Bob Payne - BobCarriesOn

September 29, 2012October 20, 2012

Jumpin’ Jamaica — a cliff-diver’s cautionary tale

I originally wrote this story for Men’s Journal, but as a result of a blow to my head during the researching of it, I can’t recall if it ever ran.

It is for good reason that in most places cliff jumping is an outlaw sport. Usually, you have to break some kind of ordinance and ignore a “No Trespassing” sign or two just to get to a point where you can launch yourself (unless your lack of forethought is exceptional) into a suitable body of water. And even though the most famous outlaw jumpers of all, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, survived a 50-foot leap into a river (Butch, in the 1969 film version of their adventures, helped Sundance overcome his embarrassment about being unable to swim by pointing out, “Why, you crazy – the fall’ll probably kill ya!”), practitioners of the sport often enough end up with the kind of injuries, or worse, that make for a highly readable cautionary tale in the local paper. Along the coral cliffs near Negril Beach, at the western end of Jamaica, though, you’ll find no such ordinances, no such signs, and … no shortage of tourists with purple welts from hitting the water with anything but a perfectly smooth — legs together, arms tight at your sides — entry.

The most popular and, some would say, most risky Negril jump spot (in both instances because of the proximity of an every-flowing supply of Red Stripe beer and Appleton rum) is the cliff above Rick’s Café, where every afternoon in season people gather to watch the sunset and break one of the sport’s only two rules – don’t drink and jump. (The other, most often broken in tandem with the first, is to check the water depth before jumping.) The jump is about 35-feet, which might not seem like much, until you’ve seen somebody fished out nearly unconscious from a sloppy entry or walking around with a backside that looks like an overripe plum.

The “professionals,” hard-bodied locals, can double the height by shinnying up the trees that overhang the cliff and launching themselves from perches marked by hand-painted signs indicating not feet above the water but the minimum dollar amount ($10 or $20) they’ll jump for. If you must leap yourself, though, perhaps the better part of valor is to first try the more manageable heights at several of the hotels that sit along the cliffs, where, through a misunderstanding, I began my own jumping career.

I was at Tensing Pen, a cluster of garden cottages with a narrow foot bride spanning two coral promontories — 18 feet high — that guard the entrance to a boutique-size cove. Where a woman, with great enthusiasm, and a great smile, said, “You’ve got to try it,” naturally leading me to assume that she herself had done it, and that, despite my considerable apprehension (“scared silly” might be a better description), if she could, so could I.

I learned only after the jump, which lasted a couple of seconds at most, but long enough for me to review some of the reasons why it might have been a very bad idea, that she had not done that particular one, or any other. But by then I was too pleased with my success, or more accurately, survival, to care. And I like to tell myself that I moved on to another Negril hotel, The Caves, because the jump there were even higher. For a jumper, the advantage of The Caves is that there are several launching spots of different heights, from a pleasant little 15-foot drop through a hole in the ground into a sea cave, up to a break in the retaining wall of the dining patio that lets you wipe your mouth with your dinner napkin, take three steps, and plunge 25 feet.

Actually there is a third rule of cliff jumping, which is: Don’t make a jump you are not comfortable with just because peer pressure encourages it. So, even though the smiling woman at Tensing Pen caused me to break it, I can’t tell you, and am quite confident I will never be able to tell you, what the jump from Rick’s feels like. I can, however, describe the technique that worked for me at lesser heights.

After swimming underwater to personally determine the depth, step to the edge of the cliff to double check that a tsunami has not sucked the water out or that somebody with a camera and a kayak has not paddled in for a close-up shot. Then, from three paces out, preferably while an attractive person you would not like to embarrass yourself in front of looks on, take a deep breath and step purposefully forward, springing off with just enough force to get you away from the cliff wall but not enough to send you flailing like a windmill. Most important, once you start taking your steps, make absolutely no attempt to rationalize what you are doing, or you will falter, possibly for good. If any words at all must go through your head, let them be those that worked so well for the Sundance Kid:

“Ohhh…s-h-i-i-i-i-i-t!”

September 29, 2012October 13, 2012

Take my towel. Please. The rules for going home with hotel amenities

Among the drawbacks of carrying on your bags when you fly is that you can’t fill them with nearly as many hotel amenities as you once could. Remember when luggage was so volumnious you could walk unnoticed out of a hotel with a TV, and perhaps even a light fixture or two?

Complicating the problem is that many hotels now expect you to take certain items, items that for promotional purposes usually have the hotel logo branded on them. But since there is no uniform set of rules, it is difficult to know what branded amenities you can tuck away without being labeled a kleptomaniac or, even worse, abtuctor of mini bars.

The W Hotels in particular leave me feeling uncertain about what is expected, as I am reminded at the W Barcelona, where I could just about fill up a steamer trunk with items banded with the upscale chain’s single-letter logo — and another steamer trunk filled with items that are not.

The W notepads, post cards, book marks, key cards, Do Not Disturb signs, and napkins that came with my welcome drink are clearly mine if I want them. And surely the laundry bag and the slippers, both of flimsy, throw-away material, are meant for me to keep, and would fit nicely in a carry-on bag. But the clothes-hangers, robes, towels, telephone, iPod dock, and giant letter W fixed to the hotel’s facade, probably not.

So how do you judge if removing a hotel amenity would be theft?

It is not branded.

At the W Barcelona, that means I have to leave the throw pillows, bedspreads, curtains, flat-screen TV, desk, and sofa, all of which wouldn’t fit in my carry-on anyway. (Oddly, the bathroom items do not carry the W logo, which is a disappointment to an amenities collector who has not purchased soap or shampoo since about 1983.

It has a card attached stating how much it costs.

At the W Barcelona, for instance, a bottle of Bacardi rum, accompanied by the mixers necessary for making a mojito martini, costs $22 Euros.

You would need a screwdriver to remove it.

That eliminates most art work, the wall mirrors, the shower head, and the bathroom vanity.

A charge for it appears on your credit card.

This has never happened to me, at a W.

September 11, 2012October 13, 2012

Happy Hands Index ™ makes writing hotel reviews a breeze

Watching couples walking hand in hand through the open-air lobby of the all-inclusiuve Riu Bachata in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, reinforces my belief in how easy writing hotel reviews can be.

Of course not all travel writers will agree with me. And there was a time, I reflect, as I sip on the pina colada I brought over from the bar (not the bar by the pool, but one of the others), when I didn’t feel that way either.

Traditionally, the problem with writing reviews — other than that after about 500 of them you begin to live in fear that your embarrassing depth of knowledge about things like the thread count of hotel sheets will emerge unbidden in the course of an otherwise normal conversation — is that they are so subjective, and so dependent upon conditions often unique to your individual stay (it is unlikely that someone else will find a live goat in their bathtub), that it is impossible to voice a critique a would-be guest can absolutely count on to reflect their own experience.

What are the areas of subjectivity hotel reviews are based upon? There are setting, facilities, and dining, all of which normally require a reviewer to see how those things might be related, however distantly, to photographs shown of them on the hotel website. There is service, usually measured by making an outrageous request, such as asking that a cheese platter be brought up to your room, by someone dressed as a Disney character, when you are not staying at a Disney hotel. And there is price, guests’ perceptions of it likely to vary significantly, depending on whether they can book a luxury oceanfront suite without much thought or expect things to be just so because they are, after all, paying $57 per person per night.

Bringing all these factors together in a meaningful way can be so demanding that many professional hotel reviewers routinely rely on a network of resources they hope will allow them to balance their personal observations with points of view other than their own. That is to say they crib from Tripadvisor.

I myself don’t rely on Tripadvisor reviews, largely because too many of them, particularly for hotels in the tropics, start with a complaint about cockroaches, a criticism that, having spent some of my more formative years in South Florida, predisposes me to look with disdain on anything else the reviewer might have to say.

What I now rely on instead, especially at a resort like the Riu Bachata, whose guests tend to be couples, often on their honeymoon or actually having their wedding at the resort, is how many of them are holding hands.

Unless it’s a parent dragging a five-year-old to a time-out location, people hold hands when they are happy. And resort guests are happy when, for them, the hotel has gotten the balance of setting, facilities, dining, service, and price just right.

So all I have to do is observe what percent of guests are holding hands, and assign the total a number on my recently created Happy Hands Index ™. I give the Riu Bachata, for instance, a 7 out of 10. It’s not the fanciest resort in the Caribbean, or even in Puerto Plata, but people generally seem to be having a good time. In fact, I would rank it even higher, except there appears to be some kind of police activity going on and I notice that one of the couples is not actually holding hands but is cuffed together at the wrists.

The Dominican Republic is one of those countries (the U.S. being another) where you don’t want to get too curious about police activity, so, work-day concluded, I am headed back to the beach, where I should be in plenty of time to finish watching two competing sets of wedding parties play volleyball.

(Doubles from $57 per person, all inclusive, not including local taxes, airport transport, spa services, casino losses, or consequences arising from discovery of concurrent visits by former spouses. Happy Hands Index: 7; www.riu.com )

May 18, 2012November 26, 2012

Airlines suspend plans to charge fees for wearing hats in coach

In a move seen as an attempt to calm the anger of airline passengers who are growing increasingly resentful about what some see as the out-of-hand increase in add-on fees, most of the major airlines announced today that they have set aside plans to charge a fee for hats worn in coach class.

The fee would have been $25 per hat and an additional $25 for any emblazoned with the slogan “Party like its 1776.”

The only holdout among the airlines was Southwest, which maintained that it will go ahead with plans to charge the $25, but only for cowboy hats, with an extra $25 added on flights between Dallas and Houston.

The add-on fee would not have applied to first class passengers or to the cockpit crew.

This post originally appeared on the wall of the now inactive facebook group “We are wearing a hat in our facebook photo, or admire people who do.”

May 9, 2012October 13, 2012

TSA secrets the flying public doesn’t want you to know

Not since the days when the postal service mattered to anybody has a group of federal workers (Congress excepted) taken so much abuse as the agents of the TSA.

That the TSA performs a necessary function is clear. Their vigilance, study after study has shown, has resulted in airline passengers bringing aboard far fewer knives, handguns, and explosive devices than they used to.

Yet the abuse of TSA agents has become so pervasive it has been estimated that comedians such as Jay Leno (“Have you heard the TSA’s new slogan? ‘We handle more junk than eBay.'”) David Letterman (“TSA says they are going to crack down on the invasive pat-downs. In fact, one agent was transferred to another parish.”) and Conan O’Brien (“ I don’t mind being patted down by airport security, but I don’t like it when the guy says, ‘Now you do me.'”) would be hard pressed to get through their monologues without some reference to the alleged humiliation faced daily by the flying public.

Of course some of the abuse is well-deserved. There’s no evidence to show that grandmothers in wheelchairs are more likely to commit terrorist acts than any other group. And what kind of person takes a stuffed animal away from a four-year-old boy, even if the animal does turn out to contain gun parts?

But try putting yourself in the shoes of a TSA agent. (Admittedly, not as easily done, at most security checkpoints, as TSA agents putting themselves in yours.) The fact is that the two things the flying public finds most outrageous about the airport security experience – pat downs and body scans – are the two things that make it most difficult for TSA agents to come to work each day (that and most of them don’t earn enough to own a car).

“Everybody says airport security is a system built on fear,” TSA spokesperson Daniel Butts said, “But what they don’t say is that the biggest fears are those faced by the TSA agents themselves. To understand why, you just need to look at most people making their way through an airport terminal, picture them naked, and then imagine having to run your hand up the inside of their thighs. It’s not exactly a Ken and Barbie world out there.”

Considering the stress that results, it is a wonder, Butts said, that the TSA team holds up as well as they have. “Sure, there have been cases of verbal abuse, theft, drug trafficking, and dealing in child pornography, but at least nobody’s gone postal.”

May 9, 2012October 13, 2012

When can you say you’ve been to a country?

One of the more difficult questions for a traveler to answer can be whether they have been to a country. Can they count it if they pass through on a train or visit on a cruise ship without ever disembarking? Must they go through the entry formalities, such as having their passport stamped, or at least, in the case of arriving by air, leave the security area? Do they have to have been there a certain length of time, overnight, say, or, more commonly, as long as whoever is asking the question?

Have I, for instance, been to Yap, a Micronesian island group in the far western Pacific where my plane touched down just long enough for me to stretch my legs on the tarmac while I waited to continue a flight from Guam to Palau?

I would argue that I have, though I was not there long enough even to see examples of the one thing Yap is known for — the coin-shaped stone money, some of it as big around as truck tires, that has prevented the Yapanese from developing the concept of pocket change.

I base my claim on the interaction I had with an old Yapanese woman who sat next to me on the flight from Guam. She was not friendly at first, fearing, I suspect, that I might be offended by the overflowing baggy in which she spat the betel nut juice that was dripping blood red, vampire style, from the corners of her mouth. But when I offered her the airsick bag from the back of my seat, her bag having gone missing, possibly as a result of use by a betel nut chewer on an earlier leg of the flight, the practice being fairly common in that part of the Pacific, she warmed considerably, and we passed the flight in pleasant conversation, despite her dribbling. And by the end of the flight I had an invitation to her daughter’s wedding, an invitation I had to decline because the airlines are so unreasonable about letting you change your mind about itineraries in mid journey.

Her daughter, who had seen much of the world, having traveled even as far afield as Hawaii, was back home in Yap now, making final preparations for the wedding. But there was a problem, the woman told me. All the daughter’s traveling had put the notion in her head that she should not have a traditional wedding. And the woman, as mothers often are in these situations, was upset about it.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told her, waving off an offer to try some of the betel nut myself.

The sticking point, it seemed, was that in a traditional wedding on Yap the bride would be topless, as the woman is in the photo accompanying this story, which also features, you may have noticed, the stone money. That the photo is an authentic depiction of traditional life on Yap can be assumed from the fact that it is a closeup of an official Yap postage stamp. The bride-to-be, however, wanted no part of tradition.

I was disappointed that I would miss the wedding, especially after, as we deplaned, the old woman pointed out her daughter to me, a lovely-looking girl waving to us from the other side of a chain-link fence at the edge of the tarmac. The experience did help define for me, however, when you can say you have visited a country.

You have been to a country when you were there long enough to come back with a story.