Couples Tower Isle - The FREE catamaran is back.

Couples Tower Isle - swim up pool bar

Couples Tower Isle - Ocho Rios has very pretty beaches with nice water

Couples Tower Isle - Tower Isle is offshore clothing optional paradise

Couples Tower Isle - Italian restaurant over the water

Couples Tower Isle - New Rooms overlooking the pool and beach

Sunset Beach Resort Montego Bay Jamaica

Sunset Beach Resort Montego Bay
Great Value Priced Family Resort with Waterpark

Sunset Beach Resort Montego Bay
Kids Pool with Black Pearl Pirate Boat

Site Inspection Report – Ocho Rios – Jamaica
October 13-16, 2012

Couples Sans Souci
We stayed three nights at Couples Sans Souci in Ocho Rios – Jamaica. Couples Sans Souci is divided into two sections that I will call the Upper Level and the Beach Level. You enter the resort from the upper level that has the lobby, The Casanova Restaurant and the Balloon Bar. We stayed in a 1 BR Suite in the Gardenia block and we liked the quieter atmosphere up the hill although we took three or four trips up and down the steps daily depending on where you were going at the time.

We ate twice at Casanova and once at Pallazina plus we had a few buffet lunches and breakfasts while at the resort. The buffets were absolutely excellent with creative options, a daily Jamaican special at both lunch and dinner. Breakfast always had fresh fruit including creative Jamaican offerings like soursop or jackfruit. There was an omelette station with pancakes and a Jamaican choice like ackee and codfish or dumplings. Lunch always had a great salad bar and a cheese tray along with three or four entrees and a carving station with jerk pork or baked chicken.

Casanova is an a la carte experience with creative appetizers like ackee in puff pastry or crab cakes. Soups and salads were good and creative. One night was a local pumpkin soup with toasted pumpkin seeds and bacon bits served from a coffee pitcher as a cappuccino. Entrees were varied like Snapper or Rack of Lamb or Beef Loin done in a Caribbean fusion style. Pallazina is an Italian restaurant with a good salad bar, a pasta station and a Segundo entrée like fish or chicken.

The beaches were clean and there is one down a garden path for the clothing optional people and another beach by the beach suites for us regular people. Water sports was one of the most active areas of the resort with a daily dive boat going out full each morning, twice a day glass bottom boat and snorkeling tours, even water skiing, water trikes, hobie cats and a nice area for swimming with plenty of chase lounges and floating chair cushion pads for people..

The staff was the highlight of our trip to Couples Sans Souci. Everybody was friendly and interested in making sure we had a great trip. In all areas of the resort, Couples has empowered the staff to interact with guests to make sure that we had everything we needed. We saw mostly smiles from everybody and they actively went out of their way to make sure we were ok whenever we entered a food outlet, bar or activity area of the resort.

We opted for a half an hour couples massage and we took a daily dip in the mineral water pool at the resort. The spa facilities are located in a quiet area of the resort near the mineral water pool and a jacuzzi. There is a full weight room and exercise facility but we never went near it opting for the dessert buffet instead.

Couples Tower Isle
We stopped on our way out of Ocho Rios to have Maxine give us a tour around Couples Tower Isle. The property looked Kriss as the Jamaican’s would say. Everything has been redone while the resort was closed for more than a year but it really has been "restored" to the original 50’s style made famous by Abe Issa when the big money clientele came to rest at Tower Isle in a time gone by.

The rooms looked great including the new deluxe ocean view and jr. suites by the original pool. There is a new pool overlooking the Tower Isle dock and it looked like the skinny dippers had already headed out to the Island as we could see the tanned bodies off in the distance as we walked around the main areas of the resort. We were told that Couples had purchased its own catamaran and brought back the popular afternoon boat-ride that is complimentary to see the Ocho Rios coastline from the sea. The Couples Tower Isle Spa is completely new and located in the garden area of the resort. The restaurants have all been redone but with tiles that resemble the 50s Cuban tiles and other authentic touches. Overall, we couldn’t be happier with the update to this hotel and suggest it will continue to be a mainstay of the Honeymoon/Romantic Get-a-Way market.

Sunset Jamaica Grande
We have stayed here many times since our honeymoon under different hotel branding. It is now locally owned by a Jamaican businessman who is the third largest hotelier in Jamaica at this point in time. Our friends are the resident manager and operations managers for the hotel so we stopped to socialize and take a look around as this hotel has been refurbished in the last few years.

We were very pleasantly surprised at the look and quality of this 3 and a half star hotel. I think for the money, this is probably one of the best values you could buy on the island. Erol showed us around personally and we were dropping cruise documents off for Gary’s 20th Anniversary cruise from Miami next month, so it was old home week. The rooms look great, the common areas of the property are clean and freshly painted with a bright Jamaican look and the pools now serpentine all around the property and eight pools are connected together from place to place.

The hotel has a large kid’s area and the rooms look surprisingly upscale for the age of the physical plant at this hotel. We originally stayed here when it was Americana on our honeymoon and many times for conferences when we worked as tour operators for the Jamaican Government in the eighties and nineties. I have always liked the hotel as you can walk into town with a short walk and you are right on Turtle Beach so you can see an occasional cruise ship berthed outside of the hotel.

Jamaica Grand offers a large buffet, Asian and Italian restaurants plus a genuine Jamaican pub serving jerk, oxtail, escovitch fish and other local specialties. Basic rooms face the mountains and town. ocean view rooms are in the towers facing the Caribbean Sea but the oceanfront cabana rooms are our favorite as they are two story at beach level and adults only doubles.

We came away from Jamaica Grand pleasantly surprised at how nice the place looked for a moderate hotel. If you are budget challenged don’t overlook a trip to Sunset Jamaica Grande in the off season as you can do so for less than $800 per person including airfare, airport transfers, three meals daily, unlimited bar drinks, taxes and service charges.

Off to the Country… Mon
After Jamaica Grande, we had the driver head up into the hills to see a friend we had not looked up for almost 10 years. Patsy was one of the first Air Jamaica flight attendants as a young girl but she worked for us in America when we did Spring Break promotions at colleges for Jamaica. She adopted the Rasta Philosophy in the early eighties and lived for a while in Runaway Bay with extra guest cottages owned by an uncle in Canada, so we used to visit regularly when we worked in Jamaica.

For about ten years, it became our "yard" in Jamaica. Pat used to have a dog that would eat anybody who entered the yard without permission. We stayed so often and always brought food so that same dog would run up to the car and wag his tail to see what food I always brought when I pulled in. I remember him eating the left over chicken bones and all as life is tough sometimes for the locals in this country.

Food is great at the little restaurants in Jamaica always served with rice and peas.

Remembering that, I had the driver stop for food in Runaway Bay at JZees for some excellent jerk chicken and oxtails over rice and peas with tasty vinegar coleslaw. Luckily the driver was from the Brownstown area so we were able to find Sister P, who lives about 45 minutes above Runaway Bay.

When we left Patsy ten years ago she had just moved into her grandmother’s rock house from the mid 1800s. She had a cistern to collect water and no electricity at the time. Ten years had been good to her and she now had electricity, an extra bedroom on the 1880s house and a little car that her cousin helped her obtain. When she left America, she gave her car to her cousin’s daughter who had repaid the favor 15 years later by showing up at the house with a used car that a friend was selling.

Patsy chops down a green banana for as thanks for our driver bringing us up the hill. Jamaican's share with each other as the island is abundant even though the people are poor.

Her grandparent’s property has two houses with cousins in the other house. The property is now covered with food crops like oranges, ackee, breadfruit, bananas, flowers and gardens with yams so they always have plenty of fresh food to eat. We stayed a couple of hours and Patsy gratefully tipped our driver with a dozen oranges and a bunch of green bananas, then we were off to Montego Bay. The driver stopped so Gina and I could see the new port at Falmouth and the Oasis was in port.

Sunset Montego Bay
Our last night in Jamaica was at a hotel called Sunset Beach Resort in Montego Bay. This is the sister hotel to Sunset Jamaica Grande that we had toured in the afternoon. We checked in and my friend the VP of Sales had upgraded us to a 1 BR Suite. This is another of those budget hotels run by the local company that offered more quality than the price indicated. The rooms looked great and the grounds were clean, planted with flowering plants and well maintained. The towers were originally Sea Wind in Jamaica so they are from the 1970’s but these guys gut everything and redo the rooms with new tile and furnishings. If you have every flown to Montego Bay in the last twenty years, this is the large high rise off the aircraft in the middle of Montego Bay past the cruise port.

Again the hotel has Asian, Italian and a large buffet plus a beach grill. Everything was closed the evening we arrived as it was Beach Party Night at the entertainment facility. It was kind of a self-serve affair but we found plenty to eat with a good pepperpot soup and some great bar b que chicken and ribs. This bar b que crew went to Memphis a few years ago for the bbq cook off and won awards for their product and sauce so it was a good night to be there. The jerk man lit up when I mentioned the award so it was nice to remind him of a fun time during a tough economic time in Jamaica. The beach party entertainment was a cavalcade of local acts including dance troupes, teenage singing groups, local reggae artists, an awesome steel pan band and of course a crab man., a balancing act, and no show in Jamaica would be complete without a fire eater.

In the AM, we got up and toured the resort on our own before everything got going. The beaches look good and they even have a private clothing optional beach way down the end. I think this is probably one of the least expensive hotels with full clothing optional sunbathing if you are a nudist. After the photo shoot and walk around, we stopped for a great buffet breakfast where they served a top notch banana bread, had an omelet station and all the American and Jamaican breakfast choices you would expect at a good all-inclusive.

Overall our opinion of this hotel was very high. I think they are providing great value for the money. The nice thing on the way out was that we were only about 20 minutes from the airport, so it was a quick trip home. The airport in Montego Bay has been completely redone. The Jetblue flight to Orlando was under $300 (some times of year) plus it is a nonstop flight of only about 1.5 hours flight time so Jamaica is a great cheap get away from Orlando.