Lit in the afternoons by an apricot light that must have inspired its Spanish name
Orocabeza
, or "Golden Head",
ORACABESSA
, some sixteen miles east of Ocho Rios, is a friendly one-street town with a covered produce market (main days Thursday and Friday) and a few shops and bars. A centre for the export of
bananas
until the early 1900s, Oracabessa became something of a ghost town when the wharves around the small natural harbour closed in 1969, taking with them the rum bars, gambling houses and most of the workers. The town snoozed quietly until the mid-1990s, when the
Island Outpost
corporation, owned by Chris Blackwell, bought seventy acres of prime coastal land and opened up the village's main draw, the
James Bond Beach Club
(Tues-Sun 9am-6pm; US$5), signposted just off Main Street along Old Wharf Road. Jamaica's most stylish beach, the pretty but tiny strip of white sand offers brightly painted changing rooms, a watersports centre, and a bar and restaurant. The expansive lawns are a regular venue for large-scale concerts.
East of the turn-off for James Bond Beach, Oracabessa merges into the residential community of
Race Course
. This is the site of
Goldeneye
, the unassuming white-walled bungalow in which Ian Fleming wrote almost all of the James Bond novels. Now an exclusive hotel, it's off limits to all but the very well-heeled.
