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Trip Reviews, Ratings and Comments - Trip Review - Club Oasis Akumal 14
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OUR AKUMAL ADVENTURE, PART 14
Sunday, 7/2/00, Day “15” cont. and Monday, 7/3/00
As we sat on the plane, some stragglers arrived. We thought we would still be able to leave on time. Wrong. It was announced that a family of eight had been booked on the two different flights returning home (remember the second flight being scheduled when we left DFW?). They all wanted to travel together on the other flight. However, the ones originally seated on our flight had already had their baggage loaded on the plane. FAA regulations prohibit unaccompanied luggage, so we got to sit and wait while some poor baggage handler waded through all the baggage in the cargo hold to find and remove these people’s luggage. One person on the plane came up with an amusing solution; let the rest of us get out and claim our luggage, and toss anything left onto the tarmac!
The luggage was finally retrieved and we pushed back at 8:24 p.m., taking off at 8:32:35. Yes, I looked. We saw the hotel strip as we gained altitude. It looked very bright and busy.
The “snack” this time was really cheap. We were each thrown ONE 1/2-ounce package of pretzels, which we nevertheless devoured greedily. (While I did have some emergency crackers in my carry-on, Steve had put it in the overhead, and I didn’t bother to retrieve it.) I spent an uncomfortable flight between Steve and another big fellow, mostly dozing and chilled.
The pilot made up the lost time in the air. (At this point, I must say that the pilots of both planes were very good.) We landed at DFW about 10:35 and taxied to the gate. Well, almost to the gate. We ended up having to wait for another plane to clear the gate before we could finally deplane.
It was a short walk to immigration, which went relatively quickly. Our baggage finally spewed onto the carousel. For a moment, I thought we had gotten rid of the Battan March at DFW, but, no, we had a long trek with our baggage to customs. We breezed through and found a courtesy phone to call the Hyatt for the shuttle. We made our way downstairs and waited for quite some time for the Hyatt shuttle. When it finally arrived, and several of us boarded, the non-native-English-speaking driver asked who had called for the shuttle. We all raised our hands. Then he asked all our names. What does it matter, fool?! Get us to the hotel! He mangled all the names reporting to the dispatcher.
We arrived at the hotel about midnight, tired and thirsty. Hunger was an afterthought. There was only one woman, another non-native-English speaker, to check some 20 people in. Oh, there was another person, but she was a trainee! We got our keycards and went up to our assigned room, 2214, clear at the end of the hall from the elevators. I inserted one of the keycards and...drum roll...it didn’t work. The other didn’t either.
Steve stormed back down to the desk and soon returned with another card. That one didn’t work either. (If any of you have ever read our Aruba trip report at www.visitaruba.com/guestarea/tripreports/trip010.html, you will notice a similarity between these events and our arrival at the Tamarijn in Aruba.) I asked Steve if he wanted to go down or should I. By this time, heads were about to roll. Steve went. I sat on the floor by the door, and...
The door opened from the inside! The room was already occupied! The gentleman looked at me, I looked at him. I explained that we had been assigned this room and apologized profusely, although it was not our fault. I grabbed up our stuff and scurried back down to the desk, hoping that Steve wasn’t coming up the elevator while I was going down. No, he was still at the desk, but there was no blood yet. I walked up and announced that the room was occupied. A fellow (another non-native-etc.) started to help us. Now, the poor S.O.B. in the room had already been awakened by us trying to get in. The desk clerk now woke him again with a phone call to find out who he was!
Mr. Roth, wherever you are, I’m dreadfully sorry you had such a disturbing night...
We finally get another room, 2234, and were relieved we could actually get into it. However, there was no ice bucket. I called guest services and asked for one; they said it would be up shortly. Meanwhile, I took the glasses to the ice machine so we could at least have a drink while waiting. After about 15 minutes of no ice bucket, Steve called. Not only had the gal been very busy, she was showing the room as unoccupied! A little Latino gal delivered the ice bucket, with ice, within 5 minutes.
We sat there with our drinks, and Steve started muttering that he didn’t care if there were beds, he’d sleep on the floor, but he wanted his damn ice bucket. Well, this set us off. We were exhausted, pissed off, and laughing hysterically at 1:30 in the morning. Laughing got me to coughing again, but I couldn’t stop giggling.
We wilted into bed around 2 a.m.
Monday, I got up early and had the first really hot shower I had had in 2 weeks. It felt wonderful. Steve showered, and we went for breakfast. We got checked out and started for home at 9:10. Since it was a nice, sunny day, we arrived home in about 4-1/2 hours, tossed the stuff out of the SUV, and zoomed off to town to get the “kids” out of hock from the vet’s.
The next day, we discovered our 21-year-old water heater had sprung a leak, but that’s another story...
Submitted by: D. Stevens -- dragon5@fullnet.net
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