Today was our last full day. We had to get up early the next day to catch our flight and wanted to enjoy our last day. The only thing we had planned was that my wife and I had scheduled a spa experience as our last experience that was part of the full board package. That was for an hour in the afternoon.
We had our breakfast buffet again and wandered back to the room to relax. Our youngest wanted to ride bikes so I went with him for a little bit and when we got back the boys played in the pool and on the patio. The novelty of having our own pool had not worn off at all!
When they got bored Tomatico and my wife wandered over to the Kids Club to see what was going on there. My wife texted me that they were playing Monopoly and our youngest wanted to join them so I let him go over on his own. This isn’t something we would do almost anywhere else, but this place felt so safe that it wasn’t a big deal for us or either of the boys who are naturally very cautious. While they were doing activities in the kids club, I rested on the patio listening to the pool and birds while I blogged. So peaceful!
Endless Lunch
I’ve mentioned this before, but meals in general were relaxed in their pace throughout our whole trip. At the desert resort they were even slower. While they generally brought the kid’s meals out relatively quickly, the adult meals generally took forever. While we got to the lunch place as soon as it opened at 12:30, we knew we would be cutting it close to our 2:00 spa meeting.
We ordered and told them we had an appointment at 2:00, but that didn’t seem to speed things up at all. Around 1:15 it was clear we wouldn’t be done in time so my wife walked next door to where the spa was to reschedule.
Service was so slow that between courses our youngest went outside to ride a few laps on his bike. The food was excellent and it wasn’t like they forgot about us, it was just the way they paced the meals.
Around 2:30 we had finally finished desert and were on our way back to our room.
Rainforest Spa Treatment
My wife and I put on our bathing suits to get ready for our spa treatment. We had decided to let the kids stay in the room by themselves and watch TV while we in our treatment. They preferred that to going to the kids club since there wasn’t much for their ages there. We had them strict instructions not to go into the pool and to stay in the room. We also showed them how to work the phone and call the spa if they needed us for any reason.
Once in the spa, they gave us a locker to put our stuff into and gave us some flip flops to wear in the spa area. The Rainforest treatment is apparently “a thing” that is only in a few places in the world. One of the staff gave us a tour and explained all the different areas we were to go through. It started with different showers alternating between raining hot and cold water on you. We would each walk through that area separately. Then there were alternating hot and cold soaking areas to stand in for a few minutes before moving to the next. Then we proceeded to some steam rooms and eventually some more, different shower areas. There was a room with a pile of shaved ice in it that we were supposed to go into after being in a hot aresa and wipe the ice on our skin. That didn’t seem too appealing so we skipped that.
There were then some saunas and more steam rooms of varying scents and temperatures followed by what I would describe as a small stream that we had to walk through. Finally they had a big pool they called the vitality pool. It was in many ways like a large hot tub. The water was nice and warm and there were different areas that had different places to sit, lie down, or stand and there were buttons to press to turn on bubbles or streams of massaging water. We spend a good chunk of our time there as it was the most comfortable and interesting.
Most of the stations that were part of the treatment seemed rather gimmicky, but the vitality pool was nice. I’m not one that normally goes to a spa but overall the experience was quite relaxing. We had the option to pay more to get a private session with just the two of us, but we passed on that as it would have cost more and wouldn’t have been included as one of our complementary activities in our full board package. That said, we were the only people there. During lunch when my wife changed the time she got the impression that the schedule was wide open. Like all the other activities we went on we had our own private session. It really made it seem even more special.
The Evening
After our hour long session was done, we headed back to the room. We wanted to see if the kids wanted to go to the resort pool as they had a lot of fun there in previous days. It closed at 5pm so there was only a little time if they wanted to go there one last time. Our youngest wanted to ride bikes instead so I did that with him.
We rode to the falconry deck and saw the daily presentation was going on so we stopped to watch the end of it one last time. Tomatico and my wife walked by on their way to the pool. Apparently he had changed his mind. After the show we rode our bikes to the Stargazer Platform at the end of the path for the 5th time. He really enjoyed riding his bike as we don’t have a lot of space to ride bikes at home. Having more space with hills and such was really a treat for him.
On our way back we stopped at the pool to visit everyone else. He and Tomatico passed the football while my wife soaked her feet in the hot tub. There was maybe one other family in the pool area, meaning it was much busier than normal.
I decided to head to the lobby to finalize our ride to the airport in the morning and to make sure the bill was correct. When I got there they still hadn’t made the reservation for the airport ride as I had requested the previous day so it’s good that I asked. I also asked if I could preliminarily finalize the bill before the morning as we would be checking our at 5am and didn’t want to be late. They told me to come back after dinner so I could review the final charges.
Dinner and Packing
My wife had a big lunch so she wasn’t hungry for dinner so I took the kids. Since we had paid for 4 days of the full board package that meant we had paid for 4 dinners and 4 lunches for each of us. Since we ate dinner the first night, that meant this last dinner wouldn’t be included in that package so that worked out for us. We’d be eating light to keep the costs down.
We headed to the Arabic restaurant as we knew the Farmhouse would be much more expensive. We were sad to see the Arabic restaurant was closed, but the place we had lunch and breakfast was open for dinner as well. When we walked in we were the only customers. I thought it wasn’t open yet, but the waitress assured us it was. We had our choice of any table!
We all ate from the kids menu as those prices were actually pretty reasonable and the food was of higher quality than you normally find in kids meals. Everything was made from scratch and not prepackaged assembly line food.
There were no other customers for 80 of the 90 minutes we were there. I asked the waitress if this was normal and she said the occupancy rate at the hotel that day was about 30% so there weren’t many people on the property. That would explain why things were so empty!
During dinner the sous chef came to our table to talk with us and get any feedback we had. He was very friendly and eager for feedback, though I could only comment on the kids meals we had ordered 🙂 Everyone on the property seemed to genuinely want to help and get any feedback we had. They wanted to know how were doing and know if we were having a good time (hint, we were!).
After dinner our youngest went back to the room on his bike and Tomatico joined me in the lobby to settle up the bill. I inquired again about the airport transfer and they called to make the reservation for us. We got a private car rather than a taxi to make sure we made it to the airport on time. It was a little more expensive, but we could also charge it to our room and get the bonus points for being a hotel charge! Plus we didn’t have enough local currency to pay for the ride so that also simplified those logistics.
They also offered to order us a continental breakfast to go since we would be leaving before the restaurant would be open. It would be free due to our status as well. I got things settled with the bill and we went back to the room to start packing.
I managed to get everything packed, including our jackets, making sure they were handy to extract when we got back to Boston where we would need them. We were all set to go in just a few short hours.
The front desk called again to ask if we wanted coffee or tea in the morning and my wife gave her preferences. They also arranged a buggy for us and our luggage at 4:45 so we’d be able to make sure we would have time to check out and get to our car at 5:00.
We had our alarms set, clothes laid out and organized and we were off to bed to be ready for our early start to what was going to be a very long day of travel.
Tomatico Travels 
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