My watch died.

It feels like losing an arm. I use it all the time, and it bothers me when I don’t know if I’m late. For instance, tonight, dinner is at 7:00 and I’m supposed to help with a fashion show at 8:10.

I don’t need this pressure.

It is proudly labeled Water Resistant to 100 meters. That is apparently a lie. This morning it didn’t go deeper than 2 meters during an excursion to Dunn’s River Falls.

We clambered onto a bus and took a 45 minute trip to Ocho Rios. There we boarded a 60 foot catamaran. It took us out a bit and then let us snorkel in a reef area. That was nice. So far I haven’t been able to swim properly here. The beaches at the resort are very shallow, and scuba diving isn’t floating, but more controlled sinking.

The best part was when the guide took a sea urchin and did something to it so that fish wanted to eat it. Little fish swarmed all over it. He passed it around so I got to hold it for awhile. Urchins are prickly, but don’t sting. Of course I can’t speak for the black ones which I’m told are a different story.

Off the side of the boat I bought a conch shell from a guy paddling around on a kayak. I don’t know why, my mother has two of them.

After that, the catamaran took us to Dunn’s river falls. It’s a treat because you don’t climb up a trail, but up the river itself. It was surprisingly easy, and not very slippery. But you do get very wet.

Too wet for a watch.

My camera survived better. I had it in a plastic gift shop bag, knotted at the top and it still seemed to work.

After the falls, we cruised on the boat, drinking and having fun, before going back to Ocho Rios. That’s when I noticed my watch starting to die.

It reset itself on the bus back. I set it to the correct time, but it kept resetting to midnight. At the resort I thought I would try to dry it out under a hand dryer. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. No screen now, just a humming when you put it up to your ear.

On the bus I heard Robert make an observation about how when someone is talking to a beautiful woman, other men will come up and talk to her as if you weren’t there. Ironic, because he did the same thing to me later.