I have no idea what the population of this island is
normally. If each of these ships brought, on average, 3000 pax to this sunny
isle, we cruisers briefly added 18,000 souls to the total.
The hope is that each of these 18,000 spends loads of money
here. I believe this is a hope that is not fulfilled.
For reasons unknown to me, the marketing of jewelry is a big
deal anywhere cruise ships land. Perhaps cruise pax are concentrations of
people who’ve demonstrated having spare thousands of dollars to spend on
themselves.
Jewelry marketing is particularly big in the Caribbean and along the Alaskan coast. There are jewelry
firms which have summer-only outlets in Alaska
cruise ports in addition to outlets down here in the islands and they move
personnel back and forth.
Don’t believe cruise ship TV ads, the view around the ship’s
pool is not pretty. Cruise pax are not slender or trim; overweight or obese
describes most of us. Recreational eating is the major entertainment offered
aboard.
We pax aren’t young, either. The question around the dinner
table isn’t “What do you do?” Instead it is “What did you do?” The presumption
is that one is retired, although a few are still working. Heck, most of us are
spending our kids’ inheritance, if we even had kids.
Something I notice about islands where the British colonial
heritage persists. It is nice to be able to read the signage. It is surprising
how much friendlier that makes a place feel.
Of course when you try to converse with locals, you discover
that their version of English is heavily accented. They understand you from
watching thousands of hours of American and Brit TV shows, you may not
understand their island patois.
During supper our ship captain made a tannoy announcement
about our course and speed over the next 24 hours. His native tongue is Italian
and we could understand roughly one word in three of his heavily accented
English.
All official announcements on this ship line are made in
English, often heavily accented. I wonder how well crew members understand each
other?
The other DrC and I joke that someday soon the whole world
will communicate (badly) in broken English. I suppose the Roman empire had the
same problem – thick regional accents messing with the Rome version of Latin.
