The trouble with great vacations...

... is that they leave you spoiled for every trip thereafter.

In December 2005 we went to Couples Resort in Negril, Jamaica. It was one of those places that delivered the perfect storm: Hubbie and I had just got engaged and it was a romantic adults only resort; it was a to-die-for location with warm aquamarine seas and a long, clean sandy beach; the weather was beautiful (not too hot or humid, gentle breezes); the food - even in the buffet - was excellent; they had a good schedule of daytime activities (yoga, couples massage classes); the evening entertainment was top-quality with talented singers and bands (including a Reggae singer who became a friend); the resort had the world's most friendly and up-beat staff; and they threw a New Year's Eve party that would be difficult to top in even the world's most famous cities.

With all the positives it was almost possible to forget the shower that leaked and flooded the room, the 3rd world villages that presented little in the way of cultural immersion, and the bumpy 4-hour mini-van trip to Ocho Rios and Dunns River falls where the driver played non-stop Sean Paul and Dad sliced his legs and arms open while trying to climb up the face of a waterfall.

Whenever we think of Jamaica, it's the good things that come up. My enduring memory is of floating up and down the width of the resort in the bath-water-warm Carribbean sea for hours on end. I'm sure Hubbie's would be sitting on the beach at 2am on New Year's Day with Jeff, the reggae singer, just shooting the breeze. My Dad would probably point to the evening entertainment and my Mum the early morning river cruise we took on a hand-made raft for two. In short, it did what few vacations can do - please four people in two different generations and with four different ideas of what constitutes the ideal break.

The trouble with the perfect storm is that it only comes along once in a rare while and it's almost impossible to recreate - no matter how much money or will-power you throw at it!

As a result, you can visit some absolutely stunning places, stay in some wonderful resorts, and spend your entire vacation nit-picking and comparing them to that one week in time when everything came magically together.

This is the problem that we've had since Jamaica.

Admitedly, as I've already said, we are four people who have close-to four differing ideas of what goes into the recipe for the perfect vacation. So it's a given that, as a group, we are not easy to please.

Case in point was Malta, in September of 2006. We stayed in an absolutely beautiful, brand spanking new hotel in probably one of the nicest rooms I've ever slept in (a one-bedroom suite with a fantastic cliff-top view.) We bitched about the lack of evening entertainment, the non-stop piped music outside our balcony that looped hourly, the reserved staff (which, in hindsight, was more a function of the Maltese culture than any lack of effort on their behalf), the fact there was no poolside drink service, the minimal opening hours of the restautants, and the shortage of outside bars to sit and relax at during the day. So pissed were we that we actually complained to the manager and got free wine, grapes, and cheese in response. (Not quite what we were hoping for, but still.)

And so it was for Puerto Vallarta this past December. A 5-star all-inclusive hotel, located on it's own secluded beach, flanked by hills covered with tropical foliage, beach and pool-side drink service, three pools, three bars, five restaurants all with great food, and a spa that performed massages under a linen-covered canopy on a private veranda overlooking the beach. (Of course, we partook in the latter... more later.)

Ok, so the entertainment was lackluster at best.

Our first night we witnessed a "fire acrobatics" show where the acrobatics were performed by a couple who looked as though they'd been practicing in their living room in front of a Cirque du Soleil DVD, and the fire was provided by a high-school gymnast who twizzled in circles for a while and then dropped her flame-ended baton.

Then there was the Comedy Night, held downstairs in a basement sports bar, and hosted by four gay Mexicans dressed as nuns trying desperately to get audience participation from the 20 baffled and unimpressed people in the room.

And who could forget the Rock-and-Roll Party on the beach, where ten of us stood 2 feet from a raging bonfire and 30 feet from the beach-side stage, to listen to the resort band (headed by a gravely-voiced rastafarian and further ruined by an overly ambitious lead guitarist) hack their way through Jimmy Hendricks and other classic rock numbers? Classic indeed.

Then there was some kinks in the service.

Our first-floor patio door didn't have a lock when we arrived and it took us several phone-calls and trips to the front desk over three days, just to get them to address it.

More importantly the "Chief Concierge", who can quite often make-or-break a vacation experience, was quite possibly the worst concierge in the history of hotels. You name the negative adjectives for the antithesis of the ideal concierge and he met them. Unfriendly, unhelpful, dismissive, and rude: you could literally be standing in front of him and he would fail to acknowledge you until you said something to him first. A conversation with the anti-concierge went something like this:

ME: "Hello, we'd like to head into town to do some shopping."

HIM: Silence and an icy stare.

ME: "So, is there a hotel shuttle or something?"

HIM: "No."

ME: "Ok, so.... do we just get a taxi?"

HIM: "Yes."

ME: "Ok, so how much should that cost?"

HIM: "About 40 pesos."

ME: "Great. And what about a map or something of the town?"

HIM: "Yes." Turns around, fumbles under a pile of crap and pulls out a map.
Hands it to me wordlessly.

ME: "Um... ok. Er, thanks."

HIM: Says nothing, looks down and returns to shuffling papers on his desk.

I am not exaggerating here!

Then, as with any place, there were little things here and there that could have been better. But the killer was the New Year's Eve party. And let's be honest here, it was doomed to disappoint. 2005's New Year was spent in Jamaica on the "perfect storm vacation" and 2006's New Year was celebrated on a party barge under Big Ben on the River Thames in London. The bar was set pretty high. The place really didn't stand a chance.

But of course, we still pinned all our hopes on the resort pulling itself out of our interpretation of mediocrity and elevating our experience at the 11th hour.

On first glance things looked promising. It looked like the Couples set-up - tables set-up around the pool, a stage erected in front of the beach, and an all-out buffet feast extravaganza. But there the similarities ended. Since it was a buffet dinner, they failed to recognize that people would come and eat at different times. Expecting them to linger after desert and watch the entertainment, they made three big mistakes.

(1) They forgot it was the coldest winter in 20 years, with temperatures in the low 60s by the pool.

(2) They packed the tables and chairs in the available space, making everyone feel crowded and eliminating any dance space in front of the stage. (Some chairs were no more than 12 inches from the edge of the pool!)

(3) They turned off all the lights and relied on the small decorative candles on each table to light the entire pool area.

So, the result was everyone got up after dinner and either went to their room or headed-up to the bar. I mean, who wants to sit at a 1/2 empty 10-top table crammed between 100 other empty 10-top tables, lit so dimly by a single candle that you could barely see your lonely companions, freezing your ass off, and without a space to dance in? To top it all off, they had one band for the evening who seemed really keen on their tequila breaks and left the stage for 30 minutes at a time, bringing the New Year buzz down to a lazy humm as piped-in music played in their absence.

Like many others (who weren't in bed already) we headed up to the bar where we had a birds-eye view on this sad debacle and started to pound the tequila. I give us credit for making lemonade out of lemons, however. When it got to 11:00pm and it didn't look like the situaiton "on the ground" was going to improve, we stood up and danced in the space around our bar table. Heck, it was New Year and we didn't care!

So, that was the bad. Honestly, I make it sound horrific, but that's only through the "Couples Lens" and to illustrate my point that, at some stage, you need to relegate the "great vacation" to a fond memory and start taking each new vacation experience on it's own merits.

With that in mind and with my "ranting" out of the way, my next post will provide the usual vacation highlights...

Right now it's 9am on Saturday morning and I'm surrounded by Christmas decorations that are still not down and piles of laundry (I kid you not) 3 feet high.

So....later!

FOOTNOTE: After re-reading this post, it occurs to me that I sound incredibly spoiled, whiney and ungrateful. I mean, here I was in paradise for New Year and all I seem to be able to do is bitch about it. Please allow me to (a) agree, because that was the purpose of this post. I'm admitting it and it's got to stop. We're all (me, Hubbie, Mum, and Dad) spoiled and spoiling our own vacations with this constant comparison. And (b) defend myself by saying that the good stuff is coming in a later post. I will redeem myself I promise!