Tales of an American Peasant Vacation Wyndham Fortuna Beach The Bahamas
I had some room left on my credit card so I figured it was time to go on vacation. I headed for my favorite 2 ½ star hotel the Wyndham Fortuna Beach in, Freeport, Grand Bahamas, Island. It’s a peasant’s palace in that it’s all that an unemployed waif like me can afford. I read the reviews on this run down relic just before I left, and they were hilarious in there disgust. People were putting out red alerts on not to come here, but I’ve been there before and for me it just the place I’m looking for. I myself am somewhat of a relic so the place fits me like a glove.
It’s mid-October so I’ll get the island to myself. After all its hurricane season and bookings tend to be light. They can always lure a poor bloke like myself with their category five discounts so I’m outta here and headed south.
When the cab pulls into the hotel entrance you get that sick feeling in your stomach that you made a big mistake and just blew a week off. The façade is run down and looks more like a circa 1970’s middle school in Buffalo than an exotic Caribbean resort. You’re almost embarrassed to walk into the lobby and admit you actually booked a room for a week in a place like this.
However, when you walk out through the other side of the lobby, you see that the grounds are attractive enough and the hotel buildings don’t look so bad. Once in my room, I’m stricken by the ocean view and the vast sandy beach dotted with palm trees. This is as close to paradise as a peasant like me is likely to get and although a peasant’s paradise is more pedestrian than Paris Hilton’s, it still is nevertheless a paradise.
I wonder if it’s the same way in heaven. Will Paris Hilton get a five star cloud to harp away on while I’m rowing and bailing out some leaking cumulus piece of carp that’s ready for the cloud junk yard? You are what you are after all even in the hereafter. If you can’t make it here on earth what makes you think there will be some kind of role reversal in eternity?
But I digress. I could care less about the condition of the hotel buildings or the lousy food they serve, I came here for the beach and especially the calm warm ocean water. The ocean is calm here and that’s something I’ve had trouble with at other resorts.
I’m sick of resorts where the ocean waves are over my head and when I try to get into the water I’m knocked on my ass by a series of building size waves. When you finally get into the water you feel like you’re in an episode of The Deadliest Catch with only even odds of making back to shore. But here on Fortuna Beach there are no waves and I can swim and snorkel off and on during the day more like a trip to Typhoon Lagoon than being a cast member in The Perfect Storm.
I worship Caribbean beaches and I love swimming in the warm salt water. I come from the Northeast, and live less than a mile from the Atlantic, but you can’t go in the water without getting hypothermia. The bone chilling water is like diving into a vat of liquid nitrogen and so I have to take a thousand mile plane ride to go for a swim.
This place has a lot of young European couples. That’s a good thing because Europeans won’t talk to Americans. They consider us too uncouth probably because we show up for dinner wearing an Arkansas Razorback muscle shirt and a pair of flip flops. That and Americans drink like fishes and every other word out of their mouth is an F Bomb. Anyway the fewer people who talk to me the more privacy I have.
I’m sitting on my deck staring out over the tranquil turquoise ocean and my soul is at peace. My problems are a thousand miles away; they didn’t make the trip with me. Everything is ok with the world now and I am reconciled to my existence.
Funny how taking a break from the greatest country in the world can make a person feel brand new and bring the joy in my heart back from the dead. I’m only half way through my vacation and I can’t wait to come back.
