DAY THREE - LABADEE, HAITI

MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 2006

I don't know what the hell posessed me to book such early excursions.

Waking up each morning is sort of like rising from the dead. You think I'm being melodramatic, but it was sort of like being dead...like, you're totally heading for that light at the end of the tunnel, and then some fucking paramedic goes and zaps you with like those paddles and all of a sudden, you're being yanked from that tunnel and being hurtled back to the here and now...otherwise known as hell.

Not that this vacation was hell.

We would always leave the stateroom in such a fucking mess. It looked like...like we'd committed some horrible crime and needed to get out of Dodge as fast as possible --- but you know, not before we completely destroyed the room beyond any recognition.

I have no idea why I didn't bother taking a picture to document the sheer devestation to the room upon return every day.

Ya gotta give credit where it's due. Those stateroom attendants really do a good job. At least to the naked eye.

I hightailed it to the Guest Services desk 'cause my Sea Pass wasn't working. The guy at the desk explained that it had demagnetized and that putting it against a digital camera or even another credit card would demagnetize the card.

I'd intended to eat like a fucking savage. I wanted to gain at least 10 pounds. But when we got to the Windjammer, I found I had no appetite. I don't think I was feeling sea sick or anything, but I went to the washroom and upchucked into the toilet, watching the small bowl of grits make the uphill climb through my throat and out onto the toilet.

Man, it just isn't a cruise unless I throw up, you know?




While my two younger sisters went off to go kayaking along the coast and get their first taste of the aggressive nature of Haitian vendors who firmly believed in the concept of "you help me, I help you", I stood around, waiting for the bullshit walking tour to begin.

When I got to Labadee, it was still relatively early and hardly anybody was around.

To get some deck chairs pulled out, you couldn't just get them yourself. Poor Haitians, looking for an easy buck, would insist on getting them for you and then look to be tipped.

Stupidly, I forgot to bring any money and needed to hightail it back to the boat to go get my wallet. But in the end, in the afternoon, you could just take your pick of any chairs that people had left behind.

We found a shady spot under a tree and dozed the afternoon away.

This was about the only interesting thing we saw during the walking tour. The Haitian native who led us around took the opportunity to talk about how poor the island was and how, after the cruise left, the townsfolk would come to comb through the garbage, looking for food that they could later sell.

He complained about how Royal Caribbean claimed they owned Labadee and called it Hispanola instead of what it really was --- Haiti. But by the same token, the Haitians need Royal Caribbean.

He said that he got paid a whole lot more than the average doctor or law enforcement official --- though, that was only about $12 US a day.

Education wasn't mandatory and it was too expensive for a lot of people, he told us.

And there we all were, vacationers, out to get some sun and to relax and be overfed.

He must have hated all of us.

Okay, the walking tour was total bullshit, 'cause we didn't really see much of anything. It was a waste of $15 US dollars. Ultimately, I had to go around on my own to see what was worth exploring and seeing.

This bell tower was pretty much it.

Yeah...so, in the end, we didn't really need that money. Like I said before, a lot of people probably got up and moved to other areas or went on excursions, so we just took over their left behind lounge chairs and we ended up dozing under the shade for a good chunk of the afternoon.

Mel and I went into the water for a bit, just to cool off and wash away the sweat. It was really great being able to stretch out under the shade and slowly dry off in the heat with the slight breeze rustling through the trees.

When it was time to go back to the boat, we found ourselves at the tail end of a really long line up.

On the menu tonight was a Venetian dinner. When you have nothing to do, you have loads of time to swing by the entrance of the dining room and check out what's on the menu for dinner. Not that we did that a whole lot. Maybe just the one time. In any event, our waiter would usually give us a run through of what they'd be serving the next night anyway --- I had a feeling that the menus for Royal Caribbean didn't vary all that much. I was probably eating off of the same menu that I'd sampled in 2004 --- not that this was a big deal, considering, I didn't really remember what I had. (Despite the photographic evidence.) It just seemed different.

Mel and I teased Rachel that she was too predictable and that it was forever easy to figure out just what she would order. Something safe, something she'd eaten before.

Mel and I tended to veer towards the things we hadn't tried before.

I had the lamb shank (which was so tender, it just melted away from the bone) and a scallop risotto. Ricky took issue with the fact that I was eating lamb, going on and on about how he felt sorry for the lamb, etc. Usually, that sort of thing would annoy me, 'cause, really, if you're going to bitch about someone eating any sort of meat, you should just become a vegetarian instead of sawing your way through a bloody steak whilst blah blahing about how you feel sorry for the animal that's been slaughtered and currently being devoured by your dinnermate.

You know, it's not even just that. I mean, I hate it when people aren't even willing to try new things, you know? They just stick to the same old thing and it's like, "What a waste. You'll never even know if you'll like this other thing 'cause you won't even try it."

But at the time, I didn't really care. I mean, he could say whatever he wanted 'cause I'd mentally blocked him out. Life's easier when you just block out things, instead of letting it get under your skin.

Mel asked Ricky, "Well, do you feel sorry for the cow?"

He looked at her puzzled.

"That steak you're eating --- it comes from a cow," she clarified.

He didn't get it.

The waiters performed an Italian song, coming out of the kitchen galley, flinging their napkins and grinning broadly as they clapped. I had this little stab of fear that maybe they'd pull us out to dance or something, like they did on the previous cruise. But they didn't. They sang the same song and for people who hadn't seen that sort of thing before, it was really cool. Okay, so it was cool even for someone like me, who'd watched it before. I mean, hey, a lot happens in two years.

This was around the time that we started noticing that our digital camera wasn't working. Every time we turned it on, it kept reading, "Memory Card Error."

Mel suggested that we got to the Photo Gallery to see if somebody might be able to help us. We figured that, worse come to worse, we'd simply buy a new memory card there --- but guess what? It turns out our memory card's outdated. They come in these tiny little chips now.

I wasn't about to resort to buying a whole new camera altogether, so when the guy suggested that they attempt to do a photo recovery and burn whatever pictures we had on the card onto a CD for us, I reluctantly agreed. I mean, that was better than nothing, right? The main thing that concerned me, though, was that all of the pictures seemed to be of things taken from a long time ago --- like they had my Vegas pictures on there.

The whole thing would cost us $49 --- we opted to buy a waterproof camera for our excursion to Dunn River Falls the next day, too.

We went off to watch some karaoke to kill time before the comic for the night showed up on stage at the Metropolis. There was this Indian guy from Toronto who "sang" Usher's "U Remind Me" --- OH. MY. GOD. It was so bad, I just wanted to kill myself. I mean, it's bad when you're out-of-tune, but when a guy's singing in a high falsetto that only dogs could possibly be able to hear, it's just torture. You just want to go up to the guy and boot him off the stage to save him from further embarrassing himself --- 'cause the funny thing is, I don't think he could actually hear just how bad he sounded.

There was another pair --- two Black girls from California --- who were singing "Respect". I guess they'd never sang it before, 'cause it was very stop-and-start, and then one of the girls, after a bit of silence, sang the part that goes, "I just want you to give it to me" and you could see how it hit her the minute the words came out of her mouth, as she's reading these lyrics on the karaoke machine. Her eyes widened, she screamed in horror, and then bolted off the stage, as I cackled until I couldn't breathe anymore.

I'd actually seen Troy Thirdgill performe at the last cruise. I bet it was the same material. I was actually waiting for him to get to that same material. He was funnier than the first guy, though.

I liked the part where he was talking about how much he hates the people who sit up right at the front --- the people who get there early and sit there up front with their arms crossed and a stone-like mask on their face, going, "Okay. I'm here. Now make me laugh."

Even though I wasn't sitting up front, I was still sitting there with arms crossed, thinking, "Okay. Make me laugh. Now."

Right after the show, we headed up to Studio B, which is where the ice rink is. They were doing "The Quest" again. We saw Wes and Danny --- this time, with a different set of girls, it seemed. I don't think they noticed us, but it kind of made us feel like stalkers or something, always noticing them, but them never noticing us. One of the girls was flirting with Danny and he teasingly draped one of his legs over her's.

I could never do anything like that. It'd be too embarrassing.

I'm more like, "Couldn't you tell I liked you from the way I was ignoring you?"

There were these two groups of black people --- one was a family from California and the other was a group of young guys, who'd been at the karaoke session the other day. With the music blaring, the family, who was sitting on the other side of the rink, would stand up and dance. The guys on our side would get up in turn and do a little jig themselves. It was kind of funny.

Predictably, they were the ones who quickly volunteered to be in the game.

Since I'd been to this thing before, I knew some of the standard questions i.e. Bring me a sock with a hole.

Okay, so the hole is where you put your foot in. But there was this one woman who bit a hole through some guy's sock. They did an instant replay of it in slow motion and I almost threw up. I couldn't think of anything more gross. (Well, actually I can. But at that moment, I couldn't think of anything more disgusting than biting through some other person's dirty sock. I mean, what if they had really sweaty, nasty feet? And the sock smelled?)

Shane, the cruise director, looked really cute in the 50s garb with the probably faux leather jacket and jeans.

Sometimes, I wish the fashions of the late 50s would come back in style. Maybe it's because it represents a simpler time.

DAY FOUR - OCHOS RIOS, JAMAICA

TUESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2006

A couple of things about me:
1. I don't know how to bargin.
2. I'm an easy mark.

If I had gone to Dunn River Falls alone, I would have definitely gone home with a DVD of the climb up the falls --- complete with humiliating footage of me falling not once, but twice.


Dunn River Falls

In my defense, though, you have to admit that the concept of scaling up a water fall is a little weird.

But then again, scaling the Dunn River Falls isn't exactly scaling Niagara Falls.


Niagara Falls

But still...trying to make your way uphill on slippery, jagged rocks as water rushes at you is...well, it's an experience.

So, the thing is, you're supposed to go in groups and hold hands to form a human chain to help each other up the falls.

Thank God I was holding onto this big guy's hand. A couple of times, I walked right into a pot hole and needed someone to haul me bodily out. I managed to scrape my legs up so that I emerged from the water with blood streaming down my right leg.

I still have a scar to show for it.



Almost as soon as we got off the boat that morning, the heat hit us like a heavy blanket and it was absolutely suffocating.

Thank God the tour buses were air conditioned.

As the driver wound through the narrow streets that curved along the coastline, he cheerfully told us, "In Jamaica, we have a saying: the left side is the right side. The right side is suicide."

When we stepped out and made it to the site, you could feel the uncomfortable, sticky heat crawl all over you. Standing out under the hot sun was less than ideal and to make matters worse, we had a fair walk to get to the little station where you're able to buy water shoes and lock your stuff away.

Everything was pretty crude, though. The fluorescent coloured water shoes were in plastic buckets of water and we found ourselves sitting on cheap, white plastic lawn chairs, waiting to be fitted before heading off to the locker rental place, only to discover the lockers were basically holes carved into the side of a dirt hill with wooden doors to cover them.

From where we were standing, we could hear the rush of the water.

Even under the shade, it was hot. There didn't seem to be any breeze.

"The water heals," our guide, Joseph, kept telling us, as he led us down a rickety set of stairs towards the beach. He splashed some water at us and it felt so cold, it was like shards of ice cutting across our skin.

He instructed us to hold hands to form a human chain and said that if one falls, just leave them alone and keep going.

Our videographer was like a little monkey, the way he scaled the falls with a hop, skip and a jump, all the while holding onto his camcorder and calling out to us to give him high fives and to smile into the camera.



Yes, the water did "heal", but when you're carefully picking your way across moss-covered stones and rushing cold water (which actually started to feel really good after awhile), the last thing you really want to do is smile goofily at the camera or pose like some B-movie starlet.

That's why I didn't really want to buy the DVD.

Past experience had taught me that nobody really watches home movies --- the shaky camera work created by an unsteady and unprofessional hand isn't exactly entertaining for anybody who wasn't actually in the video.

It's also pretty headache inducing.



When the tour was over and I was hobbling off, the videographer came running after us, trying to make a sale.

I'd forgotten the first rule about dealing with hagglers:

Just say no.

It's not "No thanks." It's just a simple no.

He knew I was the weak link, though, and didn't even focus on either Melanie or Rachel at that point. He kept at me as I hemmed and hawed, trying to think of a polite way of telling him to get out of my face so that we could get on the bus and head over to Dolphin Cove.

I had my hand on my wallet at one point, but Melanie focused on me and kept saying, "No." We finally managed to extract ourselves from the situation and weaved through the market place set up right near the entrance and headed for a bus.



Our next stop was Dolphin Cove.



It turns out we didn't really read our ticket all that carefully, so we didn't realize that this wasn't exactly a swim-with-the-dolphins encounter. For extra money, you could go swim with the dolphins, otherwise, you were allowed into this secluded little tourist trap where you could watch the dolphins resting before another "encounter" or catch a shark feeding or weave through the little jungle trail where you could look at other animals kept in captivity --- say, a parrott or two, which one of the guides can have propped on your shoulder while he takes your picture.



(Not a fun experience. The talons feel really gross and you can feel them digging into your flesh -- but oddly enough, I found holding the birds to be even more creepy. I kept wanting to fling them bodily off of my hands and go running and screaming like a banshee out of the jungle.)



With the heat steadily rising, we felt like the best thing to do was to get back to the boat and have a late lunch before heading out to the pool to nap under the sun.

DAY FIVE - GEORGETOWN, GRAND CAYMAN

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2006

We got to the Grand Cayman Islands via tender boat right at 10 a.m. --- just in time to discover that the snorkelling guide had already left.

We had to reschedule, which meant that we had about 2 1/2 hours to kill.

At George Town, in the area where the tender boats dock, there isn't really a whole lot to do. You've got your standard gift shops selling junk labelled with the town name, duty free shops selling booze and perfume, and scores of jewellers.

For someone strapped with cash, it wasn't really the ideal place to kill time.

I liked the coloured walls of some of the buildings, but George Town was surprisingly bland and boring and almost rundown looking in some spots.

This was directly across from the pier.

We arrived right at ten a.m., missing our motor cruiser for the 10 a.m. snorkelling tour.

Our Royal Caribbean attendant rebooked us for the one leaving at 12:30 p.m., which meant we would miss the Grand Cayman highlights and turtle farm excursion that was at 1 p.m.

Sebastien assured us that we'd made the right choice and that snorkelling was best done in the Grand Cayman.

It was exhausting trying to find ways to kill time in Grand Cayman. It's not like we had oodles of cash on us and even if we did, I wasn't exactly in the mood to cart around huge bags of booze and perfume and jewellry.

Each shop seemed to sell pretty much the same thing.

The heat was so bad that we kept ducking into shops, attempting to cool down while pretending to peruse the wares offered for sale.

Felt a little out of place in some of the shops, 'cause I thought it was pretty obvious that we weren't buying anything.

(C)Lonely Planet

(C)Lonely Planet

This was taken aboard the motor cruiser after we finished at the first snorkelling location, which allowed us to see the reef system.

Remember "Finding Nemo"? The blue fish that Ellen Degeneres voiced? Yeah, well, there were tons of schools of fish just like that, darting in and out of the reef.

The guide, Russ, said the Grand Cayman was an ideal location to learn how to snorkel 'cause the water's relatively calm and warm and there's plenty of tropical fish and marine life to see.

We were warned not to panic if we saw "shark-like fish" 'cause they weren't really sharks. They were tarpin and they were harmless.

After the first location, they took us over to this shallow ship wreck that had become an artificial reef system which had been extensively filmed by National Geographic and Discovery Channel.

DAY SIX - COZUMEL, MEXICO

THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 2006

This seems to be a pretty standard shot of what you'd see in the Caribbean.

The ferry that took us from the ship was so rocky, it wasn't even funny. I thought I was going to get really seasick, so I took some pills before I left and tried to sleep through the 45 minute ordeal.

When we arrived and were directed towards our tour guides, this is what we saw.

They actually took a photograph of us while we were waiting, with this backdrop, but my eyes were closed and it totally ruined the shot.

Walked past this restaurant while heading towards our tour bus that would take us to the Tulum ruins. Thought it was bright and colourful and that's why I took a picture of it.

As you can probably tell from most of these pictures, it was mostly overcast that day and it actually started raining at one point --- mostly spitting, but nonetheless, it wasn't overly comfortable, even in the heat.

The guide started to lead us towards this "cave", but the problem was that, with over thirty of us, we didn't all fit inside. Some of us --- me, in particular --- still wound up standing outside.

Our guide was chock full of information --- but for some reason, he chose to stand in front of the most boring buildings...and far away from them, too...and he'd stand there for a really long time, blah blah blahing about all sorts of factoids without really giving us a chance to explore some of the other buildings.

It wasn't like we had a whole lot of time.

I really love this shot because you can see where the rain water collects on top of this plant. What the hell is it, anyway? Some sort of cactus?

From this picture, you can't really tell, but it was actually pretty high up. When I was walking along this path, some guy asked me if I wanted him to take a picture of me and my sisters.

My sisters weren't in the mood for pictures, but there aren't very many pictures of the three of us from the few that we managed to salvage after our memory card went crazy on us.

Afterwards, the guy joked, "That'll be $5."

For some reason, when I got home, I couldn't find a picture of the three of us anywhere from the ruins.

For such an overcast day, it was hotter than hell. I mean, even though the ruins were gorgeous and the ocean lapped up against the beach in rushing waves, spraying mist all over the place, we were just too high up and really suffering through the heat to really enjoy any of it.

I'd carefully picked my way down the rocky hill to get this shot.

This was one of the last shots I got before I realized that I was in serious danger of being stranded at the site.

The driver had been really clear about being back on the bus by 2:40 P.M. --- he told us the ferry back to the ship would wait for no one and that he'd had to leave behind 10 people the last time and the taxi ride would cost us upwards of $80.

Not only that, but the ship had provided us with a lunch that we were supposed to eat on our 75 minute ride back to Cozumel.

Ultimately, I was sprinting back towards that more than anything else.

The Amazing Race style sprint left me even sweatier and gross than I already was --- to this day, my sisters accuse me of abandonning them.

I still maintain that I was sprinting to the parking lot to stop the bus from leaving without us.