Tony Deyal EARTHQUAKE, FLOOD and fire still have not taught Port Royal in Jamaica a lesson. I went there some time ago and stayed at a hotel that is connected via history and nomenclature to the late great pirate and privateer, Sir Henry Morgan. Having arrived at the airport, I waited for about an hour for the shuttle-bus that I was assured would be there to pick up the entire party of two. My colleague from Barbados roamed his cellular-phone anxiously for about 30 minutes but all he got from the hotel was a busy signal. We then engaged a taxi and, as we neared the hotel, saw the shuttle heading for the airport, possibly to meet and greet us, but more likely for the driver to say that he had waited many 'howers' for us but we 'ad not harrived' or him 'no see' we.
The exterior of the hotel seemed so neglected that I remarked speculatively that the pirate business seemed to have fallen on hard times after the demise of the late great Sir Henry. Although the setting of the hotel is magnificent, right on the harbour and with a view of the mountains that is spectacular, the appearance is not pre-possessing. Later we learned that the phone was not working and we were virtually isolated. My cellphone is highly domesticated and has been curbed of any tendency to roam. In fact, even in Rome it does not do as the roamers do.
CONCH FRITTERS
The hotel proved not much different from the Princess Hotel and Casino in Belize City where I had spent some time before heading off to Jamaica. As a sea-food lover, and seeing conch fritters on the buffet dinner menu, with jerk-chicken as a lagniappe, I decided to dine at the Princess for the equivalent of US$12 (without coffee) instead of going down the street to a Chinese place where a conch chow-mein costs about US$4. I scanned the buffet hungrily, if not greedily.
No conch fritters. Deprived of my fritters, I started fretting and asked a kitchen employee what was the problem. She explained that there is a conch season and that we were not yet in it. So why put it on the menu? No reply.
Nobody could shed any light on why the conch was on the menu but not the table. The rest of the meal was forgettable, the jerk chicken was honey-glazed and more of a joke than a jerk. In fact, I was feeling more and more like I was the jerk. So I went in search of the dessert, hoping to find some comfort or, at least, compensation. Deprived of light, I sought sweetness. There was a vanilla mousse on the menu but none on the buffet table. Looking at the corpulent kitchen staff, I smelt a rat and figured they had kept the mousse for themselves. When I complained that I had frittered away my hard-earned money on a menu with false information, the hotel staff did not understand why I felt aggrieved.
I then went to my room and asked for an iron to smooth out the wrinkles in my clothes, my face and forehead too far gone for anything but a plastic surgeon. I was told it was not the policy of the hotel to subject their guests to such hard labour. However, if I wanted my clothes ironed, housekeeping would do it at a cost of US$3 per shirt and US$6 for a pair of trousers. The prices and the policy caused me to gasp so that my breath came in short pants.
In Belize and elsewhere in the Caribbean, there are a lot of people who think casinos like the Princess are really money laundering facilities. They might be. However, I realised that given their prices for basic business ironing, they also launder money.
Port Royal was not much better. No phone service. Overpriced food. And then I decided to buy a bottle of water to take with me to my room. It was a very small bottle, not much bigger than a bottle of perfume or cologne. I know that in Trinidad a litre of water costs more than a litre of gasoline. But this one was ridiculous. In Jamaica, where it is about $60 Jamaican to US$1, and where the bottled water is domestic and not foreign, the hotel bar charged me US$2 for a trickle.
It was then I realised why the piracy business was not doing well. It was simply a matter of adapting. The pirates have given up the sea and have turned their attention inland. Instead of piracy, they have switched to highway robbery.
