Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Cruise, Day 4: [inhale]

Day 4 found us arriving in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. I inhaled deeply off the balcony, hoping to catch a whiff of cooking jerk chicken, mixed with some marijuana, but all I could smell was diesel fuel. My preconceived notions were shattered. To jump ahead in the story, we didn't eat any food in Jamaica, and I regret that; the time constraints would have made it very difficult to eat anywhere other than immediately off the boat at one of the three huge duty-free malls that were in convenient walking distance of the ship, and I have a sense I can find more authentic Jamaican food here at home than there. Oh well.

Once off the boat, we headed to Dolphin Cove to swim with the main attractions. This took me way outside my comfort zone, and I was very nervous to be in the water with large animals. I do not swim for fun, and I have a fear thing about not being able to touch the bottom and being in "their" (read: out of my) environment. However, the Wife thought this would be good for me, and as usual, it turned out she was right. We (and by we, I mean the two of us and five other people, so a small group that allowed a lot of interaction time) swam with Nemo, one of the younger dolphins there, and he was a bit sassy. It was early (according to the trainers, dolphins don't really sleep in the same sense we do, so I am not sure what is "early" for a dolphin?), and he was apparently not in the mood to go through the normal motions with us. I actually really liked the idea of Nemo sort of giving the middle finger (fin?) to his handlers and us; it was reassuring to me to think that he was intelligent enough to demand extra fish to allow the big white guy to touch him. When it came time to take the kissing photo, instead of one tap on my cheek, he did it like 12 times...in my mind, Nemo was being ironic, and I pretty much laughed for the entire time we were in the water with him. I had hoped for a photo of the three of us (me, the Wife, and Nemo), but the staff said that Nemo didn't do that. I have a sense Nemo would have been fine with it, but that would have meant me only buying one photo instead of two, and apparently it is pretty expensive to feed a dolphin, let alone the 10 or so they have at the park. As much trepidation as I had, I have to admit, that was an amazing opportunity, and I am very glad I did it. Would I do it again? Probably not, but some of the fear is gone, and that alone was worth the price of admission.

The rest of the park was kind of sad; I got excited about feeding time at the shark tank, until I saw they were all nurse sharks, which I believe are the nerdy computer programmer cousins in the shark family. Here's a short video of them circling, which reminded me more of a morning commute than anything cool:



After the dolphins, we went across the street (literally) to Dunn's River Falls, which seemed to be a must-see on every tourist list. The falls themselves are very impressive, and the surrounding park was very pretty. There was the standard hawking of crappy chotchkies, and one guy even secretively offered to sell me weed. I assumed this was all part of the tourist experience, but was told later that undercover cops abound throughout the tourist areas, hoping I guess to make their quotas of arrested Americans. Sorry to disappoint. The guy who offered to sell me the weed did take this picture of us, though, so if he was a cop, he's a better photographer than police officer.

Back aboard, we were entertained that evening by Ice Under the Big Top, an ice show in the bottom of the boat. Full-on triple axels, on an ice rink that looked like it was the size of my living room, in a moving ship...and nobody fell. Impressive.

1 comment:

Jenny said...

I would HOPE that Chris and I would turn down the pot...not sure though. That's scary. :) Love the dolphin story.