We were supposed to catch our bus in front of the resort lobby at 6:45am. We were even a little early, but soon discovered that the bus was going to be late. At 7:00am our tour guide arrives and we are told that we will be the only ones on the tour. I found this to be a little odd, but at that point we had spent the money and were ready to go. We got seated on the bus and waited...and waited...and waited...
Here is Drew waiting...
Here are John and Lisa waiting... (Picture me waiting behind the camera!)
Another 45 minutes pass and finally one of the resort personnel comes out to load up the bus with sandwiches, fruit, pastries, beer, juice and soda. While this was nice, this should have triggered an alarm to go off in our heads...but it did not. We finally left at about 7:45 and are informed that we have a THREE HOUR DRIVE just to get to the first stop!!! This is when the boys popped open a beer...because they were already irritated...and the beer is what led us to this lovely rest stop where the prettiest view was this sign...
After our 3 hour tour of the land between Ocho Rios and our first stop, we ended up here...where we were taken on a Black River Safari tour via pontoon...
We got to see lots of these pretty little monsters! I totally thought this one was fake, but lo and behold, it was not...
I honestly did not think we would see too many crocs on our short ride down the Black River, but they were everywhere! Hanging out on the tree branches...
...dipping their toes in the water and resting their heads on logs...
...swimmin around...
Overall, aside from the crocs, the tour was pretty uneventful. It was pretty and they had some cool trees, but there wasn't much else to look at.
I still got Drew to muster up a smile for me despite his irritation at being roped into such an insane tour. I think he knew that if he didn't, I might totally lose it.
After hopping off the boat, we were rewarded with a ridiculously disgusting lunch of chicken, rice n' beans and slaw. I'm normally a fan of all of those things, but believe me when I say I could barely stomach 1/3 of what was on my plate. We quickly beat it outta there and drove another hour to Y.S. Falls. This was to be the highlight of our trip...or so we were told...
The falls were beautiful and it was nice to get out and walk around after being couped up in the bus for such a long drive.
Near the top of the falls were some really pretty caves and it was in this area that John decided to go swimming with his sunglasses on top of his head. One dip underwater and they were gone. Apparently one of the tour guides was an expert at finding lost items in the water, so he spent a good amount of time searching for them. Eventually they did find them and we were notified of this right before we left the area.
After ANOTHER hour drive, we arrived at a rum distillery, which was our final stop before a 3 hour drive home. As soon as we got off the bus, I immediately wanted to vomit. I have never smelled anything like that before in my life... I don't even know what it was, but it was horrid. We were supposed to be given a tour of the distillery, so we went inside to meet our tour guide...only to find out we did not have a tour guide. The place was packed and it would be at least another hour and a half before our tour would start. By this point we were just DONE and there was no way I was going to make it through another 2 hours with that horrible stench. So we took our pictures next to the giant rum bottle in the courtyard and we left.
After leaving the distillery we were all DREADING the 3 hour drive back to the resort. The ONLY thing that kept us from losing our minds was the drive. We were literally holding onto each other and our seats for dear life the entire way home. Most of the roads were were on were little, winding, dirt back roads. They were narrow and often had cliffs or steep hills on either side. Our driver also knew them so well that he had no fear...despite several near death experiences... We were all SO thankful to be alive a few hours later...and SO thankful to be done with that tour!
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