Paul - March, 2011

I would have to say that this was one of the best trips in recent memory. The resort was full, there was great representation of younger people, and the food was good. The bars had a full stock of liquor. Anna is pretty much full time in the nude beach bar and she is a delightful person who is truly guest centered. I met with Kevin Levee on Saturday, March 26 for about 20 minutes. As a posting on the message board said you can never be sure if the person that you're speaking with is being totally honest. I think that in this case it isn't productive to doubt what the person you're speaking to is saying. Having gotten to know Kevin a little bit more in the 20 minutes I have to say that I was comfortable. Time will tell. Based on our conversation Kevin indicated that the bridge will start early this month. The fans are anticipated to be installed in June. I'm sure that those of you were going to be there during the summer will welcome them if they're done on time.

 

In any case I'll get on to the trip report. As I said up above this was one of the best trips I've had in many years. We were in H block about midway between the nude beach nude oceanview rooms and the tennis court side of H block, 2245. We are usually in the Library, but without our crowd of friends the  library is rather boring so we moved down the beach a bit to the vicinity of the Massage shack. We actually made a few visits to the new pool complex. We always gone to the bar and once or twice we've been on the barstool in the water but it was rare that I was in the nude pool and I had never been in either the pool with the jets in it or the misting pool.  For the first time in years I went down to the hot tub quite a bit. The former prude beach is now clothing optional and we spent an afternoon down there. At one point we walked all the way up to the Sandals fence naked. I would have to say that the bulk of the people there were either fully dressed or topless, but they were probably 6 to 10 nude people as well.

 

The less good. I purposely have called this less good because I don't think anything really was bad at the resort. For those of you who use the wooden float on the nude beach its’ out for repairs, although it will probably be there by next week. The air conditioner in our room was actually too cold and we played a sort of ping-pong game of turning the air conditioner on or turning it off and opening the window. Hot water was in abundance. The food will always be an issue, but I would have to say that it was fairly good during this visit. We went to Munasan once and Martino's twice. Munasan was OK and Martino's was quite good. We really didn't have a bad meal at the buffet either. I was doing my best to stay away from the dessert table but I used the ice cream machine whole lot.

 

The piano bar was, well, the piano bar. There was a young man by the name of Daniel who stripped down and was singing from the top of the piano. Dion called a woman up to the piano and asked her if she could give Daniel an erection without using her hands. Unfortunately the woman's husband was not very pleased about that whole thing and it became an issue but it seemed by the next day all was well. Another event which I think was over the top was when he called up three young men who are were at Hedo on a night pass. I believe that they were conservative Jews in their middle 20s. They had no clue what he was going to ask them to do and I think they were very embarrassed when he asked them to strip, but two of them did so. I really don't think they were comfortable and many of us in the audience were not comfortable. I will say that Dion asked them their names, which turned out to be Abraham, Israel, and David. He seemed to think that was funny. I think that shows that essentially cause a person to be embarrassed are in poor taste. If these twentysomething-year-olds were typical American men of the same age I wouldn’t have minded, but you could tell they were very uncomfortable.

 

We went on the catamaran trip on Tuesday morning (reef/caves). We nearly had a problem when a couple on their seventies wandered about a half a mile away from the boat. The crew was not aware of them until some of the passengers indicated they had not returned. They eventually were picked up, but the wife said she had begun to panic.

 

There was one thing that I found disturbing on the beach. On the tree just before the walkway that goes between room 2125 and 2126 someone had put up a very professionally done sign saying gawkers should turn right.  I would've been all for that sign except the sign poster decided that he was going to rip down the signs for the Hedo library. If that is somebody on this board who did that they owe the people at the library an apology. One side of thing wanted to take their sign down but all that would do is to show them that I'm just as bad as they are if you are on this board shame on you.

 

One big time problem was the Wi-Fi. If you were in H-Block you had virtually one or two bars out of five. Downloading one of the threads could take well over a minute. I would recommend that you immediately try Wi-Fi out in your room and if the reception is poor either cancel or get an Ethernet cable. We had brought our own cable, but the jack in the room was not live.

 

There were several groups there at the time. The Hedo Amigos were a very large group. When they came on property the main pool by the dining room became a clothing optional pool, as it has before. I actually used it after lunch on several days.

 

It was enjoyable to have a different kind of vacation as my friends weren't there. My significant other and I actually had a very good time. This was her third time and her best one!

Paul