(Dateline Dec. 27, 2008, aboard the Carnival Pride, somewhere off Baja, 100 nautical miles north of Cabo) My wife and I booked this cruise for us and our grown son and daughter as a family, over-the-year-end-holidays vacation to the Mexican Riviera, last August, before all the dramatic economic events unfolded this past Fall.
As the date approached and the economic news grew dimmer and more like a B-movie film script, I truly had mixed feelings about the Marie Antionette-ish aspects of going on a family cruise while what may yet prove to be the next Great Depression was ravaging the world’s economies. But, the date came, I badly needed a break from the current gloom and doom of the commercial real estate world, so, a’cruisin’ we went anyway.
We are on our last day at sea. Overnight, we went from the calm, balmy, humid tropical mid-80’s, to the 40’s and 50’s with a 20 mph headwind, moving at a very fast 22 knots, bouncing wildly, and even skipping at times, across the dark, white-capped waves, all 88,500 tons, 2200 passengers and 950 crew of us, with many bundled up now with peeling tans, some huddled in their rooms with a bucket close by. For those who need it, this is an All-The-Bonine-You-Can-Gulp day at sea – too windy for the upper sundecks where even SnowBird passengers from the MidWest, Canada and other snowy places now fear to tread.
I have had fascinating conversations with shipboard passengers, crew and others I met in our ports of call at Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo. To a person, the economy is casting a gloomy pall over what should be very merry Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, and other year-end celebrations. ‘Gloomy pall’ is a gross understatement. Onboard, the “Attention K-Mart Shoppers” announcements still come hourly and crass materialism still burns brightly, not yet squelched by the Media’s Gloom & Doom fire hoses trained on the conflagration, doing their part to bring everybody down with over past months.
I have talked with cruising extended families, trying to make ends meet, and older, retired folks, seriously concerned about their ability to continue living on fixed incomes in the coming new year. Ashore, the jewelry and other stores were, to my eye, nearly empty, and the pacing salespeople were playing Let’s Make a Deal, but this time it seemed like they really meant it. Name a price, any price . . . walk out, or pretend you are going to, and pick a number.
Even with the hefty consideration the shops were paying the cruise line to steer passenger shoppers, one must seriously wonder how so many shops selling the exact same merchandise are going to make it – especially with significantly less tourism predicted in 2009. It was hard to tell whether the ship’s passenger count was reduced from this horrible economy because so many people were delayed by bad weather traveling to our origin port in Long Beach, that some did not join the ship until our first port, Puerto Vallarta, the third full day of the cruise.
South of Puerto Vallarta, I took my family up into the jungle above Mismaloya Beach, to find Chico’s Paradise, a legendary restaurant I had visited with Mexican clients several times over the last couple of decades. We could only get as far as Chino’s Paradise, which looked vaguely the same, laid out along a wild river on great rocks along the sides, overlooking waterfalls, where we had wonderful local lobster, shrimp and fish, broiled on giant platters with cold beer. Chico’s Paradise is higher up, as I learned, and harder to get to, but it was there that I had spent some fine afternoons baking in the tropical sun high above the waterfalls as local boys dove for the pocket change we threw.
It looks like Chino’s won the cruise ship wars and got all the traffic now, but there were only a few tables occupied and many troubled faces among the waiters, trying hard to keep smiling for the Gringo tourists. The proprietor, who also ran a tequila distillery out back and put on a great show selling his wares, was thoroughly drunk but a real charmer, and we left with several bottles. I wondered how all these people would support themselves if people like me no longer went there. Once, the great Hollywood action films, like Predator, and the earlier, Night of the Iguana, put fishing villages like Puerto Vallarta on the map and drew Americans, Canadians, Europeans and others with money looking for a refuge south of the border – but, it is very expensive to bring a whole production company down here and locals told me they did not expect much more movie business.
Fear was the underlying theme. It was on the faces of people aboard and locals on shore – fear of what is coming for 2009 and whether we can pick ourselves up and get back in the race in yet another time of crisis, like America has done so many times before, or whether this time, we face something different – perhaps a sea change (pun intended) in life as we have known it. Carnival runs at least one cruise ship, once a week, on this 8-day jaunt down to the Mexican Riviera, as some enterprising person with a great imagination named it long ago.
The crewmembers each sign on for 7 or 8 month “contracts,” then go home to the Philippines, or Indonesia, or Croatia, or Ukraine, for a couple of months with their families who they support with their cruise ship earnings, and then go out and do it again – week after week, port after port, with no breaks. I think of them and the crowds of swarming vendors nearly everywhere you stop. Then, back on the ship, for more ‘Attention K-Mart shoppers’ announcements, selling everything not tacked down, 24/7.