Crocodiles, Waterfalls and Rum, Oh My!

This is honeymoon post numero dos and I'm here to talk about our first excursion.  This was a whole day excursion and had a lot going on.  And it was fantastic and worth every penny.  We did the Black River Safari, YS Falls and a tour of the Appleton Rum estate.

We started out with an insane ride through the Jamaican mountains.  It was crazy and Ryan got a little bit car sick.  Imagine driving at top speed on a two lane road, that really only fits one car, and on the other side of you it just drops off.  I was glad I wasn't driving.

The first stop was the Black River.  They put you on a pontoon boat and take you for a ride down the river.

 Before we even got going, this guy pulled himself up out of the water to sun himself. 

We had the tour guide who liked to play with the crocs.  He would throw chicken out into the water and tell them to come.  Silly crocodiles would actually listen.  Then he would grab their leg.  It was pretty cool to see.  He said that the Crocodiles don't like Jamaicans because they are too spicy.  But apparently us white people should watch out!

 I loved all the mangroves. 

Part of the excursion was a typical Jamaican lunch.  They gave us fried chicken.  I found that amusing.  I was expecting something a bit more cultural...

Next up was YS falls.  If you didn't know yet, Ryan and I love waterfalls.  This waterfalls was located in a park. We had to go on a trailer ride to get into it.  It was really beautiful.  We had a very limited amount of time, but we enjoyed ourselves anyways.

We had an individual guide take us through the falls and take our picture along the way.

The final stop of the day was the Appleton Rum Factory.  They took us on a tour of the factory and of course gave us some rum punch.

The ageing house was neat.  It was full of oak barrels of rum.  I wish I could remember the exact amount, but each year, a lot of the rum evaporates from the barrels and then they combine the barrels to fill them again.  This is why aged rum is more expensive, because they lose so much of the rum in the ageing process.

At the end of the tour, they set out a table of all of their different rums.  I think that there were 13 in total.  There was regular rum, flavoured rum, rum cream, even a rum that was something ridiculous like 70%.  They use it mostly for medical purposes.  They set out shot glasses and told us to have fun.  I did one shot and that was enough for me.

Ryan of course bought his duty free alcohol here.  He bought a couple bottles of rum cream I think.  Rum cream makes everything more delicious.

I felt like we really got to experience Jamaica on this excursion.  Even just seeing all of the little Jamaican houses and people on the way to the locations was pretty interesting.