Ocho Rios, Jamaica.  I got up about 4:00 this morning and went out on deck with my binoculars.  I saw Jamaica on the horizon, and another cruise ship (the Carnival Imagination) heading into port about 30 minutes ahead of us.  The bow of the ship was very calm because the wind was almost directly behind us.  The bow of the ship is the absolute best place for star gazing, because they keep the lights off at night so they can see where they’re going.  And the skies out there are very clear.  It reminds me of my youth when I lived in a small town where there was very little light and lots of visible stars.  It’s odd to see Orion directly above rather than down on the southern horizon where he belongs.

We took an early morning trip to Dunns River Falls, where we climbed 1,000 feet up the falls and then went back to the beach for some ocean kayaking.  We rowed the boats to James Bond Beach, where they filmed a scene from Dr. No (the first James Bond film).  It got to be a joke among some of us throughout the cruise, because the guides must have told us the story of the beach at least a dozen times throughout the tour.  There’s nothing terribly special about the beach, by the way.

I lost my watch while climbing the falls this morning.  No great monetary loss, as it was just a Casio that I paid $30 for in 1983.  I’ll miss it, though.  That watch and I had been through quite a lot together.  What amazed me about the thing was that I only replaced the battery once:  13 years after I bought it.  I bought a new watch at a shop on the island.  Again, I didn’t go for anything fancy.  This one is a Timex Expedition: an analog face with a digital display for the stop watch, timer, calendar, and alarm.  At $45, it wasn’t any less than what I would have paid at Wal Mart.  It certainly was a lot cheaper than most of the watches there, though!  I had to check four different shops before I found anything under a couple hundred dollars.