if you choose not to wait in line in the heat for the tram, it's a long walk off the pier, and when you arrive you have to either rent a golf cart for $60 for the day (fun!) or hire a cab to get to the shopping/beach areas.

Carnival sold excursions to some of the beaches, but other passengers who paid for those told me the free beach and free beach chairs were literally 10 feet away from their 'paid' ones, which would be frustrating. We chose to take a taxi for $5 each to the Radio Beach area, and enjoyed a free beach. The Food vendor at Radio Beach had huge and VERY fresh fried shrimp available that husband enjoyed thoroughly.

There was a vendor kind of hidden behind the little 'shopping' area of tshirts and keychains. They had bottled tropical flavored rum drinks for $10 each. VERY strong and delicious. Happy we found them.

They had the port/tourism area roped off, and if we were not on an approved excursion, we were not allowed beyond the Margaritaville shops. The locals were very happy to have a ship in port and to sell us their stuff.

Jamaica was very strict on their rules, masks on both indoors and outdoors. Security was walking around everywhere and they kept track of who came from the ship and who went back. I kinda felt bad for the locals because they were being watched so closely.

There were temperature scanners in several doorways and if you scanned hot, you couldn't go into the store.

There's a starbucks in the shopping area, and there were a couple of fun street entertainers with tip boxes, that we and several others tipped in. There is a small beach area right by the port, I don't know if it was free or not but there were a lot of people on it, considering we were the only ship in port and we were sailing at about 60% capacity.