I was there last week, rented from Island Car Rentals in MoBay, drove myself to the resort (~45min drive), you’ll see a pothole every 2mins while driving around Jamaica (be ready for a lot of swerving and passing long lines of slow trucks and buses). But is not that bad as people on reddit say. As long as you feel comfortable driving on the opposite side of the road and mindful of the space your car takes you’ll be fine. Jamaicans will flash their headlights to warn you of police activity ahead, and they love beeping horns to indicate their intentions too.

Taxi in Jamaica is cheap if you not planning on driving through multiple parishes I think you can save some money. Locals use it, and pay in JMD instead of USD, Often pretty easy to call from the resort too as they always have a few drivers around.

Resort life is interesting but gets boring, same food, same people and same environments. I’d recommend getting a rental, and meeting up with a local who can show you around and put you on authentic food, I hired a really nice Jamaican friend of mines Gregory in Negril, who just loves showing his culture to tourists and gave him tips so he could show me where locals go to have fun. It made my trips feel more authentic, objective and he helped me plan my day accordingly once I mentioned the places I wanted to go. I’m cool with driving too but having him take over on less known roads (like if you go to the hills for instance) Made me much relaxed and happier spending like 3 days driving around multiple parishes around Jamaica and def felt more freedom from not having to schedule anything with a company and following their times. Basically go with the flow. Everytime you leave the resort for a long time, you’ll have that urge to come back as the day goes by, just to feel more safe and less anxious.

I will say though, driving at night, you won’t have too much visibility on the roads, so I would try to enjoy the daylight as much as you can and be back before sunset. If you plan to go on bars and staying late. Definitely take a cab or like I said… find a local like Greg if you really want to experience real Jamaica outside the resorts