da Conch Shack

On our final complete day while on Provo, we decided to travel to an area that is more representative of local life than the resorts. We traveled to the Blue Hill area and had a wonderful time.

We travelled by local taxi (jitney), to Blue Hill from the Comfort Suites. We had a Haitian driver by the name of Charles that was very nice and accommodating. We drove to a seaside restaurant for lunch, "DA Conch Shack". The guys that perform this type service are not sanctioned by the resorts, so, you must hail them on your own account by roadside. In fact, locals that work in the resorts will not encourage travel by this method.

My impression of this is that the cab drivers that are sanctioned by the resorts have some type agreement with the resorts and the jitney drivers do not. The fact remains, that as an individual on vacation, I have the right to make decisions as to who I will support for the things I desire. The main reason I can see for the extreme cab fares of the resort sanctioned taxis is that the cab drivers charge an unrealistic fee for the services. If the resort will only support their sanctioned cabs, the competition is eliminated and they are raping tourists in cab fares on Provo. It is the old story of the captive audience not having a choice. Any tourist traveling in the islands can make decisions for what they need and shouldn't be subjected to that type fare manipulation.

The very things the island resorts discourage are the things we want to experience. Therefore, on our final day we traveled and lived island style. An example of the rip off practiced by the resorts is this: A resort sanctioned taxi will charge tourists $13.00/individual for service. The jitney driver will only charge $5.00/individual for the same service to the same location.

To provide an example of how less expensive island life is, the following account is provided. We bought lunch for the day, had 3 Red Stripe, and brought lunch back to the hotel for a total cost of $53.00. The round trip cost of transportation was only $20.00 for the two of us. We also stopped at the IGA supermarket and the driver didn't charge extra for that service. The resort sanctioned taxi would have charged us $52.00 for the service and the extra stop would have required us to pay an additional $26.00 for stopping because he would have terminated the trip and restarted it when we came out of the store.

When we were at "DA Conch Shack", we learned a lesson on sustainable resources in the islands. Conch are grown another area of the island. "DA Conch Shack" buys a specific number of the animals and stores them in control pens in the ocean next to the restaurant. The control pens don't allow the animals freedom of movement. The restaurant has a diver with a small boat that gets the animals to the harvesters awaiting on the beach. The harvesters remove the animal from its shell, cleans it, and delivers the conch to the restaurant fresh. There are no needs to have frozen conch on the island.

Countess had a lesson in conch harvesting while were awaiting our lunch. This was a wonderful experience.