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
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