Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth: a local's guide

How to get there

Treasure Beach is on the south coast of St Elizabeth, reached by country roads off the main highway at Black River or Santa Cruz. From Montego Bay, allow roughly two and a half hours by road, and from Negril roughly two hours. From Kingston it’s about three hours, through Mandeville. These are estimates, not timed routes. Sections of the coast road were damaged in the hurricane and The Gleaner reported in April that some repairs were still to be done, so leave extra time and drive carefully after heavy rain.

Driving yourself or hiring a driver is the practical way to do it. Once you’re there, the bays are close together along one main road, so you can get between them on foot or by a short taxi ride.

What to expect

The bays. From west to east, coming in from Black River: Billy’s Bay, then Frenchman’s Bay, Calabash Bay and Great Bay, with the Great Pedro Bluff at the eastern end. Frenchman’s Bay has a long beach that runs about half a mile down the coast. Calabash Bay is the working heart of it, with the fishing beach where the boats come in; the water here can get rough, so take care. Great Bay is a wide, calm crescent, good for a long swim, with a few small seafood spots on the sand. Between Calabash Bay and Great Bay there’s a quieter, enclosed beach locals call Old Wharf. The beaches are public, so there’s nothing to pay to get on the sand. Some sand was stripped away by Melissa; it has largely come back, but beaches may look different from older photos.

The community. Treasure Beach is known in Jamaica for community tourism: the money from visitors goes to guest houses, cooks, boat captains and craft vendors in the villages, not to one big resort. Much of that is organized through the BREDS Treasure Beach Foundation, a grassroots group that The Gleaner says has worked across eight South Coast districts for nearly 30 years on sport, health care and education. After Melissa, BREDS led the local recovery. Henzell told the Jamaica Observer in January that it had given grants to 300 Treasure Beach tourism workers and vouchers to more than 400 farmers, and in July he said the foundation had helped 30 small businesses and was planning a purpose-built hurricane shelter for the community. Many small restaurants and beach cook-outs have reopened, so ask locally what’s open the day you’re there.

The fishing village feel. Mornings start on the fishing beaches, when the boats come in and the catch is sold on the sand. In April The Gleaner reported that fishermen at Calabash Bay were gradually going back to sea, some sharing boats while their own were repaired. That’s the rhythm of the place: quiet days, fish and bammy for lunch, and a lot of talk on the beach in the evening.

Using it as a base. Boat tours to Floyd’s Pelican Bar, the bar on a sandbar out at sea, leave from Treasure Beach, and local captains also run trips along the coast and to the Black River. Inland, YS Falls is open again with its pools, and Black River Safari is running crocodile boat tours with a smaller fleet. East along the coast, the clifftop lookout at Lovers’ Leap is about a 20-minute drive, and Little Ochie, the seafood spot on the beach at Alligator Pond, is roughly an hour away. Little Ochie and the safari are both still rebuilding, so check before you go.

What’s on. The Treasure Beach Food, Rum & Reggae Festival, which was turned into a one-day benefit concert in Kingston after the hurricane, is back in Treasure Beach on November 6 to 8, 2026, with Protoje and Lila Iké headlining, The Gleaner reports. Expect the area to be busy and rooms to be scarce that weekend.