The Best Things in Life are Free

Like any normal person, I try to avoid talking to people in airports. You have to observe the movie theatre maxim of at least one buffer seat between you and the next person, always. But, this particular 9-year old boy was having none of it. We were awaiting our flight to Cancun and the polite young man was alternating between scolding his younger siblings for blocking the aisles and engaging me about our respective vacations.

First he asked where we were going. He didn't actually give a toss, but having been raised right, he knew he should ask me first before quickly interrupting to tell me where they were going, which he was clearly confident would best my answer. He could not contain his smug satisfaction as he informed me that they would be staying at the Nikelodean Resort.

Well played.

We did not get to go here

Still, I intended to hold my own in this contest. While he was taking a selfie with Spongebob Squarepants (moments after descending the Ninja Turtle waterslide), I would be ripping tequila shots with a couple of dudes from Dallas at a swim up bar.*

Top that little man!

*"swim up" is a bit of a misnomer as it turns out. It's only 4' deep in these pools. More of a wade up situation. Not a lot of swimming going on in these places.

The Mayan Riviera of Mexico (the coastline south of Cancun) is the epi-center of the "all inclusive" resort vacation. As the name implies, you pay for everything up front, and then everything is included aka free: the giant buffets, the top-shelf booze, the beer, and the white tablecloth restaurants. Free, free, free. Some people might choose to interpret this situation with a sunk-cost economic principle and therefore practice their usual moderation in all things. Some people. Not us people. Cause... well, it's free.

"But wait" you say, "Tom, I thought you and Lori were vaguely snobby travelers... culture assimilators (not appropriators)? You're all about walking tours, learning about strange customs, standing in long lines for museums and generally being liberal apologists."

Well that's exactly right, we are, but… you know, sometimes you have to slow your ramble and just relax a little. I mean strenuously relax, while eating and drinking about 12,000 calories per day. Because, say it with me now, it's free.

More Cowbell

The two resorts we would be visiting were restricted to adults only, meaning you had to be at least 21 years of age, with a mental age of no more than 15.

Still, one must be careful what one wishes for. If I was hoping that adults-only meant less noisy and fewer rugrats underfoot, I was in for a surprise at the first resort—the party resort. Our first day, we found ourselves around the pool while the resort's party maker staff tried to whip up some enthusiasm from the still hungover vacationers. The warmup was water aerobics. To get us in the mood, they cranked the music up to 11. Or it would have been music if there had been any musical notes involved. This was some sort of pulsing electro death synth that would only ever make sense to your brain if you found yourself in a Berlin nightclub, at 3AM on your ninth Red Bull & vodka. Plus, a heroic dose of meth. My lounger was rattling on the pool deck.

Midday on a Monday, just two days after a wedding where (it was reported at least) I had been energetically dancing (which can mean only one thing...), I had more of a Bob Marley hammock vibe in mind. But there was no escape. The only course left to me was to gulp a triple margarita (light on the lime and triple sec) and submerge myself in the pool until unconsciousness took me.

Mercifully, the aerobics ended just as I was being revived. We moved onto pool games. Despite assiduously attempting to avoid the circulating merry pranksters with the same determination that you would dodge a mime at a Paris street show—we got recruited back into the pool for the first game. In my defense, these gals are quite a bit cuter, and therefore more persuasive, than mimes. Anyway, they split us into two teams, ladies vs. gentlemen. Each person would be blindly served a shot glass that had either tequila or water in it and you had to throw it back, sight unseen. The opposing team then had to venture their guess as to which liquid it was based on the swallow reaction. Kind of fun because you can bluff that it made you gag if it was water or pretend it went down smoothly if it was tequila, or not. Each couple was trying to use their built-in bullshit detectors against their partners.

And it super doesn't matter who actually won, because it was all just good fun.

The guys won. Our reward was sluping chocolate syrup off our partners' bodies. There are simply no rules in Mexico. Hedonism and anarchy reign! Then we took a nap.

The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo

The Industry Pitch

The travel industry usually tries to lure us to the tropics with images of deserted beaches, infinity pools, and other serene "get away from it all imagery." But people pretty much go there with one daytime activity in mind— to party like the rock stars they know they are.

American males in particular have a pretty straightforward agenda: stand in water up to where their Bermuda board shorts meet their rounding bellies, tequila shot in one hand, beer in the other, probably a ball-cap with funny caption on the front like "I (heart) boobies" and share what the tatoo on their calf signifies with a new bikini-clad friend. The bikini-clad friend will undoubtably be fascinated to learn that he got the overlarge calf-dragon ink during a pretty tough time in his life. You see his truck had blown a piston or a gasket or something, lots of smoke at any rate, and his dog came home smelling of skunk (all in the same week), and anyway...

The bikini has ducked out to the bar get more annestized by a fifth mudslide.

By 4PM the pool party has moved to the giant hot tub. Everyone is cheek to jowl and the bartenders' arms are moving at a dizzying speed delivering cervezas, pina coladas and margaritas aplenty to the crowd. At night, there is a theme where people eagerly dress in costumes to go to the disco (a double-whammy worst nightmare for me: costumes + dancing). Luckily, we were long in bed by this point anyway, having put in very hard days at both buffet and bar.

To recuperate from all that fun, we moved on to the romantic resort which is more the province of honeymoons, anniversaries, and girls' getaway trips. No one talks to anyone they didn't arrive on a plane with. Which is fine, because there is just as much (free) eating and drinking, and I generally don't like people that much anyway. Nor do I have any tattoos to fall back on when the conversations stalls. So it's a better fit all the way around.

The food was amazing in both places. I mean not just pretty good, but great. The breakfast and lunch buffets were mazes of culinary delights being tended to by a small army of dedicated staff. The white tablecloth places for dinner were uniformly impressive and compel you to sample each of the five offered courses. It's easy to gain some weight on these trips.

Thankfully, I have the self discipline of a starving hyena; so it’s not a problem for me. In one fairly typical session, I put away the following: a large salad with bread roll, a bowl of creamy soup, a plate of seared tuna, a chicken alftredo pasta, a Cuban sandwich, two beers, and an ice cream sundae. That was lunch. Dinner is a bit more elaborate. Lori can be a bit impulsive as well. One morning, I peered over my mounded plate of eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, cheese, and potatoes (plus 2 slices of fruit as I'm kind of a health nut) to see that her first course contained a football-sized omelet—plus a chocolate glazed donut.

Breakfast of Champions

It bears mention that the staff in both resorts were unfailingly friendly, warm and professional toward us. This was true in spite of the fact that at least one American thinks that major bodies of water should be named for whoever has the biggest military and/or the smallest dick.

Each day was the same at the quiet resort. Nespresso on the balcony. Big breakfast. Beach or pool lounge with waiters bringing us drinks. Huge lunch. More lounge. Two paragraphs of my book before ZZZZZZ. Showers. Cocktails on the balcony (they stock the room with booze and mixer). Ginormous dinner. Bed.

And each day, it felt like brain, kidney, liver and some other lesser organs were unionizing for a strike. Not this time they would say. No Más. We demand concessions. We demand a fighting chance. But then, a new day would dawn and the strike would be broken by thugs swinging tequila bottles.

This pattern could probably go on semi-indefinitely at which point you might try to write a hit country song about it, or not. Luckily, while everything in Mexico is free, apparently it's only free for so many days, at which point they want more money. Thus rescued, we were carried home on our shields.

Re-hab is underway. But the damn scale appears to be broken again.