Banyan Tree Al Wadi Adventures

Our trip this weekend was an incredible retreat. Our villa opened up to a private infinity edge pool. We spent a great deal of time out on our patio, hoping in and out of the pool. Here's a picture of me in the pool:

We had bikes to ride around the resort, when we weren't taking a "buggy" (a golf cart driven by resort staff). Craig and I took one long ride around the resort and several shorter rides to different activities. Here, Craig and I took pictures with the oryx that live on the resort as a part of a nature preserve:

We also had to try the Rainforest Spa (you can find the resort's description here). We were told there were 14 stations (the website says 16), but we only found 13 of them. And that with some difficulty.

We started by going into men's and women's changing rooms. I was told that I should leave my glasses in my locker, so the whole adventure was very blurry. In fact, when I came out into the pool area to meet Craig, I hesitantly approached the only person I could see. I can't actually see a person well enough to tell who they are at any socially acceptable distance, so this could have been really awkward. But it was Craig, so we headed to the first station.

The experience began with a series of showers. There were four showers, each with lights overhead to let you know when to move from one to the next. Of course, we didn't figure this out until we had gone through the entire course, missing most of the showers. So we went back and did it again, as you do.

Next, we walked through a shallow "stream". This was challenging because there were four sections of water, each one lit with blue or red lights, but with a step between the sections. Navigating this without my glasses was challenging, even with Craig giving me direction.

Next, we encountered four rooms. Two of them were marked as the third station. The other two were unmarked. We tried them all before settling in the cooler of the two steam rooms. Even this one got so hot and uncomfortable that we were forced to open the door. The instructions said that we were supposed to sit in one of the two rooms for ten minutes, but I doubt we managed anything close to that.

We swapped from one steam room to the other, mostly to enjoy the cooler air between the rooms. On one such occasion, we saw a staff member headed into one of the other rooms carrying a tray. She told us that she was putting our scrub in there and we should go into that room next.

After enduring the steam room as long as possible, we found our scrubs. We had paid extra for this: a honey-salt scrub that you apply yourself. The scrub came in two bowls. The first bowl had a mixture that smelled like orange, felt like the guts of a pumpkin, and presumably had honey in it. The second bowl was Kosher salt. We set about scrubbing ourselves and one another with the scrub, mixing the two as we went. We were wearing swim suits, but we still ended up flinging scrub at one another before rinsing off.

After cleaning most of the scrub off our bodies and swim suits, we went to the next station which was another steam room. Craig and I are not fans of steam. Each time, the sign told us to spend ten minutes breathing in the steam. Each time, I think we managed perhaps three minutes.

The next station had two shower-like stalls. We went into one, which had two different showers with lights and sound effects. One was gentler and the other heavier with thunderstorm effects. We enjoyed this and actually came back to it after the bucket drench failure.

The other shower was a bucket drench shower. From the description on the sign, we were expecting a huge amount of ice cold water to pour on our heads. We huddled together under the bucket and pulled the rope. All the water poured out onto the ground next to us, missing us entirely. Laughing, we waited for the bucket to refill and tried it a second time. We had both reached out to the water and found it wasn't nearly as cold as advertised, so we weren't nearly as anxious the second time. This could have been much improved by an indication on the floor of where to stand. And colder water.

At this point in our adventure, we were unable to find the next station. There was a room marked Hamman, which we finally decided must be where we were supposed to go. I couldn't see very well, but we explored the Hamman a bit. The center room had a large jacuzzi-like thing. Four rooms off the central room had individual bathrooms and large soaking tubs. An alcove off the center room had a shower. Craig used the shower, trying in vain to rid himself of the last of the honey-salt scrub. We climbed into the jacuzzi for a minute. 

While we were soaking, an employee came up to the double doors we had entered through and looped something around the door handles. Frightened that she had locked us in, and bored with the tepid water in the jacuzzi, we hopped out and went to the door. We were able to exit the Hamman without difficulty. And the employee directed us to the next station, which was out of sight around the corner.

I see now that the Hamman is on the list of amenities in the Rainforest. But at the time, we thought we had gone into a place we weren't allowed. And the employee didn't disabuse us of that notion. She acted like we were crazy. Of course, we were giggling like lunatics by this point, finding everything amusing. 

The employee sent us into a herbal sauna. As with most of the steam rooms, there were two options. We settled on the cooler option. I think we lasted longer in the sauna than the steam rooms, but I may just be optimistic.

After the sauna, we backtracked to the Ice Igloo. Inside a chamber decorated like an igloo, there was a central pedestal with a large bowl-like top. The bowl was lined with plastic wrap. Inside the pedestal, we found crushed ice. (We could see that the crushed ice came from an ice machine overhead.) At first, we were distrusting of the instructions to "rub ice on our cellulite-prone areas". But it turns out that rubbing crushed ice on your skin is really invigorating and rather fun.

We moved on to yet another miserable sauna. This one had a clock outside (we had lamented the lack of timepieces in the saunas, because we had no idea how long we had stayed). The clock said 4:05 when we went inside. As we settled into the sauna, I asked Craig what time it was because I hadn't been able to read the clock. He told me "4:05" and I replied, "so we started in this one at 4."

Initially, he was confused by my inability to tell time. But when we came out of the sauna at 4:07, he agreed that we must have started at 4:00. We decided to run back to the Ice Igloo and rub ice on our faces before continuing.

We enjoyed another brief shower with lights and sounds. With every shower, Craig claimed that bits of orange pulp were coming out of his swimsuit. 

We walked through another stream. This one wasn't divided, making it easier for me to walk through blind. 

And I think there was another shower, with several different showers.

Finally, we ended up at station 13, which was the large pool where we initially met outside the locker rooms. I couldn't see anything, but Craig led me into the water. The sign said that there were 6 stations in the pool. There were several seats/locations at each station. We sat in chairs that had jets at the back. We tried to lay in lounges with jets along the bottom, but the jets pushed us both out of the seats and into the pool. We turned on "waterfalls" - one felt like you were trying to walk under a fire hose and the other was like being attacked by a wall of water. We walked through a corridor that had jets underfoot and on the side walls. That was probably my favorite part of the "Vitality Pool".

I wish I had pictures. Or better yet, a video showing this experience. Craig and I really enjoyed it, but we were acting like hysterical maniacs most of the time. The steam rooms were miserably hot. The "cold" showers were never cold enough. The ice igloo was pretty amazing, even if it was just crushed ice from a machine. The whole spa was something of a maze, with no clear direction from one station to the next. While some of the showers had lights and sound effects, the entire place was eerily quiet. 

It was fun. And I'm glad we did it. But I'm not sure it's something I would go out of my way to do. But I suppose if I went back, I might give it another go, provided it had been some time since this trip.