Post-Melissa Jamaica is a work in progress

With my timeshare contract with H10 running out in mid-December, I had thought for a while about how to use my all-free, all-inclusive week that I had kept for a special occasion. In August, I finally decided to take Sandy to Jamaica for a last-hurrah vacation with the Spanish chain. Jamaica's H10 resorts have the highest daily all-inclusive supplement cost of any of their resorts, so using the freebie certificate made sense, nixing what would have been a surcharge of around $1,800 for our week in Montego Bay.

And then came hurricane Melissa, devastating large swaths of Jamaica in a full-out, direct assault back in late October. In case you don't remember, Melissa was the most powerful category 5 storm to have hit Jamaica in recorded history.

By the time Melissa hit, the entire trip had been set up: first-class flights to Montego Bay, a free one-night stay with Wyndham points in the Decameron Grand in MB the first night, a driver for all of our ground transportation needs, and of course the reservation for seven nights in the Ocean Eden Bay. Whilst in Sicily, I had reached out to AA, the properties, and Arnold, our driver, to make sure that recovery was progressing and that we would be able to enjoy Jamaica, even if not everything was going to be as smooth as expected. All systems were "go."

Well, sorta. American Airlines had cut back on its flight schedule to the island, and we had to make several changes only to end up with our initial itinerary that involved Charlotte going out and Miami coming back. A lot of phone time for nothing, but as a retiree I'm prone to enjoying talking on the phone. NOT! The situation was a bit different with the Decameron Grand: I had called Wyndham twice to assure that we would have a room after our arrival in Montego Bay, and both times it was, "The hotel is open and ready for you!" Then, on the day before our departure, I happened to see in my Wyndham app that the stay had been cancelled—WTF? Yet another phone call (with much wait time) yielded the information that the hotel would not reopen until January 1. Searching for an available hotel and then comparing prices (they varied wildly from about $155 to $230 from one OTA to the next, and even the property's own reservations system showed a price $25 more than booking.com) I finally ended up with Hotel 39 on Jimmy Cliff Boulevard.

And so it was with a bit of trepidation that we started our trip from Lubbock to Dallas, onward to Charlotte and finally Montego Bay. Yet, the travel woes I had anticipated with short connection times and other snafus never materialized. We arrived on-time in MBJ in the late afternoon, and our man Arnold was waiting for us to ferry us the few miles to the Hotel 39 where a decent room was waiting for us. On the way to the airport we started to see the havoc that Melissa had wreaked upon the city.

The boarded-up Decameron Grand, our original hotel in MB

After a decent night we got up for an interesting breakfast in the hotel. We had a choice of an American (egg, bacon, the works) or a Jamaican breakfast. Of course we went out on a limb and were not disappointed by the saltfish, collard greens, banana, and something like a white hockey puck that turned out to be a boiled dumpling, with two simple ingredients: flour and water. Colorless and even more tasteless, the dumpling (hard to chew!) was not our favorite, but all the rest was really yummy.

Before being picked up by Arnold for our transfer to the H10 by around noon, Sandy and I went for a stroll along Jimmy Cliff Boulevard, the narrow two-lane road that winds along the Montego Bay seafront. It was so empty—no tourists, relatively few cars, numerous locals who did not appear to have slept inside a house for a long time. Most of the shops were closed and even boarded up; from the few open ones, shopkeepers would emerge to call out to us to come in and shop. Sandy ended up buying a few trinkets from an elderly woman who had reopened one of the few stalls in the "craft market," asking for princely sums for bracelets, cheap, printed fabric purses, and other worthless bric-a-brac. It seemed to me that she could have easily quadrupled her take for the day had she asked for even remotely reasonable prices in light of the fact that there were no other tourists. None.

Damage from the hurricane was everywhere: debris in the promenade's park areas (some of it bundled into plastic sacks that were awaiting pick-up), downed trees, construction fences, damaged roofs and worse. Add to that a complete void of the normal sounds that this formerly touristy vibrant city center would have emanated. It was quite eerie. No birds chirping, no stray cats or dogs, almost no pedestrians. The few panhandlers, scrawny looking without shirts, were not very persistent, yet they made us feel uneasy as we had intruded upon their territory, coming from a much more prosperous world and not belonging there. Don't get me wrong: They were not menacing in any way—it was our inability to properly handle these insecure feelings having arrived less than 12 hours before.

Arnold picked us up, more or less on time, and we loaded up our luggage. He is a short, happy-looking fellow who has a small tour operations business. We talked a lot on the way to the resort (after he had stopped at a stall to get himself a cup of soup) about how his house still doesn't have a proper roof and how hard it is that there are no tourists. He drove a nice minivan, and from the outside he didn't look like someone in dire material need or even traumatized, but one could sense that things have been really rough. Ya Mon!

The transfer to the resort, about 25 miles north-east of Montego Bay, took a bit less than an hour, and we went through the H10-typical check-in process. Of course, my e-mails had not been acknowledged or answered, and even though we were within the normal check-in time our room was not ready. Sandy and I, after our recent H10 experiences in Playa del Carmen and Punta Cana, took it all in stride and had an excellent lunch in the Privilege Lounge down by the water, being relaxed and enjoying the beautiful setting. A quick kudos to the chefs of all the lounges and specialty restaurants who were the best in all my years with H10. 

Eventually, our room was ready move in. The Junior Suite was a decent one-room unit on the second floor, overlooking the large expanse between the two resort wings, with its pool and a view of the distant ocean. So much for a prime location. At least we were not in the basement.... 

The Ocean Eden Bay is one of two sister resorts that make up one large complex of two-winged tracts, one of them the family-friendly Ocean Coral Spring and the other the adult-only OEB, where we stayed. Both resorts share all of the specialty restaurants as well as two Privilege lounges right on the beach; the Coral has a more pleasing design and free-form pools that are more imaginative than the rectangular ones of the Eden. As we found out, the Coral had re-opened immediately after the hurricane, while our part of the complex had been closed until just a week before our arrival. Repair work was evident everywhere, and we were amazed by how much had been accomplished in such a short time. Kudos to those local worker bees, some of whom seemed to have been brought in from Cuba.

The "ocean view" from our balcony

What was  missing were the guests. By my estimate (corroborated by some of the staff's comments) the occupancy rate could not have been more than 5%, if that. Mind you, total room capacity for the two sister resorts is around 900 rooms! There were days when during the middle of the afternoon there were fewer than a dozen guests at the main pool, five or six of them at the swim-up bar and the others disappearing in the sea of empty chaise lounges. But the resort maintained all services, including several buffets and all but one or two of the eight to ten specialty restaurants, on a rotating basis with one or two closed each day. Every evening, there was some excellent entertainment that ranged from live bands and circus acts to an outstanding magic show and well-choreographed dance shows. Impressive. The company realizes that the best way to make sure guests cancel their reservations in times such as these is to invite negative reviews. H10 must be bleeding thousands of dollars each day right now. Oh well, they're a Spanish company and have the euros, right?

Few visitors means that the staff are bored and take much more time to talk to the few guests who are present. It didn't take much on our part to elicit the Jamaicans' incomparably soft smile, one of the most beautiful that I have ever seen. When left to their own thoughts and worries, the locals have a somber, often stern expression, but greet them and they light up like a Christmas candle. It is genuine. This is not one of those "give-me-a tip" smiles. And this goes for women as well as men: sparkling eyes, brilliantly white teeth, and an open, inviting visage. Ya Mon!

Add to this the Jamaicans' innate drive to sing and sway to anything that resembles music, and you feel happiness and content where despair and pain would appear to be more appropriate in light of the current situation. Don't get me wrong: The various servers and bar tenders expressed their concern and sorrow where appropriate, but there was always this can-do mindset that prevailed. We learned a lot about numerous aspects of everyday life of everyday people, who work in these resorts for the fat cats from abroad. If there was resentment, we didn't perceive it.

We spent our days the way one does in an all-inclusive resort: mostly eating, drinking, and hanging out on either the beach or by the pool. With most of the tiki umbrellas having been destroyed by Melissa and staff just slowly rebuilding them, the beach didn't look as polished as it normally would. But as there were only a handful of tourists who wanted to lie in the shade we didn't have any issues finding open chaises and umbrellas. The water's temperature was just perfect, and the beach was free of sea grass and it was easy to just float without being exposed to the strong waves that the afternoon winds bring with them. Sandy was giggling every time she took the brunt of an errant swell, and she spent literally hours looking for shells and other treasures.

We left the compound three or four times to walk on the beach toward the west. (Toward the east, there's only undeveloped, rough shoreline, not made for riskless walks.) Immediately outside of the resort boundary (tightly secured by staff) used to be a small village of tourist shops. But Melissa destroyed essentially the entire encampment, and only two or three shacks had started up business again. Walking through this area of destruction was not pleasant, I have to say. "Look at the beautiful things I have! Good prices! Please come in!" We just wanted to walk on the beach, and this made us feel uneasy and guilty for not buying whatever might be on offer. This whole thing of being a rich tourist in a devasted country makes one think about who and what we are.

Looking east, not much shoreline can be walked

Toward the west (direction Montego Bay), lots of explorable shoreline

When Judy and I had visited India many years ago and were confronted with the abject poverty of so many people, people who were everywhere, people who held up their hands in despair, we had experienced something very similar. You can't help. You can't give a penny to everybody who stretches out the hand. The hands keep coming, and you can't stop them. It was the most helpless that I had ever seen Judy, the archetypal social worker if there was one, be completely helpless and distraught. I felt similar in Jamaica. Yet, we go to places like that and seek happiness. 

I continue to try to come to grips with how lucky we are living the lives we have. We have our homes, enough money to feed ourselves, go out to eat, vacation abroad. Pretty much everything. Yet we bitch and moan whenever we can. None of the locals we talked to complained, yet they acknowledged how difficult life is for them but there was something else.... Dignity, that's what they all had, so much dignity.

H10 made a valiant attempt at getting me to sign a new contract. Well, at my age, a 25-year renewal duration doesn't make much sense, does it? The promise of two "ocean front weeks" rang hollow in light of former promises (and a decade-and-a-half of fighting for a better room, almost every vacation!), and the all-inclusive fee of between $130 to $200 per person / per day (or an additional $80 single supplement when traveling alone) was not attractive, either. What about all those RCI points, you ask? Pretty much worthless, and with added costs such as the RCI annual membership, exchange fees, and even extra cleaning fees if a stay is for less than a week they are bordering the realm of what we call a racket. To top it all off (and make us walk out the door) our sales dude, Curtis, had to add another $400 annual membership fee to the hefty price to buy into the scheme. He really wanted the sale. Sorry, and addio, H10. I'll go private from now on as there are a gazillion deals out there. 

A last lunch of jerk chicken and pork (OMG, soooo good!) on the beach, a final dinner at the Indian restaurant (equally excellent, as all the specialty restaurants were as opposed to the extremely blah buffets), and then it was time to check out, wait for Arnold to pick us up, and check in for our flight to Miami and home. 

The last major trip of 2025 was in the bag.

Jürgen