Picture Noel Coward, admiring the sunset from his Ocho Rios estate, a cigarette in one hand, a proper English gin and tonic in the other"

The celebrated British composer and playwright, who lived on Jamaica’s north coast for 20 years, undoubtedly concurred with Columbus, who landed near Ocho Rios more than five centuries ago and declared it to be “the fairest island ever eyes beheld, where the land seems to touch the sky.” The land, as Columbus learned from native Arawak Indians, was Xaymaca, “a place of rivers.” Ocho Rios does not boast eight rivers, as its Spanish name suggests. But water is the town’s lifeblood, nourishing brilliant blue bays, sandy coves ringed by quaint fishing villages, and cascading waterfalls.

At Dunn’s River Falls you’ll feel as if you’ve stepped into a postcard. It’s magnificent--and also a little touristy. At the falls’ entrance is a village of sometimes overly enthusiastic crafts vendors. But Dunn’s River is an icon of Jamaica, and no visitor to the island should leave without visiting the Caribbean’s equivalent of Niagara Falls. If you’re feeling adventurous, a guide will help you to climb the falls’ 600 feet of limestone tiers. If not, admire the view from the shore and applaud those daring tourists who form a human chain, helping each other to reach the top. Less taxing, but just as romantic, is Irie Beach on the White River, where sparkling water cascades over rock chutes, forming pools large enough for swimming.

Ocho Rios’s fairy-tale beauty also manifests in vine-draped Fern Gully, a three-mile road running along an old stream bed overhung with greenery. So dense is the canopy that Fern Gully appears to exist in perpetual twilight. But you’ll have no trouble spotting bamboo trees entwined with lianas, 500 varieties of ferns, and 200 kinds of tree-clinging orchids, many of which are found nowhere else on earth. Nature shines as well at Shaw Park Gardens, where helicon, ginger and stunning flame trees carpet a hillside overlooking the bay. Is it any wonder that Columbus loved this place?