A long time ago I had an idea that it would be hilarious to produce a TV show based on this blog.  But it wouldn’t have just been about Jamaica travel, it would have been about dragging along foreigners who are less familiar with Jamaica, to see if they could enjoy doing it how I do it.

 

Very recently I had the opportunity to make my TV show idea a reality, only I didn’t have the TV show part.  But I DID have the woman who owns THIS shoe closet come along with me.

I took this photo of her closet the night I picked her up to take her to the airport as a tag-along on my latest travels.

Most of you guys and gals know me and my travel style very well, so you tell me….does THIS look like a match?

I swear, if we did have a TV crew following us around the show would have been sold out.  I’ve never had so many ‘laughing so hard I can’t breathe’ moments in my life!

This blog post contains the first 24 hours of what will probably turn into a mini-series of posts around the most hilarious and most serendipitous events that happened on this trip.

 

[separator type=”thin”]

 

I already had my entire journey planned out well in advance.  I had nine days fully planned with a little bit of room to play, but for the most part I would be driving the island from tip to tip in my usual fashion.  I rarely sit still in Jamaica.

About a  month before I was to leave, through pure coincidence and this blog post on my other blog, I ended up reconnecting with a woman I went to high school with.  Her name is Carmen.  She read that post and messaged me about some of her travel ideas, none of which included Jamaica, all of which included New Orleans, as mentioned in that other blog post.

So we met for drinks one evening, twelve years after the last time we had seen each other and it was almost like the planets had aligned somewhere along the way.  I mentioned my upcoming travels, she mentioned that she’s making a conscious effort to say YES to every opportunity that comes her way, and VOILA!  The next day she was booked on the same flight as mine.

I’ll just drop this right here because…..Jamaica!

 

 

 

My pre-Carmen schedule for the nine days in Jamaica looked like this:

First night – UNPLANNED, just rest after a red-eye flight.

Next three nights – Reviewing Seacliff Resort in Portland.

Next three nights – Travel to Negril to meet a friend who had recently opened a restaurant.  The review of her restaurant is RIGHT HERE.  These three nights were also to be a little R&R for me.

Last two nights – Reviewing Waterfield Retreat in Montego Bay.

 

My post-Carmen schedule morphed into sleeping in five different beds, in five different locations during the nine nights we’d be on the island.  Why did it change so much?  Because if I had traveled alone I probably would have bunked in with a local friend the first night and I wouldn’t have been celebrating Carmen’s birthday in the middle of the trip, which turned into an entire first-class luxury experience…..on the house.  I swear I love my life sometimes!

Here’s how the first 24-hours went down, and over the coming weeks I’ll be writing more reviews and more detailed stories about lots of these incredible and hilarious events individually.

Carmen has only been to Jamaica one time.  It was in 2007 for a honeymoon getaway and she had only experienced the one resort she stayed at.  I admit that I had a little bit of anxiety bringing her along because I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of traveler and I had no idea what kind of traveler she was.  So I decided that on our first night I would book us into Jewel Paradise Cove, which is a Hilton property.  I work for Hilton so I could book at a staff rate which is very manageable between two people.

This is our arrival photo at Sangster airport and Carmen stipulated that I could only post it if I state that it was taken after 36 hours of NO sleep because of our flight times.  #TeamNoSleep

 

 

When I told Carmen we would do our first night in a fancy inclusive resort she was more than okay with it. Her reply was something like this, “That’s awesome!  I can do one night in my comfort zone before you fling me into the unknown!”

That was kind of funny because for me?  The resort life IS the unknown!  However, I kind of loved the resort idea for the first night because after a red-eye flight it would be nice to just arrive somewhere and be able to eat, drink and relax before our four-hour journey to Portland the next day.

 

Getting to Jewel Paradise Cove

 

After we landed in Montego Bay, sorted out my forever-awesome Budget Car Rental, and had a ceremonial first couple of drinks at the airport, we were on the road to Runaway Bay and our first of five different beds this trip.

I totally know that Jewel Paradise Cove is right off the main highway running towards Ocho Rios but since I didn’t know exactly where the entrance was I thought I’d pull it up on my GPS just to avoid any confusion.  First mistake, because as we approached where I KNEW the resort should be my stupid GPS told me to turn right off the highway, going up into the countryside.  I knew full well Jewel is a beachfront resort so I wondered what’s the purpose for the right turn instead of left?  For a brief moment I thought that maybe they put staff discount people in a cheap section across the road because we don’t pay enough to get a beachfront room, so I went with it.

It became obvious after about 3 minutes up this road that we must be headed to someone’s house.  There was definitely no resort up that way and I felt like an idiot for even taking the first wrong turn when I knew full well where I should have been going.

Carmen and I laughed our heads off as we headed deeper into nowhere until the road finally just ended.  Point blank.  I turned around, went back down the hill, and back onto the main highway.  A short distance up the road, we had finally arrived…and I think we were the most disheveled people on the entire property.

 

 

 

I could not WAIT to get into a room and have a shower, eat some food, and get presentable.  The first thing we did was order room service because we didn’t deserve to leave the room looking and feeling the way we did.  Then we took turns showering before heading out to check out the property and finding a place to eat a real dinner.  After all, we would only be on this resort for twelve hours so there was no time to waste.

I’ve never seen an adults only hotel room with twin beds before but as you’ll see below, the tub size more than made up for the lack of bed size.

 

 

 

After our showers it was dinner time so we headed out the door and wandered in the direction of the waterfront figuring there must be a restaurant and bar.  Of course there was….right ON the waterfront.  And what a beautiful sunset Jamaica offered us on our first night.

 

 

 

 

Once we had a few drinks and got seated for dinner, fatigue was rapidly setting in.  For those of you Canadians who regularly take these red-eye flights….you know what I mean.  I literally don’t even remember what we each ate for dinner I was so tired and right after we ate Carmen completely blanked out.  She couldn’t even process the words that were coming out of my mouth so we decided to head back to the room and die.

She got ready for bed but I was craving a good cup of coffee before I would turn in, so out the door I went to a little cafe I had noticed near our room block earlier.  Best decision I ever made.  This place makes a killer hot mocha cup of coffee!  AND I didn’t have to pay for it LOL.  Remember, this whole all-inclusive thingy is not common for me.

 

 

After picking up  my coffee I could hear plenty of music coming from somewhere on the property and I couldn’t stand the thought of just going to bed and not figuring out what goes on at this resort so I wandered over in the direction of the music.  The restaurant and bar I found were packed with people and I almost couldn’t comprehend that there were so many people NOT as tired as I was at this point.  But in reality it was only 8 or 9pm and they were all just getting started while I was about to collapse.

So with my cafe mocha in my hand I perched myself at the bar and also ordered a cocktail.  There I was, double-fisting with a coffee and a cocktail, alternating sips.  I could see some entertainment on the stage over yonder but couldn’t move my feet so I just sat, and ended up striking up a conversation with a hot, young American guy.  My only recollection of what we talked about was 50 Shades of Grey and the fact that his friend was lost and drunk somewhere on the resort.  So we chatted and I drank more until magically his drunk friend showed up and he left.  That was my cue to just give up and succumb to my fatigue.

 

 

When I arrived back into our room I figured it out.  The ONE thing about traveling with Carmen that was going to be an issue:  Air Conditioning.  Opening our room door was like opening the door to Alaska and I just about died.  I don’t use AC, and she uses it even in her home in Canada so it was going to be the theme for the rest of the trip.

Once morning came, Carmen also discovered the ONE issue about traveling with me.  Apparently I snore 😀

Regardless, we both slept like logs and felt like brand new human beings the next morning.  I swear we woke at the crack of dawn since we went to bed so early, so we decided to make the best of it and go explore the property we’d be leaving in a few hours.  We were up SO early that we basically sat in front of the bar stalking them until they opened.

Buffet breakfast at Jewel Paradise Cove was great and pretty much had everything a foreigner could want but I don’t recall seeing any local Jamaican food.  My most recent resort experience before this was Half Moon resort last year and they literally have EVERYTHING on the planet earth including every Jamaican breakfast item you can imagine on their buffet so I now compare everything to that.

After breakfast we wandered and discovered that Jewel Paradise Cove – an adult resort – has a lot of fun stuff that I regrettably wouldn’t get to enjoy.  Waterslides, SUP boards, water bikes, swim-up bars.  I guess everything one would expect in a resort.

 

 

 

It looked like fun but maybe a little boring if I were to be in here for any length of time, although I could have enjoyed it for probably three days before I’d go crazy.

But the mission for the day was a long-ass drive to Portland, Jamaica and a whole new experience for Carmen…..a Jamaican road trip!

To be continued…….

 

In the meantime, have any of you ever stayed at Jewel Paradise Cove?  How did you like it?  Please share in the comment section below.