June 25, 2008

Where NOT to Honeymoon

I swore I would tell the world about my horrible Sandals honeymoon someday.  Today is that day.  I don’t know what’s moved me to do so now, other than to prove that a big storm cloud followed me, even back then.  Literally.

Mr. BBM and I were married in the middle of October in 1998.  When we were planning our honeymoon, we considered Hawaii, but then heard that St. Lucia was the Hawaii of the Caribbean and decided to save some money and go there instead.  We paid for it ourselves, and decided we would go to Sandals St. Lucia.  The brochures looked so nice.  We’d pay more for what we considered was a guaranteed awesome honeymoon.

Our flight left the Philadelphia airport on a Sunday morning and we arrived in Miami, Florida for a brief layover.  We boarded a plane to St. Lucia with great anticipation.  Several hours later, we were in the middle of a horrible rain storm and I was completely panicked.  Our pilot kept lowering the landing gear and circling what appeared to be a small and barely lit speck of an island, before she would abruptly pull the gear back up and continue to circle some more. 

The older man seated beside us was drinking rather heavily and explained this erratic flight behavior on the fact that our pilot was a woman.  I was too scared at the time to punch him in the nose, but thinking back, I sure would have liked to.  I thought that perhaps it was the bad weather and the fact that our pilot preferred to land our plane at an airport and not in an ocean that was holding us up. 

After circling for quite some time, we finally landed.  The rain was coming down in sheets and the airport was pretty much open to the elements.  We retrieved our bags and went out to where our Sandals van was supposed to be waiting to deliver us to paradise. 

We gave our names and were then herded out of the way by the Sandals drivers/organizers along with eight other couples.  While other weary couples were getting into the vans, we stood there getting wetter by the second.  After flying for 9 hours, and barely getting any rest the two nights before, I was on edge.

After continually asking what was going on and getting nowhere, Mr. BBM finally had enough.  He approached one of the guys and demanded to know what was going on.  We finally got our answer.

Sandals had overbooked the resort.  There was no room for us or the eight other couples.  We were being "bumped" to a hotel on the other side of the island, for not one night, not two nights, but for four nights.  We had paid for an all-inclusive Sandals vacation and we now didn’t know what we were getting. 

When Mr. BBM delivered the bad news to me, I immediately burst into hysterical tears.  I was exhausted and this was the icing on the cake.  I thought I was going to die on the plane and now I didn’t know where I’d be sleeping.  Because of the tears and the hysteria that was building because of them, the Sandals man quickly grabbed our bags, loaded them into a rickety cab and told us to get in.  He gave the driver directions I didn’t understand and we were off.

We had no idea where we were going.  The roads were dark; the rain was pouring so much so that goats were washing out into the road.  The cab was so old and awful that I felt like we were in a Flintstones car.  The floor of the car seemed transparent.   For all we knew, we could have been taken off for slaughter. It was a terrifying drive.

After driving for about an hour, we arrived at a gated entryway.  We drove through the rain forest and arrived at a building.  We were at what was then called The Jalousie Hilton (now The Jalousie Plantation).  Another couple was also there.  We were trying to get the details of our stay straight.  Sandals could not guarantee that our expenses would all be covered, yet we brought no money with us at all.  We had paid for an all-inclusive vacation. 

While the other newlywed wife and I sat and tried to comfort each other, Mr. BBM and the other husband were laying down the law and trying to get a straight story about what was going on. 

Soon, we were taken via another resort van to our villa in the rain forest.  We were nestled between the two Piton mountains in St. Lucia but our view at night was of a pitch black rain forest.  It was too late to call our travel agent and we were starving.  With no guarantee that Sandals would pay for our expenses, we decided to stick it to them. 

We ordered comfort food: hamburgers and a half case of beer via room service.  We ordered other island specialties as well and stocked our villa with food while I cried and Mr. BBM paced angrily.  This was not how it was supposed to be. . .

Check back tomorrow for the next segment of the honeymoon from hell.  Here’s a brief preview: water shortage, more rain, food poisoning. . .

  • Print
  • email
  • RSS
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

You might also like:

  1. Fraud Alert
  2. Home Again, Home Again
  3. Yet Again

Posted by on June 25, 2008 in Mental Strain for Mama | 7 Comments

Comments