My Response to Anti-Puerto Rico Message Board Posters
I spend a lot of time reading various message boards and am always surprised by the amount of posts stating how rude the people of Puerto Rico are on board the cruise ship. In fact, a couple of years ago I recommended a cruise to a couple of members of my family and they expressed those same concerns. In my opinion if you think they are rude you must have never been to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore or any other big city on the east coast. I have always been under the impression that if anyone thinks Puerto Rican cruisers are rude its because you either don’t understand or are unwilling to accept their culture. Here are some things you need to realize.
- They probably will speak their native language, but they are on vacation with family and friends and have far better things to talk about than you. Get some self-esteem and stop being so paranoid
- There will be a lot Puerto Ricans on board the ship, but I have never heard of people complaining about the number of Floridians on a cruise out of Port Canaveral. I don’t see what the big deal is about this.
- At times they will cut in line. I have been on cruises out of many different ports and have yet to survive one without being “line jumped”. Additionally I have noticed that the Puerto Rican technique for line jumping is no different than the one used by most people from middle-America. Mom stands in front, dad stands in back. Mom keeps moving while dad stops as fifteen kids fill in the space in between.
- Any time a cruise director says Puerto Rico they will cheer so loud you will think you are the only non-Puerto Rican people on board the ship, until the cruise director says either Canada or New Jersey.
- The last thing you need to realize is that if we all spent more time enjoying what it is we like to do on vacation instead of worrying about what others are doing to enjoy theirs, we would all probably enjoy our vacations so much more.
Edit: This post was written in response to a couple of emails I received from people telling me about their nightmares of cruising out of Puerto Rico.
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Related posts:
- Why you should take a cruise out of Puerto Rico?
- My Carnival Freedom Cruise – San Juan, Puerto Rico
- The Newbies Guide to What to do After You Board the Cruise Ship
- Picking the Location of My March ’09 Cruise
- Tips For Flying Out of San Juan International Airport
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Comments
Hello Daki,
First of all let me thank you for visiting my blog. Secondly even if you didn’t enjoy the trip I’m glad you at least got a reprieve from all of the pollen. I’ve never had to deal with allergies, but both my best friend and my brother are really going through it right now, simply miserable. I wish you would have enjoyed your trip more but I guess it wasn’t in the cards.
I wasn’t writing my post to say that all Puerto Ricans are polite and nice what I was saying is that they aren’t any worse than other people. Although on vacation we would like to have everyone be in as a good a mood as we are, but that can’t always be the case. They are there to live their everyday lives while we are there to live it up. I guess I am getting a little sidetracked but my point was that people are the same everywhere you go. I read a lot of posts that castigate Puerto Rico as if New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles or Chicago are known for politeness. My only contention is that jackasses know no ethnic, geographical or gender specific boundaries.
Hey T.I. Cruiser
Thanks for the article. Me and my fiancé just came back from San Juan, PR. (We didn’t do a cruise…just flew straight there). I was super excited to go of course, but I would say the biggest draw-back were the people. Just a sidenote: I’m African-American and have grown up around different cultures all my life, my bf is Ethiopian, I live in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood (right outside of DC), etc. Grew up in DC, and have lived in several different places, so I’m no, “geeze, why are there so many Puerto Ricans in PR” type lol. BUT I must say I had a LOT of encounters with rude Puerto Ricans while on the trip.
Starting out with the positive I will say that the weather was BEAUTIFUL, and I felt great -had been sick (no pollen, yippeee), beach was awesome with big waves, great view from hotel, pretty good food too.
I wasn’t even trying to dwell on the negatives during the first few bad encounters but there were AT LEAST 6 blatantly rude things that happened on a 4 day trip. I tried to adjust myself, thinking that maybe it was me. I was practicing my basic Spanish, saying “hola” and “gracias” out of respect, not at all to be condescending, but that’s the type of reaction I got from two waiters (mind you these waiters also spilled water/drink w/o wiping it up or apologizing and generally weren’t friendly). Also, received a lot of nasty looks…I don’t know if they are more white/PR friendly, but it was weird, was ignored a lot when trying to ask questions, etc. The list goes on. After a while I said “F” it. Just tried to enjoy myself, but didn’t try to be friendly at all, since it was unreciprocated most times.
I WILL say the younger (late teens/20s) Puerto Ricans than we encountered were super friendly (probably spoke with 3 of them on different occasions). One of my best friends that passed away shortly after college was Puerto Rican (and part Columbian), so I would never make a blanket statement about all people or one culture. MAYBE some Puerto Ricans just don’t like Americans (who does, right lol) or tourists…not sure. But for that reason, I wouldn’t pay to go back on vacation there, at least not to San Juan. It has a lot to offer, but I felt pretty unwelcomed. But I don’t regret the experience…we learn from everything!