When one thinks of wheelchair accessible countries, Jamaica probably doesn’t spring to mind, however, we docked at our first port of call, Ocho Rios today…
Wishing to explore a little of Jamaica rather than staying in the resort town, one had booked a wheelchair accessible taxi courtesy of Jamaica Wheelchair Taxi to take us sightseeing tour around the local area, through Fern Gulley (which I was led to believe was a rainforest) ending at Dunn Falls. As one was unsure of the accessibility, Superbunny remained on the ship. Our driver arrived on time with a wheelchair accessible minivan which had a tail-lift at the back making it easy for both a manual and electric wheelchair to enter…
We started our tour by heading through Ocho Rios and its main street where it is possible to get a flavour of how poor the country is. Now, when one thinks of rainforests, images of exotic animals and the Brazilian rainforest come to mind, however, the Jamaican version seems to be simply a large amount of fern trees towering above you with a road winding through it! What is interesting is the amount of shacks at the side of the road with people selling trinkets etc. It is always amazing how people can make money in the middle of nowhere with the occasional car…
Next, one drove up to a viewpoint via a very poorly maintained road where it became apparent just how big our cruise ship actually is, towering over half of the town…
On the website for Dunn Falls, it looked fairly wheelchair accessible, however, in turned out that the majority of the site was on a hill with steep slopes making it difficult to roll around, even in a manual wheelchair.
Finally, our driver took us to a local takeaway restaurant to sample some authentic jerk chicken, before returning back to the cruise ship.
Tomorrow, we dock in Georgetown in the Cayman Islands.