Jamaica Kate and Kayla

kate and kayla’s apartment in Jamaica

Many of you are probably wondering what our living accommodations are like here in Jamaica.  What comes to mind?  A luxurious villa with a private beach or maybe a condo with amazing sea views … HA HA HA!  I wish!  While we don’t live in a shack up in the hills, we definitely don’t live in luxury either ….

The great thing about coming to Jamaica long term is that your accommodations are much, much less expensive.  If you’re staying local on a short vacation, you can expect to pay anywhere between $60-100/night at a villa.  Staying long-term, we’ve found an apartment to rent in what the locals call “the scheme” (neighborhood), and known more formally here as Runaway Meadows … while we won’t go into exact details about our rental arrangement, we pay in a month much less than you’ll pay in a week for a villa!  Wondering how we found the place?  If you’re going to stay in a local rental, you need a Jamaican to do the looking for you … our friend found us the place about two weeks before we arrived (thanks Orlando!).

Our apartment is in a building that has three units.  Our landlady lives downstairs, a mother and her son live in half of the upstairs, we live in the other half.  The building is a forty minute walk from the beach (we need the exercise, we do nothing else haha) … and a twenty minute walk from the crossroad (which is what the locals refer to as the place where one of the only stop lights are found … near the bank, grocery store, taxi stand, etc).  As I mentioned, we live in one of the schemes, a very small neighborhood.  You may also be wondering about security – we have a lock on the front iron gate that you pass through to enter the yard, and a locked iron gate at the bottom of the stairs at the back of the building where we enter from.  We obviously also have a lock on the door going into our apartment.  I have never felt unsafe for a moment in our neighbourhood!

The apartment (which came furnished) consists of two spacious bedrooms, a bathroom, living room/dining area, kitchen (which is actually separate from the rest of the apartment), a HUGE balcony where we have spent countless hours chillin and a laundry area downstairs (ps – I thought I hated doing laundry in Canada with machines … lets just say my arm muscles are getting pretty strong from all this hand washing and wringing out of clothes … ugh!!).

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