Alright, I suppose now I have recovered enough to FINALLY talk about our disaster of a honeymoon. Seriously. I feel bad talking about it because people ask me how it was expecting me to answer with "absolute paradise" or something like that, but all I can say is that it sucked, and we need a do-over. So without further ado… here it goes.
So we got there on Saturday afternoon and of course, coming from MN, were dressed in long pants and fleece jackets, etc. It was gorgeous though. We went to the welcome office and the woman there offered us cold towels and champagne. We immediately decided that this would be awesome and also, that we weren't used to being catered to like that. So they showed us to our room and we got settled in, changed into our swimsuits and immediately headed to the beach. I don't want to carry on like this for the entire trip or it will result in a novel. So I will give you all of the highlights... and the lowlights. The beach was the best part. It was 80 and sunny every day and it was just beautiful. The people (locals and staff at the resort) were absolutely awesome. They were soooooo nice! ANYTHING that we wanted they were there to deliver. All of them called me princess, and the waiters carried things on their heads… awesome. Because we were on our honeymoon, we were treated especially well. Every time room service made up our bed, they sprinkled tropical flowers on it; we were brought free champagne one night; and they served us breakfast in bed one morning (on their heads, of course). It was really nice. Also, while we were there we got a massage that was called "in each other's hands" which was basically the masseuse teaching us how to do it and then we did it on each other. We walked away from that with some free massage oil and some tips. It was great. Then of course, there were the drinks. Everything was included so we could drink all that we wanted… and we did. Good stuff. As much as I hate to say it… that about covers it for the positives. It sounds like a lot, but most of it was not realized until we were home and had gotten over the rest of the BAD things that happened while there.
The food, while VERY well presented (really, it was all gourmet looking), tasted nor so good. It was NOT as good as it looked. Even the fruit, which I expected to be amazing because we were in the Caribbean for Pete's sake… sucked. It tasted better in MN. They did not have the milk that we are accustomed to. It was all coconut milk. This was all well and good the first glass that I had… but it was nasty on cereal… and they don't keep it cold. Gross. That got old fast. I'm telling you, all I wanted was a frozen pizza or mac and cheese… SOOOOOOOOOOO BAD. You can only eat faux "gourmet" meals for so long before you just want some good ol' fashioned American mayo, or something, you know? So that was a rather large disappointment. There was a day where Paul and I missed American food so much that we went to gift shop and loaded up on Gatorade, Fritos, Doritos and a big bag of bugles… at a premium, of course. Seriously, the bugles would have cost 4 dollars at your local cub foods, but in Jamaica, they were 9. That's right… 9.
Aside from the food issues, there was an ant infestation in our room at one point. It was the weirdest (and grossest) thing. It was very sudden that we happened to look where we were walking and there were tons of ants everywhere. I decided at that point that I would no longer be walking barefoot on the tile floor. Gross. The next day it was even worse… really bad. So we told the front desk about it and they said that they would send someone in to check it out. Later that day when we went back to our room the ants were gone, but it smelled pretty strongly of chemicals for the next couple days.
The main reason our honeymoon sucked is this; and please forgive me for being blunt/graphic. Like I said, we got there on Saturday. On Tuesday night we went to the Asian restaurant on site and I had sushi. Mistake. Big mistake (my mom informed me later that it probably had worms). Very shortly after we finished eating I felt the uncontrollable urge to find a bathroom… quickly. So Paul went to the bar to get us some wine that he would bring back to the room, while I took our room key and power-walked back to our room. Once there I IMMEDIATELY got SEVERE (you can probably see where I'm going with this). Little did I know I had just entered the gates of hell. Basically the next couple days were filled with trips back and fourth from the beach to our room so that I could use the bathroom for the same reason. It was unpleasant, but not to the point of unmanageable… yet. It got so bad/frequent, however, that on Thursday I decided that it would be a good idea to visit the nurse on site and see what was up. By that point I was pretty much bed ridden and I felt horrible because I did not want to do anything but lay in bed (WHICH by the way, was no better than if we had thrown our pillows on the tile floor to sleep) and Paul (who had not eaten sushi) felt totally fine, but spent most of his time sitting out on the deck doing logic puzzles. So I went to the nurse and had to tell her everything that I had eaten in the last 2 days and explain everything… all the while I had stomach cramps so bad that I couldn't stand up straight… just getting to the nurse's station was a challenge. She gave me PEPTO BISMOL. Seriously?? Thanks??? Grrrrr… she then told me that if that didn't help, I should come back the following day. Great.
The next day (Friday), we had scheduled a tour of the nature and wildlife of Jamaica that we were supposed to leave for at 8 am. This was the part of the trip that we were really looking forward to. Well when we woke up that day I felt worse, and the fact that I was sure that there wouldn't be a bathroom at my disposal at any point through the day and I knew that when I had to go it would be sudden and uncontrollable… I didn't want to go. I felt HORRIBLE because I felt like I single-handedly ruined our vacation. So since I did, in fact, feel worse, Paul escorted me slowly to the nurse's station yet again. I explained how bad I felt and she said that she would call the on-call doctor, but he wouldn't be there for a good hour or so, so we were to go back to the room and wait. UGH!! I had enough trouble just walking so this was not a pleasant ordeal. They called the room and told me that the doctor was there so we walked all the way back over there and ended up waiting for like 20 minutes before she even let me in. The doctor didn't tell me what he thought was wrong… at all. He gave me a shot in the ass (which HURT a lot) of God knows what, and 4 different types of medicine (and these are not the nice American coated pills… these started dissolving the moment that they hit your tongue, so for someone as nauseous as I was… not good) and sent me on my way. After I was all drugged up I passed out. I slept for like 4 to 5 hours and then woke up and I felt much better. Because it was our last day there I decided that I was well enough to go down to the beach for a while, so we did and I was doing okay. Well a few hours later I felt even worse than before, and this time it wasn't just the old familiar issue... this time I felt like I was going to throw up as well. It was BAD. We got dressed for dinner, and I wanted to go with Paul because I didn't want to make him go alone, but I also knew that I couldn't eat much, if anything. During dinner, I had maybe 4 bites of mine and felt so dizzy I couldn't see straight, and I felt like I was going to throw up at any moment. So Paul shoved down the rest of his food and we went back to the room. I laid down and didn't move for quite some time. I didn't WANT to move, but we needed to pack. Simply standing was horrible. You know what it feels like to be sick to your stomach and NOT want to stand up because it makes it so much worse, right? Well as I was trying to pack I had to race to the bathroom and threw up for the first time. I was in hell. I know that Paul was super annoyed with me because I did, in essence ruin our honeymoon and prohibited us from doing a lot of things… including eating (our favorite thing). However, he was really good and held my hair out of my face and rubbed my back, so I was really grateful for that. Anyway, after that I felt a little better (well enough to finish packing, anyway).
The next morning we woke up early to check out and take the shuttle bus back to the airport. I was feeling bad, but stable at least. I didn't want to eat ANYTHING, but I sipped on some bottled water when we got to the airport. We were waiting to board and I started feeling worse gradually, and then we found out that our flight was delayed. Great. I just wanted to be home more than anything at that point it wasn't even funny. FINALLY the plane started boarding, but I started feeling even worse. When I realized that I needed to throw up I literally RAN past tons of people in the airport to find a bathroom and HARDLY made it into a stall before the inevitable. I was thankful that that bathroom was noisy. I don't think that anyone heard me, but who knows. By the time I cleaned up my face, rinsed my mouth and headed back to Paul, it was our turn to board. I had had the window seat on the way there so Paul was going to have it on the way back, but I asked him if I could have it because I knew that that was not going to be fun and so I at least wanted to be able to lean against the window. Fortunately for me, he agreed. We were sitting there and all I could think about was how sick I felt. I took one last opportunity to go to the bathroom on the plane before we took off because I knew that this wasn't over, but I waited in there for a good 10 minutes and nothing was happening so I went back to the seat. Taking off was not fun. You know how you get that butterflies in your stomach feeling when the plane gets off the ground? Well normally I love that, but at the time it was all I could do not to puke. This was a long flight, so they were serving something, I have no idea what but I couldn't even look at it. I got some 7-up to sip on, but that ended up being a poor choice. My stomach did not want ANYTHING in it. Long story short, while Paul tried his best to shield me with his arms and chest, I threw up in the air sick bag FIVE TIMES throughout the flight. That was by far the worst experience of my life. It was mortifying, disgusting, and awful. I tried to be as quiet as I could, but it's kind of hard to turn down the volume on vomiting so everyone around us was talking about it and I can only imagine what the guy sitting next to Paul was thinking.
I didn't throw up anymore after we got home, but the intestinal issues continued like 2 weeks after we got back… I ended up having to go to a doctor and take medicine before finally getting back to normal. I lost like 10 pounds through all this… it was bad.
SO! There you have it. Needless to say, it could have been better. I think after that experience, I deserve a make-up honeymoon. It was pure hell.
The calm before the storm...
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