Cruise-Goers Still Enjoying Haiti, Despite Widespread Devastation

Originally posted by Signals
Doc copied and pasted that response from my thread.

Actually, no. I copied it from my own desktop notebook and pasted it into both your thread and this thread. It was such a great response, it received multiple stars in both threads.

— Doc Velocity

Originally posted by Doc Velocity

Originally posted by Signals
Doc copied and pasted that response from my thread.

Actually, no. I copied it from my own desktop notebook and pasted it into both your thread and this thread. It was such a great response, it received multiple stars in both threads.

— Doc Velocity

Cool! I just gave you another star for that!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was just there in Labadee on March 17th, 2009. There is no "port" there. The ship I was on, "Freedom of the Seas" dropped anchor off shore and then you take a quick tender to the pier. The area is completely sealed off from the real Haiti, so you do not have a chance to see how the Haitians live. They have craft stands where you can purchase wood carvings and the like from Haitians. Most tourists lay on the beach and the cruise line provides an all you can eat lunch buffet (which really sucked by the way). The lunch they provided was terrible, but the beach was nice. Labadee was certainly nothing special, and from what I understand, the area is completely fenced off with armed security and you are not allowed to leave the area to go on excursions or explore the island outside the confined area. I read that the cruise line is donating all proceeds for this stop to the earthquake relief effort, along with pallets of supplies, etc. Many passengers will no doubt have mixed feelings about frolicking in Haiti while 60 miles away is a scene of complete devastation.

The latest information from Royal Caribbean has convinced me that the Cruise Lines would be doing Haiti a disservice by canceling their scheduled port of call in Labadee.

Life must go on for the Haitians that were not in Port-au-Prince.

Royal Caribbean Cruises is one of Haiti’s largest foreign investors for almost 30 years.

I would have no qualms about a shore excursion in Labadee.

On a side note: Royal Caribbean also plans to use a portion of their $1 million donation to augment the company's Crew Relief Fund, which can be drawn on by any of the company's more than 200 Haitian crew members for assistance, as well as to match employee contributions to the partner organizations.

This seems a little shady to me. They say a portion. I wonder how much that will be. Then again, it's their money and they can do what they want with it.

Here is a link to their site:
www.royalcaribbean.com...

[edit on 1/29/2010 by Sparky63]

Here is another interesting article from NPR regarding Royal Caribbeans relationship with Haiti and the recent Earthquake.

www.npr.org...

Haiti's government has asked his company to continue docking its luxury liners at Labadee in northern Haiti,...Mr. GOLDSTEIN: We're unloading about 40 to 60 pallets' worth of materials with each ship call. Navigator of the Seas is there today. That's the second one that's been at Labadee since the earthquake. We're probably looking at about three calls per week - a lot of water, canned goods, and then shelter-type relief supplies to the extent that they're made available to us.......

They may be opening another port of call, in the future. I think that investments like this are exactly what Haiti needs.