Top Ocho Rios Day Trips

Our family of 4 had a blast today at Dunn’s River Falls and the Blue Hole. Our guide Sunshine and our driver Godfrey took great care of us. We didn’t realize there was a third option to our tour/tubing so that was a little frustrating to find out after the fact but we ended up finding lunch nearby while we waited for the rest of our tour to finish up the tubing. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the everything about our trip! Can’t wait to come back!

I'll start with the great! Carlos, our guide and driver, was amazing. Very friendly and we enjoyed his commentary. Highly recommend him as a tour guide. Next, the river guide, Duane was friendly and informative and we felt very safe throughout the whole river run. Crazy how they ride stomach down on their tubes and guide us here and there like that! Bamboo Beach Club was very nice. We had chairs reserved for us )thru the tour) which made it nice to get off the bus and go right to our chairs. The included lunch was good...jerk chicken and yellow ride. Drinks were cold and strong and yummy! Now, getting to all that goodness was not as pleasurable. The chaos at the port led to us not leaving there until after 10:15. After rushing off the ship, there were plenty of people there who worked for Bamboo Beach club, but only a few had any idea what was going on. They took buses and buses of VIP Beach Club people to THEIR buses, while we stood there as there were only 11 of us it seemed they were looking for a smaller bus to take just us (that is how we got the wonderful Carlos...he has his own bus/company that Regae/Bamboo Beach must have contracted to take us) The ride to the river was closer to 50 minutes (only 2 ships docked in Ocho Rios) therefore setting us back even further. Becasue of the delays we had zero time to shop at port when we got back. A 5 hour excursion took 6.5 mostly due to the chaos at the port. I realize they are a secondary excursion vendor and would not be give priority for set up to receive passengers, but a better system of getting off and onto buses needs to be implemented. I will also say, they were the ones in charge of getting even the Carnival excursions onto buses...definitely not efficient like Carnival usually is. The tour, the guides/driver and the river run was amazing and worth it for sure.

We were picked up on time in a van at the cruise port. It was a 20-minute Drive to the raft River location. A group of approximately 10 people were on our tour. The raft guides walked you to the raft and assisted you to mount it sidestepping on bamboo boards until you could be seated. They turned on some music and also chatted a bit. They used long poles like in Venice to guide the raft toward the beach which was a short 10 to 15 minute ride. You get off the raft to walk on the beach and admire the water. Nothing much else to do there. Some vendors came by but we're not pushy. Then you returned to the raft and back to the dock. Very easy going experience. Saw two good looking birds but not much else. We found it enjoyable but if you are looking for Action this is not it.