The Martha Brae River has carried rafts since 1871, when lime and sugar plantations used thirty-foot bamboo poles to float cargo downriver to coastal warehouses. By the 1960s, cargo traffic had ceased, and Trelawny landowners repurposed the rafts for leisure journeys. The present-day Rafters Village opened in 1970 on a bend where the river widens past limestone outcrops, formalizing what had been an informal network of independent captains. Today the village dispatches approximately fifty rafts daily, each handcrafted from Dendrocalamus strictus bamboo harvested in the interior hills and lashed with coconut-fiber rope. The three-mile route runs northwest from Rafters Village to the river mouth near Rock, passing through a corridor of bird-of-paradise plants, wild ginger, and broadleaf ferns. The rafts themselves measure ten feet by four feet, seating two adults on a raised platform with a canvas canopy overhead. A trained raft captain stands at the stern, using a single bamboo pole to navigate shallow limestone shelves and deeper pools where the current slows. The journey takes roughly ninety minutes at normal water levels, though seasonal rainfall between May and November can shorten transit time by fifteen minutes. Martha brae rafting village tickets provide access to a departure system that staggers launches at fifteen-minute intervals to prevent crowding on narrow stretches. The village grounds include a small museum displaying early twentieth-century cargo manifests and photographs of raft captains from the plantation era, plus a botanical garden cataloging sixty native Jamaican medicinal plants. Restrooms, changing facilities, and a covered pavilion with benches occupy the northern end of the village. The river itself flows over a bed of weathered karst limestone, creating a gradient gentle enough that no rapids form, though the current accelerates slightly past the halfway marker where a tributary joins from the east. Conservation protocols established in 1998 prohibit motorized boats on this section of the river, preserving the acoustic environment and minimizing erosion along the banks.