Sandals South Coast - Part 3

Thursday

Finally, the winds had died down and water sports was up and running again. I thought I’d better get my wakeboarding in as early as possible, while I still could. It had been almost a year since the last time I went wakeboarding so I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it. But I got up on the first try and managed to stay up the whole way down the coast to the cove and back. Woohoo! I couldn’t wait to do it again the next day but then I remembered that the next day was our last day and we would be on a tour. Rats, the week was going by way too fast!

a walk to the nature preserve

There were lots of fun activities at the main pool that day. The head chef for Bayside and Eleanor’s gave a cooking demonstration, making ackee and saltfish (a traditional Jamaican dish) and jerk shrimp cooked in Appleton rum. Yum! Later, some of the staff brought out a cart of coconuts. They chopped them open with a machete, poured out a little of the coconut water and then topped them off with rum. I have always wanted to drink out of a coconut! Every time they had them on our other Sandals vacations, they’d run out of coconuts before I could get there. This time as soon as I saw people walking around with coconuts, I ran straight to the cart and was rewarded with the most gigantic coconut I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I had to hold it with both hands. It was huge. :-)

cooking demonstration

Mento band

That night we went to Neptune’s Bar for a pre-dinner drink, where we ran into Kendall and Matt from the Pelican Bar tour. While we were chatting, we commented that none of the restaurants seemed crowded and we hadn’t had to wait for a table the whole week. Where was everyone eating? When we were ready for dinner, Kendall and Matt headed off to Neptune’s while we walked over to the new sushi restaurant, Sushi on the Sand. That’s when we found out where everyone was eating. There was a 45-minute wait! We decided to eat at Eleanor’s instead and save the sushi for our last night.

Neptune's Bar

Eleanors

Friday

Our plan for the day was to take the Appleton Estate Rum Tour, but no one else had signed up so we ended up doing the tour to YS Falls instead. We met at the lobby at 10 o’clock and along with three other couples, we boarded a van for the 45-minute ride to the falls. It was a scenic drive and a lot less bumpy than the one over the mountains from the airport. :-)  We soon passed out of Westmoreland Parish and into St Elizabeth Parish, which our tour guide Sharon called the “Breadbasket of Jamaica”. St Elizabeth produces 22% of the nation’s food, despite its relatively low rainfall. We rode through a few fishing villages and then into the most beautiful pasture-land with huge trees and cows resting in the shade underneath. There was a large horse stable, and several foals were playing and prancing in the fields. When we reached the YS Falls entrance, Sharon checked us in while we ordered our lunch, which would be ready when we got back. Then we had a 5-minute ride to the falls on a tractor-pulled jitney.

Because of the big rainstorm on Sunday, the falls were much, much stronger than on our tour seven years ago. I couldn’t believe how different they looked! The top falls were closed off but there were several other pools that we could still get into, with a lot of help from our guide falls Damian. I am terrified of falling, but Damian knew where every rock and hole was and walked me through it. There were a couple of times when I thought the current was going to pull my feet out from under me but I did it! The falls were just gorgeous, seven levels high and surrounded by red ginger and other tropical plants. We even spotted a couple of hummingbirds, including a streamer-tailed hummingbird, the national bird of Jamaica. There were three swimming pools too so after Ron and I climbed the falls, we relaxed by one of the pools until it was time to head back for our lunch of jerk chicken and pork with a side of rice and peas.

YS Falls

streamer-tailed hummingbird

On the drive back to Sandals, Sharon talked about Jamaica’s famous coffee, Blue Mountain coffee. 70% of the coffee is exported to Japan, 20% to the US and only 5% stays in Jamaica. Sharon told us that Jamaicans don’t drink much coffee because they prefer tea. She asked our driver to stop at one point so that she could pick some of the different plants and leaves that they use for tea. She handed out the leaves so that we could crush them to bring out their aroma and guess what they were. Lemongrass was easy to guess but it took us a little longer to figure out allspice, which smelled a lot like cloves.

When we got back to the resort around 3 o’clock, clouds were building ominously. Ron headed to the swim-up bar while I went to the photo shop to sort through the pictures the photographers had been taking all week. Before long, it started to rain, then it came down hard! I finished up my purchases and was wondering how I was going to get back to the room without getting drenched when Ron showed up with an umbrella. Is he a great husband or what? We dashed across the piazza to Café de Paris, where I had one last crepe and said thank you to all the coffee shop ladies for making my week so special.

That night we went to Sushi on the Sand as soon as it opened so we wouldn’t have to wait. Even still, there were already a couple of people ahead of us.  We shared the albacore tataki appetizer and three different sushi rolls. I was glad it was a light dinner because I was still pretty stuffed from my late-afternoon crepe. :-)  There was a chocolate buffet that night but it was indoors due to the earlier rain and it felt crowded and loud. So we went back to the café for dessert instead and drank our coffee outside, listening to the tree frogs peeping loudly. I was going to miss that sound and this beautiful place. Sandals, Soon Come Back!

Sushi on the Sand