Trevor Hudlin Tours - Recommendation for Ocho Rios, Jamaica
by c&wvebes
My husband Wayne and grown son David and I had a magic day for our tour of Ocho Rios, Jamaica due to the kindness and caring attention of Trevor Hudlin. Sept 12, 2007 was the best day of our cruise! I had contacted Trevor to arrange this through the Internet, due to a review by Tom Ogg in PortReviews.com. I just e-mailed him at
trevorhundlin@hotmail.com, and he suggested a wonderful tour at a very reasonable price. Our experience was just as the review had describedâ€â€and really wonderful to experience for ourselves!
Trevor met us where the boat landedâ€â€you can just mention Trevor Hudlin Tours to anyone, and they will point the way to him. He is polite, friendly, and immediately reassured us that he was as nice as he had sounded in his e-mails.
He whisked us several miles away to Dunn’s River Falls, in his spotless air-conditioned 8-passenger van, ahead of the crowds. He narrated wherever we went, with lots of interesting details. We learned about the history and the people and the politics (there had just been an election.) They say of Jamaica that out of many peoples, they are one people, since they have many nations represented in their country.
At Dunn’s River Falls, we discovered that we had to rent water shoes (our water thongs would not have worked on the smooth, slippery rocks!)
It would have been better to buy water shoes for $20 on the ship instead of renting them for $15â€â€using up most of our cash. (We were so impressed with Trevor already that we had to save a tip for him). While Wayne watched from the nearby stairs, my son and I enjoyed 45 minutes of exciting, exhilarating, somewhat strenuous, and very memorable climbing through a rushing wall of water up to the top of Dunn’s Falls. We went up single-file, holding hands before and after, with young men reaching a helping hand to haul us up when the way was steep. These young men took my camera and took several pictures of us along the way. They also filmed a DVD of our little group climbing, which we could charge for $20â€â€worth it even though it’s repetitious.
Shopping at the top of the Falls was also memorable. They said we could charge, so that encouraged us to shop. However, because we were charging, they said they couldn’t lower the prices. So we spent more than $100 on trinkets, T-shirts, etc. Some were nice art pieces, actually, but not really bargains. We worried too whether they would overcharge usâ€â€but they charges were just as expected.
Then we were off to the next stop on our tripâ€â€tubing down the White River.
Trevor took our picture, and we were off in large inner-tubes down a placid river, guided by a young man on a tube. He often put himself in harms way to push us away from the bank with scratchy branches. It was all green and serine. Then the rapids started, and we were glad that the inner tubes had fiberglass bottoms. We felt safe and just pleasantly jostled and excited. The young man did have his hands full guiding us all safely through. There were smooth passages and rough rapids for quite a long trip. About mid-way we stopped and saw pictures of ourselves on a preview screen with a computer set up in a wooden, covered structureâ€â€quite a site in the middle of nowhere. The pictures were good and inexpensive, but again we had no cash to purchase. So sad!
With our two main exciting activities over, we were content to sit and watch the sites of Jamaica. We stopped at a roadside stand and Trevor bought us sugar cane and taught us how to chew itâ€â€delicious!
We drove around the hills, stopping to take pictures of the ship from high above.
Just driving was thrilling, because the roads are narrow, not in great shape, and everyone is on the wrong side of the road! We drove through Fern Gully, a narrow road through a tropical rain forestâ€â€very lush and scenic.
To conclude our Jamaican adventure, Trevor located a good restaurant that would let us charge (the first one we stopped at had the charge set up broken). It was Mama Marley’sâ€â€yes, Bob Marley’s mother’s restaurant. We enjoyed jerk chicken and a tropical drink.
We felt very fortunate to have found Trevor to be our guide. He also guides tours in Montego Bay; we’ll have to go back and see more of beautiful Jamaica.
