Jamaica - Country #94!

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Well, we made it. AA direct flight from Miami took about as much time as the drive from Port Everglades in rush hour traffic. In a small bit of good news, there was one upgrade available to a business class seat at our AA Platinum Pro status and Clay let me have it. I am really thankful because we couldn't get seats together anyway and both had window seats. I would have hated to feel trapped beyond 2 strangers if I needed to stand suddenly. We both have business class seats together for the flight home tomorrow. We had a bit of a panic when Clay tried to check us in on his phone and found I had a different record locator number. I guess when you take the complimentary upgrade at boarding, you get a new locator number. A head's up would've been nice.

We are at the Doctor's Cave Beach Hotel. It is across the street from beach front property. It is only about a 5 minute drive from the Montego Bay airport. We focused on this Hip-Strip near Margaritaville because it is where we would have come on our RCI excursion. We booked this hotel because it was the first one in walking distance (10 minutes or so) from Margaritaville that we could book directly online through their website. It is about $160 USD for the 1 night. I cannot recommend it. It has AC so that is good. It includes sketchy WIFI and a continental breakfast. The breakfast was table service beside the pool It included coffee or tea, grapefruit or orange juice, banana, orange and watermelon, toast and pound cake slices. Clay walked to a market to buy me a yogurt for $174 Jamaican. You can get the ice bucket filled at the bar. The room is noisy and needed blackout drapes. The 2 double beds are hard and the floor is gritty.  I hope we'll be fine for one night. Oh, no elevators!

We had booked and prepaid QuickTransfer for a private car/driver from the airport to the hotel. They didn't show up. Viator is where we found and booked it. They say they've issued a refund. A couple of tourist information people tried to help us but no one knew the outfit we were looking for. The guy finally put us in a tour van for $25. It was half what we'd paid already to be met. Best laid plans and all. We asked the hotel's front desk to book us a taxi back at noon tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

Jamaica immigration/customs people did not like that we'd been in Haiti on Monday. We scored an extra stop at a nurse for a health check. She only talked to us about how we might have avoided cholera and malaria in Haiti. We explained we had beach walked on dry land from 9:30 to 11 am without eating or drinking or getting bit by mosquitoes. At that point, I was actually fine if they refused us entry and put us on the next flight back to Miami. I'd set foot on Jamaica and that counted in my book. I'm a little surprised since RCI planned the same itinerary by ship with thousands of people.

We had dinner early at Pelican Grille about 15 minutes walk from the hotel. It is where we'd planned to have lunch here from the aborted RCI cruise stop. We had traditional Jamaican dishes and they were good. I had a massive chocolate malt and oxtail stew with rice and peas. Clay had a Red Stripe beer and curried goat. It was all quite good in a nice quiet and air conditioned restaurant with a view of the bay. Clay paid about $5000 for the meal and about $800 in taxes and a $1000 tip for a total of about $7K Jamaican or $55 USD.

Given the state of our Internet connection, Clay may not post photos until we get back to Mom's house tomorrow or the next day. Check back.

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