Playa del Carmen, Mexico
New year, new era! Those crackpots and fruitcakes awaiting intergalactic saviours to rescue them from a cosmic fireball on the 21st of December are no doubt still wiping egg off their faces as the rest of us sail merrily into 2013.
But while armageddon didn't happen that day, I did have an appointment with a hospital bed, to be prodded and probed, ensuring that my own apocalypse was still many moons away!
Thankfully, while a few years of working like a Trojan have taken their toll, it seems that some prescription drugs and a holiday in the sun are just what the doctor ordered so there's no better time to head off to Mexico and celebrate the new year whilst checking out those pesky prophetic Mayans and relaxing with a margherita on the beach.
It's the first proper all-inclusive holiday we've done; a chance to head somewhere luxurious and not move from the sun-loungers as we're fed mountains of food and served non-stop cocktails... but that doesn't quite fit with my sense of adventure so I've got a few surprises up my sleeve to drag Coman off the beach and bring him face to face with those blood-thirsty, calendar-counting, pyramid-building Mayans. And that's not all I've got planned, there's some entertaining extra-curricular activities which should make for quite the fun-filled trip.
So, with enough luggage to rival Joan Collins on a weekend break, and carrying a fair amount of post-Christmas excess bagagge of our own, we set off for Gatwick on a package-holiday to end them all. Fortunately, Virgin Holidays have their very own lounge there called the V Room, so once we've checked our trolley-load of bags in, we head straight in for a hearty breakfast before we board.
It's not exactly the glamour of the Upper Class lounges, resembling more a swanky motorway service station. But we load up on a full English, rounded off with some Marmite on toast. Spotting an opportunity for a taste of home everyday, a handful of the little Marmite sachets mysteriously make their way into my pockets for the journey to foreign climes.
As we eat we watch planes take off in the grim murk and rain which is streaming down the windows. Eventually our turn comes and we say goodbye to rainlashed, grey-skied Britain and Ola!!!! to Me-hico - via an 11 hour flight full of films, the Saturday papers, a rather fine wine list, a Bloody Mary, a Baileys and a Thai green curry. There are worse ways to travel!
After eight hours or so we pass over Bermuda, then the Bahamas and Cuba, all peeking out through breaks in the tropical clouds, dancing pink and orange in the sunset, before landing as darkness falls in an airport carved out of the rainforest to the south of Cancun, on the tip of the Yucatan peninsula by the blue waters of the Caribbean.
We've obviously done something right as we're first to disembark the plane, whizz straight through immigration in about sixty seconds and our bags are the first on the carousel. And as if to greet us is a huge sign announcing the New Year's Eve spectacular by David Guetta in Playa Del Carmen to which we've wangled VIP passes.
However as we're ushered into our car to transfer from Cancun to Playa del Carmen our luck changes and rain starts to pour down, a rather depressing reminder of home. And then at our hotel, once wrist-banded for our VIP 'Concierge Level' stay, we're shown to our room, which is supposed to have beautiful views of the Caribbean to greet us each day only to find it looks out on a concrete seating area atop which sits a gaudy maypole bedecked for Christmas with a far distant bit of sea peeking out.
A somewhat jetlagged and emotional performance back at reception results in the promise of an upgrade to the Honeymoon suite from New Year's Day. Nice!!
By now it's 8pm so we unpack some of our bags and dress for dinner, choosing La Terraza, the hotel's Italian fine-dining restaurant for our repast. It's a large, high-ceilinged space boasting a vast wine-rack stretching the height of one wall, but in need of some decorative flair, something that the entire stark, white expanse of the hotel could benefit from.
The food however is very good; a spinach and goats cheese salad for Coman followed by pesto genovese, and beef carpaccio for me followed by salmon papillotte with a passably good bottle of French cabernet sauvignon to send us sleepily off on a wander around the pools before we crawl into bed. If the food continues in this vein then it'll be thumbs up for the all-inclusive experience.
Let's hope our fellow guests don't prove themselves to be the flies in the ointment. We have suspicions they may not be quite as agreeable as the food. Suspicions that prove correct a couple of days later as towel-gate and the battle of the wristbands erupts.
