Treasure Beach is not one place but four fishing villages strung along six kilometres of the south coast — Billy's Bay, Frenchman's Bay, Calabash Bay, Great Bay — with dark sand, a working fleet of pirogues pulled up on it, and no all-inclusive anywhere.
This is the driest corner of Jamaica, in the rain shadow of the Santa Cruz mountains: scrub, cactus, and fields of scallion and melon rather than the green of the north coast. It gives the place a different look and a different pace.
What makes it worth the drive is how the tourism works. The community set up its own fund decades ago, taking a percentage from the guesthouses and tours to pay for local projects, and the result is a place that feels like a village that takes visitors rather than a resort with a village attached. The Calabash International Literary Festival, held here in May of alternate years, is the best literary festival in the Caribbean and draws writers from across the world to a beach in St Elizabeth.
The swimming needs care — there is no reef here and the surf can be strong with a current — so ask locally which bay is safe on the day. Boat trips run out to the Pelican Bar, a driftwood shack built on a sandbar a kilometre offshore, and east along the coast to the Black River morass.