Snorkeling & Diving in Montego Bay

The resort areas, the Hip Strip and organised tours are where almost all visitors spend their time, and trouble there is uncommon. Jamaica does have neighbourhoods that visitors should not walk into, and they are not always obvious from a map. Check your own government’s current travel advice before you go, take licensed transport at night, and treat a booked tour with hotel pickup as the low-risk option that it is.

About 105 km east, next to Ocho Rios – between ninety minutes and two and a half hours each way along the coast road, depending on traffic. That is why the tours run eight or nine hours. If you only have one free day and want a river without the drive, the bamboo rafts at Lethe and on the Martha Brae are well under an hour away.

Not for tours – nearly every listing includes hotel pickup, which is how the whole island sells excursions. A car pays off if you are staying several days outside the resort belt or want to set your own timetable. Remember that Jamaica drives on the left, and that the coast road is slower than the distances suggest.

Doctor’s Cave Beach on the Hip Strip, walkable from most town hotels. Admission is US$8 from age twelve and US$4 below that; loungers and umbrellas are US$6 each per day. It is a bathing club with changing rooms and a closing time – the free stretches of shore in town have no facilities, no shade and no lifeguard.

December to April is the dry, busy, expensive season. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November, with the highest risk from August into October; that is also when prices are lowest. Rain in Jamaica usually comes as heavy afternoon showers rather than all-day drizzle, so a wet forecast rarely cancels a tour – rough seas do.

Sangster International (MBJ) is ten to fifteen minutes from the Hip Strip, about a quarter of an hour from the Rose Hall resorts, half an hour from Falmouth and roughly ninety minutes from Negril – which is why the fares differ so widely. A shared shuttle is cheaper but waits and drops others first; a private transfer leaves when you do.