Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Royal Caribbean keeps cruising to Haiti

(nypost.com)

Not even hundreds of thousands of rotting corpses can keep boatloads of vacationers from Haiti.

Royal Caribbean International is still cruising to private Labadee Beech, a mere 60 miles south of the earthquake's epicenter -- where mountains of decaying bodies foul the air and traumatized residents scrounge for food.

Guests on the 3,100-passenger Navigator of the Seas yesterday lounged in hammocks, sipped rum and tooled around on Jet Skis an hour's car ride from devastated Port-au-Prince.

And sister ship Liberty of the Seas is due to dock today.

"I just can't see myself sunning on the beach, playing in the water, eating a barbecue and enjoying a cocktail while there are tens of thousands of dead people piled up on the streets [of the capital]," someone wrote on the Web site cruisecritic.com.

But CEO Richard Fain argued that Royal Caribbean was keeping hundreds of Haitians employed and planned to donate $1 million to the rescue effort. He added that each cruise ship was dropping off food and water.

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