JCCC4 - Jamaica, land of harrassment - WAS:Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies (Unhand my tutu, Miss!!!)
Hi everyone.
Honestly, I had the most marvelous time last year and really enjoyed the GLBT and Allies cocktail party. Really enjoyed watching my wife mistake
Kevin Murphy as a gay guy and then watching Kevin realize that Shelley had mistaken his pierced ear for a gay gang sign.
I was just reading a little Cruise Critic boards and under GLBT cruising they were talking about Jamaica and it's notorious anti-gay policies. apparently MUCH worse in Montego Bay but not restricted to there. The state dept has a warning out for Jamaica, not listing Falmouth, but many of the other cities in Jamaica arent safe.
I'm waiting for the list of JOCOSpeditions to make decisions, but we may just stay on the ship in Jamaica for a suntan and beverage binge. Has anyone ever cruised to Jamaica and what was your shore experience there?
AuntiL
Comments
Our plan is to stay on the ship that day.
(All that said, one of my colleagues is from Jamaica, and I feel super bad every time the conversation moves to Jamaica Is Terrible. The touristy areas are for sure overrun with aggressive people trying to sell stuff, but there's also lots of the country that isn't a cruise port.)
On JCCC1 I wandered away from the touristy areas in search of a store and found relief from the opportunists, but felt very conspicuous and soon returned to the ship.
The experience mostly made me sad.
My understanding is that Falmouth's pier was done up specifically for Royal Caribbean to be able to dock the big honkers, and inside the pier area you can expect it to be fairly sterile and the usual tourist rubbish, Jamaica-themed. Outside the pasty-pen, I don't have enough information.
And the sun shines brightly on the mountaintop
I took a trip on a sailing ship
And when I reached Jamaica, I didn't stop!
Won't get off the ship today
I'd say if someone was interested in seeing the island but was concerned about these sorts of problems, there's no reason you couldn't just walk of the ship into the nearby port town, and if things feel uncomfortable right from the start (which they probably will if they're going to be) just turn right around and walk back to the ship, no harm done.
As implied by a few others here as well, some of the pre-arranged excursions for things like snorkeling might be perfectly nice as well. Probably the big keyword to avoid in a shore excursion description is the inclusion of phrases like "...and we'll conclude with an opportunity for shopping with special discounts from several preferred stores!" Any mention of shopping in the excursion description is probably likely to imply being dropped off in what we might refer to colloquially as "a trap".
Here's another comment from the peanut gallery. In 2007 I spent a week in the interior of Jamaica (May Pen, for those curious) with a half-day in Kingston on the way back. The people are very socially conservative, and once you get away from touristy areas the salespeople aren't especially obnoxious. I felt a bit on edge for most of the time I was there, except at the hotel or at work, but at least part of that was just my normal social anxiety.
The food was almost always very good, as was the tourist coffee. (All of the good stuff seems to be for export or sale to tourists; most people drink instant Nescafe.) I'll probably get off the ship to get some jerked chicken and coffee, if nothing else.
Hey speaking of, I just ran across this: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g612473-Activities-Falmouth_Trelawny_Parish_Jamaica.html
No guarantee any of these would be offered as ship excursions of course. At least some of those seem like things you'd have to stay into the evening to do.