From Strawberry Hill in the Blue Mountains to Goldeneye on the Caribbean coast, a family adventure reveals Chris Blackwell’s Jamaica. At Strawberry Hill, Chris Blackwell gestures to his son, Chris Jr, to pull out a chair for a guest at the breakfast table, where black coffee and tropical fruit are served.
The estate is a vision of serenity, with whitewashed clapboard buildings, iconic infinity pools, and broad porches. The cottages seem to hover above the mountain range, offering sweeping views across the rainforest canopy to the hazy plains of Kingston far below.
Blackwell bought Strawberry Hill in 1972, and it would go on to become a creative sanctuary for artists, including the Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, and Bob Marley. Bob Marley famously convalesced at Strawberry Hill after being shot during an assassination attempt in 1976.
Music and Nature
According to the hotel’s public relations manager, Michelle Toyloy Carter, guests tend to arrive for one of two reasons: the music or the Bond connection. However, she offers a simpler explanation for the attraction: “Nature. That’s really what it is. We have no televisions or radios in the rooms.”
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The property is replete with stories about recovery, retreat, and famous people hiding in plain sight. With children in tow, it becomes a mountaintop village with paths to run down, verandas to take over, and adults who keep appearing from Jamaica’s rich cultural history.
A Family Connection
Children have a way of collapsing distance, and travelling with them can make you slower, sweatier, and more logistically compromised. However, it also makes you less sealed off from the places you visit. In Jamaica, children have a way of returning everything to human scale.
While exploring Kingston or jogging through mountain villages, conversations become warmer and more natural when there’s a curious five-year-old perched on your shoulders.
The family spends just two nights at Strawberry Hill but leaves feeling as though they’ve explored every winding path and hidden corner. The arrival bridge at Goldeneye is a new destination, with a misty morning shuttle descending the Blue Mountains on steep, serpentine roads.
Goldeneye: A New Destination
Beyond Kingston, the scenery changes into plains of banana and sugar cane before opening out to a sweeping panorama of the luminous Caribbean. Goldeneye is the full production: sea, lagoon, villas, huts, Bond ephemera, and a martini bar.
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Most visitors arrive at Goldeneye through the front door of Bond mythology, but the author is drawn more to the second life of the place – the one shaped by music. Chris Blackwell convinced Bob Marley to purchase the property in 1976, and when Marley decided he didn’t want it, Blackwell bought it himself as a place for friends and family to stay.
Since then, it’s hosted musicians and producers such as Quincy Jones, Fatboy Slim, and Bono. The vibe continues to this day, with Blackwell saying he wanted Goldeneye to be a place where people mix, meet, and become friends.
The Goldeneye pool and surrounding area are a social centre of gravity, with a broad sweep of white sand lined with spacious villas, Bizot Bar, and a freshwater pool. The lagoon feels more private and elemental, its cottages opening directly onto the water from decks furnished with kayaks.
A Series of Distinct Little Worlds
Goldeneye unfolds as a series of distinct little worlds, each with its own rhythm. Low Cay Beach is its social centre, while the lagoon feels more private. Further along the coast, the freestanding beach huts rise among tropical gardens between Snorkeler’s Cove, Button Beach, and Shabeen.
Shabeen is a breezy gathering place, with a pool, cocktails, and a rooftop overlooking the Caribbean. Button Beach is scruffier and more playful, its little Bamboo Bar serving rum, jerk, and fish brought in by local boat – a hub of activity for young families.
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Unlike many hotels, the choreography of separation collapses here. Within minutes, your carefully maintained adult boundaries have been destroyed by a shared bucket, a ball, or lunch. At Button Beach, the family meets other parents.
As the children catch hermit crabs together below a palm tree, the adults trade stories. Before long, they are drinking rum out of coconuts and exploring the lagoon by kayak and paddleboard.
The final evening ends with a drum circle beside the sea at Shabeen. Cocktails pass between guests while Rastafarian Nyabinghi drummers play in front of the breaking surf, the rhythm carrying across the water.
Decades later, the author finds himself sitting beside Blackwell as the children take over. The daughter squeezes in around a drum with the two friends she has made, and Blackwell’s grandchildren join them. Jamaica is full of larger-than-life stories, but this is the image that stays: children drumming together after dark, oblivious to the history gathered around them.