From its origins as a sleepy, nearly inaccessible fishing village, through its psychedelic hippie heydaze and evolution into a complete vacation destination, Negril has grown up without losing its laid-back sense of fun.
There have always been two distinct Negrils: the cow side and the goat side. Or at least that's how it used to be separated back when cattle roamed beside the beach and goats held the high ground. At other times it has been boozers on the beach and spliffs on the cliffs, established luxury on silky strands and hippie huts in the jungle and, most recently, the sprawling all-inclusive beach resorts on one side and eclectic boutique hotels on the other. Often the twain never met. But with such a diversity of attractions combined with some of Jamaica's best food and music and friendliest people, Negril has always had the potential to be a great party town plus. To find out what's left of old, funky Negril and what's going on in the plush resorts and whether any cross-pollination is going on I steer for Jamaica's wild west coast.
BACK IN THE STONED AGE
The small town of Negril sits centered between 7 miles of soft, sandy beach and roughly the same length of dramatic, saw-toothed cliffs. When American hippies ''discovered'' Negril, most of them gravitated to the rocky West End, hoofing it up the goat path in worn hurachis. I take a rental car.
Beyond the roundabout that serves as Negril's elbow, the road climbs in a serpentine track past a singular assortment of small hotels that offer some of the best sunset views in the Caribbean. Castles, beehives, birdhouses architects have found the cliffs inspiring. Or perhaps the far-out designs are more the result of nearby Orange Hill's most prolific product: The hills here are as renowned for their wacky-weed crop as the Blue Hills are for their coffee beans.
I nearly miss the sign for Banana Shout on a sharp curve across from world famous Rick's Café. I pick my way down a jungle path past koi ponds and a collection of wood and thatch cottages that look like they're just borrowing a bit of space from the forest. As I approach the office/house of Mark Conklin owner, with his wife, Ilene, of the resort I'm not quite sure what I'll find. Conklin is a survivor, one of the first ex-pats to buy land back in Negril's hippie days, and I've been hearing the local buzz about his new book, also called Banana Shout. Conklin's novel is a thinly veiled account (i.e., Rick of Rick's Café is portrayed as Nick of Nick's Café) of Negril's history as a haven for flower children and ganja entrepreneurs. I half expect to be met by a spliff-toking white Rasta sporting sun-bleached dreadlocks, tattered madras and a peace symbol, swinging in a hammock. And that's what I find. Well, at least the hammock part.
Conklin is actually clean-cut and bespectacled with a trim blond beard and a leprechaun's smile. He looks more like a cool college professor than a reggae revolutionary. I settle in on the porch facing a wall of well-thumbed books and framed island art while Conklin gives me a lesson in Negril's colorful history.
''Back in 1973, the West End had no electricity and no paved road,'' says Conklin as he slowly rocks his hammock. ''The only lights were kerosene lanterns, and we had ice hauled up the cliff path once a week and wrapped it in banana leaves to keep it from melting.'' Conklin built a small, basic cottage for himself, but business soon came knocking. ''There were no hotels,'' he says. ''Anyone who came to Negril stayed with local families, paying a few bucks a day for meals and a place to lay their sleeping bags. As soon as the cottage was finished I had offers to rent it.'' One of Negril's big attractions, Conklin tells me, was the free-form lifestyle of sex, drugs and reggae that evolved up on the cliff and was tolerated by the locals.
''From the beginning it was a resort town discovered by and for young people,'' says Conklin. ''That's what made it unique: Young people doing what young people like to do. The locals thought hippies were weird, just like the Rastas strange, but harmless,'' Conklin laughs. ''But they never really got used to all the public nakedness.''
And those hippies now? I ask. ''A lot of them come back for vacation,'' says Conklin. ''Some still stay with local families; others stay at luxury hotels. The amazing thing is that now these same wild partyers from the past are businessmen and doctors and have their kids and even their kids' kids coming to Negril.''
CRYSTAL CLIFFS
With the hippies growing hippier and toting grandkids, I wondered if the all-natural types were still drawn to Negril. I head farther up the West End Road, past the rock star- and supermodel-infested Caves. The Caves is a cliff-top work of architectural and geological art in progress where grottoes beneath uniquely designed cottages house a hot tub and a dining room fit for a romantic rendezvous with a Batman fetishist.
Two miles beyond the Negril lighthouse, at the Outer Limits of Negril, I come to Jackie's On The Reef. Jackie's is just what the shaman ordered. Her Web site lists an irresistible array of amenities including ''white owls,'' ''solstice ceremonies'' and ''big rubber ball movements.'' I walk past the ''Quiet Zone'' sign outside the chambers simple rock-walled rooms skillfully designed to blur the distinction between indoors and outdoors. I cross hand-painted floors, duck under dangling crystals and step around shells and sea glass arranged in astral patterns, to a stone staircase leading to the blue Caribbean. Jackie Lewis flows up the steps fresh from communing with the local sea creatures.
Still statuesque at 61, Lewis is a former SoHo clothes designer and boutique owner who felt unfulfilled until she moved to Negril. In 1996, she opened her holistic spa/hotel on a low-lying cliff, where she and her trained staff help guests let go of stress and open up to the heavens. Jackie sits me down with positive thoughts and a soursop smoothie, ''pure with just a touch of fresh lime juice,'' and I learn how, beyond the more traditional spa therapies like herbal scrubs and hot stone massages, this is a great place to clear my crystals, center my chakras and have my holistics filled, stars aligned, soul searched, aromas therapied, energies balanced and oils changed. Or something like that. After being in Negril a couple of days, the one thing I do understand is the detoxifying treatment.
ON THE ROCKS
I check in to the Rock House after dark and follow one of the hotel's staff down a stone path that winds through a tunnel of trees to my room. He leads me to a circular thatched-roof cottage with thick rock walls framing floor to ceiling windows. The moon is hidden behind a distant cloud bank that snaps and crackles with summer lightning, but even in the darkness I can sense the closeness of the cliff and taste the salt soaked into the humid air from the sea below. The sound of a reggae guitar floats by, its slow scritch-scritch carried along the craggy rocks by the warm breeze.
At the hotel's cliffside restaurant, I join Lisa Schnept, just back from a trip to Kingston where she's active in cultural development projects, and Paul Salmon, two of the three Aussie owners who've turned Rock House into one of the coolest places to stay in the West End. We feast on lobster enchiladas, crab quesadillas and blackened mahimahi while telling stories and watching the more fortunate seafood swim in and out of the aqua glow beaming from lights on the cliff into the clear water below.
My first sight the next morning is the panoramic view from my mosquito-netted bed of a daybreak-purple ocean, its surface an oily morning calm. I need a West End-style wake up, and pad down the stone path until my toes are curled over the edge of the cliff. I come to full consciousness somewhere in free fall and linger a few silent moments underwater, suspended in the sea, its shallows still refreshingly cool from a predawn downpour. After a swim in and out of the caves along the cliff, I climb back up to my room and into its outdoor shower. I rinse off encircled by a rock wall built to a discreet height with sea-grape trees flush with ripe purple fruit and a few peeping frogs forming a canopy overhead.
BE-ALL, END-ALL
The other half of Negril provides a more gentle transition from land to sea the silky soft sands of Seven Mile Beach. This is the land of the reggae beach bar and, on some long stretches of the gorgeous strand, is literally wall-to-wall with beach-sprawling all-inclusive resorts. All of the big names are here, and there is a one-price-gits-all resort designed for every taste, want and wallet: couples, singles, coupling singles, parents with young kids, parents with older kids who aren't ready for the singles places. Each resort has a bulging menu of activities diving, sailing, snorkeling, kayaking, spa treatments, workout classes, games, multiple restaurants and bars that would take serious commitment and heavy scheduling to get through completely during just a week's vacation. Most visitors, from the active young crowd at Sandals to the older dress-up guests of Grand Lido, seemed to be more interested in simply taking advantage of the greatest luxury of all these days: long hours spent blissfully disconnected from the worries back home, lazing on the beach, floating in the clear ocean, splashing up to the pool bar, staggering up to the tiki bar and going back for thirds at the buffet.
When Jamaica's all-inclusives first came into vogue, it was common for guests to disappear within their gates not to be seen again until the return trip to the airport. I discover that's not true anymore in Negril. I see all-inkies out shopping for bargains at the new duty-free mecca Times Square and the craft market beside the Negril River, and I meet a mix of guests from hotels both big and small when I stop for lunch at Cosmo's Seafood Restaurant & Bar. Cosmo's is a local landmark and lunchtime tradition you can't go wrong when you see cops and workers from nearby hotels taking up many of the picnic tables under the thatch and out on the sand.
Many all-inclusives have programs where locals and guests of other hotels can pay an admission fee and spend time enjoying all the amenities of the resort. Some of the more popular buy-ins are for beach days at Sandals, the Friday night Grand Gala at Grand Lido twinkle lights, ice sculptures, lobster-topped buffet, live big band and a night of entertainment and sampling the free-for-all sybaritic scene at Hedonism II, where every long night seems to end up at the naked hot tub. Night crawlers from both the cliff hotels and the beach resorts who want to skank to live reggae and mix it up with the locals join the nightly rotation between beachside venues like Alfred's, Roots Bamboo and DeBuss and then hit the steamy late-night hot spots like the Jungle.
Late afternoon every day, there's a migration from the beach to the West End when everyone heads to one of the cliffside bars like Rick's, the Pickled Parrot, LTU or the pool bar at Rock House. After watching or even braving a try at cliff diving (what the locals call ''drunken tourists falling off rocks''), toasting the sun's splashdown and arguing over whether they saw the green flash or not, the crowd moves to the best oceanfront tables at restaurants all along the cliffs. Candles are lit, Jamaican, Continental, Asian, American and fusion cuisine hits the grill, and the cliff lights come on to illuminate the sleek houndfish, pudgy pufferfish and adolescent sea turtles that frequent the waters at the base of the rocks.
For my last sunset in town days in Negril revolve more around sunsets than sunrises I join the tourist throng at Negril's most famous bar, proving the line paraphrased from Casablanca that sooner or later, everyone who visits Negril ''comes to Rick's.''
Local divers execute perfect flips and dives from a cliff across the narrow channel while tourists take their own chances from the 44-foot-high platform at Rick's. Some do well, landing with their legs held tightly together and arms at their sides. Others spend the rest of their vacations trying to get their bathing suits out of their butts.
After Mark Conklin's history lesson I have a greater appreciation for Rick's, built from what used to be the famous crash pad of a rock promoter who fancied himself rather Bogey-in-Casablanca-ish. The sunken bar used to be Rick's pool that could never quite hold water. It's where Rolling Stones and other rockers (Conklin awoke one morning to hear ''Sunshine Superman'' playing and wondered ''where'd they get the electricity to run a stereo?'' until he got up and found Donovan strumming a guitar and singing for some locals) once mingled with Playboy bunnies. Now as another glorious sunset calls for applause and more drinks, guests from ''ultra'' and ''super'' luxury all-inclusives party with the high-end boutiquey crowd and the Rasta-worshipping Gen X'ers and Y'ers who bring the Negril experience full circle by crashing with locals, camping on the cliffs or finding the places here where you can still stay for under $30 a night.
It's a cool scene repeated up and down the cliffs and on the beach: a mellow mix of people out to have a good time in a funky place that proves even though you have to grow up, no one can force you to act your age.
Posted online 11/28/01.
