There and Back Again

Disposition: Tired
Reading: Sparrow Nights
Pondering: Rain hangs about the place, like a friendly ghost. If it’s not coming down in delicate droplets, then it’s in buckets; and if neither, it tends to lurk suspiciously in the atmosphere. (Barbara Acton-Bond)

I woke up this morning confident that the sun will be out and life at Playa del Carmen will resume the way I want it to resume. Sis and I will go back to Shangri-la Caribe and they will offer us new accomodations after they apologize to us for any inconvenience the displacement has caused us. Besides, I can’t blame them for the bad weather though I blame them for the poor set-up of the resort and for the lack of warning and assistance they provided us the night before.

After a poor-tasting breakfast at Club Banana’s dining room, my sister and I spent miserable hours watching grey clouds slowly move to reveal a bit of bright skies only to be replaced again by another patch of grey clouds. We did this as we wait for Shangri-la to send us the shuttle they promised would pick us up this morning and take us back to our rooms and the baggages we left behind. When the waiting extended to 3 hours without any explanation whatsoever, I knew then that Shangri-la Caribe was crap and it has the worst kind of attitude towards their customers.

By far, this was the most frustrating and disheartening part of the ordeal — Shangri-la’s lack of direction and support for us, the inconvenienced guests. If only they showed a little effort that they wanted us to stay, that they were trying hard to make it up to us despite the unpredictable weather, we would have stayed. We would have given them another chance. But when we got there and saw no urgency, got no apologies and were told to wait a little longer, my sister and I decided to take our bags and leave Playa del Carmen for good. We hired a taxi and checked-in to one of the hotels in Cancun’s hotel zone. We figured, if we were going to be miserable with the rain for the remainder of our vacation, we can be miserable somewhere where it was dry, highrise and with TV and room service to keep us comforted.

We checked-in at the Camino Real Cancun hotel and got a room with an awesome view of the ocean and the cloudy skies. On TV was the European Cup in Portugal featuring England vs. France. We ordered room service and retired while switching the TV channels between the NBA play-offs and La Academia (Camino A La Fama), a Mexican reality TV show that’s a combination of American Idol and Real World.

Before I turned off the TV to sleep, I caught Kobe Bryant miss another jumper and another replay of David Beckham’s assist to goal. Then I said a little prayer for the sun…