Day Cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Freeport, Bahamas. Winter 1990.
Cruise to nowhere, literally
Thirty years ago, time share companies were so desperate for people to buy, they sponsored trips to view their properties throwing in a night in a hotel and a cruise. Brian and I took advantage of one such offer in Florida during his third year of law school. I remained dubious, but as an aspiring "legal eagle", Brian was certain we could have our cake and eat it too. That we did, even if the cake was nothing anyone wanted to eat anyway.
We booked cheap tickets to Florida. The timeshare part of the experience was so NOT memorable, I don't even remember where it was. We were picked up from the hotel and toured the property, saw a video, and had a hard-sell interview at the end. Brian did all the talking and I admired his tenacity. He was going to be a good lawyer. I actually felt sorry for the people who were selling the timeshares. I wondered how tiresome it must be to put this high-pressure sales pitch on people day after day and what kind of success rate they had.
We didn't buy a timeshare. We did, however, get two tickets for a "cruise to nowhere" out of Fort Lauderdale to Freeport. I was sure the kind people of Freeport did not appreciate that their city was "nowhere", but then again - most of the cruise passengers never set foot in Freeport proper. Compared to later "luxury" cruises I would take, this was definitely the cheapest way to get on a cruise ship and say "I have cruised". We were there because it was free and we had no money, period. The food was unremarkable, the drinks expensive, and the overall atmosphere akin to being stuck on a boat with "the People of Walmart". All that having been said, to be away from a New York City winter in the warm Florida sunshine was a welcome reprieve.
We arrived in Freeport to a kind of fake tourist village right in front of the port. The boat disgorged Gladys and Fred, Beatrice and Orville, and all their friends. Since it was all so amazingly NOT interesting, Brian and I (adventurers supreme, ha!) asked how much time we had in port and set foot outside the port gate. The guards looked amazed that we were walking out onto the island. They told us which direction to go and soon we were on the un-busy roads of Grand Bahama Island. This was "the real Bahamas" of which we knew zero.
The place looked like nowhere anyone would want to go on a holiday - just hot, flat, and dusty with precious little shade. Nothing was appealing whatsoever. The place had a decidedly "this is not for tourists" vibe. I don't know if we were more disappointed than shocked? We had both been to Puerto Rico and knew the region had uneven development, but still - this was so brutally NOT my image of a Caribbean island. Outside of the port area, it was simply nowhere I would want to visit nor live. We beat a hasty retreat to the fake wonders set up for us and our comrades on the ship - back to the "safe" zone.
This experience, of course, would never happen today because the internet would have forewarned us that there was "no point to go outside the cruise complex", or that it was "too far to walk anywhere", or some other admonition. Admittedly, the experience was not good, but in these days of visually "pre-experiencing" everything online, at least we had the satisfaction of stepping out into a real unknown. Yes, it was disappointing - but it was real. Before the internet, I would read up on places before visiting because I had no device in my pocket that could explain it to me on demand. Today I do the opposite. I prefer minimal research to get the maximum "surprise" effect. Reading up on a place is best done after a visit in the evening over a coffee or glass of wine.
We did really set foot in the Bahamas. A piece of "nowhere" became "somewhere".