My first ever trip to Negril, Jamaica…

I visited the land of wood and water back in April to attend and be the wedding photographer for a friend’s wedding, and aside from the attempted breaking down of the door to my room at the Riu Negril it was an adventure I won’t forget!

Jamaica, a place that since I was young I’ve always wanted to visit. I grew up with a lot of friends from the Caribbean in the west end of Toronto, and my father had some Guyanese friends who would come over for BBQ’s and play Reggae music all night, so I was brought up close to the culture at an early age even learning how to speak Patois, the native language of the Jamaican people.

So for our trip we went with Sunwing Vacations and stayed at the Riu Negril on the picturesque Bloody Bay. As I’d stated, the experience was great, the staff were friendly and aside from the heart stopping moment when I came back to my resort room to find somebody had tried to force my door open in the middle of the night while I was at the disco. Initially the Resort manager and first front desk girl had tried to accuse me or my drunk friends of “knocking too loud” and that “nothing was wrong since they didn’t break into the room”. Sorry, my friends didn’t bring screwdrivers and don’t try to punch my lock in. I’m just really thankful that when this was happening sometime between 1130pm-1am (based on reports that people heard a ‘slamming sound’ and thought it was just people coming back from the bar being loud.) my friend and his fiancee who’s door was directly across from mine didn’t step out into this situation as I’m not sure what would have happened.

Apparently the staff at RIU Negril saw no problem with this state of my door.

Just a heads up, if you’re going to stay at a resort it’s ALWAYS important to lock the deadbolt on your door when you leave, and always have your valuables in your safe even though I’ve heard many stories of ‘master codes’ and room safes being pried open (or off the wall) it’s still it’s never a bad idea to make sure everything is always safely locked away. Had I not engaged my deadbolt lock this would have been a story about how my room was broken into and everything I had was stolen. That would have been a nightmare of a vacation, thankfully that didn’t happen and I managed to talk the resort into putting me (begrudgingly) into a whole other building on the resort instead of just down the hall like they initially had tried. After that among our wedding party of 16 people we kept my room number and location secret and never spoke of it aloud, it’s like I was located at a tropical Area 51.

Not my ideal, but I found it made it a bit easier to leave my room with my stuff in it without worrying who might be watching me and trying to find out where I was moved to. Would I return to the Riu Negril or suggest it to my clients planning a wedding there? Seeing how that situation was handled I think I would be a little hesitant to give it my two thumbs up to be honest or stay in that resort again, I’ve heard of other places worth checking out in Negril and in Jamaica in general and I would be curious to see what they are like, I’m tentatively going back (to another resort) at the end of August for another wedding so I’ll report back after that trip. One of the other people from our group spoke to Sunwing Vacations and they gave them a $100 credit to make up for the bad vibe that everybody was left with on our trip after my situation, and also in regards to some other issues they had encountered in our 7 day stay. During my stay there I ran into the General Manager of the RIU Negril and showed her the image and told her the story and she was shocked and appalled that this happened, took my info, and I never heard back.

So although I had that scary situation, it could have been worse, and it doesn’t change my view on the beautiful people and country I visited as that could realistically happen anywhere, and being a photographer I’m automatically a mark as soon as my gear is spotted. So please, don’t let this scare you out of a trip, just be safe about it and stay in a well reviewed place and keep your very important valuables either on you at all times on the resort or very very very well secured and hidden. I’ll be looking for secondary security options for my next trip.

So without any further adieu, here is my personal set from Jamaica, we flew into Montego Bay and took a bus to Negril so these photos are either in Negril, or somewhere between the airport and Bloody Bay. Custom prints are always available for sale so please contact me if you’re interested.