True Negril
Negril, on the western tip of the island of Jamaica, is a bustling tourist haven that sprang up around the original fishing village in the 1960’s. All-inclusive resorts dominate Negril beach now, but it’s easy to find smaller establishments catering to the more independent traveler.
Many hotels perch on the cliffs south of Negril town. Blue Cave Castle, right on the water, affords beautiful views of the sea, and the town and beach in the distance. Stairs lead down to the water for snorkeling, swimming, and access to the cave below the yard, home to swallows and bats.
In the morning, enjoy aromatic Blue Mountain coffee in the yard, and wait for Millie to stop by with her fresh squeezed orange juice. Get out your binoculars and watch the fishermen pull in traps, unload them into their boats, and move on to reset them, frigate birds gliding overhead. One old fisherman paddles alone in a patched-up canoe, occasionally throwing a fish to his pet pelican. Glass-bottom boats show up later, trolling for tourists to take snorkeling.
At sunset, the pontoon boats from the beach motor up the cliffs, dancers on deck. Cameras flash as the boats pass the towers of Blue Cave, rising high above the sea. The magnificent structure fulfilled the dream of a Czech man, Steve Zurik, who came to Negril in the late 1970’s to build a hotel. Recruiting local labor, he first built a four-room wooden guesthouse.
The construction of the Castle was a labor of love for Steve, and also for the men who helped him build it. Fuzzy, now chief of operations at Blue Cave, was young when he started working for Steve. They cleared the land of brush and trees and built retaining walls before filling in the area with sand and topsoil. The towers went up first, then the rest of the structure, room by room, the crew working from homemade scaffolding. After the initial failure of the first tower, the masonry team tried a wetter cement in the congregate of fossilized coral and rock that makes up the thick walls. The Castle, survivor of many hurricanes, is a testament to the team’s improvised engineering skills.
Steve’s partner Susan Evanko, an American, has operated the hotel since his untimely death in 1996. Fuzzy remembers her speeding off to town on her moped to order supplies in the old days; now she reigns over the pavilion and yard, with its turtle pond, conch shells and local wood-carvings, mingling with guests at sunset. Blue Cave’s clients are often groups of friends who meet there every year to reconnect.
In the late morning, drive down to the beach for lunch and a swim. Just a stroll down the white sand from the resorts, you can get a taste of indigenous Negril at Cosmo’s Seafood Restaurant and Bar. Cosmo’s has offered “Jamaican and seafood dishes, lobster and conch, whole fish and crab-back, local goat meat, cold Red Stripe, and reasonable prices,” since 1976, and remains the favorite beach restaurant of the local folks.
Born on the beach half a mile from his establishment, Cosmo Brown went to Chicago as a young man in the 1960’s for a job in the restaurant business. He remembers arriving in Miami for the first time; he couldn’t figure out how to work a cigarette machine, and was too embarrassed to ask for help. In ten years, the young man from the village learned the restaurant business; but he always missed the beach, and dreamed of serving seafood in his own place at home. Starting out with a simple thatched roofed bar, Cosmo’s business has expanded steadily. His clientele has been both local and foreign from the start, and Cosmo advises visitors to Negril to “go where the natives go, you will get good food and good value!”
Shairley Buchannon, who Mr. Cosmo refers to as his “backbone,” has worked at Cosmo’s since she was 22. In the beginning, both of them cooked and “did everything,” she recalls. Although she went to primary school in an outlying village, she says that her real education came from her mother; now she supervises a large staff and manages the business. “Miss Buck” succinctly sums up Cosmo’s appeal: they serve “simple local food, in a clean and rustic atmosphere.”
Although Cosmo’s has long been a mainstay of the beach, the ever-growing presence of the all-inclusives has hurt his business. The managers and staff, all local people, like to walk down the beach to eat at Cosmo’s, but most of their guests never go beyond their resort’s delimited stretch of sand. It also hurts that Mr. Cosmo’s well-trained staff, with its almost formal demeanor, may be lured away by the higher wages that the big hotel chains can afford to pay – not just to other jobs in Jamaica, but also to overseas destinations. But, Cosmo says, “I don’t need much and I’m glad to help my people.”
Red pea soup with dumplings, escoveitch fish served with Scotch Bonnet sauce, tender conch bits and crispy fries, everything is fresh and homemade. Italians, Germans, Japanese, and others rub elbows with Jamaicans in the open-air restaurant. Correct as the service is, the charmingly unselfconscious waitresses sing along to their favorite songs on the radio. If you’re lucky, a group of men will start up a game of dominoes on a table in the shade; they enjoy spectators, slapping down the tiles, chatting and laughing.
Come back to the cliffs for sunset to Whoopee’s Hammock Park, and take in the expansive view and old-time ambiance of this establishment. The proprietor, Dennis Lynch, inherited the property from his father, who kept a herd of goats there. The herd is still thriving, mothers and young ones running freely around the yard.
Twenty years ago, Dennis started serving food and drinks to the growing number of tourists on the cliffs. He also provides goat meat to local restaurants and hosts weddings on the seaside property, but most of his business is with people stopping by for a drink and a chat at sunset. Like Cosmo Brown, Dennis has felt a loss of revenue resulting from the expansion of the all-inclusives, saying that “there are no more people on the cliffs” because they just don’t leave their beachfront hotels.