Traveler's Report

This is our Trip Report (TR) of our fifteen day vacation (January 24, 1997 through February 9, 1997) to Diamond Eden Resort (DER) located in Nopolo, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Nopolo is located about nine kilometers south of Loreto, B.C.S..

For those not familiar with Loreto, it is a small town of 7,000 people located approximately 600 miles south of San Diego, California on Mexico Route 1 in the southern Baja California desert. DER (formerly known as The Loreto Inn and also formerly known as El Presidente) is an adults only, all-inclusive destination resort located in Nopolo. The daily room rate includes everything but cigarettes, souvenirs, car rentals, taxi fares, and any and all expenses outside of the resort.

This TR is written to document, for the record and for our future use, our experiences and findings during our vacation. Some of the information may be useful to only the Travel Agent (TA) that we used, some only to the resort management at DER, some only to potential vacationers to DER and Baja California Sur, and some only to us and our friends.

We are not attempting to target our report to any specific end user, but we hope that every reader will find something interesting, informative, or useful in here. In addition, we make no claims to the thoroughness and completeness of this TR -- we've simply reported our findings and experiences during our trip. Indeed, the reader may find instances where we might have overlooked something which should have been included in this report, or, quite possibly, there may be topics discussed, which, with additional research and analysis on our part, may have yielded different findings and conclusions. We make no apologies for our findings; again, this TR is simply a compilation and statement of our vacation experience and nothing more.

Our trip from Washington, DC to DER took approximately 23 hours, including an overnight layover in Los Angeles at the Wyndham Hotel at the airport. Our trip cost approximately $4,500 for fifteen nights, including air fare, trip insurance, and one night's layover lodging at the Wyndham. Based on a 15 day stay, we paid about $300 per night per couple.

After completing our trip and having had about three weeks to reflect on our vacation, we believe that our TA did a decent, fairly professional job for us. However, a number of points concerning the trip planning and TA actions need to be made, as follows:

1. We believe that there exist three primary reasons why a tourist would want to visit DER and the Loreto/Nopolo area. They are a) fishing, b) golfing, and c) tennis. (Note that golfing and tennis charges are included in the DER room rate -- a major attraction if one likes to golf or play tennis.) Unfortunately, neither of us golf, play tennis, nor fish!

We feel that the TA should have strongly urged us to go somewhere else for our vacation rather than "be captive" at an all inclusive, destination resort like DER which is located in a geographic area with a minimal of non-DER activities available.

As an aside, a bit of Continental humor: one evening at DER during dinner we met two older British gentlemen who were just in for a couple of days to get in some (in their words) heavy duty golfing. After talking with them a bit over dinner, one of the fellows said "Let me get this straight. Neither of you golf, play tennis, nor fish. What in the bloody hell do you two do ALL day?" We replied by saying "Not much. Just hang around the beach and drink, and while that's OK for a couple of days, after more than five days we're dying of boredom".

In summary, we think that the TA should not have recommended DER to anyone for more than three to five days unless the person is an avid golfer, tennis player, or fisherman. We would have been much better served, and would have really admired, respected, and recommended our TA more highly if he would have adamantly and strongly urged us against spending over two weeks at a golfing, tennis, and fishing resort, but rather encouraged us to go to the Caribbean.

2. Consistent with Note 1, above, the TA knew in advance that we wanted to snorkel in warm and clear tropical waters on beautiful beaches. While the TA did say that the beaches and the water were "not quite as nice as the Caribbean", he did not say - and he should have - that the DER / Loreto beaches did not exist. Yes, DER puts sand on their 300 yards of beach, but nowhere else along the resort were there sandy beaches. The water was chilly and not very clear -- indeed, we were advised to wear wetsuits (!) if we wanted to snorkel. Note that wearing a wetsuit is not what one wants to do while on vacation!

3. We had a major problem at the Wyndham Hotel at LAX airport. Despite e-mails and phone calls between us and the TA prior to the trip, when we arrived at the Wyndham Hotel at 8:00 PM on Friday 1/24/97, after flying six hours non-stop from Baltimore-Washington International airport, we were told by the front desk at the Wyndham that a) they had no (none, zero, nada) knowledge of our confirmed (by the TA, of course!) reservation, and b) they had no rooms available. We, of course, asked them to check again, stating that our TA assured us that the room was confirmed, and then we began to beg and plead.

The front desk, after asking for our confirmation number (which we didn't have because the TA failed to provide one to us), finally found an "expensive" room for us at around $150 including tax. We stayed in this room. Upon returning home, we discovered that the reservation made for us by the TA was for a different Wyndham hotel located nearby, and not for the Airport Wyndham. This was not (and should have been) made very clear to us prior to our trip.

4. The TA did not dissuade us from our preconceived notion / expectation that DER was a "Five Star" destination resort. Although the TA did indicate that DER had certain limitations, we feel (as noted in Notes 1 and 2, above) that the TA did us a major disservice by not disabusing our expectations of a Five Star resort. He should have strongly stated that, although DER is phenomenal for Baja California and could be a Six or Seven Star resort, compared to our North American standards DER probably would / should rate only two or three stars. This the TA did not do, and we feel that we were somewhat misled by our lack of knowledge in this matter. As to why we feel DER should only be two or three stars, please see our comments about DER further in this TA.

5. Another area where we disappointed by the TA was in the total pricing of our trip. Although (as stated earlier) we initially believed our TA's pricing was competitive, we discovered after we arrived at DER that there existed a tour package out of Toronto (Sunquest Tours) which offered substantial discounts AND a nonstop flight (!) direct from Toronto to Loreto. The numbers provided to us were $1,750 per week Canadian including airfare! We probably would have saved substantial money and / or travel time if we would have used Sunquest Tours and traveled out of Toronto.

AT DIAMOND EDEN RESORT

The following comments apply primarily to our fifteen day stay at DER in Loreto / Nopolo. Again, let us reiterate for the reader what we have said (or, at least, tried to communicate to the reader) earlier in this TR: our intent is to identify those issues / problems / experiences / findings which we noted and which we would communicate to those interested in our opinions in reference to a trip to DER. Indeed, on balance -- and this may be the most important conclusion of all -- we had a really enjoyable vacation, enjoyed DER and its staff tremendously, and returned home fully relaxed, refreshed, and ready to get back to work and to our routine. The vacation was well worth the expense, the hassles, and the minor irritations discovered whenever and wherever anyone travels. But we still would like to point out for the reader -- and potential traveler -- those items which we feel should be identified and addressed.

A simple, yet accurate, example may be in order: Overall, we would rate, on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the best), our vacation as an "7", which isn't too bad. We would rate the beach as a "5", the weather as a "8", the price/value as a "6", etc., etc., etc. These lower numbers, however, do not mean that the overall vacation was less than an "7"; it simply means that, on balance, the relaxation and peacefulness of the vacation outweighed the minor irritations discussed in this TR.

6. USAir "lost" one of our bags between BWI and LAX (actually, for some unknown reason, the bag was never loaded on the plane at BWI). At LAX, the USAir baggage representative said that the next morning the bag would be shipped to LAX and then sent to Loreto airport. When we arrived at DER, we told the front desk clerks about this and (remember, this was supposed to be a Five Star resort) we expected DER to handle everything from then on, including having the bag delivered to our room. Silly us -- what really happened was that the DER front desk personnel simply said that they were sorry this happened but that it (basically) was our problem to handle.

We had to make a special trip, at our own expense, to the airport to retrieve our lost luggage. We were surprised that DER wouldn't have a customer friendly policy in place to handle lost baggage. To further irritate us, we later found out that the DER arranged C&C Ground Services & Tours (see Note 25, below) to bring to DER other guest's baggage that had been lost on other flights to Loreto.

7. In our room was a sign stating that DER is not responsible for valuables left in the room, and that a Safe Deposit Box is available at the front desk. For five straight days we tried to obtain a safe deposit box for our valuables (cash, traveler's checks, and jewelry), and, for five straight days the DER front desk said sorry but none are available. So we said what about the sign in the room (?), and the front desk personnel said that they were sorry but that we should just ignore the sign. We asked them to please put this in writing, and the DER front desk personnel said sorry but no. After five days we gave up and put our valuables under the mattress.

8. The hotel room telephone would ring randomly throughout the night, sometimes with a Spanish voice on the other end asking an unintelligible question (we think) in rapid fire Spanish. Other times, the phone would mysteriously ring two or three times and then stop. We complained to the front desk about this and they said they were sorry that this happened but they couldn't do anything about it.

9. The housekeeping / maid service was surprisingly unusual. First, despite us waking up every morning around 8:00 to 8:30 AM because the maids were shouting (?) -- or at least talking very loudly -- up and down the hallways to each other, our room would usually not be made up until 4:00 PM, despite our hanging the "Please Make Up Room" sign on our door around 9:00 AM daily. Then, after the room service was provided by the housekeeper, many times we would not have towels or soap. However, we handled this problem on our own: after four or five days of this, we did two things. First, we began to "tip" the maid about $5.00 every third day. Second, since we didn't like our afternoon nap interrupted by room service, we would, every other day, request no room service except for clean towels, which the maid would provide to us on the spot.

10. Sometimes (three or four times, in total), when we would call the front desk from our room, there would be no answer for ten or fifteen minutes, after which time we would "give up" and walk down to the front desk. This is unacceptable in an alleged "Five Star Resort".

11. On our third day at DER we decided to go biking. Well, guess what? There were no bikes available -- they were all "checked out". So we said, fine, for the next day we'll make a reservation for two bikes so that at 10:00 AM we could go biking. Well, guess what? The front desk said sorry you cannot make reservations for the bikes - they suggested that we just try to get there before everyone else does and you can have a bike! In addition, the condition of the bikes was exceedingly poor. The tire pressure was very low, the bikes looked like they were made in 1950 and were bought at a flea market in Loreto for $2.00 US per bike, and had not been adjusted / maintained /tuned up since 1960. While this biking issue was not a major problem, it did cause us to change our plans -- we initially planned to bike every morning but the unavailability of bikes plus the poor condition of the bikes caused us to quit trying to bike regularly.

12. One of the biggest reasons we were initially attracted to DER was the water sports: specifically, going out on the Hobie Cats and going out kayaking. Well, were we surprised! On our first morning at DER we made a beeline for the water sports area to go out on the Hobie Cat. Well, we were told the only one Hobie Cat DER had was broken. It took us about five minutes to recover from the news that DER had only one Hobie Cat instead of three or four which would make more sense. Then, when we asked when it would be fixed, the attendants said sorry but they didn't know. During our entire fifteen day stay the only Hobie Cat (conveniently) remained broken. This issue alone really irritated us -- along with the snorkeling, this was the other big reason we went to DER. We then decided to go kayaking. We wanted to paddle out and around and relax and slowly paddle about and enjoy a leisurely afternoon. Well, the attendants said sorry but you folks cannot do this: there is a 30 minute time limit on the kayaks. We said that wouldn't allow us enough time to paddle around and enjoy the shoreline and the fish and relax. They said sorry but the kayaks need to be available for others to use. We said yes but, most of the day, the kayaks are just lying on the shore. They said sorry but you'll have to talk to the front desk. We said sorry but we won't use the kayaks.

13. Let's talk about room service. The TA had told us that DER had room service. Unfortunately, this was not technically true in the standard sense (especially at a Five Star Resort). It was severely limited. Here's what a guest could only do: order AM coffee, rolls, juice, toast. And whatever was ordered was delivered "uncovered", with no protection from dust, dirt, flies, etc. And, more often than not, the time room service arrived was (statistically) purely random in nature, despite our selecting a precise time for delivery. An 8:00 AM request had just as much chance to arrive at 7:30 AM as it did at 8:30 AM as it did at 8:00 AM. Here's what a guest at DER could not do: Order eggs or bacon or French toast or omelets for breakfast. In addition, a guest could not order room service at 2:00 PM, nor could room service be ordered at 7:00 PM, nor at 11:00 PM. As far as we are concerned, this is ridiculous -- every hotel we've stayed at in the past allowed the guests to order what they wanted when they wanted it. We love to order coffee and sandwiches around 4:00 PM daily. We were strongly disappointed. When we tried to order room service during the day, we were told sorry but this cannot be done.

14. The television service in the room was exceedingly poor. We were told by the TA that every room had cable/satellite. This may be true, but the higher truth is that only four or five stations were provided (of which two were Spanish only), reception was exceedingly poor, and, periodically, the signal of one or more of the non-Spanish stations would be gone for hours or days at a time. We have always enjoyed, while on vacation, lying in the hotel room bed and watching cable and drinking our room service coffee during the afternoon. When I asked about the poor television situation, we were told sorry but that's the way that it is. In addition, the front desk requested a "deposit" (!) for the remote control for the television! That is insulting!

15. On site at DER is a restaurant called Caruso's which has an Italian theme. Arranging to eat there really ticked off both of us. First, one couldn't just simply present oneself to the restaurant to be served; no, one had to make reservations. This is OK. However, then we were told that one had to make reservations the day before! This is ludicrous. And then these 24 hour early reservations could only be made at 7:00 PM the day before! This is ridiculous! Then, we were told, these day-early reservations at 7:00 PM could only be made in person, not by telephone. This is asinine!

We're staying at a $200 US per day resort and we're treated like high school children. Who makes these absurd, preposterous, and nonsensical rules? We got the feeling that DER has a secret staff of professional rule-makers whose sole job is to make simple activities as complicated as possible. When we asked why we had to do this 24 hours in advance in person, the front desk said sorry but that's the rules. Then, to add insult to injury, we noticed repeatedly that Caruso's was, sometimes, approximately 40% to 50% empty some evenings! Yet we could not eat there even if we presented ourselves at the proper time because we didn't have "reservations". Amazing!

16. Now let's discuss the room assignment and the type of bed. We requested from the TA, and we paid for (we thought), a water view with a king size bed. We were provided a back court view with two double beds. When we mentioned this to the front desk personnel, they said sorry but that's the best assignment that can be made, and that's what you reserved. We know that wasn't true, but, because we had already unpacked and got "set-up" in our room, we didn't continue to go back to the front desk and complain. We just wish that this would have done right initially and / or the TA would have initially coordinated it correctly with DER. So we spent the whole fifteen days in a room with double beds and not the view for which we paid!

17. We were in room 365 and our friends were in room 368. Both rooms constantly and strongly had a powerful smell of sewage. When we pointed this out to the maid, she simply shrugged and implied that she was sorry but that's the way that it is. Other guests at DER indicated to us that they also had the same problem with their rooms.

18. One of the main reasons that we were initially attracted to DER and Baja California was that we wanted to go whale watching. When we first went to the DER staff to go on the whale watching tour, we were told that, at this time, there wasn't enough interest (and hence revenue) to warrant a tour and that sorry but maybe next week there will be one. Because our friends were leaving in two days, we had to arrange an independent tour with with Las Parras Tours of Loreto, which, incidentally, turned out exceedingly well. This, however, in no way excuses the inconvenience we experienced by having to arrange our own tour independent of DER, a tour which, incidentally, cost us (party of four) $120 US more than the advertised DER tour and which provided one less meal than the DER tour.

19. When we arrived on the bus from Loreto Airport to DER, there was, approximately, a three to four hour wait in order to check in to our room. This was unacceptable -- it's not as if DER didn't know a group of new arrivals were due in. After traveling the day before across the whole USA and then awakening in Los Angeles at 6:00 AM to catch the plane to Loreto, the last thing we needed was to have to wait three hours to check into our room.

20. While we recognize that DER is located deep in the heart of Baja California Sur, we were tremendously disappointed in the quality of the food served at the resort. We expected, in keeping with our expectation that DER was a Five Star Resort, that the food would be either phenomenal or, at a minimum, the same quality as a Denny's or Howard Johnson's restaurant in the United States. Unfortunately, many of the entrees served up appeared to be, in the words of one of our fellow guests from Canada, "mystery meat". When asked, even the waiters and waitresses wouldn't (or couldn't?) tell us what type of meat we were eating. We were quite nonplused and baffled as to the consistently poor quality of the food. It may be a result of the buffet concept where it probably is inherently difficult to cook and serve top notch, quality food in a buffet context. In addition, we were tremendously puzzled why DER did not, daily, serve at least one local seafood entree, given that DER is located in one of the best fishing areas in North America!

21. Occasionally, at breakfast, DER would "run out" of a given item, such as hash browns. When we asked about it, the staff at the buffet restaurant said sorry but that we should try to get to the meal earlier! When we pointed out that there was still one hour to go, they simply said sorry. As an aside, we love bacon. Every morning for breakfast there was no bacon. When we asked about it, the staff said sorry no bacon, but maybe tomorrow. When we arrived back home we immediately had bacon with our breakfast! One would think DER would serve bacon daily to its North American guests. In addition, we constantly were unable to get fully-cooked scrambled eggs; daily the scrambled were watery and runny and appeared to be significantly undercooked.

22. The drinks served at DER, both juices and alcoholic, appeared to be "watered down", or, at least not as good a quality as we expected and as we are used to drinking. Daily we would drink juice for breakfast which seemed quite excessively diluted with water. Additionally, we were not impressed with the quality nor potency of the liquor. Both the beer and the liquor looked as if they did not contain the normal or typical alcohol content. Indeed, we found ourselves consuming much more liquor than normal with, apparently, no negative effect. Again, this is unacceptable and appeared, along with the food quality, to be a cost - control measure on the part of DER management. And, as we've said earlier, one does not expect this when one is paying over $208 US per day!

23. DER management needs to determine its policy and strategy of the clothing optional (CO) areas, i.e., the beach and hot tub. The current DER policy is simply not acceptable and intuitively not logical to even the most casual observer! The present DER policy is to advise all DER guests that the far south section of the beach and the adjacent hot tub area are "clothing optional". Well of course anyone would know what happens next: almost every guest at DER will wander over to the CO areas to "check out" the freaks sunbathing or hot tubbing without clothes! As an aside, it should be noted that only about 5% of the guests staying at DER are the type of folks that would sunbathe, hot-tub, etc. in a CO environment to begin with.

Here's a couple of examples to illustrate the discomfort and hassles experienced by the CO guests. At 11:00 AM on a typical day, there might be 20 folks out on the CO beach, but, over the next one to two hours, 20 or so non-CO folks might "drift" over to check out the nudes, pull up lawn chairs, and stay without removing any of their bathing suits! This would then eventually result in the guests that were either fully or partially unclothed feeling uncomfortable -- as if they were on display for the amusement and pleasure of the gawkers -- and then either putting their bathing clothes back on or leaving the CO beach altogether.

What we thought was tremendously ironic was that, on some days, there were more (!) folks sitting out on the CO beach than there were on the non-CO beach, and, even more ironic, most (or all) of the folks on the CO beach were fully clothed in their complete bathing suits!

The second example is even more pathetic. Until about 3:00 PM daily, most of the folks in the hot tub were either fully or partially unclothed. Then, more and more non-CO folks would congregate at the hot tub to the point where anyone even slightly unclothed would feel that they were on public display, simply "there" for the pleasure and enjoyment of the fully-clothed folks!

How to correct this problem? Quite simple. DER management needs to make mandatory -- and strongly enforce -- a policy of no clothing at the CO beach and CO hot tub. Just as Gresham's Law (see Economics 101) says that bad money drives out good money, a presence of clothed folks in a CO area rapidly drives out those who prefer to sunbathe "au naturel". And this should not be a problem for the non-CO guests because the CO areas of DER probably comprise only 10% of the beach area. DER management needs to simply tell all guests on arrival that one must be nude to be in the CO area.

In addition (and this is the critical part for DER management), as word spreads among the CO folks in North America, DER will get a reputation as being not a very CO "friendly" place. No one likes to appear to be on display as a "naked freak", which is the way many of the CO folks ended up feeling as, every day, their CO area was overwhelmed with gawking, pointing, staring non-CO folks, just hanging out to "enjoy the view". In addition, many of these gawkers were with cameras taking photos or videos.

24. Car rental. We rented a jeep for 24 hours from Fernando (?) in the DER lobby. We felt he was very professional and that the service was good and the price was right. We recommend using Thrifty and Fernando.

We thoroughly enjoyed the two days we explored the Loreto area by jeep. We explored the road up to and past Primer Agua and drove (twice) up to the microwave tower located about 10 kilometers north of Loreto adjacent to Arroyo de Arce. It was a tremendously beautiful view of the entire Loreto / Nopolo / DER area, including wonderful vistas of the Sea of Cortez. We recommend the drive to everyone. In hindsight, the only thing we'd do differently is that we would have rented the jeep for seven days and explored more of the Baja California Sur, including taking day trips to La Paz and Mulege.

25. C&C Ground Services & Tours. We spoke with both Steve Overton and Cecilla (jr.) of C&C for various reasons over our fifteen day stay. In all cases we were impressed with their professionalism, knowledge, and courtesy. Steve especially appeared to "go the extra mile" to provide information and insight about DER, Loreto, and entire Baja California area to us when we asked questions or requested information. We especially enjoyed his guided tour of the town of Loreto and the Loreto Mission, a.k.a. "The Mother and the Head of the Church of Upper and Lower California".

26. DER personnel. Almost without exception, every staff member we met at DER was wonderful and, we believe, was doing a most professional job given the constraints under which they operated. We found every one of the service employees at the bars, disco, restaurants, front desk courteous, polite, and full of good nature. Of the management staff, we found the assistant DER manager, Mr. Alberico Bitetti, most courteous, attentive to our needs, and very professional. In addition, we would like to especially thank Elba, Sandra, Antonio Ramon (stage show), Mr. Pete Repole (intern), and Mr. Humberto Hernandez (restaurant) for their courteous and attentive consideration to our various needs.

Although we had significant comments about Caruso's Restaurant (please see our Note 15, above), we found the service there to be spectacular! We would chiefly like to note the exemplary service of Rigoberto, Valentin, Gloria, and Alfonso the bartender. Despite our concerns about the restaurant management policies, these folks managed to somewhat ameliorate our problems and discomfort.

This concludes our TR for our vacation to DER at Nopolo, B.C.S., Mexico in January and February 1997. Again, for the record, we want to reiterate that the items discussed in this TR are simply stated for the record and to assist the various readers in obtaining unbiased yet first hand feedback of issues in which the reader may have an interest. In no way is this TR meant to denigrate either the TA, DER, or the trip itself.

You are invited to contact us if you have any additional questions, comments, or if you require any additional information. Enjoy!

Our phone number is 703-790-7247 and our e-mail address is volatfam@erols.com.