Negril, Jamaica.

Notice I said Negril, Jamaica and not Jamaica in general.

This is because the hectic pace doesn’t end with your arrival at the Montego Bay airport, although the pace of the customs workers slows considerably from their American counterparts. Once you exit customs you are met by a barrage of sights, sounds, vendors, and porters both official and not, all anxious to serve you and collect those American dollars.

Now, I want to interject one thing here. I love the Jamaican people and don’t want anything I say on here to be taken as derogatory. The simple fact is they live in a third world country where dollars are hard to come by. At many of the resorts the pay is equivalent to less than $20 US per week, which is why they work so hard for an extra dollar or two in tips. ALWAYS TIP FOR GOOD SERVICE!!! Yes, even if it is an all inclusive resort.

Once you get your suitcases into the van, and reject the offers to sell you ganja which start at the airport when you arrive and end as you are leaving the island, the driver takes you on a very scenic ride for an hour and a half with one stop for a Red Stripe beer break. One very important thing to remember, as a driver once told me with a big smile, “Hey mon, you watch the scenery, I’ll watch the road.” The ride is a little hair raising your first few times as the speed seems too fast for the small roads, they drive on the wrong side (a la England), and they share the road with pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, goats, and dogs. Once I swear I saw the outside mirror brush the hair of a man on a bicycle we passed at 50 miles an hour.

But once you get to Negril and get check into your hotel, everything changes. Time slows down, at least until the last day of the vacation.

Jamaicans exist on a different schedule than we do. A favorite expression of theirs, and one a visitor will hear often is “Soon come”. This does not mean “Right away sir”, instead it means “Eventually.” Like I told my best friend, they have been living this way for a couple of hundred years and you having a fit isn’t going to make them move one iota faster.

Just take a deep breath, sip your rum punch, and enjoy another day in paradise.

TO BE CONTINUED…