The second port of call on the western run is Labadee, Haiti. Labadee is an island owned or leased by RCCL to serve as an exclusive tropical park for the cones. Nobody lives in Labadee, but nearby residents are permitted to sell things, like voodoo dolls and love potions, in an 'authentice straw market' there (the cones aren't happy unless they have something to buy while they're ashore).

The island is lovely, really. Well manicured beaches, volley ball courts, walking paths. No garbage. Clean rest rooms. Idyllic. A real tropical paradise.

I usually stay on the ship when we're in port at Labadee.

One reason I stay on the ship is that Labadee is a tendering port – the ship is moored offshore and you must take a tender, a sort of water bus, to go ashore. And the cones go first, of course. We crew are not supposed to displace any cones on the tenders so we have to wait until the crowds thin out later on in the morning.

From my vantage point on the ship the contrast between the visitors and the permanent residents becomes obvious, and unsettling. The cones are out there on the jet skis, sailing rings around the local, jerry-rigged fishing boats, probably disturbing the fish. Others parasail high above the Haitian shacks and villages at a cost of $75 for about five minutes in the air.

Of course, the Haitians probably live it up like this when they're on vacation too.

Once while I was back on deck 5 aft, one of the Haitian fishing boats came very close to the ship. The occupants begged us on the ship to drop money down to them in their boat. I guess the ship must look like pretty good pickings to them. But our security people chased them away and they got nothing.

Labadee was closed to us for a while during the recent civil strife in Haiti. Probably that was a wise move.

When I was young I really wanted to visit Haiti after reading Graham Green's ***, and subsequently a well-written history of the island. What a colorful history it has as the world's oldest black republic. And how strange for a country to have voodoo as the official religion. Papa Doc Duvalier, Baby Doc, the Tonton Macout. Compellingly interesting.

But there's no hint of the real Haiti on Labadee.