THOUGHTS ABOUT OUR CARIBBEAN CRUISE PART II: THE NEGATIVES

Before I complete this blog, I need to make a correction from last week. The city I visited in Saint Marteen was Philipsburg, not Fredericksburg. I get my long Dutch names mixed up all the time. My apologies if you tried to Google that city. This blog will be considerably shorter than the previous one. But to give a little bit of background, cruises are not my favorite form of recreation. While they have their perks, there are also some downsides that really made aspects of the trip unappealing. Let’s dive into the four negatives of cruising.

1) As mentioned in Part 1, I did not discuss our last destination, the private island of Grand Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas. The reason is because the cruise ship never made it to the island. Due to a high wind tropical storm which led to the closing of our top deck for one day that created large swells which made the ship feel like it was going through THE PERFECT STORM (And led to an awful two hour night of sleep that evening), the ship was unable to make it to The Bahamas which based on the passenger reviews, is one of the best stops on the cruise. The good news is that the family got the port fee money back for that failed stop. The bad news is the final day of the cruise, instead of being on a private island with jet skis and swimming pigs, was spent on the ship fighting through rough water on the way back to the Miami port. On the last two days, mother nature got her revenge.

2) Since the family had never been on a cruise before, the experience of opening the door to our room on the ship and realizing that the bathroom in our condo is the same size in square footage is an interesting experience. To make it work, my wife and I slept on the King bed (Which gives you about a foot to exit on either side). My daughter slept on the couch with her feet hanging over (She is 5 feet tall exactly) and my son slept on the Murphy Bed above me. If I had swung my head up too fast because of a nightmare or breathing difficulties, I would knock myself unconscious on the bottom of the Murphy bed. When our cruise ship was built, they obviously wanted to convert the exciting experience of being crushed on an airplane and convert it into a room. It had a very space capsule like, trapped in a trunk feel to it. The bathroom was even worse. It was literally a cylindrical capsule that can literally fit one person at a time. Do you need to go to the bathroom while I am taking a shower? Tough shit, u must wait. My family got very good at running down the hallway and going up a flight of stairs to the nearest public restroom on the ship. Plus, we learned not to use the toilet for any bowel movements. The vacuum flush did not work properly and that smell of 48-hour chicken often would stink up our room for a bit. Thankfully, the sweetheart girl who made up our rooms gave us a bottle of Febreeze and Purell to make the experience a little more bacteria free.

3) My last two complaints are related to one another. This has to do with the nature of how the cruise ship industry works. When I am on vacation, the goal is to relax and gain new experiences. This is why I believe that traveling is one of the most important things you can do in your life because it stimulates your body and mind. But the cruise ship industry wants to make money. COVID-19 shut the industry down for over a year. On the ship, you have a casino. The slots were cold as ice. I never saw one person walk out of that room happy. I made a 100 dollars by wining eight straight hands on a ten-dollar blackjack table and lingering around for a half hour. I did not gamble again on the whole trip. My wife and daughter had no luck. The stores on the ship are constantly trying to sell you things due to the “duty-free” stores. Whether it is alcohol, jewelry, art auctions, books, clothing, technological devices, cameras, and dozens of other products, this rampant consumerism gets frustrating after awhile when you are stuck around it for ten days. Since we stopped at six ports, getting out of the ship does not issue any relief. Every island has a port that is isolated from the city in which it docks. The ports are outdoor shopping malls filled with dozens of different types of stores including restaurants and tourist shops. In the case of Antigua, St. Marteen, and St. Kitts when we left the general port area, the experience is more natural and cheaper (More on this in #4). All prices are much more expensive in the ports. The ports also are a mixed bag. Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic was the nicest one by far. The other nice port was Philipsburg. Antigua, St. Thomas, and Basseterre’s ports left a lot to be desired. They were acceptable but nothing impressive. Even with the duty-free discounts, many of the items up for sale felt overpriced. After Puerto Plata, my family decided against spending time inside these money-grubbing shops.

4) Besides the consumerism everywhere inside the ports, my other problem had to do with the ports themselves. It does not take long for an observant person to notice the large ten-to-twelve-foot walls with razor wire along the top and guarded on the outside by armed private security guards (And in the case of the Dominican Republic, by that country’s army itself). The Dominican Republic is a tragic country. My family decided to leave the port and were immediately overwhelmed by poverty. From the moment we left, we were bombarded with taxi drivers wanting to take us on rides deeper into the island. I wanted to see two historical streets that were a short hike away. We made it to both (Umbrella Street and Paseo de Dona Blanca) before heading a mile back towards the Macorix Rum distillery. Despite dressing down, you can’t help but stand out amongst the Dominican people. Walking that one mile changed my kids’ lives forever. They had never seen poverty like this. Everyone owns a motorcycle since no one can afford a car. They make up about 80% of the traffic. Cars are broken down everywhere on the side of the road as they buy used parts from a mechanic (Leftovers from the United States and Japan) to get their engine working one more time. Little creeks filled with feces, clothing and harmful bacteria are flowing under bridges. On the way to the rum distillery, I wanted to confirm we were walking in the right direction. I approached a member of the Dominican Army (Who spoke no English) and talked with him in broken Spanish (Casa de Ron, Sur or Norte?). He ended up escorting my family across the street while holding a Mossberg shotgun in his hand and an AR-15 strapped over his shoulder. Even though this was the most distressing experience, going to the other islands was not much better. Antigua and St. Kitts which are part of the British Commonwealth are a little wealthier. But there is still homelessness in large parts of the island, drug addicts everywhere, and if you leave the port and drive around the island, which we did in both locations, the villages scattered around the island are third world poor. The only island we went to that had a middle class; upper scale vibe was Saint Marteen which was beautiful everywhere we went. But these other three islands took the joy of the cruise away and spiraled me down into the cold, hard reality of the world. The Caribbean is a poor place and the only positive thought I had that balanced out these sad experiences is that my United States dollars helped them at least temporarily live a better life for that day. Because of this underlying reality, I really hated these ports. I FUCKING HATED THE PORTS. They often would have dancers from the island there or individuals playing the music of the island. For instance, steel drummers were in every part of the St. Kitts port.  Because every port was protected with heavy security, this Disney-fied experience felt artificial and fake. I personally despised every second of it. I know these cruise ships want to protect people from the crimes that poverty can create. But our family left the port in all four locations, and nothing happened to us. In three of them, police were nowhere to be found and we were able to sightsee and enjoy our time on the island.

Anyway, drop your thoughts on this. I hope you enjoyed this summary of my family’s first ever international cruise. Whether I do it again, we will see.