Rightly famous for its beaches and music, beautiful Jamaica is much more besides. There's certainly plenty of enchanting white sand, turquoise sea and swaying palm trees but, less expectedly, there's lots to see away from the coast: spectacular mountains and rivers, tumbling waterfalls, and cactus-strewn savannah plains.

The cities, meanwhile, provide a reminder that the island is more than just a tourist attraction, particularly Kingston - the Jamaican metropolis which helped to inspire the music of Bob Marley and countless other home-grown reggae superstars. Jamaica retains an attitude - a personality - that's more resonant and distinctive than you'll find in any other Caribbean nation. It's a country which is proud of its history, sporting success and musical genius.

But Jamaica has not avoided the familiar problems of a developing country - serious poverty, dramatic inequality of wealth, and social tensions that occasionally spill over into localized violence and worldwide headlines. The mixture is potent, and has produced a people renowned for being sharp, sassy and straight-talking. Don't expect anyone to beat around the bush here; Jamaicans get on with life. And the Jamaican authorities have spent millions making sure the island treats its tourists right. As the birthplace of the "all-inclusive" hotel, Jamaica has become well-suited for those who want to head straight from plane to beach, never leaving their hotel compound. But to get any sense of the country at all you'll need to get into exploring mode. It's undoubtedly worth it, as this is a country packed with first-class attractions, oozing with character, and pumping with music.

History
Christopher Columbus first landed on the island in 1494, when there were perhaps 100,000 peaceful Arawak Amerindians who had settled Jamaica around 700 AD. Spanish settlers arrived from 1510, raising cattle and pigs, and introducing two things that would profoundly shape the island's future: sugar and slaves. By the end of the 16th century the Arawak population had been entirely wiped out, suffering from hard labor, ill-treatment and European diseases to which they had no resistance.

In 1654 an ill-equipped and badly organized English contingent sailed to the Caribbean. After failing to take Hispaniola (present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the 'wicked army of common cheats, thieves and lewd persons' turned to weakly defended Jamaica. Despite the ongoing efforts of Spanish loyalists and guerilla-style campaigns of freed Spanish slaves , England took control of the island. There were constant insurrections, especially after the American War of Independence (1775-81) and the French Revolution (1789) spread a spirit of subversion, but they were quashed with the utmost severity.

The last and largest of the slave revolts in Jamaica was the 1831 Christmas Rebellion, and up to 20,000 slaves razed plantations and murdered planters. When the slaves were tricked into laying down arms with a false promise of abolition, and then 400 were hanged and hundreds more whipped, there was a wave of revulsion in England, causing the Jamaican parliament to finally abolish slavery on August 1, 1834. The transition from a slave economy to one based on wage labor caused economic chaos. Mulattos (mixed race) were enfranchised in 1830, and liberal mulattos such as George William Gordon took up the fight of the oppressed in the 1860s. When naval blockades during the American Civil War (1861-65) cut off vital supplies, desperation over conditions and injustice finally boiled over in the Morant Bay Rebellion led by a black Baptist deacon named Paul Bogle. Governor Edward Eyre and his followers mercilessly suppressed the rebellion, hanging Gordon and Bogle, executing and flogging hundreds of others and razing thousands of homes in retribution.

The brutality of the repression provoked an outcry in England, marking the beginning of a more enlightened era under a series of liberal governors. A banana-led economic recovery was halted by the Great Depression of the 1930s, and then roll-started by the exigencies of WW II, when the Caribbean islands supplied food and raw materials to Britain. Adult suffrage for all Jamaicans was introduced in 1944, and virtual autonomy from Britain was granted in 1947. Jamaica seceded from the short-lived West Indies Federation in 1962 after a referendum called for the island's full independence.

Post-independence politics have been dominated by the legacy of two cousins: Alexander Bustamante, who formed the first trade union in the Caribbean just prior to WW II and later formed the Jamaican Labor Party (JLP), and Norman Manley, whose People's National Party (PNP) was the first political party on the island when it was convened in 1938. Manley's son, Michael, led the PNP towards democratic socialism in the mid-1970s, causing a capital flight at a time when Jamaica could ill afford it. Inflation roared above 50%, unemployment skyrocketed and society became increasingly polarized, culminating in fully-fledged warfare during the campaigns preceding the 1976 election. The PNP won the election by a wide margin and Manley continued with his socialist agenda.

The US government was hostile to the socialist path Jamaica was taking, and when Manley began to develop close ties with Cuba, the CIA planned to topple the Jamaican government. Businesses pulled out, the economy (tourism in particular) went into sharp decline and the country lived virtually under siege. Almost 700 people were killed in the lead up to the 1980 elections, which were won by the JLP's Edward Seaga. Seaga restored Jamaica's economic fortunes somewhat, severed ties with Cuba and courted Reagan's USA. Relatively peaceful elections in 1989 returned a reinvented 'mainstream realist' Manley to power; he retired in 1992, handing the reins to his deputy, Percival James Patterson - Jamaica's first black prime minister. The Patterson-led PNP romped it in at the 1993 and 1997 elections. In spring 1999 the country erupted in nationwide riots after the government announced a 30% increase in the tax on gasoline. Kingston and Montego Bay, where sugarcane fields were set ablaze, were particularly badly hit. After three days of arson and looting, the government rescinded the tax.

Attractions
Kingston Jamaica's teeming capital city is the vibrant heartbeat of Jamaica and its center of commerce and culture. It hustles, it bustles, and it merits a visit, especially during one of the annual festivals. The view from the mountains reveals leafy foothill suburbs overlooking a magnificent natural harbor. Just north of the waterfront is the historic downtown area, with its high-rise hotels and offices and its urban underclass: hustlers, street vendors, and beggars.

New Kingston is uptown, north of the old center. The Bob Marley Museum, at the reggae superstar's former home in New Kingston, is the city's most visited attraction. Highlights include the singer's simple bedroom with Marley's star-shaped guitar by the bedside, the bullet holes that ripped through the rear wall of the house during an assassination attempt in 1976, and the tree outside beneath which Marley would smoke ganja and practice his guitar.

Downtown Kingston's waterfront area is well and truly ready for its planned restoration, but it's still a good place for a breezy walk, and you can visit the craft market on the wharves. A few blocks westward is the National Gallery, displaying Jamaican works from the 1920s to the present, including a good collection of Edna Manley's sculpture. Every December it hosts a national exhibition of contemporary art. The majority of budget hotels are on the south side of New Kingston. Pickings are slim downtown where options are mostly glitzy and upmarket. There are heaps of good food options downtown, however: Indian, Chinese and Yankee places rumble for the belly-dollar with local chowmasters. North of New Kingston and running away to the west, Red Hills Rd has plenty of jerk stands. You can smell the spice and smoke as you drive along. Red Hills Rd is also one place for street parties and discos, but regardless of which area you find yourself roaming, reggae music is sure to be blaring.

Ocho Rios
Ocho Rios, 67 miles (108km) east of Montego Bay, is in a deep bowl backed by green hills and fronted by wide, scalloped Turtle Beach and a reef-sheltered harbor. The town is popular with cruise ships, which disgorge 400,000 passengers a year into Ochi's compact, charmless streets. If the garish pleasures of Turtle Beach get too much, there are less built-up swimming options nearby to the east. Fern Gully, a couple of miles inland, zigzags for about three miles through the canyon of an old watercourse. Trees form a canopy overhead, filtering the subaqueous light. It's best to visit the gully early in the morning, before the traffic fumes collect in a thick haze. Dunn's River Falls, 2 miles (3km) west of town, is Jamaica's best-known attraction. You might as well forget about trying to avoid the crowds here and just join the daisy chain clambering up the tiers of limestone that stairstep 600 ft (180m) down to the beach in a series of cascades and pools. The water is refreshingly cool and the falls are shaded by tall rainforest. Less than a mile further west, Laughing Waters spills to a fabulous little beach.

Montego Bay
Jamaica's northwestern node is the thriving port city of MoBay. This is resort Jamaica at its purest - the scintillating beaches, the golf courses, the historic houses and the mountain-village life going on behind the narrow coastal strip. Many admirable Georgian stone buildings and timber houses still stand downtown, and there is an excellent variety of arts and crafts. Every kind of water sport is offered, although most of the good beaches are the private domains of resort hotels.

Negril Negril, 52 miles (84km) west of Montego Bay, is Jamaica's fastest growing resort and the vortex around which Jamaica's fun-in-the-sun vacation life whirls. Despite phenomenal growth in recent years Negril is still more laid back than anywhere else in Jamaica; on the beach, makeshift stalls selling health foods and jerk pork line the roads and mellow greetings are proffered freely by locals. Negril's 7-mile-long (11km) beach is great.The Negril Watershed Environmental Protection Area is the first protected wilderness zone in Jamaica. It is intended to protect the entire Negril area, including a marine park, the Great Morass swampland north of Negril town and nearby mangrove forests

Area: 4411 sq miles (11,425 sq km)
Population: 2,652,689
Capital city: Kingston (population 800,000)
People: 76% African descent, 15% Afro-European descent, 4% European, 3% East Indian & Middle Eastern, 1% Afro-Chinese & Chinese
Language: English and patois Religion: 80% Christian, including revivalist cults such as Pocomania and Rastafarianism
Government: Independent member of the British Commonwealth Prime Minister: Porcia Simpson Miller