Ocho Rios River Safari tour (RCI)

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Here is my review of this excursion from our cruise on Freedom of the Seas last week:

 

We booked it through RCI. Chukka was the tour operator. It was a fun and interesting 45 min. drive up (1000 ft up) to the Spanish Bridge on the White River. For much of the last 1/3 of the drive it is a one lane dirt/stone road. Several times a truck or van would come the other direction and they woudl have to back up to let us get to a point where we could drive by them, with only a few inches clearance btwn. the vehicles! Our driver was reliable. My daugher and I were up in the front seat with him so we had a great bird's eye view, and we got to ask the driver a lot of questions about life in Jamaica. Try to sit up in the front. We saw some spectacular flowering trees and the area is incredibly lush and green and colorful. We saw cows, chickens, goats, and horses in the yards around the tin-roofed houses on the sides of the roads were were on as we got closer to the river. We also saw school kids in their uniforms as school is in session til end of June. The ride was great, and a very fun part of the trip. It was a faster and less harrowing ride coming down after the tubing.

 

We had 9 people in our Chukka van. When we got out at the bridge launch point, we met up with about 8 other people from another Cukaa van (from a Carnival ship I think). So all together we had about 20 people in our group. It was a good size group- I did not feel crowded on the river portion. We all were given life jackets that we had to wear (and for good reason, more on this later). The guides are a very integral part of the trip as they guided us all down the river and were working constantly. They would come over and get us away from the banks of the river when we floated away and could not get ourselves away from the bank (and this happened frequently). At several points they had us join hands or hold onto each other's tubes so we didn't float away. And at several other points there is a rope across the river that we all had to hold on to so they could give us inxtruction on the part of the river we were entering, tell us which side to stay on, and they could also control the number of us launching off the rope at any one time. This is important because at some points the river gets narrow going thru the rapids and only 1-2 tubes can fit thru slots at a time. THe guides also sang some Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff songs to us. I requested the Jimmy Cliff song as I had seen him perform once and like his music, and the guide sang Cliff's song "Many Rivers to Cross," a very appropriate song to be singing while we were on river.

 

The ride itself was a lot of fun! I laughed the whole time as we had some clowns in our group. In particular we had one family whose kids were just hilarious, and the father was doing some crazy things like standing up in his tube pretending he was on the flowrider surf machine we had on the Freedom of the Seas. We were all spashing each other. The water is crystal clear on the river, and for most portions it is not very deep, about 4ft or so, but the wooden bottom on the tube keeps you from scraping any rocks. There is thick bamboo forest on both sides of the river and it is spectacular scenery, w/lots of bird noises. At some points the bamboo grows across the river above you as you are floating under it.

 

The guides are essential. At one point towards the end of the tubing, there is a particularly fast set of dropping rapids through a narrow channel. 3 of the people in our group flipped over in their tubes on this set of rapids. My 14 yr old daughter was one of the 3. She is a very athletic, strong competitive swimmer and I was surprised she flipped, but this shows that it can happen to anyone. She was able to get thru the rapid ok as it is a short rapid after the portion where she flipped, and she just stood up and went to her tube and was fine. But I suppose if you had a small child that the kid could panic when they flip and potentially hit their head on a rock or something. This is why the guides are so important. They kept track of everyone as they went thru that rapid (and every other one) and made sure everyone was ok. They frequently swam over the help people get back in thier tubes or get us in the right place as we went into a set of rapids. The rapids were short and not overwhelming at all, but there is that one set at the end where you can flip. The guides told us ahead of time to secure our glasses, that people do flip there and that that was a potential.

 

We were on the river for over an hour, close to 1 hr 15 min, just as the tour is described. This was a perfect amt. of time IMO. We exited at Chukka's little compound, which had nice gardens, a very small gift shop (not worth visiting really) and a place to get a drink and watch the pictures that had been taken at points along the way from the riverbank in our tubing expedition. The picture review process is disorganized and we never were able to find any pictures of my daughter and I in our tubes, as they are all mixed up w/photos from other expeditions that morning.

 

We enjoyed this tour. It is relaxing, but with enough anticipation and fun not knowing what little rapids we were approaching. The water was cool, not freezing cold though- it was comfortable. It was not as hot outside as I thought it would be, there was a nice breeze.

 

One tip, bring some cash to tip the guides. We tipped them $10 for the 2 of us. Another family did not bring cash and they borrowed $10 from me to tip the guides. They caught up w/me later on the ship in our cabin and paid me back. I left my personal belongings in the Chukka van, as the driver stays with the van- afte rhe drops you off at the start point he drives the van down to where you will exit the river and he keeps the van locked. I was going to bring our passports and sea pass and $$ on the tubing in a waterproof tummy pouch I had bought but I decided just to leave it in the van, and it was all there when we got back in the van.

 

Also, I have seen comments about other tubing tours saying that people stopped are were allowed to swing from a rope and jump in the river. That is not a part of this expedition. That must be on a different part of the river, as I do not think the river was deep enough to do that in the portion we were on.

 

I heard from people on the ship that Dunns Falls was incredibly crowded the day we were in port. I was glad we skipped the crowds there. After we were dropped of at the port from tubing (btw, the whole excursion took longer than I expected and we were dropped off at about 1:45 pm) I walked over to Island Village (a 5 min. straight shot directly in front of the port) and had lunch and shopped until it was time to go. Good shopping there, local coffees and spices, very nice woven purses (the loom is in use right there onsite) and other handmade goods. I went to the cigar shop and should have brought home more of the $6 jamaican cigars they sell in their humidor room, my husband says they are very smooth and good.

 

My husband and 16 yr old son LOVED the canopy zipline tour. It was a trip highlight for my son, his very favorite thing.