The next morning, Orsi said she was going to stay at the hotel with the kids, who wanted to swim in the pool. Kris decided he wanted to come with Matt and I down to the beach, so it was decided it would be their Man Walk. I was just along for… well, everything awesome about the beach.

We found Popsie, who drove us down to the far end before the megaresorts begin, and dropped us off at the Treehouse. Matt and I had never been down past Margaritaville, so it was awesome to see a new spot.

We got drinks at the bar and hung out looking at the beach for a while, then went up to their patio for another view. It was gorgeous outside, if really windy.

The Treehouse seemed to be a pretty laid-back property like Legends. I’d definitely consider staying there.

We decided to walk down the beach, so Kris led the way (walking waaaaay too fast for the beach). I followed behind at the appropriate strolling speed. We passed Margaritaville (they couldn’t be convinced to have a rasta shot), and stopped in at Tony’s instead.

As we walked up, Matt and I realized that Tony’s was probably actually the boat bar we were thinking of. It was nautical and wooden, and the view was right from the direction we were walking. We were very excited to find it.

The guy running the place was really funny, and most of the people sitting at the tiny bar looked like they’d been there all day, every day. The men got seats at the bar, and I preferred to sit on the low wall overlooking the beach. People had left their names all over the place, so Kris got us markers to leave messages ourselves. I took this picture to show Orsi how the Man Walk was proceeding:

Matt found a Twins’ Homer Hanky on the ceiling, so we left a pro-Gophers message right by it. It seemed appropriate.

The telephone ring man passed by, and I grabbed cash to get one. We’d run into him at least a few times before, and his rings are really awesome. He’s well-known on the beach, walking up and down yelling, “Ring! Ring! Telephone Rings!” He told me that kids collect the old telephone wires and bring them to him, and he teaches them to make jewelry. I only wanted one ring, but in typical Jamaican beach-consumer fashion, I ended up with five rings for $10 and a Red Stripe from the bar. Considering he initially wanted $15 for one ring, I feel like I did well. I brought the extra rings back to Orsi and the kids later on.

Then it was time to move again. Kris marched us down to the Boat Bar, because they were intent on having the house drink, known as the STEEL BOTTOM. They went to the bar and ordered, and the bartender laughed and said, “These guys want to make babies!” I realized then that the Steel Bottom was not going to be a drink for ladies (according to Jamaicans, and also my desire to not drink overproof in the morning), so I ordered a Red Stripe instead.

The Steel Bottom was a decent-sized shot of Red Cap with a beer, meant to be poured together and consumed. It looked terrible, and I was really glad I didn’t have to drink it. Here’s an appropriate picture of how they were probably feeling about drinking it at the time. BLACKOUT.

While we sat there, a guy came up and asked Kris if we wanted a boat ride. When he said no, he asked if we wanted cocaine. Oh, Jamaica.

Then it was time to move on again, because we were hungry. Conveniently, we encountered the patty man and his bike on the beach. We got patties, and Kris got a coco bread too. We headed to Yellow Bird, ordered Dirty Bananas (the exact opposite of a Steel Bottom, I think), and Kris made a sandwich out of his bread and patty.

There were a few women sitting next to us who really wanted to talk to Kris, and their voices were so ungodly scratchy and horrible that they actually chased us from the bar. Eesh. Also, there was a super-drunk local harassing people, so we figured we should probably move on.

The wind was picking up more and more, and it was started to get a bit overcast. We headed all the way down past Legends and Bourbon Beach to the last big hotel, called Travelers. It seemed pretty laid-back as well, and they had a concrete pingpong table sitting in the middle of the courtyard, for reasons we were unsure of.

Kris said the mudslides there were great (he’d done this same beach bar crawl before). I really didn’t want anything sweet after a Dirty Banana, so I got a rum and diet instead. Matt said they were delicious, but definitely really sweet.

At that point I was sick to death of sitting at bars instead of somewhere in the sand, because we were on one of the best beaches in the world. We decided to walk down to Bourbon Beach, where we could actually get a table on the beach itself. The second we left Travelers, though, we realized our mistake: the wind was coming from the direction we were walking now, and it was HORRIBLE. We got sandblasted the whole way, and I was the only one wearing sunglasses and therefore able to see. We stopped at Bourbon Beach to get a beer, and Kris got a text from Nav saying that Orsi and the kids had gone to the German Bar to get pizza. That sounded like an excellent idea, so we went over to Legends to get a cab back up to the cliffs.

They weren’t at the German Bar when we arrived, so we figured we’d wait for them. Then it occurred to us that maybe they’d been there and left, so we decided to order. We got a bunch of pizza, and left carrying a to-go box. It was so windy at that point that it was hard to hold the pizza box as we walked down the road.

We stopped back at the hotel to clean up, and found this sign waiting in the room. It was no joke… the waves would come up so high on the cliffs that you could be washed off the edge.

It was actually getting cold outside in the wind, too, which was a surprising and new experience in Jamaica. We decided to stay close by, and went across the street to Ciao Jamaica for dinner. We got an indoor table (I couldn’t believe people were sitting out on the patio) and ordered cocktails.

While we were waiting for our food, a table of ladies arrived. They were well into the day’s celebrations, and didn’t seem to understand that they were in a nice restaurant, not, say, Senor Frogs. They were yelling and doing shots and generally annoying everyone in the place. We spent a lot of time glaring at them.

After dinner, Orsi wanted to take a Lady Walk over to No Limit for a drink, so we did that and the men and kids went back to the hotel. We had a beer there, and then went back to to join them. We sat out on the patio for a while, and the waves were so rough we were getting sea spray all the way over there (past the cliffs, two swimming pools, trees, and a wall). It was cold, too, which still blew my mind.

Matt and I went back to our room around 10. We left the windows open because we thought the breeze would be nice, but I kept waking up panicking about the noise of the waves crashing, and eventually had to close the windows. Plus I was freezing to death!