Jamaica: Everting Irie, Mon!

Before I take you through our trip to Jamaica I will give you a little lesson that our bus driver told us: "In Jamaica we have noa problems. We only have situations, mon. Sometimes we have some serious situations, but never any problems. When everting is all good we say 'everting irie, mon"

Hence the title.

Ever since serving in New Jersey and meeting many Jamaicans (and eating their DELICIOUS food) I have wanted to visit Jamaica. The fact that Montego Bay would be our first stop made the cruise just that much better.

Under my parents recommendation (who took this exact same cruise a few years back) we decided to try the Chukka Kayak and Canopy tour. I think Chukka is the name of the river there but I'm really not sure...

We left the boat and took a long winding bus ride through some very poor parts of the city. It was very humbling to see poverty in other countries and see how much less they have than the 'poverty' in America.

Finally getting to the (Chukka?) river we suited up and got ready for adventure.


The tour began with a mile or two kayak trek down the river. We got in our banana boats (literally) and headed downstream.




That was the kayak part of the river (obviously). Next came the canopy part. We got our of our life preservers and took a minute to look cool in front of some really tall bamboo.


Before turning into human mushrooms. Very dashing. Donning our new gear, we climbed up the side of a mountain.


We were then off into the vast unknown jungle! We would ride zip lines from jungle canopy platforms. As you can see from the pictures below it wasn't possible to see the end of the zipline. Because of this the operators/guides would yell out from the forest "WHHHHHHHOPP!!!!!" (atleast that's the best I can do to spell it). Once they heard that noise echoing through the jungle they'd shove you off the end of the platform and away you go.




After spending maybe an hour or so flying through the jungle it was time to return to the river. We kayaked another mile or two before boarding a rickety truck and bouncing around all the way back. That truck was nuts! It's bad enough that the road's practically falling off the side of the mountain but then the Jamaican guides keep randomly screaming from the back with every bump.

To any Harry Potter fans out there, Crystal described the truck ride as riding the knight bus from the Prisoner of Azkaban movie. It was even more fitting because the movie bus had that shrunken Jamaican head that was talking the whole time.




We survived the truck ride and returned to camp where we were all able to enjoy the absolute deliciousness that is jerk chicken. My family loved it so much they let Crystal and me cook jerk chicken since we have been home. Yum!

Here we are with our awesome guides (and randomly our bus driver in the back) before we went back to the boat.

Jamaican me crazy, mon!