♪

♪ . ♪ ♪ i took a walk through this beautiful world ♪ ♪ felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪ ♪ found something good in this beautiful world ♪ ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha la la la

♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la ♪ sha la la la la la ♪ ♪ >> nearly a year on the road, all those miles, all those airports, it was time for something low impact. so off to jamaica.

this is the first time i've ever driven a car on the wrong side of the road. how hard can it be? oh, i get to pass on the right, too. thankfully we have roll bar. you probably know of jamaica as a vacation paradise. but it's worth mentioning this is a divided country and has been in one form or another since the days of slavery. there's a small minority who control most everything, and then there's the poorer, less connected, darker skin majority. jamaican cuisine still represents this conflicted place. introduced basically as feed. ♪

day one, first order of business, some chicken. ♪ oh, that's good. yeah, yeah, i know this routine. believe me. it's brown, it's murky, and it burns, mommy, it burns. and there are still all these years later two jamaicas. there's the jamaica that most jamaicans live in, cook in, struggle to survive in.

the real jamaica. then there's the jamaica you're probably more familiar with. ♪ the tourists have been coming to jamaica for a long time, when this part of the island threatened to become an international jet set destination. local legend has it that erol flynn was shipwrecked here in 1947 and fell in love with the place. before then, it had been an empire of bananas. a huge industry that later became united fruit. bananas went out, tourists came in. the banana business eventually went elsewhere, and when tourism shifted to the other side of the

island with the construction of an airport, that was it. the northeast coast was largely forgotten. it has the feel still of a forgotten paradise. there are those who believe that the area can come back, that it must come back. that the future is hotels and businesses for wealthy visitors as it once was. take this place, for instance. the trident hotel. expensive, luxurious. best of all, i'm the only guest.

oh, did i mention it comes with a castle? what kind of person would own a building like that? who? why? then this man arrives and kind of answered that question. all of this belongs to michael lee chen, local boy turned billionaire, one of the richest men in the world and my host. he's invited me for dinner. >> let's have some rum. >> sounds like a plan. the drink is in order. >> cheers, mate.

♪ >> a lot of crab holes. this time of year, port antonio is literally crawling with crabs, i'm told. lit be really easy. just scoop up the little bastards, then it's back to the pool. >> hot. >> it's sweltering, freaking hot and dark. >> find something? >> yeah, yeah. >> awesome. >> but it doesn't seem to bother the hotel chefs who willingly risk dismemberment for the sake of procuring dinner. >> where are your friends? >> one crab down, 49 left to go. i'm frankly anxious to get this over with, so when the opportunity arises to stick my paw down in a hole where there's a pissed off crab, i could care less.

are those fire ants? wonderful. please attack my nut sack. anything to get this over quickly. i don't want to kill the little guy. >> nice one. >> what seemed like several sweltering hours later is mission accomplished and time to get ready for dinner at the castle, followed by a party, i'm told. >> do you recognize these? >> i put this guy back. i'm joined by billionaire michael, his partner, john baker

and john's wife. erol flynn's grandson, luke flynn, and his son, sky. you grew up in this area. what was port antonio like in the ''50s? >> it was vibrant, lots of wealthy tourists. so port antonio was a happening place. ♪ >> you're a man with a diverse financial interests.

banks, communications. as a veteran of 30 years in the hospitality business, why? why would you do such a hard and probably unprofitable thing? i mean, usually unprofitable. >> i thought you're smart, brilliant. but your behavior shows you're dumb. >> no, no, i know the answer. are you a romantic? >> great things will happen when you romanticize, you see a vision, you dream, and you set off to achieve that vision. ♪ >> where does it cross over where all of the things you love

about this area, and people are building 400 room hotels? is there a threshold where things start to not be the things that you loved about the place in the first place and how do you guard against that? >> port antonio is a long way from getting there. it has not progressed out of the '50s. >> very little tourism in recent years. >> everybody loves reggae, everybody loves bob marley and spicy, delicious jamaicaen food. what's the problem? >> it's an effort to get here. it filters out certain forms of

travelers. >> you get beat up by a lot of lame islands. >> even in jamaica, if someone says i've been to jamaica but they haven't been to port antonio, i'm like, oh, really? you didn't get a real feeling of jamaica. >> people who are generally warm, where there is a strong culture of food, strong culture in terms of music. and at the same time, being part of a community and you can be a visitor without being part of the tourist industry. ♪

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♪

hello. during world war ii, british naval intelligence officer ian fleming came to jamaica on a secret mission to investigate possible u-boat activity. like the legendary character he would later create, he was a spy. the mission came to nothing, but fleming fell immediately in love with the island and vowed to return. which he did. buying this place, golden eye. at the time considered very spartan, a cottage, single room really, few smaller rooms in the back, but an incredible view. he spent much of the rest of his life here writing a book each year at this desk. you know those books. ♪

today, fleming's cottage has been enlarged and made more luxurious as a hotel, but the original house still stands along with some improvements. grotto, eh. what did every male want born in 1956? they wanted a grotto. it sounded good to me at 12, as i got older, who was in the grotto before me becomes a concern. like ron jeremy just leave the grotto? am i the first one? someone changed the water? these were concerns later in the life. this was it, i wanted a grotto. i still kind of do. ♪ thank you so much. this is totally better than the

playboy mansion. you know that the playboy mansion totally smells like old man ear stink. the current owner of golden eye is another unusual man, chris blackwell, legendary music producer turned hotelier. over the years, blackwell expanded the property into a resort, gates reaching right up to the fishing beach. blackwell has big plans for the area. ♪ the next day i leave golden eye's luxurious embrace, headed into town for something, well i

just had to have -- a long-time favorite. what do we have here? oh, ox tail. >> yeah man. >> goat. >> sweet. >> i don't care whether it's the bronx or kingston or wherever i can get it, ox tail, and of course rice and pigeon peas. got to have that. god, i love the food in this country. >> it's the best. >> it's such a mix. african. a lot of -- people totally miss out. curry goat. east indy is what they used to call it. >> that's true. >> chef chris's cook shop became a thriving business in a town that's seen better days. how long you been open here? >> i've been open, in this little shop for 13 years. >> 13 years. >> yeah man. >> the town changed in that time or stayed the same? >> right now, our economy is not good right now. >> why not? it's one of the most beautiful areas in the world. >> for real. we have a beautiful water front. >> beautiful weather.

>> what more could a guy ask for? >> what do you think went wrong? i mean, why would people stop coming? >> i guess the guys in the top seat messed it up, they're trying to correct it now, you know. >> it's expanding fast. >> yeah. it is. it is. >> you're going to be building all the way -- >> all the way down there. >> all the way around. >> so that's thousands of tourists. >> thousands. to be honest, i'm waiting for the moment. i don't want to think. ♪ we really need that, this town was dying fast, real fast. chris blackwell came back and he's booming the town. that's a good step in the right direction. >> oh, thank you. oh yeah, see now, now i'm happy. that is just beautiful. nice place to grow up? >> it is.

>> what's it like being a kid? >> my childhood days, i used to spend it on the beach. >> that's good. who gets to do that? >> well, i guess only me and my friends. >> do you ever take it for granted, like do you get -- >> we do. >> you do? >> we do, we do. see the thing about it when we really need it, that's the time we can't have it. a lot of our water fronts have been gone. we have very little right now. you know, it's okay. we have james bond beach like ten minutes walk from the house. we're one of the lucky ones.

♪ it's inevitable of course that next door to golden eye, there would be a james bond beach. >> all of the bond movies were conceptualized and written here. ♪ >> when blackwell heard i wanted to visit the local fishermen, he hooked me up with his good friend carl for good company. i'm here to hit a local rum bar where one can indulge in a fishermen's breakfast, rum. so we drinking rum here, beer, rum and beer?

>> all i know is hard core. >> but you're recommending just like beer and rum together? >> better now. >> all right. >> right. then one part of rum. >> yep. >> and four parts of beer. no water. no ice. try that. steel bottom. meaning -- >> good. >> and you could take it to your dimension. >> so who fishes here? you fish? >> yeah. >> what are you fishing for? >> multiple fishing. >> yeah. >> snapper, your parrot. >> business better or worse? okay, worse. >> fishing is a problem. >> this is a fishing village for now, at least. all throughout the caribbean, fish stocks are in decline and making a living from the sea is getting harder and harder. >> so right here, it's actually

the fishing area. we're trying to revive the fish stock around the island. >> so if this becomes a protected sanctuary, what are you doing far living? >> we'll have to go further out to sea. >> that means more gas. >> more gas, and less fish. so it's a strain, right. >> is there a future for the traditional fishing industry in jamaica or do you think like every place else in the caribbean, is it going to end up an entirely tourist economy? >> it's going to belong to the tourist. this place, i can tell you something, i live up the road, love the spot. and they're going to tell me i cannot fish here. >> here's what i'm kind of getting here, rich people want to live what they see as a simple life, in their minds, they want to live the life of a jamaican fishermen. they want to live the life of

somebody that doesn't have a lot of money. but the people who actually do that now are giving up their living and essentially entering the tourist sector. there's weird irony at work here. who gets to live in paradise? >> nobody. because guess what -- there's a lot of things going on here, right? i read a piece of paper a couple months ago that's going on down here, all right. native here, there are no beaches. >> this architect's model sits in one of golden eye's offices, showing what the coastline will look like if all goes according to plan. >> they've going to come inside here. >> i'm no expert on local politics, whatever is going on here has clearly stirred up some strong emotions.

>> the school kids, they also want to own that. >> wait a minute, i'm talking -- >> wait a minute. >> stop that. >> stop talk. all right. big man, stop talk. >> why? >> come here, come here. >> sit down. >> don't do that. don't do that. sit down.

♪ >> which is better, to be your own man, uphold family tradition in a dangerous, evershrinking, ever more difficult business trying to catch fish in the sea or carry a golf bag for a wealthy tourist? i couldn't tell you. i was in the service industry cooking people's food for most of my working life, so it's not like i have anything against it, but i don't know. >> let us find the spirit in man and travel. travel to the unknown. because we are here in the present, this is coming. and we are going to go on into there.

if one man die, all man dead. and if one man live, all man live. one moon, one sun, multipurpose in the energy on life. black, blue, green, pink, yellow, river, sea, mountain, bird, dog, man. the car, money, everything is connected to the universe. so if we are one person does not realize or wherever we are within the time. earth will not disappear. is caringing

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♪ who gets to live in paradise? it's jamaica, let's accept as a basic premise this is as close to paradise as it gets, right? this place i'm staying was built by a guy who lived here two months out of the year. that place down there, probably the same. two months a year. sad to say, i think it's

unlikely that 50 years from now, anyone but the extraordinarily fortunate, the extraordinarily connected, and the extraordinarily rich will be able to even look at a vista like this. that is my personal theory. look, here i am. fully aware of the irony of the situation. it's like the whole preservation thing, preserved for who? save the reef, for who? save the beach, for whom? not you. probably. ♪

later that evening, blackwell invited know his private bar just down the cliff from fleming's old villa. there are very few pieces of land anywhere on earth like this, especially with this kind of legendary status. >> legendary status, yes, bond's birthplace. >> chris blackwell is the founder of island recorders. he's credited with discover, bob marley and spreading the gospel of reggae in the mainstream all across the world. to the extent that one person can sort of be responsible for the sound track of your life, you are responsible for much of the soundtrack of my life. >> yes. >> did you have any idea signing bob marley, the extent to which his image alone would blow up

to, you know, the level? >> bob somehow managed to touch people in every corner of the world in different cultures, different societies. no, i never could have imagined. i don't think anybody could have imagined, it's so unbelievable. >> having sold island recorders for some rumored to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, blackwell spends his time, well, doing whatever he wants. you have a number of hotel properties, rum business -- >> uh-huh. >> what's the master plan? or are you just having fun? >> always is to have fun. that's part of the master plan. i only live one time. i'm very excited about here. what i'm doing here. i'm trying to break a little resort town into something that filters into the town, filters into the parish, filters into the country.

>> lately the project at hand is the fish sanctuary, set up to protect the local fish habitat and breeding grounds. the noble cause, but one that has put blackwell squarely at odds with some of his neighbors. it seems to me that most people who come to jamaica pretty much stay within the compound of, you know, sandals or whatever, and don't really get out there much. >> it's a business model, and that business model works well for people. ♪ the market that i'm going for are the ones on the high level, in terms of high cost level. >> is it inevitability that all of the caribbean will end up as a service economy? >> yes, i think, yes, i think mainly so.

and then it's based on tourism. it's based on people -- >> tough balance. the engine that's going to preserve or safe is depended on who's coming to look and what they're willing to pay to come and look. >> uh-huh. >> can there be a balance do you think? can a place this beautiful be unspoiled? forever? >> i think it could be a couple hundred places like this in jamaica. as long as there are people who can go and spend some money in communities, go to little restaurant, go to a little bar, go to, you know, shopping. that's essential for jamaica to really thrive. >> if life were a bond film, who would you be in a bond film? >> well, there's only one hero in the bond film. >> you'd be the hero? >> i'd have to be, yeah.

>> i don't know that i'd be the villain, i'd be like number 17. >> he doesn't have a happy end, and his end is kept short. >> yeah.

♪

what we're all looking for, isn't it? the perfect beach. remote, uncluttered, cold, local beer. the perfect end to a long, and well, bumpy road. winnerford's beach is that beach, mostly locals, a few clued in visitors, white sand, clear, warm water. and of course, local food.

>> this is aki, jamaica favorite dish. typically in jamaica, we use it as a breakfast. >> cynthia and dennis run this place and come highly recommended. i'm told this is the spot for the got to have it or you ain't been to jamaica aki and saw fish. rehydrated and cooked, it happens to be toxic if you don't handle it right. now they say the best -- >> in jamaica. >> anywhere. >> and yeah, also some banana. that is delicious. cynthia's friends joy and margerie have restaurants on the beach, here too it's in danger of redevelopment. and all this might disappear into the everchurning wheel of, well -- ♪

>> it is a public beach. it has been one of the best beaches in jamaica. the beach was left to give the poor people of jamaica. >> so the government takes it over, supposedly to make it a public space, but they want to sell it to, what a hotel group? >> yeah, they want to make like a resort. >> there were a lot of islands on the caribbean where you're not allowed to own a beach. meaning all beaches are public. even if it's an exclusive hotel, at least theoretically, anybody can go. >> right. >> here it's different. here if you can buy a house and the beach, if you, you're a hotel, you can make it a private beach. meaning, they don't let the locals or venders. they can keep people out. >> right. >> how many public access beaches are there in this area? >> just one. >> one. >> this one. no more. no more.

no more beach. >> we have other beaches around, you know, we have like blue lagoon which is a private beach. and this is the only public one. you know. >> yeah, what happens if, i mean, that would be sort of ridiculous if jamaicans can't go to the beach in jamaica. >> exactly. >> there are two sides to every story, of course, and the government for the most part claims that locals will still have access. >> they want to get us off. and come six, seven years, they don't do anything on it. and close it off. >> right. ♪ what kind of monstrous human being or organization would

displace their own people in the beach? >> we have nowhere to come and swim. ♪ >> so we the people, we are in court with the government, because we do not want them to take away the one and only beach that we have in jamaica, portland. >> what do you think your chances are? are they good? are you going to win? >> yes. >> i've been fighting over seven years. >> seven years? >> and i said i'm going to fight until i reach the top. when i reach the top and i lose i feel much better, but i'm not giving up. >> let's face it. there are only so many beaches in this world, even fewer unspoiled beaches, and even fewer beaches like this. i mean, that's one of the things that's nice about this area is that it's not a big resort area like some of the other parts. and the food is amazing.

>> right. nice food. >> you can't get this at the hotel. >> not that dish. >> that's fresh. >> really, really tasty. i'm going to have to come back here, like tomorrow. ♪ >> whenever people come here and they have problem they go to the sea, and they look over there in the ocean, and when they are finished they never have a problem again. it goes right in the water and down. it is medicine here. and i hope that the world can h and they can come on and ifred enjoy and the beauty of the people and the love of the beach. daughter gave was beautiful. i just feel bad knowing they struggled to pay for the funeral, especially without life insurance. i wish they would've let us help. but, it did make me think, though. about what? well, that i could leave you in the same situation.

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♪ next day, and i know where i'm going. ♪ because you never know. because it may not be here that much longer, not like this anyway. sun, sand, rum and ting and some more food. oh, yeah.

♪ hi. wow. what a spread. i'm not going hungry today. beautiful. thank you. i'm so excited. mm. that is actually quite delicious. you're not missing out on starches. you get yam, plantain, bread fruit, peas, corn, carrots, dumpling, festival. like the man said, eat dessert first. life is uncertain. mm. it's good. i knew i was coming back here. it was a smart move to come back here.

these ladies can cook. point being, the way the world turns, the inevitable grind of history seems to indicate that places like this and people like this get plowed under, pushed aside, paved over. who owns paradise after all? who in the end gets to own paradise, use paradise or even visit it? that's a question probably worth paying attention to before there's none left at all. ♪ how do you do this and be a good person? i don't think you can. like if you wanted to do this

regularly for the rest of your life? i'd like to spend three months out of the year in a hammock, looking out at the caribbean in a secluded beach like this. you'd have to do bad things to do this, right? james bond doesn't get this. james bond's a hustler. he gets this for a couple days before he moves on to the next location. the guy who lives here is the bond villain. not james bond. ian fleming was much closer to blowfeld or hugo drax, you know, those guys had lots of leisure time. sitting around in hammocks, trying to figure out how to take over the world. a lot of down time in world domination. bond was a working class [ muted ] that's what i've been missing.

all right. summon the ruba caranas. where's my cocktail? vacation over, as we headed home to our regular beds, our daily lives of school and homework and ordinary things, maybe my little brother, maybe i would wake up and look out the window at the night sky and suddenly it would fill with stars and golden mist, and we'd pretend for a second we were somehow deep inside the mickey way