Jamiaca in April - Beaches Boscobel or Dunn's River Falls

[Ellanora]

I have just booked the Carnival Liberty for next April, with a stop in Ocho Rios. The time in port is 7:30 - 3:30. One of the reasons I booked this trip was the stop in Ocho Rios; I flew to Jamaica in 2005 with my son and stayed in Beaches Negril. We had a fabulous time. I have read about Ocho Rios and wanted to visit. I have two ideas for port excursions and am trying to decide which would be best.

 

1. Day passes to Beaches Boscobel. We loved the Beaches property in Negril, and would really like the chance to check out Boscobel. The day passes are expensive, but I would be willing to pay it, as we may never get the chance to visit again. However, we would have to set up some kind of transportion from the port to the resort, and then depend on that transportation back. That is a little scary for me. It doesn't appear that Beaches Boscobel is close enough to the port to walk safely, if something happened with the transportation. My son will be eleven, and we will be alone.

 

2. Dunn's River Falls - I would really like to visit here, although I'm not sure my son and I are up to climbing the falls. From the pictures, it appears that there are places you can play or walk in the water and some of the falls without actually climbing, is this true? Also, we would want to get there ahead of the ship crowd, so once again, we would have to hire transportation of some kind. I'm not sure what the best way to do this is if we just want to spend some time playing at the falls.

 

Then I started wondering if we were able to do the falls early enough, would we have enough time left to hit Boscobel for a few hours? That might be pushing it, time-wise.

 

Any recommendations or experiences anyone could share would be greatly appreciated. :)