How to Cruise - On the Islands

In this second installment of How to Cruise, we will focus on your time On the Islands.

The most important thing to remember when cruising is this: when the ship stops at a beautiful, tropical port, get off the boat. Don't sit in your stateroom all day watching reruns of the Love and Marriage show from the night before. Don't spend your day attempting to eat everything in sight. Don't go to the onboard pool or hot tubs - you can do that anytime. The ship's casino and shops are closed and the photographers that typically lurk around every corner are - you guessed it - on the island. The reason they are on the island is... well, because they are paid to take pictures of you on the island. However, they can't do their jobs if you are sitting in a deck chair reading the latest Nora Roberts novel. And besides keeping the ship's photographers gainfully employed, by getting off the boat you will get to see beautiful sand beaches, palm trees, turquoise waters and more duty free shops than you can stir with a stick. Also, you will get to see a way of life that will be completely foreign to most of you - island life. Island life is slow and stress free. Island life is "No problem, mon!" as we like to say when we're in Jamaica – except for Carol, she hates it when we say that. As you sit on the beach or walk down the street, the island lifestyle will seep into you and your normal pressures and headaches will slip away into the warm Caribbean breeze… but not if you’re sitting on the boat.

The mistake most new cruisers make (and we made this mistake as well) is signing up for the excursions on the ship. These excursions range from a bus tour of the island to parasailing five-hundred feet above the ocean and everything in between. These excursions have good points: the cruise companies make sure the excursion operators are safe and honest and will reimburse you if you don't get what you paid for, the ship will not leave you behind if the excursion is late getting back to the dock, and you will be surrounded by fellow cruisers and there is often safety in numbers - of course this is also the major downside to these excursions. For instance, we've been on several snorkeling excursions that were arranged by the cruise line. On each of these excursions, about thirty to fifty cruisers are herded onto a snorkeling boat, given snorkels and masks that have seen better days, and guided around a reef area by snorkeling guides. The problem is that there are thirty to fifty people thrashing around in the water, all trying to look at the same fish at the same time. You typically end up looking at someone else's flipper kicking you in the face - or worse yet - their swim suited rear end for the majority of the time and at fish only when someone shoves you completely under the water while swimming by. This is not a good time. On our second cruise with Dale and Carol, Carol used Cruise Critic to find all-exclusive resorts or beach areas on each of the islands we visited. We would take a cab to the spot Carol picked, pay a small fee in some cases, and spend the day with relatively few other people enjoying the sun, beach and ocean. We didn't feel like herd animals at any time during these trips and no one swam over us in order to see yet another blue fish. We did find that spending too much time at a swim-up bar at an all-inclusive resort can impede your tipping skills, however, so be warned. Cabbies on the islands are apparently forbidden to say, "Hey, this is too much, mon."

Never, ever rent any type of vehicle and attempt to drive around on an island. If you do, you will be smashed, maimed, and looted before you have been on the road for five minutes. There are a few islands that are fairly safe such as Grand Cayman. However, there are some islands where driving is a quick path to an early grave – I’m looking at you, Jamaica. Seriously, there are road signs in Jamaica that say, “Don’t go home dead – stop at stop signs,” with cartoon pictures of motorcycles going over cliffs. If your island needs this type of road sign, something is seriously wrong. We went on a zip line excursion in Jamaica once in which we piled on a bus with a bunch of other cruisers and drove up into the mountains. The bus driver was driving on the left side of the road, as they do in Jamaica, and merged onto another road without slowing down. This was disconcerting because we were not used to merging onto the left side of the road and also because a car was coming right at us at a high rate of speed in the lane we were merging across. A poor lady sitting in the front of the bus screamed as she saw her life flash before her eyes. The bus driver just chuckled as we skimmed by the car with millimeters to spare and said, “You don’t need to be scared unless I scream. That when you be scared.” On the other hand, we were on a bus in Grand Cayman with our children when the bus driver announced in a booming voice, “The first time I saw Jesus…” He then proceeded to fill us in on the multiple times he’s seen Jesus in his lifetime including the time when Jesus was thirty-five feet tall. So I guess you can ride a bus in Grand Cayman or drive a motorcycle in Jamaica and there’s a good chance you’ll see Jesus either way.

Definitely go shopping for liquor on the islands. It costs about half as much there as it does in the U.S. although you are limited to bringing back two liters per person. You can solve this problem, however, by taking your children and your neighbor’s children and some children you find on the way to the cruise terminal with you on the cruise. You can then multiply the two liters by the number of children and bring home enough liquor to intoxicate a small city. Of course, I’m kidding. I would never use my children or anyone else’s as a liquor mule.

You should definitely avoid jewelry shopping after visiting a swim-up bar. It could turn out worse than the tipping failure I mentioned earlier. Jewelry shopping after a swim-up bar is really no different than choosing someone to take home at closing time in a regular bar – you will probably wake up with something that you don’t recognize and that makes you slightly nauseous.

Speaking of nausea, only 1.3% of the people in the world are qualified to wear a bikini (girls) or a speedo (guys). Okay, there are no guys qualified to wear a speedo so just don’t do it. Anyway, statistically the odds are pretty slim that you are one of those people that qualify so the safest course is to skip the bikini or speedo when on the islands… or really anywhere for that matter. I can’t tell you how many overstuffed bikinis we’ve seen on our trips and we are always forced to make snarky comments about these women. We don’t want that to be you so just say no. Besides, who wants to look like a sausage wrapped tightly in twine?