We'd decided to stay in MoBay our last night in Jamaica because our flight was at 2:30 and even if we took the back way, we weren't sure if there'd be traffic or not. That meant we'd have to leave pretty early and lose the half-day. So, we decided to have Lee pick us up around 11 the day before to go back the coast road way and stop by some falls, make a day of it. The falls Lee took us to is called "Five Fingers" and it's somewhere up in the hills near Lucea. It's a small family operation way up there and the road was something else! Curves on the side of the mountain...I'm glad I wasn't driving but I was really glad to get to see it - really beautiful country. One of the things I love about Jamaica is it's big enough to visit 100 times and never see the same things but you make friends you want to visit again and again too!

Anyway, for $10US (both of us) to the family, whose daughter acted as tour guide and escort, we hiked down to the falls. This is a pretty steep hike but there are steps cut all the way down and when you get to the bottom there's this beautiful, deep, pool with a single set of falls cascading down. I'll add pictures when I develop them We had the place to ourselves and swam (refreshing - you do get used to it, really - it was not very hot the day we were there so the water was extra-cool), chatted with Lee and enjoyed ourselves immensely. We got a couple of red stripes from the family store before we went down.

We went on and stopped for late lunch at a restaurant by the water near Round Hill, where, incidentally, How Stella Got Her Groove Back was mostly filmed. We laughed a lot - the waitress was so bad (told us they were out of everything - Lee found the owner who informed us they DID have everything) we got the bartender reassigned to our table, it was very funny. I don't remember the name of the place but it was right on the sea and the food was good.

We got to MoBay in the late afternoon needing a place to stay near the beach and town because we wanted to be able to walk places. I'd checked out a couple of hotels online before I left so we stopped first at Caribic House. It was cheap but kind of depressing. We also stopped at Doctor's Cave Beach Hotel, too expensive. We wound up at El Greco, on Queen's Drive on top of the hill. Mo Bay has a tourist strip (Gloucester Ave - the "Hip Strip") and right behind it is a very steep cliff with a road on top. Our hotel was up top but there is a 16 story hotel/apt building on the beach road there and we just walked across a covered indoor overpass and took the elevator of that building down to the beach. Neat.

El Greco was very nice - new, lovely grounds, good security, we had a suite w/ kitchen and living room. We hated it. We were so bummed to NOT be in Negril. MoBay felt like a cold city to us (and this is where we usually go!) after that, and our nice hotel felt really sterile after Blue Cave's kitschy rooms. We made the best of it - had a great Chinese dinner at Ghuangzhou, went to Doctor's Cave Beach and snorkeled our last morning, had lunch with Lee at Margeuritaville before we went to the airport, but next time I'd do Lee's excellent tour with the falls on the way down and take Air Negril at the last possible minute on the way back!

The thing that especially struck us about Negril is how comfortable everyone is. Most places had locals, tourists, ex-pats - all together hanging out. In MoBay things felt more segregated - tourists here, locals there. We met more non-tourists this trip than in all the others combined! We felt absolutely comfortable everywhere in Negril.

Notice how we're already talking about what we'll do next time...thinking maybe June if Hookah goes down....