“Whatever you do,” said our tour guide for Dunn River Falls, Jamaica, “do not tell anyone your name or buy any souvenirs from the merchants – they are overpriced.”
With that, our royal blue bus, a refurbished airport limousine from Japan of all places, some ancient stickers on the backs of the seats giving away its familiar place of origination, swung around the corner and lurched into a parking spot.
The driver opened the door, and we climbed down the beat up, black linoleum-covered steps.
After an hour’s ride over steep highways and winding shoreline roads, it felt good to stretch while standing on the sidewalk. The sun was brutally hot, and I took a few steps toward the shade of a nearby tree.
“Ya mon!” said a guy standing next to our bus. “Welcome to Dunn River Falls! Is this your first time?”
“Yes!” I answered, truthfully.
“My name is CJ. I work here. What’s your name?”
“Sarah.”
“The falls are beautiful, Sarah,” he said. “The guys clean the rocks every day, so they’re pretty safe. It looks scary, but you will be fine.”
“Thanks, CJ.”
“Is this your husband?” he asked.
“Yes.” I was thankful to be stepping closer to Tom. Something didn’t quite seem right all of the sudden. Why did this guy care?
“He has a beard that looks like Moses! What is his name?”
“Tom…”
Oh, craaaaap. Suddenly, the tour guide’s words came back to me and made perfect sense.
Mr. Shadypants was putting something in my hand. A woman. Carved from wood. With my name etched on the side… next to someone the name of someone else that had been quickly scratched off.
“In Jamaica, the woman is the boss,” he said, trying to impress me.
I was mad. Mostly at myself.
“Yeah? Your wife is your boss? And you’re okay with this?” I said, trying to hand him back his trinket.
“Oh, that’s a gift for you,” said Mr. Shadypants, pushing it back towards me with his open palm. “We men say, ‘No problem!’ See how it’s carved right here?”
My skin crawled as I noticed the guy’s pupils were dilated as big as saucers. Why didn’t I see this before? Crap! Crap! Double Crap! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
In his other hand magically appeared a male figurine with Tom’s name carved along the side. Beard and all. Wow, Mr. Shadypants was fast.
“Tom, mon!” he said, getting Tom’s attention. “See how they kiss?” He smooched the two figurines together. “This is a gift for your wife. She’s a good woman,” he said. “This one, though, well, I was hoping you could give me something for it… you know… whatever you think it’s worth. I have a family to feed, mon!”
Tom shot me a lethal look, retrieved his wallet, and gave Mr. Shadypants $10.
Mr. Shadypants went to go hustle the people getting off of the next bus.
“You had to tell him your name, didn’t you?!” growled Tom.
“You had to pay him!” I retorted. “You could have said, ‘my wife is crazy… no thanks!'”
“He was a scary dude!” said Tom. “Aren’t you afraid of big scary dudes?”
To my detriment, no.
I am a naïve little girl who always thinks the best of people… especially on vacation when my guard is, apparently, down. (Note to self!)
I hate myself because I know better.
Dunn River falls is amazing, and you must climb it if you go to Jamaica.
Just, please, don’t give anyone your name.
Have you ever been hustled into buying something? At what point did you realize you’ve been had? Please tell me your story so we can commiserate together.
Funny that you linked to Mitnick. Now that guy is slick. I met him once at DefCon. Could convince Eskimos that they needed ice cubes.
Kevin Mitnick understands people better than most psychologists. In this post, I referenced his book, The Art of Deception, because it was life changing for me. I used to _always_ be the weakest link. Grew up in small town Indiana, ya know?
Personally, I recognize my ‘flaw’ as a desire to help, and not to disappoint people. Have to run it through the filter of “I want to help the people I care about”.. not just random strangers. If you don’t care what people think, you tend to keep your mouth shut more.
(Apparently, I still revert, given my recent vacation story. Truly, I was excited to be there and wasn’t thinking. I am _keeping_ the figurines to serve as a monumental reminder not to let it happen again!)
(And, yes, if you say you’re stationed overseas, the phone company back home will do anything for you, skipping all the important security checks, even if you have a US number via VoIP. )
Ice to Eskimos. Haha. Those Jamaican hustlers are quite smooth… way more than the persistent Nigerian skin traders in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo. Hats off to them. Wish I could have watched a death match between Mitnick and CJ ;)
FWIW, you can follow Mitnick on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/kevinmitnick and his information security consulting firm can be found here : http://www.mitnicksecurity.com/ .
Ahhh nooo!! I can imagine the whole thing unfolding…
I went on a cruise once, and they somehow found a way to put the trinket on your “Tab” on the cruise and the trinket would show up at your room door before you got back on the ship.
There was one guy who called tim and I over to a fence where we soon realized he was selling pot haha we told him the people behind us really want some.
love you sarah! glad youre having fun!
Lige,
Wow. Name and room number, eh?
One of the difficulties of being overseas or in an unfamiliar area is that you are kind of at the mercy of the locals.
You hire a cabbie online, and you expect that it really is him when he picks you up at the backwoods airport. You get into his beat up bus with Bob Marley stickers all over the inside and convince yourself that “it’s just how it is here.”
In my case, the guy introduced himself as “working there.” He was wearing the same pastel colors as the workers we were “familiar” with.
I don’t know how to avoid that when traveling to areas that aren’t the most reputable… but often lovely or interesting… like Jamaica.
We made sure trusted people back home had our itinerary and locations/contact info.
Curious what tips people have for travelers?
ALSO — the tour guides identify you by your name/room number. Over and over again.
When we rented the shoes from this little stand run by the locals, directed to us by our tour guide, it was name/room number. (Key – directed by tour guide.)
Very difficult to distinguish those who are legit and those who are not… especially when everyone says they “work there”. Your cruise ship let swindlers on their boat, ya know? I’m sure they knew what was going on yet turned a blind eye, if not received a blatant kickback.
Ha! Great story! It reminds me of life in India… My sister always managed to get the better end of the deal with guys like that. The vendors in her neighborhood soon found out not to bargain with her, but anywhere else she went people would see her blue eyes and blond hair and think they had an sucker. She could get amazing deals!
Nice! Hustle the hustler.
I enjoyed reading your blog today. Lovely pics! Looks like you’re having fun this summer :)
Well at least you got away for $10. I don’t think that is much for a good refresher lesson!
Oh, yes, when we were newlyweds in Washington, D.C. This guy in regular clothes approached us with a smooth remark about how happy we looked and something about helping him to keep kids off of the streets, etc., all while handing us stickers…he was really smooth and we bought it–we gave him a dollar for the stickers, then after walking away, Jon looked that the back where it said, “ISKCON.”
Hmmm…oh, yeah! That stands for International Society for Krishna Consciousness!” Argh! We gave money to the Hare Krishnas, who are guilty of all sorts of awful things. :o/ (We grew up not too far from Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold in WV and my brother worked in their mold shop. Ugh!)
It’s quite unfortunate that this happened, i’m jamaican and its no excuse to swindle people to so callingly feed ur family. I’m actually doing my university final year research on the challenges faced by craft vendors,though no consolation, many factors within the industry causes this type of harassment, particularly an over flooded craft industry impacting livelihoods. As mentioned in the blog it would be nieve to come to a tourist dependent country such as jamaica and not expect some kind of unfair soliciting.The important thing to note now is that you are more guarded even when on vacation.