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.