[All photos on this blog were taken by Alan A. Lew and released under a Creative Commons copoyright: non-commercial use, attribution required, share alike copyright]
I was woken several times over night either by rain beating against our windows, or by the wind. At about 4am on Wednesday (2 January 2008) there was a lull in the rain and I went out to bring in a couple clothes items that were hanging by clothespins to dry on the hammock. I was afraid that they may have blown away.
At 6:30am the wind and rain were still pounding away. This was unusual as all of the previous squalls like this only lasted an hour, more or less. Someone came by our unit at about 7:30 to see if we had booked a fishing tour. I saw about 10 people eventually make their way in rain gear to the pier for that fishing trip.
At about 8am I went down to see if my scuba dive was going to take place. It was raining lightly and blowing hard. The front desk said that the dive people had called and cancelled the dive trip. I went back and got my computer so I could just hang out in the lobby and get my blog site up. Fortunately, the internet was a lot faster today than last time. A lot of people were checking the weather forecast on the public computer in the lobby, and the tour booking person was busy rescheduling tour, as well as booking new tours for people who had just arrived the day before.
I noticed a couple filling out a form, which I guessed was for their sale pitch meeting, and so I asked if we could move our sale talk from Friday to today. We were changed to 11am today, which included lunch for the four of us.
I had a hamburger for lunch and our sales person joined us. She said that the Sunchaser timeshare group (which has 14 resorts in Canada, Hawaii, and Mexico/Central America/Caribbean) was having a membership campaign, which is why we saw this resort available as an Interval International Getaway week several months ago. Following the typical timeshare sales pitch, she asked us where we had vacationed, where we would like to vacation, if we saw ourselves vacationing well into the future, and what our dream vacation was.
They all ask these same questions, then try to fit their resort into your dream and future vacations. Unlike other sales pitches that we have experiences, she included the kids in the discussion and asked them questions like those above, as well.
She also showed us a pyramid that had beach resorts at the top (highest demand and easiest to exchange), mountain resorts in the middle, and inland resorts at the bottom (lowest demand and hardest to exchange). And she repeatedly commented on the second longest barrier reef in the world and the low supply and high demand for timeshares on Ambergris Caye.
She commented that the sales are low key here at Costa Maya Reef Resort and asked if we were interested in the resort. I said no and she said that she was required to go over the purchasing options, which she did quickly. She also said that about 35% of the people she talks to ends up buying into the timeshare.
At one point I mentioned that I was more interested in reducing the number of weeks that we own (currently 2) and she mentioned that she could buy one of our weeks for $1000 to $2000, which they would then sell to a wholesaler. I found that interesting and may look for a wholesaler myself. Alternatively, I was thinking that if we could sell what we have now for a timeshare in San Francisco, that would be the ideal situation for me, since I could easily visit that city for a week every couple of years.
The entire pitch took 90 minutes, including lunch. That was pretty good, as in most other resorts, 90 minutes means 2 hours. And we have had some incredibly high pressure sales pitches in the past. In fact, I often will not do them no matter what the offer they make.
The rains had completely stopped by late morning, but the winds were strong all day, the sky was completely overcast, and the temperatures on mild to cool. We pretty much stayed inside for most of the afternoon, though I did convince Mable to get a couple of bikes to go for a bike ride on the beach later in the afternoon. We rode about a half mile down the beach to the next resort, and then about a half mile up the beach to the next resort.
We saw a wide range of different levels and forms of development, including abandoned and storm damaged buildings, quite a few fancy private homes of different styles (some with thatched roofs), and several completely undeveloped parcels. Most had narrow sea frontage, while extending back quite a ways to the main road. We were advised not to take the main road because of its poor condition during the rainy season. They expect to have the road paved all the way to San Pedro by next year sometime.
The Trade Winds that had been blowing since we arrived were an onshore wind, blowing from east to west. The winds with this storm were blowing offshore from west to east, which tells me that it may be from a low pressure system to the north of us. Last night was cold – the first time we needed blankets.
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