Lemony Snickets Meet Dante in the Third Circle.

I have just returned from a week in the Dominican Republic. I had booked this vacation for my children and me as a means of de-stressing from a difficult couple of months. My children indeed, had had a series of ‘Unfortunate Events” and truly needed to be pampered and loved. They are experts in Latin American traveling, my son in law being “equitoriano” and their having spent 3 months last year traveling from Tijuana to Central America, South America and back by ship, I figured they would know about the Dominican Republic. Even they were shocked by what was to follow.

I purchased the vacation on eBay. The glossy photos showed a 4-bedroom villa with a private plunge pool for a week for only $1000. Ok, so when it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true. Lured by the promises of fabulous restaurants, lobster every night, maids to make our breakfast each morning at the pool, who could refuse? And thus began our descent into hell.

There are rings to hell, if you remember your Dante, and we hit every one. It seems that Lifestyle Hacienda Resort and Spa is composed of myriads of layers of people who neither communicate with you or each other. It is based upon the idea that everyone is secretly elitist and wants to piss on people who have been made unequal. Yeah and you know how that’s going to work for my family and me.

Once it was clear that we did not want to be “VIP Members” we got shuttled off to the morass of people who didn’t know what was going on, who were trained to always practice deniability while appearing to acquiesce to your desire, or try to be helpful. It mattered not that my son in law spoke perfect Spanish so that he could deal with the lower echelons; we were always bumped to someone else.

And what, you might ask, required all this discussion with the staff. Well, let’s start with the villa which had no air-conditioning in the main part of the villa. Only in the bedrooms, and only in 2 of them. And no we didn’t get a 4-bedroom villa, but a 3-bedroom villa. Seems the lady who sold this to us on eBay is a notorious liar and guaranteed us al kinds of things that don’t apply to Lemony Snickets. There was a lot of reassurance that no villas had air-conditioning, but that was clearly not so, we had met folks who had it. But remember we were not worthy of that treatment since we did not want to plunk down $85,000 for the privilege of feeling superior to other people with inferior wristbands. (And trust me there is a whole hierarchy to that as well.)

They also had this amazing ruse about “restaurants”. What they had was a central slop bucket buffet, which served unrecognizable food to the peons. Then they had other “restaurants” that served up the same food, just further away from the industrial kitchens of the lower depths. But for these you had to make reservations the day before. Only on the last day were we allowed into the inner sanctum (The VIP Gourmet Restaurant which served hot food) Yes I did feel like gnawing my hands off. Oh, and you were required to buy into this as it was “all inclusive”.

We finally figured out how to escape, rented a car and left Dodge. We found 2 amazing beaches where the snorkeling was fantastic, the scenery delicious, and where one would hope you could get away from the constant push to buy a timeshare. That was not the case, however by day 5 we were intrepid soldiers in insulting anyone who ventured near us to sell us the “Lifestyle Resort Life”

There is definitely a lot more I could report on including the 3 little girls who slammed into our rented car, knocking the bumper off, or the inability to get any kind of report from the higher ups (who all happen to be white Europeans), but suffice it to say, my advice is to stay away from eBay and timeshares. It ‘s not for me and my peeps.

Keep the faith y’all.