It's A Situation Mon!

Falmouth, Jamaica

We arrived in Jamaica at 12:00 PM after cruising 762 nautical miles. Before we left home, we chose excursions for each of our stops. In Falmouth, we chose the “RAINFOREST AERIAL CHAIRLIFT & DUNN'S RIVER FALLS.” The description of this adventure was: “Experience the great outdoors from three different perspectives with an excursion that begins with a 600 foot climb up Dunn's River Falls, takes you soaring 700 feet above the Jamaican rainforest on the Sky Explorer chairlift, and ends with spectacular views from the

observation tower at the educational pavilion.” They also provided lunch.

As we disembarked, we passed through a modern shopping plaza as we headed towards the buses. We knew almost off the bat that we had wasted our money and time. At $200, it was not cheap. We waited with lots of other cruisers to board a bus for the many-offered adventures. It seemed pretty chaotic but understandable with all the people that they had to deal with. We boarded our bus with about 40 other people and literally raced for an hour and one half while we were being entertained by a local woman who after about 15 minutes was no longer entertaining. Pat could not understand her due to her accent but basically she was instructing us about the “no worry man” attitude of Jamaicans. It’s not a “problem” but a “situation” and so on all with the Bob Marley speech style.

One of the things that she stressed was that we were going to soaked head to toe. We decided to take advantage of the path beside the falls and not go into the water. We raised our hands asking if this was possible. She said yes but we didn’t feel very confident in her answer.

We arrived at Dunn’s River Falls and followed our guide to the area where most of our fellow travelers were going in. All we could think is “Thank God” we didn’t choose to do this. It was basically strings of people holding hands trying to maneuver up slick rocks as freezing water cascaded on them. We were able to stand on a sidewalk and watch. We envisioned something akin to a waterfall out west where we could climb up beside the falls and feel the mist. Not so much.

All the while as people moved up the canal of water watching their step, there was a guide leading each “string” taking a movie of their adventure shouting Jamaican “ain’t we having fun” slogans and asking them to repeat it back so he could capture their fun on film. After our fellow travelers dried off, we headed back to our bus but not without the last assault of moving single file through another booth-lined trail with Jamaicans selling their wares. Insult to injury was when we got back to our bus, a young man was aggressively selling the videos taken in the water at the cost of $49 each. He was literally entering the bus seeing out the suckers who forked over their money.

From here we boarded a ski lift which took us to a hill top where we had a bob sled ride. Since we were in Jamaica, we wondered what this would be like. It was a amusement ride set into the surrounding hills. It actually was enjoyable but something you could experience at

a park in the US. Then we had a skimpy lunch described as genuine local Jamaican cuisine. Really, any of us could make this in our crock pot.

Down we went onto the alpine ride to return to our bus. We were running a little late so the driver decided to pick up the pace. We leaned left and right as he sped back to the ship. The only good thing about going back is that our guide was quiet.

You can tell that we were not really happy with our first excursion and wondered if we would enjoy the upcoming adventures that we already signed up and paid for.

As we embarked our ship, we noticed that the movie “Star Wars - Episode VIII - The Last Jedi" was showing. Wished we had stayed to watch it!

Our ship departed around 8:00 PM