We decided to take a trip to Sandals Montego Bay on the island of Jamaica. Here's the scoop.
Getting There By Plane
There are many airlines that go to Jamaica, some have nonstop flights, others don't. We used USAirways, which was fine, except for when we were returning to the US. Our flight originated in Baltimore, with a connection in North Carolina for the plane to Montego Bay, Jamaica. Getting there was fine, plenty of time between flights. Coming back was another thing. Our flight left Jamaica a little late, so we got to North Carolina a little late. When you are coming from another country, you have to get your bags, go through customs and then check them in again, even if you are using the same airline. It took so long for our bags to appear, we almost missed our connection to the flight going back to Baltimore. Our suggestion is to either make sure you are on a nonstop flight (and this goes for ANY foreign travel) to avoid the hassle of having to go through immigration and customs between flights, or make sure there is at least a 2-3 hour window between the time your flight is supposed to arrive and the next flight is due to take off in your connection city. USAirways only gave us about 1 hour, which we thought might not be enough, but since they were the ones that arranged it, we figured they must know best (silly us!).
Once You Arrive in Jamaica
The Montego Bay airport (Donald Sangster International) is like a big shack, but that's all part of the fun. As you go through customs (which is pretty quick), there is entertainment, such as a singing and dancing group. Naturally, they sing the 2 songs you hear on all the Jamaica commercials. After you go through customs, you pick up your bags and (if you are staying at Sandals) go to the Sandals check in desk, where they will tag your bags and direct you to the hotel shuttle (which is free). TIP: The airport redcaps (the guys who want to carry your bags for you) are VERY aggressive-they'll bug you to death from the time you get to the baggage carousel. Try to avoid them. The bad part is, even though the baggage carts are supposed to be free, they hog them all up, so you'll have to carry your own bags, or pay them to carry them for you. It's not so bad, you can give them a US dollar a bag, but what we didn't like was when the guy counted the money we gave him right in fron of us.
Jamaican Money
Don't bother getting any Jamaican dollars. The exchange rate has been between 50 and 60 Jamaican dollars to the US dollar, but everyone we dealt with takes US dollars and credit cards. (Naturally, if you go to the outdoor market, they won't take credit cards, but just take lots of US dollars.) We didn't venture off the property except twice (and once was to another Sandals), so the fee we paid to exchange some money before we got to Jamaica was pretty much wasted. If you find that you really need Jamaican dollars, your hotel will do it for you, so you might as well wait.
SANDALS MONTEGO BAY
Sandals was a great place to stay. At all inclusive resorts, all meals, activities, and even alcoholic drinks are included. According to most information we've read, Sandals is considered a top notch resort, and we were not dissapointed. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that it's a little more rustic than we expected (their brochures are slick, glossy publications which have quite a bit of color touch up on the pictures-which I figured out when I got it in the mail), but it didn't bother us. Sandals resorts are all couples only (the rules are heterosexuals only-sorry, Jamaicans really frown on gay couples), but they have sister properties called Beaches, which welcome families with children.
Checking In
The rooms are almost never ready when you get there. You are directed into a lounge area, where they come by with cool towels and champagne to welcome you. A couple of resort staffers will give you lots of information about the resort property, and talk to your group for awhile, and then you are free to enjoy any of the activities, beach and restaurants while you wait for your room to be ready. There is a place to change into your bathing suit if you want to head to the beach right away.
The Room
Our room was in an 8 room cottage right on the beach. (Not to mention right next to a poolside bar!) There was plenty of room, and an adequate bathroom. If you're stuck in your room, there is a TV, but there's not much on. The channel selection is horrible. (But that's not why you're on vacation anyway, is it?) Our room category was Grande Luxe Beachfront. (We had booked Grande Luxe Oceanfront, but they usually upgrade you a room category or 2 when you get there.)
The Restaurants
In the evening, there is a dress code for all but one of the restaurants. Breakfast and lunch are casual-for the gals, if you're wearing a bathing suit, just be sure to wear shorts or a cover up. Dinner at OK Corral is casual as well. For dinner at Bayside, The Oleander Room, Cucina Romana, and Tokyo Joe's, long pants and a nice collared shirt for the guys was fine. For the gals, a simple dress (nothing really fancy is necessary-as a matter of fact, you might look overdressed) or pants and a blouse are fine. Here's a tip-the only restaurant that's air conditioned is the Oleander Room, so dress for the temperature. Also, if you have your heart set on a certain restaurant, be sure to check the schedule-not all restaurants are open every day. And be sure to make reservations at the concierge desk. The other thing we noticed is that the menus are the same every day, but there are enough different restaurants that it doesn't matter. As for the service, no matter which restaurant you go to, the service is fantastic. The Oleander Room Dinner only. The nicest restaurant on the property. The menu has lots of great Jamaican specialties. Try the Ackee and Salt Cod-it's the national dish, and very good. The entrance to the restaurant is hard to find-walk past the Bayside entrance to the end of the terrace. Bayside Breakfast and Lunch are both buffet style. The selections change a little bit every day. Try the calaloo-it's a local vegetable-if you like kale or collard greens, you'll like it. A nice casual restaurant-you can eat either inside under a ceiling fan, or outside on the terrace, which has a lovely view. Dinner (except for Fridays) has a menu to choose from, with some pretty good choices. On Fridays for dinner, the doors between the Oleander Room and Bayside are opened and the whole place is an international buffet, which has lots of great choices. The dessert table alone is to die for. Tokyo Joe's Dinner only. The drawback here is that on rainy days it may be closed, since the area it's in is totally outdoors. If this is the case, they may attempt to put it under cover behind the Bayside terrace. Great oriental, done in a slightly Jamaican style. A serve yourself salad bar starts things off, and then there's another bar where you choose your own vegetables and meat, and then a chef will stir fry it in front of you. Irie Bar/Grill Lunch. Located right on the beach, you can get all your favorite drinks right here (including Red Stripe beer), and around the back, there's a great grill with hot dogs, hamburgers, and Jamaican jerk pork and chicken sandwiches.
Alcohol
All your alcoholic drinks here are included, as much as you want. The only rum they have is Appleton, and the only beer they have is Red Stripe, but they're both very good. The pool that has the swim up bar is the best! If you're around the pool bar and they start serving "bang bangs", swim right up and check it out-it's fun. You sit right on the bar, lean back, and the bartender makes your drink for you right in your mouth-a splash of mixer, then a splash of rum, shake it up, and there you are! The really unexpected thing is that even the activities crew participates-sometimes they'll start up drinking games-check the activities schedule for times.
Activities
Sandals has a teriffic activities staff. There are always fun activities to do, and the more you take part in, the more points you can earn, which will entitle you to gifts such as Sandals t-shirts. Check the activities schedule to participate in impromptu activities such as beach or pool volleyball, bocce ball, aerobics, dance classes, the drinking games we've mentioned before, and lots of other fun stuff. The staff will even come around the beach recruiting people for the games. There is also lots of water sports equipment available for free at the water sports desk, located on the beach. You can borrow water trikes, canoes, kayaks, flotation devices, sailboats, and other stuff. You can also sign up for jet skiing, glass bottom boat rides, snorkeling trips, and most importantly:
SCUBA DIVING! Inexperienced Divers: The resort has a free introductory class that will teach you the basics and allow you to go on shallow dives (under 40 feet). It's great fun, and everyone should try it! As long as you are reasonably healthy, and do not get claustrophobic, you'll be fine. It's a blast! If you find that you really like it, the free class gets you part of the way towards getting PADI certification, so you'll be able to dive anywhere in the world. You can get PADI certified here, for an extra fee. This also makes even simple diving much easier-if you have the basic certification, you won't ever have to take the free classes again-you'll be able to start diving right away! (The basic certification allows you to dive up to 40 feet with an instructor, which is mostly what you'd want to do anyway.) The dive sites are excellent-very beautiful. And the great thing is that it's done rain or shine. Our dive instructor said if it's raining, you might as well dive! You're going to get wet anyway! Experienced Divers: If you're an experienced diver and have a higher certification than the basic PADI 40 feet certification, there are deeper water dives available, and nighttime dives as well, all included in the resort price! More about PADI: The dive masters here are great people-very knowledgeable and very patient. We highly suggest getting certified here-it’s a good deal less expensive than anyplace else, especially considering you don’t have to pay to rent equipment and stuff like that. You can also increase your certification level here, so if you want to increase your knowledge about diving, and want to go on those deep water and nighttime dives, this is the place to learn. The prices are very reasonable, especially since you don't have to rent equipment. Drawbacks to Sandals diving: It's great that it's included, when everything is in working order. In the week we spent there, some of the dives were cancelled because the boats they use to get to the dive sites are absolutely decrepit. Each resort is supposed to have its own boat, but we ended up sharing a boat with Sandals Royal Caribbean. (Sandals Royal Caribbean is not far from Sandals Montego Bay, but this precluded the 2 dives a day that are usually scheduled.) The boat that we did have was leaking fuel, which gets all over you as you are reentering the boat after a dive, which makes for a very bad taste in your mouth. If you can get past this, the fact that it's supposed to be part of the "all inclusive" is still a good thing.
Exchange Privileges
As a Sandals guest, you are entitled to use all the facilities at any of the other Sandals properties on the island. (This is true of the entire Sandals chain.) This includes all the activities, bars, and restaurants. There are 6 properties total on the island of Jamaica. The 2 closest to Montego Bay are Sandals Royal Caribbean and Sandals Inn, and a free shuttle goes between the 3. (At the time we went, Sandals Inn was closed for remodeling.) The other properties, Sandals Ocho Rios, Sandals Negril, and Sandals Dunn's River are farther away. You can use the facilities at these, as well, but you'll need to pay for your own transportation-they're far enough away that you'd have to take an Air Jamaica shuttle to them. If you're big time into scuba diving, trying to see these other properties could preclude some of your dive time, and you certainly wouldn't be able to scuba dive at them-remember, you really shouldn't dive for the 12-24 hours leading up to an airplane flight.
The Gift Shop
If you think you will have time to shop at the airport duty free shopping, DO NOT SHOP HERE. We found that the prices here turned out to be much higher than airport duty free-especially on alcohol. It's an ok shop for stuff you need, or Sandals paraphernalia, but on other souvenir type stuff, it's not worth it. We never ventured out of the resort for other shopping, so if you're brave, the outdoor market down the road may be even cheaper.
Sightseeing Tours
Sandals has a tour desk where you can book off property sightseeing tours. There's only one person working the desk and the wait can be quite long at times. There are lots of tours available, including shopping tours, safaris, river rafting, and horseback riding. We chose: Chukka Blue Jungle River Tubing A jeep picks you up at the hotel, drives up in the mountains, and then you board your own personal tube for a journey down the river. Guides take your group down the river, explaining the foliage and history along the way. It's a really beautiful area. If you take a waterproof camera, one of the guides will be glad to take pictures of you during your journey. It's a fun trip, and worth the time-it was a little rainy when we went, but you're getting wet anyway, so who cares? Don't worry about your belongings-anything you don't want to take on the river with you, such as cameras, etc. will be safe in the jeep when you get back-we left a backpack with a nice camera in it, and it was fine when we returned. One drawback-don't count on the trip duration they advertise-Jamaican roads are in extremely poor condition, and the ride to the river on the Jeep took twice as long as they said it would. The drivers are very nice, though-they tell you alot about Jamaican history, and point out lots of interesting sights. Getting out at least once like this gives you the chance to see the real Jamaica, which is mostly quite sad. It's a 3rd world country, where most of the people live in nasty looking corrugated metal shacks. The joke that goes around about Jamaicans having more than one job is no joke-they don't make much money-if we remember correctly, our driver said he makes about 3000 Jamaican dollars a week, which was about $60 US at the time.
Taxis
There are lots of sightseeing tours to choose from available at the tour desk, but what if you want to go somewhere that a tour isn't available for? You can take a taxi-there are always taxis available at the entrance, but we don't recommend it. We wanted to go to Appleton Estates, where they make Jamaican rum-a tour is available there. The only way to get there is taxi. When we approached a taxi driver to ask how much it might be, he said it was too late in the day to try to get there (in more of an "I don't feel like it" kind of tone), but would we like to go somewhere else that he could suggest. Basically, you have to barter with them about the price of your ride, which we don't like-we're used to set prices. The other thing is that he kept bugging us when we said no thanks, which really creeped us out. So, we decided taxis were definitely out.
Checking Out and Getting Back to the Airport
You have to check out of your room by 10AM, but you still have full resort priviledges until it's time for you to catch the shuttle for the airport. There is a list at the front desk of airline departures and the shuttles scheduled for them, but we suggest leaving an hour earlier than their suggested shuttle. The airport is only 10 minutes away, but the shuttle didn't even arrive at the hotel until 2 hours before the flight, and we wanted to already have been there by then. We suggest letting them know you want to leave on an earlier shuttle, to make sure you have plenty of time for checking in, and duty free shopping.
The Airport and Departure Flights
Sangster Airport is very poorly designed. They do not have xray machines for the check in luggage, so the lines for flights to the US can get extremely long and slow, since their customs makes you open EVERY SINGLE BAG so one of their people can paw through your belongings. (We really didn't appreciate this, since our bags were really packed tightly and this made it very hard to resituate our belongings and close them again.) They really need to spend some money and get some up to date equipment for inspecting check in luggage, instead of the tables that are set up directly in front of the USAirways counter, serving both as "customs desks" and hindrances to making the line move quickly at the same time.
Once you've (FINALLY) checked in for your flight, you should have time to take advantage of the duty free shops, where you'll find lots of bargains on liquor, souvenirs, and famous Jamaican coffee-the coffee is an especially good deal compared with what you pay at home.
Overall Review
Our overall feeling of the trip is that we would go back, and most especially to an all inclusive resort. Everyone at Sandals Montego Bay really tries to make your trip fun, and they succeed. The scuba diving alone makes the trip worthwhile, even with the problems with the dive boat. What you'd pay for scuba equipment rental and the dives themselves anyplace else (hundreds of $) is all included-wow! We wouldn't bother doing any off property sightseeing again, since the Jamaican roads really didn't impress us.
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