So I'm back in Canada eh?

Ok, I've obviously been home for a while (since November 21st to be exact), but have managed to procrastinate updating my blog until now. Part two of the Mexican Adventure story starts NOW!

The scary taxi ride to our second resort (the "Princess Grand Riviera Maya") surprisingly resulted in no fatalities of anyone of us in or outside of the taxi. The Princess seemed about 200 times better than the "Grand Sirenis Riviera Maya" we left far behind, though that might just have been due to the absolute horrors we experienced at that last resort. The gentleman at the desk was friendly enough and we got to our room. Was it perfect? No. Was it Mexican perfect? Yes. This means it was as good as anyone can reasonably expect from any room at any resort in Mexico as I have now learned. We had a balcony with a decent view. I think Nicole has posted pics on her Facebook page for those interested in what sayings tell me I can only do in 1,000 words (little do they know I would do it in no less than 1,500!) We asked about internet and were told there was a fee and it could only be accessed from the lobby either from their own lobby PCs or our own laptops wirelessly. The rates were varied but came in 30 minutes, 24 hours, or 7 days. There was virtually no difference between 30 minutes and 24 hours, but a large jump to 7 days. Given that we were only going to be at this resort for 5 1/2 days we opted to go with the 24 hours a couple of times during our stay to keep things affordable. Funny story! We were told by more than one hotel employee the internet could only be accessed from the lobby. I have this brilliant wife who says "Why don't we try it from the room anyways?" I go on a rant about how there is no way any Wi-Fi routers they have feet up in the lobby could possibly reach our room which was quite a distance (a good 10 minute walk) from the lobby. So what happens? It works! Not only that we loaded up their own hotel's website which advertises extra pay features including "Internet available in the rooms and some areas". Go figure. Nicole +20 points, desk clerk -10 points. This newfound ability to browse the web from our room turned out to be a curse dressed up as a blessing as Nicole decided to research our new resort and look up some reviews to see how good/bad the rest of our trip might be.

Turns out this Princess resort might be known to some of you. Remember that news story about a year back where some people (including some Canadians) died in an explosion at a resort in Mexico? How much do you want to bet it was the same one we were staying at now? If you bet against a "yes" you are a terrible gambler and a terribly unintelligent person I'm sorry to say (I mean why would I ask unless it was the exact same place?) Feel free to have a look at what the resort looks like after some gas escapes and then explodes:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/894364--mexico-resort-partly-closed-after-blast

Remember my wife Nicole "the worrier" O'Leary Sontag? Remember how in the last blog I told you she was worried about every aspect of the trip and specifically how it might put my health in danger? For some reason this newfound "nugget" of information did little-to-nothing to relieve any of her stress. In fact, she became more worried and stressed (if you can believe that?!?) Yes, I'm using a ton of sarcasm here in case it isn't coming across in these rather bland black letters (that will become white once I publish this post). This only added to our dislike for WestJet Vacations, given that we asked the rep specifically about both resorts we were given as options to transfer to (and what some pros and cons might be of each). I get that they don't want to advertise the fact the place exploded almost one year prior, however an "oh by the way..." would have been nice.

Aside from that the trip was fairly enjoyable. The food was 50/50 good/bad. The buffet was the latter of the 50's, while the à la carte restaurants were fantastic. We got to choose six à la cartes, which given our 6 night stay meant one for every dinner. We chose Oriental, Sushi, Grill (think cows and chickens), Temppanyaki (think Ichiban), Mexican, and finally Swiss (Fondu). Oddly enough the Oriental was by far the best while the Mexican came in a bottom of the list last.

Going to an "all inclusive" Mexican resort was obviously a fantastic idea given that I cannot drink (due to pills that affect my liver), should not ingest too much sugar (given the anaerobic cell functioning going on in the cancer cells in my brain), and should avoid direct sunlight (due to one of the medications I am on, and possibly some other reasons I cannot recall). I enjoyed many free waters and wore special sunscreen so thick people should have been calling me "Casper". I literally could "lather up" in the morning, go swimming in the ocean, swim in the pool, shower off in the afternoon, and still have adequate sun protection for the rest of the day. The water would bead off of me. I was wondering if going into the ocean might cause the locals to think Moses was near by however the effects were not quite so dramatic. The purpose of the trip was merely to find some sort of "rest and relaxation" away from the cold, away from Winnipeg, away from the hospital visits, and away from the stress. Thankfully we visited no hospitals while in Me-hi-co, and it was relatively warm the whole time we were there, the stress never does seem to go away. I did manage to enjoy the last several days at the resort and I think there is a chance Nicole herself did enjoy brief moments of SRSL (slightly reduced stress levels), though you would have to ask her.

Nonetheless we are back in Winnipeg now and facing all of the wonderful stresses (stressors) we are used to, which ironically brings some sort of comfort in and of itself. Hope you all have a good day/week/month/year and such and update you when I have more to say. Oh, and... CHEERS!!!
--
Tom

PS: I'm not proofreading this one, so bonus points to all who can find and point out any spelling/grammatical errors.

Greetings from ME-HE-CO!

Hola Blog Readers,

The rumours [I started] about my going to Mexico have turned out to be true. I am in fact in Mexico (or Me-he-co as I like to call it). It all came about when Nicole found a last minute deal to stay at an all-inclusive resort through WestJet Vacations on RedTag. We agreed that a trip was exactly what we needed as life was getting stressful at home and with the winter quickly coming and Christmas shopping around the bend, this might be our last good chance to get away and enjoy ourselves before the end of the year. As luck would have it the weeklong trip did not conflict with any of my usual hospital visits or checkups. The only problem was that we only had a couple of days to decide whether to book it or not. Of course there were (as there always are) many reasons against going. I’m sure you’ve read the list I’ve put on this blog prior about having to possibly be subjected to x-rays at the airport, additional radiation from being on a plane, changes in pressure from the plane causing swelling inside my head, increase risk of blood clots, odd waking & sleeping schedules increasing the likelihood of a seizure, having to be away from my medical team, being in a country of questionable food quality and standards, an unknown medical system, and so on, and so on. All of these were hurdles for us to overcome in order to enjoy a “relaxing week away”. Oh, and stress for me is not good [insert overly long description of oxygen saturation levels and anaerobic cell functioning].

I managed to convince Nicole “the worrier” O’Leary-Sontag that it was worth all of the “what-if’s” to go on this trip. We ended up at a resort that was listed as a 5-Star, but in actuality was what a 5-Star would be if one of the stars murdered a couple of the other stars and then committed suicide. In other words the resort was badly misrepresented in all of the online descriptions and photos.  To start with, the entire resort seemed to be flat and slick stone walkways. Great idea right? Classy look yes… safe when wet? No. It happened to be raining when we first arrived and saw many people & children falling all over the place. I grant you on TV this would have been funny to watch (provided no serious injuries ensued), however one serious blow to my head could in fact kill me. Secondly, the room smelled mustier than an old lady’s basement in which she kept bags of old wet laundry and cats (whether the cats are in bags or just loose in the basement is up to your imagination). Now it turns out ol’ Tom here has allergies to mould, dust, penicillin, trees, and some other things. Mould and dust would be the two that stick out in a room that was humid beyond belief and very unclean (the hairdryer looked like it had about 3 months worth of “scudge” built up on, in, and around it). We were unimpressed. We returned to the front desk where they were shocked that the room would have been like that and said they unfortunately had no other rooms with king beds available. With some protest they were able to “find” another room for us to check out. Surprise surprise, the second room was also incredibly musty and had the usual joys (hairs in the bathtub, questionable stains on the bedding, etc.) and so it was back to the lobby for us. Keep in mind this was all after having had to wake up at 4:00 am to make it to the airport back in Winnipeg. Oh, and did I not mention that part???

So, Nicole’s sister (and my now “sister-in-law” Jen) was nice enough to drive us to the airport at 4:00am in order to get us to our early flight on time. We cleared security in no time and figured we’d find a comfy spot to relax. Over the course of our waiting we heard 15 calls (ok, maybe 8, but exaggerating is way more fun) for the flight to Calgary, 22 (6) for the flight to Montreal and 0 (zero) for the flight to Cancun. Nicole at one point said, “Hey, we should go to the gate area to see what’s going on”. Upon arriving at the gate we saw 0 (zero) passengers waiting and 1 (one) angry panicked WestJet employee saying “Are you heading to Cancun? You’d better get on that plane in a hurry, they’re unloading your bags and are about to take off!!!” So far all is calm and relaxed right? As I see it, at least we didn’t have to wait in any lines. Upon getting on the plane (and getting that wonderful “Oh, you’re the idiots that made us wait here” look from our fellow passengers) we asked a flight attendant about the status of our luggage. He assured us that the employee at the other end of the terminal was just a bit over exaggerating and that they wouldn’t have even begun to unload our luggage for at least another 10-15 minutes. So far so good!!!

Now is when we get to Mexico and try to navigate the airport with some moderate success. Again the stress levels are high as we manage to find our tour operator who will take us to our resort (the crappy one I was describing before I interrupted myself). Unfortunately we had to wait, as two of the passengers scheduled to be on our shuttle could not be located (thankfully they were not us). This meant standing in the hot humid air outside of the airport watching for hours as busloads of other people got on their way. Funny story side note time.

FUNNY SIDE NOTE: I took this neuro-psych test a few weeks back that was designed to test my cognitive abilities and certain motor functions, etc. just to see what brain functioning I have that might have been affected by my tumour or the surgery to remove some of it late last year. I received a phone call from the resident medical student running my test telling me that I was best to come in for my follow up very shortly as the doctor was going to be going on a vacation for a couple of weeks to “some place warm” and thus I would have to wait a while to get my results if I did not make it in the day or two following his phone call. Where did she go? Turned out she was standing in the same area waiting for a shuttle bus just outside the Mexican (Cancun) airport with her (I assume) husband. [Insert “It’s a small world after all” being sung by little children]. </FUNNY SIDE NOTE> //HTML JOKE (I’m a nerd)

After two hours in the hot sun at the airport we finally got our shuttle, which took us on the long ride to the resort. If I recall correctly we arrived in Mexico just before noon, and didn’t leave the airport until 2:00 in the afternoon or so. At this point Nicole was running solely on two bags of Bits ‘N Bites, while I had the same plus some Pop Chips in my system to sustain me. Now I can return to the story…

So given it is now past 3 in the afternoon and Nicole and I are both starving and tired (both understatements) and still have yet to be assigned a decent room, we are not happy. Back at the front desk the gentleman (code word for “asshole”, but I’m trying to keep this a clean blog) suggested we settle for a room with two double beds as surely a third room would meet our expectations. After much discussion it turned out he did have other king beds available on the main floor of some buildings “if that was okay by us”. We said we didn’t care what floor the room was on as long as it had the king bed we asked (and paid) for plus was clean and I could breathe in it. Off to room number three we went, by now knowing the shuttle cart route by heart (yet not having seen any pools, the beach, or any food… our suitcases remaining very unpacked).  Want to guess the condition of room number four? It was perhaps worst of all.

We finally went back to the front lobby and asked to speak to the WestJet representative we were told would be at the hotel. Of course there was no WestJet employee but rather a “Best Day Travel” representative who WestJet contracted with to look after things in their absence. The gentleman from Best Day was nice enough, but basically had no authority to do anything for us. He could only put us on the phone with the actual WestJet rep. The WestJet rep was only willing to do what the hotel would offer us, which was to continuously show us room after room until we found one that we “liked”. I found this insulting, as we weren’t being picky because we didn’t like the colour of the drapes or some such thing. We just wanted what we paid for in a room that didn’t cause undue risk to my fragile state of health. Again after much heated debate we agreed to look at “one last room” which we were assured would be clean and not musty. It was musty and was not clean in the sense of the word that would be defined as “not dirty at all”, but it was the best of all five we had seen and so settled for it as we had to eat and change our clothes at the very least. The representative informed us she would be at the hotel at 10am the next morning and would “try to get something worked out” but that switching resorts was very tricky and not something that could be done quickly. Also they were unwilling or unable to extend our stay by a day as we argued our entire first day had been wasted as we were in no way able to enjoy any part of it while being shuttled between various rooms and the lobby with no satisfying result in the end. We ordered some room service food, which turned out to be the farthest thing from edible in the room (next to the must cushions and sheets of course). After unpacking only the clothes we needed to wear the next day (as there was no way we were going to stay at the resort one additional day) we managed to take a brief walk at night in the dark. Oh, and did I mention the smell? The very un-"Grand" Grand Sirenis hotel and resort had a very unique smell of what I would describe as "raw sewage"wafting about the hotel grounds. So even though it was hard to see in the dark at least one of our senses got to enjoy some stimulation. GREAT START TO THE FUN & THE SUN!

Sparing you all of the dragged out details we managed to get the WestJet rep to set us up at a different resort for the remainder of our stay in Mexico. The highlights of the process were that she (WestJet) was going to charge us a transfer fee and would not be able to transport us to the second resort (meaning we would have to arrange for and pay for a taxi ourselves). She also could only offer us two options based upon brief descriptions which she would then send to head office to be reviewed and sent back to her with details about additional costs, etc. She could not show us any pictures or information about the other resorts and we only had her word and descriptions to go by. We asked her if she or the hotel could provide us with at least 30 minutes complimentary Internet to research these resorts, which we were told they could (would) not. Nicole and I paid for half an hour of Internet time and used the world’s slowest PC’s to see what the resorts our rep had suggested looked like. Neither was fantastic, but we picked the best out of the two and researched an additional one ourselves. We went back to the rep who told us she could get us in to our pick of the two for less that $200 and that she would waive the transfer fee. Asking about the third resort we found she contacted head office again and was told the additional fee would be $1000. We went with the <$200 resort hoping this 5-Star would provide us with some rest and relaxation in what would now become a 5 ½ day Mexican vacation. But we weren’t out of the Grand Sirenes just yet. Upon checking out just after noon, the same “gentleman” as before told us we could not leave until we paid our phone bill for the room. We informed him we had only made two calls and that both were to WestJet Vacations using their 1-800 number to sort out the whole mess with their falsely advertised hotel. He told us this did not matter and that unless we paid the 100 pesos, we were not allowed to leave (as in they would not release our luggage which they were holding at the front). It turned out that this worked out to $8.67 CDN. We asked to speak to the manager. Of course he was the “assistant manager”. We asked to see his manager, however his manager was in a meeting and would not be available for a while. His main argument was that the phone charge had “nothing to do with the hotel” and was directly charged by the phone company, thus there was “nothing [he] could do”. I’ve been to business school and I think waiving an $8 charge is something any business can and should do if it means really upsetting an already irate customer, but I guess at that point it was evident we would never return to the hotel anyways, and so why not push our buttons just a little bit more.

$8.67 later we were in the back seat of a cab with only one working seatbelt and our luggage in the back.  The story goes on from here, but I’m currently on the balcony of our hotel and the rain has just stopped. Rest assured that both Nicole and I are both safe and sound and have eaten several meals (of varying quality) since we’ve gotten to the “Princess Riviera Maya”. The fun stories do continue though, so stay tuned!!! And lastly, before I go, I offer you some Mexican CHEERS! J

 --

Tom