SIGHTSEE JAMAICA: My Debut Book

Happy New Year! I’ve been alluding to exciting stuff on the horizon for my blog and brand, and I’m excited to finally share the first one with you. The title gives it away– I’m publishing my first book this month on January 23! SIGHTSEE JAMAICA is a brief travel guide and gigantic checklist to every place worth seeing in Jamaica to the best of my knowledge. Some of the places I’ve included have never been published in a Jamaican travel guide before, because this guide is 100% local written. We’re now accepting preorders so go ahead and secure your copy.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle25 Comments

22 Travel Resolutions for 2022

‘New year, new you’? Just so you know, that doesn’t require a big change. Around the New Year many of us quickly stumble into disappointment by shooting for resolutions which require a total shift, instead of easing into them with smaller, manageable steps. While you may be looking for ways to improve yourself, take it a bit further by considering the following list by SimplyLocal.life below, which may also help positively contribute to the improvement of others as well as lovely Jamaica on a whole! Here’s what the lovely queen, Jhunelle, behind Jamaican travel blog SimplyLocal.life had to say.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle35 Comments

A Guide to the Two Turtle Bays of Portland, Jamaica

Portland is my favourite place in Jamaica as the parish is home to some of the most breathtaking views I’ve ever seen. This northeastern parish has been spared from the gigantic all-inclusive hotels and over-commercialization of our other resort towns. I find it amusing (– and confusing) that they named two places Turtle Bay in the Manchioneal district of Portland, and they are ten minutes apart from each other. This trip, I visited the two Turtle Bays of Manchioneal so read on for more details and pictures of these delightful destinations.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle19 Comments

Turn Your Adventures Into Beautiful Wall Art

As we ring in a new year, many of us are looking for ways to renovate our spaces and create more meaningful experiences and memories in 2022. A simple way to do that is investing in fine wall art! There’s nothing quite like seeing a portrait of your most recent adventure hanging on your wall as décor while also adding elegance to your home. When you turn travel photos into wall art, you’re making memories that will last a lifetime. Displaying photos from your excursion is a fantastic way to keep the experience fresh in your mind. Decorating your room with adventurous photos adds dimension to your space and soothes your senses with the beauty of nature. In its simplest form, adventure is an exciting or unexpected encounter undertaken to fulfill one’s curiosity. Beautiful wall art is an excellent way to immortalize that memory and prevent it from fading.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle13 Comments

A Guide to Solo Travel in Jamaica

Let’s clear the air by saying I’m not much of a solo traveler. I usually travel with family, my partner or a small group of friends for safety and convenience, even if you won’t see photos of them on my blog or social media for privacy. This causes people to falsely assume I travel alone, so I often get DMs on Instagram from would-be and experienced travelers who express awe at my “solo travel” or from people looking for tips on how to do it. While it may not be my usual modus operandi, I have done solo trips and am aware of how to accomplish them safely. Read on for my solo traveler’s guide to Jamaica for every kind of traveler.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle32 Comments

Guide to Jamaica’s Best 3 Rum Distillery Tours

I’ve had the pleasure of taking all three Jamaican rum tours and I even took one of them more than once, so I’m qualified to pit them against each other, right? Rum is a quintessential Caribbean alcohol. Our history is unequivocally tied to it as for three hundred years, Caribbean society revolved around sugar plantations. It was on these plantations that millions of enslaved Africans forcibly brought to the Caribbean would convert sugarcane, a species of tall perennial grass from the genus Saccharrum, to sugar and rum. In this blog post, I’ll give an overview of the process, share the three main remaining distilleries then compare them so you may choose the best tour for yourself. Perhaps I’ll even convince you to take them all, you rumaholic.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle22 Comments

Maamee River: A Hidden Gem in St. Andrew, Jamaica

Maamee River is a place I heard of via word of mouth, and I finally took note of the turn off from the main a few weeks ago when I made a visit to Maryland in rural St. Andrew. The Blue Mountains is my favourite corner of Jamaica, but I still haven’t scratched the surface in exploring it even after five years of being more deliberate in discovering every nook and cranny of Jamaica. Having dedicated the next few years of my life to completing a residency, my compromise for long daytrips and weekend staycations will be exploring all the close and accessible parts of the Blue Mountains. Hence, I ended up at Maamee River after work one Saturday afternoon and here’s how it went.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle11 Comments

Maryland, Saint Andrew

It always amazes me how close the ‘country’ is to our beloved city of Kingston. As a city girl, I often quip that I must’ve been from the country in a past life because I look forward to escaping the hustle and bustle every chance I get. The verdant mist-covered hills, breathtaking valleys and meandering rivers and waterfalls of rural Jamaica are more my scene. Papine is a small bustling town which marks the gateway of the Blue Mountains, Jamaica’s largest and most important mountain range. This mountain range is world renowned for Blue Mountain coffee, a brand of coffee which is as unique to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica as champagne is to Champagne, France, and is grown on steep inhospitable slopes between 3,500 and 5,500 ft. above sea level. Its tallest peak is the Blue Mountain Peak in Portland which towers at 7,402ft (2,256m) above sea level. Hiking to Blue Mountain Peak is still my most favourite adventure to date, but requires at least two days’ commitment. When pressed for time, I make do with exploring the more accessible parts of this mountain range instead and one such community worth exploring is Maryland, a rural district four miles north of Papine.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle21 Comments

2021: Mid-Year Mark

The ability to reflect on the past and use it to plan for the future is one of the abilities which sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. I reflect at the close of every chapter of my life, be it relationships, leaving an old job, ending an academic year and certainly, at the mid point of every year. I’ve been sharing mid-year reviews since 2018 to summarize what I’ve been up to so far and where I’ve reached in my goals. Read on for a few life updates and what to expect from Adventures from Elle for the rest of 2021.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle34 Comments

Discover Johnny Falls: A Hidden Gem in St. Mary

There’s this waterfall hidden in Palmetto Grove, St. Mary called Johnny Falls which I heard of years ago on Facebook. There were no directions on how to find it anywhere, so I added it to my list of Jamaican waterfalls to visit and moved on. Last year my interest in visiting Johnny Falls piqued again with Grove Swimmers, a fearless group of youngsters who perform admirable dives into the river which runs through their district, headed by 17-year-old Nathan Douglas. They have taken to Instagram and YouTube to showcase their talent, and have even been featured in national newspapers. Thus, I happily tagged along with a group of avid explorers and friends to cross this enigmatic and twenty-second Jamaican waterfall from my list with Nathan as my unofficial tour guide.

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Rochelle | Adventuresfromelle13 Comments