Overall, this a nice place to stay. It's small and the cottages are pretty cute. They are not upscale hotel rooms, so I think you'll enjoy your stay better if you remember this. The value per dollar spent is very high.

Let's talk about the people! They're great. I enjoyed talking with everyone who worked there and they are all nice and helpful. Put a BIG feather in their cap! I'd love to name names, but I know I'd leave someone out.

The cottages are clean and nice. I found the bed to be a little hard for my liking. There are no glass windows, just shutters, so keep the place closed up and you will have almost no issues with mosquitos (some reviewers have complained about this . . .Dude . . . you're in tropics). I had a few after housekeeping came in one day (I assume they left the door open while cleaning).

The restaurnat has a great breakfast and good lunch (I heard the dinner was good as well, but never ate dinner there). Please take note of this . . . the restaurant is very generous with alcohol in the drinks . . . don't go anywhere else :-).

The only really bad thing about the hotel is the proximity to Margaritaville. Most nights, the noise was not bad. However, on the night that there was a live band, I could hear each word of each song in my room. BTW . . . I used to love to go to Margaritaville in Orlando, but I did not care for the Margaritaville on Negril (music sucks by and large) or at the Montego Bay airport (food sucks by and large).

We flew out of S.F.O @ 6 am. We made it to M.I.A @ 2:30pm. We had a 4 hour lay-over in Miami. On top of the lay-over our flight was delayed 4 and a half more hours. BUT when we finally got to MoBay airport Ernie was waiting for us. We arrived @ Country Country @ 12:30am. When Ernie dropped us off at out "home", he told us that we would wake up in paradise. And we sure did. Our honeymoon was a gift and neither my husband or myself had very much money but we really did not need much. We hung out on the beach, walked to the store, and just enjoyed each other and all of the beautiful surroundings. When we got up on our first day we went to the office to do the official check in. We were told that we were going to be moved into the room that we were meant to be in. It was room 515. It was the best one that they had. Apparently there was a bottle of chilled champagne waiting for us courtesy of my mom and dad, but we arrived to late to enjoy it, so we enjoyed it the next morning. Our room was about 15 feet from the beach. (for me it was about 25 feet because I took a detour around a spider that was our neighbor). Before we went on our trip I had read blogs about our hotel and was concerned by one written by a woman who went there for her wedding and was so upset about the noise from
Margaritaville. Yeah at times it was loud but WHO CARES! Enjoy. WTF. Either go out and check it out, drink enough during the day so you pass out, or just have sex and make your own music. Just chill out. Anyways, the staff was really nice. Ernie was super cool. We went to Mayfield Falls one day and on the way back Ernie drove us around the West end, and took us to Rick's Cafe, so we could see the view and the amazingly blue water. Anyways, our trip was spectacular. Although you do not need much money the only thing that I regret was not having enough cash to tip people appropriately.

Just returned from Country Country, Negril yesterday. I want to write a long review but I am very tired. lol.

Negril - Flew from ATL to Montego Bay. No worries, Mon. The turquoise ocean hinted at the beautiful beaches yet to be seen. We landed and got through customs and the helpful Jamaican airport employees pointed us in the right direction to get on our transportation to the hotel. We booked through Travelocity so we went ahead and arranged for transportation. We checked in with transportation and walked outside to where we were directed to get onboard a van that carried a few other passengers. The trip to Negril from Montego Bay took 1.5 hours? Maybe 2 hours? We stopped halfway there at a small shop. Some bought beers, some bought food. Another transportation van stopped after we did. We got back on the van ready to get to our hotel.

Hotel - As we rode up to the hotel strip, we started dropping people off, a few at the Riu, a few at another large resort, and each drop off included comments from those on board the van, "Nice resort", "That one's nice too!". Then we got to Country Country and you can barely make out the hotel due to the palm trees and greenery and flowers. The checkin desk was a hut. There were whispers on the van, "What's this? Country Country? Never heard of it!". A lot of confused looks and a little worry that people would choose to stay somewhere so... so... non-resort-y. lol!!! I wanted to say so bad, "I've done the big all-inclusive resorts and decided that sometimes, a Miami hotel is not what people always want!"... but why explain???? *shrug*

We walked to the hut and were greeted kindly by Shayfala. She checked us in promptly and called a guy to assist us with bags. I'd call him a bellboy but this was by no means a regular hotel! So we walked down the paved walkway and headed to our cottage. I was hoping we'd get the PRIME cottages on the beach but we stopped way before the beach. It was fine though! We walked up stairs and walked across the patio to our wood shuttered cottage. I was nervous. lol. We opened our wood shuttered door and in we went!!! It was so different and it was HOT! We immediately searched for the a/c and found it to our relief! (Thank God for a/c! Note: In the next few days, we used it less than we thought we would!). Anyhow, we quickly inspected the room to our satisfaction. The bathroom was small and the room was clean and had enough to be of comfort in the few hours we needed it for sleeping. Including a TV with channels from Ft Lauderdale.

We were so hungry we rushed outside to eat at the beachfront restaurant but unfortunately they were closed (between lunch and dinner). We decided to walk the beach and find something before we fainted from hunger. Luckily we walked to the right and next door was a bar with tables that were serving food. Unfortunately the waitress didn't realize we were eating when we ordered water and disappeared for 45 minutes!!!! As we stood up to leave, the bartender rushed to call the waitress after being informed she hadn't taken our order. She came out 5-10 minutes later and took our order. They say that in Jamaica, time doesn't exist. IT'S TRUE!!! NOTE: GO EAT BEFORE YOU ARE HUNGRY! YOU WILL WAIT! :) So we received our food (I think we ordered jerk chicken and something else - I forget). It was good and satisfied us. We also ordered a Miami Vice, my signature drink for the entire weekend. Yum!

The hotel breakfast was good. I had the banana pancakes with a side of bacon. He had the french toast plate. I tried the Jamaican Special breakfast of ackee & saltfish with 3 rolls of some type. It was good. We ate at other restaurants the rest of the weekend but had lunch at our hotel. We also kept ordering Miami Vices... yum. Oh, we had dessert twice. Chocolate cake and ice-cream. The chocolate cake tastes like box but the ice-cream was very good. We had some the next day and it was obviously the same cake but drier... yuck. Ice-cream was still good. :)

The days were kind of similar, beach, ocean, eating, walking, laying around, eating... lol. They all run together. I think I will type the rest in the Negril forum since this review is primarily for the hotel.

Bottom line - Loved it. Private, beautiful beach, wonderful employees, nice comfortable rooms.

One issue - We ordered room service and my bf had to go get it so we weren't supposed to be charged the $3 service fee. Upon check out, the bill included it and we had to "convince" the front desk that we didn't have room service delivered and the lady who wrote the ticket was off of work. The $3 charge wasn't the issue. It was the fact that we didn't have the service provided and they kind of looked at us like, "Are you telling the truth"... Ha... over $3 huh? lol... Minor issue.

Anyhow, I will elaborate on our excursions in the Negril forum... Under "Country Country May 2008"

It has been a year since my stay at Country Country and I would not trade my memories for a refund of every penny spent. I was in no rush to review the property because 99% of the reviews written since my stay have expressed my sentiments. But recently noticing their rankings have dropped them to 12th in Negril I felt they needed someone to put the three negative reviews that precipitated the fall in perspective. CC really derserves to be ranked much higher than 5th in Negril.

Any travel agent that books three couples of old fogey's into CC during college spring break deserves to be ranked the worst at their occupation. You can hit Margaritaville with a thrown rock from CC's beach. The management at CC can't dictate the way Jimmy Buffetville does business. During our stay in May the noise was minimal and ended before midnight. I didn't have to use the foam earplugs I had packed once.

How many resorts have you stayed where you developed a first name friendship with everyone on staff. I still email Monique, co-manager, to see how she is. I called last year just hours after the Category 5 hurricane passed to verify that everyone was safe. And that is not my usual personality.

There is no need for me to say how CC's rooms are clean, spacious and comfortable/the beach is perfect and the water is calm and refreshing/entertainment is within walking distance in any direction/you can dine at one of the best restaurants in Negril on site. Their dinner entrees average in the $18 to $25 American dollar range.

But the best testimony for staying at the CC is that for $150 American per day a couple gets a cottage directly on the white soft sand beach, just steps from your door, and it includes the best breakfast you have ever tasted. Priceless!!!

I shouldn't be so concerned about the drop in their rankings as it will insure I continue to get accomodations as I want. I just feel they work so hard making sure your stay is just perfect they should be rewarded for their efforts.