More than 50 Jimmy Buffett fans from Oklahoma were sickened on an annual pilgrimage to celebrate the trop rock troubadour’s music and lifestyle at an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic in April, according to the parrothead club’s travel agent.
News of the mass illness comes
as another tourist has died in the Hispaniola island nation, bringing the total number of Americans to die mysteriously there to eight this year.
At least one of the Oklahomans who went on the trip to Punta Cana, from April 13 to 20, is still sick, and doctors at her Veterans Administration hospital diagnosed her with salmonella Wednesday night, said Dana Flowers, an Oklahoma City travel agent and trip organizer for the Central Oklahoma Parrothead Association.
“She’s been sick ever since the trip,” Flowers said.
Flowers, 62, was one of the 114 people to go on the trip to the Hotel Riu Palace Macao and one of those who became ill, he said. His illness lasted for 19 more days after he returned to the United States.
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He tested negative for salmonella, but others in the group have tested positive, he said. The one thing all the ill have in common is they hung out at the hotel’s pool bar.
“We all either swam in the pool or drank something from the pool’s swim-up bar,” he said. “I tend to think it was contaminated water or ice or a chemical they were pouring into the pool every night.”
The hotel’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
When the trip ended, 47 fan club members reported being sickened. Since then, others have come forward saying they also became ill on the vacation, pushing the number over 50, Flowers said.
He said a few people who fell ill went to doctors on staff at the hotel and were immediately given medicine to treat for parasites without testing.
“It makes you wonder, did they know something,” he said. “To me, that was suspicious.”
According to Flowers, hotel staff said the people in the group became sick after going on an off-resort excursion, but he said he began feeling ill before then.
“It had nothing to do with the off-site excursion. We just didn’t believe it,” he said.
The Central Oklahoma Parrothead Association takes several trips a year to places like the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to party in honor of Buffett, the one-time Key Wester whose songs about living off the grid in island paradises made him famous decades ago and earned him a huge following of fans, known as parrotheads.
The fan club doesn’t see Buffett concerts on the trips, but musicians who play in the acoustic, country-rooted “trop rock” style music he helped pioneer come along and perform.
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