Now what? You’ve gone through all that information to help prepare you for Jamaica, and so what’s next?
KEEP EXPLORING! The more you read-up on the cities you will be visiting, the more you will get out of your time abroad! Remember to bounce back to Module 1 and Module 2 of this online pre-departure information any time.
Here are a few more helpful resources for the two cities you will be visiting soon!
Montego Bay
Montego Bay has two distinct faces: there’s the smooth tourist countenance that grins contentedly from the pages of a thousand glossy Caribbean brochures; and there’s MoBay proper, a pretty gritty city, second only to Kingston in terms of status and chaos. Most of the big all-inclusive resorts are located well outside the urban core in the fancy suburb of Ironshore. Stay in the city, however, and you’re faced with an entirely different proposition – a riot of cacophonous car horns and bustling humanity that offers an unscripted and uncensored slice of Jamaican life, warts and all.
The Hip Strip (aka Gloucester Avenue), with its mid-range hotels and ubiquitous souvenir shops flogging Bob Marley t-shirts, acts as a kind of decompression chamber between MoBay’s two halves. You won’t find many hipsters here, but, in among the hustlers and smoky jerk restaurants, there’s a detectable Jamaican rhythm to the action on the street.
Mandeville
An antidote to Jamaica’s busy, sometimes blemished, coast, Mandeville is a cool inland town located at an altitude of 628m, meaning you can traverse its busy streets without collapsing from heat exhaustion and enjoy a slice of everyday Jamaican life bereft of the iPad wielding, camera-clicking tourists in evidence elsewhere. While the town center remains boisterously Jamaican with uniformed schoolchildren playing cat and mouse with the speeding taxis, Mandeville’s salubrious suburbs exhibit a posher, more refined, veneer. Mock Georgian mansions with manicured gardens provide second homes for Kingston entrepreneurs or returning expats who have made their money abroad. Devoid of major sights per se, Mandeville is best enjoyed as a pit stop for people who want to see the island from a different (Jamaican) perspective. Grab a patty from a scruffy shopping mall, be a spectator to an alfresco game of dominoes, or just shoot the breeze with the local taxi drivers/shop assistants/rastas in the busy central square. Welcome to the real Jamaica, mon!