"Blown into the harbor by a hurricane, Hollywood bad boy Errol Flynn was amazed by what he found in Port Antonio."

“Heaven on earth,” he dubbed this lush Jamaican haven, “more beautiful than any woman I’ve seen.” So smitten was Flynn with the region’s charms that he bought nearby Navy Island and stayed for years. It’s easy to understand the actor’s passion for Port Antonio. Far from the tourist enclaves of Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, in the upper right-hand corner of Jamaica, Port Antonio is a bucolic refuge nestled between twin scalloped harbors, a magical place, where mist-shrouded mountains slope to the sea and crystal-clear waterfalls cascade into fern-edged pools.

Founded in 1723, Port Antonio was an important center of banana agriculture and export. Centuries dissolve like windward mist when you visit the town’s historic sites, including Folly, a mansion of Romanesque ruins, and Fort George, an 18th-century British stronghold whose rusting cannons still guard the harbor. In the 1950s, Port Antonio was Hollywood’s best-kept secret. After Flynn bought property here, the town evolved into a vacation playground for the rich and famous. You’ll feel like one of the elite as you float down the magnificent Rio Grande on a long, narrow bamboo raft.

Under the water another world awaits, and it’s every bit as magical. Dive in the spring-fed Blue Lagoon, whose depth reaches 200 feet. The world seems to fall away and you find yourself in paradise, where the air is perfumed by tropical flowers and the trees are nearly white with roosting egrets.