Set within Half Moon’s 400-acre beachfront sanctuary on Jamaica’s north coast, The Half Moon Resort Riding Experience pairs one of the Caribbean’s most storied luxury resorts — welcoming guests since 1954 — with an equestrian programme of genuine international calibre. Under director Trina de Lisser, an international show jumper and retired FEI judge, the centre has spent nearly forty years building a reputation that extends well beyond the resort gates, drawing riders from across the island and beyond for lessons, beach rides, and the Surf & Turf experience that has become one of Half Moon’s signature attractions.
The partnership between hotel and stable is seamless by design. Guests can book a lesson, a private jumping session, or a full beach-and-swim outing as easily as they book a spa treatment or a tee time, with the centre’s own rescued horses — many brought back from adversity through Trina’s welfare programme — carrying riders of every level, from a first-time four-year-old on a lead rein to competitive adult riders working on their position with an FEI-level instructor.
The Experience
You arrive at the stable yard to find a private staff member assigned to you and your companion for the visit — an unusually generous ratio that means you’re never left feeling exposed as a beginner, and get genuinely useful, individual instruction if you’re more experienced. Dogs, cats, and a resident goat wander the yard alongside the horses, giving the place a lived-in, working-farm feel even amid the polish of a five-star resort.
The ride begins in the arena. Even for confident riders, a few minutes on the flat here is worth it — you understand the horse, the horse understands you, and the guide can see exactly what pace and what terrain will suit you both. It is unhurried, professional, and disarming in how personal it feels for a resort experience.
Then the paths through the resort grounds open out and you are heading toward the beach. The route is quietly beautiful — palm-lined, dappled, the scent of sea air strengthening as you approach. And then Sunrise Beach appears, and the Caribbean, and for a moment it is hard to know what to look at.
The Surf and Turf experience takes the whole thing a step further. Saddles come off at the water’s edge. You and your horse walk into the surf, then deeper, until the horse is swimming and you are holding its mane, the warm sea around you both. It is, by any honest measure, extraordinary.
Back at the main resort, your day continues on Half Moon’s own considerable terms: the award-winning Fern Tree Spa for a post-ride massage, a dip in one of the resorty’s swimming pools, and a variety of restaurants spanning casual beachfront dining to elevated Jamaican cuisine. Few Caribbean resorts offer a riding programme with this level of genuine equestrian credibility, and fewer still make it feel this effortless to combine with everything else a luxury beach holiday promise.
About Half Moon Resort & the Equestrian Centre
Half Moon has welcomed guests to its crescent-shaped, two-mile stretch of private Jamaican beachfront since 1954, growing over seven decades into one of the Caribbean’s most consistently celebrated resorts. The Equestrian Centre has been part of that story for close to forty years, but it was Trina de Lisser’s arrival as director that transformed it from a resort amenity into a genuinely serious riding operation.
Trina, born in Kingston, was introduced to horses through her father, an international polo player, and began competing herself at age seven before progressing into show jumping and, eventually, FEI Level 2 instruction and international judging. Her own riding school, which she began developing at just thirteen years old on her parents’ stables, has evolved into a full programme covering riding instruction, an active horse-rescue and rehabilitation initiative, and consulting work across Caribbean equestrian events. Many of the centre’s horses have come through that rescue programme, given a second career carrying resort guests along the same beaches where Half Moon’s guests have vacationed for generations.
What makes The Half Moon Resort Riding Experience distinctive is this rare combination: genuine, FEI-calibre horsemanship, a rescue-and-welfare ethic that runs through the entire operation, and a signature beach-and-swim experience unlike almost anything else on offer in the Caribbean — all set within a resort that has spent seventy years perfecting everything a guest might want beyond the saddle.
Our Stewardship
The riding centre is led by Trina de Lisser, who runs an active horse rescue and rehabilitation initiative alongside the resort’s riding programme, giving a number of the centre’s horses a second career. Half Moon’s beachfront is also a documented nesting ground for the critically endangered Hawksbill sea turtle, and the resort runs a formal Sea Turtle Conservation Program with the Oracabessa Marine Trust. Half Moon’s environmental practices are independently verified through Green Globe certification, and the resort was the first hotel inducted into the Caribbean Hotel Industry Conference’s Green Hotel Hall of Fame.
Photo credits: Half Moon Resort& Equestrian Destinations
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