Falmouth, Jamaica

We were supposed to visit Falmouth on our Amazon cruise in 2022, but there were going to be too many ships in port and our ship switched to Ocho Rios.

We have booked a tour of Green Groto Caves from an outside vendor, our first experience trying this. We decided to try it first in a port where we dock, so we didn’t have to deal with tendering back to the ship.

The damage from Hurricane Melissa which made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane on October 28, 2025 was visible.

We walked to the entrance of the port area and our tour guide greeted us. There were 14 people on the tour, the van was full. The port area is nice and clean. It took 45 minutes to drive to the cave.

The tour guide for the cave was provided by the cave, we toured two caves, the Runaway cave and the Grotto cave. There are 21 species of bats in Jamaica, 9 in these caves. The Hurricane has devastated the area, the bats don’t use these caves as much, we didn’t see any.

The green in the cave comes from copper oxidizing.

The caves have a long history, being used as a hiding place for runaway slaves and pirates.

There was a nightclub and bar in the cave in the late 20th century, but it was removed as it was damaging the cave.

The cave complex is quite large, going on for several miles.

There is one limestone formation that looks like the map of Jamaica.

In the bottom of the grotto cave (down 65 steps) there is a small lake.

Our guide “played” a stone that stuck out from the wall in the cave and it reverberated with a really nice sound.

Our guide told us about Jamaica on the way back, we passed several gas stations and she converted the price of gas to around $7.50 US dollars per gallon. It’s been as high as $9 per gallon. There is a 16% sales tax in Jamaica.

We stopped at a souvenir shop on the way back. They did rum tastings. The rums are around 150 proof. Donna tried the mango rum and Steve tried the five-year and eight year aged rums. The older rum was noticeably smoother.

Back to the ship for lunch, then out to look at port shops for a little bit.

Visited the chocolate factory in the port. Production is in the back room through a glass window. We tasted several chocolates. St Mary 71%, Clarendon 71%, Curry Goat 55%. Cacao was here before Columbus, brought over by Taíno, the indigenous people.

Hurricane Melissa damaged the Clarendon trees completely. This is on the estate of Captain Morgan, which is now owned by the government.

We made it back to the ship before the rain started. We saw some royal terns from the ship. Then walked three laps when the rain started.

A little puzzle time, I worked on a butterfly puzzle. We ate dinner by ourselves, got done in less than an hour. The theater show was a magic and contortion show. Michael White, an English magician and his wife, Hulan, from the Mongolian Circus.

After the show I worked on a 2000-piece puzzle, a cliff/seascape. I sorted out sky and put in a few pieces.