It's the question that I'm starting to dread: "How was your holiday?"
It's not that I've been asked a lot or that I'm tired of answering. It's that when I do answer with anything other than "good, thanks," I start feeling a little petulant and maybe ungrateful.
You see, this year we did our first all-inclusive beach resort holiday in Mexico. The place where we stayed was beautiful. The grounds were impeccable, the beaches pristine. The food was very good, and the service exemplary.
So what's to complain about, right? I mean, how can I find fault with a place where people walk by to pick up my empty glasses after me, a place where the Corona taps at the bar are turned out away from the bartender, so people can simply fill up as they desire, a place where unlimited food was always merely metres away?
Well, maybe all that, and more, soured me a bit on the all-inclusive experience.
Large, opulent - and mostly excessive - resorts run for kilometres and kilometres along the coast on Mayan Riviera. It seems that from Cancun to Tulum, and probably beyond, each square metre of perfect Caribbean beachfront has been given over to a Disney ideal of what a Mexican holiday is supposed to be about. Forget Mexicans, forget even Mexico, as long as the servers' English is Spanish-tinged, and the tequila is free, then we can all pretend we are in Mexico.
There is something almost surreal about landing in these places. In our 2,000-room resort, there were countless restaurants, bars around each corner, and literally hundreds of workers cleaning, gardening and servicing the needs of the thousands of guests.
There was even a mall that was anchored on one end by an 800-person-capacity discotheque and on the other, a much smaller-capacity Catholic chapel. It brought to mind a modern-day merging of the "cleansing of the temple" and "Sodom and Gomorrah." What would Jesus do, indeed! Have his hands full, that's for sure.
Another thing that bothered me about the experience was the behaviour of some of my fellow guests. Some people, it seems, figure that because they are in an all-inclusive, they should eat and drink as much as they can all day long so they "get their money's worth." It wasn't uncommon to see people staggering around half-cut midday or piling plates full of every possible buffet item.
Whatever. People can do as they wish, but drunks generally are obnoxious to be around, and the amount of food that was left uneaten on plates was staggering. It all just seemed so excessive and wasteful, and it provided a shocking contrast to the life that so many Mexicans have to live.
We did try to get out. We took the Colectivos, the public transit, up and down the highway and visited Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and some ruins. We also took advantage of the magnificent beaches at the resort and did some swimming and snorkelling.
But when someone asks, "What did you do for your holiday?," I'd be hard-pressed to say I went to Mexico. Sure, I was in the country, but I didn't go anywhere near the real Mexico. Our first all-inclusive holiday will likely be our last.
