It has been entirely too long since the previous installment in our ongoing Jamaica Tales saga, and this last chapter is what I like to refer to as “a doozy.” A “barnburner,” if you will. A tale of epic horror, rivaled only by some sort of horror movie that has yet to be created by man or beast. Enjoy!
Continuing on from our last chapter, our boat trip from Lobster Island took us to a place out in the middle of the bay where a few sunken cannons were located – a decent place to snorkel. I manned the underwater camera and took photos of some coral and such, they turned out shockingly well actually (link also contains more photographic evidence of our batshit crazy tour guide).
Cutting to the chase, we arrived at Rick’s Cafe to enjoy some (more) drinks, food and cliff-diver watching until the sunset ended and it was time to bus back to the resort. And to be very clear, Rick’s Cafe has some of the greatest sunsets and most beautiful scenery of any bar I have ever seen. Featured prominently is a group of fellows that work the crowd, collecting tips and entertaining everyone by jumping off of very, very high ledges into the water below. There are also a few lower ledges that patrons can jump off of for a small fee.
And let me just put this out there as a word of advice: If you’ve been out on the water all day in the hot sun, drinking rum and eating nothing except for a fire roasted lobster AND exerting yourself while snorkeling and jumping on midwater trampolines, take a break for a few minutes. Have a glass of water and cool off! Have a snack! Do not under any cirumstances forgo eating altogether and try to jump off of a cliff in a country with little to no public health services!
| Should I bother to explain why I deliver this word of advice?
Can you guess as to what occurs next? Welp, two of the girls we were traveling with decided to jump off of the ledge shown in tandem. The jump lasted three seconds and it did not end well. One of the girls cocked her leg out a bit and hit the water …incorrectly. I didn’t personally witness the landing, but I sure as hell heard the “OOOOOOOH SHIT!!” on impact. As soon as they brought her back to the table after about a half hour of sitting on the side of the water it was fairly clear that she was a) in some form of shock and b) had very badly bruised her ass. She was complaining of a shortness of breath, she was shaking, and looking dazed as all getout. Not a good thing. |
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Now, the fact that basically everyone we were with was inebriated in some way (with the exception of the poor bastard family of three that had to come with us on this trip) did not help the situation. At. All. Especially after thirty or so minutes, when the injured girl in question had a fainting spell in the bathroom while trying to get dressed and everyone FLIPPED THE FUCK OUT HOLY SHIT WE NEED AN AMBULANCE SHE MIGHT BE BLEEDING INTERNALLY AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
And at the end of the day, when someone gets hurt due to gross negligence on their part, the first thing you do as an American citizen is blame the establishment. And in this case, it was a string of exchanges between waitresses and our people, who were completely outraged by the fact that the cafe insisted that we pay our tab before leaving. I didn’t bother to mention the fact that there is an enormous “liability release” sign on the cliff that the two girls launched off of – one that they force you to read aloud – but it didn’t matter to them I suppose.
This really became fairly embarrassing, especially when a group of loud drunks are demanding the presence of an ambulance, an ambulance that in all likelihood doesn’t exist and sure as hell isn’t going to get there any time soon, in a country that more than likely doesn’t accept American health insurance. The only method of egress was to hop into the bus we were supposed to get on in the first place, and head to a hospital. It was a frantic cram session into the van, and on the way out Krazy Kenisha nearly got into a fist fight with another cab driver for yelling at her for not filling out an injury report. I was surprised that such a thing even existed…
And our journey to the hospital had started. …things got worse. (Stay tuned)
WOOOHOOOO!!!!!! Been waiting for this to pick back up for months! Well played sir.