An open letter to vacation goers

Dear vacation goers to small coastal towns

Each year over the festive season you arrive by the masses, taking over our beautiful small towns. You enjoy our beaches, our scenery and sights, you eat in our restaurants and shop in our stores and every year there are some of you who makes it unpleasant for all.

While you are on our beaches we can’t walk our dogs, even for a while after you are gone because you leave your picnic scraps on the sand and that is not the best meal for our pets, I’m not generalizing but I am talking to those of you who are guilty of doing this. So next time you are on the beach, eating your chicken and your choppie, it won’t take that much effort just to throw your scraps in the bin along with your other trash (that also gets left on the beach a lot of the time)

While you are driving from one place to the other to enjoy the scenery and sights, please keep to the speed limit and obey the law of the road. Driving like a speedster, sitting on another car’s bum, and not using your indicator is just rude and damn right dangerous. Flashing your lights and honking your hooter isn’t going to make any of us drive faster, no, it just makes us extremely annoyed, but do you know what? We will still be friendly to you because we are better than that.

Think about it

While you are enjoying your meals in our restaurants please keep the following in mind. That waiter you were just rude to just now is someone’s family and they sacrificed their festive season with them to serve you your medium rare steak, pizza and burgers. When a waiter tells you the food might be a while don’t get annoyed and start yelling at the staff when your plate didn’t arrive after 3 minutes of your order. The pace here is slower, if you don’t like it then go vacation in the city. If your waiter looks “disinterested” as I saw people say, use your brain for 3 seconds and just think. It’s hot, it’s humid, the kitchen feels like hell and they’ve probably been on their feet since 7 in the morning, trying to give YOU a nice vacation so a little bit of patience and understanding might just save you from a stroke.

While shopping in our stores, just keep in mind that you being here has probably tippled the amount of people who regularly shop here. The lines will be long, there won’t be any parking and stuff will be sold out, just deal with it. We deal with it every year and we survive.

Last but not least, to those who brought fireworks into a nature reserve……was that really necessary? Really?

To the hands full of people who come here and actually have a slow-paced vacation and fall in with the locals, I salute you and invite you back. To those of you who don’t like it, maybe small town vacationing isn’t for you and you should start thinking about alternative vacation spots.

Here is to another festive season, nearly done and dusted.

Yours sincerely