John & Teresa - May, 2013
5/3/2013 – 5/10/2013
We arrived at Hedo on Friday, 5/3. Since it was our
first visit to Hedo, neither my wife nor myself really knew what to
expect, and therefore we were quite nervous when we got there,
around 2:30 local time. Approaching the front desk, everything
seemed perfectly normal, and just like other resorts we had stayed at.
We were greeted, and offered champagne or a mimosa. After taking
our information, and frowning over our reservation for a few minutes,
the girl working the front desk told us that our room wasn't ready yet,
and invited us to go eat some lunch, and come back afterward. It
seemed a little ominous, but I was hungry, so I didn't question it.
After eating, (I’ll go into the food review separately) we
made our way back to the front desk, where a manager type lady asked us
to join her in her office. (Sorry for the lack of names, but I’m
terrible at remembering names. There were people we met that a
week later I still didn't know their names.) After having a seat
in the office, she informs us that due to a booking problem, the nude
ocean front Jacuzzi suite that we had booked wasn't available,
and wouldn't be available until Monday, 5/6. Instead, she offered
to put us in a standard nude ocean front room, and refund us the
difference, with the option of moving to the Jacuzzi suite when it
became available. In addition to this, she gave us both a free
one-hour massage. While disappointing at the time, neither one of
us were ready to let something like this ruin our trip, so we agreed
without making a fuss.
(In hindsight, we were lucky – the room we ended up in was
3 doors down from the nude pool where we ended up spending most of our
time, while the Jacuzzi suites would have been a much longer walk, and I
doubt we would have spent much time in the Jacuzzi anyway. We
decided not to move rooms even after it became available.)
We left the office to discover that it had started to rain.
Not the normal light rain we had experienced the last time we were in
Jamaica. It was pouring. The staff was reluctant to send us
off in the rain to find our rooms, and didn't want to try to deliver our
luggage in the downpour, so we hung out at the entrance for a bit.
Another manager type lady came over and was talking to us, and
discovered that we were Hedo virgins. She wasted no time in
beginning the devirginization process.
Before I knew what was happening, she was yelling for
someone to bring up a car to deliver us to our room so that we could
have sex. While the gentleman up front was pulling the
ridiculously small truck up to deliver us one at a time to our room, she
assured my wife that she would take care of making sure that I was nice
and hard and ready to go once I also arrived at the room. I can
only imagine the look of shock on my face, and how red I must have been.
But, having read up about Hedo, and somewhat knowing what to expect, I
tried to take it in stride. 15 minutes later, we were in our room.
Like the food, I’m going to save the accommodations for a separate
section.
Since it was raining so much on Friday, our first day was
pretty much just spent unpacking, and resting from our trip. We
did wander over toward the main dining area, and just explored a bit to
learn our way around. Saturday morning found us again exploring, and we
found our way to the Jacuzzi on the prude side, where we met a nice
couple who were relaxing in the Jacuzzi, sans clothing. This was
our first indication that the prude side was more of a clothing optional
area.
After eating lunch, we finally decided to brave the nude
side. We went back to our rooms, got undressed, and headed towards
the nude area. Since we were very close, it wasn’t a long walk.
The first thing we noticed was the soda hut, so we walked over to check
it out. Apparently my wife is more observant than me, because the
first thing I noticed was her staring towards what I learned was the
elevated whirlpool portion of the pool. I turned around to see
what she was staring at, and that was the first time we saw the
Russians. Let me just say, the Russians made our trip memorable.
I had read on these forums about the open sex, and that if
you came to the hot tub at 2 in the morning, it was almost a given.
So I was prepared for that situation, at that time. I wasn’t
prepared for the Russians. This was 4 in the afternoon, it was
broad daylight out, there were groups of people around, and here was 5
Russians all having very loud and proud sex in the middle of it all.
I later learned that this was perfectly normal for this group.
They were in the whirlpool having sex several times a day, every day.
My running joke became the fact that you could set your watch based on
their sex schedule.
So there we were, my wife and, staring at this group having
sex, and realizing that nobody else was very surprised, or caring at
all, about it. So that’s when we realized exactly what we were in
for. Before long, we were in the pool, with drinks in hand,
cheering our new Russian friends on. And that is how we got
introduced to Hedo.
After that day, we fell into a pretty standard routing.
Get up around 9-9:30, and go to breakfast. After breakfast, we
would go relax on the beach for a while. Once we got too hot, we
would go to the nude pool, and start drinking. A few hours later,
I would realize I was drunk, and switch to water. Sometimes we
would eat lunch, sometimes not. Then we would get out of the pool,
and get ready for dinner. After dinner and the show, it was off to
the piano bar and/or club for a while, and then it was back to the
pool/Jacuzzi, and more alcohol, until 4-5am, then off to bed, and back
up at 9:30 to do it again the next day.
We met some wonderful people there, and had lots of fun.
So much fun, in fact, that once it got close to time to go home, we
instead extended our stay out by a day. We would have done more,
but my wife had to be back on Saturday for work.
We got to meet and talk to Harry a few different times.
He was very quick to talk to us about our experience, and get feedback
from us. Talking to him really helped to reassure us that they are
trying to go the right direction with things. I was very impressed
with how much I saw him talking to people, soliciting feedback.
Occupancy while we were there was pretty low.
The number that I kept hearing tossed around by random people was
around 25%. Not sure where
that number came from, but that’s what I heard people repeating.
It was obviously fairly empty, but that didn’t keep us from being
able to enjoy our time there.
Perhaps it even worked out a bit better for us, since it was our
first trip. We were broken
in gently, so to speak.
And now, let’s talk a bit more in depth about certain
areas. I’ll start with our room.
The room was decent. It wasn't great, it wasn't bad.
I've stayed in worse, I've stayed in better. After reading up on
the forums about the place, I went in with no expectations, and
therefore ended up being somewhat pleasantly surprised. It didn’t
seem as bad as people seemed to make out. It definitely needs some
maintenance and repair, but it was functional. The first issue
that I noted was that the air conditioner did not work. At all.
It simply would not come on. I notified the front desk, and within
a couple of hours, it was working. We also later notified them
that our bathroom sink was leaking, but that was never addressed.
The first couple of days we noticed that the hot water was completely
hit or miss…. But mostly miss. However, after day 3 or so, we had
reliable hot water. Not sure if they changed something, or
if we just got lucky. But it was hot enough that we had to be
careful not to scald ourselves. These were the only issues that we
noticed with the room.
Now, on to the food. Like the room, I went into the
food situation with no expectations, due to what I had read here ahead
of time. Like the room, because of this, I found myself pleasantly
surprised. Nothing that I ate was bad, and most of it was really
good. The buffet was good, especially the specialty stations, such
as the carving stations, or the pasta station. One night, they had
a separate table set up where a chef was cooking sautéed shrimp.
I’m pretty sure that was the best shrimp I have ever eaten in my life.
If I had to pick a criticism, it would just be that I wish that they had
a few more options each night. But even so, I had no problem
finding enough food to satisfy me.
My wife and I ate at Harry San twice. We were
pleasantly surprised at how good it was. My wife works part time
at a hibachi style Japanese restaurant at home, so she came into it with
a critical eye, and quickly decided that it was just as good, if not
better than, the cooking back home.
We also tried the Italian restaurant. It was pretty
good, but not as impressive as Harry San was. Both of us were
disappointed in our deserts, she had the tiramisu, and I had Crème
Brulee. I like my Crème Brulee to still be hot on top, but cool on
bottom, and unfortunately the entire thing was room temperature.
Also, the custard portion wasn’t set properly, and was kind of soupy.
Overall, not that great. But the lamb chops I had made up for it.
We only ate at the prude grill once, and we had jerk
chicken, and since you can’t really go wrong there, we don’t have much
to say about it.
We ate several times at the nude grill, both early in the
day, and late at night. It was never disappointing. A
discovery that we made on our last day that I wish we had found earlier
was a grilled cheese, with jerk chicken and tomato, dipped in the jerk
sauce. Indescribable. At night, we lived off of the pizzas.
The guy that was working the grill late at night was a trooper – he
handled anything we threw at him. Jerk chicken pizza with jerk
sauce instead of pizza sauce? No problem. Pizza with ¾ jerk
chicken, and ¼ plain cheese? No problem. He even hand
delivered our pizzas to us as we sat in the pool at the bar.
I couldn’t do any type of review of the place without
talking about the staff. They are all incredible. Quick to
smile, always genuinely interested in how your day is going, they’re
great. Especially the EC team. Adrian, Hennesy, Diana,
Eaton, Winston…. I can’t rave enough about how much all of these people
helped make our stay memorable. I especially liked the time when
Adrian tried to get my wife drunk enough that she would have sex with me
on one of the tables in the nude pool. Something about us showing
the Russians how it was done…
The only complaint I would have about the staff is that
there were a couple of different staff members who very purposefully
asked for tips. This didn’t
bother me in the sense that I didn’t like being bothered for a tip.
It worried me more simply because I know that these employees can
be fired over this, and I’d hate to see them lose their jobs.
However, I assume they know the risk, and if they choose to do it
anyway, I suppose it’s their own fault if they lose their job.
The best way that I can sum up our experience is this: On day one, we were nervous and intimidated. By day two, we had settled in. By day three, we were planning two more return trips over the next year.