Tony Deyal
Tony Deyal
PLACENCIA IN Belize is a village at the tip of a peninsula with the blue sea on one side and a saltwater lagoon on the other. It was a corsair or pirate (some people prefer the term privateer) based in the days of Morgan, Drake and Captain Kidd. What the pirates left behind were their descendants and a tradition that other interlopers have continued.
I dropped in to Placencia, at a place called Millers Landing. It was not a happy landing and I got soaked. I should have known when the American owners, both heavy smokers, cigarettes in their mouths, looked me straight in an eye already watering from my allergy to smoke, and boasted proudly, "This lodge is all natural. No bulldozer or heavy equipment has ever been on our property." I did not comment on the contradiction at the time. I should also have known when no busboy or help came out to assist with the luggage and I had to trek through deep, hot sand to make the several trips required to get to my room. Worse, the naked galvanised roof and the hot little box without air-conditioning should have driven me away. Unfortunately, having driven almost 100 miles in the hot afternoon sun, 27 miles of which were on a dusty, dirt road, and with my first official activity scheduled for two hours later, I was in a vegetative mood too bushed to move.
CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
At breakfast the next morning, I moved from bushed to ambushed. A continental breakfast, consisting of two slices of bread with jam and some coffee, cost me US$8. The only continent that I could think of where food would be as costly was Antarctica but there, at least, there is no charge for ice. Eight US or 12 Belize dollars is less than such a breakfast would cost at the Radisson Hotel in Belize and much less than in Placencia Village itself where I got a huge slice of fried kingfish, with four fry-jacks (bakes) and coffee for just about US$4. While eating my breakfast in the village, I saw a postcard advertising Millers Landing. It claimed that all the rooms opened out onto the sea and had a picture of a dock which belonged to another hotel. The only thing that opened out to the sea in the room in which I was put was a little window which was blocked by trees and which had never known anything but dust and cobwebs since it was built.
Certainly breeze and tide were unknown luxuries. What was worse is that the room remained virtually untouched for most of the five days I was there, the sheets were never changed, and I had to pay a 25 per cent service charge. I suppose it could have been worse. Henny Youngman, the comedian famous for his one-liners, spoke about his experiences, "The hotel I'm in has a lovely closet. A nail". "I have a lovely room and bath in the hotel. It's a little inconvenient, they're in two separate buildings!", "My room is so small, the mice are hunchbacked, and The room is so small, when I put the key in, I broke the window!"
What worries me, even more than the cost, is that increasingly it is an experience that is becoming quite common in the Caribbean, especially in the many mushrooming bed and breakfast establishments that now dot the eco-tourism landscape.
There is an iron law of tourism which states that tourism inevitably destroys whatever attracts it. The corollary can be whatever attracts tourism or is attracted to it also destroys it. The destructive effects of tourism are well known. Creating one job in tourism (most times at the lower end of the scale since the management comes from outside), costs about US$10,000 when you add up all the concessions given to the entrepreneurs. Creating a self-employment opportunity costs about US$1,000 at most.
TOURISM
A smart country uses some of the money from tourism to keep its plant a demeaning industrial (not botanical) term used to describe everything from a country, culture, way of life to a ramshackle, rundown building alive for as long as it can while pouring the rest into self-employment opportunities or into making the country a knowledge-based society. Dumb countries continue to put all their eggs in one basket even while painfully aware that tourism is the most fragile of industries and that anything from an airline moving out, a hurricane, local violence, rise in fuel costs, or an intervening opportunity would doom their industry to destruction. For me the worst thing about tourism in the Caribbean is that we allow foreigners with dreams of having their own hotels on the beach to come here, give them all kinds of subsidies and favourable concessions, and allow them to set up resorts that are uneconomical even with one-hundred-percent occupancy. That way, when things are slow, they just jack-up prices to maintain their lifestyles.
Beaches and dreams is the name of a small place in Hopkins Village in Belize but it could also be the term used to describe many of the small resorts in the entire region. The world is fast moving to value for money as the basis for even leisure transactions. While the following story did not happen to me in Placencia, it typifies the attitude that I have described and might easily happen to some other person somewhere in the Caribbean.
A husband and wife driving stopped at a hotel and took a room, intending to spend only one night and then head out. When they went to check out they were given a bill for $350. Seeing no reason for such a high charge, the man demanded to see the manager. The manager explained that the hotel had an Olympic-sized pool and a conference centre, as well as a floorshow with some of the best entertainers in the country and they were all available for registered guests to use. No matter what facility the manager mentions, the man replies, "But we didn't use it!" Although the poor guest kept insisting that they had not used those facilities the manager insisted that they were there to use. On leaving, the man gave the manager a cheque for $100. The manager angrily pointed out that the cheque should be for $350. The man said blithely, "I charged you $250 for sleeping with my wife." "But I didn't," exclaimed the manager. Holding her husband's hand and smiling, the man's wife said, "Well, I was here, and you could have."
Tony Deyal was last seen quoting Henny Youngman, "There was a girl knocking on my hotel room door all night! Finally, I let her out."
