Dunn's River Falls in Jamaica was wonderful. We may not have been the oldest people in our group, but we were close. And I know that people who were much younger than we are wimped out and took the stairs. Who says a 60+ cardiac patient can't do this?. (Okay, so there were hand rails in places but those were the places where the water was coming at you so fast it knocked your feet off the rocks.)
We were also warned that there were craft booths. We were told that they would give us "gifts" but then expect us to buy something. We were warned that they would ask our name and then carve it onto something and expect us to buy it. We were told that we were under no obligation to buy anything. Let me tell you, that warning was not strong enough! They should have told us to arm ourselves with sticks and beat our way through.
You know when you go to museums or "attractions" you have to exit through the gift shop? This was like that. Except it wasn't a single gift shop. It was a "crafter's village". Before we could even see what he had, the guy on the outskirts of the village was shouting "hey mon!" We thought we had the perfect excuse - all of our money was on the bus. "No problem! No one takes money to the falls. We go to parking lot with you!" He wanted us to buy a $6 mug for $20 and a $2 magnet for $7. (We bought them both for $10.) He also wanted us to buy junk with our names carved on it. No.
Having escaped only spending $10 for things we would have bought anyway, I decided to forge ahead. (My back was starting to hurt and I really wanted to sit down.) My plan was not to make eye contact with anyone, but to charge through the gauntlet and get to the parking lot. That's what I did. I assumed Mark was behind me. I came through to the parking lot unscathed but Mark did not. I watched the exit to the crafter's village for several minutes. Still no Mark. Where was he? No choice but to backtrack and find him.
It didn't take long. He was surrounded by "craftsmen" all sporting dreadlocks. He seemed relieved to see me. "There she is now!"
"Yes, I lost you. I thought you were behind me, but clearly you weren't." He had obviously made another purchase because he had a bag with stuff wrapped in newspaper. "What did you buy?"
"I'll tell you later."
We got back to the parking lot and I noticed that Mark was visibly upset. He told me that he didn't know where I'd gone. He didn't know if I was in front of him or behind him or if I'd been dragged into a booth somewhere. He said he'd been surrounded by at least nine of them. He felt he had to buy something in self-defense. In the meantime they had become interested in his gold chain (a really, really, really nice one that I bought him for his 60th birthday). And that was when I came back and we escaped.
As they say, all's well that end's well. By the time we got out of there we had no cash left. But we had our jewelry and our lives and some trinkets. And we'll never set foot in a Rastafarian craft village again. I didn't get to see what he bought until we got home. I'm planning to hang them in our office just to remind us of all the fun we had!
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