What’s worse than someone else’s vacation photos? How about their travel blog? It’s a bit overdue, but if you read on, I can promise a few fun items: a race of superior South Africans, an old naked Japanese guy, a youth gang of jellyfish, and a drunken domestic situation that involves Rastafarian lifeguards.
My Travel Blog
April 29, 2005
Travel Day, Vegas to Negril
US Air did a nice thing that no other airline seems to do. They left pillows and blankets in every seat. The passengers in rows 18 and higher, however, did a bad thing. They took those pillows and blankets from the lower rows, like mine, in 17. I’m pretty sure I experienced hypothermia from Vegas to Charlotte.
From Charlotte, we take a connecting flight to Montego Bay. Charlotte is a friendly little airport, full of red state people going to the Caribbean. I’ve been bashing these very people for months now, since I started this blog, and here I am face to face with some of them. Boarding the plane in Charlotte was way more civil than boarding in Vegas (which was no doubt, filled with blue, red and purple state people). The women down here really make an extra effort to look nice. I am dressed in a style reminiscent of a drug addict in rehab. I’m wearing yoga pants and a jogging jacket.
In Montego Bay, we board a shuttle bus to take us to Negril. A group of six couples board the bus, they are staying about fifteen minutes up the road from us. They are older, apparently Republican since they were openly making jokes about Democrats and talked reverently of golf. True conversation:
Women in the back of bus calls to a guy in the seat behind me, “John, how old is Arnold?”
“Palmer?”
“Yes.”
“65.”
I heard someone mutter, “No, he’s 70.” Followed by someone else say, isn’t he dead, then, someone said, “No, that’s Jack Nicklaus.”
We passed a roadside bar that had three words written like this:
Cold Beer
Joint.
One lady took it to be a place you could get a cold beer and a joint. “John” felt that the name of the bar was Cold Beer Joint. They both had good points, but, unfortunately, we did not stop to find out.
We did stop at a place call Cousins Hide-away, which was a mandatory stop according to our bus driver, and we were welcomed to buy overpriced Red Strip and Rum Punch. We went with the Rum Punch.
When we finally got to the Rock House, our hotel, we didn’t bother unpacking. Instead, we headed straight for the ocean side restaurant and munched on Salad Nicoise and drank mango daiquiris. With the heat baking us and the rum melting our taut nerves, we started very slowly to relax. One drink turned into two, the sun started to set and I wondered what the hell I had been so stressed out about for the past year, since I was here last.
April 30, 2005
Day 2 Rock House, Negril
What are the poor people doing today? I’m not talking poor in the financial way, as in, I don’t have enough money to get liposuction. What are you poor slobs who are not living life in the sun up to? I’m normally one of you. Not today. Today, I rose around 9:00, had a nice Jamaican breakfast of callaloo, salt fish and bammy, took a nap under a lazy ceiling fan, snorkeled and made friends with some needle-nose fish, napped, lunched on fresh crab quesadilla, drank the world’s best papaya daiquiri, napped, got a massage, swam, um, napped (I need rest) and now I’m sitting on my private deck as the sun sets, drinking pinot grigio and watching cliff divers off Pirates’ Cove. Life is good.
Jamaicans behave better than Americans. Even the hustlers. They are aggressive when it comes to selling you their wares, but they are nice about it. Your ordinary workers are even nicer. Our “housekeeper,” Jean, who cleans our bungalow, introduced herself to me this morning by extending her hand for a good-old fashioned shake. I can imagine that some Americans, and a healthy dose of the Brits who stay here, would be put off by that, but I thought it was a nice touch. She gets a nicer than usual tip each day.
The Rock House is crawling with Australians. Why they chose to come here is beyond me only because it’s a long haul. I love the Rock House and think there is nothing comparable in the Caribbean, but honestly, I’m not sure I’d go all the way around the world to visit. There’s gotta be other places. Actually, I know the reason they are here: a wedding. The bride has the body and looks of Rachel Hunter. Bitch. In fact, everyone in the wedding party seems to be gods and goddesses from down under. They have a token chubby friend who is, of course, American. She’s super friendly and they have a tendency to leave her with the two brats they’ve brought a long, one infant, and one toddler who speaks amazingly well and plays backgammon. I’m vacationing with an Australian prodigy.
Last year when we were here, there was another wedding party that had taken over the hotel. They were from New York City. Again, everyone looked like models. I really need to lose ten or so pounds so I can stop having body envy.
Day Three
Late Afternoon:
There is a naked Japanese man staring at me from across the rocks. I’m sitting on our private patio, he is lying belly down on a lounge chair, his upper body cobra-style and his eyes fixed on me. I know he’s staring because just a second ago, I flashed my eyes over there, not expecting to see naked sushi and I caught him looking my way. I jerked my eyes quickly away when I saw his bottom mooning the sun. In my brief glimpse, I saw that the woman with him was also naked. They are old, sixties. What the hell? It’s always the people who shouldn’t be naked that are. It’s like a life lesson or something.
I look back at old Japanese man and he give me a big wave. That’s all he wanted. Just to say Hi to his neighbor in the bungalow next to him. I half-heartedly wave. I don’t want him to think I approve of naked old Japanese people.
Hubby comes out and I catch him up on the naked neighbors. He doesn’t care. “You know,” he tells me, like he’s French or something, “only Americans have issues with people running around naked.” Thank you Pierre.
Night:
I had a good meal tonight but hubby did not. We dined at Norma’s, which is supposed to be the best fusion food on the island. Or maybe it was the only fusion food. I forget. We shared a smoked marlin appetizer that was great. Three nice slivers of smoked marlin, accompanied by ringlets of thinly sliced sweet onion and a creamy sauce with a Dijoniase base.
My dinner was penne pasta with jerked marina sauce. The idea of jerked marina caught my attention and the result amply rewarded my curiosity. With more jerk than marina, the sauce kicked like a purple-faced kid in the throes of a temper tantrum, for once, a good thing. It went splendid with our 2000 Chateaufneuf Du Pape.
Hubby did not fair so well. He ordered Steak au Poivre. The fillet itself looked as if the butcher had ripped it by hand from the cow. Honest, it reminded me of a prop in a horror film. “Here, have some,” he said, which meant he wanted the rest of my meal so he didn’t have to go hungry.
“No thanks,” I said, pushing my plate toward him. Lucky for him, I’ve been on a diet since 1995 and pasta isn’t part of the plan.
We took a taxi back to the Rock House. The stars were brilliant in the sky above and I inhaled the smoky sweet night air. Ganja. The whole night smelled of the weed. As we passed the lights of the sad little homes of the locals, I imagined them all sitting inside, watching crappy-ass TVs and getting high.
Day Four
The Australians are actually South Africans. I think they might be a superior race, decedents of some Nazi experiment. How can such a large group of people all be so tall and thin? The men have six-pack abs and asses so tight you could bounce dimes off of them. The women, well, those bitches. Let’s just leave it at that. But I will ask this one question. How can you be 6’1 and a size two? And how can your hair look so good in this humidity?
The Pirates Cave is bustling with tourists tonight. The magnificent gleaming body of a lone local just jumps from the cliffs into the water. Either he’s having fun or the American tourists are getting to him and he had to get away. There is some nasty reggae thundering from the speakers and even across the lagoon, I can hear each and every word. There are many references to ganja, of course. In fact, I think that is the name of the song.
Hubby wants to join the party. He’s telling me to stop blogging and start drinking. “You’re in Jamaica, party mon.” I tell him to shut-up and stop sounding stupid. Bless his heart.
Day Five
I spent ten minutes in the sun yesterday and my shoulders are burned to a crisp. I look like a nuclear power plant mishap. There’s only one thing to do. Put on more sunblock and drink lots of rum and brave the pool area.
Swimming in the ocean is not in our near future. Yesterday, we went for a mid-morning swim and made enemies with a swarm of baby jellyfish. They were so small we didn’t see them at first. While the stings weren’t that bad, my hubby is worse for the wear. His vanity is having a hard time dealing with the little spread of welts the stings left on his legs, chest and arms. Mine are just about gone, finally, that extra layer of fat came in handy.
All morning, hubby has been annoying the Rock House staff senseless by asking, “Do you think there are jellyfish out there?” “Do you think they will be there this afternoon.” “How about on the South side of the island.” One man finally said to him, “honest, I just don’t know. I’m not an expert on jellyfish, mon.”
Creatures are abundant and thriving in Jamaica. A couple of tiny bugs have taken up residence in my laptop. I know that when I return to the States I’ll probably be busted at customs for carrying a larva farm of sort some in my hard drive. I also may be the first person in history who has to call Orkin to exterminate my laptop. Oh well. It will be my personal claim to fame.
For lunch, we did something touristy: we went to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. Blame it on the jellyfish. I hope was hoping for something charming and cute, as opposed to the corporate and soulless Margaritaville in Vegas. I should stop hoping. The food was overpriced and bland and they had an annoying DJ who would not shut up. I’m not a fan of Jimmy Buffet’s, but if I were, I’d be pissed that my rock-n-roll icon (or whatever it is he plays) is a huge cheesy corporate sell-out. One last word on the subject: if you have never been to one of his restaurants, they each have a gift shop where they sell salt shakers, as in “searching for my lost shaker of salt.” Get it? I didn’t think so.
Day 6
The Wild Thing passes the point in front of the Rock House. I watch from our lanai. The deck is filled with happy tourists, chattering, laughing, whooping it up. Reggae, of course, blasts from the speakers. For a moment, my view of it is marred slightly by the tropical foliage growing out of the cracks in the lava rock cliffs. It is in this brief moment that, for the first time all week, I feel, with every cell in my body, the laziness of Jamaica. Life is hot, humid, and it is slow. The sun is bright, the water is a study in glitter. It is all good, as it should be.
Tomorrow is the last day of our vacation. My liver is begging me to call Betty Ford. My newly formed cellulite is suggesting urgently, with each jiggle, the South Beach Diet. My skin wants me to learn a new word: shade. By all accounts I should go home and be happy to do it, but my brain is begging me to stay. Or maybe that’s my soul I’m hearing It sounds a little Rastafarian if you ask me.
Hubby is ready to go home. Today he jumped off the 42 foot cliff at Pirates Cave. In all of history, it will go down as one of the most inelegant leaps. He landed on his butt and part of his back. Now he walks like a car wreck victim, the kind who thinks range of motion happens to other people. He drank a ton of rum and passed out, in part from the booze and in large part from the pain killers. Always thinking ahead, his last words to me were, “don’t forget to make reservations for dinner. 7:00 sounds good.”
It’s just as well. If he could see me now, he might want a divorce. There is a somewhat famous episode of “Friends” where they all go to Bermuda or Barbados or somewhere tropical, and Monica’s hair frizzes from the humidity to the size of a beach ball. I look like her right now, just not as thin and without the great bone structure.
This morning, we underwent an interesting social study in motion. We went on a “Rhino Safari,” which is to say we took these little two-seater speed rafts out on the sea with a tour group. Counting the two guides, there were 12 of us total, each couple in a Rhino. The guides were very specific. Do not go too fast. Ride single file. Go slow over the large waves. This is not a contest. Have fun. Watch out for the other riders.
As soon as we got started, the other “Rhino” rafts, all driven by men, took off like bats let loose from hell. They were determined not to be last. Single file lost definition. It hurt going over those waves. Hubby deliberately took it slow because he knew that it was worse for the person in back, meaning me. I had the only considerate partner, evidently. There were several near wrecks with the Rhinos as most of the drivers cut the others off like it was the Vegas freeway. Or the LA freeway, or the Boston (insert the name of your town here). Actually, you are probably thinking they were all Americans. Nope. We were the only USAers. One couple came from England. One from France (they were all smoochie smoochie I might add) and the other two couples came from Denmark. They were the really rude ones. The drivers HAD to be first, at all costs. When our trip ended I wanted to walk up to the one who arrived first and say, “Congratulations, you came in first. What did you win? Beside me thinking you are a jackass.”
Testosterone has been the cause of many things. It’s also the cause of wars and most divorces, and of course, the very reason why there are lesbians. And one more thing before I leave this topic, note to European men: sweeties, skimpy Speedos are not impressing anyone. You are not that well-endowed, and even if you are, no one cares. Honest. Get some swim trunks. Quick.
Day 7
It’s our last day at the Rock House. Tomorrow, too early, we board a shuttle, head back to Montego Bay, sit there in the terminal for a couple hours before they decide to let us board the plane, fly to Charlotte, sit there for three more hours for our layover, then we land at that cracked jewel in the desert, Las Vegas. I miss my cats, Sammy and Liza. That’s pretty much all I miss. On Monday, I return to work where my boss will bombard me with his usual schoolyard humor of mean little jibs and jabs: Did you get shorter on vacation? Where’s your tan? Oh good, you’re back. It was getting lonely around here without stupid blondes. On his good days, I can mutter “jackass,” and he laughs. On his bad days, I can mutter “jackass,” and he gets the double whammy pleasure of telling me I have no sense of humor. And you wonder why I have a blog devoted to people behaving badly.
Everyone should be a Jamaican. Time is irrelevant. It’s something invented by Americans. Urgency is not in their vocabulary. Life’s unpleasant events bead up and roll off you like water over skin soaked in too much Coppertone. “Don’t worry, be happy, mon.” Yeah? Well bite me because I have to return to reality now.
I witnessed something today that got me in the mood to go back to the old USA, where humiliating ourselves to make money is not just a normal way of life, it is a God-given right.
We were at Pirates Cave, yet again. I was drinking Papaya Daiquiris and eating jerk snapper, yet again. There are four young locals who act as “life guards” overseeing the jumpers and divers off of the cliff. There were no tourists today in the mood to jump, however, one man, an American who kept boasting that we was from North Dakota, paid each of the jumpers a buck each to jump while he took snapshots of them. He wore a bad Hawaiian shirt and blue jean Bermuda shorts, with pockets on the side. He looked like he bought his clothes at a car wash boutique. Each life guard jumped two or three times, some from the cliff, some from a higher wall with a jagged top, some from crows perches they had built in trees for extra high jumps. The man snapped away, yelling instructions. “Swan Dive!” “Pull your knees in!” “Back flip!” “Touch your toes!”
His wife, or girlfriend, or whoever, stood nearby smiling. She wore a pink bikini top and her belly flopped out over her Bermuda shorts. She looked like she was in her third-trimester, which is doubtful since she was in her mid-fifties at least.
“Is he a photographer? I asked, since he was giving direction.
“Oh gosh no, he’s just having some fun. He wants to show all our friends how the natives live here. It’s so exotic you know. It’s really something else.”
Maybe I should clarify that these were normal young men who just happened to not be American, but instead, are Jamaican. They do not have bones pierced through their nose and they speak in English, not in clicks and whirls. While it is true that not everyone has the chance to hone their skill at cliff diving, it’s hardly like the guys were full of local color. They were wearing Tommy Hilfiger matching swim trunks for God’s sake.
If I were that other, yet only sporadic and rare, contributor to La Blogda, Ironhuff, I’d have the skill and talent to write a special song about American tourists from North Dakota.
The whole episode brought me down a bit. It’s not the tourists from ND that bothered me so much. That behavior is counted upon, one of life’s comforting clichés. These guys were so willing to dive and take this badly dressed strangers command, all for a buck a dive. They were eager, trying to outdo each other, as if the cheap bastard might give them an extra buck for creativity. They are young and a few extra bucks are probably helpful money down here. Still, it’s like so many other places I’ve visited in tourists places, where the locals are trained like dogs to make us Americans (or Europeans) laugh at their silly, exotic antics.
Then again, them jumping forty feet for a buck is really no different than me jumping through hoops to carry out a new marketing strategy for the powers-that-be in my company. These boys dive in the clear blue water, I submerge myself in corporate politics. In the end, both of us experience a stinging sensation, them to their bodies from the impact of the fall, me from my ego for trying to meet the corporation’s undefined, ever-changing, and always unsatisfied goals.
Hell, just thinking about it makes me ready for another vacation.
Day 8
I have encountered rude people in my time. I have met jackasses and assholes and big fat MOFOs. I have endured whiners, SOBs, and a slew of backstabbing bitches. But today, this morning, I encountered for the first time in all my years, the original Ugly Americans.
Each hotel in Negril has chartered shuttle buses to take its guest to the airport. The busses usually stop at three hotels before finally going to the airport. We were the first to be picked up. The next stop was at some all-inclusive called Village something or other. The driver got off to find the people he was picking up. We waited. Ten minutes passed. He boarded the bus and looked at us. “They will be just a few minutes.” Then he disappeared. Ten more minutes passed. He came back and turned down the radio. “Okay, I have to say, I think they are being very disrespectful toward you. They are having breakfast.”
“What?” I said. “They understand we have a plane to catch, right?” He said, “So do they. They had a pick up time just like you, but no, they weren’t ready and when they finally came down they said they needed to eat. I told them to get it to go, but they are sitting at a table with plates and all.”
“Can we just leave them?” I asked. He said he’d already put a call into his office to ask them if he could.
Another ten minutes passed. Hubby went inside the hotel to find the driver. He pointed out the offenders. They were getting up from their table and slowly making their way to the lobby. Hubby boarded the bus. “They are on their way.” Then he told me, as if this held the key to their rudeness, that they were very slobby, very out-of-shape people. Hubby comes from a superior race of thin people with low body fat.
A few minutes later, no one boards. The driver runs to the bus, and shut the door behind him. He takes off, like he has just robbed the bank.
“The lady said I had to wait for them, but I told her no more. By policy I only have to wait ten minutes, but since they were there when I arrived, I thought I’d wait, until they decided to have breakfast.”
I had to ask. “What country are they from.”
He hesitated. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“They are from the States, aren’t they?”
“Um, yes ma’am, they are.” His voice sounded as if he had just told me I had a terminal disease. American.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m sorry for my countrymen’s behavior. We aren’t all this rude.”
“Oh I know. I’m sorry you had to wait. They were very disrespectful.”
Of course, I turned to hubby and said, “I just bet they are Republicans.”
And that is how the beginning of our last day of vacation ended. Now we are sitting in the Charlotte airport, waiting to board a plane back to Vegas. Behind me a woman talks on a cell phone to her sister. Her voice has the southern consistency of maple syrup. She keeps talking about bed shams. I have a New Yorker sitting beside me. In a few minutes, I will log off and read a story about how W and his gang of evildoers are ignoring warnings about global warming.
Tomorrow I will resume my normal life. My cat, Sammy Davis Jr., will display behavior problems because we left him alone with his Uncle Bill for a week, and Uncle Bill is allergic to cats and can’t let Sammy sleep in bed with him. Sammy will leave little “gifts’ meant for the litter box in the middle of the stairs, or worse, in the middle of our bed. We will pretend we are mad at him and then after a few minutes, one of us will pick him up, hug him, and call him our little prince, our precious cream puff, the light of our life. He will purr, and we will wonder how we could leave such a cute thing alone for a week.
We will grocery shop, wash clothes, dust furniture, and I will resume my diet that I’ve been on since the mid-nineties. On Monday morning, I will wake up with the first light and realize I have to return to work. I’ll miss the ugly Americans who missed the shuttle bus and kept us waiting, and wonder if they are still in Jamaica, missing taxis or other shuttles because they can’t get their act together. Their lack of urgency and bad sense of manners will keep them forever in the lobby of the Village whatever in Negril, on permanent vacation. That is the past and Vegas is the future. For now, I sit in the Charlotte airport and listen to the kid who just plopped down next to me, as he speaks his indecipherable southern language and smells of what else, but peaches.
