Jamaica July 1999

J & I started dating in July of 1998. We'd been friends for a while but had realized one day that we really like each other and decided to date. It was a big chance for both of us because if it didn't work out, we'd have both lost a good friend. Luckily, it worked out fine.

One year later, in celebration of our one year anniversary we decided to test our relationship by traveling together. It was up to me to choose a place, etc. I was very new to traveling. I'd gone places before in my adult life but nothing like this.

After researching several places, I found that a week at Jack Tar Village in Montego Bay Jamaica was within our budget and it sounded like a great vacation. As I said, we were newbies at this traveling thing so we had no idea that traveling to Jamaica in July was probably not a great idea. Just the same, here it is - our first vacation together.

As I said, we took an all inclusive vacation to Jack Tar Village in Montego Bay Jamaica. Neither of us had been outside the US (except to Mexico) so this was an exciting vacation. Plus, spending a week together in close quarters would really test our compatability. (Boy did it ever!)

Here I am in front of the Jack Tar Stage where all the different shows were performed. So, Jamaica in July is REALLY hot. At Jack Tar, the only (and I mean ONLY) air conditioned place is the room. We were here for 7 days and the only place we could get A/C was in our room.





The water was beautiful. It was so clear and blue - just gorgeous. This is J on the pier.

This is J standing on the balcony of our room. Below is me with the view from the front door of our room.
We had a great view of the ocean from our balcony and then a really nice view of the the city from the front door of our room. It was SO hot. They had a dining area where all the meals were served - breakfast, lunch & dinner. It was all buffet style. They had really good fruit but the rest of the food was just okay. The dining area wasn't air conditioned. That made it very uncomfortable to be down there.
Also, there really wasn't much to do on the resort unless you like water sports so after the first few days, our routine was to go down and have breakfast, go back up to the room to cool off, go down to the pool, go back to the room to nap and cool off, go down for lunch - well, you get the picture. It felt like all we did was eat. Here we were lucky to get out the beach early enough to score one of the little umbrella like things. This meant we had shade so we could sweat out of the direct sunlight.

We decided to take a tour of Rose Hall The Great House. It was supposed to be haunted by Annee Palmer, the White Witch. She supposedly killed 3 husbands and a lover and is searching for her 4th husband.
This was a plantation of some sort back in the 1700's. Annee Palmer was rumored to have practiced voodoo and to have been very cruel to her slaves.
This is the chandelier from the Great Room. It has been heard that sometimes a ghostly face will appear in photographs taken of the chandelier. I guess not this time.

The upstairs bedrooms was where she killed her three husbands. Each one was killed in a different room. I think one was poisoned, one stabbed and one strangled. The lover was a slave and he was flogged to death. Annee was finally strangled but they say her ghost still lives...

That's J going down into the dungeon. Annee set bear traps in the woods to capture slaves that tried to escape. When she caught them, they went into the dungeon where they were lowered into a 60 foot pit and left to die of starvation. The dungeon is now a souvenier shop and the pits were raised & made into restrooms.

This is the grave of Annee Palmer, the White Witch. A seance was conducted & the spirit of Annee brought out. She didn't want anyone on the property after 6 pm so the property is vacated at 5 minutes to 6. Annee claims she will be the last mistress of Rose Hall. Notice the cross on the end of the stone. There's one on each side to keep her spirit trapped. Did it work??
The four lone palm trees are said to mark the graves of Annee Palmer's 3 murdered husbands and the one slave lover.

After the Rose Hall tour, the bus took us to the souvenier section of town where people asked us to buy trinkets, etc. This part was kind of boring but if you said "no", then the people would leave you alone.

There was a little strip center right outside the gates of our resort. So, we thought we'd take a little stroll over there and just look in the shops. The locals were a lot more aggressive. One guy asked if we wanted to look at his merchandise so we said sure. We thought he was going to take us into one of the stores. Instead he took us behind the building into this little shanty type area where there were stalls set up. It smelled like pot. I don't know why we followed him. All I could think was that we were going to be murdered in this spot. It was very creepy. We bought $20 worth of junk and left. We ended up going into one of the stores and we bought some Jamaican rum.

Here's J with our prize - the Jamaican rum.

After that, we chose to spend the rest of the time on the resort.








This is us sitting out on the balcony reading. We spent a lot of time in our room. I think the housekeeper would watch for us to leave so that she could hurry and come it and make up the room. Several times we walked in on her so we'd just come out the balcony and wait. It was kind of funny, like a race.




We had a sunset like this every night. It was really beautiful. After 7 days of being in Jamaica, we decided that this wasn't really the place for us. We kind of felt like prisoners on our resort because the locals would follow you around if you left the compound. The food wasn't great and the shows they had were okay at best. One good thing was that the drinks were free flowing. The other good thing was that we found we could be cooped up with each other for long periods of time and not end up killing one another.

When it came time to go, we were ready. So ends our first travel experience together.
This is J as we're waiting for the bus to come take us to the airport. I think we were both a little loopy at this point and very ready to go home.