Vamos! – At Leisure in Club Med-Land

In which Sid and Doris have to represent their country in the land of international hospitality.

“Where are you people from?”  We are going to hear this a lot in the next couple of months, mainly from people who have tried hard but failed to understand a word we say.  Here in Club Med the core languages are Canadian-accented French, American-accented English and Mexican-accented Spanish, but we have found that if we speak slowly and carefully we stand a chance of being understood, especially once Sid has softened off the cut-glass edges of his accent.  “You say buTTer and I say buDDer” is our new refrain.

Everyone in Club Med is super-nice and want us to have a fantastic time.

After two days we have explored most of the very large campus and at one point we found a set of hammocks nonchalantly strung under some trees, just inviting you to lounge in them.  Doris lounged into one and found herself immediately and unexplainably on the floor.  “Oh for heavens sake”, said Sid, “how hard can it be to simply lie in a hammock?”

After that period of extended relaxation was over, we went in search of the sailboats.  One of our key reasons for choosing Club Med was that we are going to be doing some sail racing in the next couple of weeks and we wanted to remind ourselves about wind awareness, race tactics etc.  The boats here are HobieCat 14s with no jibs or booms which makes them uncapsizeable and very, very safe to give to beginners.  They are easy to gybe but very difficult to tack, coming to a sudden and total halt as you try and get them through the wind.

We eventually worked our way back to the shore, and a session with Mr Google turned up several discussion threads on “how do you tack a HobieCat without a jib”. Mostly eliciting the reply “just get a jib”, but also with some very handy hints on roll tacking which we last did on the Thames Raters.  Today’s session was much more constructive, sailing a figure of eight course more or less without stalling.

The site has some Circus Training equipment which we think is really aimed at the children (it seems to be already US school holidays) but from 4pm onwards the adults are allowed on.  By 4:01 Sid was the next in line for the trapeze.

Not bad for a gentleman of a certain age, and several people came up to congratulate him afterwards, some of them sounding slightly surprised.

That’s it for now.  I originally decided not to torment you with pictures of idyllic Caribbean lounging, but hey, maybe just a couple of pictures…

PS I have now got Snorkeller’s Bum Tan.