East of Ocho Rios
East of Ocho Rios, the in-your-face tourism glitz recedes and the coast road glides through some of the most beautiful scenery on the north coast. Following Boscobel, location of the region’s aerodrome, the main settlements are Oracabessa and Port Maria – slow, close-knit communities where tourism has taken hold in a more sensitive manner, and the small guesthouses and restaurants that pepper the roadsides are generally overlooked by those who prefer sports bars and jet skis to quiet exclusivity. Low-key glamour has a lengthy history here, however, having long been a haunt of the rich and famous. Noel Coward and James Bond creator Ian Fleming both lived here and their old homes, Firefly and Goldeneye, are still standing. Firefly has been transformed into a prime tourist site, with Coward’s former guesthouse Blue Harbour an ideal spot from which to explore the area, while Goldeneye is the centrepiece of the most exclusive villa complex in Jamaica. Beyond Port Maria, the road swings inland and the coastline extends in an unbroken series of forested outcrops interspersed by deserted, volcanic-sand beaches and beautiful waterfalls reachable only on foot or by boat. Hiking uncovers breathtaking vistas – best undertaken from Robins Bay, where eco-minded accommodations offer reasonably priced guides and tours. Further inland and you are firmly off the tourist trail in the gorgeous scenery of the St Mary interior. Market communities like Dressikie and Gayle have numerous local swimming spots; ask around for directions if you’re feeling adventurous.
Firefly
Jamaica’s most northerly tip, five kilometres east of Oracabessa at the Galina Lighthouse, marks your arrival in Noel Coward country. It was while at his former beach house, Blue Harbour (now a superb if quirky guesthouse) that Coward stumbled upon the historical site that was to become Firefly, perched on the hilltop high above. He bought the land from local politician Roy Lindo for £150, and from its construction in 1956 to the playwright’s death in 1973, Firefly was the Jamaican home of both Coward and his partner Graham Payn. Now it remains the area’s only organized attraction.
The house was built on the site of a former Taino settlement – with artefacts found both here and across the hillside – before later becoming the stamping ground of pirate extraordinaire Sir Henry Morgan, who used it as a vantage point during his reign as governor; gun slits in the bar recall the buccaneer days. Acquired by Island Outpost in 1992 (this arrangement is under review at the time of writing, with the museum’s future uncertain), the house remains much as Coward left it: his studio with a painting on the easel; the drawing room – where illustrious guests from Sophia Loren to Audrey Hepburn and Joan Sutherland were entertained – complete with two polished pianos; kitchen cupboards full of yellowing bottles; and the table freshly laid as it was on the day the Queen Mother came to lunch in 1965. Coward died here and is buried on the property. A statue of him by UK-based artist Angela Conner overlooks his favourite view. Even if you’re not a Coward fan, it’s worth coming up to Firefly for the panorama alone; possibly the best on the island, taking in Port Maria bay and Cabarita Island, with the peaks of the Blue Mountains poking through the clouds. You can even see Cuba on a clear day.
Oracabessa
Lit in the afternoons by an apricot light that must have prompted its Spanish name, Orocabeza (“Golden Head”), ORACABESSA is a delightfully sleepy little town, with friendly citizens and a mere handful of tourists visiting at any one time. Some 25 kilometres east of Ocho Rios, it is centred around a covered fruit and vegetable market (main days Thursday and Friday), a police station and a few shops and bars. A centre for the export of bananas until the early 1900s, the wharves around the small natural harbour closed in 1969, taking with them the rum bars, gambling houses and most of the workers. It took until the mid-1990s for Oracabessa to begin to develop as a low-key resort, when the Island Outpost corporation (whose owner, Chris Blackwell, has family connections with the area) bought up seventy acres of prime land – from Jack’s River to the Goldeneye estate at the town’s eastern outskirts. British reggae group UB40 also set up Oracabessa Records here, and artists frequently record in their studios above the town (not open to the public).
East of the petrol station, Oracabessa merges into the residential community of Racecourse (named after a long-gone donkey-racing track), and where gates, walls and trees mask Goldeneye, the resort surrounding the unassuming white-walled bungalow designed and purpose-built by Ian Fleming, sometime military man and creator of James Bond.
James Bond Beach Club
The James Bond Beach Club comprises a stylish strip of sand with a collection of brightly painted changing rooms, a bar and a restaurant, yet it receives a mere handful of visitors during the week. Locals do venture down at weekends, however, and the expansive oceanfront lawns, often used to stage large-scale concerts like Fully Loaded at the end of August and Boxing Day’s Teen-Splash, make a wonderfully breezy outdoor venue. For most people though, snorkelling to see the stingrays that live in the waters surrounding the beach, or a glass-bottom-boat tour around the reef (revitalized as a result of the Oracabessa Foundation’s fish sanctuary, see oracabessafoundation.org) are the order of the day. The small adjacent Fisherman’s Beach is an equally appealing place to swim, and the Rasta carvers who’ve built a shack on the sand sell seafood meals and drinks.
Sun Valley Plantation
One of the north coast’s most attractive plantations, Sun Valley Plantation offers the best tour of its kind in Jamaica, with plenty of insight into the development of crops on the island, linking ecology to plantation politics and agricultural exports and providing plenty of room for questions and personal attention. The fascinating growth processes of bananas, coconuts, and sugar are explained, and the tour, which takes in trees and flowers, as well as the crops themselves, finishes with drinks, a light meal and fruit tasting.
007’s Jamaica
From Errol Flynn to Ralph Lauren, Jamaica has always attracted the rich and famous, but the island also served as inspiration for the ultimate (albeit fictional) symbol of glamour – James Bond. As a commander in the Naval Intelligence Division (NID) of the British army, Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, first visited Jamaica in 1943. Staying in the Blue Mountains, he was immediately taken with the island’s sensual pleasures and declared that he’d be back to put down permanent roots after the war. By 1947, he’d paid £2000 for a plot of land on Jamaica’s north coast that had once served as Oracabessa’s racecourse, and engaged local workers to build the elegant beach house that he’d designed himself. Naming it after a bungled NID anti-German operation he’d been involved in, Goldeneye became his winter retreat and a source of competition with neighbour Noel Coward, who insisted that his Blue Harbour was far superior to Fleming’s spartan bachelor pad.
Ian Fleming at Goldeneye
A series of magazine articles penned by Fleming on the joys of his island paradise soon lured a fashionable set to Jamaica, and Goldeneye played host to such luminaries as Sir Anthony and Lady Eden, Truman Capote, Lucian Freud, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Cecil Beaton. Cocktails by the pool and snorkelling with his “Jamaican wife” Blanche Blackwell (mother of Island Records’ Chris Blackwell) soon began to take up most of Fleming’s time. It wasn’t until his other lover and soon-to-be wife, Lady Anne Rothermere (ex-wife of the British newspaper baron), became pregnant in 1952 that he got down to any serious writing. He cranked out Casino Royale on a rickety old Remington typewriter with the jalousies shut to block out the distracting sea view.
Clearly besotted with the island, Fleming exploited the Jamaica connection by taking his hero’s name from the author of the classic book Birds of the West Indies – and many of his characters were inspired by Jamaican friends. Pussy Galore, in the Goldfinger novel, was said to be a tongue-in-cheek representation of Blanche Blackwell. Two novels, Doctor No and The Man with the Golden Gun, were set here (scenes for the movie versions were filmed in Kingston and Westmoreland respectively), and the island served as the fictional San Monique in Live and Let Die. And of course 007 wouldn’t have dreamed of drinking any other coffee than his favourite Blue Mountain brew. Fleming later wrote “Would these books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday? I doubt it.”
Bond on film
Fleming returned to Goldeneye each January to spend two months writing, but the years of hard drinking and partying began to take their toll and by the late 1950s his health had seriously deteriorated. Fleming survived long enough to supervise Cubby Broccoli’s movie version of Dr No, filmed in Jamaica with Chris Blackwell as location manager. In the first few months of 1964, Fleming returned to Goldeneye and wrote his last 007 novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, infusing the pages with a strong sense of nostalgia for Jamaica. Though his Bond novels had by then sold some forty million copies, Ian Fleming died (on August 12, 1964) without ever really knowing what a sensation he had created. Four months after his death, the release of the movie version of Goldfinger signified the beginning of worldwide Bond mania.
Port Maria
A series of twisting outcrops protecting a natural harbour mark your arrival in the diminutive capital of St Mary, PORT MARIA. As you round the last bend, a stunning view of tiny and forested Cabarita Island is revealed, right in the middle of the bay and well known for its variety of bird species. Once one of Jamaica’s most picturesque towns – nestled around a crescent bay with lots of cut-stone and faded gingerbread fretwork alluding to more auspicious times – it’s now rather a scruffy place with little to keep you. West of the centre and marked by two sizeable royal palms at its gates is the quaint cut-stone St Mary Parish Church, dating back to 1861, with the weathered gravestones of its cemetery extending down to the sea. Nearby, in the middle of the playing field, is a monument to black freedom fighter Tacky, while the covered “ben-dung” fruit market (main day Friday) – so called as you must literally “bend down” to get items spread out over the ground – is a maze of dingy paths winding through piles of yams, bananas and assorted local produce.
A bridge crossing the murky Ochom River brings you into the centre of Port Maria, where the streets of yellow stone and timber are laid out in a rough grid. Bear in mind that the centre effectively shuts down on Wednesday afternoons – not a good time to appreciate the usual hustle and bustle. At the eastern end of town is Pagee Beach, where you can arrange a combined fishing trip and visit to Cabarita Island (approx US$25/person) with local fisherman “Wiggle”. He moors his boat at one end of the greyish sand, which, although strewn with sea grass and debris, extends in a long picturesque sweep backed by palms. If you’re here in early August come along to the annual Fisherman’s Regatta, held on the first Wednesday after Independence Day, which showcases a fishing competition as well as lining up all the local sound systems along the town’s streets.
The Tacky rebellion
In the late eighteenth century, Port Maria saw one of Jamaica’s bloodiest rebellions against slavery, an uprising that sowed the seeds for emancipation eighty years later. Led by a runaway slave known as Tacky (a European spelling of the Ghanaian name Tekyi, meaning “the great”), who was said to have been a chief of Coromantee descent, the rebellion sparked violent protests throughout the island. It aimed at a complete cull of whites and the creation of an all-black colony. The revolt began on Easter Sunday 1760, when Tacky and a small group of slaves from local estates murdered their overseers and marched to Port Maria, killing the storekeeper at Fort Haldane and seizing arms and ammunition. Five months of fighting ensued, with £100,000 worth of damage to nearby plantations. However, the thousand-strong slave army could not compete with British military force, which utilized loyal slaves and Maroons (following the 1739 treaty) in guerrilla warfare. The rebellion was savagely quashed and severe punishments meted out: Tacky was captured by Maroon marksmen and killed, his head cut off and displayed on a pole in Spanish Town; others were chained to stakes and burned alive, gibbeted or hung by irons, as an example to others contemplating sedition. It’s said, however, that in one last defiant gesture, Tacky’s sympathizers removed his body under cover of night and gave him a proper burial. After Tacky’s death, many of his followers committed suicide rather than live enslaved. Three hundred Africans died fighting, with fifty more captured and executed and three hundred transported abroad. Only sixty whites lost their lives.
Robins Bay
A series of small villages and estates around 23km from Port Maria, ROBINS BAY is the ideal place to explore the stunning section of coastline between Port Maria and Annotto Bay, the last part of the north coast without development. Tourism here is based largely around the tranquil Rasta-oriented community of Strawberry, named after the Strawberry Fields campsite popular with American hippies in the 1970s, whose free-love shenanigans drew sighs of consternation from local people. An earlier claim to fame is that the campsite’s pretty white-sand cove was where Spanish governor, Don Christobel Arnaldo de Yssasi, fled the island in 1657 as the British closed in.
Signposts for Robins Bay and Strawberry Fields Together indicate the turning from the main road, and the road meanders along a craggy section of coastline past the hotel, working plantation and orchid houses of Green Castle Estate (a left turn after a kilometre). A right turn at the signed crossroads in the village beyond leads you past the incongruous concrete of Robins Bay Village Resort and down into Strawberry. The community itself, perennially laid-back, just has a couple of basic, quiet, friendly bars that offer Jamaican food, and you can look out for local fine artist/sculptor Busha (crazy-inspirations.de) who has some of the most detailed wood carvings to be found anywhere in Jamaica (ask for directions).
Outdoor activities at Robins Bay
East of Port Maria the road swings inland, allowing the coastline to remain undeveloped, with disused plantations, ruined villages and a plethora of fruit trees growing wild. A hiker’s paradise, there are scores of attractive black-sand beaches and deserted waterfalls to explore – notably Kwamen Falls, a twenty-foot drop into a deep blue lagoon, and Tacky Falls, better accessed by boat but equally impressive. The staff at the listed accommodation can set up guides and tours along the coastline from Robins Bay, whether on foot or by boat (US$25–100). Strawberry Fields Together also offers mountain biking and possibly the best ATV/quad bike tour on the island, up through the forest along hillside trails. More leisurely pursuits include fishing trips, and an invigorating River Water Therapy Experience, with river gorge hiking, natural whirlpool massage and rock climbing. Day passes to Strawberry Fields Together, including the cove, cost US$15, which covers use of showers as well as volleyball, table tennis and use of a barbecue and wood-burning pizza oven. A short hike upstream directly from the River Lodge property passes a series of impressive rock pools and cliffs, eventually opening out into a clearing with bamboo towering overhead.
Ocho Rios
Light years away from the sleepy fishing village of a few decades ago, OCHO RIOS (usually just called “Ochi”) has long been overtaken by the tourist industry. Developed specifically as a resort, planners often overlooked aesthetics in the chase for foreign dollars. Each week thousands of cruise-ship passengers disembark here (especially from December to March), and Ochi is fully geared up to easy-access tourism with numerous neon-fronted in-bond stores, visitor-oriented restaurants and several slickly packaged attractions. Ochi isn’t the best choice for the classic Caribbean beach holiday – the meagre strips of hotel-lined sand just can’t compete with Negril and Montego Bay. Yet in spite of its scenic deficiencies and the fact that local culture takes a bit of a back seat, Ochi does boast a certain infectious energy, and the fact that its town and tourist area are one and the same means there’s less of the “sitting duck” atmosphere of the Montego Bay strip. Harassment here too, has become only a minor irritation.
Brief history
“Ocho Rios” is a corruption of the Spanish name chorreros, referring to the “gushing water” of the many local waterfalls – there are not “eight rivers” here. In contrast to its poetic name, the town has a somewhat violent history as the site of several bloody battles that took place when Spanish governor Don Christobel Arnaldo de Yssasi refused to give in to the British after their capture of the island in 1655. Major skirmishes took place at Dunn’s River in 1657, Rio Nuevo in 1658 and Shaw Park in 1659, when Yssasi’s men were attacked by a group led by his erstwhile ally, Juan de Bolas, a former slave who had defected to the British. In 1660, Yssasi fled the island, but local Spanish legacy remains in a smattering of place names and through the fragrant pimento tree, first discovered by the Spanish in St Ann and commercially planted here ever since.
The British left a more pervasive mark, with their huge sugar cane, lumber and cattle farms, though most planters were absentees. Ocho Rios remained little more than a fishing harbour until the twentieth century, when tourism and bauxite began to physically sculpt the land. In 1923, a great house at Shaw Park became Jamaica’s first exclusive hotel, and by 1948 it had been joined by the Sans Souci Lido, Silver Seas and Dunn’s River (now Sandals). Recurrent crop failures led local planter Alfred DaCosta to chemically analyse the St Ann earth in 1938, finding that the soil contained high levels of bauxite, the chief raw material used to produce aluminium. Foreign companies Reynolds and Kaiser bought up huge tracts of land, and in 1968 forty acres were reclaimed from behind what is now Ochi’s Main Street. The harbour was dredged, and Reynolds built a deep-water pier, while Jamaica’s Urban Development Corporation imported sand and built another jetty for cruise ships. More than three decades later, their efforts have brought about the firmly established resort town of today.
Dunn’s River Falls
Jamaica’s best-loved waterfall and a staple of tour brochures, Dunn’s River Falls are overdeveloped but still breathtaking, and remain the island’s major tourist honeypot. Masked from the road by restaurants, craft shops and car parks, the wide and magnificent 600ft waterfall cascades over rocks down to a pretty tree-fringed white-sand beach that’s far cleaner than the one in town. There’s a lively reef within swimming distance, and snorkel gear is available to rent from several touts.
Impressively proportioned, with water running so fast you can hear it from the road below, the falls are surrounded by dripping foliage and more than live up to their reputation, despite the concrete and commerciality. The main activity is climbing up the cascade, a wet but easily navigable hour-long clamber. The step-like rocks are regularly scraped to remove slippery algae, and the thing to prevent a stumble is to form a hand-holding chain led by one of the very experienced guides. It’s thoroughly exhilarating, as you’re showered with cool, clear water all the way up – wear a bathing suit. There’s a restaurant and bar, and full changing facilities at the beach and at the top of the falls. Hundred-strong queues frequently form along the beach; to avoid the crowds arrive at opening time or late in the afternoon (last climb at 4pm), when cruise passengers are already aboard their ships.
Upper Dunn’s River
An alternative to the crowds and the admission price of Dunn’s River Falls are the unmaintained waterfalls above the enclosure. To get there, take the main route to Dunn’s River but carry on up past the car park to where the tarmac ends. Follow the dirt path into the bush to your right for five minutes, and there are several more waterfalls higher up the road. You may well need a local guide to find them; local ranger “Brother Mike” from Sun Venture Tours is the ideal candidate (US$70/person, min 4 people).
Faith’s Pen
One of Jamaica’s best-loved street-food institutions, Faith’s Pen is a string of aroma-intensive food stalls some 26km south of Ocho Rios. Blackened by years of barbecue cooking, the stalls still do a cracking trade with locals avoiding the toll road to and from Kingston. Each sells a variation on the same theme (go for the cook with the longest queue to find the tastiest food): roast yam and saltfish, jerk chicken or pork, ackee and saltfish, roast corn, curry goat, mannish water or fish/conch soup, alongside beers and natural juices. Food sells for between J$300 and J$1200. You eat at benches, with whizzing cars and the strains of Irie FM blaring from ghetto blasters serving as background music. Though not the most picturesque place for a meal, Faith’s Pen is the consummate, and most delicious, on-the-road eating experience.
You can reach Faith’s Pen in twenty to thirty minutes’ drive from Ocho Rios: head out of town on the A3 through Fern Gully, continuing through the emerald fields dotted with dilapidated gingerbread houses and restored plantation homes to the quiet village of Moneague. From here, avoid Highway 2000 to Kingston in favour of the old A3 route through to the southern end of Moneague – you’ll find the vendors a ten-minute drive south.
Mi dial stuck pon Irie FM
In amongst the glamorous frontages of all-inclusive hotels, the studios of Irie FM are marked by a colourful billboard opposite the Coconut Grove shopping centre. Irie was Jamaica’s first reggae-only station and remains the island’s most popular – airwaves were previously dominated by American soul, gospel and country. Since its first transmission in 1990, Irie has championed the cultural legitimacy of a musical genre branded subversive until the early 1970s. Today, the station provides the soundtrack for the nation. Wherever you go, you’ll hear the music, the popular talk shows and the patois jingles: “Irie FM – a fi wi station” or “My radio dial stuck pon Irie FM, and guess what – me nah bother fix it”. Steel Pulse, Burning Spear, Aswad and Third World, among many others, have recorded at Irie’s Grove Studios, and the station has brought a bit of Kingston-style culture to Ochi.
Watersports, boat cruises and river adventures
Although there isn’t that much underwater at Ocho Rios main beach – you’ll find richer pickings east of the harbour or at the reef at the bottom of Dunn’s River – the sand is lined with watersports concessions. Prices are set and displayed at boards by the entrances, and offerings range from jet skiing and banana boats to water-skiing and parasailing. Kayaks and windsurfers are also on hand. Half- or full-day deep-sea fishing for blue marlin or sailfish is available, as are glass-bottom boat rides along the coast to Dunn’s River Falls. For divers, the best spots are Devil’s Reef at the eastern end of town and a couple of shipwrecks further out to sea.
On most days, the coast reverberates to sound systems aboard pleasure cruises. Day-trips go to Dunn’s River for snorkelling and climbing the falls (try to go on one that leaves early in the morning, before the crowds), while romantic or soca sunset cruises enjoy the afternoon or early evening, usually with unlimited alcoholic drinks and snacks.
Some of the most fun activities are swimming, tubing, kayaking and rafting on the White River just to the east of Ochi. Bear in mind that the rapids are only mildly challenging even after heavy rain. Nonetheless, fear of accidents (and no doubt associated litigations) has led to a degree of over-cautiousness by commercial operators; this notably doesn’t include the lower-key attractions Irie River and Blue Hole.