Kris, Orsi, and kids came down to the beach on the shuttle again, and we joined them in the ocean. After floating around for a while and drinking beer in our beach chairs, we decided to go over to Yellow Bird for our daily visit.

We had dirty bananas, then did a lot of time sitting around staring at the beach and passers-by and joking. We got hungry after a while, so Matt and I walked down the beach to the patty shop (Jamrock!) to get some lunch. We brought them back to Yellow Bird, because we wouldn’t want to miss out on the 2-for-1s.

Of course the patty man showed up right after that. (Not that anyone was sad about more patties.) He showed Orsi how he’d modified his bike for beach-rolling purposes: the pedal on his side was removed, as well as the seat. He was in no real hurry to get the patties down the beach, either, and hung out at Yellow Bird for a while.

The kids made a new friend, and spend the time running around and playing in the sand with him. As they did every day, a couple Jamaicans rode slowly past on horses, trying to get people to ride. They also hung out in front of Yellow Bird for a while, and sat on their horses texting. I made a mental note to add that to my to-do list.

Later in the afternoon, we decided we could maybe switch bars for a while. We all piled in a cab, and Orsi fell in love with the driver’s hat, so she traded him. (His was way more awesome.)

He dropped Matt and Kris in town near the cricket shop, and the rest of us rode up to the Canoe Bar. Orsi and I got a table on the balcony overlooking the beach, and the kids headed down to play. The men arrived shortly after that, just in time for happy hour. Matt had an awesome West Indies cricket cap, and Kris had yet another gigantic knife.

We had an informal travel mascot meetup while we were there. These dudes have been a lot of places.

We ended up staying there long enough that we decided to just stay for dinner. The kids were tired, so K&O took them back to the hotel while we stayed. Matt placed a 2-for-1 drink order right as happy hour was ending, and somehow managed to end up with FOUR “Rock the Boats”. He ordered lionfish for dinner, and I had amazingly delicious curry tofu. It’s not so hard to be vegetarian AND get something other than rasta pasta if you go to the right places.

We were on our own for the evening, so we decided to get our Margaritaville visit out of the way. We grabbed a cab for the cliffs, and arrived to find the place pretty empty (it was probably 8:30 or 9ish, so that’s late for the beach), and the last of the resort shuttles was leaving. We sat at the bar near a couple who were having a night of it. We could tell because the lady kept slurring very loudly about how it was her 37th birthday.

We ordered the obligatory rasta shot (which is surprisingly delicious) and margaritas. After a while, I had to ask the couple near us where they were from, because I had a suspicion. They were from Watertown, Wisconsin, outside of Milwaukee. They were there without the kids, celebrating her birthday by drinking four billion margaritas, as far as we could tell. We didn’t hold out much hope for the lady being able to stay on her chair much longer, but suddenly their dinners arrived and she rallied.

We hung around there for another drink (and to watch sports on TV, which was rare), then decided to head back down the beach. We had shoes with us this time in case we couldn’t get around that building in the ocean.

We reached it and peered around to see if it looked safe. While we were doing so, another group came up behind us, and one of the guys was PISSED about that development. We all decided to do it, and made our way across on the sandbags. It wasn’t the safest thing in the world, but it worked.

On the way down the beach, we passed what was left of 23/7, our favorite bar on our previous trip. According to the internet a while back, the owner (who was from New York) got in some kind of beef with a local guy and tried to kill him with a machete. Then he fled to Canada, and people came and knocked down the bar. All that’s left of it is the tiki hut, so probably it should belong to us.

We went and stood under it and toasted.

We saw that Roots Bamboo was still hopping, and since it was another favorite from the last trip, we stopped there instead. We got drinks, and god knows if I even remember what we were talking about. I was obsessed with the wires hanging out of the back of the cash register, and made Matt take a picture of them.

We went back to our hotel after that, and were glad to find the beach gate open again.