Resort to a Resort
Original text by Daisann Mclane,executive summary by darmansjah
THE SEAPLANE IS BOBBING ON its pontoons in the choppy South
Pacific Ocean like a plastic duck in a toddler’s bathtub. “You’ll have to wade
in from here,” the pilots shouts over the propeller’s rat-tat-tat. I look down
doubtfully at the restless sea, the swaying ladder, then take a deep breath and
start pulling off my sandals. Suddenly, in a whoosh, I’m in the air, courtesy
of a bare-chested Fijian giant who materializes from the waves and scoops me up
with one arm. “Welcome to the island!” talk about dramatic arrivals: I half
expect the waters to part as he strides to the beach through the roiling foam
with me balanced precariously, and ridiculously, on his shoulders. We draw near
to the shoreline, and I see my next two weeks spread out before me like a glossy
brochure: cute thatched cottages, bright yellow kayaks in neat rows on the
shining sand, pink tropical drinks topped with paper umbrellas. I’m not sure
what makes me more uneasy, the thought that I might fall off the Fijian’s
shoulders or the knowledge that once the airplane flies away I’ll be stranded
for days on this resort island.
Resorts are a staple of the travel world, but I’ve always
had an uncomfortable, double-edge relationship with them. I know that these
man-made destinations-the grand hotels, the all-inclusives, the seaside,
countryside, and mountaintop retreats-are protective bubbles. Yet I fell in
love with travel because it offered freedom, serendipity, and a way to break
out of my comfort zone. Traditional resorts wrap their guests in a cozy blanket
of the familiar, filtering out risk, chance, surprises-in other words, the very
things that draw many to travel in the first place.
For those us who plot our travels to maximize contact with
real people and places, the idea of squandering precious vacation time in
curated, controlled surrounding feels almost like a felony. Guilt kicks in :
Really, I should be booking that guesthouse with the shared bathroom in the
undiscovered neighborhood. Or kicking back in a string hammock by a beach shack
in that little fishing village.
Yet there are times, I’m embarrassed to admit, when I don’t
want my travel to be so real. Browsing the Web, I’ll stumble on a hotel and,
instead of continuing my search, I’ll linger and allow the resort sirens to
whisper in my ear: “Space! Quiet! Privacy! No decisions!” then I bargain with
my self: if I start my trip with a lazy, insulated week, won’t I have more
energy to do serious traveling the next?
The truth is, sometimes after working hard at travel, it’s nice to have travel take care
of you. The first trips I remember taking with my family were to resorts-not
the sleek all-inclusives of today but old rambling countryside manors in New
York and Pennsylvania surrounded by acres of farmland and forest. Long before
the word “sustainable” became a buzzword, these resorts were. The staff were
local students or members of the owner’s family, and the activities were
low-impact things like swimming in the nearby lake, playing tennis and
badminton, walking in the woods, and devouring three home-cooked meals a day
(remember the “American Plan”?). my sentimental attachment to these mostly
vanished hotels of my childhood probably explains my taste in resorts today.
What seems to make all the difference in my resort
experiences is local character. Even a bubble can lead to a sense of place. My
resort “Big Fails” have been hotels like the concrete compound in the Bahamas I
booked as a quick getaway packages one cold New York winter. The setting was
beautiful but the property so anonymous and anodyne that after three days,
dying of boredom in my beach chair, I slipped out the gate and walked to the
nearby town. After inquiries at the local conch-fritter joint, I met up with a lady who had a room for rent.
I retuned to the hotel, packed up my things, and fled to the other side of
paradise.
The there are the resorts I enter and never want to leave,
like the loopy beach hotel in the Dominican Republic. Architecturally, it was
anonymous as the Bahamas hotel. But the
owner, a middle-aged Italian expat, had found himself a local girlfriend
and become well-known character in town. Every night he would host a party by
the pool for his guests and invite all the neighborhood musicians, who would
pass beers and guitars around and sing Dominican merengues and bachatas
under the moon. In his resort, you never forgot where in the world you were.
Quirky owners, landmark old buildings, fellow guests who
don’t speak your language – when a resort has one or more of these wild cards,
you can embrace your craving for an escape while still feeding your traveler’s
sense of discovery.
Perched on the bronzed shoulders of the Fijian man, I felt I
had “tourist” written all over me. But not for long. It turns out my porter and
the other workers at the resort hailed from the only village on the little
island-and the village controlled the island’s land, leasing it to the resort’s
foreign owner. The workers were the bosses, which meant the bosses, ultimately,
worked for the workers. I swam in the ocean, went to church in the village, and
one night even played the ukulele with the man who’d carried me to shore. I was
in a bubble, I know, and not exactly travelling. Yet I felt like a traveler
still.
