B and I woke up early and ran in the rain; it soon stopped and we went poolside. The weather was clear and very hot and humid. The water is turquoise on the ocean side of the resort, big waves. At night you can watch jewel-lit glittering cruise ships pass on the black horizon.

B put up the beach umbrella and soon a rotund hotel employee in a hot pink shirt rolled down and started putting it back down. We asked him why, and, puffed up, he advised us that Tropical Storm Nate would move through around 8. B pointed out that it was only 10, and he spread his hands in the helpless “nothing I can do” gesture. He rolled off and was tongue lashed by an elderly woman whose umbrella was his next target; she received the same helpless gesture but she couldn’t let it go. After appealing to management, she was able to smugly reinstate her shade and soon they bloomed like mushrooms.

The only real signs that we had a storm last night were the facts that they brought our balcony furniture in and closed the pool early. This resulted in staggering numbers of people in the lobby swarming over the snack table and consuming free alcohol. (“They closed all the bars down the strip cuz they’re open-air – Senor Frog, Pancho Willie. People don’t have nowhere to go,” B’s sister’s boyfriend drawled in his Southern accent. “Wait, there’s really a place called Senor Frog?? And people GO THERE?” B asked incredulously.) 

The preponderance of free alcohol is gobsmacking. We have a series of bottles in our room, beer in the fridge, swim-up bars, all free free free. (“This,” B’s sister says, waving a hand at the slack-faced, sunburnt pool patrons clutching sweating plastic cups full of booze, “is what perpetrates this ‘tainted alcohol’ thing. All these people who come down here, lounge around in 90 degree blazing tropical sunshine, drink only alcohol, and then wonder why they feel like hell.”)

I’m not much of a beach vacation kind of gal, but I have to say, there is an interesting abandon with which the resort-goers attack this place. From our pale Midwestern position under the sun umbrella, with my straw hat and our library books (The Magician King for me, Garrison Keillor for him) surrounded as we are by shrieking, extremely drunk people glistening with sweat and suntan oil, revealing alarming amounts of sun-damaged, poorly-toned, leathery hide, I am having fun.