The place might not be cheap, but it sure was fun!!
We were very fortunate to find a lovely spot on AirBnB to rest our heads so for less than the price of a single room in the Holiday Inn we found ourselves in a lovely 4 bedroom villa with far more room than we needed.
Villa Patio View to Pool and Sea
Friday evening we took a ‘stroll’ up to Royal Palms for the tourney kick off party and meet up with a few familiar faces. But with the early start scheduled for the next morning we were grateful of the Public Bus service to get us most of the way home!
Saturday morning showed just how different our Caribbean neighbours are with the tournament starting promptly on schedule at 8am and ending right on time some 11 and a half hours later! The morning session saw the running of the Men’s and Women’s division with the Twins playing with the New York girls, Nephew joining up with Houston and Tonka mainly on refereeing duties. 8 rounds later we took a couple of hours off for lunch with the girls happy in their victory!
New York Ladies with the Jamaican Boost!
The afternoon saw another 7 rounds of more ref’ing the 4 of us teaming up with our friends from Houston for a bit of fun and valuable experience. Thankfully the mixed final was a much easier game to officiate than the Men’s final with New York completing the clean sweep with a tense and exciting victory over Cayman 2-1. A few post tournament beers, a birthday toast to OJ, some pleasant trips down memory lane then home for pizza was about all we could manage after a long, hot and thoroughly enjoyable day. After refereeing in 12 matches and playing 4 rounds the warm jacuzzi at the villa complex was an extremely welcome place to enjoy some late night rum!!
Houston & Jamaica Squad
Sunday allowed us to enjoy a much easier pace, but also saw Nephew continue to move out of his comfort zone and enjoy new experiences! His first flight might have failed to get us off the rock, as we made a quick stop in Mo-Bay before he finally got to walk on foreign soils. With the boat trip and swimming with sting rays soon to be ticked off the bucket list the day started with a challenge that he sadly was not up to – declining the full Irish breakfast and the delight that is black pudding!
Boat soon come…
After an hour’s delay for technical issues and the boat only taking in Sting Ray City (and not Rum Point), the boat trip could have been better, and the greasy kebab would have been much better if the mozzies had not have been eating us a quickly as we ate the food! But that aside the company was amazing and the craic mighty! In spite of the ridiculously early start Monday morning (and a slight run in with the Jamaican taxi driver) we were back on the Rock ready to start the next chapter of the awesome journey that is Jamaican Touch!!!
Check out a couple of videos at the links below