Jamaica - Part 4 - Food and Excursions

Food: 

The big kicker at any resort.  The buffet was far from the best that I have ever eaten at a resort.  I am in no means a foodie, but when there is only 8 to 10 things plus salad, bread, and dessert, it is kind of hard to get excited about it.  Of the food that was there: Breakfast was pretty standard...the boiled bananas were quite gross though.  Lunch, was hit and miss, but a couple of days they had some great wraps, and other goodies.  Finally, dinners had some fun options but limited each night.  All in all there was always food there that was edible but definitely disappointing.

A-la-carte restaurants were definitely better, as they generally always are.  They were also limited though, with only 4 available.  We ended up going to 2 of them, because one was a Japanese place that there was a $20 extra charge for and the other was a seafood place. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a hate on for seafood...although they did have steak and chicken options as well. There were apparently also extra charges for the steak though, from what I have heard, which sucks.

Of the two we did go to, one was an Italian restaurant, which was really quite good.  There wasn't a crazy amount of pasta though which was sad, because I love it.  Overall though the pasta that was there (I had the Gnocchi and spaghetti with veggies) was quite good, I was happy with it.

The other place was a Jamaican style place that was amazing.  I had the Jerk chicken, with spicy jerk BBQ sauce.  The sauce was awesome in itself.

Finally, we went off resort a couple of times to Scotchies:

It was recommended by several people back home and was about a 10 min walk from the resort.  I was skeptical when it was called the best Jerk in Jamaica, but to that end, it was by far the best two meals I had here in Jamaica. Not only was their chicken and pork good, but their sausage was amazing too.  Sides were great as well including the standard rice and beans and Festival (tasted kind of like a donut but as a stick instead of round....hard to describe).  Plus the hot sauce w as amazing, if it didn't need to stay refrigerated we would have bought some of it!  Highly highly recommend going to one of them if you are in Jamaica.

Excursions:

We went on two excursions. One to Dunn's Falls and the other to the Luminous Lagoon. Both were awesome, and well worth the additional cost.  

Dunn's Falls is definitely unique from what I have done before.  Most of the time at waterfalls, you get there take a few pictures, and you leave.  Here you actually climb the falls in the water:

It is surprisingly not too strenuous, and a lot of fun when they get you to jump in pools, or go down a natural water slide. It took approximately an hour.   With the tour we were with JTL which provided an awesome guide and bussed us back and forth from the resort.

The Luminous Lagoon was probably the most unique thing I have seen anywhere.  Basically the water glows when you disturb it at night.  It happens due to micro-organisms that absorb the UV light. When we were first getting to the dock, it was raining so hard that we were contemplating skipping it. The rain stopped however and we were able to get on the boat and more awesomely go swimming. Every stroke you take you can see for a second or so. Here is a picture from behind a boat, I didn't get anything myself as everything I have is non distinct unfortunately:

Again highly recommend this one, the bottom is a bit gross so you get a bit tired from all the swimming, however you are not out there for more than fifteen or twenty minutes.

Will post my final thoughts next post.