Prior to officially opening to the public as one of the first hotels on Negril, Jamaica’s West End, in 1974, the Rockhouse property was already a silver screen staple. Papillon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the once-lost-to-time No Place Like Home each featured its jagged coast and watery caves. Paul Salmon and his partners would purchase and set about expanding the lodging in 1994. Since then Rockhouse has grown to include a foundation—started in 2004, based on its commitment to active community engagement—that has partnered with six schools in the area and the Negril Community Library. Here, Peter Jon Lindberg, previously executive editor of Condé Nast Traveler and editor-at-large of Saveur, captures the guest experience of the hotel in his own firsthand account.
Rockhouse: The Book is now available.
The first time I saw that view I laughed out loud. It was, in a word, ridiculous – like stepping into someone’s absurdly oversaturated screensaver. Pristine Cove glittered before us in the midday sun, framed by the most perfectly formed limestone cliffs, with siren-red ladders descending into sparkling blue green water. Vincent’s glass-bottom boat bobbed just offshore, circled by a trio of snorkelers. Nilou and I stood there for a full minute, grinning at the crazy of it all. All we could think was: Are you %$#@ing kidding me?
Our first visit was in 2002, over Valentine’s Day. Our friend Ellen had recommended — no, urged us to go. “It’s my favorite place,” she said. “Trust me: you’ll love it.” She was right. From our first laughable glimpse of Pristine Cove, Nilou and I were all in. We’d booked just six nights at Rockhouse, but by checkout we were so deeply relaxed it felt like a full month had passed.
I had an ulterior motive on that first trip: after two years of dating, I planned to propose to Nilou. I’d hidden my grandmother’s ring at the bottom of my dopp kit, among the bug spray and SPF, and was determined to pick not just the right moment, but also just the right spot.
On Day 2, in the quiet calm after another mesmeric West End sunset, I finally got up the nerve. Conditions were perfect. Frigatebirds circled a sky streaked with gold. The pool bar had mostly emptied out, save for a dozen hangers-on, and we were alone at the cliff’s edge, gazing out at the sea. I was about to pop the question when we heard a hair-raising shriek. “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!”
At the far end of the pool, a woman was flailing in the water, squealing and splashing frantically as her boyfriend looked on. For a second we thought she was drowning, until we saw her left hand, waving triumphantly in the air, sporting an enormous diamond ring. “WE JUST GOT ENGAGED!!!!” she shouted to everyone within earshot. A cheer rose from the pool bar; rounds of cocktails were ordered. And for the second time that week, I thought to myself: Are you %$#@ing kidding me??
Needless to say, I wasn’t going second. After being unceremoniously scooped I mostly wanted to go to bed. I ultimately gave up on my Jamaican proposal and waited until we were back in New York. (Nilou said yes, by the way.)
And anywhere else, it might’ve ruined my whole trip. But Rockhouse doesn’t let a thwarted marriage proposal stand in the way of a perfectly good holiday. And despite my inclination to sulk and scowl at our newly betrothed neighbors, we ended up having a blissful week.
How could we not? That was the week we sat three stools over from Lee Scratch Perry at the Rockhouse bar, quietly freaking out while he held forth on God knows what. The week we saw porpoises – porpoises! – leaping in the surf just yards from our chaises. The week we swooned to the mellifluous harmonies of a mento band, straight out of 1950s Kingston, singing nightly at the bar. We discovered the revelation of a proper Jamaican breakfast complete with ackee, saltfish, festival, bammy, buttery callaloo, and velvety Blue Mountain coffee. We rented snorkel masks and fins and learned that the only thing better than the view across Pristine Cove was the view underneath Pristine Cove: a parallel universe where we spent most of our mornings, wondering if maybe breakfast had been spiked with hallucinogens.
As much as we adored the place that first visit in 2002, we never imagined Rockhouse would become “our” place, the one we’d return to every year. Hell, we weren’t sure we even wanted that. Who goes back to the same resort over and over and over again? There was so much more to see and do, so many other somewheres! Nilou and I were in our early 30s then, and both working at Travel + Leisure – going to new places was literally our job. Travel, we told ourselves, was about the unfamiliar, the untrammeled, the passport full of stamps.
What we didn’t account for was the possibility of falling head over heels for this curious little outpost by the sea – in a house, on a rock, in a bay, on a reef, on an island, in Jamaica. Returning? After our second visit, less than a year later, it was no longer a question. It was settled: Rockhouse was our spot. We were together for the foreseeable future. Now it’s 22 years later, and we’ve been coming here long enough to remember when Pushcart was still Pirate’s Cave.
When the organic garden across the road was just a barren field. We were here before the Ocean View Suites, before the Premium Villas, before the gym, even before the spa.
We’ve been coming here long enough that my wife has her own cocktail at the Pool Bar: the “Nilou Special,” a silky blend of fresh papaya, bright lime juice, local honey, and Appleton Special rum, with an extra rum float. (That last bit is key.)
You become a New Yorker, wrote Colson Whitehead, “when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.” This is how so many of us feel about the Rock. At every corner, you can’t help picturing times before: where you celebrated birthdays and Christmases, weddings and anniversaries; where you first met Lauri and Doug and Justin and Tina and Talia and John; where Dada shot off fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve; where you all snuck down to the cove to swim among swirls of phosphorescence under a bleach-white rising moon; or that spot near the pool where you nearly proposed to your wife. In the decades since our first encounter, it’s hard to distinguish all these visits from one another. Each blissful week merges with the others before, until it feels like one long holiday, interrupted by reluctant forays home. And when you do return – when you pull up in the Kenny van wearing far too many clothes, and Scarlett relieves you of your suitcases and greets you with a hug and an icy glass of some- thing tropical, and you collect your room key and race to trade your city jeans and closed-toe shoes for swim trunks and flip-flops and leap off the bridge into the purifying waters of Pristine Cove – when you do return, it’s as if you’d just stepped out to run an errand in New York, then came back, 351 days later, to find everything just as you left it.
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