Montego Bay

Montego Bay is the capital of the parish of St. James and is also Jamaica's only other officially incorporated city, referred to as The Second City or more widely known as MoBay in local lingo and sometimes Bay by the locals. The city is however the fourth largest urban area by population after Kingston, Spanish Town and Portmore, all of which form the Greater Kingston Metropolitan Area, home to over half a million people. As a result, Montego Bay is the second largest Anglophone city in the Caribbean, after primate city, Kingston.Montego Bay is a popular tourist destination featuring duty-free shopping, a cruise line terminal and several beaches and resorts. The city is served by the Donald Sangster International Airport, the busiest airport in the Anglophone Caribbean, which is located within the official city limits. The city is enclosed in a watershed, drained by several rivers such as the Montego River.HistoryWhen Christopher Columbus for the first time visited the island in 1494, he named the bay Golfo de Buen Tiempo ("Fair Weather Gulf"). The name "Montego Bay" is believed to have originated as a corruption of the Spanish word manteca ("lard"), allegedly because during the Spanish period it was the port where lard, leather, and beef were exported. Jamaica was a colony of Spain from 1511 until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell's Caribbean expedition, the Western Design, drove the Spanish from the island.