Caribbean > Jamaica > Kingston > Kingston > Tropical Paradise > Articles > Island Outposts, Jamaica

In our days of mass, package tourism, it is sometimes hard to maintain the romance of Caribbean travel. Jumbos fly like migrating birds to the winter warmth, and holidaymakers are bussed to huge, humming shore-side hotels. Even if you manage to find a perfect room on the beach, there’s still that slightly tacky feeling that it will be turning out the exact same pleasure for someone else next week.

Time was that the Caribbean islands were exotic beyond measure; frontier lands to be explored and developed, lands where dreams could be forged. It was a dangerous, often desperate time, but huge wealth was created and magnificent plantation houses were built. To see these now, even in decayed grandeur, is a heart-rendingly romantic sight.

Even 50 years ago the north coast of Jamaica was the stuff of dreams. Churchill, Anthony Eden and Ian Fleming came here, Errol Flynn washed up in Port Antonio and invited Hollywood. Noel Coward built himself a house with, true to form, the most exquisite view in the Caribbean.

Which is why, in a world where so many hotels are built like factories, it is something wonderful to see people still creating dreams. The Island Outposts are some of the most exquisite places to stay in the whole Caribbean. They are not simply luxury - really that’s an easier thing to do - they have a feel to them, a Jamaican ‘vibe’.

The days of the plantation are gone, but Strawberry Hill still uses the best of traditional Caribbean architectural techniques. Its cottages are built of wood, clinker-laid, their timber frames and tray ceilings visible from the inside, and each one has a huge veranda that takes in the views of the Blue Mountains and of Kingston, the Jamaican capital, nearly 3000 feet below.

Above all they are beautiful, in a way that concrete isn’t. (Not yet at least, though perhaps even concrete will grow a rust of romantic authenticity for 22nd century travellers, who will all no doubt live in self-regulating ‘smart’ houses of gleaming chrome.)

The very name Strawberry Hill resonates 18th century romance. It is not that they grow strawberries here (though, amazingly, at this fertile altitude they can) as the fact that it was named after Strawberry Hill in London, the estate of the Walpoles, by whom the Jamaican estate was also owned.

The atmosphere of Strawberry Hill is one of gracious hospitality - again somehow it speaks of a bygone age. It is partly because of unobtrusive management, but mostly because of the staff, many of who come from the surrounding villages of Irish Town and Redlight. Jamaica doesn’t have the best image (and it’s true that the hard edge of hustling in Jamaica is pretty unpleasant), but in the Blue Mountains and other untouristed parts of the island, the people are friendly, welcoming and resolutely charming.

There’s no need to have air-conditioning in the Blue Mountains above Kingston, but nor is there any need of it on the beach if you use techniques for living in the tropics that have been developed over a couple of hundred years. These are high ceilings, big windows and doors, with louvres, mosquito netting on four-poster beds. It’s all about letting through a flow of air, which is then whipped up by a ceiling fan to cool you naturally.

And besides, verandas and huge windows make most the most of the view, which is an advantage when it is as broad as it is from The Caves, Island Outpost’s property in Negril, at Jamaica’s far western tip. In the calm of the early morning you can see, from your bed in some cases, fishermen rowing silently and pulling their lobster pots, even occasionally pods of dolphins jumping.

The Caves is an oasis of calm in Negril, one of Jamaica’s main resort towns. Once you pass through the gates, the (relative) bustle of the town, and hustle admittedly, evaporate. You are enclosed with a maximum of twelve or fifteen guests. Where Strawberry Hill feels part of the community, here there’s no reason step outside unless you want to remind yourself what a beach is like - and the five miles of Negril Beach is probably the finest and certainly the longest strand in Jamaica.

The Caves makes the best use of its position on ‘the cliffs’ (Negril’s second, less known, half) and it takes its name from caves which cut into the 40 feet of coral limestone. In the water fish-fry swim as thick as plankton. Dive into them and they swirl around you like wisps of smoke. Come evening, The Caves is perfectly positioned for Negril’s traditional pastime, watching the sunset. If you’re really lucky, on a perfectly clear and cloudless day, you might see the Green Flash. Just as the last of the sun disappears, a flash of green light lights the horizon.

Jakes, the smallest and least expensive of the Island Outposts, is in the tiny, dozy town of Treasure Beach on the south coast of Jamaica, a fishing village which has been almost entirely bypassed by tourism. Unlike the Caves, Jakes has no sense of a perimeter at the gate. The town of Treasure Beach extends into the hotel, and town characters frequently do, gravitating around the bar, which also looks towards the sunset from Adirondack chairs.

Jakes has just ten rooms scattered around a dry garden on a rocky seafront. Like The Caves, Jakes has taken a completely different approach to Caribbean style, using bright tropical colours and taking them to a pleasing jangle of juxtaposition. Against the yellows and greens of the dry foliage, adobe walls are dressed in blues, purples, yellows and fading reds, with wooden gingerbread trimmings. Delightful.

The last of the Island Outposts in Jamaica (there are two more in the Bahamas--Compass Point on New Providence and Pink Sands in North Eleuthera--and six art deco hotels in South Beach Miami) is Goldeneye, which is on the north coast, in the small town of Oracabessa.

The original villa at Goldeneye was owned by Ian Fleming and was the place where he wrote many of the Bond novels, during his constitutional winter visit to Jamaica. You can sit at his original bulletwood desk. There are a number of other villas scattered through the profuse tropical gardens with access to tiny bays cut into the cliffs below. Again they make the best of Caribbean style and graciousness: open-air living with attentive, personal service.

Like Strawberry Hill, Goldeneye is owned personally by Chris Blackwell, Jamaican musical entrepreneur (founder of Island Records, which brought Bob Marley and others to worldwide fame). And it is largely because of him that these hotels are as they are. He obviously loves Jamaica and likes to see others enjoy the best of it too.

He’s not averse to picking good features from elsewhere, though, and the magnificent bathrooms at Goldeneye have more than a touch of the Far East about them. They are outside, closeted within a wall of bamboo and overgrown with greenery. So, you bath under a banana or shower within the buttress roots of a banyan. In a world of white-tiled bathrooms, there not much more romantic than that.

Articles

• More from James Henderson
• More on the same theme