There is something that sets the Land of Wood and Water apart from its neighbours. Never mind the perennial sunshine, sea and sex, its greenery (not the spending kind), flavourful food, exotic music and beautiful people. There is a near inexplicable allure that draws almost 2 million tourists to its 4,000 square mile radius annually, something that intoxicates countless romantics into giving up corporate pay checks, high rises and Starbucks runs, to melt away on the golden dunes of the sun-bathed isle.
Notwithstanding, Fox News recently published the summary of a poll, where Reddit users placed Jamaica at number 7 out of 8 “Most Disappointing Travel Destinations on Earth.” Some people thought the ports were “full of opportunists looking for tips for doing nothing”.
I think we’d all be booking the first-flight to whatever country that is totally free of ‘opportunists’. Even if we were to take a story with such a sensational headline and – if you can believe it – use Reddit as a source seriously, a handful of people on an internet thread hardly make a majority. Everyone experiences the island in his own unique way and it would be silly to expect that every single person who has ever been to a country all have the same thing to say about it. And let’s face it; as my father once told me, “All of the worthwhile women in this world make you sweat a little”. And there’s a fair share of sweating in Jamrock.
Yet still, it’s hard to walk a mile in this country without running into another tanned, mosquito-bitten ex-pat who traveled to the island and got laid a little too back, and now has a thrilling story of how he packed up his corner office and ditched the big city to trod the beaches of Negril and limbo the rest of his life away on the sand. As a fellow victim of this grip, I’ve often wondered what exactly she put in this Kool-Aid – and there really is a Kool-aid flavour called ‘Jamaica‘, by the way.
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