The Pelican Bar complete with Honeymoon suite
Mac and Doris waiting for a cab?
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"Of course, the kitchen has been modernised..."
"Theres a draught coming from somewhere?"
We have all
traveled the world in some form or another and we have witnessed everything
from the ridiculous to the sublime, or at least we often think we have. I personally have found myself in such squalid
places as a public toilet in Kenya way back in the early 80’s where you needed
a strong stomach to go within 50 yards of the place and just a few blocks
further on, the Sunflower Disco where local businessmen turned up in dinner
jackets and suites and tourists such as myself had shorts and flip-flops on
watching naked Limbo dancers wriggle under a flaming bar just a few inches from
the floor. A sight that has lived long in the memory, I can tell you.
No doubt
you have your own wonderful and weird experiences to relate and I would be glad
to hear from you if you can beat my Limbo dancers but there is one such place
that defies logic and that one place is a pile of sticks, planks, palm leaves
and nails that passes for the most important tourist attraction in the whole of
the Caribbean islands. The Pelican Bar!
The Pelican
Bar is a ramshackle hovel that sits on wooden stilts about a mile offshore on a
sandbank and was the brainchild of a local fisherman by the name of Floyd
Forbes who thought this platform in the middle of the Caribbean Sea might be
the ideal place for himself and other fishermen friends to hang out after a
hard day’s work. It developed from that
to becoming the biggest local attraction on the south side of the island of
Jamaica and in no time the tourists were flocking to this complete wreck of a
bar that sits out in Parottee Bay just down from Port Charles in the parish of
Westmoreland.
The
original Pelican Bar was washed away in a hurricane some years back and such
was the impact on the local economy that local businesspeople clubbed together
to enable Forbes to rebuild the Pelican bar and produce the finest concoction
of planks, nails, poles and driftwood anywhere in the Caribbean.
To get to
the Pelican Bar from Negril (For those staying at Villas Sur Mer) you drive
down the coast on the A2 until you get to just past Crawford and then it’s
through Black River and then you are there. In all it takes you about 1 hour 30
minutes by car and is roughly 83Km but worth every inch of the journey.
If you are
staying with Villas Sur Mer or Luxury Arrivals Jamaica Villas then I’m sure the
staff will be delighted to point you in the right direction. So, if you do go for a Jamaica villa vacation
in Negril with Sur Mer or along the coast with Luxury Arrivals and you do visit
the delightful Pelican Bar, just remember who told you about it and send me
your photos and comments and I will add them to this blog for other weary travelers
to enjoy.
Jamaica Vacation Villlas links:
http://www.villassurmer.com/ Negril Villas Jamaica
http://www.luxuryarrivals.com/ Jamaica Villas
