my thoughts on great huts:

being at great huts is like being at a sleepaway camp for hippie/bohemian grownups. like hogwarts summercamp or a caribbean camp half-blood. it's a really beautiful place and it's well maintained. our room, the fig tree house, was cleaned every day and i had no issues with the condition of anything in the room.

i'm going to preface this next part by saying i'm not a fan of people in general, so these comments are mainly because i'm a jerk who prefers to be alone. i was not a fan of the clientele at the hotel. it was extremely european- german, swiss, french and italian seemed to be the main demographic.

i just got a bad vibe every morning, having breakfast- that's the time i saw the most of my fellow guests. the incident with the woman giving the waitress a hard time about lattes and the jamaican guy with her who did not run interference is the kind of thing i'm talking about. i mean, who goes to a treehouse hotel outside of port antonio and expects to be able to get a latte at breakfast? i don't have time for that type of sh!t. again- i am SURE this is just me being a curmudgeonly d!ck. and it didn't ruin my stay there or anything. it just made me not want to eat on the property.

in general, i think i'd prefer staying at great huts during the off season.

another thing about guests- the fig tree house is RIGHT next to another tree house. i think it's called the almond tree house. they have a big porch that faces the entrance to fig tree hut. 3 days into our stay, a couple checked into the almond tree house. they, unfortunately, were chain smokers who loved to spend hours each morning and night on their porch, and of course all of their smoke wafted directly into our bamboo-walled hut. i probably could've gone and complained at the front desk, but i was on a "no complaining" bent this trip (my husband was impressed).

sidenote 1: i know there are allegedly strict (cigarette) smoking laws in jamaica, but i've NEVER seen them enforced.

back to my thoughts on great huts. loved-loved-loved the grounds and accommodations. LOVED all of that. the staff was very nice and VERY patient with all of the guests. clientele was way too euro for me. i'm also not used to staying at a place where there were pretty much no jamaican guests. aside from that fancy dread traveling with the german ladies, i did not see a one.

sidenote 2: the guests at strawberry hill were predominately a mix of south american, irish, and aussie. a lot of the day trippers were jamaican and asian. great huts doesn't have day trippers, i don't think.

great huts has a very tiny, very cute beach area, but it was extremely crowded with people laying out and people jumping from the diving platform (by extremely crowded, i mean there were about 7 people there- it's that small). we went down there during the morning of our first full day, spent about 20 minutes climbing around the rocks and never went back. even though we had to pay to get into boston beach (a whopping 200j per person), i much preferred to hang out there. that beach is gorgeous and it has a really good vibe.

the two pools (the cliff pool and the larger pool at the africana house) were both equally nice.

the snake walk was really cool.

there were a lot of concrete thrones, mesh hammocks and porch swing thingies to lamp out on scattered throughout the property.

my birthday lunch at the sankofa dining area was very special.

i would say that great huts (especially the fig tree house) was worth the cost, but if we went back to boston bay, i'd probably just say "f it" and book us into the boston beach guest house. it's rundown and probably has terrible water pressure, but it's cheap enough and it has a staircase that leads directly to boston beach.

i would also consider the winifred breeze guest house. it might be nice to spend a little time in that area, which is closer to port antonio.

but i would most definitely stay at great huts again.