Last month we sailed on Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas from Ft. Lauderdale to the Western Caribbean. Falmouth, Jamaica was one of the port stops.
Since I’d recently climbed Dunn’s River Falls, I decided to take the 1700’s Great House and Plantation Tour with Lunch offered through Royal Caribbean’s shore excursions.
While Falmouth is known today for being the home of one of the world’s fastest men, Olympic sprinter and world record holder Usain Bolt, it was famous in the late 1,700’s and early 1800’s as a wealthy port town. All of the sugar and rum from the nearby plantations that made Jamaica the world’s leading sugar producer at the time were shipped from this port.
Lydia with Chukka Tours (pictured above) was our fabulous tour guide as we boarded our bus and headed from the port along some bumpy roads to the Good Hope Estate, where the views of Jamaica are spectacular.
Good Hope was a sugar plantation started by by Colonel Thomas Williams in the year 1744. The Great House was built in 1755 for his young new wife, Elizabeth Williams.
Unfortunately, she got sick and died on April 2, 1762 at age 24. She is buried in the lower corner of the house.
Our tour took us inside the Great House, which as seen many uses over the years. The furniture, such as shown above in the Blue Room, is from the time period but not original to the home.
The tour also takes you around the plantation. The Martha Brae river runs through the estate. Today the river is a popular for tubing adventures.
In the late 1700’s, the river was channeled into canals which powered the wheel to extract the sugar from the canes, greatly increasing the amount of sugar that could be produced.
After the tour, we enjoyed a delicious jerk chicken lunch. One of the many fun facts that we learned from our guides: pimento, used in making jerk chicken, is known as allspice in most places outside of Jamaica.
Chukka tour buses returned us to the port of Falmouth. The Chukka tour company does a terrific job, and all of its guides and drivers that we experienced on this tour were entertaining and informative.
Have you visited Jamaica via a cruise ship? What activities or tour did you enjoy on shore? Please share in comments below.
You might want to check out these posts on other Caribbean tours and shore excursions…..
- Eating and Drinking Our Way Through San Juan, Puerto Rico with Spoon Food Tours – Part 1
- Para-sailing from Cozumel, Mexico
- Exploring “The Baths” of Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands via a Seabourn Shore Excursion
- Snorkeling and Climbing Dunn’s River Falls from Falmouth, Jamaica
- Labadee, Royal Caribbean’s Private Resort in Haiti