A Tough Ending to our Mexico Trip and Final Thoughts on Club Med

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The whole point of going to an all-inclusive resort was to avoid getting sick if at all possible. If you read the previous blog you'll know that we headed back to the room on about night 5 and found that Kyla had a fever. The next morning she tested at 102 degrees. After another bout of baby paracetamol we headed out to breakfast. Being paranoid first-time parents, we took the thermometer along with us and it seemed that she was getting hotter and hotter. We threw some food down our throats as quickly as possible and then rushed back to the air-conditioned room where she quickly tested cooler. We decided that the best course of action at that point was to get her into bathers and put her in a cool shower and head to the pool area where we could stay in the shade or dunk her in the pool while we monitored her temperature. Turned out to be a bad idea as she quickly got overheated again. To cut a long story short, we basically ended up spending the entire day inside our air-conditioned room. It was really boring but whenever we went out, Kyla's temperature would rise and worry us.

The next day (our final full day) she was only running a slight fever but this time it was Scott that fell sick - strange raised spots on his arms, a migraine, and "Montezuma's Revenge" to boot! He spent much of the day in the room but Kyla and I managed to get out a bit.

The next morning everyone was feeling a lot better. Unfortunately it was our final day and we had to vacate our room by 12 noon and our taxi to the airport was booked for 1:15pm. We managed a couple of hours at the pool before heading back to the room to pack. After spending a week of being pushed around in the stroller to take naps, Kyla did something very unexpected - she said the word "nap" a couple of times before lying down on the sofa and falling asleep in the full daylight with us packing everything up around her! The bummer was that it was 10 minutes until checkout. Good timing, Kyla! We ended up carrying her to reception while we checked out, and then we took it in turns holding her in the only air-conditioned room that we could find in the whole resort, the internet room, while we rotated out to eat lunch. She miraculously stayed asleep until our taxi arrived.

Being the great little traveler that she was during our UK and Indonesia flights, I was expecting the measly 3 1/2 hour flight back home to be a cinch. It turned out to be our worst flight ever. In the departure lounge Kyla got it into her head that she wanted to go into a particular gift store and terrorize everything in there. When we dragged her out and tried to distract her, no matter what we did, she wanted to go back in. This led to a major tantrum - kicking, screaming, turning red in the face, the works! The worst part was that it didn't stop. She continued on like this for at least 20 minutes while all the people waiting to board our flight looked on with a mixture of amusement and dread. All of a sudden, instead of being proud of our fantastic pint-sized traveler, we were "those parents", the ones that couldn't control our bratty toddler. We'd never experienced anything this extreme before so it was quite a shock. Luckily when it came time to board she calmed down and we got onto the plane quietly. For the entirety of the flight she was like Jekyll and Hyde. One minute she was being her usual charming self, and the next she'd get frustrated and go into screaming mode. Quite stressful. We were so glad when we finally landed in Los Angeles! For the first time, she did an great job on the airport bus and when we got home she soon fell asleep in her crib - phew!

So, after my first all-inclusive trip, what's the final opinion? To be honest, when we left in the taxi to go to the airport I had this strange feeling of being an inmate leaving prison for the first time in a long time. It was fascinating to see that the outside world still, in fact, existed. Cars, restaurants, shops, just people going about their everyday lives. Having said that, Club Med was very well set up for families with babies as we could get access to milk, yoghurt and other baby staples 24 hours a day, plus our room came equipped with a great pack 'n' play, a bottle warmer, a stroller, a baby bath and even a changing mat. For the purpose of this trip, it worked out well (apart from the illnesses of course) but I couldn't always travel this way. Maybe for a couple of years while the kids are so little it might be the best way, but soon enough I want to be putting on a backpack and taking them to see the real, big wide world instead of a manicured plastic one. Time will tell!

Oh, and after doing some reading, we think we know what caused the illnesses. We think Kyla had a simple case of heat exhaustion, due partly to the fact that she refused to drink water during the second half of the trip. Apart from her 3 daily milk bottles, she refused anything else to drink, which was stressful. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, as the saying goes. In Scott's case, he continued to have some more strange symptoms at home. He found a description of something called "Hand, foot and mouth disease" which, although it sounds like Mad Cow Disease, is quite different thankfully. It is spread mainly by little kids in infected feces (and lets' face it, the Club Med pool was constantly being closed due to "accidents") and has quite a few specific symptoms, most of which Scott had. Luckily it clears itself up with no medication within a week or so and there are no long term effects. Kyla may even have had a minor bout of this. We'll probably never know!

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Photos

Carrying a sleeping Kyla to reception at check-out time.

Almost made it and she's still asleep!

At Zihuatanejo airport having fun with a balloon arch...

...before the major meltdown!!

"Green arrow!" Kyla loved following the trail and would stop and point to each as she stated "green arrow". Scott and I were just glad to have made it back to Los Angeles airport!