On Saturday morning in Miami Moe and I got to work for an hour or two with the laptops in the hotel lobby, and before long we had booked flights to Jamaica, along with a hotel for the week we planned there.
Our flight left that evening, so we had a few hours to have a look around Miami. We went looking for a mini-golf place that I had discovered online, but it seemed closed down when we found it, and instead we had a wander around the used car lots nearby, and managed to get some much-needed laundry done.
We cruised down the coast, and wandered down to Miami beach before finally heading for the airport. There was a bit of a mix up with flights, and somehow we had been booked on flights for the following day. After several phone calls, and some fantastic assistance from the extremely helpful American Airlines staff, we managed to just make it onto our original planned flight, with some very hastily-packed baggage.
In Jamaica, because of the booking mix-up, we now no longer had a hotel room for the first night, and eventually caught an expensive taxi to a cheap (by Jamaica’s somewhat expensive standards!) hotel. Hotel Gloriana had the most impressively big bed I have ever seen crammed into a little room.
The next day we took another taxi from Montego Bay to our destination in Negril at the west end of the island. We are staying in a basic, but comfortable, and wonderfully situated little beach-side resort. For a few days now we have been slowing down to Jamaica-time, and I think we have pretty much got there now.
We have swum in the warm tropical sea, wandered into town to buy food, sat in the hot spa, drank beer in random, baech-side bars, and had fun bargaining with the local beach-sellers.
Yesterday was a truly wonderful day. Moe and I went into town, and tried the local speciality, jerk chicken. Our plan was to wander around the coast up onto the cliffs, aiming for the oft-mentioned Rick’s Cafe for sunset. But we were easily side-tracked into a roadside coffee shop brewing heavenly locally grown and freshly roasted coffee.
We eventually arrived at Rick’s long after dark, and had a look at the spectacular jump-off points on the cliffs where jumping and diving regularly takes place. On the way back to town we stopped off at a little bar for a beer, and enjoyed the real flavour of Jamaica.
Moe barganied hard with the taxi driver who took us back to our hotel, and he laughed and chatted with us on the way into town. As he worked the nightshift, we arranged to call him on Friday night to take us on our early morning journey back to Montego Bay for our return to Miami.
Back at the hotel, we grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge, and walked down to the dark beach, where the water felt so warm. We had the place completely to ourselves, and it felt so hedonistic bobbing around in the warm sea with a beer in hand.
I was amazed when I moved my arm at one point, and the water lit up. I have only seen this luminescence once or twice before, and never as brightly as this. There were patches where the phosphorescence was very bright, and when we moved legs and arms they glowed impressively under the water.
We stayed in the sea for perhaps an hour, perhaps more, I really have no idea, then when we started to feel slightly chilly, headed up the beach and plunged into the hot spa. It felt absolutely wonderful.
We really have relaxed into Jamaica-time now, but that isn’t helping me to achieve the goal I came here to accomplish – have a “workplace romance”. I haven’t really done too much work yet!
