Vacay 1.5-ish
Day 0: Travel Day — known as Conde Nast Purgatory. Autoreply, check! First off, a quick medical disclaimer: let me clarify, checking 7.5–10 times that the oven’s off, the family’s passports are on hand (and ideally still valid) and the front door’s locked is not therapy-resistant OCD, it’s experience — and the not so comforting realization that you’re the only one in your family who cares about coming back to anything but robbed-blind rubble.
Anyway, like a drug-sniffing dog begging for a mercy cold you’re soaking up the ‘magical’ smell of your typical US airport, vaguely, a BO-meets-taco maker scent. You come to appreciate that despite its unquestionable horrors Covid has a few clear advantages.
Pointing proudly to your (likely counterfeit) KN95 mask, you don’t have to talk with anyone — the welcome death of small talk — throw in the odd strategic cough, followed by an unprovoked Purell hand bath and you can finally read in peace that magazine that sat on the kitchen counter for months. Flight is uneventful, probably because the pilots have started Happy Hour before take-off, can’t blame them, the siren of Duty Free. In the seats is basically the same type of family from the East Coast suburbs, a masked private school entitlement horde fed with outdated peanuts and glued to their mobile devices (of course in ‘flight mode’, to avoid disturbing the well-deserved 2nd round of Margueritas up in the cockpit). You’ve done this before which is why you’re not a rookie a**hole and, consequently, didn’t check your bags (which would have gotten them a free round-trip to Uzbekistan for a week or so). As such, after pushing an elderly, overweight couple with Disney cruise-embroidered Panama hats & Birkenstocks to the curb, you’re in pole position at the car rental place — well, you were until you realized they merged and therefore the 7 banged up ‘standard’ cars the new combo firm rents has a temp kiosk at a different floor or terminal …”Buenos Dias” — there goes your first vacay hour, even if you decline the overpriced insurance policy or OPEC-supporting tank refill. F*ck ’em. At this point, call it “Pre-Mojito”, it’s essential to listen to your wife that “Life is (getting) short, Honey” (- makes you wonder if she breached HIPAA and has disturbing intel from your GP?) as you still must brave the drive to the hotel, at night. All in all, I won’t lie to you, with or without Xanax, this day can be sucky.
Day 1: Inaugural day in the Caribbean paradise and you wake up when the AC fan starts with a semi-nuclear bang in its Quixote-like effort to keep some of the sweltering heat at bay. But, Darling, as sure as hell it’s no time to play defense @ 6:30 am! You’re on your way to breakfast — nothing short of a crack advance team sent by everybody else in the family who cherishes to sleep longer; c’mon, you don’t need that because you get up at home early to plow the driveway, so why change a winning team, right? Let’s just assume for kicks that you survive the treacherous, flip-flopped run along the slippery pool tiles to reserve a bunch of folding chairs, draped over with the family’s dirty laundry to make it look like yours’ (easy), and set up as close to the toxic chlorine haze and melanoma-causing sun exposure as the grinning cabana guy is permitted to — whose hands you greased with 5–10 bucks, or whatever the floor is that the East Coast Spring Break ‘market’ in that particular resort has set. Vaya a la Playa, or con Dios — take your pick.
Day 2: By now, you named every single mosquito in the resort which, for the obligatory dusk & dawn roll call, (1), humanizes an otherwise often contentious relationship with these Gringo-trained bloodsuckers (*) while it, (2), doubles as a surprisingly inexpensive memory preservation tool. Fresh-flesh and Benadryl are THE classic 1–2 tropical pairing — too bad therefore that you forgot the Benadryl this time in lieu for an extra lock-the-door routine at departure (see Day 0, above). Let’s move beyond the itch. Good that they offer the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet with the omelet station in the back as your sky-high cholesterol otherwise would take a nosedive, for the first time in years, something that may well cause bewilderment if not outright concern in your clogged up arteries. So, make sure you go twice, and then sign with the room number of that NYC jerk that beat you to the pool chairs this morning. ‘Karmer’ is a B*tch.
(*) = PETA et al. Disclaimer: No animals were harmed during the writing of this assay — unfortunately, as I tried, but these suckers are relentless, smell fear and are just too fast.
Day 3: You marvel at the $32 (#) burger and that the kitchen can achieve such artisanry in making it smaller — for the price you get several pounds of decent, non-GMO ground meat at your local, reasonably overpriced Whole Foods — while simultaneously reduce quality to a level seen last at a drive-thru Mickey D’s in New Jersey. It must be the charming accent of the server that justifies the distinct pricing difference, although as I recall, the dude in Jersey also had one. Anyway, the good news is that the soggy fries seem to be a treat for the hungry, disease-ridden local black birds that hang around your table in ever increasing numbers (did Hitchcock come to this resort already in the 60s?, which would explain the strange plumbing noise when you flush …) and as such you feel like you’ve done something ‘decent’ for the environment, while being fleeced. Chapeau!
(#) = Calm down: Yes, it already includes a garden variety of taxes, resort fee, tip for the entire staff and their (close) relatives, pandemic surcharge, and tsunami insurance.
Day 4: You love your family which is why, with the money left, you consider getting away from them — not permanently — just for a few hours and what better than playing golf at 100 degrees (as morning and eve hours were booked out weeks in advance, of course, by locals, at a much lower rate). Sadly, there is nothing shorter nee cheaper than 9 holes, else you’d take 8.5 or even 8.75 by now. Who cares, it’s only money and the unavoidable, major fluid loss justifies a few drinks afterwards that seem to come with a non-voting equity share in the local distillery. Life is good and although missing the fairway yet once again, on hole #6, you look up in gratitude only to discover that the precarious coconut on that picturesque palm tree, if dislodged right now, from that height, could well end what at this point can only be described as a ‘full life’. While it is not entirely clear what, you tell yourself you have so much more to give and as such you step over a few to make sure ‘probability + gravity’, life’s great equalizing combo, gets another tourist sucker. Sorry, Dude.
Day 5: Rip currents meet desperation — dwindling resources, utter discontent for resort fees & fellow tourists, and general boredom with the troops on literally anything offered within the golden cage. So, you confer with the concierge and — lucky you — turns out one of his “cousins” operates a zip line (= your kids’ head injury programmed) or an art shop (= you’re head injury required). You get the picture — a rental gas tank later you may meet another one of his cousins, a Grenada-trained neurosurgeon, that is if you survive a typical Thursday afternoon at a Caribbean emergency room. Please keep in mind, this is what an HSA is for, and all of this makes you only stronger.
Day 6: Focus on this last day is on the flight back home, or to wherever you came from pre-Paradise. Palpable sadness among the island’s mosquito colony — “Sorry, Compañeros, need to paint a bullseye on someone else’s a**”. You spontaneously hug the check-in ticket agent, no one sees the tears — no particular reason, just happy to be here, to come back alive, once more — screw relaxation. The stale peanuts, last remnants of a once proud inflight menu, taste like fillet minion on steroids, particularly when paired with a Coke Zero (or Pepsi equivalent, Ok?) served in a decorative one-way cup that you will meet again as microplastic pebbles in your next sustainably farmed salmon. So, let’s get home in a jiffy and watch the beautiful island paradise documentary on Nat Geo that everybody talks about — after you shovel that driveway, of course.
© Tom Deisboeck, 2022. All Rights Reserved.
