More images from the lush, green island of Jamaica

This small but powerful waterfall, which I visited on a Jeep 4X4 Safari with Chukka Tours, feeds the Great River on the island of Jamaica, below. The waterfall once was the source of power for a sugar mill on a plantation with slave labor.

Birds of Paradise growing in the shadows near the falls.

Beautiful flowers abound.

A banana spider.

Dairy cattle.

A former slave hospital was converted into an Anglican church in 1847, above and below.

The building's exterior was made from ballast stone, which helped stabilized ships sailing to Jamaica from England. The stone also was used to build bridges and other buildings, such as the slave master's house on the sugar plantation.

Bamboo, a member of the grass family, grows four to six inches a day.

When the sugar-plantation slaves revolted, they burned the slave master's house and broke into his safe, which was filled with money.

The national dish in Jamaica combines a bland fruit called ackee and salted cod fish with hot peppers thrown into the mix. The Iberostar Grand Hotel Montego Bay served the dish for breakfast with the traditional side of boiled green bananas. The fresh ackee used in Jamaica is a rarity in New Jersey.

The sun setting near Montego Bay.

Iberostar in Jamaica: Where all inclusive meets portion control

An impressive display of ahi tuna, large Caribbean lobsters, beef and lamb at the Galleon Surf & Turf Grill & Steak House, one of four specialty restaurants inside the all-inclusive Iberostar Grand Hotel Rose Hall in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

My entree of Surf & Surf included portions of smaller lobster tails, above, after the waiter at the 5-star hotel deflected my request for one of the big tails from the magnificent crustaceans on ice near the entrance. I asked for the thick tuna steak cooked medium rare, and it came out perfect.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I ate plenty of succulent Caribbean  lobster, enjoyed many rich European cheeses and drank as much Jamaican rum and Spanish wine as I desired.

But my three-night stay at the highly rated Iberostar Grand Hotel Rose Hall in Montego Bay, Jamaica, turned out to be "all inclusive" with a number of important exceptions.

The 5-star resort from the huge Spanish hotel company offers two buffets and four specialty restaurants that serve limited menus offering guests three-course meals: 

Kiniro Japanese Restaurant, Es Palau Gourmet Restaurant, Galleon Surf & Turf Grill & Steak House and La Toscana Italian Restaurant.

At Kiniro, only farmed salmon and "red" tuna were available as sashimi, not the fresh local fish I had hoped for, and Japanese beer wasn't served.

In the Gourmet Restaurant, which serves classic French dishes, premium wines displayed near the entrance were available only at extra cost, and the menu listed no salads.

Fruit and wine

We arrived last Thursday afternoon too late to eat lunch, but were delighted to see a fruit plate and bottle of wine waiting for us on a table in our spacious oceanfront suite.

Unfortunately, there was little Jamaican fruit on the plate, and no way to open the bottle of inexpensive Spanish red wine.

I asked our butler for a corkscrew, but the bottle sat on the table unopened until we left on Sunday, and wasn't worth taking home.

Italian or Japanese?

Given all the Italian-American restaurants in northern New Jersey, where we live, I decided to try the Japanese restaurant on the our first night at the resort.

I planned to order slices of fresh local fish -- like those I saw at a roadside market only a few miles from the hotel -- content in knowing my wife, who doesn't eat fish raw, could enjoy grilled and other cooked food.

But only pale farmed salmon and tuna were available as sashimi, and the slices were unusually thin.

I ordered warm sake and Japanese beer, only to be told the latter wasn't available, another disappointment.

The following night we ate at the Surf & Turf Grill and on our last night, we had our best dinner at the Gourmet Restaurant, smallest of the four, overlooking the extra charge for premium wines.

I bought my vacation from Costco Wholesale.

At Kiniro Japanese Restaurant, slices of pale raw salmon were the thinnest I have ever seen, above, and the cooked eel sushi had been prepared ahead of time and refrigerated. The rice was still cold when served.

This thin sashimi was described as "Red Tuna Fish" on the menu, which had a number of misspellings. Often, plating of food was haphazard and very un-Japanese.

A serving of shrimp and vegetable tempura was disappointing. Inedible fried noodles came with the tempura.

My entree was unadorned grilled lobster and shrimp, with a side order of grilled vegetables on another plate. The restaurant also served beautifully tender lobster skewered or gently poached in fruit sauce, such as the appetizer below served on a cucumber slice. I asked for seconds.

In the Japanese Restaurant, this chef, who called himself "Egg Foo Young," entertained guests seated around a grill with his skill at balancing and juggling an egg, a bowl of rice and other items on his two spatulas. Here, he was scrambling eggs for fried rice.

Origin of food a mystery

There is no information on menus or signs in the hotel's buffet restaurants on whether fish, meat, poultry, eggs and produce are local or imported.

If you ask, you might find that a juice served at breakfast wasn't squeezed from Jamaican oranges.

French Brie and Spanish Manchego were served, but I never saw Italian Parmigiano Reggiano, which is sometimes referred to as the "King of Cheeses."

I loved the brie and cheddar offered for

dessert in the Gourmet Restaurant, but they should have been served with crusty bread, not crackers.

My wife's Surf & Turf included a small lobster tail and "beef fillet."

A green salad is one of the side orders available in Galleon Surf & Turf Grill.

As an appetizer, sea scallops were offered au gratin with a "ham-and-bread crust," but when I told the waiter I don't eat meat and didn't want a creamy cheese sauce, I got these juicy breaded scallops with diced tomatoes.

At Galleon Surf & Turf Grill and other restaurants, guests can drink as much inexpensive Spanish Tempranillo, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon as they can hold.

Despite the scarcity of local fish at the Iberostar Grand Hotel Rose Hall, this painting in the Surf & Turf Grill offers guests a glimpse of how Jamaicans routinely look to the Caribbean Sea for fresh food.

Part of the menu at Galleon Surf & Turf Grill & Steak House.

A gift from the chef at Iberostar's Es Palau Gourmet Restaurant: Blue cheese and apple puree in puff pastry.

The dining room of Es Palau Gourmet Restaurant.

Perfect fish and more

At the Es Palau Gourmet Restaurant on Saturday night, we found out that "all inclusive" could mean more than smaller portions of the food we wanted to eat.

As we waited to be seated, I looked over several bottles of premium wine from France and California displayed near the entrance.

At our table, I asked the hostess if the restaurant had a list of those wines, and she said it did, but they were not part of the all-inclusive plan.

Still, the restaurant served our most satisfying dinner -- perfectly cooked European fish fillets and desserts of rich cheeses, dried fruit and almonds.

At my request, Hake Fillet Stuffed with Prawns in a Champagne Sauce was steamed without butter or cream, and served with crunchy vegetables. Though the portion was small, I was impressed with the fresh, clean flavors. 

My wife really loved her Sea Bass Cooked En Papillote atop Gratin Potatoes.

My wife is not a big fan of smoked fish, but she enjoyed this appetizer of Smoked Salmon Toasts Glazed with Hollandaise Sauce.

My choice to start the meal was Bouillabaisse with a Shellfish and Tomato Broth.

The brie, one of two cheeses in my dessert, was creamy and full of flavor, but I didn't go near the inauthentic crackers served with them.

My wife, who didn't have room for one of the traditional desserts, asked for almonds.

After dinner, I enjoyed Remy Martin Cognac VSOP and two espresso coffees in the hotel bar.

Tomorrow: 

More on my Costco vacation

A slice of heaven on a lush mountain in Jamaica

A goat herder on Canaan Mountain in Jamaica, where he lives among other subsistence farmers. Our stay at the nearby Zimbali Retreats showed us a side of the Caribbean island few tourists ever see.

One evening, Obrian Herron, the chef at Zimbali Retreats, prepared a deliciously thick soup, using coconut milk that he made himself and filling it with unusually tender whelk, a marine mollusk; banana, yam and other ingredients.

 

Another evening, Obrian served us butter-fish fillet with rice and peas; eggplant and other vegetables. His fruit-based sauces and salad dressings made every meal special. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Zimbali Retreats -- a cluster of rustic cottages on lush, green Canaan Mountian in western Jamaica -- redefines the meaning of getting away from it all.

The complex is not only off the beaten path, it relies almost completely on solar power, storage batteries, rain water and a natural spring.

We enjoyed three meals a day prepared by Chef Obrian Herron, using ingredients from a 7-and-a-half-acre organic farm the owners started several years before they began accepting guests.

What did we do? 

We ate, rested, ate some more and rested some more. I read "East of the Sun," a novel set in the 1920s in England and India that I found in our room.

Life is a beach

You can be as active or inactive as you want. 

There are spa services available at extra cost, including massages, facials and nail treatments. 

Or you could go on one of several day trips, including a jaunt to the white-sand beach Negril is famous for -- about 12 miles away.


Nature's soundtrack

And you can commune with nature, listening during the day to the sounds of birds, crickets and goats swell at night to a discordant symphony of noisy tree frogs and other critters. 

We watched powerful thunderstorms from the safety of a covered veranda in the main villa.

My morning routine was making coffee in our cottage and drinking it on the porch.

I watched in fascination as -- only a few feet away -- iridescent green hummingbirds took nectar from flowers while their wings beat furiously to hold them suspended in the air.

A tasty vegetarian meal of, from upper left, lentils, lentil flat bread, salad with mango vinaigrette and green plantains.

A breakfast of ackee and salt fish, the Jamaican national dish, included roasted breadfruit, rear, boiled green banana, avocado and sweet plantains.

Fresh fruit started off breakfast. Sweet bananas had green and red skins, and the latter was the sweetest such fruit I have ever tasted. A soft Jamaican apple was unlike any I've eaten before.

The freshly made juices served with most meals, including pineapple, above, were heavily spiked with ginger.

  

Cooling off

Just before breakfast on Sunday, GG, the farmer at Zimbali Retreats, led me and my wife on a 10-minute walk down a rocky dirt road to a spot where I could take a dip in the cool Canaan River, under a thick canopy of leaves and bamboo.

We encountered a farmer who lives nearby and was out cutting fresh sugar cane for a morning energy boost.

Fruit rots on trees

GG spoke of the abundance of fruit and nuts grown in the lush setting, including breadfruit, mango, avocado, which is called "pear" in Jamaica; cashews, almonds and lychee.

In fact, he said, there is so much blooming on the mountain that farmers and their families can't possibly eat it all and lots of it goes to waste.

Coffee on the porch of our cottage, only a few feet away from a tree whose flowers are called shrimp, below.

Hummingbirds find this flowering shrimp simply irresistible.

A young hummingbird in an unusual pose -- resting on a branch. When in motion, you can hear the thrumming of the hummingbird's wings, but it's a blur when flying.

 

A hammock is placed strategically at each corner of the main villa's breezy covered veranda, which guests have the run of. 

Zimbali Retreats' main villa as seen from the farm.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday brought intense thunderstorms, all of them starting at 3 in the afternoon. On Sunday, the sun rose through a cloudy sky.

A welcoming home

Since we hung around Zimbali Retreats most of the time, we got to hear the owners, Mark and Alecia, bantering with their staff and their children in the colorful hybrid language Jamaicans call "patois."

Mark apologized for workmen sawing and hammering wood to add a sixth guest room on the other end of the property from our cottage, explaining the off-season is the only time he can expand.

You'll find most of the creature comforts at Zimbali Retreats, but no air-conditioning. 

Near silent ceiling fans do a good job of keeping guests cool in the hot, humid weather, especially on the breezy veranda. Nights are cool, and even fans aren't needed.

One of the revelations at Zimbali Retreats was fresh collaloo, above left and below, a spinach-like green that is chopped, canned in brine and sent to the United States.

Collaloo with sweet and green plantains, avocado and scrambled eggs.

Ackee, the Jamaican fruit, is said to be poisonous until it opens, and then requires labor-intensive cleaning of the black seeds and other non-edible waste.

Chef Obrian at the stove in the kitchen-dining room. He is a skilled vegetarian cook, but will prepare seafood or chicken for guests who want them. No pork is served. Many of the nearby farmers are Rastafarian and eat only fruit, vegetables and fish.

Going organic

The mostly organic food was a big draw for us, and eating fresh collaloo and ackee -- not the canned stuff we have in the U.S. -- were revelations.

We were served wonderful homemade juices, heavily spiked with ginger, including mango, pineapple, sour sop and beet.

I also liked the strong, muddy black coffee from a French press.

After my swim on Sunday, I asked GG if there was any coconut water around, and he went to hack open two of the fruit for us.

The owners, Mark and Alecia; GG, Chef Obrian, Miss D and other members of the staff made us feel completely at home.

Coconut water straight from the source, above and below.

Chef Obrian estimates that 75% of the ingredients he uses come from the farm at Zimbali Retreats.

GG fashioned a spoon so we could eat the "jelly" from inside the coconut.

 

A farmer of Jamaican and Chinese descent enjoying a snack of fresh sugar cane, above and below.

   

Zimbali Retreats, Canaan Mountain, Little London District, Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica; 1-876-485-2789. 

Web site: Healing mind and body

We learned about Zimbali Retreats from Amazon Local, purchasing a voucher for 4 nights, including meals, for $799 for 2 people.  A 16.5% tax is additional.

Transfers from the airport in Montego Bay were $99 each way, and are well worth it considering Jamaica has some of the worst roads -- and worst drivers -- in the Western Hemisphere, including a long, rocky dirt track that runs through a sugar-cane estate leading up to Zimbali Retreats.

Jamaicans also drive on the left. Enough said.

If you go, don't forget to pack insect repellant. 

Coming soon:

In Jamaica, nature's splendor

 is everywhere