HOLIDAY DELIGHTS: When you read this, I should be at Huatulco on the same beach where a University of B.C. doctoral student was when her former husband located her body and that of a friend on Dec. 27. That sad event aside, most visitors to the southern Mexican community and the nearby small town of La Crucecita will continue to leave for home delighted and ready to return. Nor will vacationers likely forsake Mazatlan, where a Calgary woman was assaulted while allegedly riding naked in a hotel elevator at 3: 30 a.m., Jan. 20. Finally, the Costa Concordia cruise ship's Jan. 13 grounding off Italy, which killed several passengers, seems not to be deter-ring other seagoers.
The two latter incidents sparked memories for me, neither of them tragic and one somewhat burlesque. The ship-borne ones first.
They began aboard the 1998-built (and since refitted) Grand Princess when it sailed from Port Everglades, Fla., March 10, 2010, for a Caribbean circumnavigation.
Days later, Captain Anthony Herriott came on the PA to announce not that Grand Princess had struck a rock, but that the gastrointestinal illness called Norovirus had struck us. As landfalls like Port of Spain, Kingstown, Basseterre and San Juan faded at successive sun-sets, our skipper came back on to recite the number of those infected.
Suavely, but firmly, he also explained prophylactic procedures to be taken that reminded us we were aboard a ship, where strict formalities existed behind the "floating hotel" gloss. True, some sturdier passengers complained that they could no longer serve their own buffet breakfasts, and had to tell non-English-speaking crew members they wanted fried and poached eggs, bacon and ham, hash browns and sausages, pancakes and French toast piled on. Others merely bet on how many would eventually report sick (59).
That, and a peek into Grand Princess's infirmary, reminded me of an earlier incident aboard the smaller Pacific Princess, where I was treated for an arterial wound sustained ashore in Turkey. After being bandaged with something a female fellow passenger offered, I was sped to the ship. There, a clear-eyed, young physician deftly treated the wound and stitched me up - all for $40 on the purser's account. A no-nonsense Scottish nurse tossed away the blood-soaked bandage, which turned out to be my benefactor's spare underwear, saying: "She'll nae need these."
Both experiences strengthened a respect for cruise ship senior staff that will survive the apparent recklessness on Costa Concordia's bridge.
As for underwear, any kind, male or female, would have been welcome when an elevator deposited me in a Marseille hotel lobby some years ago. Guest rooms may be configured differently in Provençal France. Then again, anyone convivially quaffing Kronenbourg beer of an evening should verify the bathroom location before retiring. Otherwise, it is possible to stumble through a self-locking room door and find your-self, naked and keyless, in a brightly lit, carpeted corridor with an urgent personal matter still unresolved.
Hotel lobbies have public washrooms, of course, but it is hard for a six-foot-plus nude man to approach one unnoticed, even in the wee hours.
Sure enough, a security guard resembling the late actor Zero Mostel burst from behind the desk to take up pursuit.
Running now, and disoriented, I made my second door error of the night and all but tumbled down a grey-painted concrete stairwell. That led to a huge boiler where, further containment being impossible . let's just say that the furnace's roar masked other sounds.
Room numbers are some-times hard to recall in English, let alone French, so it was some while before Zero, who had now captured me, could learn mine.
That accomplished, we were about to ascend when the elevator door reopened. In stepped a business-suited man who returned a birthday-suited occupant's bleary smile in a sympathetic and even encouraging way. Having none of that, Zero escorted his captive to his own room, and may well have stood guard there to forestall further escapades.
Discretion is a hotelier's middle name. Even so, the late-night Lady Godiva episode seemed to have everyone entertained at breakfast. "Tant pis!" the French would say: "Too bad!"
Still, springtime mornings in Provence are splendid tonic, as was a hair-of-the-dog Kro-nenbourg at a sidewalk café in Arles. Sharing the sun, elderly gentlemen withdrew their venous schnozzes from pas-tis-and-water glasses to mutter salaciously about widows filing into a church across the square.
Circumstances only improved with a truffle-scented lunch at the fabled Auberge de Noves, a dash down the Autoroute de Soleil to Marseille, an Air Inter flight to Paris with home-going businessmen swigging Scotch, and undisturbed sleep at the Hotel George V, where late-night nakedness might barely engender an urbane shrug.
Meanwhile, they serve a lovely draft beer down here in Huatulco that is dark in colour, light in taste, that aids appetite, digestion and well-being, and that all but guarantees untroubled nights. Until next week-end, then, à bientôt.
malcolmparry@shaw.ca
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