Where The Rubber Meets The Road

Bob Marley is Elvis in Jamaica. Maybe even Jesus. He’s certainly omnipresent. And the good people of Jamaica have embraced the western way of remembering their fallen heroes and icons: with cheap, tacky souvenirs.

There is a Bob Marley drink, Bob Marley hats, t-shirts, stickers, magnets, pipes, rolling papers, shoes, ashtrays (Kids! Kids! Stick a lit cigarette in Bob Marley’s eyes!), pins, do-rags, playing cards, towels (dry your loins with Bob Marley’s face today!), figurines, spoons, wristbands…

Well. It’s forgivable. At least, more forgivable than the constant references to Cool Runnings.

Once we reached the resort, Noelle and I were treated to a sharp decline in Marley-themed crap. Cold facecloths and more wide grins met us directly off the shuttle, and we were ushered into the lobby, our non-facecloth bearing hands filled with champagne glasses. Mind you, we were going on nearly 24 hours with little to no sleep and gave our thanks with glazed eyes and overwhelmed expressions. Nevertheless, we stumbled through the check-in process and trudged after another smiling staffer, who hauled our luggage across the resort to our room.

Only the glimpses of frozen drinks, white sand, and a clear blue ocean could have motivated us enough to do anything that first day. Those, and hunger.

It didn’t take long to settle into the all-inclusive routine, broken up with various water-related activities. Sleep, eat, tan, swim, drink, eat, drink, take a walk, shower, drink, drink, and drink. Okay, maybe not that much drinking.
The snorkeling expedition was well worth it. Fish and plant life I couldn’t begin to identify swam and wafted barley inches from arm’s length.
On day three, a shop owner offered to sell us weed, hash, oxycodone, and various other recreational drugs. I, having enough drugs in my system already, declined. He was friendly and shameless, but I guess that comes from a culture that is slightly more relaxed when it comes to recreational drug use. A distinct lack of furtiveness was evident, very unlike the paranoid culture brought on by the U.S.’s fake Drug War™.

It was the rainy season in Jamaica, and you could set your watch by the weather. Sleep in, have breakfast, lie on the beach for a couple hours, take a dip, and head inside for lunch, because rain is scheduled from noon to between three-thirty and four-fifteen. After that, it’s back to the outdoors.

Of course, you’re expected to stay outside, or at least that’s the impression I got when we decided to spend a day lounging in our giant fluffy bed, soaking up the air conditioning. The housekeeping staff comes by four times a day to make up the room, restock the minibar, turndown service, and one other duty I never discovered. Perhaps a relaxing, full-body massage with release or something.
Turndown service was the best, mainly because they’d leave behind little cards with Jamaican sayings printed in all caps, like:
RAMP WITH PUPPY IM WI LIK YUH MOUTH
Or my absolute favorite:
COW CAN’T HEAR, DEM NECK BELONG TO DA BUTCHA
Imagine that lying on your pillow when you’re abut to shuffle off to sleep. (I have in no way altered these words of wisdom; they are reprinted verbatim.)

Live music was played nightly at the largest of the restaurants. These were lounge-esque night club acts, for the most part. Singers dressed in uncomfortably heavy suits, sweating profusely and belting out Lionel Richie – no, thank you. The best of them was a trio of what could easily have been street musicians playing a blend of old Jamaican standards and similar-sounding North American songs, Bobby McFerrin-like.
Apparently hip to the fact that American men are too manly to dance, the resort had a wandering group of male staffers who plucked wives and wives-to-be up to dance, which I thought was both sweet and a little creepy. I was not too manly to dance, but largely too gimpy.

This might all seem disconnected, and it abruptly swerves from topic to topic, but it’s actually a fairly accurate chronology. The resort was designed to remove the burden of thought, and so we did little in the way of thinking. As soon as something struck our fancy, off we went to do it.
We did not scruple to cancel and change plans at the drop of a hat, and wandered around without the slightest concern for how we spent our time. Other couples seemed to have packed a month’s worth of activities into each day, getting the absolute maximum amount of “vacationing” in for their dollar. Somehow, that seemed to fly in the face of the intent. There was no desire to sample everything, and so we left a fair few things undone. I suppose that is desired by the resort as well: “Next time, we’ll do the parasailing!” Emphasis on the “next time”.

By the time we left, we had done enough to satisfy the need to ‘get our money’s worth’, and had not found ourselves bored with the place. I doubt I’d have felt the same if every day was a race against the clock.
And sure enough, the day came to leave, and we weren’t wishing for more time. Nor were we homesick. It was just the right amount of hedonism, indolence, and indulgence.
Though I would have done quite well with a little less Bob Marley.

Tags: Entertainment, Musings, Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 5:09 PM and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.