Little things can make a big difference.

Our hotel/resort in Jamaica was a beautiful place. The RIU Ocho Rios is brand new... only open since October and is an “all inclusive” facility where just about everything you can imagine is included in the cost of your stay. From food to recreational facilities, daytime and nighttime entertainment and even the cost of drinks at the bars is covered in your cost and you can literally have no out of pocket expenses once you arrive. It has about a quarter of a mile oceanfront of crystal clear water, a white sand beach and palm trees waving in the warm tropical breezes. If dipping in the ocean isn’t for you, there are two huge swimming pools with large built in Jacuzzis. They provide numerous types of ocean recreation facilities including canoes, peddle boats, sail boats and snorkeling equipment. No less than seven restaurants that cover just about any epicurean preferences and I’m still counting the number of bars available where you can wet your whistle. For nightly entertainment, there is a covered outdoor stage where singers, dancers, magicians and other forms of entertainment help you pass your evening hours. Truly, it’s no exaggeration to say the RIU company has put a lot of thought and money into designing and building a truly impressive facility and we had a really nice time during our stay there.

But. Yes, it seems like there’s always a “But”. No system ever conceived of or constructed by mankind has ever been perfect. It seems like there is always something that isn’t quite right and this place is no exception. Strange as it may seem though, it’s a couple of little things that are my biggest gripe. Take, for instance, the salt shakers in the various resturants. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Jamaica is a humid place. And what happens to salt shakers in humidity? The salt clumps up. Ok, they do put rice in the salt shakers to soak up the humidity… a standard cure, normally, but it still has a tendency to clump up to some extent. Ok, so how do you still provide for salt to come out of the shaker? You have reasonably large holes in the shaker, right? Well, not theirs. The holes in the shakers seem to be only slightly larger than the size of individual grains of salt. Consequently, it seems to take about a minute and a half’s worth of shaking to get any appreciable amount of salt out. Couldn’t they have figured out by now that they need shakers with bigger holes? Seems like a no brainer to me.

And then there’s the issue of water. Not the ocean. Not the swimming pool. It’s the water from the faucet in the guest rooms. Located very prominently in the literature found in your room when you first arrive is a comment that you shouldn’t drink the water out of the faucet. It’s not that there are any germs or bugs of any kind in the water but evidently the chemical content of the water can be disagreeable with some peoples intestinal systems. So, to keep from spending an inordinant amout of time in the very nicely appointed bathroom visiting with the Jamaican cousin of Montezuma, it’s advisable to heed their advice. Your scribe speaks from personal experience in this regard, having forgotten that admonishment one evening.

Now it would seem to me that if they are going to spend the kind of bucks that they obviously did to build this place and considering the cost they charge people to stay here, I’m wondering why they couldn’t have spent a relatively few more dollars for some kind of a filtration or purification system to provide drinkable water. For such an otherwise first class resort, this seems too much like a third world situation.

But you know what? Sometimes you just have to understand that nothing is perfect and this place is no exception. So, you just have to overlook certain things and concentrate on the otherwise good time you are having. And a good time can definitely be had… if you don’t sweat the small stuff.

Pictures in the gallery.