Jam
Jamaica is a beautiful island with extremely friendly people, great weather, awesome hotels and lots to keep you occupied for a great vacation.
We decided to take a beach vacation last February and chose Jamaica as our destination. We had never been to the island before and really never went on a beach vacation. I always thought that there wouldn’t be enough to do on a beach vacation to occupy a weeks time. Boy, was I wrong.
We knew that we wanted to stay in an all-inclusive resort and there were quite a few to choose from. One of the things we knew for sure that we wanted to do was play golf, so we decided to stay at the Jewel Runaway Bay Beach & Golf Resort. This resort had the golf course on site, so we would be able to play as many times as we wanted to.
The resort had plenty of daytime and evening entertainment, activities for the kids of all ages, a spa, water sports and a water park on the grounds. It also had 7 restaurants so we had a wide array of choices for food. There are also bars all around the property with bartenders making delicious exotic drinks.
This was the view from my balcony
The beautiful beach
Wow, talk about relaxing
This was one pool by the main dining area
This was a great swim up bar. they also had exercise classes in this pool
Infinity pool
Gorgeous day
This was a moonlight dinner around the pool
The main meeting area
Evening entertainment
As I was walking to my room, this was the view
Entertainment for the moonlight dinner
On the first full day at the resort, we took an excursion to the Dunn’s River Falls. This was on every visitors guide that I saw, so of course we couldn’t miss it. There was a bus from the resort to the falls which only took about 30 minutes. We all had our bathing suits on and our waterproof shoes to climb the falls. If you are not in fairly good shape, this can be challenging. You have to hold hands with the person in front of you so they can pull you up while you are holding hands with the person in back of you so you can pull them up. Here are some shots from the day.
The second day we went golfing. We were picked up in a golf cart and taken across the road to the golf course. There we were met by a caddy who had our clubs on the cart all ready to go.
The course was in good shape and the weather was comfortably in the 80’s with a slight breeze. The caddy was awesome, giving us tips all along the way to speed the game along. We brought our golf shoes, but rented clubs from the resort which turned out to be a huge convenience.
On day 3, we decided to swim with the dolphins. We set up the excursion to Dolphin Cove. Before we got into the water, we walked around the facility and came across these amazing birds.
Then it came time to get into the water. Each group was split up into approximately 10 people. The trainers were amazing and were in total control of the dolphins the entire time. We took the Swim Adventure where we did the belly ride, boogie board push and of course a kiss from the dolphin.
This was a fantastic experience. I recommend everyone do this when they have the opportunity!!!
On the last day at the resort, we decided to stay on the grounds and take advantage of all it had to offer. We did all the normal water sports snorkeling, paddle boating and kayaking. We also spent some time in the waterpark drifting down the lazy river. But most of the time was spent relaxing on the beautiful beach. It was the perfect way to end the vacation.
We stayed in Jamaica from Tuesday through Saturday and we could have used 2 more days there. The things we didn’t get to do was horseback riding in the water, Mystic Mountain Bobsled, Zip lining and of course shopping.
Guess we’ll have to plan another Jamaican adventure!!
