Negril

Negril might not exactly be the authentic Jamaica nowadays – far too many white foreigners and a rash of synthetic bars and all-inclusive resorts – but it isn’t quite like tourist-trap resort towns I’ve visited elsewhere in the world, either – it’s far too Jamaican for that.

Bloody Bay, Negril

Virtually cut off from the rest of the island by land until a coastal highway reached round the western Great Morass in 1959, the once-sleepy fishing community living on this pristine seven-mile stretch of idyllic Caribbean beach on Jamaica’s western tip was discovered by American hippies in the 1960s and 70s. News of Negril’s natural beauty, as well as the laid-back, anything-goes atmosphere encouraged by the mingling of hippies with the local Rastafari community (and, I suppose, the pungent local ganja, rumoured to be the best on the island), soon spread far and wide, and growing numbers of visitors  have brought an inevitable commercialism.

It is, however, commercialism the Jamaican way. There’s something cynical and patronizing in the way the town’s riotous recent past still gets used to market it as some kind of haven of free-love and hedonism (much the same thing as happens with Glastonbury Festival), but the slick, big money, westernized operations still have to rub shoulders with the street vendors and hustlers who look to cash in on foreign money the old fashioned Jamaican way. There are also laws keeping all seven miles of beach public and not allowing any buildings to be built higher than the tallest palm tree, meaning the town’s greatest assets are thankfully open to all at all times of the day of night, and there’s no sign of the high-rise developments which have changed Montego Bay and Ocho Rios so much.

Party crew

I didn’t think I was going to get the chance to go, as the five-to-six hour journey by bus and taxi made it seem a little pointless to do in a weekend, but Dan, Andrew, Simon and Amy arrived bang up for going, so we all decided we should make the effort. As it was Amy’s birthday last week and is Simon’s this, last weekend seemed like a perfect excuse for a double celebration, so I begged Friday and Monday off for us all from a slightly reluctant Mrs Mapp and found some decent accommodation going cheap up in the West End of town, towards the cliffs famous as the best spot on the island to watch the sunset.

Amy and my big ugly cake

Come Friday morning, I would have been pretty excited had it not been for the fact that I had a touch of rum flu courtesy the previous all-nighter in Old Harbour and about three hours sleep. Amy’s birthday had been marked in appropriate fashion, and suffice to say I in particular wasn’t really relishing the idea of six hours rattling like a smackhead across 200 km of potholed highway. Amy seemed to have had fun though, which was the main thing – she downed something like three bottles of tonic wine as we sat in the bar next door early evening, so I reckon she was set fair from there. The five volunteers clubbed together to buy her a bottle of rum and a card and I baked her a huge misshapen square cake so she could blow the candles out.

Rude Bwoys

The party was at the same place we’d been the previous Friday, and went much along the same lines. This time, though, we had a much bigger crew – us six, Kaday, Kaya and Kara, Jayvan, Cherise, Shaun, Shanique, Kim and Marsha, the oldest of the Bryan sisters, who said it was going to be her first proper night out in two years. After carrying five of us into town on his first trip, Shaun then somehow managed to cram the other nine into his taxi on the second, easily beating the previous record seven passengers in a taxi I’d seen in Albert Town.

Dancehall Divas

I won’t bore you with the details of what went on inside, you probably get the picture by now – rum, dancing, rum, a bit more dancing, more rum, rum and a lot of dancing until I nearly dropped a girl on her head attempting some dance move or other (Joanne last week, Shanique this) and then it’s time to go home. Kaday finally showed us all why she’s got a reputation as a bit of a dancer by demonstrating her ability to do the splits, much to our amusement, and we also bumped into a few friends we’d made at the last dance, including Sweaty Palm, a young guy who dresses flash and dances like crazy (hence he’s always dripping with sweat) who’d been showing Joanne how to dance last week. He was out with his family this time, although I didn’t believe it when his sister pointed out their mum to me, more from the way she was dressed and how she was dancing in front of the live streaming video camera than any consideration of her being youthful.

 Far too soon after going to bed, I was cursing my stupidity for not bearing in mind I had a day’s traveling cross country to do while I was partying the previous night, and I was already running late. It’s not even that overproof gives me a particularly bad hangover – I’m still mercifully immune to them – but it does give me an epic thirst which I knew I’d be battling with all day as I toiled through the convoy of busses and taxis we’d be taking. With nothing else for it, I stuffed myself with beans on toast, buns, birthday cake and tea, and we were soon setting off under a spitefully hot sun.

The beach me a reach

The journey to Negril would take us from Old Harbour to May Pen, then on to Mandeville, Savanna Le Mar and finally Negril, a minimum of four busses and taxis if we didn’t have to change in Santa Cruz on the way to Sav Le Mar. I’d done this journey as far as Santa Cruz a few times already, but after that it was new territory for me. In other circumstances, I would have enjoyed it, but as the standard of transport gradually deteriorated with each leg of the journey, so did the levels of discomfort and irritation rise, somewhat detracting from any possibility of taking pleasure in the scenery. The long hike from Mandeville all the way to Sav La Mar, taking in some stunning coastal scenery, was particularly brutal – the bus was rammed full and there wasn’t even room to shift your ass slightly, condemning you to a purgatory of numb bum as the blood supply to your derriere was slowly but comprehensively cut off. I seriously thought I was going to stand up at the end to find my entire backside had gone necrotic, I was in that much discomfort, and things weren’t helped by the fact that the weaving and bumping round the winding roads and over treacherous potholes were making me feel proper sick.

It was late afternoon by the time we finally got out in Sav, straight out of the bus and into a taxi run by a guy called Eggie, apparently because he used to eat so many eggs when he was younger. I’d heard Negril was a place where hustling visitors for whatever goods or services you could possibly sell was one of the most common forms of employment, and Eggie didn’t waste any time giving us a full demonstration. First, he negotiated a rate with us to take us all the way to our accommodation rather than dropping us in the centre of Negril where we’d have to take another taxi to our final destination, then started giving us the spiel on how great the local ganja was. Half way into the journey, he suddenly pulled over and disappeared for a couple of minutes, returning with a fairly sizeable bag of marijuana which he then offered round to each of us. We each explained we didn’t want it, but he wasn’t deterred – as we got out the taxi, he tried the classic hustlers’ trick of thrusting the bag into my hands, asking me what price I’d like to pay for it, in the hope that I’d be too flustered or scared of causing offence to refuse this hard-sell tactic. I stood my ground, however, and told him that something I neither wanted nor needed had no value to me, so I didn’t want to give him anything for it. He quickly took it back.

Long Bay, Negril

Dusk was already falling as we arrived at where we were staying, the Mango Tree Cottages on Tigress Lane, off West End Road. I had been expecting a ten-bed dorm – instead, it turned out we’d booked too quite pretty little cottages, sat in a beautiful garden full of trees. I’d had an e-mail off the owner, Alan, the day before and guessed that the wiry, brown-skinned and blue-eyed guy who welcomed us was Headly, his caretaker. He didn’t say much, and didn’t show all that much interest when I asked him when he’d like us to pay the balance of the bill, but he made sure we had everything we needed and left us to it for the evening. Not surprisingly, everyone was pretty knackered, so our plans extended no further than walking up the road where we found a decent Italian restaurant to eat in and then all tuned in for an early night.

The next morning we awoke to a surprise – I’d had several missed calls from Paperfoot since the previous evening, and when he finally got through to me, it turned out he was also in Negril with Janet, Charma and Maz, the other volunteers who were staying up in Albert Town. Ten minutes later, he pulled up at ours in a car and we had ourselves a driver for the day. There’s only really one place to go in Negril, though – the only question is exactly where on the seven miles of sand you want to park yourself for the day to soak up some rays and drink a few juices.

Ready for a snorkel

The ‘centre’ of Negril is a roundabout where the town’s three main thoroughfares join – Sheffield Road, which takes you inland towards Sav through the town’s residential district, Norman Manley Boulevard which follows the coast right along the seven miles of beach and beyond, and West End Road, which winds for a few miles out along the cliffs where sunset-watchers congregate. It is also a good place to watch the collision of cultures between Jamaica and the West – here, outside the Burger King, Scotia Bank and some neat little shops, is where many of the local hustlers ply their trade. As soon as we got out the car, there was a steady approach of would-be taxi drivers and tour guides, Rastas selling sensi and kids begging us to buy them a Burger King. The presence of plenty of whiteys isn’t all about the money grab, though – later in the day, we saw one middle-aged white guy in a white shirt and a hat sat outside the corner shop chatting with a bunch of Jamaican guys sipping rum. When we passed again several hours later on our way out for the night, he was till sat there, visibly in a state of refreshment, having a whale of a time.

Stocked up on snacks and booze, we made our way round the corner and over the Negril River bridge with it’s pretty collection of fishing boats and finally hit the beach. It really is a sight to behold – we were stood at the southern end of Long Bay, one of two bays in and around Negril, and in front of us was a stunning sweep of white sand stretching far into the distance, lapped gently by the calm green waters, with the shallow cliffs rising behind us. In the corner of the beach where we entered there’s a bar and copse of twisted, wind-gnarled trees practically falling into the sea, while the entire length of beach rolled out in front of us was lined with bars and palm trees. It does a pretty good job of living up to its reputation as a paradise on earth.

Andy getting down with the fishes

One thing that did surprise me was how quiet it was – even though it was a month before high season kicks in, I still expected Negril to be fairly lively, but the beach was practically deserted. We were near companionless except for the steady stream of vendors roaming the sands, all looking a little lost with no one to sell their wares to on a Saturday afternoon, but that didn’t bother us – we had sun, sand and beautiful warm, shallow sea, who needs other people? After a couple of hours sunbathing, swimming and lunching on the best patties I’ve tasted here so far, sold by an old guy on a bike who claimed to have made them himself, we got talking to a guy who’d just landed his glass-bottomed boat on the beach next to us, who offered to take us snorkeling to the reef which protects the bay. Normally I don’t bother with things like that on the grounds that they are usually bloody expensive, but by this time I’d had a couple of brandies and the guy offered to take us for a very reasonable 15 quid each, and everyone else was up for it.

The last time I went snorkeling was probably when I was about 12, and that was just paddling round the rocky bits of a beach in Menorca. I’d never been snorkeling off a boat before and was inexplicably excited about the fact that I’d get to wear flippers, although once in the water I found out they were and absolute pain in the backside coz the reasonably strong current kept pulling on them and made my ankles ache after a while. We were maybe a kilometer off the shore but the sea was still shallow enough to see the bottom easily – I could dive to touch the sea floor no problem and in places the coral was so high it was awkward to swim over it without it scraping your belly. I love the sea anyway, and there is something incredibly relaxing about floating around in the water, looking down at the fishes and sponges and sea fans while the tide buffets you around, the outside world cut off by the roar of the ocean in your ears. There was plenty to see – huge shoals of bright yellow fish sheltering under craggy coral outcrops, tiny electric blue fish which flashed in the sunlight as they swam, small rays hugging the seabed and strange eel-like creatures with long protruding noses which hung upside down in the water. Joanne also saw jellyfish and a star fish.

Sunset at Rick's Cafe

Once back on dry land, we gave Paperfoot a call and he came to pick us up to drive us up to Rick’s Café in the West End to meet Janet, Charma and Maz. Rick’s Café is a Negril institution, a bar sat up on a prime bit of clifftop offering panoramic views of the sun setting over the sea as well as some pretty hair-raising cliff diving courtesy some fearless local youth. It is also a total tourist trap – the bar and restaurant are as plush as anything you’d find at home and completely un-Jamaican, there’s a swimming pool and at $4.80 US a beer, I didn’t have any qualms about walking 50 yards down the road to the nearest supermarket and filling my bag with bottles at a third of the price. The place was teeming with Americans (as Negril apparently always is), and we even saw a wedding party there.

Me about to plummet

The cliff jumping at Rick’s Café is both a spectator sport and participatory, with guests invited to test their mettle against a 35-foot plunge into the small U-shaped inlet below. I naturally assumed we would all be up for giving it a go, and had no qualms about being the first to strip off and climb onto the purpose-built platform. It was only once I was up there that I started to wonder whether this was such a good idea – not just because 35ft suddenly seems a long way when you are looking at it straight down as a vertical drop, but also because of the slightly disconcerting disclaimer printed next to the platform informing me that what I was about to do could result in spinal injury, broken bones, ligament and tendon damage and a range of other medical conditions I didn’t really fancy. Oh well, in for a penny and all that… in these circumstances, all you can really do is make like Van Halen and jump, so away I went. A split-second of gut-wrenching acceleration and adrenalin later, I hit the water, suffering no worse than a minor slap to the soles of my feet. I climbed the steps back up to where the rest of them were sat, beaming and enthusing about what a thrill it was, expecting someone else to get up immediately and follow excuse. But all I got in reply was a chorus of muttered excuses and glances away – some people have no sense of adventure. 

Muscle Brain

Rick’s Café had been busy enough to give us some hope that there’d be some life in the town after dark, but as we headed back to the beach end of town, we realized that wasn’t going to happen. Paperfoot drove us a couple of miles down the beach to a big resort bar called Margaritaville, which was deserted. We had been hoping there might be parties and fires to be had on the beach, especially as it was Bonfire Night, but again it was not to be – all we found was a private wedding party being held at a bar a little way down the beach, which at least gave us some music to listen to as we chilled on the sand. Again, though, it didn’t matter that it was quiet – it was magically beautiful, with a sky lit up with a three-quarter moon full of bright stars reflected on the calm inky sea below. It was, we all admitted, a place for lovers to walk and talk enjoy the romance of nature, which wasn’t much good seeing as we were all either single or had left our other halves back home.

Cliff jumpers

We didn’t get much choice about where we were going next – Paperfoot had told us practically the moment he met up with us earlier that morning that he was taking us clubbing that night, and there is only one club in Negril. I already had a fair picture of what The Jungle would be like, and I wasn’t disappointed – before we reached the tackily decorated ‘jungle’ theme plastic exterior, we were greeted by large security gates and, to my dismay, security on the door. I’ve fallen into the habit while I’ve been here of carrying a flask of rum in my pocket whenever I go out, partly because it’s what everybody else does and partly because it is cheap. But as I watched them conduct body searches on everyone going in, I faced the horrible prospect of both losing my beloved overproof and having to pay what I knew would be criminally inflated bar prices inside. In the end, a last minute random change of tactics saved me – I decided to switch the flask from my side to my back pocket, not really expecting it to make much difference, but for some reason the door woman patted down my pants all the way down the sides without ever once getting close to reaching round and trying my back pockets. I was home and dry, and had managed to smuggle booze into two of Negril’s most famous tourist spots in a matter of hours.

Showing The Jungle how we do it

Inside was much as you’d expect – four rooms, a tame R&B soundtrack, and a décor which meant you could have been in any big commercial club anywhere in the world. I’d have much rather have been in one of the small outdoor ‘lawns’ which serve as typical Jamaican clubs – from the ones I’ve been in, there’s a much better atmosphere, the dancing is hilarious and I’ve developed a bit of a soft spot for dancehall anyway. It wasn’t even busy, which made the large rooms seem lifeless, but it was what it was and we made the best of it. On finding a small downstairs room belting out disco and 80s classics, me, Amy and Joanne did a thorough job of making total tits of ourselves on the dancefloor, much to the amusement of the bar staff. And then another of Negril’s hustling institutions made their move on us – hookers. I think in all three of them approached all four lads one by one, pretending to be girls out on the town looking for a good time for about 30 seconds until money was mentioned. My favourite was the first to approach me. I was sat down and she just walked up to me, smiled and sat down in my lap, gyrating suggestively. After about 10 seconds of this impromptu lap dance, she turned to me and asked ‘Would you like to give me some money for my sexy dance?’ Now, I’m no expert, but when it comes to selling a service to someone, I wouldn’t have thought it’s a very good idea to demonstrate said service and then give the prospective buyer the option of coughing up or not. I looked at her blankly, said ‘No’ and watched her pout all the way to trying it on with the next mark.

Paperfoot the crab catcher

Sunday was like a reprise of Friday, except this time we mercifully didn’t have to trek two-thirds the length of the island on a rickety old bus. Paperfoot was pissed off with us because he’d wanted to pick us up at 10am to go see Janet and the girls on the beach, but it was well past 11 by the time we’d dragged our carcasses out of bed and were ready. He got his own back by driving us all the way to Bloody Bay, at the far end of Norman Manley Boulevard from the town where all the all-inclusive resorts are, and simply dumping us on a stretch of beach there, muttering that Janet was ‘up the way so’ somewhere before driving off in a huff.

There are, of course, worse places to be dumped – Bloody Bay was until about 2000 pretty much untouched, but despite all the large-scale resorts which now dominate it, it is still incredibly beautiful, absolutely teeming with palm trees just a few meters back from the water’s edge, and even shallower than Long Bay. On this occasion, the public beach law felt like something of a blessing and a curse – yes, we could walk all the way along this lovely stretch of sand, but it also meant we had to witness dozens of rich white holidaymakers living out a sanitized fantasy of Jamaica which we knew was laughable, and had paid a fortune for the privilege. Every 20 yards or so there was a stall selling the usual Bob Marley t-shirts, crap wooden nic-nacs and ‘Jamaica – No Problem’ towels, while guys with guitars strolled up and down serenading tourists with Marley songs for a few dollars. As lovely as it was, it was shit at the same time. Worse, we walked all along the beach back towards Long Bay and found the public beach laws didn’t apply to the small headland separating the two beaches, it was owned by one of the resorts and no, we couldn’t pass through, we’d have to walk all the way back to where Paperfoot dropped us off.

Dog the crab catcher

Having finally grabbed an over-priced taxi back to the corner of Long Bay we’d been on before, the rest of the afternoon was spent chilling on the beach there. A large soundsystem at one of the bars gave the place a bit more atmosphere than the day before, as did the bigger numbers of people there, mainly Jamaicans. There was also a bit of surf up, which made playing in the sea even more fun, although I’m not quite sure why I enjoy being knocked off my feet and having salt water forced up my nose so much.

The soundsystem was scheduled to play on until midnight and we’d been told there’d be a decent party after dark, so we decided to return to the beach later on, minus Amy, who had caught far too much sun and wasn’t feeling the best. Given how many people we’d seen around over the past couple of days, it was questionable just how banging this party was likely to be, and sure enough, we arrived about 8.30pm to find just a few handfuls of local youths stood around while a few lone Rastas bopped around to the Marley and Peter Tosh being blasted out over the now-calm sea. Again, though, the quality of the party hardly mattered – how many times in my life am I likely to be sat on a stunning beach in early November in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, watching the stars and listening to reggae?

It felt a bit weird leaving on Monday morning, like we’d just bailed on a holiday a couple of days in before we’d even got into the full swing of it. Negril has a charm which makes it very easy for me to understand why huge numbers of people visit year after year, and you don’t need to go bang in the middle of holiday season when it’s all beach and bikini parties to see it. For the drive home, Dan had got talking to a taxi driver who’s said he would take us all the way back to Old Harbour for about 13 quid each, the catch being that two of us had to sit in the boot. As we pulled away, he told us he was going to have to teach us to lie – ‘The police don’t like us having more than four people in the car, so if we get pulled over, tell them you were robbed in Negril and I am helping you get back to Old Harbour.’ First thing we came across on the road out of Negril was a massive police checkpoint, with officers lined up on both sides of the road pulling vehicles over for spot checks. The coppers had a good look at us as we passed, but no one motioned for us to stop, and even though the driver kept checking his mirrors for a couple of miles after, no one followed either.

The return journey also gave me the chance to enjoy some of the Westmoreland scenery I’d not been in the mood to take in properly three days earlier. As we headed away from Sav on a stretch of coastal highway which hugs the shoreline, Ini Kamoze’s stomping ‘Jail House’ came on the radio, and I had one of those moments where you know even as you’re experiencing the moment that it will be a memory you carry with you for the rest of your life – the beautifully calm sea stretching out to the horizon, the burning sun riding high above, the small, brightly coloured fishing huts hugging tiny strips of sand, the overgrown hills tumbling down to the shoreline. Right then I didn’t have a care in the world.