Cruise to Jamaica: Don’t get off your ship

You picked your cruise ship and liner, and on your itinerary you see a day in Jamaica. It sounds fun, and if you pay the expensive excursion costs, it just might be.

We recently traveled to the country on a Royal Caribbean ship. Our first stop was Grand Cayman. It’s a great little country and safe for guests wanting to get off the boat, do some shopping, and find something fun to eat. Can’t say the same for Jamaica.

To be fair, we didn’t tour the country, and everyone we have spoken to says it’s beautiful. Judging by the landscape, it’s easy to see why. It is a gorgeous country.

Cruise ports are often tourist traps, but unlike Grand Cayman, which you can explore on your own, the Jamaican port is closed in. Meaning you can’t wander outside the port without booking an excursion. Why? Because it’s not safe.

From the deck of your ship, you can see all that the country’s Falmouth port has to offer. Shopping and a couple of places to eat.

Entering the port that is gated off, you enter a large courtyard where they peddle “handmade” wooden art, bowls, and more. The shops sell anything and everything Bob Marley.

The biggest problem we had was the haggling. Even in the stores themselves. Every store we went into had a clerk tell us that the price of an item wasn’t really the price and that we could negotiate. So we tried. Apparently, negotiating can turn into an offensive ordeal.

At one courtyard pavilion, we were told that the price was negotiable, but when we started to discuss the prices, we were told that if we didn’t like what they were offering, we could go back to the ship. One woman told my wife, “You’re in Jamaica now, so live with it or leave.”

At the pavilions selling carved wooden items, we were told the prices were not fixed. We asked what they would be willing to consider and were told that we needed to find another vendor and then bring their price back so they could meet it.

The other vendors were adjacent to their own.

We spent less than an hour walking around before we phoned it in. It simply wasn’t worth sticking around for. The courtyard is set up to entice excursion goers to buy souvenirs as they head back to the boat, but it’s not welcoming.

At ports in the Bahamas, there are similar setups, but there are also options for local cuisines, and Bahamian merchants make you feel like you are why they are there. They make you feel like they need you. That wasn’t the case in Jamaica. Instead, we felt like a burden that they were being forced to talk to.

When choosing a cruise, it is always smart to plan your itinerary and research the ports of call. Some are nice, but may be limited to a few blocks for safety reasons, while others are wide open for you to explore. Jamaica was none of those.