April 12 - the last full day

Our last full day in Jamaica dawned with clear skies and calmer waters. The waves seemed to have buried much of the seaweed overnight, and though the water was not clear enough to find any fish, it was certainly free of 98% of the debris which had been obscuring our path the day before. Most of our crew woke early and met down on the deck... D and a couple of nieces got into a game of soccer on the beach while I ordered some calaloo, toast, and coffee for my breakfast.

One of my favorite birding accomplishments - a shot of one of the bananaquits gathering material for the nest.

D and King.  See the belt buckle?  When Kingsley found out we were coming back to Jamaica, he asked if we could find him a belt buckle that said "King", to replace his old one that he'd broken.  We found one, complete with bling (or "ice", as he called it) but D said King had to win it in dominoes.  King won his belt buckle on the first night, but it took until the end of the trip for him to find a matching belt to wear it to work.

I spent much of the morning in the water with G, who has grown by leaps and bounds in her confidence and enthusiasm for swimming and general water adventures. I floated around on an inflatable raft while she practiced turning forward and backward summersaults and trying to do handstands in the moving water.

SO happy in the water!

The view of our row of chairs and umbrellas, as seen from the water.

I also had another go at paddle boarding. I managed to once again get past the buoy line and paddle up and down the length of the beach without panic. I believe the current ban on jet skies helps my confidence tremendously, as I don't have to worry about drunk tourists ramming into me out on the open water. 

 My adventure quickly turned into a “MOM! The ball is floating away!” game of lose-the-beach-ball-and-mom-will-chase-it. After three retrieves, and nearly tipping over trying to grab the thing, I suggested that G and her new friends play with something that wasn't quite so easily lost at sea. At any rate, the water was becoming choppy and paddleboarding without a life vest felt like less of a good idea.

Once I felt good and waterlogged, and G had other people to swim with, I came into the chairs and settled in to read for a bit. Roughly around 11 or so, just as I was starting to feel like I needed a snack, the jerk pork vendor appeared on the beach. I jumped out of my chair and followed him to his resting spot in the shade and ordered up a pouch of jerk pork.

After more snacking and swimming, it felt like it was around lunch time. We determined we'd venture down the beach later for dinner, so we all decided to stay at Idle Awhile for lunch, and I ordered myself my favorite Jamaican Stirfry. At that point the weather started to turn, black clouds began to darken the skies, so we stayed under the cover of the deck and broke into a few card games. A family from the east coast had checked in the day before, and the guy who had stepped on the sea urchin the day before was sitting close by, so we invited him to join us in a game of cards. We started out playing “bullshit” (which G took great delight in being able to say, only within the context of the game) and eventually progressed to teaching our new friend how to play our family game, cribbage.

Turns out our friend, from Connecticut, is a fan of Tolkein.  This caught my attention, of course, and I disrupted the card game to engage in nerd talk.

As the rain came in waves, we all came and went from our rooms, slowly working on packing up or showering and cleaning up for dinner. We collectively decided to go to Kuyaba for dinner, which was always a good choice for D , G and I in the past. It was raining again when we were all ready for dinner, so we called for the shuttle to pick us up and take us down the road, rather than trek down in the rain. As it happened, Kuyaba had some live entertainment that night, and we were treated to an eclectic mix of covers from Johnny Cash to Kenny Rogers to the Beatles to Bobby McFarren. Of course, there was a brief inclusion of “One Love” in the middle of the set, but since there was a long-running joke that my brother-in-law resembles Kenny Rogers, we all forgave the repetitive Bob Marley once we heard the opening lyrics of “The Gambler” emanating from the speakers.

The drinks here come with umbrellas, which is awesome

"You've gotta know when to hold em... know when to fold em"

G quickly swiped my drink umbrella to use as a hair accessory

My dinner - grilled snapper in a coconut calalloo sauce

M, D, and G's not-so-subtle photobomb

After dinner we discovered that the hotel will shuttle you down to the restaurant, but although the menu and information on the hotel specifies “free shuttle service”, nobody explained to us that the shuttle was only free to the restaurant, and getting a ride back would require a taxi fee (not the person we called for the shuttle, not the driver who picked us up, not the staff who seated us. Nobody.) Seeing as how we felt this was a little too sly for our liking, we opted to call our regular driver Tyrone, to come pick us up. After dinner we gathered on our porch for some icecream and one last late-night card game. After a few rounds of bullshit and dessert, and a little more packing on my part, we all retired for the night.

April 4 - Beach Day (allowing Sand Gravity to take effect)

This morning I woke relatively late, 7:00 a.m. local time, and meandered my way out to the deck for breakfast.  Today was a total beach day, mostly spent either in the chairs or swimming in the ocean.  I let the "sand gravity" take full effect  and I hardly took any photos.

My breakfast was slow paced and relaxing.. oatmeal, blue mountain coffee, and a banana.  I spent some time flipping through my bird book looking for the names of some of the birds I had photographed.  I had noticed the groundskeeper had different names for some of the birds (what I would call a "bananaquit" he called a "lionsquit")  My book shows the official names of each of the birds, along with some of the "local names", but even those did not match the names that the groundskeeper had told me.  Still, I managed to get a shot of the Jamaican Oriole he had pointed out to me, though I can't remember the name he had called it.

After breakfast, and sunblock application, we spent a lot of time playing in the water.  We were able to borrow stand-up paddleboards to give those a shot.  The boards are far too short for anyone generally over my height, and they are inflatable (which makes them quite bouncy)  G didn't want to try it, she preferred hanging out on a floaty.

The various vendors passed by all day.  I bought a coconut from the fruit lady, D bought a bottle of orange juice from Tony, our favorite juice guy, and we grabbed some jerk pork for lunch from the jerk pork vendor.  The spicy jerk pork is INCREDIBLY spicy... those red things are scotch bonnet peppers, which make jalapeneos seem cute and precious.

We had a bit of rain pass through late in the afternoon, so I took the opportunity to shower up.   My sister, brother in law, and a couple of my nieces wanted to take a walk before dinner, so we left the hotel and turned left, passing by a number of hotels and markets and checking out places that might be interesting for shopping later.  After our walk, we gathered around the bar area and hung out, playing games and waiting for the dinner tables to be set up.  Needle and King were on shift tonight, so we introduced them to the family and King started teaching my niece how to play dominoes so that she could beat D.  :)

 Friday nights Idle Awhile has live music, so we ordered dinner early enough to have our food just as the music began.  Lobster season is just about over, so I jumped at the chance to have some grilled spiny lobster while I could.

After dinner some people were done in by the sun and headed to bed early.  We grabbed some juice and a bottle of coconut rum for our room and got into a game of cribbage.  I eventually faded and went to bed, and missed out on King coming over to learn how to play cribbage.  Perhaps we'll get him into another game of cards sometime before we head out.

Thursday May 5 - Beach day

Thursday dawned with bright sunshine and calm waters again.  We woke up and meandered our way down to the deck for our breakfast of oat porridge, toast and coffee. 

 Gayle likes to help mark our chairs with our towels while we finish up our coffee.

 Breakfast this morning includes a bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice from a vendor on the beach.

As we finished up breakfast, I noticed a heron flying in and landing under the tree to the side of the property.

Looking forward to properly editing these at home - sometimes the lighting on the sand is a hassle to deal with.

We spent some time back and forth in and out of the water...

D's view of me walking out into the water to chat with some of the other guests.

Around lunch time we wandered our way down to the Waves market area to see about getting some patties from Niah's.
Of all the market places along the beach, this one is my favorite - save for the indoor gift shops, it's the only spot on the beach where you don't feel hassled.  The wood carvings that are for sale are being shown and sold by the actual carvers themselves... last year we bought from Robert Woolery, who was not in his shop today, but we met his mentor Mason, who has a shop directly across from Robert.  We absolutely plan on going back to buy something from the folks in Waves before we leave, but for today we were just looking and getting an idea of who carves what kinds of subjects.  Mason specializes in faces, some are abstract, some realistic, but all are incredibly beautiful.  I'm hoping to go back when I'm not so greased over with sunblock so I can take proper photos without fear of dropping my camera.
We ordered our patties from Niah's and they said it would take about a half hour (they had just opened) so D hiked back to the room with G to pick up some chicken across the street to go with them.  I stayed, and chatted with some women who were selling whole aloe leaves.  I was turning red in a few spots and was interested in seeing what raw aloe vera would do to help.  I picked up a stalk, and one of the women also offered to rub some on me right there (for a fee, of course)  I went ahead with it, expecting it would just be put on my shoulders where the redness was showing... and ended up with pretty much a full body aloe rubdown right there on the beach. 
I think if I'd gotten it on video I might possibly be able to make a few bucks off of that on certain websites. :)

On the way back to the hotel I noticed the stingray in the water, very close to the edge.  I grabbed a shot before stepping into the water, but once again she swam away before I could get an underwater photo.

As much as I want an underwater photo, I'm also still rather happy that she's so shy around people.

We've noticed the pattern of her swimming seems to be fairly consistent... somewhere around 11 to noon she passes back and forth around this stretch of beach.  I'll continue to try to get her underwater, but so far this is the best shot I've managed.
 While hanging out at the bar munching on our lunch a couple came up to grab a drink and say hello.  They'd just had their wedding here at Idle Awhile the day before we arrived and were now spending the remainder of their honeymoon up the beach at an all-inclusive resort.  They were talking with the staff and us about the differences between the two, saying they much prefer the experience at Idle Awhile as compared to the all inclusive.  For one thing, the staff-to-guest ratio can't be beat (the all inclusive housing hundreds of rooms as opposed to Idle Awhile's 14) and then that morning they discovered that to leave their property just to walk down the beach, they needed to "check out" - put their name and room number on a list and let them know how long they would be before they returned.
A few thicker black clouds began to roll in, so I decided it would be a good time to pop back into the room for a shower.  When I came back out Shirley, one of the guests, spotted me and said - in a voice that was calm but urgent "Oh good there you are... go get your camera!  The one with the zoom."  I dashed back inside for the camera and crept up to where she was standing to see another heron posed in the tree.

While I was having fun chasing after wildlife, D had been picked up by Tyrone to go down the street and visit Courtney, a chef we know from previous trips. 

D snapped this shot of Tyrone in his colorful shirt - which we jokingly call his "tourist shirt"

While D was out with Tyrone, I took a nap in the hammock and G worked on some of her homework packet.  Once he came back we were all still feeling kinda lazy, so we decided to stick around the bar, playing dominoes and grabbing a few snacks as dinner. 
I have about a billion photos of generic sunsets... the glowing orb off on the horizon, so I've decided to try to make each night's shooting attempts a little more creative.  Tonight I put on the lensbaby and poked around behind the little baby palm tree.