ALONG THE NORTHWESTERN coast of the tiny island of Jamaica, there is a well-trodden bounty of perfectly manicured, vacuum-sealed white-sand resorts, the kind with all-inclusive honeymoon packages and all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets. But on the northeastern side, in the quiet parish of Portland, there is something quite different: the Geejam Hotel. Tucked away in the forested foothills of the Blue Mountains, the winding estate offers glamorous villas, intimate cabins, and minimalist guestrooms. There’s a full-service recording studio for musicians and a small beach for guests down a long cement staircase that bends through locals’ backyards.

Geejam is the antidote to the “White Lotus” set of resorts. It’s a real place for real experiences. “You’re part of the community. There’s a real connection with the locals and I think that’s what makes it special,” says Jon Baker, Geejam’s founder. “It’s an adventure.” Baker never imagined himself a hotelier when he bought the original piece of land, about 15 minutes from the peaceful town of Port Antonio, back in the early ’90s. He was a music industry figure with a love for the island — its sounds, its people, its energy. His vision was to build a special kind of getaway, a place where artists could come and decompress, stay as long as they like, and write and record records in a lush Shangri-la. And come they did: No Doubt, Rihanna, Drake, and Amy Winehouse, to name a few, have all recorded at Geejam.

For Baker, it’s as much about being outside the grounds as inside. “If you go to a lot of the other hotels, they like to keep you inside their boundaries,” he says. “We’re pushing you out the front door first thing in the morning. We’re saying, go and look at these incredible waterfalls, go down to our beach, go and enjoy.” Nearby is the Blue Lagoon (a gorgeous, serene cove for swimming, with contrasting warm- and cold-water currents), a bay to paddleboard and turtle-watch in, and a chance to raft down the river in the Rio Grande Valley, perhaps eventually stopping at a small riverside restaurant owned by a woman named Belinda. She cooks nestled under the palm fronds, just as her mother did. “We can keep visitors busy for 15 days with absolutely different things that they can do,” says Baker.

The pandemic has been tough on Geejam, as it has been on every hotel, but international restrictions encouraged Baker to make the space even more neighborly. “We focused on our local business and we’ve had so many cool Jamaicans come — and they’re still coming, coming on weekends. It’s created a new energy,” he says. “It's sort of started to take on a new life of its own.”

And things are hopeful all around. Baker is building another restaurant at the foot of the property, right on the ocean. Plus, though Geejam is now a circuitous three-hour drive from the main airport in Kingston (the hotel can arrange a car for you) up mountains, astride cliffs, and down gulfs, a new road is being built along the water that will cut the travel time in half. “Until then, it’s a bit of an Achilles’ heel for us — I can't lie. We just try to get really comfortable cars,” he says. Still, even if he wants as many people to experience Geejam as possible, he also understands there’s something bittersweet about opening the proverbial front gate wider than it is right now. “The long drive does filter out a lot of the less adventurous — they don’t even want to give it a go,” he says. “Sometimes you have to try a bit harder to get something a little more special, don’t you?”