Trust Me, You Have Never Seen A Drive-thru As Fascinating As This One

Of all the ridiculous things I've experienced through travel, this one takes the cake...and ALL the Cheetos.

Happy “week before Christmas,” y’all!! Nobody is paying attention to anything but holiday chaos right now so this week I’m delivering a quick and easy read that’ll add a healthy dose of laughter to your week. In case the tornado otherwise known as Christmas doesn’t bring you any form of joy, at least this week’s post will 😁😁

Good times? Bring it!

Forget late-night fun at MacDonald’s. This is the most bizarre drive-through I’ve ever come across and it quite possibly makes it onto my top 10 list of funniest travel experiences….EVER!

I can say with certainty that I have never encountered something like this before.

First of all, if you find yourself vacationing on the south coast of Jamaica, you should know that exactly nothing stays open past 8:00 p.m. except the odd roadside bar.

Second of all, don’t bother going to the south coast at all if you’re looking for a wild vacation experience. You won’t find it. Which is the reason I lived on that side of the island my second time around.

If you need fuel, cigarettes, or snacks you’d better stock up in daylight hours because you’ll be shit out of luck after dark. You can’t even get a taxi or find an indoor place to pee…hence this type of debauchery 😁:

That’s me on the left in the referee ensemble. My man-pee stance is nowhere near as good as the other two.

But fear not!

If you end up at a late-night party on a beach with a bunch of off-duty police officers, you CAN get snacks at one particular gas station in the middle of nowhere. Even if it’s closed.

The gas station is called Unipet and when you drive up to it in the dark, it appears well-closed and locked up. Not even the street lights are lit.

BUT…if you’re with someone who knows what they’re doing you’ll weirdly discover that there’s a metal box on the outside wall of the building.

Also, if you’re with someone who knows what they’re doing you’ll quickly learn that the metal box is actually a slot that pushes in and out of the wall for the transfer of money and goods.

If and ONLY IF the guy inside who manages the metal box is awake, you can get whatever treats and prizes you want. But if he’s sleeping you have to bang on the metal box and yell at him.

My police friend yelling at a metal box

That photo is exactly what it looks like. You yell into the metal box and make the guy inside walk through the dark store to pick out the items you want. That’s his actual job. He then yells back through the box to tell you how much your goods cost, you drop your money in the box and your snacks magically appear!

The night we ended up at this literal hole in the wall, there were four of us foreigners with my one policeman friend. He did all the dirty work for us.

The ordering fiasco lasted for about fifteen minutes because none of us could decide what we wanted, then we changed our minds, then we wanted Cheetos, then they didn’t have any.

On and on it went.

All four of us were intoxicated and laughing so hard that we could barely breathe. The policeman kept yelling at the guy inside to wake the f**k up while knocking on the box and adding more to our order.

Then, just like magic, the box popped out of the wall and our items appeared, along with our change.

I swear, I was SO sad I didn’t capture this whole episode on video because the ridiculousness of it can NEVER be replicated. But it was so dark at 1:00 a.m. that the only way to capture anything was with a camera and flash.

By the time we had completed our mission, I was positive the guy inside was going to slide a pipe bomb through the box and kill us all.

So anyway, consider yourselves informed.

If you’re ever desperate for a smoke and a Cheeto in the middle of the night in Jamaica, make sure to drive around and check all the gas stations to see if there’s a metal box on the wall.

FUN FACT: The police officer in these photos is the same one I had met on my first trip to Jamaica twelve years earlier. The one who made me the offer of a lifetime. Through the magic of social media, we found each other again after losing touch for nearly a decade.

I’m sorry that’s all I’ve got for you this week! In hindsight, I should have saved this post for next Tuesday which is Boxing Day….when a post about a box in the wall might have been more fitting.

In the spirit of holly-JOLLY-ness, feel free to share one or some of your most ridiculous discoveries while travelling. Lord knows I can’t resist laughing alongside (or at the expense of) others.

In the meantime…JINGLE YOUR BELLS OFF! 😊😊🎅🎄❄

Merry Christmas!