All these events are a blur for me, not because I was drunk, but because there was no change of scenery, time or calendar to help me distinguish between the occurrence of each event. I'm sure that if I had the event schedule to work with, I can recall each event in grave detail.
We had to have played Trivia on Sunday, because that's when Le Yen met her arch nemesis, Neil early on in the week, and I recall us asking the ENT team what events are in store for Tuesday because we weren't going to be there on Monday. This would be the trivia game where Le Yen came in second place.
After that I think we played Charades with the Pictionary game set. This is where I found that Stacee was extremely good @ Charades, just like Amy, therefore I said that she was like the Jamaican Amy.
On Monday, we would go on our first and only excursion. We would be headed to Dunn River Falls to climb a waterfall! How insane is that? to climb a 900 Meter Vertical Waterfall!
The package that we signed up for was $55 it said that we would be picked up @ 9:30 in the morning, taken to the falls, shopping and then followed by lunch. They told us that we needed water shoes to climb the waterfall otherwise it would hurt. They told us that we could rent them for $7 at the water fall place.
Before that we decided to check out the gift shop in our resort lobby to see if they had water shoes for sale and indeed they did. I picked up a pair of size 8's for 12 bucks. I guess I must have picked up the last pair 'cause Ly wasn't able to find another pair and buy his.
So in the morning they bring a tour bus to pick us 5 up from our resort, but we shared the bus with several other groups from different resorts.
Our first stop was the water shoe rental place, which was really just a little hut that had a whole bunch of them for rent/sale. Ly was able to purchase his here for 17 bucks. We figured that if we spent a few more dollars we could keep the shoes as a souvenir.
After the water shoe rental place we were all expecting to be headed to the water fall to climb the waterfall, little did we know that they pulled a fast one over us and took us shopping before hand, they took us to some duty free shopping centres.
The first stop they were selling jewellery, coffee, and alcohol. We didn't really want any of that stuff so we walked across the street to some other souvenir gift shops.
This one guy tried to get us in to his shop by asking if we were from the Starfish resort, then he told us that he's a bartender there and that today is his day off and he's just helping a friend out. I don't think anyone of us believed him but we were already planning on going in.
Then I heard him give the exact same speech to a couple behind us, but he used a different hotel name. Clever!
We walked around to a whole bunch of shops and discovered that they had water shoes for sale here as well, and they were priced cheaper than the gift store and a lot cheaper than the rental place, the cheapest we found was a pair for $6, and that's without negotiating.
I don't think anyone one of us purchased anything in these shops here. So we all boarded the bus and then headed to the next shopping centre.
Here it was pretty much the exact same thing, the items being sold here were the exact same as the other place, however here we discovered Jamaican Rum Creme, it's just like Bailey's but tastes a whole lot better, and only costs 10 bucks a bottle.
The interesting thing about all of these souvenir gift shops is that they're all owned by Indian people! They just hire Jamaican girls to work in their shops, and they all speak English very well.
"Would you like something? I give you best price"
After this shopping centre they told us that they were going to take us to a place were we could buy some Jamaican crafts. So they took us to this little village looking place and we had to be divided into smaller groups, i think it's to ensure that everyone in the village gets a chance to make some money off of the tourists. They seemed to have a roster going on. I stood outside while Le Yen and Aileen were buying their bracelets and I heard one women say that the tour guide didn't give her any tourists this time and she was quite vexed.
"$10? That's too much. No thank you"
"Okay, how much are you looking to spend?"
"$1" (That's how Ly would negotiate)
It never worked though, maybe it he shouted $4 instead.
It wasn't really a high pressure sales tactic that they would use, they would let you leave their shops, but they would really try to beg you to go into their huts and view their items. I think that was their only source of income.
So finally after leaving all of their Wal-Mart stores (they would name their huts 'Wal-Mart') we were finally on our way to the falls, or so we thought. Turns out we had one more stop, and that was lunch, but it wasn't just any lunch, it was a $15 lunch buffet.
I went in with Ly and Aileen, while Sang and Le Yen stayed out to enjoy the scenery. Much to our surprise it was an Asian themed buffet, then we noticed that a few of the wait staff were Chinese, then we noticed that the guy standing around wearing a tie, who was presumably the owner or manager was Chinese as well.
He noticed us and came over asked if we were Chinese and asked if we spoke Chinese, I said yes to both and he seemed really ecstatic that he finally had Chinese people to talk to, so he began telling us about the great sites of Jamaica and where we should go visit while we were there. Told us about a nice beach that was about a $100US cab ride away.
Then told us that he came over here from Hong Kong about 6 years ago and started this restaurant, business is usually pretty good, he says he's usually able to fill up his restaurant.
So finally we were able to get out of the restaurant and be on our way to climb the water fall. When we get there, we have to make our very long descend to the bottom of the waterfall. When we got there we were all very disappointed that it wasn't a 600ft vertical climb with a race to the top kind of thing, but in fact that it was a waterfall that was slowly elevated and that we had to climb it as a group effort, forming a human chain. No wonder why it takes 1.5 hours to climb it.
We would be formed in a human chain slowly climbing it, while the videographer and the tour guide would simply just run up the waterfall. They hold our cameras for us and take pictures for us.
At the end of the climb they would return your camera and expect a tip. In this case they would truly deserve a tip since they took pictures for us and did not get our camera wet.
We would also be able to purchase a more professional photo for $8, but I don't imagine that sales for those photos are high since they already use our cameras to capture the same shot.
They also had a 30 minute DVD for sale as well, this DVD would set you back $40 if you were to opt in for it.
Instead of paying for it, here is a 10 minute sneak preview of the video: http://www.jamaica-tour.com/dunn-river-falls-jamaica.htm
They did make the climb very fun though, but would I do it again? Probably not.
No comments:
Post a Comment