My first adventure of the year was a trip to Jamaica for another Femme Nue photography retreat. While I had been to the Caribbean a couple of times, more than 20 years ago for scuba diving, this was my first trip to Jamaica.
When I signed up with the State Department’s STEP website, I was surprised to find that they had a Level 3 warning, mostly due to violent crime in a variety of areas. I set that aside, but I kept my radar up. Overall I had no problems, but I did have a few very interesting encounters with the locals, who where all friendly but also seemed to be running various games. To wit, I was solicited twice if I was interested in getting any women (once from an employee in the airport), and 4 or 5 times if I was interested in any ‘smoke’. None of these encounters seemed ominous, and the overall feel (at least in the tourist area where I stayed in the hotel) was friendly and colorful … and the speech patterns live up to the characterization — Ya mon.
Before and after the retreat, I stayed in an all-inclusive hotel in Montego Bay, which turned out to be a nice way to do it. Although the food was ok/mediocre it saved me a lot of money on restaurants. It also included an open bar, and best of all free access to the Doctor’s Cave beach across the street, which enabled me to swim in the sea a number of times during my stay. The only downside was it was on a fairly busy and noisy road, and people there seemed to be up until the wee-wee hours making lots of noise out on the street.
The photography retreat was at the beautiful Springville Villa, up on the hillside with a beautiful view of the hills and sea. It was just over the border into Hanover Parish, overlooking the great river bay. The villa had an infinity pool with an amazing view that looked out onto the sea. For our retreat, we had access to the grounds, a beach down below, and a couple of local houses up the hill on the road where the villa was located. We had our own butler and cook that took care of us well. I ended up booking two sessions, which gave me 5 full days of shooting and 2 half-days. During the retreat, I had the opportunity to shoot with Sienna Hayes and Vivian Cove, with whom I had worked a number of times, as well as a model new to me, Ali Claire, from Canada. Interestingly, one of the photographers on the first session was Patric who was the only other photographer on my last tour in Yucatán Mexico. In addition to shooting around our villa, we took a short excursion to a local beach where we shot for a few hours. A few of us also went on a snorkeling trip, where we took a boat out, snorkeled for a bit, and stopped on the way back at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville.
After the retreat, I returned to the same hotel and just relaxed for a few days, swimming in the ocean and enjoying the ambiance of the place. Afterwards I returned home where it had been much colder, and very unusually had even gotten a little snow on the top of the local peaks. I had turned off the heat in my house, and when I returned, it was in the 40s.
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