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I went to Jamaica for my sister's wedding. Rachelle and Anthony got married at the Sandals Dunns River Resort just outside of Ochos Rios.
My other Sister Saundra and her friend Sean came down for the wedding.
Here we are starting our visit to a plantation house:
Rambo came down from Boston to join in the adventure. He took a fancy to our tour guide:
There was an old style hearse at the mansion - with windows for easy viewing:
On the second day, we decided to drive to the Eastern shore to do some surfing.
There was about 4 hours of continual rains in the morning, so the already challenging roads became impassable at some spots.
Or, at least impassable for most cars...
Here are some typical shots of the flooded roads:
At one point, the road was completely blocked off by a river that had jumped its banks and was flowing straight down the road.
There were many cars backed up and a couple of trucks stuck out in the middle of the road/river.
We pulled the car up next to a police car and went to investigate the conditions.
The road/river was about 1.5 ft. deep and flowing fast.
At one point, the river made a 90 degree turn and heading up towards the mountains.
We followed that up about a block and decided to try and divert the river back into a channel
that would flow under the road, instead of on top of it. We worked for over an hour to divert the river -
all the while a hundred people from the village looked on without lifting a finger.
At the end we were completely soaked, muddy, and all of my fingers were bleeding.
But, we managed to divert more than half the flow into the channel. Here is a picture of our work:
Note that the flow down the street is now only about 6 inches deep.
The water going off to the right of the picture is the flow that we diverted.
To get an idea of the volume, here is a picture of the flow going back into the channel that goes under the road:
After our diversion, the road was passable once again. When we returned to our car, our reward was a slashed tire.
There were dozens of people hanging around our car, some offering to fix the tire - for a price.
Once I informed them that we loved to change tires, we made a quick change and got away
before that got too aggressive in their requests for money.
We got our slashed tire fixed at the next little ganja and tire facility. We eventually made it to Boston Bay
(right next to the Blue Lagoon) and rented surfboards. It was Rambo's first time on a board and the waves were perfect for learning
- big enough to scare, but not big enough to kill.
We returned to Ocho Rios that night. Rachelle and Anthony's wedding was the next afternoon.
In the morning we went golfing - in another major downpour.
Luckily, the weather broke enough in the afternoon to have the ceremony outdoors.
The following day we went to Dunns River Falls. There is often hundreds of people climbing up the 600ft sequence of falls,
but we went early in the morning and had the whole place to ourselves for about 45 minutes. Here are some of the falls:
There were numerous opportunities for danger:
Rambo got creative and invented the one-hand handstand in the falls. Here is my attempt:
Rambo got overconfidence and thought he could climb right up the most challenging part.
He paid for his cockiness by being swallowed by the falls:
Rambo eventually escaped and we heading to the far West side of the country to visit Negril.
We got a little bungalow on the 7-mile beach, which is lined with little hotels, bars, and clubs.
For dinner we headed to the Southside of town to visit Rick's, which sits on top of some cliffs overlooking the ocean.
We were not dressed for jumping that night, so we returned the next morning.
