Jamaica Tours, Guides and Vacations

I’ve been planning a long term trip to Jamaica for quite some time now and although it has been less than serious I am at least I’m familiar with what we want and need for a comfortable experience. I myself have been to Jamaica on two other occasions and my family will be traveling for the first time. I’m very excited about my return trip but I really want to do some planning this go around. We’ll be traveling with children and I want to be certain we get about the island smoothly. I would really hate for a bad start to ruin our vacation so I’m looking at where to start first of course.

With the time I’ve spent in Jamaica and my idea of what we’re looking for I think someplace close to Negril would be my best choice for a first home or apartment to rent. I think our first place should be a nice one so we integrate into Jamaica as easily as possible. Right now we’re considering an apartment rental somewhere near the Negril beach area and I think we would hopefully be able to settle into a more permanent place during our first month in. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to find a better place to stay after we arrive because the sources available online are pretty pitiful.

There are a number of Jamaican websites online but not much for apartment searches. In the past I have used sites like Jamaicans.com and Everytingjamaican.com for general travel and island information. Jamaicans.com is possibly the best resource for general information on Jamaica and the Jamaican people. The Jamaicans.com forums has a topic and expert on just about everything Jamaican and you can have your questions answered by an expert rather easily by joining in the conversations with them.

Most of the websites about Jamaica are about vacationing in Jamaica and while much of this information is useful to us we’re looking for more specific info on moving to Jamaica and the steps necessary to do so legally. We may spend some time in a hotel but we’re probably looking for a more long term rental space and the typical room search in Jamaica isn’t going to do us much good. Searching for “Jamaica real estate” brings us sites such as Sangsters Realty which isn’t the prettiest site on the net but it does have quite an extensive selection of Jamaican real estate. Coldwell Banker also has a great site for Jamaican realty and one can find anything from multi acre farm estates to single family homes for sale or rental apartments throughout the island. Both of these sitews seem to have a better selection of properties listed then the official Jamaican Realtors website at RealtorsJamaica.com does. Using a combination of all these sites helps you get a better understanding of the Jamaican rel estate market but I do believe there is much more to things than what we can find online. It seems to me a great need for smaller local property listings in areas surrounding the major cities in Jamaica. Many of the properties listed are expensive all inclusive type vacation rentals and finding properties to rent for long term use is going to be easier for us using the Jamaican newspaper website at Jamaica-Gleaner.com. I’ve been able to get a better idea of living costs from the local news site then anything else. It’s been a hard year for the tourist season and living in Jamaica should actually be cheaper for us then expected due to the lack of visitors to the island thus far this year.

Of course finding a place to live is only one part in relocating to Jamaica and securing the proper documents and travel permits is probably the most important thing we need to do first. I have already sent out applications for passports for everyone and I am having mine renewed as well. It’s got 2 years left but I think it’s best we all have fresh documents and photographs. The US Passport agency is running behind schedule because of the new travel rules and passports are taking up to 10 weeks to deliver now. I was forced to pay to have ours processed within two weeks because of my lack of planning. I should have taken care of those last year. I think the best resource I have found for general information on actual moving to Jamaica procedures has got to be the EscpapeArtist.com pages on Jamaica. This site is huge and has loads of great articles on living abroad and their information on moving to Jamaica is great.

Finding travel arrangements was pretty simple for us as we live in Florida and Air Jamaica has flights from Fort Lauderdale three times daily. Their Specials Page offers great rates on air travel to Jamaica and we’re going to be traveling at about $169 each for round trip tickets from June 1 to Dec 10. I considered other forms of transport including taking a boat or cruise ship over to avoid the need for passports but in the end it was easier to fly into Mobay and take a cab to our destination city after we land. I think the kids will enjoy the airplane ride although AJ may find it noisy. I will have to get him some ear plugs for certain.

I have decided that in order to enjoy our first month in Jamaica and to ease the transition from America we shall spend our first month in Negil on the beach somewhere. We’re going to start it out like a vacation and ease into Jamaican life. I searched the web for “negril apartments” and ended up with a rather poor selection of available long term rentals. Realizing that the local economy and the tourist season this winter was weak I decided we should contact some of the nicer places to rent on the beach and ask if they were offering a discounted rate for long term rentals. We are currently looking at a studio apartment directly on Negril beach that rents for $79 per evening with a full kitchen and bath. The current offer is $800 for a full month and I think we might just take that. I’ll keep you posted on those developments and more later.