New Year's 2000-2001 - A Caribbean Cruise, Part 2

If Grand Cayman was the Blue, then Ocho Rios, Jamaica was the Green. I have to say that Jamaica at least ties Ireland for the greenest place I've ever been, if it doesn't surpass it. We decided not to climb Dunn's River Falls like every single person on the ship. For one, I saw the Falls as a romantic trip, which I wasn't particularly in the mood for. Also, since EVERYONE was going to be there, I thought that something a little less crowded would be good. We decided to go on a River Tubing trip. Here are Jay and I in our tubes at the start of the trip

Yes it was raining. That's what happens in a rainforest. Here are Jay and I again. Scott's oar is in the pic :) The tubes had wood and metal on the bottom, with a tube tied with rope. Several tubes got punctured on the way, so it was good that they floated extras along. We were supposed to use the oars to push ourselves away from the banks, but most of us got serious scratches anyway! I ended up in the ship's infirmary to get a splinter out of my hand. OW OW OW.

When we got to the end, there were lots of people there to help stop the tubes and get us out of them. Scott's in this picture, waving at me. It was remarkably hard to get out of the tubes when you wanted to, considering how many people fell out of them on the way. By the way, yes, the water is brown. They showed us pictures of the water being blue and said that it changes depending on the season. It was still kind of scary at first. I thought of it as an adventure.

Here are some pictures that I took of the forest that we were tubing through. The first one is a bamboo bush. They were all over the place! I've put space in between, so just keep scrolling.

Here you can see what the tubes looked like, and also what one of our guides looked like. Jamaica is filled with beautiful people.
Tubes being loaded onto the bus. Tourists (us) standing around watching.
About 1/2 hour from our ship, the bus got stuck in the mud. I thought, great, we get to stay in Jamaica! Well, one of the guides got out, jumped on the back of the bus, and started bouncing it out of the mud. I made Scott take a picture of it.

Here are some more pictures of Jamaica. We stopped on the way back to the bus to have some Red Stripe beer and buy t-shirts. Mine says "Jamaica. No Problem" Yes, the cows are red. I've left space again.

Well, we're coming to the end. After Jamaica, Jay and I hung out on our balcony to watch the people doing water sports. We figured we'd better get pics of each other on the balcony, to prove to ourselves that we had one!
And here's me. Still in my swim suit from the tubing trip.
I leave you with one Origami towel elephant, courtesy of our room steward. Carnival definately is a "fun ship" and they try to make everyone smile as often as possible. I loved this little guy!
So, all you friends of mine, next year when I say, "let's go away for New Year's," I don't want to hear "It's too soon to plan" or "Oh I'd never enjoy that!" This is the second year in a row that I've had a FANTASTIC time over New Year's, and I fully intend to keep doing it!