To Sloth or not to Sloth

Dec. 7, 2005

What’s the one thing you have lots of when staying at an all-inclusive holiday resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico? The answer is everything.
Food? In buffet style, breakfast gets sprawled out starting, apparently, around 7am. At 10:30am or so, they clear that away and begin gearing up for lunch. A stroll cases out the menu. The soup station seems like a good place to start, but wait, that friendly guy who served the toothsome leg of beef at dinner the night before has something steaming away out the other side. He’s nicely set up next to the five choices of dessert. By the time his fresh ham is evident, last night’s main course is now today’s soup. Wonderful. Efficient.
Forget the soup. What else is out today? The bread racks are stocked, and stacked, with baguettes, croissants, buns, and loaves. Two banks of four steam tables serve an array of fresh vegetables, potatoes, rice, chicken, and on and on. Now, a decision is required. How much of which item to take in order to find a balance between sampling enough fare to satisfy your curiosity, and trying to walk to the beach without calling in a mobile crane.
Repeats of dishes were rare during my week of immoderation, a double-edged sword because great cuisine should be enjoyed again, but what else could the chef have under his bonnet?

FILL, REFILL
The service is perfect, as far from that at home as you can get. Restaurant staff hustle like rookies clearing, pouring, wiping, and dodging kids. The bottom of your coffee cup or wine glass is feared as though it hid the Loch Ness Monster. Fill, refill, refill. Pee, get refilled.
Time for this brat to come clean. One evening at dinner, the grillman serving beef chop suey skipped over to the marinated pork chops and onion station to deliver something. He was gone close to 15 seconds. Somehow I withstood the wait, plate in hand and dying to be served. I was so spoiled, that if this wayward warden hadn’t rebounded in haste, I was on the verge of bolting, quick as a cadaver, over to the fresh pasta with two kinds of sauce and perfectly grated parmesan.
Between grazing, this hotel presented four bars, opening at 10am and closing, in theory, 16 hours later. Standing in the way of a Dirty Monkey, a Banana Mama, wine, beer, or any highball you’d care for is your refusal to ask.
Sports? Tennis lessons at 9am, for an hour. The archery center opens as the nets on the two ping-pong tables go up. The water sports shed has boogie boards, kayaks, windsurfing, and sailing - lessons provided. The peanut-shaped pool, surrounded by reclining beach beds, hosts water polo, pool volleyball, musical swimming chairs, and tequila volleyball (use your imagination). There’s shuffleboard, beach volleyball, dance lessons, horseshoe pits, badminton courts, bocce ball areas, and a steroidal teenager’s delight, a weight room. If gym’s not your bag, or you hate spilling your drink during an activity, there’s bingo, guacamole class, bartending class, language class, art class.

MIDDLE-AGED SPREADS
Decision making and strategic planning still too hard on the head? The beach is a no-brainer. Middle-aged spreads on bodies of both sexes outweigh other body types, still there’s everything from slight and tight to droopy and dodgy. Swimsuits? Bikinis fabricated from dental floss. Bronzed beef-cakes strutting like peacocks after the hens, and everyone’s favorite beach victim, the alabaster lobster suffering from the sun that some just can’t seem to let go. A willowy thirtysomething lady saunters by, clad in her string bikini, a cell phone hanging from her hip. Treasure of the Sierra Madres. Oops, wrong country.
Even in this parade of free entertain-ment and armies of entertainers, a few activities inevitably cost extra. The eyes of the parasailing guys go ka-ching as sun-soaked flyers meet up with the birds on a 15-minute high-altitude spin around the bay. These safe, undemanding, infectious rides have the folks of every age paying around $25, and just as the sun never set on the British Empire, the parachute never seemed to set onto the sand. Each person would plop down in practically the same footprints, and the next harnessed-up customer clicked in and the boat powered up again and again.
If you have the money for an all-inclusive, go! Advocating this style of holiday is easy since at times in every breast hedonism rides up front. There’s going to be a ton to do, and with all the food and drink offerings, the kid-in-the-candy-store syndrome will be in command at the beginning. After a few days, sensibilities return, and your indulgences will become more evenhanded. We became part of the scene, more inhabitants than hungry tourists. We drank the water, learned a little Spanish, and played at being free, free, free at last with more of everything than we would ever use up.

IF YOU GO...
Mexico, the Caribbean and Hawaii are filled with all-inclusive vacation options. Nuevo Vallarta is the latest expansion of Puerto Vallarta where a number of three to five star hotels and time-shares fill the beaches, including the well-appointed Allegro Resort (see www.allegroresorts.com). Prices range from $80 - $160 per person per day based on double-occupancy depending on the time of year.
Nuevo Vallarta lies 30 or so minutes from town, around 15 during the wee hours with the right cab driver. A bus costs a dollar, a cab around $18 regardless of speed. You’ll find all the amenities such as a marina, a shopping mall, golf, and a chapel on the beach.
Scuba diving ranges in price from $70 to $100. Shop around in town for the best deal, or head for the time-shares. Parasailing amigos start their prices in the low $30’s but their bottom line seems to be $10 less from where they start, depending on your dickering skill. The official Puerto Vallarta website is www.puertovallarta.net

The Time Share Trap
Beware the hard sell on free gift offers

Forget daisy chain paraflops, I wanted scuba diving. A little shopping around destroyed any illusions about Mexico still coming cheap; $78 was the most reasonable trip. The other option was to go tanned-toe-to-tanned-toe with the Time Share tyrants. Their offices offered gifts for the right to listen to their pitch. I faked interest and took the plunge. Ninety minutes of my time earned scuba diving for two. But the price also included more than I had bargained for.
An icebreaker conversation, lunch, and a tour of the impressive grounds and apartments led to the Closing Room.
“If you like the terms, we have what we call FVI, or First Visit Incentive (compliant with Mexican law as they had already painfully pointed out) meaning you get the one-bedroom suite plus the studio room for US $42,000, then a $329 annual maintenance fee. This assures you one week per year, 50% more fee getting you into your place at Christmas, New Year’s, or Easter.”
I had the stock cheap guy’s response all prepared, and they looked at me as if they were ready for baloney, so I delivered: “I can’t give you a commitment of that size right now. I’m the point guy with my family. I’m supposed to get information and talk about it at dinner. Can I take the numbers with me?”
“We understand, but the answer, I’m afraid, is no, we have to turn them in. I was hoping you could keep them clear in your mind.”
Time for the cheapie retreat and regroup: “No I’m not signing and committing anything this fast.”
Up come the reinforcements: Somehow Manager #1 arrived just on cue. He was debriefed on my unique intellect and amiability.
“So your family is out looking at other time shares, then you’ll compare tonight, that’s it, right?”
Time for a segue or deflection or bigger fib: “Nope, I left them shopping.”
Rebuttal: “That doesn’t seem fair.”
Battle fatigue: “What doesn’t seem fair?”
Shock troops called up: “That you have to be here and they’re off vacationing.”
Back to the bunker mentality: “No big deal.”
Pregnant pause.
Interrogation of the POW: “So your family sent you?”
Name, rank, and serial number: “I sent myself for all of us.”
Good interrogator role: “Do they trust your judgment?”
John Wayne prisoner of war monosyllable response: “Sure.”
Sneaky enemy officer trap springs: “So why wouldn’t they trust you to make this decision?”
Duke punch to the enemy nose: “Because it ain’t gonna happen right here, right now.”
Victory, music up, popcorn bags on the floor. He departed silently. Wait. The second interrogator, bad cop. My pitchman waved Manager #2 over.
“This is Jim, he said there’s six in his family, I don’t know…”
I heard words and phrases like equity, convenience, what’s best for me, prime carrying charges, and on and on until my cranium was out of RAM. He gave way. After a decade or an hour, I was alone, rewarded, scuba laden at last.
No.
Up rose interrogator #3. A woman this time, the ultimate dirty-trick weapon for a single guy, a woman of such beauty and clear of eye that Satan had to have broken the mold, and she took one last crack at capturing the whole battalion. I was Odysseus resisting the Siren’s offensive, with the single-minded focus of the scuba prize battling her allures.
When she finally surrendered, I fled unescorted to the in-house travel agency who booked the scuba for the next day. Odysseus survived the voyage, except in our own little Greek tragedy, the underwater view during the dive was reduced to a few yards from rain and cloud. Who said Homer didn’t like mockery?