My trip to Jamaica

everyone keeps asking me how was jamaica, and i'm not really sure how to respond, except for the word "Amazing." So i was just writing an email to one of my really great friends and telling them about the trip, and thought hey this would be a really great post to tell everyone what it was about.

So without further dragging on, this is a breakdown of my jamaican vacation. Yeah mon...
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What did I do in Jamaica.

dude it was amazing. I didnt expect it to be this much fun, i expected to sit on a beach drinking rum and red stripe beer. And you know what if thats all there was it would have been enough for me but I did that and so much more.

It was 90 degrees down there the whole time, at a few points of the day the sky would just crack open into these gigantic downpours of rain, and it would only last like 15 minutes, and then suddenly it would stop, you're back in a sunny paradise and everything is dry again.

There was music everywhere, from big ass reggae concerts on the beach, some cost money but most were free. everyone from little local guys to big shots like shaggy, sean paul, damian marley, and third world played. but it wasn;t just reggae the whole place is just a bed of music culture. people sing these almost soul songs while they work.

On christmas sunday, the jamaican women got all dressed up in these beutiful brightly colored robes, and all the different churchs walked out into the streets togehter and they start singing these really loud amazing gospel style songs, and kids danced in the streets. And they're was always music, but not just reggae, some street performers played blues blues, amazing jazz, and almost everyone plays drums, so becuase its a third world style country and they dont have like tv's and computers and crap alot of times the neighborhood people just hang by doing these awsome drum circles. I got in one and they tought me to play a basic beat, and i have a drum and its just literally a scrap, a broken piece of metal that looks like it used to be part of an old oil barrel. One night I went to this place the jungle, which is a huge nightclub in negril, and it was awsome, now if you know me you know i;m not a nightclub type of guy, but to party and dance along with the people of the town and other tourists from accross the globe....i had a ball.

And the art there is amazing, they carve faces into trees, the houses are all little one room shacks, sometimes they dont even have electricity but they are painted these big bright colors, puples, blues, yellow, orange. it was just fucking beutiful. and the artwork was awsome, they have murals like in philly on public walls, but it wasnt like the murals in philly, they paint these awsome landscapes.... i cant really even describe it it was such an awsome experience.


and thats not even all i did. I went into caves, I dug up crystals, i made these crazy bead things, I went to a party with in this ghetto of negril called red rocks, and partied with the natives and they cooked me the most amazing food and it was all from stuff that was either vegatables they grew, animals they raised or fish they cought right there on their land. and there are animals everywhere just wondering on the roads like they were people, everywhere you look, goats, dogs, cats, cows, horses, birds of every color you could possibly imagine.

I learned to play reggae stlye on the bass, i went snorkeling, jet skiing, i went to a holistic medicine doctor that fixed the cough that i've had for like 8 months straight with some really nasty tasting vegatable tea. I went deep sea fishing.

This jamaican family that I befriended, cooked us a fish dinner, and it was so cool they cook up the fish whole like they still have eyes and tails and shit ( this might have freaked you out but, to me it was just fun) I didnt know how to eat it, they had to teach me.

My hotel was like 100 feet from the beach, when i walked out of my door, there was a Bananna tree, and a coconut tree, and you could eat them right off the vines. And Some rasta guy i made friends with got me sugar cane, its like this yard long looking branch right, and you just bite into it and its really soft, and all this sugar water leaks out of it into your mouth, and you just spit out the bark.

and like between all that crap. I just spent hours laying on the beach staring at the palm trees and the ocean thinking, oh my god this is fucking killer.

I'm going back in april, when the rates go down after tourist season ends. and then again in October of next year, it really was the most amazing place i've ever seen in my life, i was their for a little less than a week, but i could have gone a month and not done everything there i wanted to do.

If you ever, get a chance to go, you need to, its an amazing experience, its a much more laid back lifestyle there, but the people don't live with nearly the amount of luxury we do in America. I could go on for hours telling you about it, it was so much fun and such a beautiful experience.


You know there;s alot of people that go to places like this and go to these all inclusive hotels, and resorts and pay silly money and never leave there resort. Thats not seeing jamaica, thats just having a nice vacation in a warm climate, if you want that go to club med, if you want to see jamaica, or any other country like it go out and see it, walk around talk and eat with the people who live there. I did, and it is an expeirience I will never forget.

You need to see it for yourself in order to not only see the country for just how amazing it is, but also to appreciate what we have here at home in the U.S. just a little more.

Some time, once i get them all developed, i'll have to show you pictures.

Its just a really fantasic place, i was there for a week and i fell in love with it, it's not like the place you go to visit, and say that was fun i'll be back someday. Its the kind of place, that I know I will go back to as soon as I can, and be going to spend time there for many years to come.

I hope you all had amazing holidays,

Happy New Year!

-Jake