Stress is a fact of life. It lets you know you're alive, or, it can make you miserable. I have been wanting, no NEEDING, a vacation for awhile. Full time job, Mom to toddler, wife, "flipping" a house to sell and grad student. Individually stress comes with those job descriptions, together it makes for a flurry of insanity really. It's easy to focus at the light at the end of the tunnel when you have a grand vacation planned with your hubby and baby in a 5 star resort in Mexico, all-inclusive and adventure bound! We debated, Cabo, Loreto or Cancun. We've done Cabo, we love it, but with a baby, I think we need something more relaxed. Haven't tried the resort in Cancun yet but again, with a baby, it probably is a bit more "on the go" than we would want. We LOVED Loreto 3 years ago, laid back but with plenty of nature things to do and a quaint little town full of some amazingly friendly people. That seemed like the right choice, we book the room, buy our flights and start counting down the days.
There is only one flight a day in and out of Loreto. I did mention a small, quaint town right? So timing connecting flights has to be driven around that. The flight from LAX into Loreto leaves LA at 9:50am on Saturday. The earliest flight you can get from Houston to LA, lands in LA at 9:01am. Man that's tight I thought, but no other choice really, so I booked it. Now as part of my time share I am assigned a concierge for each trip, he's like a travel agent. He calls me to discuss my flights and when I share with him my itinerary he says Mel, you'll never make it. IF you land perfectly on time at 9:01 you still have to switch from domestic to international, which means re-checking your luggage and re-screening through security and with a baby. It would be best to fly in Friday and stay over night in LA. Ok, I call United back, explain to them the situation, they agree, I'll never make that connection, and the change fee per person to fly in Friday night was $200 a ticket. How awesome, I paid $240 per person for the ticket and the change fee was almost just as much. Oh well, no choice now, I pay the change fee and book a Courtyard Marriott room for Friday night that has free shuttle service to/from the airport.
David and I both take off work on Friday, get up that morning and all 3 of us are a little under the weather, cough, stuffiness and scratchy throat but nothing a little sand, sun, dry air and saltwater can't fix. We packed that morning and have my Dad pick us up and take us to the airport. Catch our flight to LA which is delayed about 25 minutes and land without any issues. Arrive at our room and immediately get on Uber to get a "taxi" to Santa Monica. We were hoping to see the sunset over the pacific off the pier but were about 20 minutes too late. Still though, how fun is Santa Monica Blvd, the pier and Palisades Park. We walk out on the beach, oh my, the sand is very, very white and silky soft, unlike any sand I've ever felt and it was cool on the feet. We walk to the end of the pier taking in the sights, I buy a T-shirt and Lillie's eyes are wide and bright watching the little roller coasters and ferris wheel over her head as she sits on her Daddy's shoulders. We make our way back to the main "drag" and have dinner at a great little taco joint and hail a cab back to the hotel. Our time zones and flying had thrown our sleeping patterns off so we didn't get much sleep with a baby in between us but who cares, we're on vacation!
Saturday morning we head to LAX and check in for Alaska Airlines. Arrive at the gate and we see our little twin turbo propeller airplane. Very cool! To say that the seats were cramped is an understatement. If you thought it was bad in regular class on an airplane, the seats were smaller! But hey, on AI, they serve food and free alcohol, NO ONE does that anymore. Score! Lillie falls asleep across our laps for the whole 2.5 hour flight. Get to Loreto, go through their "customs" process and grab our transportation to the hotel. We are in paradise at last! First thing we do is hit up the restaurant for food and pina coladas. Next we head to the kiddy pool as it's the shape of the turtle's head and has fountains that Lil can play in, she's having fun. Our room is FANTASTIC, it's on the 5th floor on the corner of the hotel. We have a balcony that's about 600 sq. ft. and wraps all the way around. Open the curtains in the master bedroom and we have huge sliding glass doors and windows along 2 walls, one opens up to the east patio with a mountain view and soon to be golf course view and the other wall opens up to the north patio with the ocean view and pool view. They bring us a crib for Lillie and we all 3 sleep great.
Sunday morning we awake to the sound of Lillie throwing up in her crib. Uh oh. It seems to be all mucousy and given that we all had similar little colds we're convinced that with the travel and head cold, the drainage caused this. Besides, she in good spirits and asking to eat breakfast. We head downstairs to meet the guy that is supposed to give us our member update over breakfast. As we are walking to meet him, Lil throws up again. Hmmm. Still in ok spirits and hungry, we take her with us to breakfast. She begins to eat, we're talking to Raul and Lil throws up in my plate of food. Uh oh, we now have more than just drainage. We tell Raul, sorry, we need to reschedule our little one is sick. We take her up to the room, get her and I a quick bath and change of clothes and she snuggles back to sleep. I make a run to the little mini mart at the resort and get crackers and gatorade which she happily gobbled up once she woke up. After she ate, she fell back asleep. We continued a pattern of throw up, fall asleep, eat, fall asleep, throw up for most of the day Sunday but she never cried and was happy to drink gatorade. By the evening she was much better so we made our way downstairs to the restaurant to try to eat again as a family and they are giving updates in the lobby on a big screen about a hurricane headed to Cabo. As we get the update, we are hearing these facts:
1) Hurricane "officials" can't decide if Odile will veer off to the left like they have 99.9% of the time or if it will make its way up the east coast of the peninsula, up the Sea of Cortez, where we are.
2) What they DO know now is that the eye will be hitting Cabo head on and is currently a cat 4.
3) Regardless of which way Odile goes, Loreto will be getting some heavy rain on Monday and we can book excursion trips for Tuesday and on.
As we are eating dinner Sunday we can feel the winds picking up and blowing over lamps on the tables, etc. David and I are realizing that as the eye hits Cabo, we are getting the outer bands and are 500km north/northeast of Cabo. Now that's a big storm, a hurricane Katrina sized storm. A category 4 storm, wow. Glad we didn't pick Cabo this year. After we go back to our room, watch a little tv, the power goes out. A few minutes later power back on, with a particular hummm. Ahhh, emergency generator, we are golden. As we fall off to sleep the heavy cast iron patio furniture starts sliding across the patio. David goes out and piles up the patio furniture at the far end of the patio and removes the cushions and brings them inside. We wake up a few times during the night from strong gusts but otherwise sleep ok.
Monday morning very windy and off and on rain, we go down to breakfast and are made aware that the hurricane IS making the way up the east coast and headed our way. It will be downgraded from what hit Cabo and we are protected by some mountains, but we need to take some precautions. The GM of the resort is making his rounds, you can tell he hasn't slept, but he is checking on his guests and making sure we are comfortable. He says the worst of the storm will be here in an hour and a half to 2 hours. He asks everyone to go back to their rooms and stay put. He will be running the generator through the storm so if we need any food for the rest of the day to order it through room service and they'll bring it to us and order it now. I ask him, do you have anything I can do for the baby to keep her occupied? He sends me with a hotel worker to unlock a kids playroom, he said take whatever you want. He and I load up our arms with crayons, paper, blocks and an activity board as David takes Lillie upstairs. So we begin to hunker down in our room, I pull the heavy black-out curtains closed so if the windows shatter glass won't blow in our faces directly, and we stay away from the windows. We pull out the room service menu and order chicken quesadillas, tortillas soups, civeche, guac and chips, shrimp cocktail, a pizza and sodas and bottled water! After I send a text over wifi to my parents: Worst of the storm will be here in hour and a half. Talk to you after. About 30 minutes later a knock at the door, room service. Little did we know the elevators were now out of order and this poor guy schlept up 5 flights of stairs carrying all of our food on a tray in 70+mph winds! We gave him a good tip. We keep our spirits up, afterall, this isn't our first rodeo...errr hurricane, and Lillie is none the wiser. In fact, after lunch, she takes a nap, during the worst of the storm! We have canned lights in the room and they begin to leak water. The windows and doors are shaking and our eardrums are popping. I'm so thankful for tubes in Lillie's ears as she can't feel it. We keep taking peeks out the windows, you can no longer see the ocean or the mountains, the rain is blowing around so hard. I'm expecting to see a goat go flying through the air, though they are probably snug in their mountain caves. We get trash cans and towels to collect the dripping ceiling light water and wait. My stomach starts to burn, of course, why WOULDN'T I stress during a hurricane. 4 to 5 hours go by and the worst is over, it starts to simmer down like it was that morning. Lillie is getting anxious and ready to leave the room, we decide to go down the stairs to the lobby and assess. One of the windows in the lobby blew out and they had boarded it up with plywood. Sandbags were lined up along all the glass doors in the lobby on both sides, to keep out the water and keep the doors from blowing open. Staff was taking large squeegees and trying to push the water back outside. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't keep the water out. The GM was still directing his staff like an orchestra director and updating anyone he could. The generator could not run full strength like he had been, we would run out of fuel. So through Monday night he would run it for 2 hours, off for 2 hours and so on. Again, we needed to order room service and his staff would cook during the 2 hours on and bring to our rooms. But this 2 hour "on" period was very limited. No more air conditioning, no outlets worked, no tv, only one light in the room worked and the fridge. Our cell phone and laptop batteries had died and it was getting hot and muggy. After Lillie finished playing with the dead bugs in the lobby and splashing in the puddles in the lobby, we ordered room service at the front desk, carried her up 5 flights of stairs and opened all of our patio doors for a breeze. We settled in for the night again, getting a bath of yellow water and all sleeping in underwear. It was hot but there was enough residual wind from the storm to give us a breeze and I was grateful. But no one slept well that night and there were still bursts of strong winds that would wake us all every so often. You could see throughout the property staff making rounds with flashlights. Again, the GM was still working at 100%, the man simply amazed me.
Tuesday morning, still cloudy and breezy but no rain. I half expected to go to breakfast and get powdered scrambled eggs, a piece of toast and bottled water. We get down to the restaurant and they have a full buffet! Wait, what? Aren't we without power still, don't we need to take provisions? The GM is there to greet us for breakfast, he asks Lillie what she wants, she says apple! He brings her 4, says produce will go bad first and this is all he has for apples, take them to our room. He also states that to keep from overloading the generator they will be running the generator every hour on the hour for 10 minutes until we get power back. I don't know why we ask this next question, we know better, but every single person does, when will we have power back? No matter who you asked that to, you got a different answer. Most said oh probably tomorrow. At breakfast we had coffee and juice but were told they were out of bottled water. A light bulb went off in my head. I said David, we have been through this before, we know what to do, we have to start preparing for our family now. He said yes, agree, and we got a game plan. Start hoarding water, go get bread, peanut butter and jelly and snacks from the mini mart and stash them, don't throw away ANY leftovers. We decided we'd eat whatever they had for us until they ran out and then we'd have a stash for our family, but basically for Lillie. We felt pretty prepared. After-all, when Ike hit Houston, some were without power for 2 weeks, here we are in Mexico and they are thinking we'd have power very soon, yeah, they are being overly optimistic. And I get it, don't scare the guests, but I wanted to be realistic. Better prepared than sorry. After breakfast and a little provision preparation, we got our stuff to go spend the day at the pool. Though there were no pumps for the pool, they had spent part of the night and all morning cleaning out the debris so that we could use it that day, as that was the only available option to do. So we were being FORCED to do nothing, hmpf, not a bad deal I thought. My husband on the other hand, cannot sit still. It's not in his DNA to sit around for days and do nothing. Maybe for a few hours tops, but that's it. After some time at the pool, a few drinks and then lunch, Lillie and I go up for a nap (remember, 5th floor, no elevators, multiple trips a day) and David borrows a bike and starts to go take a look and see if he can get to the end of the mountain or near the top that maybe he can get a cell signal. A few hours later he comes back, no such luck. But he knows that the heavy equipment the resort was using to build the golf courses were being sent to help clear the roads. There had been some rock avalanches closing the roads to town and to the airport and they needed that worked on asap. Especially for those being evacuated from the south of us.
What was coming out of our pipes in the rooms was a yellow water. You weren't supposed to drink it but you could wash with it. 10 minutes was not enough time for all of us to get in a shower. Keep in mind we had no clue what time it was, so you would hear the generator start up and if you decided to bathe, get up 5 flights of stairs and start filling the bathtub. It wasn't that after 10 minutes you just lost the hot water, you lost water period! No pumps to send the water to your room. So each night, we'd wait for the genny, fill the bathtub, Lillie and I would take a bath and we'd save the water in the tub for David and he'd grab a bath last. During dinner Tuesday night they kept the genny up for only one of the kitchens and our knight in shining armor, the GM, who we learned was named Sixto, was in the kitchen with a chefs hat on and cooking. This man literally did it all. We sat outside, there were 2 items they were cooking to choose from, usually chicken and fish or steak and shrimp, beans and rice and they had bottled water! So they have a basement that had flooded a bit and couldn't get to their bottled water supply that morning, that's why they didn't have any, not because they had run out, whew! I smacked a mosquito on my arm and Sixto said are you getting eaten by bugs? I said yes, but I have Off in my room, silly me just forgot to bring it down. He said where in your room is it, I'll send someone for it. Oh no, Sixto, your guys are busy, we can go get it, I appreciate that thank you though. They handed out candles and matches at dinner to everyone to take to our rooms and to be able to navigate the pitch black stair wells at night. Again Tuesday night was hot and there was less wind so less breezy but somehow we slept fairly well and during the night sure enough, Sixto and his staff were canvassing the property with flashlights and cleaning the pools.
Wednesday morning breakfast was the same, a full buffet, we were definitely getting fat. Sixto comes over to each guests table to check on everyone. He said what do you need for Lillie? I said Lillie is good, and Lillie told him apples. Of course, in less than 2 days she had eat 4 apples. I'm not sure where her all of a sudden appetite for apples came from but what Lil said while we were there, Lil got. So Sixto tells me he is sending someone in to a nearby town to get fresh produce and will get Lillie apples, even if he has to send the guy by boat. We notice there are some new guests Wednesday morning and are starting to hear reports about Cabo. I know right away that my parents, particularly my Mom, was probably having a heart attack. All they knew was my last message, worst will be here in an hour and a half and I'll talk to you after and then nothing. So all they would care about is that their granddaughter had essentially now been missing for 3 days. The staff that was helping during and after the hurricane stayed on site, so they were very limited in the knowledge about outside our town as well. But the new travelers arriving had some stories and a little panic was beginning to set in among the guests. We were hearing that Cabo was like a war zone, most people lost the windows in their houses, they were out of fuel, basic supplies like water and food and people were beginning to loot and rob others. So some people that had provisions for their families to make it through the storm were evacuating not only because they were told to, but they were being robbed. Instead of waiting on rescue flights out, they tried to drive to Tijuana. Other talk was that Cabo airport would not be operational again until some time in October and only military could use the airports in Cabo, La Paz and Loreto. Wait, no flights out of Loreto either? Nope. But maybe next week. Crap. I have GOT to get word back to my family. Mid morning we hear that Sixto is having to turn people away, since we still don't have power he can't take on anyone else as he won't have enough food for his guests that are already there. He feels bad but someone tells him that a few places in the town of Loreto have power. Instantly we all want to go to Loreto. He conjurs up the resort van and it is soaked inside and moldy/musty smelling. He said if you want to sign up to go into town we'll leave at 10:30 and come back at 3:00. They handed out towels for us all to sit on and we began the journey to town to find electricity, I was hoping for a phone or signal, along the mountain side. Poor Sixto knew he had to come up with something to allow the guests to get out for a bit and that nasty van was the best they could do and we all took it, happily.
Now when I say Loreto is a small town, it's a SMALL town and I have no way to describe the lifestyle there except extremely friendly people who live a very simple and laid back life. Believe it or not, my sis said of course you do, I have a friend in Loreto named Alma. She worked at the resort 3 years ago and we've stayed in touch over FB. She's no longer working at the resort but she told me if we come to town where we'd find her. When we get to town, I gave her a big hug and the phone guy is there chatting with her, a few minutes later she whispers, psssst, Mel, I have a phone line that's working there at her work. WHAT?! I run over and call my Dad, he answers and finally my family knows we are OK. Dad is wanting to chat my leg off and I tell him Dad, I'm agreeing to pay by the minute here so I gotta go, I'll let you all know when we know something about leaving here, etc, hearing that might not be til Monday or Tuesday but I'll let you know. Until then, just know we are fine. Now in Loreto cash is really the only form of payment and we had ZERO. I had planned on getting some from the bank in the hotel but after the storm, that was a wash. A very nice couple we had been talking to from San Diego insisted we take $40 cash from them and pay them back whenever we could. We used $20 for me to make that phone call, buy drinks and snacks at the local supermercado. I gave John and Lori $20 back, saying we only spent half and I'll get it back to you as soon as possible. I also had a midterm to take on Wednesday, so I needed to get an email to my professor to explain what my situation was and I found an email from him that said he was pushing the midterm back til Sunday. We take the nice musty smelling van back to the hotel and we are all feeling a bit better, others found internet where they could get off emails to loved ones and give statuses.
Rumors are coming around that power will be back on today and that another storm is in the making, seriously? Sixto says that they are telling him we'll have power by 5:30pm but that he's not holding his breath. We start waiting for 5:30! We go back to lounging poolside for the afternoon and head to dinner. 5:30 comes and goes. By this time, Sixto has been up for 3 straight days with no break, he's beginning to look exhausted though his composure is great. Again dinner choices are very limited and by this time my husband is in a pretty foul mood, he's ready for air conditioning and to stop climbing all the steps. They said they would be happy to let us switch rooms but I said, we are in a corner room up high with the ONLY people who are getting a cross breeze comfortable enough to sleep at night. If we give that up, sure, less stairs, but miserable nights. He agreed and we stayed. We had the stairs memorized, 9 steps, 11 steps, 9 steps, 11 steps, 10 steps, 10, 10 and 10. That's how you keep from tripping over dark stairs at night carrying a baby. At 2:30am on Thursday ALL the lights in our room light up and I jump up and scream power! David is asleep on the patio and he comes inside and Lillie starts yelling as I've scared her. We close the doors, turn on the a/c and fall back asleep an hour later MUCH more comfortable.
Thursday morning we all get a nice shower, there are elevators again and we are in a great mood. David takes off early for a guided nature hike from the hotel while Lillie and I sleep in. We meet up for breakfast and the sea looks calm so the 3 of us go kayaking and snorkeling. That was awesome. After kayaking we head to clean up and get lunch. After lunch, there's no a/c in our room again. We inquire about this and are told that even though we have some power back to the hotel not all the lines are fixed so we have to limit our power usage since the hotel is overloading the system. Grrr. But, no more stairs and no more limited food ordering. We also have off and on internet access and can watch tv. Thursday night it's hot again but we had a great day and are enjoying the clean hot baths that we don't have to share and watching a movie.
On Friday we are told that a/c people will come to work on the a/c that morning and that in a few hours we should get a/c back. At this point, who cares, we've been without it all night! We also know a few people who are scheduled to leave and as far as they've heard, they are still leaving. So we wait and they don't come back. Good sign. I call my concierge and he called Alaska airlines for me. No flights are being allowed to bring passengers in to the baja, but every flight off the baja is now being called a rescue flight and we will still be flying out on Saturday with other evacuees. After lunch on Friday we take the cooking class the hotel offers and learn how to make chilaquiles, which was very yummy. Friday night's activities team entertainment is the theme Cats and Lillie absolutely loved it. She laughed and clapped and petted them when they came up to us. It was cute. And Friday night we have air conditioning again! Friday night was probably the best night's sleep we had all week.
Saturday morning the hotel is very scarce. I feel sorry for them cause their guests are leaving but none are being allowed in. Tourism is really their only source of money on the baja. We get a great a la carte breakfast and head to our rooms to pack. Our transportation picks us up and we head to the airport. To check in at the airport, they hand print a boarding pass for the 3 of us on a piece of paper and stamp it with an Alaska Airlines stamp. Other than our rescue plane, the Policia Federales are the only ones taking off. As we wait, a man in a 4x4 pickup truck unloads his wife, twin girls that are Lillie's age and their 3 year old son. He has in his truck his posessions they could save and their english mastiff dog. Also from the truck is his sister in law and her 4 year old daughter. They are business owners in Cabo and have run out of supplies, their kids need basic things that they don't have and they are number 5,000 on a list of people needing evacuation in Cabo, so they drive. 9 hours it took them to get there. Alaska Airlines puts the girls and children on our flight along with other evacuees. The twin girls are sick and have fevers and are screaming. Mom is desperately trying to carry all 3 kids, the Aunt finally gets the boy to go with her. As we all make our way through security, the girls are screaming still and I look over and the Mom has tears streaming down her face. I immediately hand whatever I'm carrying to David and go over and put my arm around her. I said do you need anything at all? She said no, I just see everyone staring at me with screaming kids, they all hate me. I said OMG we're all staring at you because we feel sorry for you and can't imagine what yall have just been through! And if they aren't screw them. You'll never see these people again in your life and it's ALMOST all over. In less than 3 hours this will all be behind you, you've made it this far, you're almost there. She wiped her face, thanked me and David and Lillie and I tried to entertain the girls.
The plane ride home was uneventful though the customs guy gave us a bit of trouble for having hand written boarding passes. I rolled my eyes at him, he had us wait while he got a supervisor who just waved us through.
I know many people say they need a vacation from their vacation, this time it was almost a necessity and I called a mulligan!
