Trip Report - Club Med Cancun Yucatan

I posted parts of the following on TripAdvisor.com. This post contains some additional comments. I also posted a photo album of this trip on FaceBook.

We visited Club Med Cancun 8-18 September 2010. We enjoyed it a lot -- probably one of our top 10 holidays. We've been to several Club Meds and always approach them with the attitude that they are summer camp for adults. If you go with that attitude, you won't be disappointed.

• I'd been to this Club Med many years ago with two friends from San Francisco: Leslie Nipper, Hank Grundig. It’s where I learned to windsurf. We’d just moved to Tulsa and I left Deborah and Danielle home to take off on that holiday. My flight back to Tulsa via Dallas was cancelled. The airport, at that time, had no amenities – including pay phones in the departure area – so I couldn’t even call home. I finally got to call them when I eventually reached Dallas some 12 hours late. They thought: (1) I’d been killed. (2) Was in jail. (3) Had decided to never come back. (Sounds like material for a good short story there.)
• The airport has changed a lot in 25 years. It’s beautiful, modern and has all kinds of shops and restaurants. Immigration and security process is as easy as it can be.

Plus:
o The excellent service. This was a major plus and a pleasant surprise. GOs were friendly, accessible, knowledgeable, and anxious to make our stay a good one. Most spoke English, French, and Spanish. Calls to the front desk were picked up immediately. After about 3 days, many of the GOs knew us by name. Service in the bars and restaurants was fast and good.

 

• Was the service as good as Mauritius? Darn near, I’d say. There were so few guests, there should have been good service, and there was. I made particular friends with Fernanda, there on a college internship. L made friends with Kyle, the water sports GO. I think he took a shine to her as well. He’s from south of Houston and suggested we get together for sailing and fishing when he’s home. Oscar was the land sport GO and a Riki Martin look-alike. He organized volleyball, but we never played more than 1 on 2. I played the “one” and won more often than not.
• We had meals with several of the other GOs including “Mad Max” from the circus – Jamaica “yah, mon”. Others too, but now I can’t remember with whom.

o Uncrowded resort at this time of year. That meant easy access to all facilities -- and perhaps was one of the reasons the service was so good.

 

o Lots wildlife including barracuda, crocodile, frigate birds, iguanas, pelicans, stingrays. The highlight: seeing a Green Sea Turtle lay her eggs on the beach at night. Snorkeling was excellent. The reef is in good shape.

• See below about the barracuda and croc. The frigate birds are fun to watch in the air. L got a couple good pictures. The iguanas were fun to see. They were all over, especially on the walk to the lunch restaurant. L fed them bananas and it was fun watching two of them arguing over it. L liked pelicans best. We watched them fishing near the bar. Walking back to the room a couple evenings L saw a stingray in the lagoon. Not too exciting, but she got a few pics.

o Usual Club Med activities available. We kayaked, practiced salsa, sailed catamarans, snorkeled, swam, water skied and windsurfed.

• L won the weekly kayak race Women’s Division. She first raced one of the GOs, who let her win. She then raced a French woman. L did really well. She paddled out to the turning buoy while the Frenchie paddled way right. L made the turn first, then the French came on. She tried to paddle across in front of L. L comes right at her. French falls in the water. L wins. I’m VERY happy.
• They had salsa lessons morning and afternoon, but were only for beginners. A couple mornings we went over and practiced our moves. Their CD music constantly skipped and their equipment was crap. We tried to dance in the gym one afternoon using our PC for music. It didn’t work. PC speakers aren’t loud enough. Next time we’ll bring our travel speakers and use my iPod. We also danced to bands and recorded music in the bar and on the patio just for fun. We were clearly the best … well, OK, … the only salsa dancers at the club. L had to get a band-aid for a blister at the infirmary. When we walked in the nurse said, “Oh, it’s the salsa couple.”
• The club had one Hobie 16 catamaran, which is a real sailboat – sloop rigged, lots of lines to pull, goes like a bat even in light wind – and you can tip it over in a heartbeat.. We opted all but one day to take out the Hobie 12. It has just a mainsail and it’s pretty hard to get in trouble with it. We did take the 16 out on the last day in very light winds. It took me a while to make friends with it, but in light wind, it was really fun.
• Snorkeling was fun. The reef was in good shape. Lots of purple fan coral, big and lots of variety of fish. We didn’t see any eels.
• I swam perhaps 100m out to the swim area buoys each day. It was a good beach, with stones in the surf zone only. Even on the days when the beaches further down were red flagged because of waves, you could swim on our beach.
• I water skied one day. I told the guy I’d never done it before so I could get the beginner’s instructions. I got up on the first try. I made it through a turn just after getting up, made a turn at the far end of the lagoon, came back past the dock, made another turn, got outside the wake and back in, made one more turn and dropped off at the dock. I was TIRED and it didn’t last more than about 4 minutes. Fun. Next time I may try to do it more.
• I windsurfed almost everyday even though there was very little wind. I used the harness one day, but the lines were too short to be comfortable, so I pretty much gave up on that. I didn’t really need it anyway. I used a fun board and a 6.5 sq-m sail. I made a few gybes and tacks. It was fine, if not real windsurfing. I should also say that the sailing area is set up in the wind shadow of the land so even on days when it was quite windy on the beach, there was no wind (or waves) at the sailing area.
• No one wanted to play volleyball. We played three times total, I think. Disappointing. I played 1-on-1 with one of the GOs and beat him – 3-hit-must rule in effect. The other couple times we played 1-on-2 with me as the one. I only lost one game.

o Upgraded deluxe room looked out on the Gulf on one side and the lagoon on the other. Very nice. Internet access was available for a small fee. Bottled water and soft drinks were provided every day in the minibar. We could have had other drinks as well if we'd asked. Bed and pillows were extremely comfortable. We slept great every night.

• L complained about ants in the bathroom, but they didn’t cause much trouble. We had to run the A/C on full cold to keep the room comfortable. It was all OK. Don’t go to Club Med for the accommodations.

o Impeccably clean guest room and public areas.

• The tile floors were slick as heck when wet. To compensate, they had people mopping the floor of the bar all day everyday. This got the sand and the water out. Nicely done. Our guest room was very clean, I thought. They serviced the minibar everyday.

o Circus show was really good.

• The first show was outdoors on the patio and that was fun. The second week it moved indoors which was OK, but not as fun … and hotter. I thought this circus show was better than a similar show we saw in Florida. At both shows one of the guests performed. Pretty impressive for them to do that.

o Close to airport. Transportation to and from was comfortable and spot on time.

 

Minus:
o No smoke alarm in our room. That concerned me since some of the building is of wood construction, including the path to the single stairway exit. Most of the building was of concrete, however.

 

o Certain of the tile flooring became ice-like slick when wet. I went down once even wearing footwear. Barefoot was really treacherous. Beware.

 

o Cigarette smoke smell filtered in from adjoining room. Guests are not supposed to smoke in their rooms, but certain people must have felt that didn't apply to them.

• Guess where the people next door were from.

o Room was shabby, frankly. Quite acceptable, but far from a 4-star room. Small and a bit of a strange layout with a 'step-down' to the back balcony. Our experience is that you don't come to Club Med for the rooms.

 

o Food was good but not great -- standard Club Med quality. There was a wide selection, but the selections tended to be the same each night except for the specials of the day. I will say that the boiled shrimp and the steak nights were excellent. I'll also say that we put on 5 pounds each, so the food must not have been too bad. We never tried the ala carte restaurants serving steak and Mexican food.

 

o Because of the low occupancy, the main restaurant was closed for lunch, which meant a trek to the second restaurant on the beach. If you didn't want to wait for a golf cart to take you, it was a long hot walk. More shuttles would have helped.

 

o We felt the drinks were pretty watered down. But it was hot and we were drinking a lot, so that was probably all for the better anyway.

 

o Because there were so few people there, there were no takers for some of the activities like beach volleyball. Not the Club's fault, just the time of year.

 

o Evening entertainment was weak -- except for circus nights. Like all Club Meds, the GOs put on the shows, in addition to doing their day jobs. Go with an accepting attitude and just enjoy it for what it is.

 

o Night club played nothing but club music, so far as we could tell. We were hoping for a better mix, including some Latin music and some rock standards. After all, the guests were predominantly older at this time of year. It would have been good for the DJs to recognize and cater to that a bit.

 

Other notes:
o Celebration of Mexico's 200th year of independence was great fun ... for us and for the GOs.

 

o Seeing the crocodile in the lagoon was exciting. I'd visited this Club in the 80s and crocs were there then too. You water ski with them. Don't worry; there's never been an incident.

• If I can ever find the pictures from my first trip to Cancun, I can prove there was a big croc in the lagoon then too. I’ve hunted high and low, but can’t find the pics. I’ll keep looking, I know they’re here.

o The snorkeling area has some BIG barracuda. We saw one perhaps 5' long laying under a coral head. Very exciting.

• The barracuda was cool. We went snorkeling one day and I dove down next to a coral head. I saw this black eye staring at me. I figured it was a big grouper or something. I dove back down and realize I’m looking at a barracuda with a head that seems as big across as my two hands held together … and four white teeth sticking out. Wow. I got L and after several minutes I finally got her to see it too. We spent maybe 10 minutes with it. On the last dive down I see that he’s now facing me head on instead of in profile as he has been. I feel like a target. We swim out of there at that point. We talk with the lady at the snorkel shack, coincidentally nicknamed barracudita (little barracuda), who tells us that when the water is high behind the reef they see lots of big barracuda – some up to 2 meters long. That’s 6.5’. I couldn’t really see all of our barracuda, but I’d guess he was at least 4’ and maybe 5’ – a big fish. Memo to self: next time remember to bring the underwater camera, you dummy.

o Sailing area has little wind at this time of year because of the wind direction. The Hobie 16 was fun even in the light winds. The smaller Hobies would move, but not fly. The wind and wave conditions were ideal for learning to windsurf, and the Club has the right equipment for it too.

 

o The iguanas love bananas ... but you're not supposed to feed them.

 

o The Club has an optional dress "code" for the evenings. For example on various nights they had all black, all white, jeans-and-white-T-shirt, "safari", and Club Med 45 shirt night. Dress for it if you feel like it, but don't worry if you don't. If you want to play along, bring a selection of colors.

 

o The boutique is eye watering expensive. We nearly bought a pair of $30 flip-flops before we double-checked the exchange rate. Buy the Club Med logo stuff there if you want, but be careful of the prices on the other items.

 

 

 

Club Med Cancun: what a fun time. We'll be back.

 

No More Makin' Fun of THIS Ol' Guy

We live on the golf course at our country club -- hole number five of the Bridges course, for those of you who are keeping score. I bought a golf cart when we first moved to Houston from a guy that lives across the way. I paid a grand total of $700 for the old ... 10-year old, in fact ... cart. It ran OK mostly, but was so slow it could hardly get out of its own way. I was embarrassed because the guys I play with would make fun of me and how slow I was. If I was first in a line of carts going down the path, I could fairly hear the people behind me sighing with impatience as we putt-putted toward the next hole ... or hum-hummed toward the next hole actually, since we have to use electric carts on our course. Basically I was a moving roadblock. Plus everyone knew it as "Jack's old cart" and they'd made fun of him too when he had it.

I dumped another $200 into the old cart when the solenoid went out a few months back. Fortunately it had crapped out on me right by the house, so I pushed it back into the garage and called for help. Got it fixed. No big deal.

Still, we could do better so we started looking at the two shops near us. One was a bit of a drive north up I-45 ... Golf Carts of Conroe. Gregg The Salesperson there was really nice. His prices seemed good. He was happy to work with us. Had good suggestions about what accessories we should get. Knew all about the carts. He sold EZ-GO and Club Cars.

The other place was nearer the house: prices were not as good and salesperson not too knowledgeable. He did however have a street-legal Star electric car[t] that we could use on the course. Looked just like a golf cart, but had seat belts, turn signals, etc ... and went like a bat outta heck. It looked really good too. Wife was sold, but I didn't want to hassle with insurance, title, registration, etc. even if the Prez was willing to give me a 10% tax credit for buying a (supposedly) "green" vehicle. Even with the credit it was quite a bit more expensive ... and we really weren't going to use it on the street anyway.

In the end we decided to go with the cheaper cart from Gregg. It's an EZ-GO Freedom RXV. It jumps when you put your foot down and looks great. You can see for yourself in the pictures at the end of this post. It has a ball/club washer, sand bottles, a cooler. We bought the "Sun-brella" package in maroon, white and black. The Club's carts are maroon, so we fit right in. I was going to feel like one of the real people. No more making fun of this old guy.

Gregg was even was going to give me $600 for my old cart. (The other place was only going to give $200.) I thought that was generous. The new cart was to be delivered in three weeks, after they put all the accessories on it. I could keep using my old cart in the mean time. And, guess what: I'm playing one night and blam, the old cart stops dead in its tracks. This time I'm quite a ways from the house. I walk back home ... it's 94F, by the way ... and hope that the batteries just need water. I carry back a couple jugs of water and try pouring them in. No go. Fortunately a buddy, Keith, comes by and agrees to use his cart to push me back to the house. Once home, I fiddle with some more things and can't get it to go. I call Gregg, who says, "Don't worry about it. We'll straighten it out. If we can't, I can only give you $300 trade." I'm still happy with that.

A few days later they drop off the new cart. The delivery guy finds a corroded wire in my old cart. He fixes it and drives the old cart right onto his flatbed and drives it away. I got lucky for once!

I'm happy; Wife's happy ... and so are the guys behind me on our course when we're driving down the cart path. What do you think? Cute, eh?

Hanging up the gloves - boring as it may be

I see retirement in my near future ... within the next four months. And I'm thrilled. People ask me, "What're you goin' to do? Won't you be bored?"

I look at 'em like they're crazy. Here's my list:

Write 1000 words a day on the way to publishing the great American novel. I've got ideas for loads of short stories, blog posts, and (really) a couple novels -- one sci-fi, one kids' book. (I wrote 1200 words today. It takes a while, for me at least, I should tell you.)

Take dance lessons. Wife and I love to dance. We are good salsa dancers, if I say so myself. We'd like to get equally good in other styles, especially, in no particular order, swing, hustle, tango, samba, chacha. Wife wants us to become certified instructors. I'm not sure I want to work that hard. I quit one job; I'm not looking for a second one.

Take piano lessons. Of course, it would help to buy a piano first, but never mind. I need to find an instructor that would be willing to circumvent the usual lessons and teach me to play blues and jazz.

Travel to all the places we've missed so far. Wife has not visited many places in US yet. Our US bucket list includes Niagra Falls (wife's pick), Yosemite (in my opinion, everyone needs to see Yosemite at least once before they die ... for what that's worth), Grand Canyon, Hawaii (I want to see an active, real live volcano), maybe Yellowstone, Miami, Key West, Southern CA beaches. I've not been back to the Bay Area for more than 10 years and that's WAY past due (but I'm afraid I'll go back and never want to leave). I suppose Wife should see New York and Washington, DC, but those are at the bottom of my list.

Internationally we have the whole Carribean to explore. (We're going to Cancun in September for 10 days, so we have that process kickstarted.) We want to get back to Italy, especially Rome and Venice and Sorrento. Wife's had her heart set on visiting Australia. We want to return to Thailand. And I'm going to visit Mauritius again before I die. Maybe in the future we'll spend August in our condo outside Moscow to avoid the Houston heat, but NOT this year: Moscow temps in the 90Fs, and no air conditioning anywhere. No thanks!

Get better at golf. I've started this process already. Wife bought me golf lessons, which of course screw you up at first but eventually really help. And with a golf course right outside my back door ... well ... this one's easy.

Pick up (doubles) tennis again. This assumes my knees will hold up. I used to be pretty good ... 35 years ago.

Build a personal website.

And this leaves out all the house chores and normal day to day stuff.

Bored? Yeah, it may be a while before you see that post on this blog.

Online news and the death of journalism

Is it just me or has CNN stopped employing people to proofread releases before the items appear on the CNN website? Why would I care, you ask? My father hated this type of lazy journalism and would wave the newspaper at me when he saw it in print. I guess he ingrained it in me.

I've noticed the trend toward sloppiness for a while, but two examples from today's CNN.com home page finally triggered my wrath:

#1 "Why train workers to leave?"

Which of these describe the real content of the article?
(a) People that work on trains are leaving their jobs.
(b) Companies may train their workers with skills that enable the workers to leave for a better job.
(c) Employers may educate their workers so the workers know how to leave ... something ... the building, their jobs, food on their plates, whatever.

If you answered (b), you'd be correct. It turns out the headline for the article itself, once you follow this link, is "Training workers to leave for a better job". Why didn't they use that same clear headline on the home page?

#2: "Memorial for Mom found in suitcase".

Your choices here are more simple:
(a) Someone found a memorial in a suitcase. That memorial was for a Mom.
(b) Someone conducted a memorial for a Mom who herself was in a suitcase.

Well, tragically it turns out that (b) is correct. A woman was murdered in San Francisco and stuffed in a suitcase. The suitcase washed ashore in SFO. The CNN video article is about the memorial service her children conducted for her near San Francisco Bay. If I followed this type of horrible news more closely I'd have read about this terrible thing earlier and I would've put two and two together more quickly, but I didn't ... and so had no clue what this was really about from the description on the link.

And your last two questions: Is CNN doing it on purpose? Is it just me?

Brave or foolish? Another legless visitor.

L is on the phone yesterday when I hear, "Doug, wait a minute, wait a minute. Snake! Bobby, big snake in our front yard. Bobby, snake. Doug, I'll call you back."

I walk out the front door and sure enough a four- or five-foot long, thin, beautifully marked snake is heading across our drive and into our front flower bed. I'm thinking it's another water snake, but this one's brownish, not grey, and much more clearly marked. Pretty, really. I got my snake handling tool, a rake, and tried to coax him back the way he came. He wasn't having it, but instead of striking out, he wound himself up in a knot with his head on the bottom.

Since he looked more afraid than angry, I slid the rake under him and picked him up in a lump. He decides that's his cue to move, and slithers slowly off. In a fit of unaccustomed bravery, I picked him up by his tail and used the rake to keep his head pointed in the right direction, i.e., away from me. He was fine with that. I dragged him across the yard and over to the wooded lot next door to us.

Double-checking online after the fact, I learned I was correct that this was a non-venomous snake -- not a water snake though. He was a picture perfect Texas rat snake. They can grow to six-feet long. They're distinguished by their markings, particularly the grey stripes on top of their head. They also have a bright orange tongue, which is easily distinguished in the video below. Normally they're cranky, but this one certainly wasn't. They're also called 'false rattle snakes' because sometimes they'll rapidly shake their tail against grass they're hiding in to mimic the sound of a rattle. They eat mostly mice and rats, though they'll eat birds eggs if they can get them. They're pretty good climbers. They kill their prey by constricting, and I could really feel that when I was holding him -- strong. He posed for a couple more pictures, then we let him go. My rake was 4-1/2 feet long, so he was certainly four-feet long, and maybe five. Here are a couple pictures and a video of our adventure.