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Photo by: Michael Melford

"Yago true dare.''Say what? My guide, Curtis Sewell, points upstream of 30-foot-high Reach Falls, where foam pours from the maw of a tunnel channeling the rain-fed rage of the Drivers River: "You go through there."A half-dozen strong strokes across a rocky pool, and I make the roaring, tube-like mouth of the passage, then kick and claw my way up and over boulders worn smooth by the currents. Through a heart-shaped natural skylight I can see a dense jungle canopy cut by shards of sunlight. I grab more rock holds and pull myself through the torrent to the next pool, where I flop around in the shallows like a happy salmon. Yeah, mon!If I were at Dunn's River Falls, just outside touristy Ocho Rios, I might be climbing its famous stairstep cataracts with hundreds of cruise-ship passengers. But I'm scrambling in Portland, a distant northeastern Jamaica parish, where on a warm, sunny Sunday morning I have the run of Reach Falls to myself. It's an escapist fantasy come true - and it's hard to believe, knowing the pedigree of this bucolic region and its time-warp town, Port Antonio. More than a century ago, the Caribbean travel industry was virtually created here. Winter cruises to the tropics and luxurious island hotels can all trace their lineage to a place locals simply call "Porty,'' a state of liming far removed from the big-box hotels and hustle of Montego Bay and Negril."The escape - this is what we're all here for,'' explains Marguerite Gauron, an artist, environmental activist and journalist who moved here from Kingston 35 years ago. "This is a totally different side. This is the real Jamaica.''Check out the Essentials for visiting Port Antonio...With a palisade of ironshore bluffs pocked with sand-rimmed coves and backed by luxuriant hills and abrupt, mile-high mountains, Porty has been blessed by nature and endowed with a rich and colorful past to match. When the British chased the Spanish from Jamaica in 1655, the Admiralty established a base on Navy Island, just off a rugged headland separating a pair of fine, sheltered harbors. After surviving the Bounty mutiny, Captain William Bligh delivered breadfruit from Tahiti (to be cultivated as cheap food for plantation slaves) and then careened his ship here. But it was another exotic fruit, the banana, that forever altered American vacation habits. In 1870, Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker carried 160 bunches from Port Antonio to the States and made a killing. He quickly returned to Porty and started an import operation that would become the United Fruit Company (later Chiquita). In the process, Port Antonio became a boomtown with handsome municipal buildings and sumptuous private homes. Baker carried a different cargo on his Jamaica-bound "banana boats"  - wealthy travelers eager to escape the winter cold of the States, a swell set he put up in his 400-room Titchfield Hotel.The golden age was short-lived. In the mid-1930s, "Panama disease" ravaged the banana groves. Then World War II shut down tourism, and in the 1950s, Montego Bay's new airport lured tourists to the west end's better beaches. Port Antonio disappeared from vacation itineraries, except among well-heeled wanderers with a taste for adventure and a desire for privacy - Travelers like Errol Flynn, the rakish Hollywood actor, who limped into Kingston in the late 1940s after his schooner, Zaca, was damaged by a tropical storm."In true Jamaican fashion, repairs took forever,'' recalls Patrice Wymore Flynn, his second wife, who was also also an actor and still lives hereabouts. Flynn killed time exploring Jamaica and was smitten by Port Antonio."An instant love affair,'' says Wymore Flynn, then a young actress.The footloose actor began buying property, including the old Titchfield Hotel. After their marriage in 1951, he brought Wymore to Port Antonio, where they lived aboard Zaca."I thought I'd been taken to the end of the world,'' she says with a laugh. "But I learned to love it as much as he did. It was great for us because it was one place we could go where the paparazzi weren't following us and people weren't asking for autographs.''Between pictures, the Flynns constantly returned to Porty, where their acquaintances included two other celebrity expats, Noel Coward and Ian Fleming. The stories are legendary: how Flynn won Navy Island in a card game; how he drove a car into his swimming pool; how he buzzed the Titchfield Hotel in an airplane. Flynn died in 1959. His widow moved to Portland in 1968 and never left. Now 82, she oversees a 1,800-acre cattle ranch near Priestman's River and still drives herself into town in an old SUV."That's what this area is all about,'' observes Gauron. "It's about eccentric people and people who are living their life the way they want to live it ... It's a very funky place.''The most popular link to that bygone jet-set era may be the annual Port Antonio International Marlin Tournament, which first cast off a half-century ago. The weeklong October fishing and drinking bout brings boats from around the island, as well as neighboring Haiti and the Cayman Islands, and teams from as far afield as Canada. Along Port Antonio Marina's dock, the smell of fuel mixes with the peppery scent of jerk pork floating from vendors' grills while reggae rhythms underscore countless exaggerations about the magnificent blue marlin. Fishermen crack their first cold beers at 8:15 a.m. Forty minutes later, 28 million-dollar power boats parade smartly up the channel between Navy Island and Titchfield Peninsula, throttle up when the starting gun is fired, and head to sea trailing rooster tails of foam.When the boats vanish over the horizon, there's plenty of quiet time to explore Porty. The low-slung town (population just 15,000) is distinguished by grand, slightly musty buildings, including the Georgian-style former courthouse and the Victorian-era De Montevin Lodge, where the likes of Frank Sinatra and Eartha Kitt once bedded down and which is now a haven for budget-conscious travelers. Along Porty's narrow, shop-lined thoroughfares, Rastafarian men push homemade handcarts bursting with market-ripe bananas and papayas, and local vendors hawk "ice-cold jelly,'' or coconut water. Inside shed-like Musgrave Market, old women sell leafy dasheen and clusters of tomatoes while a handful of souvenir vendors lounge behind a limited inventory of T-shirts and beach towels and patiently await the arrival of the day's first customer.  A steady succession of setbacks - the loss of the Titchfield Hotel to a fire; several crippling hurricanes; and the appalling roads - has effectively spared Porty from mass tourism. The lunar condition of the coastal highway, which turns the 60-mile trip from Kingston or Ocho Rios into a three-hour slog, proved a mixed blessing. While intimidating all but the most determined travelers, it also put off outside speculators and ruffians."We've never had a bank robbery here,'' states Gauron. "Ever.'' The single road to the outside world was simply too poor to allow a swift getaway.While not a crime, the shabby condition of Frenchman's Cove, considered the Caribbean's top resort in the 1960s, borders on the tragic. The gorgeous beach, nestled in an intimate cove and flanked by a startlingly clear stream, still sparkles. But villas that once welcomed the likes of Prince Philip have been weathered over the course of the ensuing decades and can now be had at near-backpacker rates. Yet this region five miles east of town is hardly ramshackle. Ultra-luxe waterfront villas hug the shoreline beside the Blue Hole's limpid waters. The nearby hills of San San hide discrete, high-end properties such as Tiamo Spa & Villas, a six-unit resort originally presented by Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan to his wife, Princess Nina; and Kanopi House, a quartet of opulent, all-inclusive treehouses perched amidst banyan trees. Hippest of all is Geejam, a new enclave featuring a trio of chic, octagonal-shaped cabins and a recording studio where Gwen Stefani, Bjork and India.Arie have cut tracks."It certainly allows for your creative juices to flow to the max,'' says Geejam co-owner Steve Beaver. "If you can't get your muse on here, you've got a problem.''View Larger MapContinue reading...Skip ahead to the Port Antonio Essentials...Learn more about Port Antonio...Online Editor's Note: Check out the digital version of the April 2009 issue to see the full article with even more photography.