NEGRIL, Jamaica (AP):
BRENT SOPEL glanced around at the lush beach and pronounced it paradise, the perfect spot to relax and get high.
"Man, it doesn't get any better than this," said the 19-year-old Chicago native.The spring break from classes has increasingly taken students to destinations more exotic than tame Florida.
The mystique of Negril's 7-mile-long (11-kilometre-long) beach has drawn vacationing students since the 1980s. But in the last four years the number converging on this small town each spring has jumped from about 10,000 to about 20,000, making it the Caribbean's second largest Spring Break destination.
For many American students who travel to Negril, the resort town in western Jamaica is quickly becoming the anti-Cancun, an alternative to the Mexican resort that draws 80,000 students a year and is the biggest Caribbean draw for the Spring Break madness.
As in Cancun, many students visiting Negril will stay out at all-night parties and drink until they pass out.
"Negril attracts more of an earthy type, the kind of kid who's looking to party, but also chill out and get to know the place a bit," said Christopher Walsh, a vice president of Sun Splash Tours, which books arrangements for about half the Spring-breakers who come to Negril.
"There are no dress codes at the bars and clubs, and guys don't rip off their shirts the second they hit the dance floor."
Or, as Alicia Schwartz, a 19-year old University of Maryland student from Potomac, Maryland, put it: "Guys aren't jumping on you on the beach!"
In many ways, Negril is still the fishing village American hippies first stumbled upon in the late 1960s and early '70s a beachside town where hotels are not allowed to build above the treeline, American chain restaurants are non-existent and locals mingle with foreigners at reggae bars.
"The second I left the airport I knew I was in a different country," said Jason Banks, 22, a New York native in his last year at Ohio State.
"I went to Cancun last year, and, I don't want to knock it it's a great place to party," he said. "But that's all you do there. Here, there's more of a local flavour."
The explosive growth in young visitors has not come without problems.
Last year's party games including one in which spring breakers ate whipped cream off each other's scantily clad bodies -- brought a storm of criticism from many in this largely conservative country.
The criticism prompted the private Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association, supported by the government-run Jamaican Tourist Board and Tourism Ministry, to issue a set of guidelines to the bars, hotels and tour operators that promote Spring Break.
Guidelines
The guidelines, dealing with issues like public nudity and lewd behaviour, appear to have halted Spring Break's excesses.
"Things seemed to have improved this year," said Daniel Grizzle, a past critic of spring break and the owner of Charela Inn, an upscale beach hotel. "I've always maintained that if you treat Spring-breakers like ladies and gentlemen, they will behave like ladies and gentlemen," he said.
Then again, the people packing the bars are college kids, and sometimes they want an all-out party.
"What's in this drink," slurred Dave Grogg as he gulped from a plastic pitcher at Risky Business, a nightspot by the sea.
"Rum and coke," replied the bartender.
"Rum and what?" said the 21-year-old Ohio State senior from Dayton, Ohio. "Whatever. It's got rum in it, and that's what's important, right?"
Grogg tilted back his head, chugged what was left, and stumbled toward the dance floor.
Then he tripped and fell face-down in the sand.
