Honeymoon, Take 2 or We Went Chasing Waterfalls

by Mara @ What's For Dinner? on January 6, 2010

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Did you miss Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3 of our honeymoon recap? Go catch up… I’ll be here when you get back!

Now, where were we? Oh right, I had a sunburn, and after a day of pure relaxation including massages (i left that out in my Part 2!) we decided there was a need for just one more day at the beach before heading out on our scheduled excursion.

We spent Monday of our honeymoon at the beach on a pier jutting out into the Caribbean sea, soaking up rays, reading, and enjoying each others’ company. Dinner that night was an easy decision, as only 2 of the restaurants on our side of the resort were open, and we’d already been to one!

This restaurant was “Mediterranean” themed, and, much to my delight, many of the dishes on the menu featured some of the amazingly delicious and bright red tomatoes that were everywhere on this trip. First off was a trip to the “antipasto bar” which was a fantastic array of cold cheeses, salads, meats, and smoked salmon as well as a few focaccia type pizzas. I helped myself to a nice assortment:

I didn’t care for the soup that night, so I ended up with another plate of green salad instead. My entree was one of my favorites of the whole trip: a grilled filet mignon atop a potato cake with fried onions and spicy tomatoes

And, after a couple of days of trial and error, I finally found a chocolate dessert that was worthy of my chocolate-snob palate:

And Adam got tiramisu.

We finished off the evening with a “reggae” show. I say “reggae” because, well, when YOU think reggae, you usually think of this guy, right?:

When we went to the “reggae” show, the performer we got was well, a lot more like this guy:

Yeah, that’d be Carlton Banks of Fresh Prince fame. It was, though, without a doubt a very fun night! We decided to head to bed because we had quite the excursion in the morning!

At 7 a.m. Tuesday, we awoke and had a light breakfast, and by 8:30 we were aboard this gorgeous boat:

It was a large catamaran that would take us along the northern coast of Jamaica to climb Dunn’s River Falls, go snorkeling, and then on the way back, turn into a “party boat”.

We had about a 20 minute boat ride until we got to the falls, which, at first glance were beautiful:

Little did I know that climbing these 600-foot falls would be one of the scariest moments of my life! We were instructed by the tour guides to hold hands in a long line (about 15 of us) and we’d be climbing the falls together. I made it up the first level of the climb just fine, but upon reaching the 2nd level, the water fell a bit faster, the terrain was rougher, and the ground was harder to see. At one point, I was crying and yelling “This isn’t fun anymore!” BUT, after much thought about getting out and taking the stairs down, I toughed it out with Adam and we made it to the top!

I’m pretty proud of myself for doing the climb even though I didn’t feel up to it at the time, but I have to say, I don’t know if I’d do it again! Maybe I’d take the stairs…

We hung out on the party boat and relaxed, and then a group of the people went snorkeling out on the reef. I was too shaken up (regrettably) to go, but Adam went and had a ball. Upon returning to the resort, we were just hungry and tired… so we ate and napped… ah vacation…

Dinner though, was quite fun! Coincidentally, Adam’s sister and brother-in-law were on their honeymoon too at the same resort! We didn’t think we’d overlap at all, but when our trip got bumped up a few days, we had a couple days together. We all decided to do one dinner together at the resort’s fancier Asian-style restaurant.

We started with a shrimp and scallop skewer on garlic noodles: