Travel in Cockpit Country without own car

Any place where there are people, there will be transport. I just visited Quickstep in October, I took a minibus from Santa Cruz to get there. The driver of the minibus arranged a room for me by cell phone, and dropped me off at my host's front door. I wasn't looking for too much backwoods adventure, and so only walked a couple of hours into the bush, but the guy who showed me around back there had experience leading lots of other tourists around on more substantial excursions. For more details and impressions from my stay there, look up my recent trip report.

Overall, my experience was that making arrangements and getting good info was rather impossible over the internet, and rather easy on the ground.

http://www.stea.net/tours

http://www.jamaicancaves.org/donations-funding.htm

http://www.cockpitcountry.com/index.html

http://wrc.cockpitcountry.com/

If you're into checking out Great Houses you have to visit Good Hope GH and Greenwood GH not to mention the town of Falmouth.

As a general JA resource try http://www.jnht.com/index.php

If you like, I can recommend a "private taxi" driver that can take you up to Cockpit country.
Send me a "private message" if you are interested.
ONE LOVE !!
Mike

I have a place just outside Accompong , which you can see at Cockpitrepublic.com in the accomodations page for Accompong. transport available, contact me for further info.

Tony, Baboo's Garden

baboosgarden, I have to thank you for the information on your website about route taxis, and the link to the Jamaica Transport Authority website. I couldn't remember where I had originally found that info until I looked at the link you provided above. It proved incredibly useful for sorting out the details of my trip, and is therefore an exception to the statement I made about getting good info on the internet.

I've done some traveling into Cockpit Country with the hosts of a small hotel I like to stay at in Duncans Bay - http://www.myjamaicajewel.com

Not exactly a budget place but they're very cool and the suites are beautiful.

Anyplace you stay can get you a driver/guide to take you pretty much wherever you want to go, it's no problem. You can take public transport - route taxis - pretty close to some of these places but some you'd need to hike into. I'm thinking of Dornoch's Head with that last, only 4WD cars can really go down there (I made it halfway down in my rental before i chickened out).

Windsor (cave, river, great house) is probably doable by route taxi.