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port antonio Where you’ll find the best of Jamaica
by roger toll
T photos by roy zipstein
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The Blue Mountains climb 7,400 feet into the sky on the eastern tip of Jamaica. Warm, moisture-laden trade winds blowing in from Africa flow up their flanks, forming thick clouds on the peaks by 9 each morning. The abundant rains create an exuberant blanket of dense tropical flora. Where the high ridges run into the sea lies the town of Port Antonio, nestled in the most spectacular setting on the island. If the bridges are still standing and the potholes are no worse than usual, it’s a two-hour drive from Kingston’s airport. Yet seldom has a drive been so worth the time and effort. Out of the tourist mainstream, Port Antonio offers up the best of Jamaica: spicy, friendly, breathtakingly beautiful and hard to find in such an alluring package anywhere else on the island.
hungry , mon ? Try a Red Stripe and the jerk chicken at the Blue Lagoon Restaurant, or (opposite page) fish for your own dinner in the Blue Lagoon itself.
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ong before montego bay, ocho rios and Negril became Jamaica’s tourist magnets, Port Antonio was already welcoming the island’s first vacationers. Lorenzo Dow Baker, a Boston fruit importer who ran banana boats to Jamaica at the end of the 19th century, pondered what product he could send in return that would fill his empty ships after offloading bananas in Boston harbor. The most lucrative export, it turned out, was chilly Northeasterners, and Jamaican tourism was launched. As Port Antonio was the principal banana port of the island (it still is), boatloads of Bostonians suddenly found themselves in this tropical paradise. Baker, clearly an enterprising person, promptly put up the first hotels, as well. As the years went by, more and more people came to Port Antonio, drawn by its lush beauty, beguiling music, exotic rum punches and laid-back lifestyle. This flow reached its apogee in the 1940s and ’50s when Errol Flynn made it famous, bought Navy Island just north of the peninsula that divides the town’s twin bays, and started bringing friends like Bette Davis, Ginger Rogers and William Randolph Hearst
to his lavish estate. The area’s reputation further enhanced when writers and bons vivants Noel Coward and Ian Fleming took up residence just to the west of Port Antonio and attracted even more of the era’s trendsetters. With a steady stream of European royalty parading through the island’s finest inns, Jamaica became the benchmark of Caribbean high life during those golden decades. High above Port Antonio stands the Bonnie View Hotel, today a frayed memory of its more glorious past. From the veranda, one has a magnificent view of the town, including Flynn’s island, the twin harbors and Fort George, the old English fort at the tip of the peninsula that kept marauding pirates at bay. The frontier between tropical forest and emerald sea hints of hidden beaches along gemlike bays, sheltered by hills green and lush with such exotic plants and trees as poorman’s orchid, flame of the forest, star apple, ackee and guango. Erupting stands of bamboo, like exclamation points, punctuate the plunging hillsides. One of those bays, Frenchman’s Cove, lies just a few miles from town. A crystalline stream meanders through a narrow,
island pleasures Clockwise from top: roadside crafts, Reich Falls, the Rio Grande and Dickie’s Sweet Banana Stand.
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don’t expect shopping malls, languid rounds of golf or any other trappings of mass tourism. port antonio is, exquisitely, well off the beaten path.
only jamaica offers that special brand of human warmth and delight that locals call “irie.”
caribbean close - ups Clockwise from top left: colorful accommodations in Port Antonio, village children in the Rio Grande valley, outdoor dining at the Blue Lagoon Restaurant and the morning’s catch. Opposite page: the happy goatherd.
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grass-carpeted, palm-dotted dale and empties into an archetypal vision of a tropical cove, human-sized, embraced by two rocky points of land covered with effusive jungle. Other than a fleshy European couple working on the beginnings of a tan, the beach is empty when I arrive. I swim out into the swells that are funneling through the cove’s narrow opening, then return to shore and grab a beach chair. I read awhile between bouts of staring at the sea. I order a steamed fish and spicy ginger beer from two Jamaicans manning a barbecue sculpted from an oil drum cut lengthwise down the middle. As I eat a
just desserts Sister Ivy offers an island treat.
superb lunch, I cannot imagine feeling any more contented. Jamaica is full of such moments. Just around the corner from Frenchman’s Cove is Port Antonio’s most famous landmark, the spring-fed Blue Lagoon, a refreshing place to swim. The Blue Lagoon Restaurant, part of the set for Robin Williams’ 1986 film Club Paradise, hangs out over the cobalt blue waters of the lagoon. Low-slung hammocks, a steady flow of reggae, tasty finger food served on plantain leaves and ubiquitous bottles of Red Stripe beer make this place a great place to while away a lazy afternoon. A few yards down the road are the Blue
Lagoon Villas, popular vacation homes—or work homes, since Port Antonio’s environs are popular settings for movies—for such recent guests as Harrison Ford, Whoopi Goldberg, Denzel Washington and Brooke Shields. Further along the eastern coast, you come to Reich (pronounced “reach”) Falls, a popular swimming hole in the foothills of the Blue Mountains. A trail leads down a tree-vaulted chasm to a pool of cool, translucent water fed by a streaming cascade. A man who doubles as a guide on quiet days points out places where I can duck under the powerful torrent to find hidden caverns behind the sheet of falling water. Like a child at play, I climb through a narrow hole
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t the center of Jamaica’s 500-dollar bill, worth about US$10, is the image of an African woman with the simple name “Nanny” printed below it. A slave in the early 18th century who escaped to the mountains, Nanny is a Jamaican hero who led an army of runaways called Maroons, from the Spanish word meaning “wild,” and for years fought the British for their freedom. The center of her mountain redoubt was Moore Town, high in the mountains above Port Antonio. Ivelyn Harris, a direct descendant of Nanny, is an accomplished herbal healer who lives in Cornwall Barracks, just above Moore Town. Curious to talk to her about her famous forebear, I set out early one morning on a drive up the verdant Rio Grande valley. Though it is a mere 12 miles to her home, it takes more than an hour to get there. A few inquiries, then a hike up a muddy road, and I am in the garden of “Sister Ivy,” as she is known in these hills. Mist swirls around us, rain hammers on the tin roof and the delicious smells of a chicken curry fill her screened hut as she launches into a rambling story of her ancestors, full of the power and marvel of oral tradition. “My people came from Ghana, where Prince Na’quan was the ruler,” Harris recounts. “One day, Spaniards arrived with copper, a marvelous metal that they mixed with gold and sculpted into jewelry. They told my people it grew on trees where they lived. Prince Na’quan was so excited about this new metal that he paid passage for himself and 165 of his people. But it was a terrible journey to Jamaica, and 60 of them
died. When they arrived and realized they had been enslaved, they ran into the mountains. “Na’quan died around 1720, and his son Cudjoe and daughter Nanny took over,” she continues. By then the British had taken Jamaica from the Spanish and attempted to re-enslave the Maroons. But Cudjoe and Nanny moved their people, now about 5,000, to the most inaccessible places in the mountains and devised new strategies to fight the well-armed soldiers. “When the British marched into the mountains, the Maroons would wrap themselves in cocoon vines that grow in the forest,” Harris says. “The British took them for trees and would pass right by. The Maroons would then jump out and kill them from behind with their spears.” The Maroon Wars intensified between 1728 and 1732. Finally, the British signed a treaty with Cudjoe that gave the Maroons self-rule. But Nanny did not agree with the terms, left her brother and became queen of the Windward Maroons. “Nanny had great powers of witchcraft, including the ability to fly through the air,” Harris says. “These powers allowed her to prevail over the British. She would project her spirit form and lead the British astray.” Queen Nanny negotiated a treaty in 1741 that gave her people selfrule and land, Harris says. Nevertheless, Nanny continued fighting for an end to slavery by raiding plantations and enlisting more slaves in her cause. Slavery was abolished in Jamaica in 1834. “Nanny is my eighth grandmother,” Harris says. “She was an expert in obeah, the science of traditional
behind the falls to a ledge 15 feet above the pool and jump off the rocks into the crystal water below. I discover a natural Jacuzzi, where I happily wallow as the sun’s bright rays stream through the forest canopy above. Don’t expect shopping malls, languid rounds of golf or any other trappings of mass tourism. Port Antonio is, exquisitely, well off the beaten path. This is a place to dive into nature: birding in the Blue Mountains, exploring stalactites in deep caverns, scuba diving over coral reefs, relaxing on splendid beaches in intimate coves or floating down the Rio Grande on bamboo rafts like those that once carried bananas from inland plantations. The nearby town of Boston Bay is the birthplace of Jamaica’s popular jerk chicken and pork, and sampling the spicily marinated, slow-barbecued meat at lunchmedicine and herbs that heal. Some time makes a delightful outing. People people think of it as sorcery, but it is not. are friendly in Port Antonio, less inured Since early times, our people have relied to foreigners than in the busy tourist on bush medicine. It is very powerful.” From a burlap bag, Harris pours onto towns at the other end of the island, and the table a pile of roots she collected they are more than willing to engage you yesterday. She pushes them about, in conversations that are certain to be explaining what each root cures. “My charming. After all, Port Antonians are mum taught me,” she says. “When I was growing up, people never went to the known throughout Jamaica as the warmstore for medicine, but used what was est people on the island. And happily, in growing around them. Now most of our uncertain times, crime is low—the that knowledge is lost.” lowest in any part of Jamaica. But Harris keeps that knowledge, and A few miles west of town on the main the history of her brave people, alive. coast road sits a shack you’d drive right Ivelyn “Sister Ivy” Harris will prepare past without a second glance. With two lunch for day-trippers or dinner for simple gables, some bright yellow paint overnight guests. Let her know your plans ahead of time by mail—Moore and a few banana bunches hanging from Town P.O., Cornwall Barracks, Portland, the eaves outdoors, it looks like any of Jamaica—or leave a message at 876Jamaica’s hundreds of fruit stands. But 801-9606. Her British husband, Simon, walk inside and you enter the magic leads birding expeditions and eco-treks into the high mountains above their kingdom of gray-bearded, twinkle-eyed home.—R.T. Alvin Butler, better known as “Dickie.” Full of its owner’s charm, the wooden shack is constructed as a sort of cascade down the precipitous cliff toward the ocean. Narrow, free-form stairs lead to small rooms, where one or two tables are incongruously set with fine linen, silverware and china. Dickie cooked and bartended at some of Jamaica’s finest hotels for many years, then bought this property two decades ago. He has been adding onto it like a sculptor ever since. Out of the ridiculously small kitchen and antiquated stove emerge multicourse meals, each more surprising and satisfying than Sky February 2003
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the last. It is hard to tell if it is the food, the absorbing view of the sea and Port Antonio, the organic architectural style, or the infectious spirit of the owner and chef that make this place so special. In fact, it is all of the above. Dickie’s Sweet Banana Stand may be Jamaica’s most felicitous surprise, and a is restaurant not to miss. Dickie serves me a delicious dinner a few nights before I’m to leave Jamaica, and on my way back to the airport in Kingston, I stop for breakfast. He is awaiting my arrival with a beautiful fruit plate, and while I eat, we get to talking about Jamaica. Most any island in the tropics can serve up a wondrous beach and crystal-clear sea, he tells me, but only Jamaica offers that special brand of human warmth and delight that locals call “irie” (pronounced “EYE–ree”). I ask Dickie just
what the word means. “It means ‘nice’, like everything is nice, cool, sweet,” he says. “It can mean good morning, or how you doing, or I’m feeling great. I’m feeling irie, mon, or it’s an irie day.” Two middle-aged ladies walk toward us along the side of the road, and Dickie greets them in the warm, flirting way typical between Jamaicans. After some banter, he says, “Our friend here wants to know what ‘irie’ means. What can you tell him?” “Oh, it’s just the way we feel about everything around us,” one of them says. “It’s the spirit of the day, the pleasure of being together,” the other offers. “It’s easygoing, relaxed, laid back. It’s . . . just feeling nice.” a Easygoing Roger Toll, a frequent contributor to Sky, cooks his
port antonio offers up the best of jamaica: spicy, friendly, breathtakingly beautiful and hard to find in such an alluring package anywhere else on the island.
For an Irie Good Time Accommodations
BLUE LAGOON VILLAS Port Antonio; 800-433-3020 or 876-993-8491; www. bluelagoonvillas.com. Celebrity-style accommodations at celebrity prices. Rates: US$5,000–US$12,000 per week.
goblinhill@n5.com.jm. Spacious one- or two-bedroom villas include a cook/housecleaner and kitchen in the price. Comfortable public spaces, a lovely pool area and a fun bar offer gorgeous views over San San Beach. Rates: US$110–US$245 per night.
Fern Hill Club Hotel and villa resort San San, Port Antonio; 876-993-7531 or 876-993-7375; www. fernhillclubhotel.com, e-mail: info@ fernhillclubhotel.com. For the budgetminded or long-term visitor, Fern Hill offers clean, spacious rooms and villas at excellent prices. A lovely dining area commands beautiful views of the sea and surrounding emerald hills. Rates: US$77–US$242 per night.
hotel Mocking Bird Hill Port Antonio; 876-993-7267; www .hotelmockingbirdhill.com, e-mail: birdees@mail.infochan.com. A comfortable, friendly inn set in what was once a private home, this hotel sits on a hillside a few miles from town. The owners will arrange local birding and hiking trips, along with explorations into the Blue Mountains. Rates: US$180–US$230 per night.
Goblin Hill Villas San San, Port Antonio; 800-472-1148 or 876-9258108; www.goblinhill.com, e-mail:
Trident villas and Hotel Port Antonio; 800-526-2422 or 876-993-2602; www.tridentjamaica.com. This vener-
able property, which stretches along the shore, sets the standard for refined elegance and old Jamaican colonial style: The staff even wears white gloves at dinner. Loyal customers return year after year. Rates: from US$180 per night.
Restaurants and Bars
BLUE LAGOON RESTAURANT Fairy Hill, east of San San Beach; 876-993-8491. Dickie’s Sweet Banana Stand A mile and a half west of Port Antonio’s town center on the A4; 876-809-6276. The Roof club 11 West Street, Port Antonio; 876-993-3817. Port Antonio does have nightlife. After 11 p.m., The Roof Club is a happening place, crowded with friendly people dancing to the hypnotic reggae beat. It has a fun, easygoing atmosphere where
lodging and lunch A bayside hut. Opposite page (left to right): the pool at Trident Villas and Hotel, one of Dickie’s specialties and the Hotel Mocking Bird Hill.
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