Malcolm Bay

Malcolm Bay lies to the west of a rather grubby little town called Black River on Jamaica's southwest coast. It's an exceptionally wide, gently curving bay with a narrow, off-white sand beach backed by casuarinas.

We came to it by boat for an all-too-brief visit but there was something about the peacefulness of the beach that has stuck in my memory. Jamaica is a crowded island and there are few places where one can get away from people - and Malcolm Bay happens to be one. Other than the six of us on the boat there wasn't a sign of another human except for the houses of the small fishing village which can just be seen in the distance.

The only permanent residents seemed to be a pair of egrets which settled on the beach near us - as if company round there was so hard to come by that they didn't want to miss a moment of our visit.

We swam in almost idyllic conditions, we ate a light lunch, we chatted with the two Jamaican boatmen, and those who wanted to walked alone along the beach and savoured that feeling of being in a beautiful place utterly remote from the rest of humanity. Then, to remind ourselves that we were in touristy Jamaica, we motored back along the coast to Floyd's Pelican Bar - see blog post here -  which brought us rudely back to earth.