Old Time Jamaica
Jakes Hotel in quiet Treasure Beach has characters to spare
TREASURE BEACH, JAMAICA— I’m on a boat ride from Jakes Hotel to The Pelican Bar, a slapdash, ramshackle, barely held together joint that rests on a sandbar nearly a kilometre from Jamaica’s quiet south shore.
The Caribbean is all silver-green and the surf is gently rolling three passengers and a guy who calls himself Captain Joseph. As he steers his small outboard through the surf, a huge kingfish suddenly leaps from the water, straining all its muscles, and arcs through the warm air. It seems to glide for an eternity .
It’s hard to know how far the fish flew but it looked like it would’ve been a pretty respectable punt in football.
You’d think a guy who lives in and around these waters has seen it all, but Captain Joseph is hootin’ and hollerin’ like a kid who just spotted Santa Claus dropping a bike down the chimney.
“Wow, that was something,” he says, as my new British friends and I grin like idiots.
The area near Treasure Beach is not the Jamaica of all-inclusive resorts and naked Hedonism II weddings. It’s not the Jamaica of Ian Fleming or a resort that packs in the rock stars or Hollywood types with tiny dogs and shoes from Jimmy Choo. To reach Jakes took me more than two hours by car from Negril, much of it gliding past secluded beaches and lime green, canary yellow and bright pink rum shacks and dodging water-filled potholes big enough for a family bath.
It’s just as well if you’re a tourist seeking relief from the maddening hordes at Negril or the cruise ship detritus that skips into Montego Bay’s Hip Strip most days. The fact is that the south shore of this lovely island isn’t about to get much more developed as long as the drive to get there involves this much of a buttcrunching.
I hadn’t heard of Jakes until someone on Twitter responded to my call for suggestions on where to go in Jamaica with a vigorous endorsement. I wish I could recall who it was who turned me on to the place, as it was easily the highlight of my trip.
It’s a secluded and spacious hotel that’s colourful and casual and fun and funky and an absolute gem. The woman who designed much of the resort is Sally Henzell. She was the art director for the classic Jamaican film The Harder They Come. Her late husband, Perry, who attended Mcgill University for two years, was the director. Her son, Jason, pretty much runs Jakes and also is building a massive sports complex nearby for the community, partly with the help of Canadian government funding (for which he is very thankful).
Jason Henzell explains his family had a place built near the beach around1941. His mom bought more property later.
“I was an investment banker and started asking about land in the area. I said to Mom, ‘Let’s expand and build a hotel.’ She said, ‘I’m an artist, not a businesswoman.’ So I left my banking job in Montego Bay and came down. Friends thought I’d fallen off the edge of the Earth, as we had no phones and the electricity and water was off and on.”
They started with two rooms in 1994 and have been slowly but steadily adding more. They now have 49 rooms (consisting of 26 hotel rooms, five cottages and four villas) set on six acres of land. Plus there are two restaurants and a small but lovely spa.
Sally explains she had little to work with when it was time to build the hotel. Conch shells and old bottles were mixed together in the outdoor shower areas at the honeymoon cottages, where you can shower and wave at passing boats if that’s your thing. Similarly bright green and blue and other coloured bottles are embedded in the walls of the units, casting wild shards of light.
“We never had money,” Sally Henzell says. “It was always ‘What can I do with nothing?’ I wanted to write a book called If It’s Not Broken, It’s Not Mine.”
The cottage I used for the night was a one-bedroom unit just steps from the ocean, with a large upstairs sundeck with daybeds featuring bright blue and white cushions.
The website for the hotel describes the themes as Moroccan, adobe and Indian, with some touches inspired by Antoni Gaudi, the famous Spanish architect, thrown in.
Jakes has helped sponsor popular literary festivals in the past, attracting the likes of Michael Ondaatje and others who would stay and read in exchange for a free room.
The night I’m at the hotel I run into a group of college kids from Kentucky who are on the island to help schoolchildren living in the nearby hills. They’re staying at Jakes and one of them has spent a fair bit of time on You Tube looking at a dance video called “Teach me how to Dougie.” It’s perfect, as the poolside bar at Jakes is called Dougie’s and is manned by Dougie (Douglas Turner) himself. Pretty soon someone has their ipod cranked up and one of the students is behind the bar teaching Dougie to dip and swirl and stand and wave his hands back over his head like he’s the Fonz combing his hair on Happy Days. The guy can move and the entire bar, fuelled with Dougie’s famous rum punch, is screaming and waving their arms in time with the music. “People love it here because there’s no one to antagonize them,” Dougie tells me. “Folks go to bed when they want and the bar doesn’t close until you’re ready.” I ask if he ever takes a day off. “Sometimes,” he replies with a wink. “But by the time you’ve asked ‘Where’s Dougie?’ I’ll be here.” Jim Byers’ trip was partially subsidized by Jakes Hotel.