Montego Bay

The sea is the reason most people come. The water is clear and calm inside the reef and stays around 27-29°C all year. In town, Doctor's Cave Beach on the Hip Strip is the classic: a short curve of pale sand over turquoise water that has drawn bathers for more than a century. Cornwall Beach and the public Dead End Beach by the airport are nearby, and the larger resorts east along the coast at Rose Hall and Ironshore have their own sheltered sand.

The town beaches are small, and some of the coast is rocky or private. Many visitors spend most of their days on a resort beach. For a long, open beach, Negril's Seven Mile Beach is about an hour and a half west and makes a full beach day.

The local food is excellent and has real character. Jerk pork and chicken are smoked over pimento wood at roadside pits and jerk centres. Patties come from bakeries, and visitors will also find ackee and saltfish, curry goat, escovitch fish and bammy, and fresh fruit from street vendors. Rum punch and Red Stripe are everywhere, and Blue Mountain coffee is easy to find.

The range is narrow, though. Fine dining is mostly limited to a few restaurants and the dining rooms of the larger hotels, and many visitors on all-inclusive packages eat mainly resort buffets. The best meals tend to be the simplest ones, eaten at a roadside jerk stand or a fish shack on the beach.

Montego Bay has a small but real heritage. Rose Hall Great House, a restored eighteenth-century plantation mansion with a well-known ghost legend, is the most visited sight. Greenwood Great House keeps its original furniture and old musical instruments. In town, Sam Sharpe Square remembers the leader of the 1831 Christmas slave rebellion and has the old Cage lock-up, and St James Parish Church is a handsome Georgian building.

That is most of it. There are no major museums, and the town centre is a working commercial district rather than a historic quarter. A visitor interested in history will find more in the Georgian streets of Falmouth, along the coast.

Going out mostly happens along Gloucester Avenue, the Hip Strip. Its open-air bars and beachfront party places fill with visitors and cruise passengers, and some keep going into the small hours. The local nights are livelier: waterfront parties and street dances with sound systems playing dancehall and reggae, at their best at weekends.

The scene is small and much of it is aimed at tourists. Many visitors on all-inclusive stays never go beyond the hotel bar and the resort's evening show. Taking a taxi between venues is sensible, and people who go out to local parties usually go with someone who knows them.

The setting is green and hilly behind the coast. The Montego Bay Marine Park protects reefs and seagrass beds with good snorkelling and diving, and catamaran and glass-bottom boat trips go out across the bay. Inland, bamboo rafts drift down the Martha Brae River, and zip lines and horse rides run through former estates in the hills. Rocklands Bird Sanctuary is known for hummingbirds that feed from your hand.

Further out, the limestone karst of Cockpit Country has rough trails and caves for walkers who hire a guide. YS Falls and the Black River wetlands with their crocodiles are a long day away, as are Dunn's River Falls near Ocho Rios. Hiking is mostly short and guided, not long trails.

Falmouth is the closest outing, about forty minutes east. It is one of the best-preserved Georgian towns in the Caribbean, with a courthouse, churches and timber houses around a grid of streets. Negril, about an hour and a half west, is a beach and cliff town known for its sunsets. Ocho Rios, a similar distance east, is a busy resort town with plantation and garden tours nearby.

Inland, Bob Marley's birthplace and mausoleum at Nine Mile and the Appleton Estate rum distillery in the Nassau Valley are full-day trips by tour bus. The roads are winding and slow, so most visitors book an organised excursion or a driver. One trip in each direction is about as much as most people do.

Families who stay in a resort will find it easy. Many large hotels along the coast have kids' clubs, splash pools and waterslides, and the shallow water inside the reef is calm and warm for small children. Glass-bottom boats, river rafting and the hummingbirds at Rocklands make good outings for children.

Beyond the resorts, there is little built for children. There is no zoo, aquarium or theme park to speak of in town. The traffic is chaotic, pavements are few and vendors can be persistent, so most families stay near their hotel and go further only on organised excursions.

The airport sits right beside the Hip Strip, so arrival is quick. After that, getting around is harder. The strip itself can be walked, but the resorts are spread along the coast to the east and west, often several kilometres from town, and pavements soon disappear.

Locals use shared route taxis and minibuses, but these are hard for a visitor to work out. Most travellers use licensed tourist taxis, hotel shuttles and tour buses, and agree the fare before setting off. Driving is on the left on narrow, busy roads, and few visitors hire a car.

Most shopping is aimed at visitors. The Harbour Street craft market and smaller stalls sell carvings, straw work, paintings and reggae souvenirs, and haggling is expected. Duty-free shops near the cruise port and in the larger shopping centres sell jewellery, watches, rum and cigars. The best things to take home are edible: Blue Mountain coffee, jerk seasoning and rum.

There are no fashion streets or design boutiques of any note, and shopping is not a reason to choose the town.

Montego Bay costs more than many visitors expect. Most beds are in resorts, and those are priced for a North American market. Tourist taxis, organised excursions and imported goods are expensive, and resort and Hip Strip menus charge visitor prices.

Eating like a local is much cheaper. Jerk from a roadside pit, patties and fish from beach shacks cost little, and small guesthouses away from the coast can be modest. An all-inclusive package often works out as the more predictable choice, because so much outside the hotel is priced for tourists.

Live music here means reggae and dancehall. Reggae Sumfest, held each summer in Montego Bay, is one of the best-known reggae festivals in the world and fills the town for a week of big stage shows. The rest of the year, bands play cover sets in Hip Strip bars and resort lounges, and some nights have local acts.

There is almost no formal theatre, opera or classical music, and the resort evening shows are entertainment rather than art. For anything beyond reggae, a visitor will be disappointed.

Wellness here means resort life. Most of the larger hotels have spas offering massages and treatments, often in open-air pavilions by the sea. The days have an easy rhythm of sun, shade and sea, and the many adults-only resorts along the coast are built for quiet. Beach massages are offered on the sand.

There is no bathing culture of the island's own and no thermal baths nearby. Away from the resorts the town is noisy and busy, so the calm depends on the hotel you choose.