We have arrived at our new destination...we had to let the other one go and hopefully battle to get our money back when we return to Canada! As of now it has gone to the wind...or perhaps the cockroaches in Panama!
It was completely and disgustingly awful! We should have known when they did not have a direct website...but we trusted the website that came up and the resort looked great!. We wanted all-inclusive, carefree, and on the beach....so technically that is what we got! However, if I may, and Taeya, I know you will be all over the drama we went thru....although, trust me you would not have liked to be in it!!!!
We flew from Kelowna to Vancouver on the 26th - stayed the night 10 min from the airport - which was so great as Ted and I were exhausted from getting home, doing laundry from Mexico, having Christmas, setting up and hosting Christmas dinner, Which I can safely say was thoroughly enjoyed by all !!! On the morning of the 27th we were up at 4am to get to the airport for our flight.....which turned out to be almost 8 hours instead of the 5 we were both thinking....but it was smooth and beautiful....I kept it together and we arrived into Panama, with sunshine, 31', a smile on our face and hope in our hearts ;-))))
We got off the plane very hungry as we had had a bagel and coffee from Tim Hortons at 5am then we had something that looked like eggs on the plane at 8:30am (our time)..........and that was it until we landed at 5:53 current time ( 2:53....on our time) We spotted a Subway right off the plane, so Ted was going to get us subs and I was going to go to the bathroom.......The line was 15 women long, ladies changing clothes, one women trying to potty train her 2 year old son for a good 5 min. etc etc.....with only two stalls! I waited for 26 minutes to go pee, and I knew Ted would be panicked.......that panicked I did not anticipate on!!!!! However, we had been worried about safety coming here and that just exasperated the situation.
We got thru customs and then headed to where our transfer would be waiting.................................1.5hours later we were still trying to figure out how to get to our resort after all of the other shuttles/buses had left! We called our resort and carrier numerous times to see what they could do to help us out! However, no one in Panama had heard of our resort???? The lady at the airport called all three Playa Blanca Resorts she thought it could be but we were finally informed....
THAT WE WERE NOT REGISTERED AT ANY RESORT, OUR CONFIRMATION # WAS NOT VALID, AND OUR RESORT DID NOT EXIST!!!
Here we are stuck in Panama for two weeks, with currently no accommodations, no idea where to go, no idea how safe we are! what the language/currency/ or anything else is!!!!!
We decided to check into the closest hotel so we can figure out what to do next!! We got in a cab that wanted $50 USD to take us to the nearest hotel, a Marriott....needless to say we decided to get out of his cab, and all of a sudden our cab fare dropped to $15 USD We checked in around 8:45pm just in time for last call for dinner! We ate...kinda.....all we could think was we had made a huge mistake coming to Panama...this was not the holiday we were looking for!
We went back to our room to call our reward representative to see what had gone wrong....we were on the phone for 30 minutes at least...on long distance charges....they said there must be some confusion, that we are registered...can we make it out tonight? We replied " no we were already here and we're now to tired to make the 45 minute drive, but we would be out tomorrow. "
We slept in ~ exhausted from our travels and emotional ups and downs, we had breakfast included in our stay at the Marriott, however due to time changes we had slept right to 10:30 (7:30 our time) and had therefor missed breakfast and the hotel's restaurant was closed. The front desk said they would keep our luggage while we headed across the way to the cafeteria for some food...we did that, it was hard as no one spoke english...so we ordered a club sandwich and a tuna sandwich. We ate part of each and headed back to our hotel where a cab was waiting to take us to our Panama Resort!!!
We were feeling good, we would soon be in our resort, on the beach, in the sun.....there still seemed to be some confusion though! No one had heard of our resort, and therefor no one knew where it was. I pulled out the address we were given last night as well as an emergency number for the package carrier (which I will not mention in hopes that we still might get some return)...still no one knew, but we headed to the spot that the hotel and cabby thought it might be located in....We were told it would be 1.5 hours and $120! We had to go, get there and have this nightmare be over with!!!!!!!
It took 2 hours and 32 minutes to get to our 'resort', we arrived at the front gate and our cabby told the front desk we were here to check in...although Ted and I were sure we were not at the right place, and the front gate had never heard of the Smile Playa Blanca...we continued thru the gates down through the apartments, town homes and finally the hotel that looked to be about 45 years old....not what we were expecting, to young to be enchanting and to old to be welcoming. We got to the hotel front gate and our cabby once again tried to announce who we were and what we needed, we once again gave out names and confirmation and the resort we were said to be staying in 'Smile Playa Blanca' The very nice men at the front gate had not heard of said resort, did not have the Rippel's checking in and did not have the confirmation number on file. We were then told to drive to the next resort 15 minutes down the road....perhaps that is where we were staying?.
Our very kind cabby and translator thru this all did as we were told! We went thru the whole thing all over again....until finally we said that is enough, could we come in and pull up our resort on-line and perhaps you will know it to see it! Ted went in to do so, as I was afraid to leave on our belongings in a strange cab (even though we had now been with this man for roughly four hours)...I pulled out the laptop as well and tried to get a signal in the cab, as I could see Ted was getting nowhere inside! I walked in with the computer, with the photo....that they could not pull up......and AHHHHH!!!! They knew the resort and now knew where we were going!!!! YAAA!!!! It was the one we had just been too, but now we had a name of whom we had to speak with....... we arrived at the front gate, gave our confirmation, our cabby told the gateman what had happened and who we were???? We did get the gate opened.....we then pulled up to the final gate, to the men we had talked to for about 15 minutes, prior to our run around, and again our cabby translated the mess we were in!!!!
We finally got to the hotel where we were greeted by ...... "We were expecting you last night".......no smile no friendliness, no sympathy, no common courtesy, NO RESPECT!!!!! As I'm sure you are all tired with this rant....I will let you wait in anticipation to see how day two and three of Panama evolved!
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