On Sunday Abe and I spent the night cuddling tightly on our very narrow couch and then got up at 4:30 am to drive to Salt Lake and catch our 7am flight to Phoenix.
Once we got to the airport, we immediately started seeing Qualtrics people everywhere. I have mixed feelings about Qualtrics people–specifically, sales people. First of all, these people are all so nice that they should not be intimidating. But here’s the thing about sales: All the cool kids go into it. Sales is full of, how to say this…jocks and prom queens. Of course, there are the occasional normal people, such as Abe and myself, although Abe is infinitely cooler than I am, so he actually fits into this culture rather well.
But the people going on Q club trips are all so beautiful, so nice, and so intimidating (to me, at least), that I get really shy and uncomfortable, especially when most of the people are new, as they were on this trip. However, I did make some friends worth keeping over the course of the trip, and so I’m grateful for that.
Anyway, the point is, aside from the fact that I spent much of the time in the airport sinfully wishing I had gotten false eyelashes for the trip, we enjoyed a very peaceful, easy flight to Phoenix, and from there to Puerto Vallarta. In Puerto Vallarta we were met with a Qualtrics bus that drove us to the Four Seasons Resort in Punta Mita.
It was a very nice resort.
Believe me, I would be singing a different, much more grateful tune had I actually been able to fully enjoy this trip. Unfortunately, I entered the trip with a sinus infection, threw up nine times the second day, was flat in bed with a fever the third day, hobbled around the fourth day, and flew home with strep the fifth day. I know I’m not a victim (poor me! –would be so ridiculous, I know), but at the same time, when you’re staring at a blank ceiling all day in a room that costs $3000 a day (the trip was free for us, thank goodness), it’s hard not to feel at least a little bit cynical.
But on the first day I actually had a pretty lovely time, and Abe had a wonderful time from start to finish. When we reached the resort we changed and wandered down to the beach and settled on an insanely comfortable four-poster canopy bed right on the beach.
We cuddled listening to the waves roll in in front of us while the sun slowly started to set. After an hour, we noticed some commotion on the beach. People were releasing baby turtles into the ocean!
After we watched the darling little turtles crawl to the ocean, we wandered up to the higher beach where the Qualtrics reception was being held. I had not eaten anything all day except some fruit before our flight to Mexico. At the reception, we gorged ourselves on beef tenderloin, ceviche, and grilled tacos. We helped ourselves to the biggest cheese display I have ever seen in my life, positioned in between two enormous dessert tables.
The food more than made up for the conversation.
Then we went back and celebrated finally having loads of time just to ourselves. That part was a dream come true!