Finally!
I've now been back for almost exactly one week. And I still can't adjust to the cold let alone find time to update my poor, neglected blog. Ah well, such is life. After 2 weeks on the beautiful island of Jamaica, it is a complete shock to my system to be rudely thrown back into everyday life at freezing temperatures.
But Jamaica - what a place. 10 hour flight dragged by but I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of the immigration process and how quickly our luggage arrived. Once out of the airport we were "helped" by a very friendly porter who welcomed us to JA and carried our luggage to the coach for us. He then stood very close looking at us expectantly while spence fiddled with the money trying to sort out a tip. He gave $200JA which is roughly £2 - not bad for a couple of minutes work. "Well, if that's all you can afford", was the response for the increasingly less friendly porter. Charming. However, it was an indication of times to come as it became obvious that the initial "friendliness" of the native Jamaicans was merely an attempt to wheedle money out of naive tourists. It is very much a country where people will be overly friendly and helpful, but only because they expect something in return. I realise that I sound cynical but there's only so much false cameraderie that I can bear.
We reached Falcon Cottages just under 2 hours later, unloaded our suitcases and went into the office to check in. The office was tiny and there was only one staff member there to check in about 10 of us. Slowly the word spread that they hadn't been expecting as many people as had turned up - luckily we were some of the expected so we settled in to our rooms and got some dinner from the restaurant. Then Babs crashed out and the rest of us decided to go with Marlon (Mr Driver Man) to Alfreds. Got some HYDRO and couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the night. Even after we got back to our room someone came to knock on the door to check that we were ok coz we'd been laughing so loudly for so long.
The rest of the holiday passed by in a blur (or should I say a purple haze). It was uncannily like the Philippines so I felt relatively at home but you did constantly have to be on guard as there were some seriously dodgy people around. One guy came up to spence on the second night sounding very proud of the fact that he had just been released from prison for raping a tourist in a holiday resort. He then asked spence to bring some drugs home in his stomach for him. Needless to say we beat a hasty retreat. Unfortunately, we kept bumping into the same guy wherever we went as well as several other dodgy guys. One of them was a huge, walking slime ball - literally every word that came out of his mouth was a line. When I told him I was with my boyfriend he paused for a split second and then carried on, asking me to run off to the mountains with him. Example of his lines:
You have beautiful hair - do you use a special shampoo? You have beautiful skin - do you use a special lotion? You have beautiful teeth - do you use special toothpaste.
All in one go just like that. It was all I could do not to piss myself laughing in front of him.
So much to write about and so little time. I'll have to continue tomorrow.....
