09-22-2009
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#1 (permalink) |
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life=playa
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Manchester, UK
Posts: 693
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Iberostar Tucan September 2009
WARNING: The following trip report contains material that some may find shocking, disturbing and offensive; we ate Big Macs not Playa Maya Coconut Shrimp, we drank shots not Babes Blueberry Margeritas, we spent our nights in Senor Frogs not the Beer Bucket and perhaps most shockingly of all we stayed at a *gulp* All Inclusive hotel. If these few things have you reaching for your keyboard in horror, poised to write some sarcastic comment, then there’s nothing you will enjoy here.
 Prologue What better way to start than with a brief update on what’s been going on since the last trip report. If you want to skip this and get right to the trip report then feel free to do so now... Casting our minds back to last years trip report, I had just managed to get on to the college course I had always wanted to do and had been fast tracked to do the course in a year. Well, what a whirlwind year it has been since then!  Without boring you all too much it has gone better than anyone could ever imagine and I am now starting out a promising career as a make up artist, and have an even more exciting year ahead of me next year as things start to take off. Whilst I genuinely am (as corny as it sounds) living my dream  , it’s not to say it’s easy. Part and parcel of the job are the long and demanding hours  . Working 11 days on the trot then having one day off then doing another 11 – part of the job . Working 17 hour days with no such thing as lunch hours – part of the job . I love my job more than anything, but I’m only human and I must say it can be absolutely shattering! I’ve done the sleepless nights of new motherhood a few years back, and I thought I knew what ‘tired’ was more than most, but I had no idea until now! After a brilliant month long production, which was both one of the best experiences of my life and one of the most tiring, I was in need a holiday more than ever. Could we afford one?  Not really, but we found a great deal (thank you swine flu!) and I decided to sacrifice my birthday, and any sort of life for the next five weeks in order to book our fourth trip to Mexico! So was it worth it? Read on to find out…
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09-22-2009
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#3 (permalink) |
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beachaholic
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Danville ca
Posts: 458
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I have been waiting for thisl....we were last summer the same as you....have very way off pictures but I know it was you.....went again the same time the end of June...had a wonderful time and now in september looking for a deal for next June can't wait for your trip report!!!!!
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09-22-2009
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#4 (permalink) | |
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life=playa
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Manchester, UK
Posts: 693
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Quote:
Wow I'd love to see the pics! Any chance of posting them? |
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09-22-2009
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#7 (permalink) | |
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life=playa
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Manchester, UK
Posts: 693
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Quote:
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09-22-2009
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#11 (permalink) |
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life=playa
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Manchester, UK
Posts: 693
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Day 1
After probably about 4 hours broken sleep off and on for me, and no sleep for Ste, the 5am alarm goes off and it’s time to go on holiday! We had countless problems with our travel agent this year we weren’t feeling all together confident that our pre booked seats together, would in fact be pre booked at all. I remember last years trip report starting off somewhat similiarly. Ah, what a taxing job it must be working in a travel agents.  When we made the somewhat irrational decision to book the holiday I wanted to do it there and then. We looked online and found a brilliant price, over £600 ($982) cheaper than last time we stayed at the Tucan.  As it was already 5pm on a Friday night when we decided we wanted to book, I phoned the number for the store in the late night shopping centre ten minutes away from our house, so that we could go down if necessary that evening. They agreed to match the internet price, and told us the same thing we’ve been told EVERY SINGLE TIME we’ve booked a holiday; “This our last room left though at this property for these dates”, normally I would think “yeah okay you say that every time”, but with it being only 5 weeks before I stupidly believed them (in reality the Tucan was SO empty that the Quetzal side was completely closed down), and wanted to book it then and there over the phone to secure the deal. Herein started our problems. I asked when I was getting them to match the price that it included everything like on the internet; transfers, seats together, in flight meal, extra luggage allowance. “Yes that’s all included”. Once booked I check again, that it definitely includes all these things and am assured they’re all included and booked for me. The girl is having problems with the system (aren’t they always? ) so says she will put it all through and phone me back when it’s done to confirm it. When she phones back I’m driving (I did wait a long time and of course she only phoned after I had just started driving and had nowhere to pull over). She calls the home phone and tells my mum to get me to call the following morning, it’s all booked, and I just need to tell them if I’m picking up the booking confirmation or would like it sent out. I call, and ask for it sent out, the girl responds, “okay it’s for a flight only to Cancun isn’t it?”… erm no! After a few minutes flustering she claims she has it up on screen now it’s at the Iberostar Tucan. I panick, I ask again, is this definitely booked as a package deal, are our inflight meals, extra luggage allowance, seats together and transfers included, I’m reassured/fobbed off again.A week passes, no documents arrive. I phone again, they say again they will post them out. Another week passes, still nothing arrives. I phone again. During each of these phone calls I say I just want to make sure since I have nothing in writing that this is all booked correctly, making sure everything I’ve asked for is on there. Each time I’m made to feel silly for panicking. After the third apparently sent out documents fail to reach us we decide to drive down. This is when we realise the store that we thought we had phoning had shut down, and the number automatically re directed us to a store 30 minutes from our house (we have another non late night one 5 mins from our house). Thanks for telling us we were calling a different store(!)  We go to the store 5 mins from our house and pick up a print off of our documents which we are told in the store is confirmation. We are reading through it at home and see at the bottom “this is not confirmation of your booking”. It seems they had no problem taking the money out of our bank accounts, but can’t seem to cope with providing us proof we’ve even booked this holiday. It also has no mention of seats together, and even has a page on the back saying “why not book seats together now?”.After having no joy on the phone again we give in and make the 30 minute drive to the store we booked at. We’re given our documents printed off, they still don’t say we have seats together, and there is still the bit saying why not book now. However she assures us they are booked together, and what more can we do, we’ve asked at least 10 times, we’re going to have to take their word for it. We go to collect the tickets when they come in (since they are clearly incapable of coping with the postal system ) and under “seating preference” on the tickets there is nothing saying seats together. We ask the woman who has given us the tickets, she says they will be booked together but we can tell she doesn’t know herself, so we wait 30 minutes to see someone else. We are then told after all this, “oh no you don’t have seats booked together”. They apparently then add them on but since the tickets are already printed all we have is a print off the girl gives us to prove this at the airport. Needless to say by this point we’re still not convinced they will have booked it on!Due to this we get to the airport 3 hours and 15 minutes before our flight is due to leave. With seats together you only need to be there 1 and a half hours before. We’re not chancing it. Luckily we do get seats together, and also we get a window seat, and the formation on the plane is 2-3-2 so we get to sit just the two of us, which is pretty much as perfect as a long haul flight is going to get. Panicking over, it’s time to start enjoying the holiday! After piling on the ‘freshman 15’ this year I have been dieting like crazy to try to fit back into last years holiday clothes as there’s no chance I can afford new clothes as well as the holiday! So after checking in at the airport (and our cases coming 0.2 under the joint weight allowance – phew!) it’s straight to the café for the first nice thing I’ve ate in 5 weeks – a full English breakfast! Mmmmm. We mill around the airport for a while looking around the shops and the time actually seems to go fairly quick. Before we know it we’re boarding the plane and on our way. Or so it seems. After sitting on the tarmac for some time the pilot comes on to announce that we can’t set off yet as the air hostess who is supposed to be on our plane was on her way to work and her car broke down. Hmmmm. What a luxury it must be to not have to turn up for work, I can’t imagine ever being able to just phone in work with some lame excuse.  He says that they have called a standby and she is 15 minutes away. 45 minutes later he comes back on to say that the standby is still on her way. Again what a luxury it must be to just not turn up when you say you’re going to. Never mind all the people waiting on you.  Eventually they give in and take a member of staff off another flight. I only hope the unreliable ones get sacked, there’s plenty of people out of work in the uk, if you can’t do your job, you don’t deserve it and you are easily replaceable. However, we now have enough staff and can set off and this is enough to put everyone back in good spirits. I took the plunge this year and took my most prized possession with me on holiday – my macbook . It was a big decision, if anything happened to my mac book, then I’m not sure I could carry on! However it was a brilliant decision and this year the flight there was almost bareable! It went quite quickly and I was able to watch films without paying to upgrade the seat back tellys on the plane. I also did a bit of de cluttering on my macbook which was well over due but I had never been bored enough to do before.The meal was some sort of chicken concoction which isn’t great for me as I don’t eat chicken. However, I swapped my chicken for Ste’s mash, and everyone was at least fairly happy.  By the last hour of the flight I’m starting to get restless and irritable (especially when the inconsiderate reclining idiot in front nearly snapped my macbook in half when they reclined ) but at least the majority of the flight went well.We get off the plane fairly quickly, hoping not to be at the back of the queue where you show your passports/forms. We do well until we get involved in a pile up at the bottom of the escalator. For some reason some people performed a ‘sudden stop’ at the bottom and everyone behind them was left with nowhere to go!  In the confusion as the pile up disperses we follow the crowd, only they all turn right, and the queue is to the left, so we all do quite a comical snake around in a big line, and the ‘pile up’ crowd, go from being the first in the queue, to the last. We are literally the last people bar two. It doesn’t take too long though (last year was horrendous).Our cases came quickly and we somehow escaped having to get them searched by getting a green light on the ‘press the button’ game at customs at the airport. As we get outside and find our First Choice airport rep, we are told to follow a man to a particular minibus. I get excited, minibus! We’re not on a coach, this has got to be good news. I barely believe it until we actually are put on this mini bus, and it is going to one hotel and one hotel only! No drop offs! Check in at the hotel goes quickly. I had asked our Travel Agent to request us a room that was near the pool and on the middle floor. Our request is for reasons most people wouldn’t begin to think of. We want a room near the pool not just for the location (popping back during the day) but because I’ve seen pictures of the HUGEST spiders in the jungle rooms and we cant afford a mosquito plug in this year! And why do we want a middle floor room…so that it’s closest to the ice machine! Needless to say I didn’t have any faith in our travel agent ACTUALLY having put our request in so I emailed through ourselves a few days before, explaining how this is the only hotel we would return to again in the area etc and we are very excited to becoming back. They give us a room in the best block again (closest to the beach without paying for upgrade) and on the middle floor. Excellent. When we get in our room we have a fruit basket. Neither of us our going to eat it or touch it (Ste and his paranoia of charges which you may remember ) but it does feel already like we might be getting special treatment because we’re returning guests. The view isn’t as brilliant as the other year but this doesn’t really overly concern us, it’s the location that’s more important to us. We forgo the usual ritual of exploring the hotel after unpacking as we have already seen it all before, this I must admit feels a little odd. We go for a cocktail whilst we are waiting for the buffet to open and then go for a delicious tea.   This first tea we are every bit as happy with as when we have stayed here before. The choice is immense and the food is delicious. I forget what we had to eat each individual day, perhaps I’ll give an over view of what choices were on offer at the end. After this we go and check the state of the beach. It’s huge, nearly as big as the first year, and is flat too – no big drop offs. The only difference is the sand bags and we learnt to live with them last year.   We went straight to bed after this, exhausted from all the travelling and wanting to be well rested for our first real day tomorrow...
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09-23-2009
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#14 (permalink) |
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life=playa
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Manchester, UK
Posts: 693
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Day 2 – Monday
I woke at about 5am like I always seem to do the first day in Mexico but this time forced myself to go back to sleep with the theory that I wouldn’t be tired as early that night. We got up around 7 and went to breakfast. Breakfast was good, just as I remembered it from the other years. I had a Full English and so did Ste. This (not so) little fella was sat next to us.  After breakfast we painfully decided to go to the rep meeting. It wasn’t a choice we took lightly. I mean, giving up an hour of our holiday to listen to “here in Mexico we have ruins” blah blah blah, is not our idea of fun, especially not for the fourth year running. However, we had planned to do two trips on this holiday – the jungle speed boat tour and to go to the new Xplor park. We also wanted to find out if they do a Playa Del Carmen bar crawl this year, and whether they sell wristbands for Senor Frogs etc.So after an hour of going into a trance from boredom, and occasionally feeling bad and feigning some interest when the rep caught my eye, we finally got to ask what we wanted to. They had a pricelist of tours and the speedboat tour was on it, however I had seen it online before we came for $50 for the two of us, and here it was $80. Since we were on a tight budget we decided to wait until the second week and see how our money was going. If we had enough to pay the extra we’d rather go with First Choice. Hey Greyline are great, but it’s not so fun being the only English people on a tour.  If we were low on money, we’d go and see if Greyline would do it for $50 and grin and bear the mini bus ride to Cancun.We waited to speak to the rep and asked him if they do a bar crawl to Playa Del Carmen and he said no, they just do one to Cancun, do we not want to go on that one. We explain the only reason we ever used to go to Cancun was to go to Coco Bongo, and now there’s one in Playa, there’s no need. He explains that the Coco Bongo in Playa doesn’t meet UK safety regulations, so First Choice can’t do a trip to it. So on we move to the next point…Do they do a trip to Xplor? He explains, Xplor doesn’t meet UK safety regulations, so First Choice can’t do a trip to it. So what have we learnt today? Everything we want to do, is too unsafe to do through our rep. Reassuring! He does however tell us that it’s only $50pesos in a taxi to get there and then we can just pay when we get there, which is fine by us, and I had thought that before going anyway. He also tells us Thomas Cook do a Playa Del Carmen bar crawl that we could book on. We ask about the wristbands and he tells us we can just buy them on the door in Playa Del Carmen. Well this has been an all round useful hour! There was one excursion we would have loved to do which I hadn’t previously seen/heard of and that’s swimming with Whale Sharks as big as a double decker bus! However, it was $230 EACH and no, that’s not in pesos! After the meeting we go to the beach and have our choice of beds, the place is practically empty. We pull some up to the edge near the water and sunbathe for a while and then get in the sea and play some Waboba ball! For those of you not familiar with Waboba ball it’s a ball (shocking) that bounces on water. We had wanted one of these for ages, never seemed to get round to buying one before other holidays and regretted it so this time we made sure we got one. When we first got into the sea we were a little disappointed with its somewhat lack of bouncing. It took about five minutes to get the technique right and then it was bouncing away and was great fun! You have to throw it HARD to get it to bounce and the better the angle you throw it at the better it will bounce. Definitely more fun than a regular ball. The main aim of the day for Monday, was to drink ourselves silly in the swim up bar.  Every year we have been on holiday we have said, we should have a day where we just drink at the swim up bar all day. Every year, we’ve not done it. So already knowing we’ll be too tired for a good night out tonight, we decide that today is the day to do it. And what better swim up bar in the world is there than the one at the Tucan? That’s a genuine question, I’ve never seen one that’s anything like it before!    After drinking lots of cocktails   and taking a few photos, Ste takes back the camera to the room and does the unthinkable. He risks putting his iphone in the waterproof bag that the camera was in. It’s something I never thought I’d see him do. If he had to choose between saving me and his iphone in a house fire, I’m pretty sure I’d come a close second. Seriously, I wasn’t even allowed to TOUCH this thing for the first few months of him owning it, and now he’s immersing it in water. Speaking of which, I remember an event of Day 1 that I somehow missed so briefly back to…Day 1 We’re at the airport and putting our bags in the little tray thing to go through the scanner. Our bags make it through the check quicker than we do, and I make it through quicker than Ste. I rush to our tray, thinking what a stupid idea it is for them to send your bags through before you. Anyone could have taken my macbook, scary times. I grab my laptop bag, and grab Stes hand luggage bag (with all our money in) and his jacket. I am, in essence being helpful, and rescuing our stuff before it’s stolen.  I wait patiently and Ste comes through a minute or so later. The next few minutes of my life, are what I can only describe as horrifying. All is well in the world until these words come out of Stes mouth; “You did get my iphone out of the tray didn’t you?” I laugh at first, good joke, and then very quickly realise he’s not joking. The next few minutes while we are asking the airport staff to frantically look through all the trays they’ve put back to find Ste’s iphone are perhaps the worst of my life. If I’ve lost his iphone my life is literally over. Luckily, there is a god, or at the very least, there is an iphone in one of the trays that is handed back over to Ste, so I get off with several “I can’t believe you did that”s and a lifetime of him bringing it up whenever we are in a hand luggage scanning situation like that. Back to… Day 2… Back in the pool bar we’re having a great time drinking in such a gorgeous surroundings and listening to our favourite music on the iphone. It’s weird, yet great, how the water is spreading the music, as outside of our booth you can’t hear anything, not one single sound, but within where we are sat we can enjoy our own music. Brilliant. The over optimistic plan turns into being we will go back up to the hotel room and get ready and go out tonight after all. We do go up to the hotel room, we do get ready, but we never get any further than having some tea at the buffet (which this time I can’t remember for more obvious reasons), and by this time, a days worth of Miami Vices, Blue Hawaiis and Mojitos have more than taken there effect, and this is the first time on holiday I “bail out” as Ste puts it, and I’m sound asleep in bed by 8pm!
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