The following is our report on the Grand Lido Braco resort, which we visited from February 4 through 9, 1999. This was our second trip to GL Braco, having visited previously in May 1998. In general, the resort has improved dramatically since our last visit, particularly with respect to the quality of the staff, which was outstanding and rivaling that of GL Negril in terms of attitude and service.
Getting there
We took Delta to Atlanta and connected with Air Jamaica, arriving in Montego Bay about 11:30 a.m. Immigration and customs were a breeze, since ours was the only flight arriving at the time. (It’s not always so; if multiple flights arrive at about the same time, prepare to wait in line since immigration never seems to change staffing levels depending on the volume of people to process.) After clearing customs, Superclubs was on the ball and had us in a bus and on our way quickly. The bus trip to Braco isn’t bad - about an hour, including a brief beer stop along the way. On the return, we made it from Braco to the airport in under an hour. For those of you who are used to TimAir or Air Negril going from MoBay to Negril, there’s no corresponding service to the Braco area, unless you plan on using a parachute. With the bus ride time, you don’t need it anyway.
Air Jamaica was fine, arriving and departing on time in all material respects on both ends of the trip. The aircraft were relatively new Airbus A310s. Service and cleanliness of the aircraft were as good as most of the domestic U.S. airlines.
Check-in
We arrived well before the 3:00 check-in time, but our room was available anyway. Take along a duffel bag with any essentials and you’ll be able to deal with a 3:00 check-in without any inconvenience: just head for the pool or beach.
Resort overview
The main Braco complex is a replica of an island village, with a number of one and two story buildings fronting on a main street running perpendicular to the ocean, which is bisected by two shorter streets, all of which are of pressed concrete resembling brick pavers. The various buildings house shops, the main lobby, disco, piano bar and most of the restaurants. At the intersection of the streets is a fountain, and at the far end of main street is the main “textile side” pool. Facing the ocean from the textile side pool, to the right are first the building housing the piano bar and Nanny’s Jerk Pit and then a number of buildings housing the textile side rooms (some ocean front, some not). To the left are the Victoria Market and Stir Crazy restaurants, the workout facilities and the au natural section of the resort. The au natural section of the resort is separated from the rest of the property by a kind of “no man’s land;” once past this Maginot Line, nude is the rule in all areas of the au natural side.
On the textile side, only about a third of the rooms (at a guess) front the ocean; the rest are what would probably be called garden view. On the au natural side, the buildings housing the rooms are between the ocean and the au natural pool, and all rooms are oceanfront. Unlike Grand Lido Negril, where “au natural” begins at the buildings facing the ocean, at Braco the whole west side of the resort is au natural, and one does not have to suit up when leaving the beach area.
The landscaping throughout the resort is really outstanding, though on the au natural side a good bit of the plantings are rather young, particularly the palms between the buildings and the beach. We noticed some maturation of the landscaping since May of 1998, and before too long things should look even more mature. Like GL Negril, there’s a small army of landscaping folks working on things just about all the time. There are a number of hammocks strung up between trees in the shade throughout the resort for those late afternoon naps.
We’d guess the average age of guests at Braco is somewhat younger than at GL Negril. Not too many in their twenties, but lots and lots of thirty- and forty-somethings. And not an insignificant number of fifties and sixties.
Like GL Negril, we found that the au natural side tended to attract the more outgoing, gregarious crowd. There was just a lot more interaction among guests who didn’t know each other on the au natural side than on the textile side, where it seemed people kept more to themselves.
Brief words about the au natural side for those who’ve never been to a nude beach: try it, you’ll like it. No one will stare or gawk at you; more than likely, someone will offer to bring you a drink from the bar. Ladies, if you want to keep your bathing suit bottom on, that’s fine. No one cares. Expecting a crowd of hardbodies? You’ll maybe find a few, but most folks look just like the rest of us. Again, nobody cares.
One difference between GL Negril and Braco is that the “nude” beach at Negril is a clothing optional beach. At Braco, the au natural side is just that: nude. Women in bottoms are accepted, but that’s about as far as it goes. If you’re not sure about trying a nude beach, we’d recommend staying on the textile side. That way, you can visit the au natural side and enjoy it if you like it (we bet you will) but retreat to the textile side if that’s not your thing. You’ll be uncomfortable in a bathing suit on the au natural side of the resort.
Rooms
There are 174 rooms and 6 one-bedroom suites on the textile side and 52 junior suites, one-bedroom suites and luxury one-bedroom suites on the au natural side. On the au natural side, the junior suites have a large sitting area with sofa nearest the doors facing the beach, with the sleeping area and bathroom at the rear of the room. It appeared as though all the junior suites had two double beds. The one-bedroom suites have the bedroom (with king bed) situated on the ocean side of the suite, together with a full bath. On the land side of the suite is a living room with sofa and chairs, together with a half bath. The luxury one-bedroom suites have two full baths, with the bedroom on the land side of the suite and a very large living room on the ocean side. All rooms have off-white tile covering the floor, which is much better than carpet in this environment.
The rooms are similar in many respects to Grand Lido Negril, in that they feature twin double beds or king beds, tile floors, reasonably large baths, and sofas. CD players, satellite TV, ironing boards, irons, refrigerator (stocked with Red Stripe and soft drinks, but bring your own opener) and small wall safe (good for travel documents, wallets, jewelry, a small camera and such, but not much more) are standard. The rooms, at least on the au natural side, were in good repair and comfortable. On the au natural side, the downstairs rooms have French doors which open onto the beach, much like Grand Lido Negril. Unlike GL Negril, the upstairs rooms have balconies large enough that one can open the French doors without bumping into the balcony furniture. It’s a toss-up as to whether the second and third floor rooms at Braco are better than ground floor rooms: it’s a trade off between the view upstairs and the easy beach access of the ground floor.
Restaurants
Piacere is the French restaurant and is elegant. Long pants and jacket are required (if you don’t want to bring your sportcoat along, the restaurant will lend you one). Very nicely done, and should be taken in while at Braco. The service is really outstanding. For example, my wife Sidney asked about a birthday cake for me when we arrived for dinner (figuring they could put a candle in a cupcake or something). No problem: desert was a first-rate cake, decorated with my name and “Happy Birthday.” The string quartet even walked over to the table and played Happy Birthday. Make reservations at the beginning of your stay. Dinner only, 6:30 until 9:30.
Victoria Market is the main dining room, and is open air overlooking the main pool. The arrangement is much better than GL Negril, where the comparable area is sort of down in a hole and further from the beach. Breakfast and lunch are served buffet style, and dinner is a la carte from the menu, which we thought had more than adequate variety. Victoria Market is closed some evenings when there is an “event” dinner being held, notably the Friday night street party. Dress is casual, meaning a minimum of bathing suit with cover up or t-shirt at breakfast and lunch, and shorts and polo shirt at night. Breakfast is 8:00 until 10:30; lunch from 12:30 until 3:00; and dinner from 7:00 until 10:00.
Stir Crazy, the Japanese restaurant (with tables for eight, each attended by a chef cooking on hot grill built into the table, just like Stateside), was much improved from our last visit. Food was excellent, as was the service. Dinner only, served 6:30 to 9:00. Long pants are required. There is also a separate sushi dining facility within Stir Crazy; we didn’t try it, but we heard good reports. Specify sushi or traditional Japanese dining when making your reservation.
Nanny’s Jerk Pit is open from about 11:00 to about 6:00, and offers jerk chicken, pork and beef. It’s very good. The Jerk Pit is near the main textile pool, and offers tables outdoors.
La Pasta Sidewalk Cafe is open from midday to about 2:00 a.m. (open 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. for breakfast croissants, etc.) Offers mix and match pasta and sauce dishes (including chicken and escargot) as well as some really great pizza, made to order with your choice of toppings and cheese. Also features an antipasto bar, and a visit to the bakery next door will fix you up for dessert.
Food quality was generally very good. If the lunch buffet on a particular day doesn’t appeal to you, just hop down to La Pasta for a pizza or pasta. On balance, we thought the food at Braco was better than at GL Negril, and that’s saying something in light of the generally legendary reputation of GL Negril.
Liquor is abundant as always, with most top shelf brands available. Remember to ask for what you want though: “gin and tonic” will get you some rotgut stuff, while “Tanqueray and tonic” will get you just that. To our surprise, Heineken was available in bottles in addition to the Red Stripe on tap or in bottles that is the mainstay most everywhere in Jamaica. We like Red Stripe, but it was nice to have an alternative now and then. Wine quality was much improved from our May 1998 visit; you’ll not find anything of outstanding quality, but enough to make do.
At all restaurants, tables for six are available; it would be wise to call ahead if there are more than six in your party so they can set up a table (except for Stir Crazy, at which the tables are set up for eight).
In addition to the restaurants, there is room service available from two “club houses” on the property, much like the “houses” at GL Negril. Each of the houses has a seating area if you want to eat there instead of in your room or at the pool. In addition to food service, the club houses have 24 hour a day bar service. A pool table had been added to the au natural clubhouse since our last visit, and now accompanies the ping pong table.
Room service is similar to GL Negril, and available 24 hours a day. In addition to traditional room service, a continental breakfast can be ordered the night before for delivery to your room in the morning. The room service menu is much more extensive than GL Negril; for GL Negril fans, Braco *does* have the lamb chops and potato skins on the room service menu.
Room service is also available served at the pool bars if you don’t care to head down to Victoria Market. Also available at the pool bar on the au natural side is jerk chicken cooked on a grill in the bar, which is a nice change from a buffet lunch and is the same jerk chicken served at Nanny’s Jerk Pit.
Beaches and pools
The au natural side beach is, in our opinion, better than Negril. While the resort faces the Caribbean Sea (unlike Negril, whose beach is on Bloody Bay), management has constructed a man-made reef around a swimming area on both the au natural and textile sides of the resort. Unlike GL Negril, the water off the au natural beach is clear Caribbean Sea, not filled with plants. While the beach and ocean bottom at Braco are a bit rockier than Negril, we didn’t find that a problem and never broke out our surf shoes.
The au natural side beach is much better than the textile beach. On the textile side there are many more large rocks on the ocean floor than on the au natural side, so if you stay on the textile side, those surf shoes might be a good idea.
The main textile pool is large and features a swim up bar. On the au natural side is the largest pool we’ve ever encountered, also equipped with swim up bar and, at one end, a sloping entrance to the pool much like a concrete beach. Both pools featured lots of tables and chairs with umbrellas, especially on the au natural side.
Both beaches and pools feature many new lounge chairs of aluminum frame and webbed fabric construction: much more comfortable than those heavy white plastic lounges at GL Negril, and no need to have one of those fancy pool/ocean floats in the chair to use as a cushion. Another improvement from our last visit was the replacement of all the water floats throughout the resort. The old ones needed replacing, and management didn’t skimp on doing so. There are plenty of floats around for use in the ocean or the pool.
There are two hot tubs on the au natural side, a large concrete one next to the pool and a smaller one surrounded by wood decking a short distance from the pool, set back near some trees. There’s also a hot tub near the main pool on the textile side, as well as a smaller tub next to the textile side club house.
There have been a number of posts and reports on the ‘Net and various proprietary service providers like AOL that the windy conditions make Braco undesirable. Braco is on the north coast of the island, unlike Negril on the west end, and there is definitely more wind at Braco than Negril. A couple of days during our trip the wind might have made sailing a Sunfish problematic for the uninitiated, but the wind was never a problem on the beach, in our opinion. In fact, the breeze kept things comfortable when temperatures rose to the mid 80s, and in the summer, when temperatures get into the 90s, things might have been very uncomfortable with the generally still air of Negril. The breeze also seemed to keep the humidity lower than Negril (not an issue in February, but could be an issue in the summer, absent the breeze).
Service
The service level by the staff was outstanding, and was the most notable and dramatic improvement since May 1998. Last trip, we thought the food service staff was pretty good, but it ranged from indifferent to outstanding. This time, service was virtually flawless, and the attitude and friendliness of the staff just wonderful, without exception. We were rather surprised to be greeted, by name in some cases, by staff we met on our last trip. Some staff working on the textile side even came over to the au natural side to say “Hi.” How they knew we were on the resort, we don’t know. (And we’re not any special kind of VIP guest or anything. We *did* write a lengthy letter to the general manager after our last trip, praising the good things (including special staff members) and offering suggestions for improvement; my suspicion is that management shares these comments with the staff, and maybe they have files “flagged” for repeat guests who’ve written to management in the past.)
Service at the “club house” on the au natural side was excellent, even very late at night. Bar service was great everywhere, from the piano bar to the pool bars.
Since our last visit, Braco has added cocktail service on the beach and around the pool. A cocktail waitress cruises around to take your order, so if you never want to leave your chair, you’re all set.
The resort offers 48 hour laundry and dry cleaning service at no extra charge. Learning from our experience at GL Negril, we packed light and still didn’t have reason to use it.
The pool guys did a great job keeping the hot tubs and pool in good shape throughout our visit. Always clean, and the right temperature in the hot tub.
Activities and Nightlife
Daytime activities (organized by the social directors or other “specialists,” such as aerobics instructors) include things like nature walks, water aerobics, reggae dancing lessons, trivia games, volleyball (in the pool or on the beach), tennis lessons, beer drinking contests, etc. The resort has a nine hole (I think) par 3 type golf course and at least four tennis courts (one of which is on the au natural side: try nude tennis some time!). The tennis courts are hard courts, in very good condition. At least one of the courts on the textile side is lit for night play, and it appeared they’d run power to the au natural court and that installation of lights was in process. Regulation golf is available off site at, I think, Breezes Runaway Bay, without additional charge. I think it’s about a 45 minute bus ride to the course.
Watersports are abundant, including water skiing, windsurfing, kayaks and Sunfish sailing. There’s also extensive scuba diving offered, included in the “all inclusive” rate except for night diving. Diving was reported as fairly good.
There’s also a workout area adjacent to Victoria Market, facing the ocean. There are about eight Cybex machines, treadmills, bikes and dumbbells, but no free weights. The equipment is in good repair, and there’s plenty of it for all the exercising you’re likely to do on vacation.
Most of the “organized” daytime social activities centered on the textile side, in or around the main pool. There were also activities scheduled on the au natural side, but they were fewer in number since the au natural side has only about one-fourth of the rooms at Braco, and I guess the management feel (probably correctly) that it’s easier for the au natural guests to be comfortable going over to the textile side than vice versa (and this also avoids having the textiles on the au natural side).
Activities outside the resort (but which can be arranged through Braco) included horseback riding (reported as a lot of fun) as well as a trip to Dunns River Falls.
While not an official “activity,” we quickly found out that, at least in May, the sun sets over the water when viewed from the au natural beach. This was truly spectacular, and was attended most afternoons by a considerable number of folks, nude and textile alike. Unfortunately, the sun doesn’t go down over the water in February.
Nightlife at Braco can be rather thin. There’s a disco that opens most nights about 10:00 or 10:30, which attracted some folks, but not what I’d call a crowd. The Thursday night pajama party generally is very well attended, and the attire is considerably more revealing than at GL Negril. Lots of thongs, g-strings, etc., but with a mix of people in more traditional garb. Everybody gets along fine, despite the disparity in dress. The Friday night street party, for which the resort sets up a pretty lavish buffet in the streets, together with tables, is usually the best attended event. There’s reggae dancing for at least two hours for those who have the stamina; most people take a turn here and there, then make way for others.
On most nights things pick up in the Piano Bar about 10:30 or so for the non-disco crowd. Some nights there are some people (local to Jamaica) jamming in, so to speak, with the official pianist. All of them were more than slightly talented, we thought.
The hot tub on the au natural side, as expected, attracted a good crowd most every night, and sometimes late into the night. Late night activities weren’t the bother for people in their rooms trying to sleep since, unlike GL Negril, the hot tub is considerably farther (on the other side of the pool) from the buildings than at Negril. The au natural hot tub adjoining the pool is about four times as large as the one at GL Negril.
Summary
With the recent improvements to GL Braco, it’s now really difficult to decide whether we like Braco or GL Negril best. The one thing GL Negril still has going for it is that Hedo II is right across the street, and you can jump over there for an evening or two of more lively entertainment than you’ll find at Braco or GL Negril. The service at Braco is now at GL Negril standards, and based on discussions with management at the cocktail hour for repeat GL guests, we think management is committed to making Braco the best resort in Jamaica.
We’ll be back to Braco, and would recommend it for people who want a relaxed, classy vacation in Jamaica. Feel free to email us at mrbenz@mindspring.com with any questions you may have. Doug and Sidney