I awoke to a dull light illuminating the room. Erroneously thinking I had woken up before everyone else I decided to grab my phone and check the time: 11:00AM. The dull light wasn’t from the sunrise, no it was because the weather had finally turned and we were greeted by our first overcast day since arriving. We had known this was coming and had planned accordingly, today would be spent lazing around the house and eventually making our way out to the Polar Bear’s Club, a relaxation spot where we’d spend the afternoon to early evening lying in pools, sweating in saunas and getting the requisite massage that all holidays need.
The late morning until afternoon was uneventful, spent half watching TV, browsing the usual websites and lazily getting ready to go. I made the mistake of opening up my work email (with all good intentions of shutting it down after I set my out of office message) and reading through the various trials and tribulations that were going on half a world away. Thankfully I resisted the urge to respond to anything, merely marking the vast majority of the 60+ emails as read and leaving the rest for future Dave to solve.
The trip out would take us the better part of 2 hours thanks to some heavy traffic along the way. I thought myself rid of all the jet lag however I was hit with a wave of tiredness I hadn’t yet felt, bringing into question just how well my circadian rhythm had adjusted. It passed quickly after a short nap however although I’d be lying if I said I felt it was completely gone. Shortly afterwards we arrived at our destination, a semi-rural retreat called the Polar Bear’s Club that was promising us a day of relaxation after the mild bedlam of the past few days.
The spa itself is set against a picturesque river, albeit a stones throw away from the main highway. My wife was disappointed to see that some of the renovations had, in her opinion, made the place worse and wished to show me how it was when she was last there. Undeterred we made our way in, got changed and proceeded to make use of the facilities. The warm pools and brisk river were great to jump between, invigorating the muscles and mind. We also spent a little time in the dry sauna that was powered by eucalyptus wood making for a rather intense experience.
The massages were so-so, our masseuse unable to conjure up the requisite strength to penetrate my wife and I’s muscles to our satisfaction. However the wet sauna we went into afterwards made up for that in spades, seeping the heat deep into our bodies. The steam was, again, infused with eucalyptus ensuring that every breath drawn opened up the airways fully. I couldn’t stand more than 5 minutes in there however. The walk to the door was also quite a challenge, the extra height gained from sitting to standing enough to dramatically increase the heat I received.
This was to to be the night where our hosts would cook us their favorite three cheese pasta however we were all drowsy from a long day spent doing nothing. Instead we decided to grab some food and watch something light before retiring. This plan went well until we discovered some mold in some of the sandwiches we had bought, something which the restaurant did make right by us thankfully. With that we bid the night to a close and left our plans open for the next day.
This being my first real holiday in 6 years I had forgotten one of my less-than-desirable habits: wishing that this whole thing would be over. I don’t know what causes it, maybe out of a desire to finish things in as short a time as possible, but I can remember thinking the exact same thing on nearly every holiday I’ve been on. There’s only one cure I’ve found: getting beyond the halfway point. I’m sure sometime tomorrow it’ll finally hit me that I only have 2 days left here and almost a week will be gone from our holiday already but until then there’s still a nagging thought train pushing me to “get this holiday done”.
Whatever it is if it doesn’t abate soon I’ll be treating it with a non-zero amount of gin and other high strength spirits 😉
