Cruise Ships Dock at Haitian Ports

While Port-au-Prince is a heart-rending scene of death and destruction, tourists are dining beach side on rich fare and fruity cocktails on the other end of the island.

No, this isn't a sick joke...

Sixty miles from Haiti's devastated earthquake zone, luxury liners dock at private beaches where passengers enjoy jetski rides, parasailing and rum cocktails delivered to their hammocks.

The 4,370-berth Independence of the Seas, owned by Royal Caribbean International, disembarked at the heavily guarded resort of Labadee on the north coast on Friday; a second cruise ship, the 3,100-passenger Navigator of the Seas is due to dock. (Guardian)

This brings up a moral dilemma:

The decision to go ahead with the visit has divided passengers. The ships carry some food aid, and the cruise line has pledged to donate all proceeds from the visit to help stricken Haitians.

But many passengers will stay aboard when they dock; one said he was "sickened".

"I just can't see myself sunning on the beach, playing in the water, eating a barbecue, and enjoying a cocktail while [in Port-au-Prince] there are tens of thousands of dead people being piled up on the streets, with the survivors stunned and looking for food and water," one passenger wrote on the Cruise Critic internet forum.

But you can sit on a luxury liner and do it?

Another passenger goes even deeper:

"It was hard enough to sit and eat a picnic lunch at Labadee before the quake, knowing how many Haitians were starving," said another. "I can't imagine having to choke down a burger there now.''

It's hard on the guilty conscience, but they still do it.  Now, it's not just the grinding poverty that plays on the minds of the vacationing revelers, but dead people stacked up like cord wood.  

They paid good money for this? 

"Friday's call in Labadee went well," said Royal Caribbean. "Everything was open, as usual. The guests were very happy to hear that 100% of the proceeds from the call at Labadee would be donated to the relief effort."

Yes, it all went well.  No desperate Haitians scaled the resort's 12-foot walls demanding food and water from the sunning vacationers.

"In the end, Labadee is critical to Haiti's recovery; hundreds of people rely on Labadee for their livelihood," said John Weis, vice-president. "In our conversations with the UN special envoy of the government of Haiti, Leslie Voltaire, he notes that Haiti will benefit from the revenues that are generated from each call

We firewall ourselves off from so much human misery, in our own cities and in faraway lands.  Every now and the the wall is breached and we come full face with humanity in crisis. 

You can take a vacation from reality, but reality is still there...