Welcome to my first travel review post! I really enjoy reading (or watching on YouTube) about people’s travel reviews and recommendations so thought I’d put together a little review of my own to share my experience of my most recent trip to Jamaica. Keep on reading to hear about my thoughts on the location, accommodations, food, activities, experience, and what amenities I would consider to be “diabetes friendly.” If you need help packing all your diabetes supplies, check out my blog post on how to prepare and pack for your trip here.
This trip took me, my husband, Chris, and our friend and travel agent guru, Emily, to the Riu Palace Tropical Bay in Negril, Jamaica. This resort is located on Bloody Bay on the northern stretch of the infamous Seven Mile Beach bringing me to my first category of location.
Location, Location, Location!
We flew into Sangster International Airport on the northwestern corner of the island in Montego Bay.
We then hopped on a shuttle for an hour and a half drive down the coast to the west side of the island. The drive can seem lengthy after spending such a long time sitting on a plane, but the drive is right along the coast for water views most of the way plus it’s neat to see the island and drive through the towns along the way.
This beach is one of the main reasons many people travel to Negril. First, it is very flat making for an easy walk along the beach in addition to being able to walk out into the water pretty far and still only be waist deep. Second, being in a bay, the water is very calm making it nice to sit in the water or float on a raft (what we did most of the time!). I’d highly recommend packing some type of raft or floatation device, but there are some available in the gift shop as well.
If you are one who loves to jump into crashing waves, this beach may not be for you, but you should definitely experience calm water like this at least once. The water is clear, clean, and the most beautiful turquoise color. Not to mention, since this beach faces directly west, the sunsets are ah-mazing! The location of this resort is only a 10-15 minute taxi ride to beach bars and restaurants along Seven Mile Beach and a 15 minute ride to Rick’s Cafe.
Accommodations
This particular Riu was not adults-only and was a family friendly resort. When staying at a Riu, you pretty much know what you are going to get as they all have the same restaurants, buffet, main pool(s), swim up bar pool, and an entertainment/theater area. What makes the difference in the experience is the layout, location, and the people. What I like about the layout of the Riu resorts is that they are fairly compact so you don’t have a long walk or have to call a golf cart to take you where you want to go. This particular resort’s layout was very long and narrow allowing everything to be along the beach which is, after all, the spotlight of this location. You come to this resort for the beach and not the pool. We did not get into any of the pools the entire time we were there and spent our days on the beach. However, we did see a lot of the kids in the pools and the swim up bar pool seemed to be quite popular and was always busy.
Our room was in a building facing the beach, but all the buildings are right along the beach making beach access for every room on the resort only a few steps away. This brings me to my first “diabetes friendly” travel point. When I’ve switched to injections instead of my pump during a trip, I like to have quick access to my room to leave my insulin pens in the room instead of having them out with me in the hot sun. I felt very safe at this resort, but I also didn’t want to risk the chance of someone swiping my bag from my beach chair and risk losing my insulin in that event. Having a room close to the beach was then just a quick trip whenever I needed an injection throughout the day.
The rooms themselves are nice, clean, comfortable, and updated as this resort was recently renovated, but nothing to write home about in terms of luxury. We had a king size bed with a sitting area and balcony. There was plenty of closet space with hangers, an iron, ironing board, and a safe. The mini bar area included a coffee maker and a mini fridge stocked with waters, regular Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, and Red Stripe beer. My second “diabetes friendly” point is the inclusion of a mini fridge in the room for insulin storage and also the inclusion of regular soda in case of low blood sugar. The bathroom had a walk in shower (no tub), single sink, and toilet and included a hair dryer, bar of soap, a small tube of conditioner, and then a dispenser on the shower wall of body/hair gel. For those of you who like to sleep cold, the air conditioning does not go any lower than 20 degrees C which is 68 degrees F. I believe you can request to have your AC go lower than that if you want. There is also a ceiling fan in the room. A few negatives about our room was the air was humid which made everything feel a little damp and could make it feel warmer in than room than it actually was. There were also quite a few mosquitoes in our room, but the strange thing was, they didn’t bite, didn’t come after me, and didn’t make that annoying buzzing sound which blew my mind as I’m used to mosquitoes attacking me living in the midwest United States. I only got one mosquito bite the whole time we were there. They did spray the resort every night with some type of bug spray so maybe that contributed to them being so docile. Every afternoon a quick rain storm would come in between 1-3pm and the hallway would flood outside our room so we would have to walk through a puddle going to and from our room, but the staff did try to be on top of mopping it up.
Food
The breakfast and lunch options were the buffet with the food being very typical buffet-type food. All I need to be happy with my breakfast is an omelet station and pastries and they had both of those. The resort also has a jerk shack on the beach that would serve up chicken, sausages, rice, veggies, and choice of mild or spicy jerk sauce which was all very tasty! We actually never ate at the lunch buffet as we would eat a big breakfast and then grab food from the jerk shack on the beach for some lunch later in the afternoon. A few of the days we were there, the jerk shack turned into a pizza shack late in the afternoon where you could have a personal pan pizza made for you.
For dinner, there were the options of the dinner buffet or one of the specialty restaurants: Italian, Japanese, steakhouse, or fusion. We ate at all the restaurants for our dinners and never went to the dinner buffet. Our favorites were the Italian and Japanese. All the dinner food from the restaurants was really good and never disappointed. All the dinner menus included 3 courses of an appetizer, entrée, and dessert. You did not need to make dinner reservations, but due to COVID to be sure people were spaced out and cleaning occurred between guests, there was an early seating at 6:30 or a later seating at 8:00pm.
And now we can’t forget about the drinks! There are 5 bars at this resort: lobby bar, beach bar, pool bar, and then 2 bars by the theater area that opened in the evening. I recommend the mango mojito! There was also a cappuccino bar in the lobby bar where we would go for morning coffees.
Travel Pro Tip: Bring an insulated double wall cup with you and ask the bartender to put your drink in that cup instead of a plastic one as it will keep your drink colder much longer when out in the hot sun.
The resort also had a 24 hour lounge that you could go to for snacks at any time of day, and I weirdly became obsessed with the salad in this lounge. Yes, I did say salad. The greens and veggies were so fresh and flavorful that you could tell it all had to have been locally grown. The salad dressing was really tasty as well and overall, it just really hit the spot…I may have been eating 2 of these a day. In my defense, they were in small to go containers and I definitely got my veggies in on this trip!
Activities
Non-motorized water sport activities like kayaking and paddleboarding are included as part of your stay. There were also opportunities to pay for activities like parasailing or water tubing in the bay if interested. Riu resorts also have their own entertainment staff who would lead various activities throughout the day such as water aerobics or trivia in the swim up bar pool. There is nightly entertainment in the theater from 9-10pm that consisted of various themed shows, a reggae band 2 nights, a karaoke night, and a steel drum band played our last night of the trip. We really enjoyed the reggae band and steel drum band. After the show, a DJ would play from 10-11pm for those who wanted to keep partying.
One of the days of our trip we went off resort and got a taxi to Rick’s Cafe. If you haven’t heard of Rick’s Cafe, it’s famous for it’s cliffside jumping. There a few different spots where us common folk can jump in and then a few special spots, like the high platform pictured to the left, that only the “professional” jumpers were allowed to do. Emily and I jumped off the lowest spot available to at least say we have jumped at the famous Rick’s Cafe, but Chris was brave and jumped off the highest one he was able to. The water was so clear and again such a pretty turquoise color. Even though you could see all the way down to the rocks at the bottom, the professional jumpers said it was 20 something feet deep. We also enjoyed some of the famous rum punch while were at Rick’s Cafe. Our original plan was to eat lunch at Rick’s, but on our ride there, our taxi driver suggested we eat a place called Ivan’s that was just down the road from Rick’s as they have really good food. We decided to take him up on his suggestion and were so glad we did!
Ivan’s restaurant was a hidden gem as from the road nothing could be seen over the fence and gate, but as it turns out, Ivan’s is located in the Catcha Falling Star resort which had such beautiful greenery, plants, and gardens to walk through (see picture the the right). We had an absolutely delicious meal. I had a jerk chicken pasta, Chris got fish, and Emily got a mango chicken, and all 3 were superb! We also had a wonderful waitress who was very kind and made us feel right at home. Besides the food, the view from this restaurant is incredible (see photo below) as it is right on the cliffs offering an unobstructed sea view.
As we were getting ready to leave the restaurant and catch a taxi back to our resort, the afternoon rain shower came in and there was a really peaceful and intimate ambiance of the gentle rain amidst all the plant life. We took a little walk around the resort and looks like a great place to stay! Overall, it was a great day and experience and one of our favorite moments of the trip. Side note, I loved these trees that had fern like leaves and bright orange flowers. So pretty. One is pictured to the left that was out front of Ivan’s and the Catcha Falling Star resort.
Experience
In rating my overall trip experience, this was my second trip to Jamaica (first trip was to Montego Bay) and would keep going back! I love the island and the people. Everyone was very friendly, I felt safe during the entire trip, and enjoyed seeing more of what the island has to offer. While some may say overall service is a bit slow, you have to remember you are on island time and to take a step back and relax. My last “diabetes friendly” point is that we did not change time zones (in coming from the central time zone). Technically we had moved one time zone, but daylight savings is not observed in Jamaica so it ended up being the same as the central time zone. It was nice not dealing with jet lag of any kind and my sleeping schedule was not thrown off making diabetes management a bit easier when being out of the normal daily routine on vacation.
Thank you for reading my first travel review and hope at some point in your life you are able to take a trip to the beautiful island of Jamaica!
If you are interested in booking this vacation or traveling to Jamaica, contact Emily Kupersmith with Dream Vacations at emily@godreamvacations.com or 816-527-9572. She will make it a breeze to book your trip and can help you find the experience you are looking for!
With Diabetes in Mind 
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