We left for our honeymoon the Monday after our wedding (April 30). We flew from Kansas City to Charlotte and Charlotte to Montego Bay. We arrived in Montego Bay and we were greeted with a Red Stripe! We loaded in the van and began the 2+ hour ride in the rain to Negril. It didn't bog us down at all though... we enjoyed Bob Marley on the way, drank our Red Stripe, and talked about how excited we were to finally be in Jamaica celebrating OUR HONEYMOON!
We stayed at
Couples Negril, and I would highly recommend it. The rooms, service, staff, activities, entertainment, food and beaches were all top-notch. We had 4 restaurants to choose from one of which had a "nacho bar" that I hit up on a daily basis. (No judgement, no more wedding diet!) We ate a lot of jerk chicken and steak and drank a lot of mojitos. The food was to die for - a fat kids paradise!
Most of our days consisted of;
- They delivered breakfast to our room accompanied with Blue Mountain coffee. Yum!
- Heading down to the pool or beach to get our sun tan on. (Tom usually lasted about 20 minutes before we need to a. head to the pool bar b. get in the pool and cool off or c. look for sea creatures on the ocean floor.
- Making conversation with the other honeymooners at the pool bar.
- Lunch time!
- Followed by nap or reading time while it rained for about an hour.
- More pool/ocean time - we checked out paddle boards and paddle boats. Tom took a spill on the paddle board (blood gushing, we didn't have any stitches... or sharks!)
- Getting showered and ready for dinner.
- Walking on the beach and watching the sunset.
- Gorging on a huge dinner. (ok, and dessert)
- Watching the entertainment; Singing, dancing and much more! They even had contests - my new husband got in a "booty shaking contest" with a "Jamaican village woman" and he also sang Piano Man to the whole piano bar. What talent he has!
It's sounds like a pretty good schedule to have, right? No worries, mon!
We did take a couple days to enjoy a few excursions. We loved snorkeling and saw a ton of great fish, that was a really fun activity to enjoy together. We got to ride out on a glass bottom boat, and see all the sealife on the way.
We got an hour massage on the beach that was so great!
We also found an off-resort excursion with a company called
Talk of the Town Tours. Sounds scary but the company was so nice to work with. We set it all up before we left Kansas. We went all along the coast with our tour guide, Omar. He took us by several fruit stands and markets where we got to try fresh watermelon, sugar cane, and coconut water. We stopped by a little shack that was selling live (huge!) crabs too. We stopped by a friend of Omars to get lunch and we ate: sea horse, sea conk, rice, swordfish, and lots more that isn't on our daily diet but was fun to try.
We then met up with our Captain Billy to head down the Black River. The river was filled with crocodiles, and we picked up Ol' Billy's fishing net, and headed out to the
Pelican Bar. The Pelican Bar is a little bar in the middle of the ocean that has been knocked down several times by a hurricane. It's made up of random scraps of wood, and frankly I have no idea how it held all of us! You can even carve your name into the wood. (
picture below) Billy gave the cooks the fish we caught earlier in the day and we all got to try them. We saw several sea urchins, crabs and even a squid while we were there!
We finished the day at
Rick's Cafe and Tom and I both jumped off a 35 foot cliff into the ocean! Talk about an adrenaline rush. This was really one of our favorite days! I felt like Jamaica was safe, and everyone was very friendly to us. It was fun to see another side to the island.
On our last day we went on a sunset catamaran cruise to some caves about an hour away from the resort. They had 'Rasta Ralphie' preforming on the boat and rum punch for everyone. When we arrived at the caves we got to go down a slide and swim around the inside the caves. On the way back to the resort Tom and I got to sent at the front of the boat in the netting of the catamaran. Talk about a way to end your honeymoon!
Jamaica was everything we could of dreamed of for a honeymoon. We have
so many fun and wonderful memories. This is pretty much the longest blog
post ever, but it was hard to put into words how perfect that week was
for us. I still have a hard time listening to Bob Marley since we have
come home, because it makes me miss Jamaica so much. When they play him
on the radio I think it's a sign from the Jamaica gods to tell us to go
back! And... I am sure we will soon! (If I have anything to say about
it!)
Check out just a few photos from our trip! There are more on
Facebook:
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| Give me your best Christopher Columbus pose - go! |
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| Bon Fire the resort put on. |
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| Snorkeling! |
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| T + L 4-28-2012 at the Pelican Bar. |
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| The coconut water was so yummy and refreshing. They cut it open to let us try the inside too! |
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| One of the many amazing sunsets we saw! |
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| Heading to the Pelican bar with Billy, our captain. |
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| Delicious! |
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| Tom and his new friend My. Pinchalot. They would hang live crabs from strings to show they were selling them. |
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| A photo opp by the fishing pier. |
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| The Pelican Bar |
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| This is the squid they caught - it inked all over this guy! |
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| Our crew! Billy, Omar, Tom and I. |
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| Relaxing in the ocean. They had floating rafts everywhere you could take out. I tried to keep a starfish in the pillow of my raft, but he snuck out. Darn him! |
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| If you look closely you can see the sting ray that Tom spotted. Very scary! |
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| Me jumping off the cliffs at Ricks Cafe. Yipppie! |
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| Tom taking the plunge. (two times in one week!) |
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| You can never have enough sunscreen, my dad would be proud! |
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| On the catamaran cruise. |
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| Where we sat on the way back in from the cruise. |
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| THE SANFORDS! We left our mark for about 45 seconds in Jamaica. |
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| An amazing starfish we found at lunch! |
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| Tom and his brother, Rasta Ralphie! |
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| The Sanfords getting ready for dinner. |
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| Some of the fun toys you could check out (for free) from the resort. |
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| Snorkeling time! |
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| Relaxing at the Pelican Bar. |
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| Before! |
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| After! |
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| I owned that paddle board! |
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| Our... interesting lunch. |
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| The Sanfords in Jamaica, mon. |
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| All the fishing boats on the Black River. |
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| The water was so clear and gorgeous. |
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| A nice little spot at our resort where Tom liked to read (and I fell asleep). |
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| These were the professionals at Ricks. Scary stuff! |
