Bamboo Rafting in Jamaica: Martha Brae or the Great River?

Bamboo rafting is the second most-booked thing on this whole site, after the airport transfer. It is also the one where people most often book a river they did not mean to book, because the listings say “bamboo rafting from Montego Bay” and leave out which water you are floating on.

There are two, they are on opposite sides of Montego Bay, and they are not interchangeable.

The Great River at Lethe — which is what you will actually be sold

Lethe is inland and south-west of Montego Bay, up into the hills behind the coast. Nearly every rafting trip in our inventory that leaves from Montego Bay goes there.

The cheapest in our inventory is a Great River raft with limestone massage at €13.18 – five stars, but on five reviews, and with no duration given at all. The cheapest with a real review history behind it is bamboo rafting with limestone massage at €41.74, 4.5 stars from 82 reviews, listed at 1.5 to 3 hours. Its own page names the river – the Great River – and gives a meeting point that tells you exactly how rural this is: use Lethe Primary School as the marker for the bridge, then turn left after you clear it. Included are the raft, the limestone massage done by the raft captain, a life vest, round-trip transport in an air-conditioned vehicle and a Bluetooth speaker. Not included, and stated as such: alcohol, lunch, hookah, a full-body massage, and the oxtail and curried goat you can buy at the landing. The operator lists it as unsuitable for children under six, for pregnant women and for wheelchair users.

The most-reviewed version is bamboo rafting and limestone massage from Montego Bay – €50.96, 4.3 stars, 140 reviews, which makes it the second most-reviewed activity in the entire Montego Bay inventory. There is also a raft cruise on the Great River at €117.32 for 3 hours and a rafting trip with foot massage at €123.02 with the best rating of the group, 4.8 stars from 33 people.

Look at that spread: €13.18 to €123.02 for the same river and broadly the same hour on the water. What changes is the vehicle, the group size, whether lunch and drinks are in, and how private it is. The river is the river.

The Martha Brae — the famous one, and the one nobody here sells

The Martha Brae is the other side of Montego Bay, inland from Falmouth, about half an hour east along the coast. It is the older and better-known operation: run by River Raft Limited since 1985, having started under the Jamaica Tourist Board in the 1970s.

The numbers on its own site are specific. The trip covers a three-mile stretch of the Martha Brae and takes one hour and fifteen minutes. Rafts are 30 feet of bamboo with a padded seat, poled by a licensed captain, life vests provided, and they run every day including public holidays, 9am to 4pm.

And here is the part that changes the arithmetic: the price is US$99, and a raft carries two adults plus one small child aged 3 to 9. That is a price per raft, not per head. For a couple it works out at roughly half what the same number looks like on a per-person listing. For a solo traveller it is the full US$99.

The catch for anyone booking from Montego Bay is not availability – it is evidence. Our inventory holds ten Martha Brae listings, and only four of them carry a review at all; between them they have seventeen. The best-attested is Martha Brae Rafting Adventure at €140.59, 4.7 stars from 9 reviews, sold as a private tour over 3 hours; the cheapest is a Martha Brae day tour from Falmouth at €61.56 with none. That is not a warning about the operators – the attraction is far older than any of these listings. But it does mean you are booking on almost nobody’s account of how it went, which is a different decision from booking something with 140 reviews behind it. And every one of these ten is priced per person: at €140.59 a couple pays well over the US$99 the pier charges for the whole raft.

So which one?

Take the Great River if you want it cheap, you want the hotel pickup handled, or you are one or two people travelling without a car. €41.74 with transport included is hard to argue with, and 82 people have rated that particular trip 4.5.

Take the Martha Brae if you are two adults, ideally with a small child, you can get yourselves to Falmouth, and you would rather deal with the operator directly at published rates. Per raft, for a couple, it is the better value – and it is the one with a published rate card you can check before you pay.

Take neither if what you actually want is to swim. Rafting is sitting still on a river being poled by somebody else for an hour. It is lovely and it is completely passive. If you want to be in the water, the waterfall and river tours page has 96 options from €13.18, and the ones behind Ocho Rios are covered in Blue Hole and Secret Falls.

The limestone massage, since everyone asks

Almost every Great River listing pairs the raft with a “limestone massage” or “limestone foot rub” – a paste made from river rock, applied by the raft captain at a stop. It is included in the price on the trips above. It is a few minutes, it is done by your captain rather than a therapist, and it is a nice piece of theatre rather than a spa treatment. Book the raft for the raft.

Practical notes

Bring something you do not mind getting damp. You sit low and the water is inches away, though you are not in it. There is no shade on a bamboo raft – hat and sunscreen, and the earlier departures are the kinder ones.

Tipping the captain is expected and is not usually in the price. He poles you three miles and talks the whole way; small notes, in cash.

If this is the sort of slow day you want more of, everything else that floats is under boat trips – 46 of them from €15.82 – and rafting is one of the few river activities here that works with a young child, which is why it turns up again in Montego Bay with kids. Arriving today? Start with MBJ airport to your hotel.