“The taxi driver's air freshener — a tiny Jamaican flag soaked in vanilla — swings hard enough on the Ironshore curves to brush the rearview mirror.”

The ride from Sangster International takes twelve minutes if your driver doesn't stop at the Texaco for a patty, and about twenty if he does. Mine does. He recommends the beef, not the chicken, and he's right. You eat it from a wax-paper sleeve in the back seat while the A1 highway unspools past a string of jerk shacks, hair salons with hand-painted signs, and a goat standing in the middle of someone's driveway like it owns the place. Ironshore is the stretch of coast just west of the Hip Strip — close enough to hear Montego Bay's pulse, far enough that nobody's trying to sell you a bracelet at seven in the morning. The turn into Mahoe Bay is quiet. A security gate, a nod, and then a long driveway flanked by palms that look like they've been here longer than the concrete.

The Riu Montego Bay announces itself the way most large all-inclusives do: a lobby the size of a basketball court, a check-in desk that smells faintly of lemongrass, and a woman handing you a rum punch before you've signed anything. You drink it. It's strong. You sign. The wristband goes on. And then you're in the system — the all-inclusive system — where the currency is time and the transaction is never having to reach for your wallet.

The room with the liquor store

Here is the thing that makes this particular Riu different from the dozens of other beige-tiled all-inclusives dotting Jamaica's north coast: your room has a full bar. Not a minibar. Not two sad bottles of Red Stripe and a Toblerone. A proper, stocked, multi-shelf liquor dispenser built into the wall like it was always meant to be there — Appleton rum, vodka, whiskey, tequila, and a gin whose label I couldn't read because the print was small and I'd already had the rum punch. There's a dispenser for mixers too. Tonic. Cola. Soda water. It is, frankly, absurd and wonderful. You refill your own glass at two in the morning without putting on shoes. This is the entire value proposition, and the hotel knows it.

The room itself is clean, modern, and exactly what you'd expect from a Riu — which is to say it's comfortable without being memorable. King bed, white linens, a balcony that faces either the ocean or the pool depending on your booking. The ocean-view rooms catch a breeze that makes the curtains billow in a way that photographs well but also means you wake up slightly cold if you left the door cracked. The shower is good. The water pressure is aggressive, actually, which after a day of salt and sunscreen feels like a reward. The WiFi holds steady in the room but gets patchy by the pool, where everyone's trying to stream something simultaneously.

Meals rotate across several restaurants — a buffet that's reliable if unspectacular, a Japanese spot called Kulinarium that does a decent enough teriyaki, and an Italian place where the pasta is slightly overcooked but the garlic bread arrives hot and nobody's counting how many baskets you order. The real move, though, is the jerk chicken at the outdoor grill station by the beach. The cook — a man with forearms like he's been turning spits since birth — brushes scotch bonnet sauce on with a paintbrush. You can ask for extra. He'll give you a look that says "you sure?" and then he'll do it.

“The beach at Mahoe Bay is narrow but calm — the kind of water where you wade in up to your chest and still see your toes, which is either reassuring or boring depending on what you came for.”

The pool area is large and loud by noon, quieter by four. There's a swim-up bar staffed by a man named Devon who remembers your drink after the first order, which is either impressive hospitality or a commentary on how many rum and Tings you've been having. The beach at Mahoe Bay is narrow but calm — reef-protected water that stays shallow for a long stretch, good for floating, less good for waves. Lounge chairs fill up by ten. The trick is breakfast at eight, chair by eight-thirty, nap by eleven.

The honest thing: the entertainment team is relentless. Pool games, trivia, dance contests — they start around noon and don't stop until dinner. If you're the type who wants to read a book in silence by the water, you'll need the far end of the beach or noise-cancelling headphones. The rooms facing the pool amplify this. I could hear the DJ's countdown to a belly-flop contest from my balcony with the door closed. It wasn't unpleasant, exactly, but it was present. Always present.

One thing I can't explain: there's a painting in the second-floor hallway near the elevator bank — a large oil of a parrot wearing what appears to be a bowler hat. It's not ironic. It's not kitschy in a self-aware way. It's just there, earnestly, a parrot in a hat, and every time I walked past it I liked it more.

Walking out into the morning

On the last morning I skip the buffet and walk out the gate toward the main road. There's a woman at a roadside stand selling ackee and saltfish with fried dumplings from a steel pot. She charges 3 $US and gives you enough food for two people. A route bus rattles past heading toward downtown MoBay — the number 2, if you're curious, and it costs almost nothing. The air smells different outside the resort. Charcoal and exhaust and frangipani. A rooster crows from behind a zinc fence. The goat is still in the driveway. I'm almost certain it's the same one.

Rooms at the Riu Montego Bay start around 266 $US per night for a double, all-inclusive — which means your meals, your drinks, your pool towels, and that ridiculous in-room bar are covered. What it really buys you is three days of not thinking about logistics, plus a story about a parrot in a hat that nobody will believe.