21.-23.04. - Ocho Rios, Jamaica

Slowly but surely our initial desire to travel Jamaica fades away. The country is not actually as it is often publicly portrayed: neither relaxed, nor easy, nor 'no problem'.

On 21.04. we took a route taxi from Port Antonio to Ocho Rios early in the morning. Our AirBnB host kindly drove us with our heavy luggage to the route taxi stop, but still tried to cheat us. We knew that the ride to Ocho Rios costs 600 J$. I asked him how much the ride costs, to which he went to a driver and inquired. Afterwards, they wanted to charge us 1000 J$ (per person). However, we had already talked to another driver and rode for 600. When we arrived in Ocho Rios, we were greeted very warmly. Actually, we are not allowed to check-in to the AirBnB until 3:00 PM, but luckily our room was already ready at 11:00 AM and we were allowed in. The room is very nice, but it heats up so much that you almost have to leave the air conditioning on all night. After unpacking our things, we went to the nearby (city) beach, which costs either 200 J$ (1.20€ = 1.32US$) for the entrance, or 3 US$ (meaning you can pay in either US$ or J$, but you save more than half when paying in the local currency). The beach is small and you can only go into the water up to shortly above your waist. Afterwards, there is a buoy line and boats are driving behind it. Swimming prohibited. Furthermore, you are constantly approached by people who want to sell boat tours, snorkeling tours, parasailing, or grass. In general, Ocho Rios (especially because of a large number of Americans and cruise ships) is much more touristy than Port Antonio and we don't like it here that much. We told one of the sellers on the beach that we would like to go diving. He was then (in addition to being a beach seller, beach cleaner, and lifeguard) of course also the owner of a diving school and wanted to go with us to it. We politely declined, but later in the day we went to this diving school to inquire. The person had nothing to do with the diving school at all.

On 22.03. we went to the diving school again at 08:30 AM. We had 2 dives planned for us (one to a nearby reef and one to a wreck). This was the most beautiful experience we were allowed to have in Jamaica so far. The reef dive went down to about 20 m depth, we had a visibility of 20-30 m and saw various colorful fish as well as lobsters, lionfish, sea cucumbers, and many corals. The wreck dive went down to 15 m depth and we dived a wreck (Katherine's Wreck) and saw sea urchins, stingrays, flounders, and also many different fish. The dive also included a kind of underwater canyon, which felt more like a cave. An absolutely great experience! We spent the afternoon of 22.04. at our accommodation, organized some things back home, and took care of further travel planning. We also had a very bad experience with Edgar (with whom we did a tour in Port Antonio), which I will not go into further detail about here. Fortunately, the experience was only online and not in 'real life'...

On 22.04. shortly before noon, we went back to the nearby city beach. To our surprise, the cruise ship 'MSC Divina' had docked off the coast of Ocho Rios. The view of the sea was blocked and the whole beach was full of cruise tourists. Just our thing. The businesses of all sorts of beach sellers were booming - we spent a large part of the afternoon drinking beer at the bar... what else can you do.

All in all, we are quite disappointed with Jamaica. The country with its nature and the sea is beautiful - no question about it. And if you like, you can definitely spend 2 weeks in a 4-star all-inclusive hotel here with crystal-clear water and a complete Caribbean feeling (and almost no contact with the local population). However, Caro and I just can't get along with the people. As 'white privileged people', we constantly feel like we are still to blame for the enslavement of the black population about 150 years later. In general, especially with white skin color, you always get looked at a little askew and almost everyone tries to rip you off in some way. Surely, economically we are better off than the majority of the local population, but from our point of view, this is not a reason to continuously allow oneself to be cheated. Especially since this is definitely not advantageous for the future of local tourism. We are curious to see how things continue with Thomas in 3 days and what he thinks about the whole thing...