Wednesday 4 January 2012

The week that started and ended on the beach

Forget snow - this year I spent both Christmas Day and New Year's Day with good company on the beach! Below are some pictures from my holiday week, now that everyone has gone home and I have time to blog...

Mom and Dad arrived late on Christmas Eve.  We ate good food, sat around the Christmas tree, and opened presents, just like you are supposed to do on Christmas Eve.  Christmas Day we went to the beach and had a lovely Jamaican Christmas dinner at my landlord's place (it included 3 kinds of meat - ham, beef, and chicken).
Mom and Dad dots in the water

Christmas Day chillin' (notice the lack of snow)

As the guidebook suggested, we did some of the hot spots in Jamaica, including Dunn's River Falls and Negril.

 
In the upper left corner you can see the congo line of people going up the falls. The route our guide took us on went straight up the middle!
Dinner at the Rockhouse in Negril

The requisite Negril sunset, right on schedule.

Dad's new found friend.
We had a couple of adventures that I wouldn't include in the guidebook, including the Royal Palm Reserve, which was essentially shut down but an opportunistic security guard took our money. We also paid the price for Jamaican crappy roads and less-than-stellar rental cars and got a flat tire.

The Royal Palm Reserve - would have been nice several years ago, I'm sure

The guard shook a bucket of nails, and the birds came flying in thinking it was the sound of their dinner!

You can see I contributed moral support to the tire change, but not much else - I was glad to have Dad there.

The post-tire-change beer was good, but the nachos were a little smaller than we had expected...
We also went to the Richmond Bird Sanctuary, always a fun experience. Even though Fritz, the manager, was disappointed with the Jamaican election results (new government!), the birds didn't seem to care.

Waiting for the birds to show up

"Don't mind me, I'll just sit here and have a drink"

Like a baby with a bottle - well, sort of...

Post-bird happiness with coffee.
.Mom and Dad left on New Year's Eve and I joined up with a group of other Cuso volunteers and friends.  We had a great dinner at my place, and then rushed quickly to get to the Yacht Club to ring in the New Year.  (We arrived with 5 minutes to spare.) There was drinking and dancing and fun all around. The week ended as it had begun - sitting on the beach on New Year's Day.

Chez Julia's, with meal made by Chef Helen.  L-R: me, Helen, Aziz, Audrey

New Year's Day - what a way to recover from New Year's Eve partying! L-R: Audrey, Aziz, me, Ann, and Helen

Squeezing the last bits of light out of the day - you can see that they had already taken our chairs to put them away. L-R: Audrey, Aziz, me

Photos are mostly mine, with the exception of Dad and I on the beach, Dunn's River Falls and the tire change, taken by Mom; New Year's Eve dinner at my house and the three of us on the beach at dusk, taken by Ann; and the 5 of us on the beach which was taken by the lifeguard at Doctor's Cave Beach.

I hope you all had good holidays too - now it's back to work!