Today we visited our first port of call, Ochos Rios in Jamaica. It was another hot one as we made our way from the cruise ship to the terminal, definitely one of the hottest places that I have ever visited!
Prior to coming out here, I had booked a wheelchair accessible taxi to go on a sightseeing tour around the local area and through Fern Gulley which I was led to believe was a rainforest. Our driver arrived bang on time with a wheelchair accessible minivan that had a tail-lift at the back, so it was easy to get my manual wheelchair in and thinking about it since, it would have been ok for superbunny!
We started our tour by heading through Ochos Rios and its main street and you got a flavour of how poor the country is. Now when I think of the rainforest I think of exotic animals and the Brazilian rainforest from documentaries, no, the Jamaican version of it is just a lot of fern trees towering above you with a road winding through it! What was interesting about it was the amount of shacks at the side of the road with people trying to sell trinkets etc. I don’t know how they can make money in the middle of nowhere with the occasional car going past but they must manage somehow.
After giving out a few tips, we headed up to a viewpoint where you could see just how big our cruise ship actually is, towering over half of the town. Next we visited a local store to buy presents and I tried some authentic Jamaican rum, before heading to Dunn Falls.
On the website for Dunn Falls it looks quite accessible for a wheelchair but I think the Jamaican term for accessibility isn’t quite the same as mine! But we were undeterred and headed in, only to head back out as the heat got to us. It was a good job that I took my manual wheelchair as it was basically on a hill with steep slopes, but a few of the locals helped me and my PA’s out.
Finally, our driver took us to a local takeaway restaurant to sample some authentic jerk chicken, before returning back to our cruise ship.
Tomorrow we visit Georgetown in the Cayman Islands, I’m not quite sure what there is to do but we’ll find out! 🙂