Surviving a Timeshare Ambush

After coming to love ALL of the sweet people and places we've treasured in Mexico, there was this one time...

PART I

Our timeshare ambush story began the evening of our first full day in Nuevo Vallarta, May 2015, as we blissfully walked the beach under a swirling pale, pink sky. Aaron routinely takes this walk on vacation, usually at the end of the day when the heat has relented; most often, I am too engrossed in some unsavory story involving mystery and murder to lay down my paperback and walk with him. This day, taking in the new excitement of being so close to the ocean, I came along.

The gulls were doing their yellow-footed dance in the water, and we were, as always, entranced with this when Emilio cornered us, running to keep up with our evasive pace.

“Amigos…please. Would you like to go…on an adventure?” he asked as he shuffled through his damp portfolio of papers. “Rhythms of the Night? A zipline?”

Accustomed to the onslaught of relentless offers that are inevitable on vacation, we gave our rehearsed answer, instantly. “NO, thank you!” No problem.

The conversation continued as our new friend instead offered a resort presentation tomorrow morning, “…up the coast past Bucerias. It’s beautiful up there, yes? Have you been there?”

Our firm no-thank-yous were drowned out by a barrage of offers and appeals.

“They will give you a gift of 5000 pesos ($350) just to come and hear the presentation, and they will give me a hundred dollars to bring you. I can buy groceries for my babies for two weeks for that. Please.”

$350? That’s the most we’d ever been offered to endure, and of course, reject, a tedious and sometimes aggressive timeshare presentation, so it slowed our pace for a minute. We opted to walk further, and told Emilio we would chat with him on the way back.

Aaron heard “$350 dollars” and started to think about it. His practical side took over as it sank in; this would cover more than our travel expenses for the week!

Once, we were staying at a beautiful resort in Ixtapa, and they gifted us with $200 to listen to a sales pitch, and tour their new extravagantly luxurious villas. It was fun, and that cash paid for all of our incidentals. Amazing. Of course, we have been cured of the urge to actually buy more timeshare property; we already carry more than we can use, and those weeks (or points) are additionally laden with annual maintenance costs.

As our toes sank into the Nuevo sand, I began listing objections, voicing concern that “we would be crazy to get in a vehicle with strangers in Mexico to go…where did he say…? I can’t even remember if he told us the name of the place?”

Emilio, if that is really his name, had a form to fill out, and there was the name of some unrecognizable company on it, but he kept saying this wasn’t the place, as he went digging through his papers.

It felt like a ruse, and it made me nervous.

What if they drove us up into the mountains to hand us over to shady characters? Kidnapping!! An experienced Netflix-watcher, I had worked myself up into a terror by the time we circled back to the spot on the beach where Emilio was waiting for us. I was toxic with anxiety; why would Aaron put us in this unsafe position? Frustrated, I still managed a smile as our enthusiastic and hopeful friend approached, “Well, will you come to the presentation…?”

The conversation went in circles for awhile, with Emilio doing most of the talking.

“Just take the $350,” he said, adding, “It would help me so much.” Then, there was the tug on the heart as he repeated, “…this money will help me buy food for my family for two weeks. I want you to meet my bambinos.”

Finally, as if we three alone shared some inside track, “You know, it’s a game; you just play the game, you buy if you want, or, no, and you get your money, only a couple of hours of your day.” Somehow, detached and compliant, I heard myself say to Aaron, “I am uncomfortable, but I always go to a fear place…I’ll do whatever you think. If I wasn’t here, what would you do?”

Aaron didn’t skip a beat. “I would go.” Loaded with self doubt, I felt like I needed to defer…the money. It was a lot. But my hazy, ill-defined fear was still an obstacle; whatever I imagined might happen took a vague form, like a giant lump of dark Playdough, with unseen, unknown monsters morphing, and I pictured kidnappings, torture, water-boarding, human trafficking and even some flashes of forced drugging. Thank you, thriller TV.

I remember logically asking Emilio, one more time, for the name of the resort, and he dug around in his portfolio of crumpled brochures, befuddled, as if he was missing the desired form. He shook his head apologetically, “They will give that to you tomorrow,” and he promised to pick us up in a cab in the morning and meet us at the Starbucks down the street. I finally, nervously and uncomfortably, agreed, convinced this was my last day on earth. But not without demanding, first, a picture of our friend Emilio, standing with Aaron and holding a picture of his license in front of them. License for what?

In Spanish, and illegible to me, I still have no idea; it could have been a fishing license, a bus pass. Whatever it was, it made me feel somehow more comfortable about the excursion. Kidnappers don’t have licenses, do they, and they don’t let you take their picture before they sell you to the highest bidder… right? It seemed perfectly logical at the time, and I was able to breathe easier as we walked away.

I decide to Facebook message his picture to my sisters back in the states on the outside chance he was a human trafficker. The message said, “I am getting in a car with this strange man tomorrow morning to go to a timeshare presentation in a location that is so far unclear. Thought someone should know about this.” (Unstated subtext: If we disappear off of the face of the earth, you’ll have a face, a fake name, and a fishing license to start with.) Somehow, I felt better having made a preemptive strike.

We got up very early in the morning, and walked off the beautiful Sunset Village resort property to meet Emilio with Matteo, and it was at some point implied that this man was a Real Estate agent (did he mention that, or did Emilio? It all happens so fast). There was a small car with, yes, blacked out windows, waiting at the curb. Matteo asked a few questions, carefully, politely, but I registered at the time that his tone and pace seemed to be masking something that felt like a layer of anxious intensity, or perhaps, agitation?

“When you get to the resort, they will ask you a few questions like, what were you promised for coming, and you can just tell the truth. Also, they will want to see your driver’s licenses. Do you have them?” We nodded. “Do you have a credit card that you can put $15,000 on today?”

Gulp. Seriously? We remembered to play the game. “Yes.” Of course, we wouldn’t put that much money on our cards…

“Finally, do you have an appointment, somewhere you have to be? They want you to stay, if you decide to buy, and there are papers…”

We admitted to a wide open schedule. Just our usual plans for the day, hopefully: beach and books.

We got into the car, and I focused on the blacked out — or the less sinister interpretation, shaded — windows as we drove away, hearing the soundtrack to Criminal Minds in the background. My heart was beating out of my chest. When the car pulled up, 15 minutes later, outside of what looked like a legitimate resort, I was very relieved. A real place; maybe I am not going to die today?

PART II : The Art of the Deal

Photo by Jörg Angeli on Unsplash

No longer anticipating being blindfolded and stuffed into the trunk of a car, I started to opened my eyes and observed my surroundings.

The Palace was pretty, but smallish. My first view from inside the gates was that of a small deck overlooking a man-made bay made up of some built-up boulders in an over-extended V shape. Something appeared unfinished about it, and we were later informed that this was the future site for a restaurant on one side, and a marina on the other side of the V. The water was absolutely still, and I wondered about the absence of breaking waves as we were quickly introduced to Ricardo. who asked “the questions” we were prepared to anticipate, and he did so in a politely direct way. Asked and answered. We were then ushered to Patricia who took the information from our licenses while smiling and being terribly (and disarmingly) charming.

This seemed to be a flow thing, and quickly, Patricia ushered us into the restaurant, oddly empty with the exception of a few employees, and what seemed like a handful of salesmen, punching tabs on their phones, a few of them huddled together at breakfast tables in bunches, like goldfish waiting for breadcrumbs to be tossed into a feeding pond. We were seated, and waited a couple of minutes before we were greeted by an American, Jack, later confusingly referred to as Brandon, who shook our hands and sat down with us to share promptly that we came from the same neck of the woods in Fort Collins. What are the odds?

“I can’t believe you guys are from Fort Collins; I love that town. I lived there back in the late 90’s, and was part of the project to build the (insert huge industrial complex in my hometown). What do you guys do there?”

We relaxed. Relieved, I spoke first, “I am a retired English teacher and I take care of one of my grandbabies full time. Aaron here is a chiropractor.”

“Oh yeah, where’s your office?”

It all felt too normal to be threatening. Aaron went on to describe the location of his office, and we exchanged chit chat with Jack/Brandon for a couple more minutes, wondering when the hard sell would begin. Jack sauntered away, and we were greeted by our official sales rep, Stefan.

Let the games begin.

The weirdly continental Stephan joined us, and began his background tale. It seems his mother and father were originally from England, and that is where he was born. This must explain the hint of a confusing hard-to-place accent. His family landed in Vancouver where Stefan enlisted (explaining the huge nautical tattoo on his arm.) He casually claimed a (wildly) successful real estate business in Vancouver where he met Clara, his wife, (pronounced Clahhh-rahhh) and they live here now, in El Tigre, and spend their time sailing and reading books. I reminded him so much of Clara.

“What are you reading?” I asked, reminded of the Robert Kellerman novel, Compulsion, I am entertaining on the beach right now. I expected him to enjoy adventure, or non-fiction. “War and Peace,” he claims, serious as a heart attack. Really?

We had breakfast, a pleasant blend of scrambled eggs with fresh herbs, zucchini boats, beef sausage and green juice complemented by a brief comparative chat about the difference between “deeded property” and timeshare.

“Real estate trumps timeshare every time,” Stefan stated authoritatively, “and what we sell here is real estate. That is always going to be an asset instead of a liability.” As we finished up a conversation that moved ever-so-gently from family, hobbies, and Colorado to the business at hand, Stefan casually guided us to the sales office to “see if this might be a fit for us.”

This is where the game picked up traction.

The financial ABC’s of the property were explained to us on a standard, plain yellow legal pad as the expert Stefan spelled it out for us, pen-to-paper: we would get 5 weeks a year of fractional real estate, owners of deeded property, and the perks were abundant. We would have year round storage, use of amenities like water sports and impeccably manicured gardens, and they would happily arrange for our groceries to be waiting for us in the fridge when we arrive. Really?

He showed us pictures of some of the locations we would be able to trade into — stunning — and then, he offered the cherry-on-top-big-finish. This property has more trading power because it is, after all, deeded real estate, and we would be able to trade one week of the Palace for two weeks at Sunset Village any time of year! Trump Tower (he actually brought that up), Paris, India…you name it, any time of year, you can get in because this system has infinitely more clout than the timeshare systems we normally work with. He conveyed this knowledge in an every-one-knows-this-stuff matter-of-fact tone, and we believed it for reasons I simply can’t explain in hindsight. In fact, the next two hours continue to be mystifying for the same reason. We asked questions, he answered, and for some reason, we believed him.

Drum Roll: after an hour of this, we asked, so how much will all of this cost us?

Stefan showed us a laminated piece of paper stating the value of the “deeded” property: $190,000. Gulp. Of course, if we made a decision today, due to national laws that allow for one-day-only discounts, he was able to offer all this for $120,000. And the game amps up…

Naturally, there was the inevitable moment when we looked at the timeshare properties we already had; if you have timeshares, and have attended unwanted timeshare pitches, you know about this bargain. He left the negotiating table for ten minutes to chat with (who?) some organization (what?) to instantly assess the value of those properties. (How did that work again?) He returned with three pages, printed with what appeared to be an official letterhead document citing what-looked-like assessed values for our timeshares in trade; there were also what appeared to be transaction numbers on the pages.

“Well, it looks like we can use your previous timeshares as trade-in values that look like this,” and these numbers are approximate because we were never actually given these papers, or anything in writing, to support this part of the conversation later. Roughly, here is what he claimed we would receive in trade:

• $23,500 for timeshare #1

• $19,500 for timeshare #2, and

• $39,500 for timeshare #3

WOW! That’s $80,000 off the purchase price? Miraculously, after lumping in our timeshare trade-ins, we arrived at the bargain price of $40,000.

“Do we have a deal?” Yikes.

Aaron said a slightly sluggish, “NO,” and I was marginally relieved.

Then, Stefan started to pitch the best part. “How many weeks a year are you likely to vacation? 4? 5?”

We thought 2–3, perhaps? We have always struggled to find enough vacation time to fit both of our schedules.

Stefan thought for a moment, paused, and then grabbed his yellow pad and pencil, and it was as if he had had a flash of brilliance. He suggested, “What if you surrender your first two weeks of the year, the one bedroom, and put it back into our rental system. We give you $2,500 for each week, which will amount to $5,000 every year, positive income for 10 years. If we do that, you still have your three weeks to trade or come here, and we make money off of those two weeks you surrender. Win-win! Now do we have a deal?”

What? We can make money renting this property?

Whittling like a craftsman, he eventually credits us for two years of the marketing pay-back value, carving it off the buying price; of course, this means that we won’t have that positive cash flow we were looking forward to for two years. Huh…?

It had now been about four or five hours at the Palace, and we were reeling at this point. More alarming, this deal was starting to seem viable. We watched Stefan wrangling the numbers as if it was so simple until we ended up at an illogical $26,000. Abbra-Cadabra!

Of course, we were still uncomfortable spending money, grasping at the now-distant memory of the $350 we came to grab and go, and we held our ground as our relentless salesman pressured us to give him “the number.” What number? The number we would be willing to pay to have access to all of this travelling potential and be set free from our other timeshare costs and maintenance fees. (Wait…Paradise Village, too?)

I looked at Aaron, stunned that he seems to be considering this idea at all; we came committed to saying NO, right? I was hungry, thirsty, miserable, and I wanted out of that room! Like an antsy middle school student, I decided to go to the bathroom to escape, and I actually (finally) took this time to pray for a few minutes.

What am I feeling? Trapped. Uneasy. Confused. Worth noting, I thought to myself.

PART III:

Wait, What Just Happened?

After tolerating (mystifyingly) hours of relentless sales pressure and a brief moment of clarity from a bathroom-stall-prayer, I walked outside, and reluctantly moved in the direction of the war room. That’s when I noticed something undeniable.

It was bloody hot! Really awful. I was standing right in front of the water, and it felt like a boiler room. For the first time, I heard these words pinging inside my head: I don’t like it here. I walked back into the sales office, and shockingly, I communicated truthfully. “It’s really hot out there at the waterfront, and …why aren’t there any people here…laying outside, on the beach, walking around, at the restaurant?”

Our salesman answered instantly, “Oh, yeah, it’s hot on this side of the building, but if you walk around a few feet toward the water there’s a beautiful breeze. And the owners are just indoors; these are private residences, they’re home!” We didn’t challenge him.

Consistently uncomfortable with the pressure I was feeling, I dug my heels in. “Y’know, I can’t imagine a world in which anyone would consider spending $26,000 without kicking the tires. I think Aaron and I should walk outside, and see what it’s like around the corner…where it’s ‘breezy.’ And…remind me; why do we have to make the decision this fast? Today?”

He patiently explained the rules in shorthand again. “This is the law in Mexico; they don’t want you to be followed around on vacation, called in your hotel rooms, or bothered about this. Some people have complained about harassment, so in order to get the special first deal as it’s pitched to you, you have to agree to it on the first day it is offered.”

This made no sense to us, but OK. Whatever. I was just as agitated, but felt relieved for a bit when Aaron and I walked outside to access a different perspective. We talked. We don’t hate this beach, but it’s all about the money.

Pros: fewer time shares, and only “fractional ownership,” or “deeded property.” Even though we would pay $26,000 up front, there would be a potential 10 years of $5,000 income annually, and more if we worked for it.

Cons: $26,000! Also, we don’t want to let go of our favorite timeshare resort.

Aaron intuited, “You don’t seem comfortable with this.”

“I’m not-I absolutely am NOT!”

“Well, we won’t do it then. Let’s go in there and tell him no, and go.”

I smiled, and said, “OK,” but not without waffling confusingly all the way up the stairs, “unless you really feel strongly about it, and then I would defer. This time share thing is your world.”

We walked in boldly to say no, thanks anyway, but like a magician, Stefan had concocted a new plan while we were out walking. He offered the special emergency worker, medical personnel, and military servicemen deal, but only if we sign a confidentiality agreement. (He really likes us, and so would Clahh-rahh.) Final offer: $17,000.

What? That doesn’t sound so bad, massaged all of the way from $190,000!

I know, it’s hard to believe that two educated, intelligent people like us would still be sitting at the table. Looking back, I am so conscious of all the warning signs, the uncomfortable awkward moments. Shoot, I wanted to run out of the room, screaming to those entering the resort, “RUN!!! Save yourselves!!”

But I didn’t. We didn’t. We considered the facts written on the legal pad in front of us: pay $10,000 today, $7,500 in a month, and we’d be done! No more fees for timeshares we can’t use, just “fractional ownership and $5,000 a year minimum positive cash flow. “You’re taking the timeshares off of our hands today?”

“Yes,” he said boldly. “Gone today! You guys, this is a no-brainer.”

Even after he flashed a piece of paper at us, mentioning that some official-looking-entity-with-letterhead will require that we pay a penalty for using our timeshares as trade-ins, $1,500 each, we see it the way he wants us to, the way Stefan spinned it: $4,500 is a bargain in light of the $80,000 trade in value, right?

Talked out and exhausted after 7 hours, we agreed. It was a deal. He hugged us, and offered us champagne.

Awkward.

And the pace picked up. They swiped our cards, two of them, as we were attempting to create some sort of balance between cash and credit. We signed the first document agreeing we wouldn’t cancel the agreement because of the nature of a “1st day deal.” We gave each other a puzzled look, and oddly and robotically, we signed the paper.

And more papers kept showing up, one after the other. Thirty-or-so, they flew by with the hyper-vigilant Stefan now on his feet, hovering nearby, or straight-up leaning over us, explaining these documents ever-so-briefly when asked what this bizarre contract language meant. He seemed oddly agitated as we kept asking questions. “It’s basic to real estate contractual language,” and…“Go ahead and initial this,” and “I work for you; trust me.”

We realized we were signing in the dark, but felt somehow rushed. Why this unnatural sense of urgency?

I literally felt nauseous signing a paper stating there would be a $1,500 “one-time-fee” for a designated rental company to market and rent our surrendered two weeks for us to access the annual $5,000 income.

Wait just a minute…. I thought that was what he wanted to do, rent those two weeks at a profit, but suddenly we were signing a contract for someone else to facilitate this? His explanation was weak, and speedy, and somehow, since we were in so deep, we felt obligated to move quickly. We were racing to the finish line as he muttered something about buying us lunch.

YES, please. Food. Sign like the wind.

Aaron and I were trying to read the small print, some thirty pages of papers, quickly.

Why would anyone want to do this quickly, I wonder, as I shove the paper I just signed in Aaron’s direction.

We even said something sarcastic out loud while we initialed the clause about “not signing under pressure.” Yeah, right. An out of body experience, we initialed on command.

Marcella, the developer, came abruptly to close the signing with us. She gave us one page, a bulleted short version of the contract to clarify that we had come to an agreement, but the language of this fifteen bullet-point paper is confusing, and we were threatening to have a full scale, walk out the door, meltdown. She didn’t know what to say to us, so she called Stefan back to the table to explain a few lines. His explanations didn’t seem to match the language of the contract in front of us, but his words were familiar, comforting.

Game over.

$10,000 was gone, and the papers were signed in duplicate. After admonishing us not to tell our friends at our current and favorite timeshare resort about this deal because “they will be horrible to you,” which is, in retrospect, clearly ridiculous, a jubilant Stefan asked us if we wanted to grab lunch. I gave Aaron a panicked look, but his blood sugar was low, so he said yes. We went back to the restaurant where I once again noticed that NO ONE WAS EATING BUT US. Our host made small talk about music and asked us both where we went to school, with an occasional, “You two are really going to love it here.”

I was 100% incapable of small talk at this point, sitting there like I had lost the use of my tongue.

I escaped to the bathroom again, and when I returned, I somehow listened to Stepan’s chit chat while the men who were working on the property above the restaurant hammered unreasonably, generating demolition volume noises that made it impossible to focus. Around the time Aaron notices a piece of grass floating around in his unopened private-labeled water bottle from The Palace, I realized I’m done.

Aaron and I got in the cab to go home, but not until we received our gift: 5,000 pesos. Thanks.

How could we have been those crazy, compliant tourists that signed all those papers in a deep trance?

PART IV: In Comes the Cavalry

We wrapped up a bittersweet afternoon, enjoying our short lived experience at our lovely resort, and when Aaron left to enjoy his evening spa experience and try to shake off some of the stress, I grabbed us some salad for dinner, and decided that, clearly, I needed some time to pray, something along the lines of Anne Lammot’s favorite, Help! I felt utterly defeated.

We signed the paper, the one that says we can’t change our minds about our purchase.

Not long after my short prayer, I was struck with a thought: where is that paper, the one that has the prices of the units, the prices we would have to pay to use our weeks? I wondered if we had any guarantees of the deal we made, or were those numbers only written on the yellow legal pad? I dove into Aaron’s piles for the contract, and found what I was looking for, but some of them looked…sketchy. I thought, maybe I should go to the website, and root around. See what I can find out. I Googled the resort, and the first thing I noticed was that the website displayed what looks like photos of a finished marina and restaurant out on the bay. Can they do that? Make it look like it’s already there? I also didn’t find any prices for the units. We’re screwed.

I clicked on a review site, like YELP, only, different. There are rave reviews of this resort, and I thought, hmmm…maybe this isn’t such a disaster? That’s when I noticed the yellow warning at the top of the page in which the review site manager warns viewers that they “suspect that some of the reviews have been falsified by those who may have an interest in the property.” Yup, sounds about right.

Still looking for help, I navigate back to fish for anything on the Palace. The first phrase I notice on Google is this: “Do not go to a timeshare presentation at The Palace!” Of course, I needed to take a closer look at this posting!

I had discovered a message board where people share stories, good and bad, about their timeshare and resort travels. A goldmine! I read, alone in the room, waiting for Aaron to come back, and when he finally did, I had joined the message board myself, and had already sent messages to two people who seem to have had the exact same experience as us. Only they had found a way out.

God bless those kind souls, sending out hope on that website! I was alone in the world that night, and these angels with code names like “Wrangler” and “Trucker” reached out to me to share their wisdom about what to do.

Here’s the gist:

1. The paper we signed stating that we understood we couldn’t rescind the agreement was only a fear tactic. The right to rescind the agreement is written into Mexican Law as long as we took care of it in the first 5 days.

2. We needed to send a certified letter with a returned receipt, cancelling the contract within the first 5 days, with evidence that we did it within the time five day time frame.

3. If we followed the directions given as an out in the contract (look for it-there will be a clause…we found ours), we could get our money back.

4. There was and is a fair trade group called PROFECO that was available to help; they would endorse our legal right to cancel, and could even help us with follow-up steps.

These message board heroes rode in like the Cavalry. The minute Aaron came back, I filled him in. The first words out of his mouth: “So, we need to call our credit cards and cancel the purchase!”

We spent the rest of the evening setting up international calling on our phones, and calling our credit card people. We did what we could, but we needed to live in the tension for awhile. Our kind credit card rep informed us that we couldn’t stop payment, but we did learn that we were legally within our rights to cancel, and according to our badass new friends on the message board, most folks that followed the process within the five day period were able to get their money back within weeks.

So, by the time our heads hit the pillow that night, we had a plan!

We woke up in the morning ready to drive out to keep an appointment we had half-heartedly made with Stefan at his insistence. I remember wondering why at the time, and now I’m convinced it’s because of the number of buyers who want to bail after that pressure-sale hurricane we were tossed around in. We decided to write our letter, make three copies, and mail one copy through certified mail to the address in the contract. We intended to file our own copy, and take one personally out to the Palace to hand deliver, to get out money back immediately.

Referring to our daily inspirational book we read together in the mornings, Aaron suggested, “Do you want to read first, before we write the letter?”

Brilliant. Why not open ourselves to the divine before running off half-cocked? Thank you, Aaron.

We collected ourselves on the couch to read, and I mentioned that since the Palace ambush, I had been mulling over the words, love your enemy, in my head; I knew Stefan and Jack/Brandon weren’t really enemies, but there had never been a greater need to be assertive.

Our daily read for June 2, 2015, began:

I will be really free, when I learn to speak up for me without harming thee. Sue Stenberg

Seriously. This was the start of our reading for the day, and the key point was that assertiveness is also compassionate. We all possess the inherent rights to express what we want, and to change our minds, and others will benefit from knowing where we stand.

We flashed back on Aaron’s comment from months before when he lamented, I need to learn how to be assertive without being a prick.

Right. It’s a lot.

We began to plan a drive north up the Nayarit coastline to assert ourselves with humility.

We thought about all we had learned, and wrote the letter together. It was simple, announcing our decision to cancel the agreement, citing the contractual clause and the requirements of cancellation, announcing that we had alerted our credit card company of the rescission of the agreement, mentioning ever-so-non-threateningly that we would contact PROFECO only if necessary. We said, assertively-and-non-prickishly, that we would prefer to take care of this today.

After making the copies, and signing them, we moved to the hotel lobby to ask our concierge for assistance. Where could we find a post office through which we might send a certified letter, return receipt requested?

Our lovely concierge Anna made a couple of calls, arranging for us to be driven by Ricardo, a taxi driver with some English speaking skills, to Bucerias where the letter would be processed, but first, she spoke with him in Spanish to clarify our peculiar needs.

Ricardo would be our angel that day, saying “not a problem” more times than we can remember.

When we arrived at the destination, the huge gates were closed and there were “bouncers” at the gate, taking names. I felt apprehensive again, but bless his heart, Ricardo handled the road block, and before we knew it, we were back inside approaching the familiar sales area.

We smiled our way to the sales office, revisiting familiar steps from the day before. Walking into the room, we asked for Stefan, hours late for our originally scheduled appointment, only to be informed that he was sorry to have missed us, and was gone for the day, as was Jack/Brandon. We were offered another sales manager, and smiled our acceptance.

We were eventually met by a resort development sales manager, and our friend Marcella from the day before, and the conversation that ensued was quick and to the point. We handed these polite professionals our letter, sheepishly showing them the receipt for the certified letter to punctuate the finality of the decision. They politely asked us why, of course, and Aaron was kind, humble (assertive, but not…) and clear: the details of the conversation during the sales presentation didn’t match the details of the contractual agreement once we finally had more time to read and consider.

Shockingly, the development manager offered to try to refund our money immediately.

After 45 minutes or so, we left the forbidding gates of the resort with a cancellation agreement, and refund receipts in hand, our knight in shining armor, Ricardo, at the wheel. Giddy with freedom, and the newfound joy of speaking our truth, we were amazed. Desperate yesterday, euphoric today, and all we possessed in the moment was that which we had already possessed before, combined with a powerful learning experience, and a daily meditational reading that felt like a personal fax from the Universe.

ADDENDUM:

Oddly, we ran into Emilio on the beach later that same day. He ran toward us, albeit tentatively, as if he was afraid he might have gotten sucker-punched. I said, “Hey, Emilio. Did you get your money?”

He smiled. “Yes, Amiga. I am going to the dentist,” showing an almost dangling façade for his front tooth.

What happened to food for the three bambinos…?

He ducked ceremoniously a bit as he approached Aaron. “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” Aaron said, semi-convincingly, and I offered an additional, “Nope, we’re fine.”

He seemed curious, “Did you buy?”

NO,” I said, sparing him the confusing details. “We spent a lot of time, though. Too long!”

“You were there a long time, maybe, six hours? I brought other couples out there yesterday, and they were gone in two hours,” reminding us that it would have been possible for us to been in and out quickly. This offered very little consolation.

He said, half-joking, half-seriously, “Want to go to another one…?”

“NO!!” We said in unison, and I looked back at him as we walked away saying, “Emilio, you should tell people the name of the resort before they go…”

He offered an abrupt, almost repellant, “Thank you, Amigas,” as he wandered down the beach.