Music, art, people, history and of course immense natural beauty help define the magic of Jamaica, and the Caribbean island’s small boutique resorts allow visitors to connect with it all without having to make any concessions to comfort.
Here are seven of Jamaica’s best boutique resorts for immersing in Jamaican culture up close and personal.
Tensing Pen, Negril It’s hard to find a literal definition of a “tensing pen,” but I like the notion that this Negril resort takes your tension, confines it to a little cage, and tosses it off the nearby cliffs into the Caribbean. Often described as “rustic” due to its construction from blocks of local stone and thatched-roofed buildings, Tensing Pen is hardly a place where guests need to rough it. Inside the walls of the hotels’ rooms and cottages you’ll find bamboo and mahogany furniture that blend as well with the garden setting as the hotel walls do with Negril’s famous cliffs. Likewise, trails lined with lush foliage wander from the rooms to a freeform pool, open-air restaurant, a spa, and spots where you can test your courage with a cliff dive into the inviting waters below.
