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The other side of Jamaica

Discovering Port Antonio, on a more beautiful, less touristy, a la carte slice of the island

BY JOHN BIEMER | CHICAGO TRIBUNE

October 23, 2005

Within a mile of Montego Bay's International Airport, we've already passed a goat grazing on a soccer field and fishermen hawking freshly caught lobsters and stringers of fish by the side of the road. On the four-hour drive to Port Antonio, a sleepy resort town on the eastern end of Jamaica, you can tell in an instant this is a world away.

Along a twisting, narrow, inconsistently signed road scattershot with potholes, we'll pass ramshackle fishing villages by sparkling blue Caribbean waters, chaotic towns with pedestrians and bikers darting into traffic, banana groves, cricket fields, lushly forested hills, schoolchildren in tidy uniforms, dreadlocked rascals carrying machetes, aging Anglican churches and roadside merchants selling fruits we'd never heard of.

We'll contend with Jamaican drivers riding the bumper of our rental car, honking and making sport of passing with inches to spare. We'll constantly remind ourselves to stay left, left, LEFT!, as we navigate our way across the northern coastline of this former British colony.

This ain't driving through cornfields. And the journey is representative of our vacation to Port Antonio overall - rewarding, stimulating, sometimes challenging and never dull.

Many Americans who visit Jamaica opt for "all-inclusives," lavish gated resorts - typically in Montego Bay, Negril or Ocho Rios - that shuttle tourists directly from the airport to their beach estates. During their stay, they rarely stray from the premises, with their buffets, open bars and a full slate of activities, while being insulated from significant interaction with most of the natives.

Port Antonio, on the other hand, is Jamaica a la carte. The choices, and thus the experience, are largely up to you.

Renting a car and driving yourself is the most feasible option to get there (according to our hotel, a taxi to the Mo' Bay airport runs $200, to closer Kingston $120; there are no buses or trains geared for tourists). But your effort is rewarded with a more beautiful and less touristy slice of the island, a region Christopher Columbus once declared "the fairest land mine eyes have ever seen." Once a major banana port, Port Antonio is situated north of the Blue Mountains, where the foothills spill scenically into picture-perfect beaches. The region is one of the rainiest in Jamaica, one of the greenest and most vibrant. It's alive with colorful birds and sprinkled with lovely waterfalls and rivers.

Using the tagline "The Other Side of Jamaica," the country recently embarked on a campaign to revitalize Port Antonio, whose heyday as a chic resort town was in the 1950s and early 1960s. Errol Flynn, who once owned an island just offshore, remains something of a local legend - and the area received a bounce in the late 1980s when Tom Cruise's "Cocktail" flick was partly set there.

Today, most Port Antonio tourists are Europeans, traveling either more frugally or more independently than the Americans drawn to the all-inclusives. There are modest - and sometimes a little run-down - hotels and more upscale villas, like Goblin Hill, where we stayed.

For about $130 a night, my wife and I got a one-bedroom villa with a small kitchen and a deck overlooking a breathtakingly gorgeous cove where a solitary yacht rolled in the gentle waves. The neatly manicured 11-acre Goblin Hill spread had mango, avocado and coconut palm trees, tennis courts, a swimming pool and an idyllic hammock. Verona, the housekeeper assigned to us, placed fresh hibiscus flowers on our mosquito-netted bed each day, and was willing to shop for and cook dinner for us each night.

The amazing outdoor bar, wrapped around a gigantic 200-year-old ficus tree, was closed during our three-night stay (we were told the bartender was out of town).

Compared to other Jamaican resort towns, Port Antonio doesn't offer wild nightlife, and the dining and shopping options are limited. But it makes for a convenient jumping-off point to explore some of the island's unique natural beauty, such as Somerset Falls, which we pulled into on our way into town.

A sign alerted us that the park was closed for renovations, but the falls were still falling, so we were allowed to enter at our own risk - saving the $5-a-person fee. The grounds and the short path to the waterfall were in a state of shabby disrepair. Still, the falls were lovely, flowing through thick rain-forest foliage - ferns, bamboo stands and philodendron. Cool, aqua-colored pools at the base were perfect for wading.

On the other side of town, we parked at one of Jamaica's more beautiful and famous landmarks - the Blue Lagoon. Yes, that very same Blue Lagoon where a teenage Brooke Shields was filmed swimming au naturel for the otherwise forgettable 1980 shipwreck film.

The color of this placid spring-fed cove is said to change with the sunlight and the time of day - turquoise, azure, sapphire. It was a beautiful jade on the slightly hazy day we visited. Through the cool, glass-clear water, we watched little blue and yellow fish with black stripes investigating our toes. As we went deeper, the drop-off was abrupt - the lagoon plunges 185 feet.

"You like the water, mon?" asked one of the persistent, overbearing knickknack salesmen who has followed us to the water's edge and waits out our swim. "It makes you feel 20 years younger."

Jerk and Ting

For lunch, we stopped at Woody's Low Bridge Place, a green-and-orange-painted jerk burger stand on the side of the road. Jerk, of course, is Jamaica's ubiquitous spicy meat barbecue. We sat on bar stools and ordered Ting, a grapefruit soda.

It's the kind of place that just feels right in wet, salty bathing suits, and reading the inspirational sayings painted all over the colorful walls - "smile, it increases your face value," "killing time is not murder, it is outright suicide" - keeps us busy as we wait for our burgers, served on a wicker plate.

After lunch, we slowed down for some sunbathing at Frenchman's Cove, a horseshoe-shaped private beach for which Goblin Hill provides passes. We rented lounge chairs and snuggled our toes into the warm, tan sand. Waiters in black pants and white, short-sleeve shirts offered cool drinks. A snorkeling fisherman with a speargun emerged from the choppy surf with a stringer of parrot fish and a large conch, which was taken back to a beachside jerk kitchen.