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. 

Honeymoonin'

I never did post pictures of our honeymoon.  When I was going through the pictures, I thought that there were too many for one post, so I'm going to do a general post, and then posts for the excursions that we went on.

We went to Jamaica for our honeymoon and stayed at Secrets Wild Orchid.  I would highly recommend it for a few reasons.  It is adult only.  I think that you might as well enjoy adults only resorts before you have kids!  I loved that it was right in Montego Bay, because it was only fifteen minutes from the airport.  

The view of the bay from our balcony

Their honeymoon package was great.  I think the best part of it was that we had a free couples massage and facial.  Before our treatments, we were able to use the bath spa.  It was a lot of fun.

The food was also phenomenal.  There were about five a la carte restaurants and you didn't need reservations.  The french restaurant was our favourite, we went twice.  There was also a japanese restaurant where they make the food infront of you.  That was fun.  We never went to the buffet for dinner.  I think we only went to the buffet for lunch once because they had pool restaurants that served wraps. 

Breakfast on our balcony



Candlelight dinner on the beach

The romantic dinner on the beach was also part of the honeymoon package.  When we got back to our room afterwards, there were candles all over the room and a bubble bath with flower petals in it.  Too bad there was nothing to light the candles with.  It's the thought that counts though, right?

Ryan loves the unlimited drinks!  Especially the dirty banana.  I mostly drank the bottled water, because I'm cool like that.

The beach was small, but nice.  Going in November was actually great because it wasn't overly busy.  It only rained for about an hour one day, other than that it was sunny and hot!

Jamaica is a beautiful country.  We didn't have one complaint about this resort.  I have been wanting to go back ever since!  But the most exciting part of the trip was the two excursions that we went on.  You will have to wait for pictures from those though.