Hedonism Review – Part 3 Excursions, Fun, Hedo vs. Cruise

Welcome to day three recap here in Hedo. We’re shooting the same spot, nice jungle. We like it because it’s shady and there’s some good ambiance, but we’ve got a tractor moving in behind us. So who knows what that’s going to look like. But it makes my hair look more red. That’s always good.

Every day starts a day breakfast, right? You gotta eat, you gotta get prepared for the day. And we’ve kind of discovered that we sit in generally the same spot each Friday, but we kind of switch who we’re sitting with. And we’ve met a bunch of really great people. We highly recommend whenever you’re at any of these events that you mix your crowd up. Don’t sit with the same people all the time because you get to experience a little bit more of your fellow guests and have some different conversation each day. Absolutely. It’s an opportunity to get to know people and you’re not shouting over music, which is typically loud at the pool and it’s typically loud when you’re in a club. Breakfast time is really nice to have those more intimate quieter conversations. We also learned from some of the sexy couples that we met about some of their experiences here at Hedo. And we’re finding that it is different pretty much each time. It depends on which group you come with. Sometimes there’s no group here, but it also changes. So even if you do come with the same group, the experience could still be different. Dynamics change and situations change. A couple we had breakfast with this morning was describing the two different trips that they’ve been here. And the first one, they were very much into the sex and had a lot of those kinds of fun experiences. But this time they’re having a lot more social interactions and learning more about people and making stronger connections with people. We decided to head out on one of the free activities that they offer, which is the class bottom vote. You can also take out a kayak. You can take out paddleboard. You can snorkel. You can scuba. Really, there’s no shortage of things to do for free. They have tours as well that you can book through the lobby and actually leave the resort. Yeah, like excursions off the facility. So you can do your ATV tours. You can do… They have zip lining. They did have zip lining. Okay, so they’ve got zip lining. They’ve got all kinds of stuff. Even a push cart, which I hadn’t seen before. So the old school railroad, you know, push carts. I didn’t see that one. Yeah, I saw that little poster for that. So that’s exciting. So first, to be honest, I thought the glass bottom boat would be a little hokey, but it wasn’t. It was pretty cool. You could put your phone right on the glass. It takes a great video. And it was starfish, all kinds of crazy fish, coral, all the fun stuff. Barrel sponges. Yeah, it was pretty nice and neat. They’ve got the captain of the boat and you’ve got the tour guide and they took us out. You would also be in that same reef if you wanted to do the snorkeling or some diving. Right. Now, let’s just say you enjoyed that so much, but you want to see more of the island kind of around where the resort is. If you go back, the tour guide and the captain, they’re going to remember who you are. And they’ll say, “Oh, last time we took you over to the risk reef. You want to see something different?” And you say, “Yes.” Boom. And then they take you to the other side. It’s like that here. It’s just friendly. I was so shocked. I was like, “Oh, do we have to tip you or pay you more?” And they’re like, “No, just come back and we’ll do something different.” You get an hour of their time and you can go anywhere you want to go, basically. Yeah, it is pretty cool. Then later in the afternoon, they had a Jamaican dance class. Describe that. What do you think? It was a cute class. It was about 20 minutes long and they taught some basic dance moves. And then at the end, we put them all together. Well, we put some of them together and did a little dance routine. And it was just to kind of give you a flavor of what Jamaican dancing is like. A little bit like line dancing. They have their signature moves. And they have a Spongebob. Angry Bird? Yeah, Angry Bird was another one. They were fun. It was a good group experience. So 20, 30 people all down by the beach, everybody being silly and dancing and having a good time. Yeah, it was fun. After that, most people went to the pool. It was cloudy that day, so it was really nice, kind of cool. And then it started to rain. So here you are in the pool getting rained on. I always love that. It’s just there’s something about it that feels luxurious. People stay, they got rained on, we hung out in the pool. And then people usually break off about five o’clock, six maybe. They go take a nap. They get ready for dinner. We decided to go to the hibachi restaurant for dinner and it was okay. It’s not my favorite food, typically. Anyway, I really like the buffet because I like the variety and the different flavors. The food quality was good, but it is a fixed menu. There’s a couple choices in the middle, but for the most part everything is done one particular way. And that’s the meal of the day. It’s Jamaican night. The live band was back playing all kinds of great reggae tunes, top 40s if you will, of reggae and Jamaican music. Everybody was dressed in Jamaican colors. It was fun to see everybody’s costumes and kind of how they interpreted that. You saw a lot of crocheted knitted net clothing. It was a fabulous night and once again, music, you said a little loud. People had to kind of go outside because it was hurting their ears, bring earplugs. It ended up working out that most people had already moved outside when they transitioned because the fire show was outside. Right, right. As it should be. So everyone moved to the beach and there was what four performers. Yeah, four performers. And Jamaican night here is typically done outside all the way down at the beach. So the whole thing, the food, the entertainment, the fire dancers, that’s usually done at the beach. We had a lot of rain that day and they were concerned about the show getting rained out. So they did half in and half out. What’s nice is that they can shift and readjust and it’s always still a very good experience for everybody. We had to change the locations because of the sun. A little melty in the sun. It blew my face out. I’m already paling out. Bright sunlight doesn’t help. All right, so here’s a little midweek recap of what’s a little different between resort versus cruise vacations. Matesurface is a little bit different. You get it twice a day on a cruise depending on which package you’ve chosen. You may get fresh flowers, chocolates, champagne. It’s a little more upscale in that regard, but I will say it probably depends on the resort too. The other thing that I like on a cruise that’s different here, even though you may be with 3,000 or 6,000 people, you end up running into them all the time. Here, the grounds are massive and you do have main gathering areas and you have a main pool that you’re hanging out at, but the beach is huge. It feels like I don’t see the same people all the time. I think part of the reason we run into people all the time on cruises or the same group of people is because we’re on the same schedule. Sleep patterns and breakfast patterns and things like that tend to control or dictate where you are at different times of the day. On the cruises, we tend not to be pool people, but here at the resort we’ve actually been a little bit more pool oriented. Right, because that’s daily activity. Unless you want to go about doing your own thing, which you’re certainly welcome to do. One of the areas of Hedo that is cool where I could see where people engage or interact with each other more frequently is on the nude side. They have like a courtyard, a bank of rooms. You really do get to see each other come and go and you can kind of congregate. We’re a little bit more on the edge. We’re on the prude side and our room door faces kind of outside of the complex. We can look out our windows and see the central garden walkway area, but we don’t usually see many people except for walking to and from the main social areas. The activities that we’ve experienced so far here at Hedo tend to be centralized activities at different times of the day and it’s all the same activities. On the ship, I think there’s more variety of things to go and do, but that also means that you may or may not run into the same people all the time at those particular things. I think also what could be happening too is that on a boat, most people do not have their phone. It’s like in the old school days when you didn’t… When we didn’t have cell phones. Yeah, you were where you said you were going to be. And so it’s kind of nice. Here you have Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is actually really great. I would say the cruise has bettering entertainment. They have a larger budget to do that, to bring in top comedians, top performers, acrobats, things of that nature. You get a four-page booklet. A pamphlet of the daily activities. There’s other options that you have on a cruise ship. You could rent the penthouse if you wanted to, which means you get your own designated staff to help you unpack. Some of the floors that you book a room on also have their own designated restaurant where you never need a reservation. You just walk in. I would say the two-hour ride to get here, if you don’t take the puddle jumper, which you can, a little two-seater, four-seater biplane on over. Did you know you could do that? Crazy. No. Oh yeah, you can. It used to be really affordable, like $250. Now it’s up to $500. I mean, that may be affordable for some people. Right. But recently, it’s increased in price and you’re here in like, I don’t know, 20 minutes. I may be exaggerating, but it’s really short compared to the two-hour drive. If you want to do the two-hour drive, I recommend not doing the bus. Do private transport. It’s a little nicer, a little more relaxing. They give you some pre-bear and drinks. But then the bus has advantages also, because then you can chit chat with people and get to know them. We were lucky. We arrived at the same time as some of our friends, and so we chartered the van together. And so we had some built-in friends for the trip, which worked out really well. And that made it really nice and pleasant and short. Yeah. But when you’re doing your cruise, you don’t have that. You just fly in the night before. Uber in. So in our opinion, this is limited opinion because we’ve been to Hedo once, the cruise so far is a little bit better bang for our buck, but we’re not done with the week. We’re only midweek at this point. So who knows? The rest of the week may just completely blow us away. We’re still leaning towards cruises being more our thing. If you’ve done nothing but resorts and have never considered doing a cruise, absolutely try it out. We finally took our own advice and got to a resort to be able to compare and contrast and kind of give ourselves that alternative experience. Everyone who we’ve talked to who have been to Hedo 1 to 20, 30 times really loves Hedo. Yes. So that’s not… generally people come once and then leave and they have a bad experience. Most people, we haven’t heard anybody say that they’ve had a bad experience here. They say it’s different each time, but that they love this resort. They love the experience and they have a fantastic time about it. Now, a lot of those couples haven’t ever been on a cruise either. Correct. Most people have not. I’m surprised. Yeah. Friday’s the spice of life. Absolutely. Especially in the swingers. All right. Well, that’s our wrap for today and tune in for the next episode and we’ll give you more juicy details about Hedo. Till next time.