I spent a week at Hedonism II Negril, Jamaica in June 1999. This was my first trip to Jamaica and my first experience at a nude facility of any kind, so I was somewhat anxious to learn what I was getting into! I was traveling alone, so before I made reservations I read all the trip reports I could find, as well as corresponding with Denny and Jamaica Jim who were very helpful. This trip report is from the perspective of a single guy who went to Hedo to spend a week relaxing with open minded people with no clothes on… and it relates only to activities on the nude side; I only went to the prude side for meals and dancing. I won’t give you an extensive description of the resort as this has been done so well in other trip reports.
Naked
I booked an Ocean view au naturel room, and realized I’d probably get a roommate, which was fine by me. When I got to Hedo there was some delay in getting a room, as I arrived at about 9am and check-out isn’t until noon. When I walked down to the room I was surprised to see that most people were clothed, and I’d booked the room with the expectation that on that side of the resort I could just walk out of the room with nothing but my keys! I asked the maintenance guy replacing a bulb in my room about that - I didn’t want my first nude experience to be the mistake of walking out stark naked in a prude area. But he confirmed that it was fine to walk out of there nude, so I put on plenty of sunscreen, took a deep breath, and leaving my shorts behind headed for the nude beach.
Well, I discovered that I’m a born nudist - I just didn’t know it until that day. It took me all of five seconds to go from merely being comfortable without clothes, to really loving it. Hedo provides a fantastic nude environment, and I never felt particularly self-conscious or awkward. Everybody was very friendly and welcoming, and this was a relief as I had been concerned about single guys possibly not being welcome. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After a few days at Hedo, I felt like the ‘Resort Labrador’; bound up to some people, say hi, eat, drink, find some more people, say hi, etc., etc. - I had a wonderful time, just meeting some of the friendliest, most relaxed people I’ve ever had the good fortune to bump into.
To those of you who are simultaneously nervous and curious about the nude side - don’t worry. The only way to attract negative attention on the nude side is to wear clothes over there. The beach is clothing optional, but the nude pool and hot tub are NUDE - not for gawkers. There is nothing more ridiculous and mildly annoying than people with clothes on trying to look relaxed and unobtrusive while wearing clothes on the nude side. Dozens of naked people are looking at you, too polite to say anything, but puzzled why you’re incorrectly dressed for the occasion. If you feel the need to arrive in something other than what nature provided, I suggest you wear a towel that can be easily removed when you feel ready. As for your own feelings of modesty, shame, or pride about your body - rest assured that you are guaranteed not to have the ugliest, most beautiful, fattest, or thinnest body, or the worst tan lines, or the smallest/biggest dick or breasts or whatever it is you’re worried about. I saw a few people with stunningly attractive, perfect bodies, but the vast majority of people are flawed like the rest of us humans. After a few hours, it ceases to matter that much.
Being nude feels good. See and be seen.
Fun & Games
I must admit I didn’t really take full advantage of all the facilities at the resort. As far as I’m concerned, the greatest pastime there is to float in the roped-off area at the nude beach, sipping a drink and working on your tan while half asleep, or chatting in the nude jacuzzi until the early morning… it seemed superfluous to make the effort to go on an Island Picnic or one of the other activities. They seemed designed to relax people and encourage them to have a few drinks and take their clothes off - and of course none of us on the nude side needed the least provocation to do that! A lot of the contests (such as "Most Revealing Toga") didn’t make a lot of sense to someone who was spending 23 hours per day nude, and loving it.
My days consisted of a light workout before heading to the nude beach. I’d normally spend 3-4 hours floating around and talking to people under the ample shade trees that line the beach. I’d usually end up falling asleep for a few hours under the trees, before heading over to the nude pool in the afternoon to drink a little more and wait for the jerked chicken to arrive. I remember reading in other trip reports how people found it inconvenient to do over to the prude side for meals, and being somewhat skeptical - but after a few days of being nude, I now understand fully. Even putting on a pair of shorts to go over to the dining room was more trouble than I was willing to go to for food sometimes. It took me thirty six years to get my clothes off in public, and now I was finding it correspondingly difficult to put them back on again! After dinner I generally didn’t stay too long for the entertainment, but headed straight over to the nude jacuzzi. The evening was usually spent very pleasantly, hanging out in the jacuzzi, or swimming out to the platforms and talking for hours with friends under the stars… I could have slept out on the swim platforms some nights, if only I’d had a light blanket!
The pajama party was a lot of fun, although the Fozzy Bear g-string I bought in the lingerie store there, revealing by prude standards, was the most I had worn all day. I love to dance, and I found the disco quite small for a wild party resort - for me, any wild party involves a large amount of dancing and bouncing around to music - and the disco was nowhere near big enough for the size of the resort. The disco also got very hot (I couldn’t possibly have worn more than Fozzy Bear or my "toga" most nights. The music was predictably eclectic for a resort catering to diverse tastes, usually starting off with electronica, moving on to house and rap, and finishing with all the disco you never want to hear again. There were a surprising number of local boys there most nights, and it seemed like the DJ was playing to his local fan club rather than the guests.
The workout facilities are adequate, with free weights, Universal-type equipment, stair climbers, stationary bikes, and treadmills. The workout area is small, and it’s fortunate that not many people on vacation felt inclined to use it! Certainly, the hot humid air is far more conducive to laying naked on the beach drinking rum than it is to pumping iron! You can work up a pretty good sweat just walking to the bar for another drink, half an hour on a stair climber seems somewhat redundant.
Happily Ever After
I attended two weddings while I was there - one as best man and one as video camera operator. The resort puts on a convenient (and very fast!) wedding if you should need one, complete with Jamaican minister, official marriage certificate, reception, and wedding presents. There are a number of pleasant garden settings where you can get hitched, although the Reverend really objects to doing them on the nude beach. There was one classic moment when I had set the camera up over a path on the nude side. My eye was glued to the viewfinder of the camera, and I was trying to capture the bride, groom, and minister at a critical moment in the ceremony. When I looked up from the camera, there were several polite people, stark naked of course, standing respectfully on either side, waiting for the ceremony to end before crossing the camera field of view! The Reverend seems like a very open minded gentleman.
Food and Drink
The food at Hedo is fine, but nothing to write home about. I think there is something to satisfy most palates, but I’m not exactly a picky eater, and will eat anything that remains stationary for a while or is even just slow-moving - so don’t take my word for it… but you shouldn’t go to Hedo if you’re looking for a gourmet experience. The wine served with dinner, particularly the red, is rather rough, and should be approached with caution. As for the other alcohol, I’m a bit of a lightweight but I found that the drinks I had during the day had very little affect on me. Those I had during the evening seemed to be more potent, but I never felt in danger of getting trashed and waking up face down in the gutter!
Strange
I had one disturbing experience the first night that I can look back on and laugh about now. I was dozing on my bed after quite a few drinks, nude of course, and my recently assigned roommate came in. He sat down on his bed (the room had two twin beds, pushed apart) and asked "do you wanna fool around?". Not believing my ears, I opened my eyes and looked up, and his open mouth was half way to my ‘nads! I flipped off the bed like a dropped cat and made it very clear to him that I was not up for that kind of thing - I’m not homophobic and don’t mind sharing a room with a guy who has an alternative lifestyle, but I don’t want to be involved. Fortunately he found a different room the next day. Maybe next time it will be worth paying the private room surcharge just to avoid such misunderstandings!
Pervert
The one unpleasant experience that changed my impression of Hedo occurred after 2am in the nude jacuzzi. I was talking to friends, a married couple, and the three of us were seated at the edge of the tub as the water was a little too hot. We had grown accustomed to lounging around until very late in the nude hot tub, and had little inclination to leave most nights as it was so comfortable there. There were not too many people around at that time of night, and on that evening there were just a few couples and a group of three rather rowdy guys drinking and smoking.
After some time, we grew uncomfortably aware of one of the guys sitting opposite us staring at my friends wife - she tends to attract attention as she is a very attractive woman, but this was not polite - he was staring fixedly at her and making us all uncomfortable. Just plain rude. Jeff and I positioned ourselves in front of her and continued talking, but this stringy haired, skinny guy kept moving around to try and maintain eye contact with her. Occasionally he’d get out of the pool and come around to where we were sitting, and just kind of futz around - not doing anything blatantly offensive, but at the same time making us wonder what was going on. I've got nothing against people who like to watch just because its not my thing, but there should be such a thing as discretion and politeness in voyeurism I suppose.
Hey buddy, can I bone your wife?
Being polite people, we put up with this for a while before turning around to find out what he wanted. He asked Lynn, "do you wanna go with me? Huh? HUH? Wanna go with me?". Not entirely sure what he meant, we assured him that we were fine where we were and continued our conversation. It was clear that the guy was more than a little drunk and stoned, and we naively hoped that if we ignored him he would go away. He was a rather poor specimen, and we felt the same for him as we would for a mangy growling dog on the street - a rather pathetic sight, but not really something we wanted to get involved with.
A little while later he started masturbating, still staring at the three of us. "When are you going to get started? HUH? I won't bother you, I just wanna watch". With a chorus of groans and rolling our eyes toward heaven, we realized he wanted to "go" with Lynn, and we can be forgiven for not catching on to this unlikely concept from the very beginning. Why would a beautiful, sophisticated, poised, and accomplished woman want to "go" with this mangy, skinny, pock-marked, wild-eyed pervert pulling his small, misshapen penis in a hot tub when she was standing next to her handsome, wealthy, successful, urbane, attentive and (lets not deny it) well-hung husband? What bizarre state of mind had this guy reached with his booze and ganga that he thought up such a thing? Regrettably, St. George’s Preparatory School for young men had not prepared me to deal with this awkward social situation.
We told him to get lost and wearily climbed out of the hot tub to go over to the therapy pool, to leave dogboy to his solitary pleasures. He immediately followed us, and positioned himself on a lounger to continue to try to coax some life into his small flaccid noodle. By this time our saintly patience had been tried too far, and I went to get security. We came back and, standing with a member of security, told the guy that we were tired of him following us, staring at us, and masturbating (not unreasonable, I think) and that he had to go away. Amazingly, he argued with me, explaining "I wont bother her" (like it doesn’t bother you to have a stoned, wild eyed pervert masturbating in front of you!) and "I just want to watch you guys" (like it should be OK). What a freak. Security escorted him out. He didn’t come back to the nude side.
Although we could laugh about it later, at the time the three of us found the incident most disturbing. Up until then we had been having a lot of fun at Hedo and although it was clear to us that a lot of couples were swinging, and all of us had been approached collectively and individually at one time or another, everyone had been very discreet and polite. There was nothing predatory about it. Even when couples were having sex in the hot tub, it wasn’t a big deal - they were happily preoccupied and not bothering anybody. Hedo is a very sensual, licentious and non-threatening environment in which we could really relax together. "Hedonism", the pursuit of pleasure, does not imply the pursuit of your own fulfillment without due consideration for the needs of others. Unfortunately Dogboy and his cohorts don’t understand this, but I'm glad we had the chance to improve Hedo by getting rid of one of his kind.
I enjoyed being at Hedo and will certainly return. It makes little difference weather you book and "Ocean View" or "Garden View" room apart from the price (I’ll take Garden next time ‘cause its cheaper), but I’m very glad I chose a room on the "au naturel" side. The nude and prude sides of the resort have a completely different vibe to them, for me it was almost like being in two different resorts.
If you have any questions, you can email me at Sspaceman@compuserve.com .