The Vacation from Hell Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale; a tale of a fateful trip . . . . Our family had been researching an island vacation well over a year before our ill-fated adventure began. Our last family vacation was three years prior to Disney World. While we enjoyed it immensely, we decided that we needed a less busy and stressful vacation. I had gone back to school in the spring and neither of us was happy in our jobs. In short, we felt very stressed out and busier than usual and needed a vacation where we could just laze about the beach for a week. Our goal was simple: To find a small island resort that could provide us with first-class accommodations right on the beach where all three of us could relax and have a stress-free good time. It would have to have some activities for Greg, who was thirteen, but not a typical all-inclusive resort that would be mobbed with obnoxious tourists. It would also have to be close enough so that we did not have to spend more than one day getting there. After scouring ten vacation guidebooks, countless brochures and web sites, we thought that we had found the ideal spot for us at Fernandez Bay Village, located on Cat Island in the Bahamas. It is a small 45-mile long 1-mile wide island off the cruise ship path in the Bahamas. The family-owned resort is on the calmer Caribbean side of the island in its own bay with only a handful of cottages. There is much more to tell, but I won’t bother with all of the details. You can see their web site (www.fernandezbayvillage.com) if you want to get their information. But beware that the site is slow to load and the pictures and information can be misleading (or at least open to misinterpretation from our mind set.) THE PLANS But the fun began long before we arrived. Arranging our vacation was so difficult that we almost didn’t go at all. Since we were not up to taking the resort’s little 5-seater plane out of Nassau (which is what we should have done), we had to book the resort and our flights separately. The only other way to get there (at the time) is to fly from Chicago to Ft. Lauderdale and from there take Air Sunshine to Cat Island. We booked everything through our employer’s travel agency in March. We were scheduled to leave Chicago on Wednesday the 14th and return on Thursday the 22nd, managing to find connecting flights both days. Our first signs of trouble started one month before our departure date. Air Sunshine called our agent to inform us that they had canceled our outbound flight. They gave no explanation as to why, but were told we had one day to decide whether to move our departure up or back one day, or cancel altogether. When our agent expressed concern in that this would mangle the whole travel itinerary with our non-refundable domestic flights, she was told, "We don’t have to notify you at all until the day before departure." Kathy, my beautiful lover and spouse, began to be concerned. If this was the way they ran their business, could we trust our vacation to them? After much debate and planning, we decided that the best (and least expensive) alternative would be to keep our current domestic flight to Ft. Lauderdale and stay overnight to catch the Thursday flight with Air Sunshine. We hoped that this would be the last bit of major planning we would need to do and could start planning what to take with us. We bought our own snorkel gear and spent many hours (and dollars) finding swimsuits and began to get excited about the trip. Just two days before our departure, I am trying to clean up last minute loose ends at work and I call to confirm our flights. I shake with disbelief as the representative tells me that we are NOT booked on the Thursday flight, but on the Tuesday flight. Plus, she notices that we are booked for return on Thursday. She claims is impossible for us to be booked on Thursday return since they "never fly on Thursday." I can’t believe my ears. I struggle with myself to keep from panicking. I can barely think straight. Practically the only thing keeping me from loosing my mind for half a year was the thought of this vacation and it was suddenly slipping away. I spend the rest of the morning with our agent, Air Sunshine and Fernandez Bay trying to work out a solution. There is still space on the Thursday outbound flight and we have the fax with those dates on it, so they can’t charge us a flight change fee. However, the return flight really screws us up. Again, the cheapest way around it is to spend an extra night in Ft. Lauderdale on Friday and Air Sunshine agrees to pay the $75 per ticket fee with United to change our flights and the extra day at the resort. But I don’t know what to do. By the time I call home to Kathy (who has taken the day off to prepare), I am hysterical. She begs me to come home to talk it over and I agree. Frankly I don’t know how I managed to get home, as I don’t remember the drive at all. All I remember is shaking and trying desperately to maintain my grip on reality as I steered towards home. (Let me assure the reader at this point that I am not prone to this type of behavior. But the compounding stress of many life factors cumulating in this last minute sabotage of my dream vacation was too much for me.) I love my family. And true to form, they were hard at work trying to find a solution. Kathy was calling other agencies and cruise lines trying to see what else we could do if we had to cancel, still using our United tickets to Ft. Lauderdale. Greg had out his atlas, looking for other possible destinations. They took over when I could bear it no more. Aren’t they wonderful?! Well, the phone calls, planning and replanning went on all day. In the end, we had to decide whether to amend the plans as previously mentioned or scrap the whole thing. Kathy and I talked a long time, and it came down to one basic question: Do we really want to go? Kathy said that she didn’t care at this point and was leaning more towards not going and trying to salvage something else out of it. Greg still wanted to go. Then in my response to the same question from her, I used the same words that she spoke to me when I asked her if she really wanted to get a kitty: "More than anything." I was nervous about it due to all of the crap that had happened so far, but I knew that I would be absolutely miserable if we didn’t get to go. So Kathy agreed, strictly out of love for me. What a woman. May I never abuse our relationship in such a way again. DAY ONE – FT. LAUDERDALE After the first day, we begin to relax as everything is going smoothly. Our plane was on time, the hotel in Ft. Lauderdale was very nice, and we were having a fine time. The only minor complaint would be the sounds of a female lounge singer crucifying Beatles songs on a cruise ship anchored in the Marina across from our room. Fortunately, the ship left port before she got to the White Album. It seemed that our vacation was now going to roll along pleasantly.
DAY TWO -- AIR SUNSHINE The next day, we feel our good fortune continuing as we hit the 40-pound per person luggage limit on the nose. But our feelings began to turn as Kathy found out that there was not bathroom on the plane: it’s too small. Kathy, who is not exactly comfortable with the whole small plane concept, begins to get nervous. We collect our tickets and I spend 20 minutes in line at Au Bon Pain trying to get a sandwich. There’s no fresh bread, no change and the register is broken. Since Kathy is on the lookout for omens, now I am getting a little worried. Back at the gate, neither of us is seriously concerned until we hear a voice from behind the check in desk: "Hey man, the guy’s here!" This, we discover, means that our plane has arrived. Kathy and I exchange looks as if to say, "Oh my god!" When they open the gate (which is just a door leading to the outside since we have to walk to our plane – a new experience for Kathy & Greg), we see a member of the crew pushing on the side of the plane with both of his hands. Kathy, to this day, swears that they were gluing on a piece of the plane. I believe, however, that they were trying to shut the door after cramming all of the luggage on board. The plane is admittedly smaller than any of us expected. It is MUCH smaller than Kathy expected and gives me numerous anxious looks. Not only is it small (12 passengers), but it is old. I mean World War II old. There’s a net across the back holding the luggage in the rear of the plane, and it’s packed. The seats are well worn to the point where I can see at least three seat covers on the copilot’s seat worn through each other. The instruments are marked with those little hand-held label makers. Our "refreshments" consist of a cooler of generic pop and a tin of stale cookies. Two of the other passengers turn out to be regulars, and believe that it’s the same tin from numerous flights, perhaps as old as three months. It’s unbearably hot because they can’t turn the air on until we’ve taken off. But they assure us the it will cool off once we take off and we taxi to the runway. The only problem with that is that once we get to the runway, we get a flat tire. Yes, I said a "flat tire." They pass on this information to us as if it were no big deal and that it will be a few minutes for the crew to make the repairs. So we get off the plane in the middle of the runway and wait. The "technical crew" looks more like a bunch of Jiffy Lube rejects that clearly don’t know how to change a tire on this plane. At one point, all that we can see happening is the technical crew, the pilot and the copilot just looking at the tire. (They haven’t bothered to inform us at this point that they are waiting for a larger jack to lift the plane.) Fortunately, the airport personal had their act together and immediately ordered a shuttle bus for us so that we could wait in air conditioning. Once it became apparent that it would be more than "a few minutes," I had to ask the airport crew leader to take us back to the gate so that we could use the restroom. Sure enough, the plane was ready after were at the gate less than five minutes. We board, and the rest of the flight is painless.
CAT ISLAND As we finally land on Cat Island, we note that the "airport" is small: a converted house trailer. The pilots tell us to get off the plane and go through customs; so we do that. But the customs official is miffed because we are supposed to get our bags first and THEN go through customs. At this point, the pilot (looking very suave in his mirrored sunglasses, mustache and shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest) yells to us to come back and get our luggage. Silly us, we thought there would be some airline or airport staff to pull the bags off the plane. By the time we get back, the customs official is chewing out the pilot because this is not the first time that the pilot has screwed up the process. The pilot could obviously care less and walks out. Welcome to the Bahamas! Of course, since our plane is late, our ride to the resort is not there. The whole idea of going to an all-inclusive resort was that we would not have to bring any money, so I had no native currency to call them. My phone card, also does not work. At the time, I blame this on the phone and my lack of understanding on how to use it. Fortunately, one of the airport staff informs us that the resort is arranging for transportation and should be along shortly. Later, we try to use the calling card from the resort to let Greg’s father know that we arrived safely (though not necessarily soundly). The card does not work internationally, even though the parent company, Sprint, says that it should work. Over the next few days, we spend a fortune on a Bahamas phone card and collect calls.
FERNANDEZ BAY VILLAGE A van does arrive 15 minutes later and takes us on the blissfully short 1-mile trip to Fernandez Bay. The concierge greets us with a smile and all of our worries seem to be over. It was stunning. The sun shone gently off the clear, turquoise waters of the bay. The beach consists of fine, white sand that descends ever so gently into the ocean. The water is not only crystal clear, but the perfect bathing temperature as well. Our cottage, as promised, is literally a few steps from the water’s edge; including our own hammock, patio, family room, kitchen and two bedrooms. I wrap my arms around Kathy and nearly weep for joy. We go for a swim before dinner and it seems that everything is perfect and going to work out after all. Oh, if only it were so! Our brief vision of paradise is put into question with dinner that night. The brochure promises "buffet style" dinner at 7:30, so were are anticipating that we should all be able to find something edible. Bear in mind that our family usually eats much earlier. We arrive before serving time and find that we have to wait until 7:45 pm until the one plate of fried grouper hors d’oeurves are served by a less than enthusiastic local staff. Kathy doesn’t eat grouper. Though I am not crazy about seafood, I have a go and am unimpressed. The "buffet" for this evening consists of rice, bread, green salad with dressing, conch chowder and cold lamb. That’s it. Now we weren’t expecting The Old Country Buffet, but we were expecting a few more selections. We force down what we can, but Kathy and Greg pretty much go hungry for lack of edible food. Dessert of pineapple cake is only served after all diners complete their meal. You might share a little more in our indignation, perhaps, when I tell you that dinner costs $32 per person. (I freely admit that we have no idea whether that is in scale with the rest of the islands, so maybe it's a relatively reasonable price.)
THE COTTAGE So we head back to our cottage with hopes that tomorrow night, when more guests are sure to arrive, all will be better. Upon our arrival that day, the villa had been opened up and aired out for us. However, nobody warned us that we should keep the doors closed before it gets dark. You see, Fernandez Bay boasts "open air baths" with their accommodations. It’s a lovely concept. One imagines showering under the clear blue sky, or perhaps even under the stars. The image does not include the wildlife attracted to your cabin and finding easy entrance via the open-air bath. With the doors to our bathrooms open, we arrived to find several additional "guests." There were several spiders in both rooms, which Kathy and Greg both detest. Kathy and I had a frog in our shower. Greg had rather large crab in his, which I was forced to trap with a wastebasket and remove to the beach. But the most unpleasant visitors are the "money bats." They are called money bats because the legend is that if one lands on you, you will soon come into money. They were not actually bats, nor did they bring us a financial boon. But they were giant, brown/black, ugly MOTHS that were just as big as bats. And they were everywhere. I spent a good hour chasing moths out of each bedroom. We do not usually sleep in the pitch dark, but we were forced to here. Because any light at all attracted the moths. And since they were so huge, you could hear their ugly bodies slamming into the screens and walls trying to get to the light source. Not that we could have slept anyway on mattresses that were extremely hard, covered with old, rough sheets. Combined with the pounding of the surf on the beach and the moths on the windows, none of us could coax our exhausted bodies into any decent form of sleep that night.
DAY THREE Greg and I like a big breakfast. There was dry cereal, yogurt and fruit included in the price, but you could also order more fulfilling nourishment from a small menu. As such, breakfast was much more enjoyable than dinner, though still ridiculously expensive at $10-12 per entrée. In light of the food fiasco the night before, we decided that we had better lay in some food from the village "store." Fernandez Bay boasts that all cottages have fully equipped kitchens for those who would like to prepare their own meals. While we were on vacation, they only food that we would be preparing would be snacks. But we assumed that there would be sufficient supplies to make a meal if necessary. There was precious little at the village "store," so we requested that our hosts take us "into town" for groceries. Well the grocery store was little more than a shabby 7-11, but without the good food selection. I don’t know how any guest could prepare their own meals unless they wanted to fly to the middle of an island paradise to boil their own hot dogs or make macaroni and cheese, because that was about the extent of the menu choices. We shook our heads and grabbed snacks for the week, not really wishing to repeat the trip. It was not until we got back that we realized that most of the food (though prepackaged) was past their respective expiration dates. Then the maid service arrived. We were sufficiently embarrassed that the maid had to inform Kathy that the reason there was a bucket of water on the patio was so that the guests could wash the sand off of their feet before tracking it all over the cabin. I thought it was to attract mosquitoes away from the rooms! Whoops. It was not until they left that we found the toilet paper had not been restocked, nor was their any Kleenex to be found. Aside from giving myself a nasty scar on my foot by dragging a lounge chair across it, the rest of the day was pretty nice. We spent most of the day swimming and snorkeling. Greg even got to go inner tubing with the owner’s kids towards the end of the day. The weather was beautiful, the water was warm and clear and it seemed like just maybe things were going to work out. Nope. Not a chance. By late afternoon, we see that despite numerous warnings and motherly advice, Greg has a nasty sunburn on the back of his legs. Once out of the water, it is painful for him to walk. So we pack in the snorkel gear for the day and shower up for dinner. Of course, it’s only around 6 o’clock, so we munch on stale snacks to keep from starving before dinner is served. While gnawing though our old Little Debbie snack cakes, we see that more guests have arrived. Or rather, we can hear them. There are five beer-bellied good-ol’ boys standing in the water up to their inflated guts, yelling stupid jokes at each other and laughing so that their drunken guffaws carry up and down the mile-long beach. It is at this point that the truth finally sinks in: We’re camping. We are NOT camp people. We are spoiled Americans who want it all brought to us via room service. This is what we thought we were going to get. Maybe we read too much into the brochure and web site information. Instead, our dream vacation to an island paradise is nothing but an ill-fated misadventure to some shabby campground lake resort, complete with obnoxious, beer-guzzling hicks. We arrive for dinner at 7:30, but appetizers are not ever seen until 9 o’clock. Kathy has given up and returned to our cabin to feast on corn flakes, but insists that Greg and I should stay. We are too hungry for cereal, so we wait it out. The food, this time, contained an edible chicken dish, but the "buffet" included the same salad and bread as the previous evening. That night, there were no moths since we had prepared for them, but there were two frogs in our bathroom. (I couldn’t bring myself to tell Kathy that one of them was in the toilet.) This time there’s a crab in Greg’s bedroom, circling his bed. Sunburned and scared, he sleeps with us. The beds are barely big enough for two, let alone two adults and a sunburned child. We try to give Greg space so that we don’t scratch his sunburn. I, in fact, end up with one foot on the floor as if I were in some 60’s TV sitcom. Sleep was made even more difficult as we could hear our drunken neighbors returning from their revelry at all hours.
DAY FOUR We are miserable. We are more stressed out from our "relaxing, stress free island vacation" than we were when we left. Then fate provides another turn to end our miserable vacation, though the reason is not one we would have wished for: We have a family emergency back in the States and must return home. They are very kind and make every effort to help us return nearly a week early. We spend nearly the entire day trying to make the necessary arrangements. Air Sunshine does not fly out again until Monday, but a new service, Lynx Air, flies out on Sunday. So we cancel the Air Sunshine flight (an event we were all glad to miss) and book a flight on Lynx for the next day. Then we can’t get a flight out of Ft. Lauderdale until Monday, so we book a room in the same hotel for Sunday night. Or rather, we try to cancel the Air Sunshine flight. The airline representative can’t seem to understand the concept at all. I have to explain it at least five times before I can get her to understand that we want to cancel, not reschedule. Even then, I hang up unsure of whether or not it will work out right. What was left of the day was spent in a bit of a funk. With his sunburn, Greg was through swimming…possibly forever, so he spent the day in his room. Kathy swam for a bit, but really didn’t feel much like it. I was determined to get some more snorkeling in before our departure and spent some time in the bay, trying to salvage something from what was left of our stay. Dinner was the same, except there was one dish that we could all stomach. We were, once again, kept awake by drunks, though not quite as late since they apparently hadn’t paced themselves for the weekend.
DAY FIVE At last, we begin our voyage home. But even this is not simple. The concierge has made the flight arrangements with Lynx and has offered to go with us to the airport to see that all goes well. Lula, from Lynx, tells her that the flight is at 2pm. All of the literature says it is at 3pm, but we go early just in case. Even though the concierge asked Lula at least three time in our presence, what Lula meant was to meet her there at 2pm, since the plane did not in fact arrive until three. When Lula finally arrives, she unpacks her stuff to process our tickets. The tickets are $175 plus $25.70 tax and charges. Lula, who now holds our return fate in her hands, cannot add these two numbers without using paper and pencil! Additionally, we were told before we left the states that we would need $15 in exact change per person for departure fees. However, the number has magically risen to $21 per person. Fortunately, we have it so we can leave (in theory anyway). When the Lynx flight arrives, we are relieved to see a much newer, slightly larger plane. I have to help the copilot load the luggage on the plane since there is no one else there. We loose a luggage tag in the process and I pray that it won’t be lost or picked up by some stranger. Now, the flight is supposed to be a direct one to Ft. Lauderdale, but the crew informs us that we have to go to Great Exuma first to pick up other passengers and go through customs. The other person flying with us tells us that when she flies Lynx, the flight always comes out of Great Exuma first to pick up Cat Island passengers and go through customs. Whatever. We just want off this god-forsaken island as soon as possible! The flight is only a few minutes, but we end up waiting around the Great Exuma airport for an hour and customs is never even mentioned. On board, two passengers break out their own beer. Great. Luckily, they are only casual lushes and are not noisy drinkers.
BACK IN FT. LAUDERDALE The flight is smooth and we arrive safely at Ft. Lauderdale. Hooray! The pilots ask us to have our Customs Declaration Forms handy. To which, of course, we reply, "What forms?" No one has given us any and the pilot is formless. Even the Air Sunshine idiots had reams of these forms sitting in their broken down cockpit. So we spend extra time tracking down and filling out forms while everyone else goes through customs. We collect our luggage safely (including the bag with the missing tag!) and head for the final checkpoint. The customs official asks for our forms, and Kathy panics because she is sure that she already gave them to the other official. I am also sure that she has done so. Perhaps the guard can tell that we are at the end of our ropes, or maybe this happens all of the time because she calmly said, "No, you didn’t. I’m sure that if you check your belongings that you will find that you still have them." How she made this statement without making us feel like morons is beyond me, but she should be commended. Kathy had indeed put them back in her fanny pack and we were able to leave the airport at last. We catch a cab that takes us directly to the hotel. I say "directly" because it is only with this ride that we realize that the cab that we took when we first arrived in Ft. Lauderdale took an extremely circuitous route, charging us nearly double what it should have cost. We arrive at the hotel safely and go to check in. The desk clerk cannot find our reservation. We know from our last visit that a good portion of the hotel is under renovation, so space is limited. But I have the confirmation handy, so everything should be okay. He searches the confirmation and tells us that we are booked for next Sunday! I can’t believe it. Fortunately, there is no need to panic because there are still rooms available. If only we could just get into ours. The electronic key cards will not open the door. I go back down to the desk, get new key cards and try again. The door still won’t open. I go back to the desk again and they have to call in someone from maintenance to reprogram the door lock before we can flop our world-weary bones on the beds. We are starving. But in light of the hotel reservation experience, I want to confirm our Chicago flights for the next day just as a precaution. Low and behold, United has us booked on a flight for next Monday! Not only do they have us on a flight a week later, but they have us flying out of Cat Island. Since United Airlines does not fly to or from Cat Island, this is impossible. The customer service rep tries to tell me that she has to transfer me to International Flights to address the issue, even though this is not an international flight. Now I’m ready for my complete nervous breakdown. I cannot take much more of this. I hang up on her and call back to get someone else. She is wonderful. (I have since forgotten her name, but I did put in a call to the United Powers-That-Be to give her superiors a glowing compliment.) I weave our sad tale of woe for her and she says the only thing that could possibly make me smile at this point: "So what we need to do is get you on a flight tomorrow, right?" YES!!! Though the afternoon flight is booked, there are plenty of seats on the evening flight. The afternoon would have been better, but as long as we can get home sometime tomorrow, that was fine with us. We finally get to go down to the restaurant to reward ourselves with a fine meal for the first time in days. It was so wonderful to be back in our own country and eating real food, that we didn't even realize the waiter had forgotten our expensive key lime shrimp appetizer until we had competed the meal. Though the major problems were over, there were a few minor things that went wrong before we reached home. I nearly set the restaurant on fire at breakfast the next morning when I put my croissant into the toaster and it burst into flame. Our flight from Ft. Lauderdale was 45 minutes late. And my guitar was not with our luggage when we arrived in Chicago. (It had been put in another claim area and was discovered within fifteen minutes.)
THE MORAL OF THE STORY . . . Is Air Sunshine to blame? Most definitely! Is Fernandez Bay Village to blame? Maybe on some of the smaller points, but they were very good to us on the whole. No, the ones most to blame are ourselves. We learned some hard and expensive lessons with this vacation. It would be easy to say at this point that we should have canceled the trip at the first sign of trouble with Air Sunshine; or that we should certainly have bailed out at any point between the first problems and the flat tire. But we all wanted to go to the islands and if we had canceled this time, we were certain to have tried to do it another time with similar results. No, the big lesson learned here was not to put so much of everything into the vacation. We were looking forward to it so much and wanted it so badly, that it blinded us to other issues. I am most guilty in using the island image to get through trying times at work and school. I had become so focused on Fernandez Bay that I began to count on it to solve all of my problems: "This vacation is going to be the turning point for us. We’ll be able to completely relax, regroup, refocus and be ready to come back refreshed. If I can just make it until July, I’ll be okay." So when it didn’t happen, or even threatened not to happen, it made things much worse. So if you are considering a vacation to Fernandez Bay Village, don't let our miserable experience stop you. But please learn from our mistakes. Think carefully about what you want and research carefully, regardless of where you go. It's a beautiful location, and an ideal vacation spot for certain travellers. But the next time we want to see the islands, we will be taking a cruise! |