Key West -Like A Rock (Gib)
When the Copy Is Better Than the Original
An eight-night passage through Florida, Disney’s private island, and the strange line where paradise becomes performance.
An eight-night Bahamian cruise: mostly the Sunshine State, the Florida Keys, and Disney World by way of Port Canaveral. The itinerary looks playful. The deeper story is about places that imitate paradise—and sometimes improve it.
Key West: The Good Life, Slightly Offshore
I last visited Key West in January 2010. For me, it is a celebration of the good life and a bygone era.
I soon discovered that life in remote Key West was like living in a foreign country while still perched on the southernmost tip of America. Have fun up North doing battle with the Snows of Kilimanjaro.
Key West was considered the “Gibraltar of the West” because it sits only 90 miles from Cuba. That reminded me of the last time I was in Gibraltar, at the Rock in 2009—another place every sailor should go.
The Southernmost State of Mind
“It’s the best place I’ve ever been anytime, anywhere—flowers, tamarind trees, guava trees, coconut palms... Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks.”Ernest Hemingway
Gibraltar of the West
Castaway Cay, Bahamas
The first stop is Castaway Cay, Disney’s own private island. I had a wonderful time there six months earlier with my sweetheart, Sarah Kennedy, who I would be joining again on this trip.
This private island in the Bahamas is a Disney Cruise Line port of call. In answer to the question, “When is the copy better than the original?” This would be it.
I am not talking about staged authenticity, like my visit to Papeete, Tahiti. Most designers spend their time creating shopping malls. Re-creating the island paradise, however, is admirable.
Somewhere in the Bahamas
Once used as a stop for drug smugglers—think “Snow White” or “White Snow”—the island still has an airstrip, though it is no longer in regular use or maintained. I shot some video below. Its unusual isolation becomes, in its own way, paradise somewhere in the Bahamas.
It is not Gilligan’s Island, but it has also been used for filming. The beach where Tom Hanks first encounters Daryl Hannah in Splash is on the island. For more about the island’s checkered and colorful past, visit the original historical reference.
The Abandoned Airstrip
Papeete: Polynesian Disneyland and the Audacity of Hype
Tahitian Choreo-Musical Performances
Moorea in the Distance
Reprinted from the 2011 World Cruise. With less than 24 hours in port, the locals and locale were living up to their stereotypes: tiki-style roofs, tropical gardens, swaying palms, and the visual souvenir that always delivers—the beautiful Tahitian princess with raven hair down to her knees, hand-weaving leis while wrapping herself in a watercolor flowered sarong.
With the ukulele soundtrack playing in the background, I felt as though I were on safari. Polynesia could not escape becoming a human zoo seeking to contain the lives of its star attraction—its first and native people.
They All Came by Boat. So Did I.
Marketing the definitive view of paradise.
The Absolute Fake
Playing the game of staged authenticity in the tourist-themed spaces of Tahiti was not quite the McDonaldization of the South Pacific. It played more like a Disney animated feature film.
I felt strange participating in the rituals of sightseeing and picture-taking. Even at the Gauguin Museum, the pictures were reproductions because the originals could not be preserved and curated there. I had seen many of them elsewhere—mostly at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, of all places.
But perhaps the copies were better than the originals. The hyperreal world is the world of the Absolute Fake, where imitations do not merely reproduce reality; they try to improve it. The French artist Gauguin’s obsession with French Polynesia was still working.
Paradise, Reproduced
Key West preserves a vanished America. Castaway Cay manufactures an island ideal. Papeete performs its own mythology. Somewhere between the original and the copy, the traveler has to decide what feels true.