Montego Bay attractions

A popular stop for visitors, Montego Bay's craft market stretches for several blocks along Harbour Street and lets shoppers interact with the local artisans who run the narrow network of stalls. Come to pick up handmade Jamaican crafts, including custom woodworking, colorful paintings, and beads.

Montego Bay Cruise Port is the gateway to the capital of Saint James Parish and the second-largest city in Jamaica. From this Caribbean city, visitors can enjoy an array of water activities, as well as duty-free shopping and plenty of shore excursions bound for other parts of the island.

Venture onto the back roads of Montego Bay to reach this one-of-a-kind hillside gallery and garden 2,000 feet (610 meters) above sea level. Surrounding an eco-conscious mini-museum run by local artist and art collector Ras Natango is a garden filled with tropical plants and birds, and it offers views of the Jamaican countryside.

Fort Montego is one of many 18th-century forts that were built to protect Jamaica from pirates and the Spanish and French navies. Luckily, this stone structure perched on a hill never had to use its four canons, and these days, the only potential invaders are benevolent travelers wandering over from the Hip Strip shopping district.

Once Jamaica’s largest sugar plantation, the resplendent Good Hope Estate offers a unique and historic view into 18th-century life on the island. Visitors can enjoy horse-drawn carriage tours, an adventure park with ziplines, river tubing, ATV rides, and an exotic bird aviary. Overnight guests enjoy luxurious, colonial-era stone cottages.

Part beach bar, part water park, part nightclub, Margaritaville Montego Bay is one of the most recognizable stops on Gloucester Avenue, aka the Hip Strip. The multilevel, open-air venue overlooks the Caribbean, with a 110-foot (33-meter) water slide plunging into the sea and floating trampolines just offshore. Expect American-style food with Jamaican twists, frozen cocktails, and a crowd changing from cruise passengers by day to a club-going scene after dark.

While in the Montego Bay area, spend a day at the Croydon Plantation, the birthplace of national hero Samuel Sharpe and one of the last working plantations in Jamaica. Trading beachy coastline for sumptuous rain forest, journey into the Catadupa foothills where delicious sugarcane, coffee, honey, citrus fruits, and pineapples are grown.

Cornwall Beach sits along a long stretch of creamy white sand beaches just outside Montego Bay on Jamaica’s west coast. This private beach offers travelers a gentle, crystal clear sea and well-managed facilities, making it a desirable spot for swimming, snorkeling, and enjoying a seaside meal.

At the entrance of Montego Bay’s famed Hip Strip, the family-friendly Aquasol offers more than just pristine snorkeling and lazy sunbathing. Here, travelers looking for more active beach time can enjoy water- and land-based fun, from banana boat rides, jet-skiing, kayaking, and glass-bottom boat trips to go-karts, tennis, and volleyball.