Caribbean Curse

By: Scott Stillman

We did NOT have a good time. We were talked to like children and treated like cattle. None of the crew spoke intelligible English. Most of the passengers were from Florida, meaning they were from New York, meaning they were old, abrupt, nasty, fat, and just not fun to be around. Ok, I'm done.

This is an 8 megs slide show of our cruse.  Cruise slide show.

Our first excursion was at the Grand Cayman.

We were told to meet at 630 in the theater for processing. Here we had our ear tag put in and were branded for easy sorting through the shoots.  About 2 hours later we were funneled onto a tender with 450 others from our ship. There were seven ships that all came in at the same time. 2500 per ship leaving 17000 plus crew call it an even 20000 all trying to move through the same dock.  Some one looked at the tag on my ear and prodded us through another shoot to another holding pen.  From here we were loaded onto a cattle car and moved across town and dumped into the dive shack.

In the shack we were handed stuff to put on, shown a flip chart presentation and dumped into the pool.  At this point Jennifer had decided she had had enough but I persisted.  As she slipped under the fence to graze out of the site of our Sheppard, I was coaxed into the ocean.  We went out about 45 minutes to about 40 ft.  I saw all the fish you see at the store.  Puffers, and gobies, barracuda, and a small shark. ( I wonder if the store people know these are here) I forgot my underwater camera. I left it with my shurpa.  I realized about 30 minutes in. Oh Well.

Once done they took all there stuff back and marked our cards completed.  We were then informed the town was just down the road and to walk.  We were left unsupervised to make our way the mile and a half back to town.  On our own to walk back to town, wondering aimlessly we were spotted by a Sheppard, shuffled back onto a tender and deposited back on board.

The next day we went Snorkeling in Cozumel.

Snorkeling was fun.  See 3rd paragraph repeated.  63 of us rode out on a 60 ft catamaran.  They dumped us in the water where we floated with the current, about 5 knots, over the reef. 40-60 percent of the reef was destroyed from the Hurricane Wilma, but it was amazing how many fish there were.  We were in between 35-40 ft of water.  Our guides had packages of tortillas that they dropped into the water.  We followed behind like cows behind the feed truck.  Moo. I went down about 40 ft. I have some great pictures on a water proof camera that I will have developed next week. We had just gone scuba diving the day before and I can still hold my breath about 1.5 to 2 min. I was laying on the bottom in 40 ft taking pictures up through the fish at the cattle. :)  After about an hour we were herded back onto the catamaran where we motor sailed about half an hour to a private beach.  We hung out, had a burger, and played some volley ball.  In the middle of the fun they shepherded us back onto the boat and back to the dock.

Cozumal was absolutely destroyed. It was like a pile of ants.  Everywhere you looked stuff was damages but there were work crews making it pretty.  It's amazing how much they have done in 8 weeks.  Capitalism is a wonderful force.  Too bad the rest of Mexico can't follow suit.  

Aboard the Ship

We had assigned seating for dinner at a table for 6. See picture.  No one showed up.  It was miserable.  We asked for early seating, we got 8:30.  Dinner served by 9. out by 10.  We missed all the shows.  Our waiter said he would move us tomorrow for five days.

The adult pool had about 200 small children running around screaming.

On a better note.

The food was good, we sometimes even got what we ordered, the language barrier, you know.

We are taking scuba next week.  Jumping back on the horse as it were.

Through out the entire trip we had 15-25 ft seas and neither of us felt bad.  This kept most of the cattle in their rooms.  

Although we will never go out on another mass cruse we are looking forward to our smaller ones.

Dundee, Flordia

After our traumatic experience we decided to take a breather and spend some time with grandpa.  He took us to Bok Sanctuary.  This was one of the best parts of the trip.  Check out the Bok Sanctuary link below.  

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Revised: December 29, 2006

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