Welcome to Jamaica

We were woken just after midnight, and our airport transfer arrived about 1am to ferry us the hour and a half to Cancun airport, so we survived the day on about an hours sleep.

Arrived at Cancun airport just after 2:30 for our 6pm flight. For a regional airport it was ridiculously early, and I'm sure our driver wasn't that impressed either, but some office person probably figured it was better to be safe than sorry. We lay on the airport floor at the front of a non existent queue for an hour or so till staff started to arrive. We were the first checked in, and the first through security, so we had another two hours to kill airside until we departed for Miami.

My last experience at Miami was one of the worst I've encountered as they were undergoing terminal refurbishment, but to give them their due, today was one of the slickest transfers I've ever done. We were through immigration and back at our next gate in under 15 minutes, but that meant we had another three hours to wait before our Jamaica flight.

Jamaica is .... well, Jamaica man. Took over an hour to wind our way up the customs line to the desk, where they promptly decided that as we had been to Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua which all have the Zika virus, we'd have to pay a visit to the medical centre before they would let us in the country. The bored lady wrote out a complete list of every country we'd been to, and the dates we'd been in each, gave us a lecture on why we should be using malaria medicine, asked us whether we'd had any cramps or aches (as if we'd say yes anyway), then put another stamp on our documents, and sent us back to the queue.

By the time the original lady inspected the colour of the medical stamp, and finally let us into the country, our bags had been off the plane for so long that they'd been impounded. I think we were probably meant to show our luggage tags to retrieve them, but we just grabbed them and walked off.

Luckily our driver was still waiting at the gate for us, and took us the 10 minutes down the road to our hotel. Walked up to the reception desk, and the girl said "You must be Gregory". Do I look like a Gregory? "Just a lucky guess", she said, and introduced herself as our tour guide - Tish.

Of course, only being 4pm in Jamaica, our room wasn't yet ready. Or at least, the room that they decided to give us when they gave away our room to somebody else because another person had their room keys and they weren't around, well it wasn't ready. Whatever man!

Went for a walk to get a drink while they serviced our room. Every shop in the 'hip strip' near the hotels has the same range of genuine rayon Jamaica clothing with 'Made In India' tags. Rayon is just the thing in the tropics. By the third store, we had the patter down. "Where are you from?" "First time in Jamaica?" "Bargain price for you" was standard when we walked in. About two minutes later I'd turn to Mandy and say "it's about time for the 50% off" and sure enough they'd come over and tell us that everything was now half price for us. As we walked towards the door it would miraculously become 75% off just for us.

Had our group orientation meeting before tea. Its a tour group of 13, and the highlight of the briefing was when Tish turned to the only single guy in the group, and told him that he could be ejected from the tour for prostitution. When there was a little gasp from the rest of us at her comment, she shrugged and told us that there was only one guy so that the comment might as well be directed at him. Hmm. An interesting cultural lesson there. Hardly equal opportunity.

Then we all went out to a local BBQ restaurant to get to know our companions for the week.