Jamaican Vacation
0 Comments | Roanoke Times & World News, Jan 24, 2010 | by Beth Macy
We are so not the kind of people who charge all-inclusive resort trips to Jamaica on their home equity lines in the middle of a recession. Really, we’re not.
We’ve never in our Midwestern-bred lives worn a gold lame thong.
No, our family vacations typically involve loading our two boys and the dog into the station wagon for a state park camping trip in the Appalachian Mountains, where our teenager groans incessantly about his inability to text.
When we announced a few years ago that we would be driving the 17 hours from our home in Roanoke to Quebec City to stay in a condo we found on the Internet for a steal — and staying with relatives along the way — the teenager was equally annoyed. The preteen reminds us regularly that we haven’t taken them to Disney, as if it’s a constitutional right.
But in August, we temporarily uprooted the family to move to Cambridge, Mass., for a 10-month-long journalism fellowship, and everything changed. The boys were friendless, bored and already anxious about the effects of a Massachusetts winter on their wimpy Southern bones.
“The only person this move is good for is you,” the teenager fumed.
Our next vacation, we vowed, would be all about the kids. For once in our cheap lives, we would spare no expense.
Respect, mon, as they say in Jamaica. We spent two nights on the Internet plotting our guilt vacation.
Even my teacher-husband, normally so frugal that he tears Bounce dryer sheets in half to make them last longer, was all for suspending budgetary belief. We would forget the flimsy 529 college funds, and pretend that it was all just Monopoly money.
So our recent six-day visit to reggaeland lacked for nothing — except for the real Jamaica that Bob Marley sang so soulfully about. From the moment we landed at the Montego Bay airport, the trip was designed to be the perfect luxury getaway, with all meals, drinks and watersports included in the price tag. The preteen had his first of several dozen virgin pina coladas at the airport lounge.
“Why not, it’s ‘free’!” we boasted, our air-quote mantra of the week.
We were in Jamaica, beautiful Jamaica, with its Windex-blue water and perfect breeze; with lounge chairs under palm-thatched cabanas as far as the eye could see. Never mind that it in no way resembled the Jamaica we saw during the 90-minute shuttle to our resort, Beaches Sandy Bay, part of a Caribbean-based chain that includes the Sandals resorts — and proud purveyor of the world’s first swim- up pool bar.
Instead of the grazing goats and fruit-stand huts we passed en route on the torn-up two-lane thoroughfare, we would be treated to the American version of Jamaica, a high-end Myrtle Beach in the Caribbean.
Beaches isn’t exactly a gated resort, we soon learned. But the hyper-polite security guards wouldn’t let us leave the grounds for a beach stroll without writing our names and room number down, warning us not to go too far.
During the day, we snorkeled and windsurfed, read books and debated the age-old question: Just because the bar is open, should you really have your first free drink of the day before noon?
We marveled at septuagenarians in thongs and Speedo-clad Italians and, when folks from the nearby Hedonism resort took their walks along the beach, people clad in nothing at all, an affront the security guards were powerless to stop.
Talk about “family entertainment” the teenager could get behind. One of the staffers confided to us, “I wouldn’t mind working at Hedonism for six months.”
We listened to live reggae every night, set against natural background music that sounded exactly like spring peeper frogs in Virginia. When I asked an employee about it, he looked insulted
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