JAMAICAN SPRING BREAK: SUN, SEA AND SEX

NEGRIL, Jamaica -- In the thousands they descend on Jamaica each spring, the
latest haven for stressed and tired students seeking laid-back days on a
sunny beach and high-voltage parties by night.

"We had friends who've come here before and told us the weather was great,
the beaches were great, and that's how we've found it," enthuses 20-year-old
Alex Tone of Indiana University at Fort Wayne. "Friendly people and really
great girls!"

Some 20,000 students from northeastern U.S. universities are expected to
visit Jamaica's three main resort towns by the end of April -- up from
13,000 last year -- lured by the promise of hot sunshine, cool seas,
all-night parties and plenty of booze.

For some, an additional attraction is "ganja," the marijuana weed which
flourishes here.

Although smoking marijuana is illegal in Jamaica, it's readily available.
The country is home to the Rastafarian religion that considers smoking the
weed the equivalent of a sacrament. One reporter almost ran down a vendor
prancing around in the middle of a main road, hawking a corn-cob size bundle
of the drug.

The students arrive after the stress of mid-term exams -- but they soon
throw that off.

Days are spent hanging out on beaches, reading, suntanning or enjoying water
sports. There are contests from the traditional wet T-shirt contests and
he-man competitions to body-painting.

Nights generally mean binges in bars with names like The Pickled Parrot, De
Buss, Chances on the Beach and Margueritaville.

Not all students use the break to indulge hedonistic impulses. Thirty-one
from Arkansas State University went to Jamaica to work in a medical clinic
for the poor.

"I get the satisfaction in knowing that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be
doing," says one, Nathalia Dawson.

Negril was a fishing village until hippies and flower children made it
popular in the early 1970s.

Students who come today find the finest stretch of beach on an island
renowned for them -- 7 miles of palm-tree lined white sands between a
turquoise sea and low-lying hotels and private villas not allowed to be
higher than the tallest palm tree.

In the years since hostile Florida residents turned on rowdy spring
breakers -- with some hanging out banners urging them to get out of town --
the revelers have gravitated to foreign climes where they are welcomed.

Negril is now second only to Cancun as a spring destination for the
students.

Arreton Bell, owner of the 23-room La Cage, says sometimes his guests are
unhappy that their rooms aren't more like the Ritz.

"You have to sit them down and rap with them and explain this is a Third
World country," says Bell, a father of two boys who says he doubles as a
guidance counselor and friend. "We say no drugs on the property, but we
don't impose too many rules, because the more rules you introduce the more
problems you get."

Patrick Brady, a youthful 43-year-old who owns the Risky Business bar, says
he's made millions of Jamaican dollars (hundreds of thousands of dollars)
over the years from spring break.

"Negril's an easy sell," he says. "Sand, sea, alcohol, sex, food, beach,
good times . . ."

As the town's hotels get sold out, late-bookers have taken to staying in
Montego Bay, which has livlier night life, then commuting to Negril to spend
the day at the beach. Several then share the $60 cost of a taxi for the
two-hour trip covering 90 kilometers (55 miles).

"I think if I had gone through college and graduated without coming here,
I'd have missed a real true spring break," says Jacqueline Sabol, a
21-year-old studying for finals in Liberal Arts at the District of
Columbia's George Washington College.