Negril Notes

Sandals 2002 w/ Dolores – Part 4

January 15, 2005

Part Four – The Sheriff of Nudie-Ham

It was our last full day in Jamaica. I woke early and padded out to the beach. The eastern edges of the starry black sky were growing purple. A cool morning breeze wafted lazily up from Panama which sent me to find my morning coffee.

Sandals is like a machine, walking through her empty corridors and pathways, even at five AM, she hums quietly. Laundry machines, clanking pots and pans, hushed young men raking seaweed from the pristine beach. It all works. As nice as it is, I know I won’t be back. My next trip will be a smaller place where I’m not be so pampered, where I can visit one to one with people and places.

I walk out and sit on the jetty separating mellow Sandals from raucous Hedonism and re-dedicate myself to my sunrise experience. It’s lighter now. The stars are all but gone and the sun is beginning to rise over the island.

Fishermen dot the horizon as the sun begins to react with the low flat clouds miles out to sea. Sandals is waking up. A hundred yards down the beach several day trippers loading a thirty foot bay cruiser for a day on the water, the wives look nervous. My gaze is broken when a tall thin Jamaican angel walks my way in her smart Sandals uniform.

“You look like you need a refill,” she beamed as her impossibly beautiful eyes sparkled in the growing light. She was holding a carafe of hot Blue Mountain coffee.

“You guys Rock!” I said holding out my empty cup. She looked confused as she poured, “I’m sorry, that’s Philadelphian for Yes Ma’am, I’d love a refill!”

Away she walked as I enjoyed the view, and then turned to look back out to sea.

I finished my coffee, and strode back to our suite. Dolores was still sleeping. Remembering our Shroom Boom the night before I was amazed how clear my head was this morning. I guess you need a good mental floss once in a while.

After a shower and shave, I sat on our patio and fired up the day’s first spliff.
It was just after seven when I heard the shower running. A few minutes later Dolores joined me on the patio dressed in a cheetah skin one-piece swimsuit and a frilly black skirt. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and after 5 days in the Jamaican sun, her dark tanned face needed no make-up.

“You look beautiful!” I said smiling up at her, still in my sunrise over Negril trance.

“Thank you Mr. Smooth,” she said in a teasing way.

We headed to breakfast. On the way we met up with Ken and Barbie, they had finally relaxed and were loving Negril. Today they were headed to the Appleton Rum Estate tour and some sightseeing. They asked us to join them but we declined. Honeymooners need to be alone on their honeymoon.

Dolores skipped her morning kayak workout because we had a full day planned. Craft Market and Shopping before lunch, Waterskiing in the afternoon, dinner at Kimono’s (an Asian style steakhouse at Sandals) and then to Hedonism with Rain and her creepy boyfriend to party hardy!

After breakfast and a morning snack, we boarded a taxi to the Craft Market near town. We went from stall to stall looking for unique gifts for my daughter and both sets of parents. At high season there are so many people shopping that the sellers and higglers were much more laid back than usual and the Jamaican dollars flew like monopoly money. Every stall sells cigarettes and Red Stripe but many would not accept our traveler’s checks, so we decided to hit the Cambio across the roundabout to exchange them for J.

As we crossed the bridge we saw an old blind man sitting on a small crate, the cup in his hand told us he was hoping for money. Maybe he wasn’t blind but somehow he sensed us coming. He greeted us warmly and I put a US five dollar bill in his cup. We were about to walk away when he engaged Dolores in conversation. As they talked I was amazed how she stood there rapt with attention looking in his eyes as their connection seemed to deepen.

He reminded me of an old Rastaman I met years earlier on my first trip to Negril. I leaned on the bridge and allowed them to visit awhile, and I wondered if this chance meeting would have a similar effect on her.

After we said our goodbyes, we ran into a group of market ladies waiting to cross the road. They seemed very interested in Dolores’ meeting with the old man.

“Did you give him money?” One of the younger girls asked in a way that seemed aggressive.

“We gave him a few dollars.” Dolores parried. “And we had a nice talk, he was telling me a story.” She thinks he was at least. She really didn’t understand his words but they definitely connected at some level.

This made all the women smile. Dolores went, in their eyes, from some bitchy American tourist to the sweet good hearted person who I knew stood before them.

“Most tourists just walk by him like he’s not even there!” Another woman said. The word “Tourist” was spoken with distain. “Man spends his life working, now he too old for work, we don’t forget him, and you treat him with respect, that’s good!”

“He was a sweetie!” Dolores said as we all crossed the street together.

The whole event seemed to buoy Dolores’ spirits as if it was some cosmic test and she’d just made the dean’s list.

After that our cabby took us to a few more of his “special” places for some deals, we got back to Sandals in time for lunch with a big pile of goodies.

We took the loot back to our room and realized we’d have to get pretty creative to fit it all in our bags. The three foot tall giraffe seemed the most troublesome. I know, I know, what does a giraffe have to do with Jamaica? I have no idea. But one thing I’ve learned about women is just to say, “That’s nice honey,” break out your wallet and enjoy the day.

We joined the throng of Sandals lemmings for lunch. Yes, we’d decided to embrace the horror. People arriving today were looking at us how we looked at the all-inclusive people on our first day. When in Romeâ€¦

Now it was time for waterskiing. Neither of us had ever water-skied and Dolores wanted to try it much more than me, so we signed her up at the water sports shack. A few minutes and some instruction later she was on the water as graceful as a swan. Well, not exactly. Water-skiing on a flat lake is one thing but in a bay with small swells is something different. She made several attempts and had a few good runs but the experience was pretty short lived.

The video of it is pretty funny. I got the fifteen or twenty people there on the beach to cheer her on. So, on the tape you hear cheers and a few seconds later a loud AWWWWWW, then a cheer, then an AWWWWWW over and over again till the boat driver thought she had enough. The cheering section all applauded when she climbed out of the boat. She had no idea why they were cheering, but she gave a bow anyway. It was more than a year till she actually saw the video, then she finally got the joke.

Since we had more than an hour planned for skiing and it only took fifteen minutes, we decided to explore northward for the first time all week. To the north was Hedonism.

Dolores went inside and put on a skimpy bikini. I commented about it she dismissed me saying it was the only one she hadn’t yet worn. I smiled, hell it looked great, and we crossed through the security gate into the wicked Hedonism II.

Like our first walk through Sandals, Hedonism was pretty deserted, a few non-naked people milled around. I was surprised that I immediately remembered the layout. I was amazed how run down it seemed. The place needed a good paint job. Even the sailboats and watercraft were dull and faded, a striking difference to Sandals brightness and newness.

As we got closer the nakedness quotient began to rise, and before we knew it we were the only clothed people in sight. We were dressed almost the same as we were on our first exploration through Sandals where we felt under dressed, but here we were clothed and crashing some kind of wild naked party!

A few people started noticing us and we started to hear cries of “newbies!!” and “get naked or get out!” We tried to walk thru and get to the beach, but we’d walked ourselves right into a naked dead end.

Now, most of these people had no reason being naked in public. Hell most of the men looked like me! Worse even! The women weren’t so bad, but the older I get the more I realize that any naked woman is a good naked woman.

Just when we realized there was no way out and it was some kind of Mardi Gras party, a big drunken loud guy pointed at us and made a bunch of loud unintelligible sounds.

“Hey, ah, hah, hey!! She drunkenly shouted waving his arms!

He seemed to be their naked leader, and to Dolores and me he will be forever remembered as the Sheriff of Nudie-ham who banished us from the forest of shriveled nakedness.

Thank God, somehow we made it to the beach still clothed. We found two empty chaise lounges, sat down and laughed about what just happened. No sooner did we catch our breath than did a Hedo security guard come over and told us we can only walk through and couldn’t use the resorts amenities.

We looked at her in terror! We have to walk back through the gauntlet of the Sheriff of Nudie-ham!!

We got out of there as fast as we could, (later we found out it was the ConneXtions Swinger’s Club annual Hedo trip) and as soon as we cleared the last few piles of cellulite we hit the gate back to Sandals. That was it for Hedo we’d hang out at Sandals tonight.

The rest of the day was uneventful. The sunset was especially beautiful that evening. We watched it from the beach while sipping martinis and promising we’d be back again soon. Later we had a wonderful dinner at Kimonos, and danced the night away, which at Sandals meant we were in bed by eleven, asleep just after two