Boatman on the Martha Brae River
Where’s the last place you were still and quiet enough to hear your own heartbeat?
For us, it was gliding down a green Jamaican river on a bamboo raft that’s been made the same way for hundreds of years.
As is our way, after being in one place for a couple of days — in this case, all-inclusive Couples Swept Away, set on Jamaica’s western coast at Negril Beach — we longed to wander. With the advice and help of the resort’s knowledgeable tour desk, we booked a driver for a 2 ½-hour inland detour and headed north towards Montego Bay (and nearby Falmouth) to float down the Martha Brae River.
Who was Martha Brae, you might ask? Well, the most widely-adopted legend follows:
In the 1500s, a young Arawak girl named Martha Brae who was rumored to know the location of a secret gold mine was forced by Spanish conquistadores to guide them to it. She led them instead to the entrance of a cave — the area’s full of them — and used her mysterious magical powers to corral the weather and change the river’s current. The cave was suddenly filled with rushing water, and the hapless Spaniards were drowned. Her ghost is said to linger here, still guarding her secret.
Well, that’s one way to get a river named after you.
The strong and able gentlemen who now guide foreign visitors down the river are far more amiable. They build and pilot their own 30-foot, two-seater rafts, making 2 or 3 hour-long runs down the river each day. These rafts are made much the same as in the late 1600s, when they were used to transport produce to the old merchant harbor at Falmouth.
These days, raft-floating itself is a brisk business. The raft pick-up point has a souvenir shop; an outdoor bar; a garden patch of common local plants like, say, marijuana; and large, clean restrooms. There’s a big grassy clearing with huge, graceful trees, pendulous bananas and bamboo raft-rods fanned out to dry in the sun. As the morning wears on, in come the cruise ship crowds from the nearby port at Ocho Rios.
We worried that with so many folks waiting, we’d all be crammed onto the river end to end…but instead it was quiet, leisurely and romantic. Boatmen wait several minutes between launchings, and we never came too close to another raft. At times, we even felt we had the river all to ourselves.
As our boatman sluiced his way through the milky green water, he pointed out soaring mango and African tulip trees among tangles of vines and sugarcane. An occasional heron would gingerly pick its way down to the water and blue-green butterflies flitted overhead. I leaned back into Adam’s arms, and could have happily stayed on the Brae all day.
NOTE:
The rafts are steady and strong.
Mosquito repellent wouldn’t have been the worst idea.
Flip-flops were just fine.
Bring cash (Jamaican or US) for souvenirs.
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See related posts
Inland Jamaica: Negril to Montego Bay
Jamaica: Serious Jerk at Scotchie’s
Jamaica: Swept Along at Swept Away
Jamaica: Notes on an Island
Jamaica: Couples Tower Isle – What We Loved
Jamaica: Couples Tower Isle – What We’d Love to See
Jamaica: Glory Be to Sans Souci
Jamaica: Dunn’s River Falls
TWT Travel Binder: Jamaica
Sounds and looks like a great time! Kev and I will have to try it one of these times.