I’m fairly stubborn about change and trying new things, unless they sound a) completely safe and b) awesome.

So when I started hearing about this whole Uber thing a few years back, I gave it a dubious side-eye. It’s not a taxi. I’m supposed to get in the car with some random stranger and let them give me a ride? I wasn’t having any of that. Even as it became more commonplace and almost everyone I knew was using Uber (and now Lyft), I just couldn’t do it.

So when I met up with a friend a few months ago in Miami, her suggestion that we get an Uber to the hotel was met with my sour frown and (I thought) very sensible suggestion that we go to the Super Shuttle kiosk. Here begins the adventure.

We loaded up into the appropriate shuttle bus going to downtown hotels near the cruise port. There were a mother & daughter, a senior couple, a younger couple, and my friend and I brought up the rear in the back seat. The ride from the airport was short and easy, and before we knew it, were turning in front of a Courtyard Hotel. The older gentleman said, “Oh, that must be our hotel.” But the driver continued and pulled into the Doubletree next door.

The mother and daughter hopped out and went to the back to retrieve their bags. The older couple also got out, but after brief discussion, they got back into the van. “We could just walk over there,” the husband said, but the driver insisted in broken English (because this is Miami), “No, I take you.” Okay, then.

Off we went, past the Courtyard and away, in spite of protests from the older couple to stop. It wasn’t long before we pulled up in front of a Holiday Inn. Being right after Hurricane Irma, this particular hotel had flooded and was boarded up. The driver turned around and said, “Dave?” No one answered. Again he called, “Dave?” Silence. The driver looked at his iPad worriedly.

Finally, the older gentleman spoke up and said, “My name is Dale, not Dave. This isn’t my hotel, because you passed my hotel back there, but aside from that, I don’t think this is anyone’s hotel!” The driver assessed the boarded doors and windows and seemingly nodded in agreement. And then, again, he called, “Dave?”

Well, all the passengers started to look at each other and chuckle at this point. So the driver, not fully convinced that DAVE was not on board and somehow holding out on him, proceeded to look each passenger in the eye individually and ask, “Dave?” We each replied with a “no” and our own names. The older gentleman again stressed that his name was Dale and he was due at the Courtyard, not the Holiday Inn.

The driver made a phone call that I could not hear, then finally turned off his flashers and abandoned the idea that anyone was going to the Holiday Inn except maybe ServPro. He dropped the younger couple at a Hyatt. They turned to the rest of us with raised eyebrows and said, “Good luck!” My friend and I were next. He took us to the elegant J.W. Marriott on Biscayne Bay, and all was well for us.

I bid adieu to the older couple, our fellow players in this Miami transportation comedy. Dale (not Dave) assured me that the driver had finally agreed to take them to the Courtyard, so I was able to sleep that night, not wondering whether they were still driving the streets of Miami looking for Dave.

But the next morning, when we were charged with getting to the cruise terminal, I said to my friend, “Yeah . . . let’s do that Uber thing.”

That was another foreign language comedy because . . . well, Miami.  It was almost as exciting as being asked 48 times whether my name was Dave. So the real moral of the story here can be best described as, “Buy the cruise line’s transfers.” But those are not always available, so I would prefer an Uber to a shuttle service in the future. It will get you there faster anyway, and our very short ride from the hotel to the cruise port was less than $3.

To book your next cruise (ahem, along with the transfers), contact Azalea Travel.