Jamaica Tours, Guides and Vacations

Here is one of the videos I was able to shoot at the Usain Bolt Tribute at Club Quad Party in Kingston Jamaica back on October 5, 2008. It took me awhile to get this video posted with all the power outages and delays I have had but here it is. It was a great party and I felt honored to have been personally invited by Bolt himself. He was a VERY busy man and I was not able to spend more than 5 minutes with him in private but the party was worth the efforts with free drinks all night long and LOTS of beautiful people to see.

This video is Bolt speaking after receiving a lifetime pass to Club Quad and numerous other gifts from local businesses. I’m working on uploading the full video with him receiving the gifts now. It may take awhile for me to post it but soon come mon.

SKNVibes.com Entertainment: Buju to perform at Jamaica’s December 6 Reggaelution

KINGSTON, Jamaica – IT will be reggae superstar Buju Banton’s only performance in Jamaica for 2008 when the artiste and some of the best in reggae music come together for an all-inclusive performance at the Liguanae Club in Jamaica.

The event is described as a ‘never before, must attend’ event in Jamaica when top flight artistes perform in a relaxed atmosphere on Saturday, December 6.

Buju Banton, a.k.a. Gargamel, is no stranger to performing in front of the demanding Jamaican crowd; however, with demanding European tour schedules, Banton will be delivering a memorable performance that will only be seen at one his European tours or next year.

He describes being a part of the event as a joy and pleasure.“This is the first time I am performing in Jamaica this year and I am looking forward to the opportunity of reconnecting with the people and continuing the message,” he told press sources. “Music is life and my desire is to share it with the audience, taking Reggaelution to higher heights”.

Etana

The artiste, who has straddled both sides of popular Jamaican music from being a prolific dancehall maestro to a now an enlightened Rastafarian reggae singer, is world renowned for his conscious yet electrifying performances.

I love Jamaican food and we try to eat at a variety of places. I do however find myself eating at many of the same places sometimes and I have to force myself to try new places every once in awhile. This was not one of those times, I’ve been eating at Sweet Spice for a long time but I never took any pictures of my meals to share.

Our last trip there was a surprise visit and I was not planning on eating out that day. We passed Sweet Spice on our way home from Sav La Mar and I got a craving for a brown stew chicken with rice and peas for dinner. We pulled in and I placed my order and to my surprise my wife ordered an Oxtail dinner instead of her usual curry chicken.

I have eaten at many of the restaurants in Negril and sampled the curry chicken at most of them. Jamaicans love to eat chicken with the bone in and it’s not many places that make a boneless curry meal but Sweet Spice in Negril has what you’re looking for if you want meat and no bones on your plate.

I have had oxtail may times before. It was the Thursday special of the day at El Siboney Restaurant in Key West Florida where I ate lunch for years. The Oxtail I have had was prepared cuban style with black beans and rice and a nice tomato based sauce. The oxtail at Sweet Spice was done a little different but still very good. oxtail is a dark greasy meat with tender meat chunks on the tailbone. The tailbone has a jelly like cartilage that some dislike but it’s pretty good to me.

The Brown Stew Chicken at Sweet Spice is very good also as are all my meals at this great jamaican restaurant. Stop by Sweet Spice on the road to Sheffield near the Texaco station for some good jamaican food without the bones if you wish.

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Juici Patties Main Sign

Juici Patties Logo

Juici Patties Hours

Juici Patties Menu

Juici Patties Poster

Juici Patties Order Menu

Juici Patty

Juici Patty

Jamaicans love their patty shops and Juici Patty is an islandwide favorite serving fresh hot Jamaican patty and coco bread meals to like half the country each and every day. I have seen the lines in a patty shop fill the entire store from 11am until 2pm each afternoon as Jamaicans file through in semi orderly fashion and place orders for a patty and a coke or boxed orange juice for lunch.

Patty shops usually offer spicy beef patties as their main choice but they also offer beef and cheese patties or curry chicken patties as well. Beef and chicken are the most popular patty but many shops also offer lobster, shrimp and soy patties as well.

Some patty shops offer more than just patties and Juici Beef is one of those. You can find a great selection of breakfast items including green banana porridge or maybe a peanut porridge either of which goes well with a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee or an Orange Juice. Juici Patty also offers fried chicken and sometimes a soup of the day if things are busy.

If you travel to Jamaica and want to experience real Jamaican food then you have to stop in a patty shop and try a Jamaican patty or you’ll be missing out on the most popular meal in the country. Ackee and saltfish may be the official food of Jamaica but the patty man feeds the country.

Sex tourism in Jamaica is huge and a much larger part of the tourist industry in this country than many want to admit to. I would say a majority of single travelers have plans to find some sex when they get here. The number of hedo resorts and nude beaches should be a tip but it’s certainly understood to be an important thing for many tourists and prostitutes are often times allowed in to resort clubs and bars for free to attract more customers. Most Jamaicans are black and most tourists are white so there’s a lot of short term interracial relationships on the island and it is common to see white tourists both male and female with Jamaican prostitutes both male and female.

I have been coming back and forth since 2001 and I have never once had a white woman hit on me in this country. Why? Because I’m not black enough for them. I have been told by a number of white women in Jamaica that I look foreign and obviously am not Jamaican. It’s an instant turn off for them and I get absolutely no play from white girls in Jamaica.

On the other hand the Jamaican ladies just love me and my light skin complexion and foreign style gets me more play than the average white boy or Jamaican but I’m not looking for women in Jamaica. It’s just a lot of fun to flirt and play around and who doesn’t like the attention. As a man in Jamaica it’s pretty easy to find some company and a little fun but its harder to find some good clean fun. If you do come to Jamaica in search of sex you won’t have to go far before you find it and in many cases it will find you but be careful. HIV rates in Jamaica are alarming and estimates are that more than 60% of the prostitutes in Jamaica are infected.

It does seem as the video suggests that many white women come to Jamaica either alone or with a friend in search of one thing and one thing alone, “The Big Bamboo” as the locals call it. It’s rather simple to see things happen on any night in Jamaica. You can enter just about any club, restaurant or bar and find white female tourists with Jamaican guys all over them dancing in seductive or downright rude style and having a good time.

I know guys here in Negril who have at least a dozen girls that bounce back and forth between the States or Europe to see them at least once if not twice a year for a week or twos worth of fun in the sun. These ladies bring all sorts of gifts like new clothes and a fresh pair of Nike shoes to shower on their men and the guys eat it up. I know for certain one friend has been given a car worth over $4,000 just for taking care of one woman well enough and this same guy had two ladies spend over $60,000 to throw a concert which lost everything they put into it and no one seemed to care.

Is there anything wrong with this? I don’t think so. As long as everyone understands the motives and the situation there should be no problem mon. I do feel sorry for some of these women who seem to think these guys actually care for them. They look at this more like a job and servicing these women is only as important to them as the gifts or cash they receive.

I have written about the fact you cannot find a decent pharmacy in negril and it remains true. There are actually two pharmacies in Negril but both of them are very small and stock only a limited number of items. The selection in both pharmacies combined is not as nice as the range of health and beauth products available at Fontana Pharmacy in Sav La Mar.

Sav as it is know to most locals is actually Savannah La Mar and the capital of Westmoreland Parish. Here you will find much better shopping chioces than those in Negril. Food and medicine prices at any of the grocers in Negril are substantially higher than what you find at any of the stores in Sav and the true is same for basic medical care.

I have used Fontana Pharmacy for everything from aspirin and Tylenol to filling prescriptions for paid medications and antibiotics as well. They a have a great selection of wound care products such as bandages, tape and ointments for just about everything. They have never not had anything I needed and I usually end up grabbing something extra from the extra items they stock including stationary, toys candy and more.

If you need a pharmacy in Negril for something simple you should try Negril Pharmacy in the Town Center but if you need something more than take a trip to Sav and you’ll find just about anything you need.

Usain Bolt is having a good year. On top of taking Gold at the Beijing Olympics he has been collecting numerous awards and gifts since his return to Jamaica.

He is now the Jamaica Gleaners Man of the Year and well deserving of the award. There is no doubt he has sparked an outpouring of national pride unlike anything Jamaica has seen in years and he’s given hope to a million poorJamaican children with the hopes of taking it “To The World”

Jamaica Gleaner News - Bolt on top - Olympian cops Gleaner’s top award - Tuesday | November 11, 2008

Usain Bolt’s trophy cabinet is getting awfully packed. After months of receiving national gold medals, honours and dozens of gifts and prizes, ‘Lightning Bolt’ took home another august award yesterday when he was named The Gleaner’s Man of the Year 2008.

As the drum roll echoed from the speaker boxes at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston, and images of Bolt on the Beijing tracks appeared on two large screens, the anxious audience relived the thrilling Olympic moments.

Nikki Royal is having a birthday party and it’s going to be one helluva birthday party for one helluva lady with performances by Peter and Gramps of Morgan Heritage as well as Dexta Daps and my boy Ras Slick and others. It should be a great reggae concert at The Jungle Negril on Friday November 14th 2008. Give us a call if you want VIP tickets in advance.

I answered some questions about medical care here in Jamaica and did a web search for help finding a listing of medical facilities in Jamaica and I came up with two great resources that I had to share here with everyone else.

The question I answered in the Jamaica forums was about having a baby in Jamaica but if you seek any kind of public or private medical facility in Jamaica you’ll want to take a look at these two websites.

JMMB :: JMMB Insurance Brokers

Jamaica Medical Directory

Blue Cross of Jamaica - Find a provider

Listing of medical facilities in Jamaica by parish

If you are planning on moving to Jamaica with medical conditions that require care you are going to want to make arrangements before you arrive. Jamaica has a number of holistic healing and wellness centers that offer a variety of natural healing treatments. For more details contact Sunset Heal

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If you are in Negril and searching for a great deal on some souvenirs to take back home then look no further than the City Center by the roundabout and Coral Seas Shopping plaza which is located across the street from Burger King in the center of Negril. There on the ground floor beneath the Digicell center you will find Sona Duty Free Shopping Center which offers great prices on everything from tshirts and trinkets to a selection of fine jewelry, liquors and cigars at discount prices and duty free.

Shop keeper Rocky has been in the same location for 15 years providing visitors to Negril a wild selection of Jamaica t-shirts and other clothing items so you can carry your Irie feelings back home with you. Lots of first time Jamaica vacationers find a taste for some of the islands special treats such as fine Blue Mountain Coffee and Jamaica’s Appleton Rum they can’t fill at home so Rocky has a selection of the most popular liquors in the right sizes for international transport so you can just breeze through the airport with your new favorite drink in hand.

For those of you that enjoy a good smoke you can also pick from some of the best cigars in the world with both Jamaican and Cuban cigars for sale. Cuban cigars are of course not legal for sale in the US but they are offered here in Jamaica and they seem to be very popular with many of our guests. You can buy the cuban cigars for smoking here in Jamaica but you CANNOT buy Cuban cigars to take back with you. Save that for the high quality Jamaican cigars which are said to offer the same flavor and smoking experience as the cigars from Cuba.

Whatever you’re looking for Sona is an excellent choice for Jamaican souvenirs and gift shop items located in the center of Negril. Stop by and say hello to Rocky while you do some shopping in Negril.