We finally got a day with no rain! It was sunny and warm all day long so we had activities in the morning and in the afternoon. Bill did the first half of his scuba certification today. He’s finishing up the written part now so he may do an update tomorrow. He does the second dive to finish certification tomorrow morning. His training today went really well and he’s excited about diving. I think it will be a fun community of people for him to be part of.

I went snorkeling while he was diving. It was a good snorkel trip, but the water was rough so it was a workout. When you jump in the water, all these little fish come over to see if you have food. I think some of the snorkel guides bring bread crumbs so the fish are used to getting snacks. I have a leftover, dried out cookie that I might take tomorrow to see if they eat those. I went for a walk this evening and found a place where I think I can go snorkeling any time I want to. That would be much more convenient than going on the boat. I’m scheduled for another snorkel trip in the morning but I might try going on my own after that’s over. We only get 30 minutes in the water.

After lunch, Bill and I signed up for a windsurfing lesson. We got the lesson, realized that it was going to be crazy difficult and decided to do kneeboarding instead. Windsurfing is one of those things that’s best if you live close to water and have lots of opportunities to practice. It’s not something you can learn in a 10 minute demonstration on the beach. I had planned to try skiing, but I missed the ski lesson. I made it to the kneeboarding lesson and that worked out great. None of the people who tried skiing were successful but my kneeboarding experience went really well. It still takes some effort but it’s not nearly as difficult as actual skiing. It was pretty fun!

I went to swim after supper and that was my day. I’ve used up all my energy! I’ll have a few pictures once Bill has a chance to send them to me.

I’m going to start off with a few things that I keep telling myself that I should put in the blog. 

Did we mention that we are staying at Couples Negril? That should probably be day 1 but the travel day can really take it out of you! 
I’m not sure if things our readers are interested in hearing about from us are always covered in the posts, if you wish we would talk about something specific please leave us a question in the comments section and we will try and answer in our next post. You can also send us email or texts if you have that information.  My email is mwa435@yahoo.com if anyone wants to contact me directly. 
Feel free to send someone that may be interested in our blog a link like this one you can copy and paste 
https://travelingwithemilydotcom.wordpress.com/2021/05/21/rainy-day-in-jamaica/#comments
Hopefully it works for you! 
While ganja is prevalent in Jamaica it is illegal to actually use it. 
The sun here is harsh, Emily and I both have gotten a little burn in places where the sunscreen has been wiped of or coverage was limited. It seems very common for people here to miss their knees and to have very uneven coverage. Sprays and liquid sunscreen may be the way to go for even coverage. I still like the sticks though and I think that we are paying more attention to the application and I have stopped draping my towel over my shoulders to go down to the beach. 
We take a lot of showers here, sometimes on the beach to rinse the sand, salt water or the pool/jacuzzi water off and sometimes after just being out and about. Add those to the regular daily shower and that’s a lot of showering. For those who’ve not been in the ocean, the water leaves a film of salt and fine sand on you and you feel so much better after just rinsing off with plain water, it also helps to get it off your face and lips. 
There are what we assume are tree frogs that make a noise that reminds me of the ping with echo in The Hunt for Red October except instead of one ping only it is a constant barrage of them in the evenings. 
Today we hoping to get to go on the night snorkel! (I’m working on this after lunch) We’ve been taking it easy for the most part. We did do some swimming at the beach, which is shallow and all sand so there isn’t a lot to see with the snorkel gear, there are crabs and fish that are hard to see because they are naturally camouflaged. The bigger fish are easier to see because of their eyes. I floated with a fairly large school for a while just watching them leave a bubble around me. Mostly we were trying out our gear after I spent some time this morning cleaning the glass in both of our goggles with toothpaste to help with the fogging. Mine weren’t doing too bad but Emily had issues again with her’s. I did her’s 4 or 5 times and seemed to help, she didn’t have any issues today. I think that I will do a quick touch up before going tonight. We ended up having lunch a little later than normal. 
Emily and I have looked at the off site excursions that weren’t included in our trip and for the most part they seem rather overpriced. Some because we are unsure of the duration of the excursion. Others because we can do it anywhere and cheaper. There was only a couple that looked like possibilities. One we most likely will do. We do have a sunset cruise on Tuesday that should be fun and there’s another we are debating. We have definitely decided that we are travel critics, not sure if that is good or bad!? It would be nice to be able to check out some of the other resorts and their options. Like Emily mentioned in one of her posts, it’s very nice here if you didn’t know anything different. Even with the rain! Which it is doing again. We’ve had some issues in the past like with the grueling schedule in Peru and my problem with the Spanish school in Colombia, for the most part though we have had really good things to share and have learned for ourselves. I’m glad to be traveling again! 
Aisha tells us that there are four buildings on this resort that are empty because of covid. She and the staff has had one vaccine dose so far and they will get the second next month. She said she is ready for covid to be done. She also told us that it’s not just afternoons that it rains during the rainy season, it could go all day. I’m not sure what we would do if it does that. She is very nice and friendly. She has two boys one is two and the utter tis tirteen (how she say it mon). 
Dexter is actually Dexton. 
We went on our night snorkeling trip and we got to see some more sea life than our last trip. There was a turtle, some rays, puffer fish, star fish, lobsters, eels, a crab and a squid. There was an octopus that we didn’t get to see. It was under a board that I’m guessing they put down to attract said octopus. We do have some pictures that are okay. The water was a little murky and the flashlights weren’t super bright. 
It was a long day today, we tried to get in to eat before our trip and got some appetizers that we barely touched. The “nachos “ were chips and canned cheese dip and the anti-pasta plate only had a few things worth eating so we had granola bars. After we went to supper, it was better than the appetizers. I had a pizza and Emily had soup. I got dessert that contained way too much rum. I would have like to taste more of the chocolate mousse. I ate it anyway. 
So even though somewhere I was given the impression that one could get food 24 hours a day, that is not true. Some of the schedules are off for our normals. 
Thanks for reading! Shout out to Sebastian, I will have to look at reading some of the short stories! 

If you were going to buy something for a two and a half year old, would you get a ukulele or maracas? My friend has a little girl who I haven’t seen in over a year. Julianna doesn’t remember me, but I’d like to bribe her into liking me next time I get to see her. I feel like something really noisy that she can carry around with her would be a good option. The gift shop here has both ukulele’s and maracas. I could teach her this song called Pocked full of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield. It’s very kid friendly and sticks in your head and won’t leave. She could sing it with her new instrument. If anyone would like to weigh in on this, feel free to do so. Bill and I are planning to visit some other areas where shopping will be an option so I don’t have to decide immediately.

Bill spent part of the morning scrubbing our snorkel goggles with toothpaste. Once he was finished, we took them out to the ocean and they worked much better and didn’t fog up. It was really exciting! We are scheduled to do nighttime snorkeling tonight and we are planning to clean them again with toothpaste before we go. We just went into the water next to the resort this morning so there wasn’t a lot to see, but there are schools of little fish that are almost completely clear. The sand is white and there’s nothing to hide in close to shore so all the fish and crabs are either white or clear. You can see through them. It’s fascinating! I found a dead white crab and various sorts of whitish clear fish kept coming over it eat it. Unless you look closely, you think the water is empty of living things, but Bill and I snorkeled through some large schools of little fish. They were mostly clear with a blueish tent along the back where their vein/digestive system is.

It’s raining right now like it does most afternoons. I have Spanish lessons at 3pm so that will work out well. Bill and I are trying to decide what other activities we want to do next week. Even though this is an all-inclusive resort, a lot of activities are not included and they are very pricy. I thought about doing parasailing, but it cost $120 for about 10 minutes in the air. You can go snorkeling in the daytime as part of the resort package but it’s $35 to go at night even though the staff and the locations are exactly the same. There is an option for snorkeling, boating and cliff jumping that we will probably do. It’s a 3 hour trip for about $60 so that seems like a fairly reasonable deal. We want to mostly do things that are included since this is a fairly pricy vacation and we can do things like zip-lining in Costa Rica on another trip for less money. We are fortunate that we came to Jamaica now. Our cleaning lady just told us that 3 or 4 blocks of rooms are empty right now because of COVID. This place would be packed and crazy any other time. We are on a bay and it’s completely surrounded by resorts. I’m sure their numbers are low too. It doesn’t seem like this is a large enough area to manage all those people. I would definitely not want to be here when it’s full. If we get to keep traveling, Bill and I should become pretty good travel advisors. I’d consider organizing a trip to Costa Rica.

We did nighttime snorkeling tonight. It was awesome, but I’m completely wiped out so I’ll have to write about it tomorrow. Bill took some underwater pictures and video that we hope turned out well. I’ll post those tomorrow too.

Good morning everyone!! 
We made it to Jamaica yesterday afternoon. We ended up having a little extra time in the shuttle because our driver didn’t have to load our bags and he forgot to ask everyone where they were going like he said he normally does. It wasn’t very long getting back to our resort. We are at the smaller of the two resorts, the other has double the rooms per our driver. 

Even though our Hynes Eagle bag gave us a extra bit of ride time it is an awesome bag. We we’re lining up to get on the shuttle and a woman from the Carolinas ask if we really only had our backpacks and the bag Emily carries when the porter asked for out suitcases. She is a travel agent and has traveled the world but still needed two suitcases for 4 days of travel to an all inclusive resort. Each one would have held all our luggage. They were staying at the bigger resort, it was too bad as they were probably the most interesting people we will meet here. In addition to traveling, the husband also mentioned he rode motorcycles and I could have chatted with him about that as well. Maybe once we start doing some of the excursions we will get a chance to meet more people. 

The resort is nice, does show a little age to it. It’s a harsh environment though as well being right on the ocean. It has an island feel to it, not blatantly Jamaica though. I would like more vibrant colors. There is a gym that we will use while here, seems well equipped so that’s nice. A couple pools and bars. I’m hoping to get some use out of the dive shop and water sports area. They teach sailing catamarans, sailboarding and a few other things. I’m debating doing my scuba certification here since there’s not many people here as Emily mentioned. 
There is a nude beach here that I’m not sure where it is and didn’t ask, I did see and woman and a man walking along the beach yesterday afternoon, both were topless. 

So far Jamaica is beautiful for the most part. There was some sketchy areas along the highway to our resort. I was noticing that some of the concrete/block construction reminded me of places in South America with the re-rod sticking out on top. There is also a lot of the very colorful shanties that are stereotypical for Jamaica. 

We made a stop on the way to the resort yesterday and one of the people in our group must’ve made a purchase of marijuana, I’ve been around it enough over the years that I recognized the smell. Emily mentioned we also were informed of “Farmer Bill” who I think is just off property. Ganja/ marijuana is pretty much a part of the culture here. Could be why everyone is so laidback 😎 I’m interested to see how aggressive they are in trying to sell it to tourists. It will be hard to make any solid conclusions about how many tourists participate based on how hard they push it but, I will still think the more aggressive the more tourists who do. 

So far the food here hasn’t wowed me. There is some potential at each of the four restaurants based on the menus. We tried the hotel’s jerked chicken last night and it was a little dry and not as flavorful as I would expect. Grilling skinless chicken breast can be tricky anyway but, even harder if they pre-cooked it. 
Breakfast is buffet with a omelette and pancake/waffle station. This seems to be a universal mask wearing event. Everything else seems to be if you have space around you then nobody cares. Occasionally you will see some people wearing masks walking around, not often though. 

There is a range of people (sizes, colors, shapes and ages) here, mostly I’m guessing, Americans. I think that things are geared towards American tourists more so than other places we’ve been. The more we travel I will have to take note of how American the breakfast is. The continental section was very limited and I find that while I like American type breakfast I was disappointed.

Hopefully everyone is doing well, we are rested and ready for some adventure to share!!

I’m doing a short post tonight because I’m exhausted! We arrived in Jamaica without any trouble, but it was a long travel day. We left the hotel in St. Louis this morning at 4am and got to our resort around 2pm this afternoon. Travel time to Jamaica is relatively short compared to other places, but wearing masks makes it a much harder trip and we had to go through a lot of customs lines and a long bus ride before we got to the resort. We only had a snack for lunch, so I had a mild headache most of the day and we were pretty hungry by the time we finally ate around 5pm.

The resort seems nice but there are almost no people here. It’s under 50% capacity. In some ways that’s nice, but I don’t think we are likely to meet many interesting people. But, there is a small pool and a hot tub that we had all to ourselves tonight. Most people prefer the bigger pool with the bar, so I think the smaller one will be largely empty.

We scheduled a nighttime snorkeling excursion for tomorrow night and we’ll get some other activities set up tomorrow.

There is a weed dealer called “the farmer” on the resort. Our snorkel guide pointed him out to us while we were setting up our snorkel trip.

We will probably have a longer post tomorrow when we aren’t so wiped out.