Jamaica Part 4 - The Dunn's River Falls Jeep Safari

On Wednesday, Mel and I went on another tour. This time we were headed to Dunn’s River Falls, but we didn’t go there directly. Instead, we took Chukka Caribbean Adventures’s Jeep Safari to Dunn’s River Falls. Our resort was about twenty minutes away from the falls, but first we had a ride in a jeep for about four or five hours. Our guide, Gene Lilly, was awesome! He told us so much about what we were seeing. First we drove through Ocho Rios. Our driver/guide taught us all about local plants. While on a street in Ocho Rios, we pulled to the side of the road, and Gene bought some fruit from a man on the street. He passed the fruit around so we could all see what it was. It was an ackee, the national fruit of Jamaica. The fruit is only edible if it opens naturally. When it is cooked, it looks like scrambled eggs. I confirmed this when I had ackee and saltfish, Jamaica’s national dish, for dinner that night.

We also stopped in a schoolyard where Gene taught us about some of the national symbols of Jamaica that were painted on the school wall. He also told us about Marcus Garvey, National Hero of Jamaica, as the schoolchildren gathered around the jeep and listened in.

Our tour then continued to take us through Fern Gully. Fern Gully used to be a river, but an earthquake hundreds of years ago caused the river to change its course. Now it is a three-mile-long windy road with hundreds of species of ferns located on the sides of the road. It was beautiful.

Gene offered us some refreshments during our tour. He handed out plastic cups and then passed back a one-gallon jug of rum punch while he was driving. The punch was good, although it was hard to get it into the cups while he was driving quickly on the rough roads. I think everyone got some of the punch, which he called “cough medicine,” on themselves.

Our next stop was on Murphy Hill, 2000 feet above sea level. If it had been a clear day, we would have been able to see Cuba from the top of the hill. Unfortunately, it was a bit overcast, so we couldn’t see Cuba. We also drove through a cattle pasture. This involved a lot of stopping as the driver had to keep opening and closing gates to keep the cattle penned up. We also drove alongside a very long conveyor belt that carries bauxite to a port.

On our jeep safari, we also stopped for a snack of some fresh fruit. We were served pineapple, watermelon, oranges, mangos, and coconut milk. We also got to try the jelly of the coconut. The local who helped serve us told us that the coconut jelly would help us men “put lead in our pencils.”

After hours of driving around seeing various sites in and around Ocho Rios, we ended up at Dunn’s River Falls. There, we climbed 600 or so feet up the waterfall. It was a lot of fun, even though it was a little challenging at times. We spent about an hour at the waterfalls. I only got one photo taken at Dunn’s River Falls. As we would be in a waterfall, I only brought along the waterproof, single-use camera. By the time we got to our final destination, I only had one exposure remaining, and here’s the photo that was taken.

After returning to the resort, we spent some time at the beach before having dinner. We were pretty tired out from our day’s trip that we didn’t do much else in the evening.