Trip Report 10/2-9/99 by Rick and Cindy
Just be doing impressions of our trip. We know we’ll leave out a lot of stuff, but what do you expect from people who just got back?
Weather. Quite warm compared to previous Octobers. Two days with serious (2-5 hours) rain with thunder/lightning; otherwise, the days only had brief showers in the early afternoon. I think it didn’t rain at all on two days. When the sun was out (which it was a lot), it was quite strong and hot.
Nude Volleyball. Large crowds watched, fully packed court with evenly matched teams. We started playing earlier every day to get all the games in. Normally, we played six-on-six, but eight-on-eight was tried (too many people), and even four-on-four (those were fun games!). I wasn’t emotionally prepared to have an audience. The WAVE even broke out, but only at Hedo would they be facing the other way! The stars of the net were Troy & Alice; Iron Mike and Shelley; John & Cindy (not my Cindy); Shintana (forgive my bad spelling) & Ben; Slammin Mike (guess how he got this nickname?); Rondi; and, last (and probably least), Cindy & I.
Improvements. Although Joe Smith has been resident manager for only a few months, we saw evidence of his management style in improved service and friendliness of the staff. In previous trips, Kevin only made the repeaters party once or twice and he was on property far more often than that. Joe is one-for-one. In the physical plant, new air conditioners were going in at the rate of one every three hours and we had one!!! Except, we had a Hedo first—we froze! We slept under two sheets, a blanket, and a cover. We would turn the A/C on before going to bed and wake up shivering. Turn off the A/C for the rest of the nite. Saw new beds being delivered along with the A/C’s.
Service. I was impressed with the improvements in service. For breakfast/lunch, sit in the two large tables closest to the salad bar and you’ll be served by Natalie. She remembered how I liked my coffee (very light milk) for the rest of the week after serving me once. Always a smile and friendly greeting! The best!! I drink a lot of water, and she kept up with me. (We do tennis right after breakfast, and you’ve got to hydrate.) If you get Fay for your maid, you’ll be very pleased. Always a smile and a clean room. She originally made our room up just as we were coming back from tennis, but she shifted our room to later in the day after we had cleaned up from tennis. And, one day it rained from about 2 to 4, she must have seen us go in for a nap because she never knocked on the door (what happened to the "Do not Disturb" cards?), but cleaned the room after we left! Scumba, Marcia, and Veronica are the best bartenders in the world! But, Scumba, I don’t know if Cindy and Rondi will ever forgive you for making that drink that Marc (aka Sizzler) bought them. He’s an evil man!
Food. I don’t know what more you could ask for, I think I gained four pounds in a week. Oh, well. I was on vacation. Lobster dinner was on Tuesday, great as always! Cindy ate Flan (carmel custard) almost every night (and sometimes lunch!). The avacado salad was delicious! The bagels weren’t as good for breakfast, so I had to get a splendid omelet from Charlie every morning. Well, that’s one or two of the pounds… Pastafari was as good as ever. Love that champagne. Finishing a meal with a cappuccino. Ah, this is the life.
Sex Police. Inconsistent rules with one necking couple told to knock it off and other couples doing far more, ignored. Thanks, Ernie, for the story of turkey and the airplane and feathers and ….what a great story! (Actually, a cover for watching the action in the grotto…but he spins such a good yarn! Thanks for the athletics, I’d give you two a 10.0. I wish I was that flexible.)
Lifestylers. The lifestyle crowd started drifting in on Thursday and some that had been lying doggo, started surfacing. The hot tub was a lot of fun our last night (Friday). I’ve got to get some of those dice!! All the people we met were quite nice, ordinary people. I don’t know why I thought they’d all be young, hard bodies. Looked like Hedo was going to have a different tone this week. (By the way, we weren’t approached and were not harassed in any way if anyone out there is worried about this group. But, they were very open and friendly…what I expect of Hedo people on the nude side.)
Tennis. Cindy & I always take advantage of the (it’s included!) lessons every morning. We also played in the doubles tournament and took first place. Course it might have been tougher had some other people actually shown up! We turned it into a singles tournament, Cindy took the first set, and I took the second…so it ended in a tie. A quick note - Thanks to Brian, Anthony, and Tony: Cindy won the two tennis matches she played since she got home. Her first two wins of the season and the tennis pros had a lot to do with it. (But I beat her at singles!)
Hedo III. We talked with three sets of guests who were at Hedo III but, at their own request, transferred to Hedo II. The reason was simple: no one there yet. One guest said that they (five of them) got on the bus and left nine guests in the resort. They said the facilities are beautiful, the food better (or the same depending on who was talking). They were planning on going back to Hedo III in the future, but waiting until there will be more people.
Entertainment. The Sat. show with Joe Jackson (?) was very good, but the rest of the nights still aren’t as good as one would expect. The art auction on Weds. is totally inappropriate in my opinion - way too loud and we were still relaxing and trying to converse. The amateur show on TOGA night got no volunteers and the coordinators had way too many people from the staff "volunteered"—just have the show be short and get on to the conga line. I appreciate their courage, but it was painful to be in the audience.
Nude Cruise. As always, a lot of fun. The price has been raised to $45. The cruise was smooth, the snorkeling okay (I’m picky), and a lot of the people used the rope swing off the cliffs. No one got hurt (I think), other than some rope burns (and sunburns). The cruise began 50-50 clothed and was 90-10 nude by the end. A good crowd. Steve still gives massages.
Problems. Renee set her travel documents on the couch, got up to hug Claudia good-bye, and promptly forgot them there and went on to make her last good-byes. Got to DelRoy’s and remembered. Called the front desk and was told that security had picked them up and given them to the front desk. By the time she got up there, they had disappeared for good. She had $20 bill in there and that might have been the motive for the theft, but consequences were:
This lady was supposed to go home on Friday and was not going to be able to leave until at least Sunday as she hadn’t gotten the documents she needed from the consulate late on Saturday. Although being stranded in Jamaica sounds great; in reality, it’s not. Joe Smith got involved. She couldn’t stay at Hedo because they were sold out. She and her friend Wayne got moved to Breezes (at SuperClubs expense) where they stayed until Renee got her stuff straightened out. She was still working on getting home when we last saw her. She finally got home on Tuesday.
This isn’t really a problem, but we requested H-block and got upgraded (?) to 2108, ocean view. We did get to see the ocean (and most of the prude beach) from our window. The prudes got to see us walking around the room nude. Not sure if we consider this an upgrade.
Phoning Home. Cindy’s cat (Tiger) was sick ($500 to the vet in the three days before we left) and you might have seen her question on Denny’s board on how to call home. Well, we’d like to thank all that gave us info. We used it! Anyhow, what we did was to buy an AT&T prepaid card ($42) at Wal-Mart for 250 minutes that gave us 31 minutes from Jamaica. (Just found out 200 minutes from Sam’s is $20). On Sunday, we got a message to call the catsitter. We called from the lobby phones. Dial 872 to access an AT&T operator, wait about 15 seconds to hear "thanks for using AT&T", then follow the directions on the back of the phonecard. Worked like a charm!. We had the sitter call us back in our room, so it only cost us "1" pre-paid minute to call the U.S. We heard from people who had called from their rooms that a 1 minute call cost them $35 last year. Renee (the one stuck in Jamaica) didn’t have a phone card so we gave the remaining time to her. For those who are wondering, Tiger is doing fine. The sitter called because Tiger wouldn’t let her give her pills or the fluids the vet wanted her to have. We got that worked out and no more phone calls the rest of the week.
Guests. As always, the reason to be at Hedo! We made a lot of new friends from nearly our backyard to Chicago. Rondi—you’re a very wonderful woman! Renee—has a story to tell about losing your travel documents and being stuck in paradise! She’s already posted her story on Denny’s page - called 9 nights with 5 free (or something like that). Wayne and Bryan—you’re lucky guys! John and Bonnie---after all that talk about what comes out of your kitchen, we’ll be up for a taste test someday! Cindy had a special connection to John and Bonnie - we love Robert’s french fries!! Here’s to a plate of them! To the volleyball gang—you’re a great group to hang with! How did you ugly guys hook up with such beautiful women?? John—THANKS for taking us out on the Hobie Cat. Next time, try to leave both pontoons in the water! Mom-Five-O and Carl, I’m sure you had a great time.