Swimming with the Fishes

Sarah and I have reached a draw in our butt-bruises contest: her bruises are far, far more impressive than mine are, and will likely remain a part of her life long after the sunburns fade. Mine are less scary, but I broke my tailbone, according to the resort’s nurse-on-site, so it’s like comparing apples to oranges, or something. We both have a lot of whimpering and squirming, but it’s all for a good cause.

Mary is considerably less bruised, seeing as how she did not leap off any cliffs in the recent past, but she makes up for it by being smugly smarter than us for not having leapt off any cliffs in the recent past. It all balances out in the end. (Hah, the end, get it? I slay me.)

The original theory was that we would have lots of time on Sunday morning, to have a leisurely breakfast, do a little snorkeling, get packed up, check out of the hotel and be on our way around the island to Ocho Rios, where we were scheduled to swim with dolphins. To quote the Jamaicans, “No problem.”

Of course I knit. But not very much.

Then the reality dawned: my mother and sisters, to balance out for their myriad gifts and brilliance, have, how do you say, a bit of a challenge with the concept of packing quickly. Less leisure, and less snorkeling, but we were in the car and on the (left side of the) road in good time. I got to drive this time, and I can say with confidence that the weirdness of driving on the left side of the road wears off much faster than the weirdness of riding on the left side of the car.

Did I mention the goats?

We arrived at Dolphin Cove in Ocho Rios after a wee bit of lostness – we drove right past it; it’s simply not well-marked. We had a bit of time before our appointment with the big fish, and Mary wanted to go snorkeling, so we headed into the ray area and got ready to snorkel. I got the mask, got the lifejacket, put everything in its proper place, got ready to place my face in the water… and promptly had a right and proper panic attack. Seriously, not a pretty thing; if they hadn’t let me go to the ladder and get out early, I’d have levitated. It was amazing; I had no idea I would panic like that. I can swim underwater, can put my face under, can even deal with sharing the water with creatures large enough to double as afghans on a cold winter’s night, but I could not – could not – put my face underwater while wearing the snorkel mask setup. I’ve never had quite that effective a freakout. So the girls and my mom snorkeled, and I paced and breathed slowly on the dock.

But then, swimming with dolphins? Awesome and fun. You’ll have to check back in a few weeks; I don’t have any photos, but the Dolphin Cove staff helpfully videotaped the whole thing and sold it back to us for a billion dollars, so once I get a copy of that I can probably post snippets of it. Sarah did not lose her bathing suit bottom, or her top… but she threatened to do both, at separate times.

Better pictures to follow... I was in the water with the dolphins, so we paid ridiculous amounts for the DVD made by the Dolphin Cove staff.

Speaking of which, have I mentioned that once again, I was the largest of a group of four women, and therefore was rendered effectively invisible for most of the trip? Sarah got two separate marriage proposals while we were in Jamaica; I’m not entirely certain they were kidding. I got to hold the camera.

Anyway, after that, we dried off. Then we drove to Kingston.

Hah, those five little words, they don’t sound too intimidating, do they? But we were driving through rain forest and mountains, on the left side of the road. On roads that were no more than 11 feet wide. Very exciting stuff, and my mother did a fantastic job driving. I’m certain I could have handled the driving, but I’m not certain I could have handled her anxiety while doing so… she’s not known to be the most calm of passengers under normal circumstances, and this was decidedly not normal. One of us would have ended up pitched over a cliff in rural Jamaica if I’d been behind the wheel, and I’m not quite sure who it would have been.

We made it to Kingston, a terrifying experience all by itself. The road that takes you to the outskirts of town is a wide, four-lane toll road; it dumps you off into a narrow, poorly lit inner city area in which prostitution and active, in-the-moment drug use happen on the sidewalk as you drive by. I haven’t spent a lot of time in my life being an obvious, physical minority, and it created senses of both self-consciousness and acute fear. I was very aware that we were four white women, in a nice (by comparison) car, with all of our possessions and money and identification in one place.

We made it to the airport, checked in the rental car, and asked the lot attendant to get us a taxi to bring us to our hotel. The Sheraton. “No,” he said.

Excuse me?

“There is no Sheraton here.”

Hmm.

I checked the printed confirmation page that my mother had carfeully carried throughout the trip. Sure enough: Kingston.

Kingston, ONTARIO.

Oh, my, yes.

It all worked out in the end. We weren’t able to get on an earlier flight, since our 6:40 a.m. flight was the next one to leave the island. But we found a room in the Hilton, the only chain hotel in Kingston with available rooms. It was overpriced but safe and not scary, and we made it back to the airport in plenty of time the next morning.

The flights home were thankfully uneventful, and I had a lovely reunion with my kids and husband.

And there were two feet of snow waiting in my front yard. Perhaps we came home a bit early…

I Have Found the Secret to Happiness

…and it is clean underwear.

At about 2:00 this afternoon, I got a wonderful phone call. “We haff found your bags, miss. We are driving them from Kingston to MoBay. You should get them around five o’clock.”

We didn’t get them until almost 7:00, but this is a small tree in the larger forest that is filled with clean clothes and toiletries.

Oh, my goodness, having more than two choices of clothing (one set purchased for approximately a billion dollars in the hotel gift shop) and toothpaste is a wonderful thing. As are readily available meals and drinks of all sorts, there for the asking as long as you have a snazzy yellow wristband.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore... or Boston, either.

We ended up with a first floor room. In most circumstances, this would make me nervous – less safe from wandering nefarious people and aggressive crabs – but first off all, it’s really cool to be able to walk directly to the Caribbean, and secondly, the door weighs approximately six hundred pounds. Even the crabs aren’t that aggressive.

The day began with breakfast and a walk on the beach, and progressed to a flurry of reservations: massages on the beach – remember that massage tent I mentioned? – today, parasailing and cliff diving tomorrow (with copious amounts of rum consumption before the latter), and swimming with dolphins on Sunday. Expensive dolphins, and I’ll have to cram in a few extra overtime shifts to assuage the guilt of that, but it’s swimming with dolphins. On Easter. Halleluia.

From there, we had some beach time…

...some trips on a much-faster-than-it-looks catamaran…

...some sunburn (turns out, the tropical sun is different from the New Hampshire winter sun, and after 40 minutes of exposure I glow in the dark)…

It has been a vastly, infinitely better day than yesterday.

And my underwear is clean. Bliss.

It was a full moon that second night... apparently a full moon in Jamaica brings much better luck than the day-before-a-full-moon.

Welcome to Jamaica... Have a Long Day

Note: I didn't have Internet access in Jamaica, or to be precise wasn't willing to pay $10+ a day for the privilege when I was on vacation, but I did bring my laptop and kept a running "blog" in Word. I'll post one day at a time, so you can pretend along with me that I'm still there a bit longer, instead of back to work in less than 12 hours.

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According to the hotel clock, it’s 8:44 p.m. According to my internal clock, it’s about midnight. Of tomorrow.

It’s been a very long day.

Any day in which you deliberately set the alarm for 4:00 a.m. is destined to be a long one, but one might expect a destination of Jamaica to cure a lot of the yawns and lethargy associated with the day. There comes a point, though, where enough hassle and ridiculousness balances out even the nicest carrot at the end of that string.

The angst started early. In theory, we were to have the alarm go off at 4:00, with a backup call from the front desk at 4:15, to allow us to hop up, get on our clothes, and climb into the shuttle to the airport. In reality, the alarm went off at 4:00, and some combination of my young and lovely sisters beat it into submission and promptly fell back asleep. I didn’t hear the alarm, but the resulting flurry must have registered on some level, because at 4:08 I sat up, grabbed my glasses, and squinted blearily at the clock. By 4:35 we were, indeed, all on the shuttle – a good thing, because the next shuttle didn’t leave until 5:30, which is cutting it a bit close for a 6:45 international flight. It required me scurrying down to the lobby ahead of the group, throwing my bag in the back and begging the driver to wait “just another minute.” He did.

We stood in long lines for security, as was expected, and made it to the gate with a comfortable margin. This turned out to be a rare and precious experience.

That first flight left about 25 minutes late. Since we were originally scheduled to have a 45-minute layover in Miami, the margin suddenly became too close for comfort. I paged a stewardess – sorry, airline customer service technician, or whatever the politically polite term is – who dragged herself to my side as though I had asked her to walk barefoot from Siberia, and asked what we should do, since our connection time was so tight and we were traveling with Mary, a young lady not known for her catlike speed and reflexes.

“Well, a lot of people have connections to make. Don’t worry about it,” was the helpful reply. When I explained that I was a lot more concerned about no one getting hurt in the process, she laughed at me. Literally, “Ha, ha, ha, ha,” and walked away. I was less than impressed.

Then they forgot to have a wheelchair waiting for us at the gate, so there was a delay waiting for that. We followed a helpful and very speedy man through the airport, fast enough that Mary got a slight case of windburn on her face, and made it to the gate just in time to watch them close and lock the door. Fabulous.

We were reassigned to another flight, and were told to hurry; it was now 10:55 and the flight took off at 11:30. In the five minutes it took to get new boarding passes, Mary and Sarah left to find a bathroom, and someone wandered off with the wheelchair. We couldn’t get another one – apparently they’re a hot commodity in Miami, I shudder to think of the black market – so I ended up carrying her on my back and running. You try running with someone on your back without jostling their head enough to bounce it down onto the ground and through the terminal. Especially down a moving escalator. Mary loved that part.

Midway to the new gate – which, of course, was back near the original gate, about a 10-minute walk from the second failed attempt – we managed to hitch a ride with a friendly neighborhood golf cart, and breathlessly made it to the gate by 11:15… only to be informed that, no, no, the flight doesn’t depart at 11:30, it merely starts boarding then.

I didn’t kill anyone today. I just want that stated for the record.

So we had a few minutes in Miami to sit and wait, which was probably a good thing. The flight to Kingston was uneventful, as long as you don’t consider my neighbor’s unbelievable foot odor to be an event, and if the day had ended there I’d be a much happier individual right now.

Instead, we still had yet one more plane to catch, because we’re spending the first three days of our vacation on the other side of the island, in Montego Bay. So the plan was to rush to baggage claim, grab our bags, hurry through customs and catch the next flight.

Instead, all we did was the first and last steps there. Because the airline – wait for it – Lost Our Luggage. Oh, I’m barely able to type it out, what with the wiggles of sheer delight.

Then we left through the wrong door, and had to go all the way back through the long security line again to get to the last plane.

I’m not sure at precisely which point my spirit broke, but it was sometime in there. I know this because once we were finally, frantically seated in the last plane of the day, we were asked to once again fill out immigration and customs forms. I was seated next to a pilot from the airline we’d been using all day – not to name names, but let’s just say that after this trip, I’ll never again offer money and time to anything rhyming with Schmamerican Schmairlines. He decided to helpfully pipe up and tell me how to fill out the form, not knowing it was my second time in the past few hours. First I snapped at him, and then I tried to recount the events of the day and I got all teary-eyed and choked up (very not me). I informed him, “I have had a truly terrible day, and you can’t help that. Please don’t try.” I have to give him credit for knowing when to shut up.

I can’t say the same for the three-year-old a few rows up. That child has lungs, and knows how to use them. Endlessly. At top volume. Those poor parents. There was a moment of hilarity after we got off the plane and were headed out: a young woman came sprinting past us toward Customs, just as the lung-intensive creature reached the large, high-ceilinged hallway perfectly designed to maximize volume and echoes. I expressed sympathy for both child and parents; Sarah thought that the woman who'd just run frantically past us was probably the mother. It's less funny in print, but in the moment it was a rare smile on a difficult day.

Finally, finally, we made it to Montego Bay, and the day stopped being so incredibly, inexcusably screwed up. We found our ride to the hotel, as promised, with minimal fuss, and were able to check in with one small blip, only noticeable because it was just one more thing in an already endless day, when they wanted to charge Mary adult rates but not let her wear the adult wristband for food and drink. My mother negotiated it, and we have a room.

It’s a small room, less ornate and well-appointed even than the one I shared with Willem and the kids in Florida, but it’s on the first floor, and if I open the sliding glass, I can be in the Caribbean Sea in 34 steps. There’s a massage tent just a few steps to the left. They have constantly-running slushie machines filled with pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris, and it turns out that I quite enjoy the taste of locally made Jamaican rum in said refreshments.

It will all be OK. In theory, they will get our luggage here on a subsequent flight and deliver it to the hotel. Even if that doesn’t happen, I found a wildly overpriced sun dress and flip-flops in the gift shop, and can wear clean clothes tomorrow. When I get a massage, and go wading, and just lie in the sun for a bit.