SANDALS SOUTH COAST JAMAICA

WISH US LUCK 

Latitudes at Sandals South Coast

Hurricane Melissa was a category 5 storm that devastated Jamaica in October 2025. It made landfall in Westmoreland on the southwest coast of the island nation and was the strongest storm to ever hit Jamaica. Towns were “flattened” and the cost of the damage wreaked by the winds and storm surge of Melissa stretched into the billions.

It also severely damaged Sandals South Coast, which happens to be in Westmoreland. The resort took a direct hit from the storm and was forced to close down and go through a complete renovation.

Those renovations are finished and Sandals South Coast is slated to reopen November 18, 2026, a little more than two weeks before we travel there.

Yes, wish us luck that everything is up and running smoothly.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

For those sainted readers of this sometimes-tedious blog know Team VFH has been going to a Sandals resort for 8 years now, ever since we honeymooned at Sandals Grand Antiqua on Dickenson’s Bay.  

Trophy Wife

We have been to Sandals South Coast before in May 2021. We had issues then too, but it was the COVID panic that disrupted our planned December 2020 trip.

It’s cheaper to travel to a Sandals in December between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but they shifted our stay to May, and didn’t up charge us.

Sandals is calling their SSC renovation, “South Coast Reimagined”. We had booked this particular trip before the hurricane and we were fully expecting them to offer a shift in stays, but so far, it’s all good.

LOCATION, LOCATION

There’s a number of reasons why we are returning to this particular resort.

South Coast

The last time we were there we found it to be strikingly beautiful, with a private beach two miles long and a 500-acre nature preserve surrounding it. The serenity of SSC is more alluring that the busier Montego Bay stretch of the island.

At SSC they have over-the-water bungalows which have been refurbished, but we would never spring for that costly stay. We’ll easily settle for their over-the-water bar called Latitudes that had hammocks off the edge in order to catch a brilliant sunset. That was our favorite place to hang out, but not sure if it will be back when we return. They are supposedly putting in a rum bar like they had at St Vincent’s but that may not be open yet for us..

The diving was so-so, but the dive sites are minutes away from the resort, so the whole day isn’t taken up with this sport, and anyway the old adage is a bad day of diving is still a great day.

Also, the cost. At the time SSC was also less expensive than the other Sandals resorts and coupled with a lower time slot in early December financially it made sense.

RETURNING GUESTS

The most important reason we are returning to SSC is we will be rewarded with a FREE 7 day stay at a Sandals resort.

If you stay at a Sandals resort more than once you are “honored” as a returning guest. There’s a dinner, there’s a gifted bottle of rum and if you stay with a Sandals resort for 70 days, as we will when we return to SSC, we will be rewarded a free week at a Sandals resort of our choice. So, we are accruing the necessary days as inexpensively as possible. I just hope they don’t hand us some wood, a hammer and some nails and tell us we have to make our own bed.

 

Thanks for reading.

Love Janet and greg

Hammock at Latitudes

Sunset at Latitudes

Sunset at Latitudes

© 2026 by Gregory Dunaj