My trip to Montego Bay, Jamaica (2013) -- Part G -- by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

Day 7 – Friday December 20, 2013:

Today, Dave and I just decided not to do much around the resort except to swim, tan, relax and maybe shop a little.  There are vendors in Jamaica who set up their handmade wares in various locations on the premises: dresses, purses, jewelry, paintings (large and small), small sculptures made out of wood, and small musical instruments.  The list goes on and on.  If you want to buy something uniquely Jamaican, that is definitely not a problem.  I bought a lovely mostly purple dress at the resort for $45 US and, while on my river raft excursion yesterday, I’d bought Brent a colourful muscle shirt and James an equally colourful T-shirt.  It would be obvious to anyone looking at them wearing these shirts that we’d been to a tropical destination.

Brent and James went to the water park this morning after breakfast and, later on, I went to spend some time floating on an inner tube on the “Lazy River”, a meandering stream that looks and behaves somewhat like a small river in the water park pool.  I must say that Brent and James had an absolute blast in that water park the whole week!  Brent even filmed himself and James going down the slide while they were sliding down it!  He was able to do this because Dave’s video camera is waterproof.  It was even more amazing to see James sliding down the water slide with Brent closely following him down it.  I have to admit it was a very unusual video to see.

Brent and James also went para-sailing together yesterday while I was at the spa!  I didn’t think an adult and a child could go para-sailing at the same time, but they did it!  They took off from a motor boat in the middle of Montego Bay, were dipped in the water a little bit (on purpose), and then the motor boat drove off pulling them up when the parachute strapped onto their backs was in the process of filling up with air behind them.  They told me they had forgotten to take the video camera on this particular excursion and Brent was really sorry about that - he said later that it was truly awesome adventure for both of them!

For myself, I was content mostly to read my book (Rage of Angels by Sidney Sheldon), work on my notebook computer journalizing our first international trip together – hopefully, not the last – swim, snorkel and go to the spa.  I don’t often get chances to relax completely, but this holiday proved to me that I could relax and completely let go of everything that had been on my mind before we left Canada for Jamaica.  So, I am definitely going to keep writing about my travels, traveling to different tropical and other international destinations and figure out how to make my coming retirement years as fruitful as possible!  This was an adventure like no other I’ve ever been on!