|
| |
|
ORACABESSA |
| |
|
|
| |
Lit in the afternoons by an apricot light that must have inspired
its Spanish name Orocabeza , or "Golden Head", ORACABESSA , some sixteen
miles east of Ocho Rios, is a friendly one-street town with a covered
produce market (main days Thursday and Friday) and a few shops and bars.
A centre for the export of bananas until the early 1900s, Oracabessa
became something of a ghost town when the wharves around the small
natural harbour closed in 1969, taking with them the rum bars, gambling
houses and most of the workers. The town snoozed quietly until the mid-1990s,
when the Island Outpost corporation, owned by Chris Blackwell, bought
seventy acres of prime coastal land and opened up the village's main
draw, the James Bond Beach Club (Tues-Sun 9am-6pm; US$5), signposted
just off Main Street along Old Wharf Road. Jamaica's most stylish beach,
the pretty but tiny strip of white sand offers brightly painted changing
rooms, a watersports centre, and a bar and restaurant. The expansive
lawns are a regular venue for large-scale concerts.
East of the turn-off for James Bond Beach, Oracabessa merges into the
residential community of Race Course . This is the site of Goldeneye ,
the unassuming white-walled bungalow in which Ian Fleming wrote almost
all of the James Bond novels. Now an exclusive hotel, it's off limits to
all but the very well-heeled.
|
| |
|
