All-inclusives are what you make of them
Dispense with your expectations when travelling to a developing country
If you’re heading out on your first all-inclusive resort vacation expecting luxury, you’ll probably be disappointed.
At 31, I recently experienced a Caribbean resort for the first time. Personally, I’m a heavily culture-focused traveller, preferring to explore cities rather than lie on beaches, but the opportunity arose, and ultimately, experiencing another country is adventurous in any format, so I left for YYZ at 4 a.m. with bells on despite an utter lack of sleep.
Let’s start with booking issues. My sweetheart and I arrived at our hotel in La Romana, Dominican Republic, after a slightly shaky four hours of air travel, and a dangerously careening hour-long van ride, to be informed that the resort was overbooked.
Sunwing, bless their hearts, really crapped the bed. We, in addition to three other couples, made short-notice bookings — through a live agent over the phone, mind you — that didn’t make it down south to our intended accommodations, leaving us stranded for hours awaiting a transfer to another hotel in Punta Cana, an hour back in the direction we came from.
When we finally arrived, there was a whole lot more sweat-soaked waiting around for the i’s to be dotted and t’s crossed before we were shown to a room with no air conditioning, and with drilling noise coming from nearby. After another wait, and a $20 US tip, we finally set our luggage down in a well-cooled room in proximity to less invasive hammering racket, close to the beach.
Let’s talk about that beach. Sadly, due to the whims of Mother Nature, many beaches in the Dominican Republic are littered with rotting seaweed, the water cloudy and grey. What do heaps of sun-baked seaweed smell like? Not good.
(Apparently the beach in La Romana was all crystal blue water and white sand, a real pamphlet-grade
beauty, though, said one of our fellow displaced travellers who wandered down during the runaround with Sunwing.)
What exactly does all-inclusive mean? It means that you can have as much boring, tasteless food and questionable liquor as your little heart desires. The decent stuff comes at an extra cost. A VIP pool is one that is less likely to have been peed in a hundred times that day, and VIP bars offer better beverages and smaller crowds, but there is a daily cost per guest to access these exclusive areas. If you’re stubborn enough to insist on a reservation at an a la carte restaurant, the premium dishes and bottles of wine are listed at North American prices.
At additional cost as well are the off-resort excursions, various novelty outings that you will be continuously pressured to purchase by sales reps stationed all over the resort grounds. Relaxing? Hardly.
Fun? Absolutely.
The way to enjoy an all-inclusive resort is to dispense with your firstworld expectations the moment you deplane, and make the best of every moment. If you choose to vacation in the Caribbean, there will be bugs — yes, even in your room. The beaches will be subject to ecological conditions beyond the resort’s control. The pools will be filled with everyone’s grubby children. The drinks will be weak, and the buffet food will be edible at best. Your TV may turn off
after 10 minutes and never turn on again. You may not even get much sun.
If you can’t go with the flow and have fun with the company you’re keeping, that’s on you, not the resort staff, and certainly not on nature and its changeability. Even a mixup with a travel company shouldn’t prevent you from having a blast, assuming you get where you need to be at the end of the day.
The willingness to make the best of an unpredictable stay in a developing country only becomes more difficult as our technologies at home improve, but a humble and worldly attitude goes far in allowing us to experience cultures abroad without succumbing to traveller’s funk, or worse, accosting the people trying to make a living by serving tourists.
Travel with the right person, and socialize openly with other guests and resort staff, because the memories we treasure aren’t of how clean the water was, but of having a first taste of Mama Juana, Dominican’s locally famous liquor, with the couple from Puerto Rico.
Mama Juana aside, the drinks may be weak, but they’re also bottomless, so go ahead and double-fist. Salute.