Cruising in the Caribbean – Tips for Travellers
This is a long listening exercise, but after the first short exercise the text is supplied for you. The presenter speaks quickly but beautifully clearly.
1 What does Gary Bembridge base his travel reviews and recommendations on?
2 About how often does he travel to places all over the world?
3 What 6 items will you find on his website?
4 What phrase does he use meaning ‘about 60%’ of all cruises?
5 How does he describe Alaska?
6 What two explanations does he give for the fact the Caribbean so dominates the world of cruising?
7 What two words tell you he is not surprised that there is such a lot of shipbuilding going on?
Can you supply the missing words in this account?
……………………………. ……………… 1 60% of all cruises in the world today take place in the Caribbean! The ……………… 2 most popular destination is Alaska. I find the fact that the Caribbean so dominates the world of cruising quite staggering. In reality it probably reflects more the history of cruising which really grew and developed in the area, driven by companies like Carnival and Royal Caribbean – and also the ……………… 3 to which cruising is still underdeveloped in other parts of the world.
It is no ……………… 4 then that the building of ships seems to be almost frantic with all the growth potential as cruising catches on in other parts of the world.
The Caribbean cruise season runs from after the hurricane season from around September until March each year, and then the cruise ships are redeployed onto the Alaska route or head off to Europe to ply the Mediterranean and Baltic in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Most of the Caribbean cruises are, and pretty much always have been, 7-day trips out of Florida where ships ……………….. 5 between a "Western Caribbean" and an "Eastern Caribbean" routing. This pattern ideally suits the USA vacation patterns, as most people in the States tend to have and take shorter holidays than other regions ………… 6 the 7-day pattern suits them. For those wanting 2-week vacations, then all they do is stay on a ship for two back-to-back cruises.
The 7-day cruises ……………… 7 to have one sea day to get to the island, visits to 5 islands and then one sea day back to port. Now the growth of popularity of cruising has, though, started to see many more USA ports offering Caribbean trips – and the area is …… ………… 8 the most popular part of the world for European Cruise lines like Cunard, P&O and Costa who tend to send ……………… 9 ships ……………… 10 during the European winter. Or in the case of Cunard in the period running up to the New Year when it tends to be too rough and too cold for people to book on their famous transatlantic crossing trips and before they send their ships on their 3-month round-the-world cruises which run from January to March.
My most ……………….. 11 Caribbean Cruise was part of what is called a "repositioning cruise" on the P&O ship Arcadia. Now as I have described there is a redeployment of ships, especially to and from Europe, before and after the main September to March Caribbean season. Most cruise lines doing this offer 2-week trips, which consist ……… 12 a week cruising round the Caribbean and a week crossing the Atlantic. Now these cruises tend to be very very good value as less (ie fewer) people enjoy the long periods at sea and prefer schedules with lots of ports.
My cruise also happened to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery which was timely as travelling around the islands we visited (Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Antigua) the one thing that did ……………… 13 me as I learnt more about the history of the Caribbean was that these stunningly beautiful ……………… 14 were not only built on the back of slave labour, but also just how brutal and terrible the slave trade was.
Behind the laid-back tone and startling beauty of the Caribbean is an ……………… 15 tale, with the British and French primarily squabbling and fighting over control with the indigenous Carib Indians being driven out and even massacred when required to take control of the islands.
They then ……………… ………… 16 slaves from North Africa mostly in horrific conditions where many ……………… ……………… 17 on the trip. They were then sold in markets held in what are now picturesque and charming town squares. The slaves were required to work on the huge sugar ………………….. 18 that soon covered most of the islands, with cruelty and force ensuring compliance.
It is clear that the sugar plantation owners, all of whom were from Europe, grew ……………… 19 on the practice and the sugar trade but as the sugar trade declined it also has left the islands largely underdeveloped as the profits were shipped out and not invested into the place that created the money. This means that now that the sugar industry has pretty much died, both due to the declining popularity for = of sugar and also cheaper and more cost-effective crops like sugar beet closer to the main markets, that the only real industry the Caribbean now has is tourism – and especially the cruise business.
Now depending on ……………… 20 point of view you follow, or possibly where your political leaning is, the islands are either ……………… 21 enormously from the cruise trade or are being shortchanged and manipulated by the cruise industry that passes little of the financial benefits onto the islands. There is an interesting debate on this and one I found made fascinating reading and gave me deeper insights about how and why the cruise industry works.
Answers for the gapped exercise
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