Alright, listen up. This is your education for the day. A long time ago, America passed a law that no non-American sailing company could operate in exclusively American ports. They passed this law because Canadian ferry companies were drifting down to Seattle and putting good ole’ Americans out of business. Now these Canadian companies would have to ferry people from Seattle to Vancouver to the other side of the sound. Slightly inconvenient. So, the Jones Act.
So this law stays on the books, and the cruise industry comes about. Not many vessels are American-flagged (taxes, red tape, unions, ick), so not many cruises operate exclusively between American ports. Hence, every cruise itinerary will have a non-US port. Hence why our Hawaiian cruise sails out of LA and stops in Ensenada, Mexico.
Enter lovely Ensenada, Mexico, on the Baja California peninsula. It’s a little out of place on the LA-Hawaiian itinerary, since it’s not tropical and not very sophisticated.
But it’s our Jones Act port, and there’s plenty of cheap stuff for sale. And they take US dollars.
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