Rooms with tales to tell
Some travellers tally up the kilometres they’ve flown in a year, others note the number of beds they’ve slept in; Jill Worrall never remembers to do either. But she can recall some interesting moments in rooms from a travelling year that’s included about
The small apartment close to the centre of Havana in Cuba was dark but otherwise perfect for one. The owner was explaining which of the three keys he’d just handed me was to be used on which door – there was one for the iron gate at street level, another for the iron gate that protected the door of the apartment and one for the door itself.
‘‘One has to be turned this way, the other the other way and this one, you need to hold the door towards you, twist the key, then pull the door a little bit up,’’ he explained. I was tired, I was hot, nothing was sinking in – I’d probably end up sleeping in the hallway the first time I had to battle through all these locks. But wait, there was more. My host showed me the apartment and then stared intently at me. ‘‘You are on your own?’’
I looked around me and pointed out that clearly, I was not travelling with anyone else.
‘‘There are to be NO men,’’ he said. I jokingly told him that as I was managing a tour, I’d be too tired to be engaged in extra-itinerary activities. He was not amused. ‘‘No men,’’ he repeated firmly.
After he left I took a quick look in the mirror. Travel-weary, hair awry, 50-something. I decided not to debate whether he was thinking desperate or in demand.
Three days later as I was leaving he came to check that I wasn’t escaping with the pink quilted bedspread or the shower curtain featuring a curvaceous naked lady. ‘‘And there were no men?’’ ‘‘No men, I had a woman here instead,’’ I replied, as I headed down the stairs. Which, in a way was true – I’d met an old school friend and we’d had a sleepover, but not in the sense that I could see my now former host was imagining.
Fast-forward to a tiny woodpanelled room directly above a wide series of rapids on Nicaragua’s River San Juan in the village of El Castillo. Founded in the 17th century, El Castillo can only be reached by boat.
The room was so small that I couldn’t open my case fully and the two of us sharing it (the Cuban landlord would be having palpitations) had to take turns to move about. But the lack of space was more than made up for by the veranda that was cantilevered over the river. From the hammock suspended there I could watch men towing their boats through the rapids.
El Castillo is named after the Spanish fortress that looms above the streets of wooden houses that are painted in a rainbow of colours. The fact that the San Juan almost links the Pacific with the Caribbean across the Central American isthmus made it a strategic river right from the time of the Spanish conquest. The Spanish built the fortress in the 1670s to deter pirates from sailing upstream from the Caribbean, across Lake Nicaragua and then plundering the wealthy cities of Granada and Leon.
Unfortunately for the Spanish, the fortress didn’t deter English pirate William Dampier, who managed to bypass it to reach Granada and burn it to the ground in 1685. However, the Spanish fortification did, for nine months, meet its match in another English attack in 1779. Among the military officers who held the fortress for almost a year, was one Captain Horatio Nelson.
That evening a friend of our hostess took us out on the river to look for caiman, a member of the alligator family. Spotting one on the river bank he suddenly leapt off the boat and began to wrestle the creature into the boat. ‘‘It’s amazing you never get bitten,’’ I said to him. He held up his right hand, the index finger was missing. ‘‘A caiman bit it off the first time my father took me out,’’ he replied, matter-of-factly.
A month or so later I was in Croatia in my cabin, one of just eight on a small cruiser. Another vessel was moored alongside us, my bathroom porthole lined up neatly with next door’s. I’d been standing in the shower the first evening trying to work out what dial worked what, not an unusual situation for me in hotel rooms. It looked less like a piece of plumbing and more like a small aircraft control panel.
Taking the scientific approach, I eventually resorted to turning every knob and pushing every switch. Jets of superheated water then shot out sideways from the control panel and poured out of the rain shower head above me, but worse given the juxtaposition of the portholes was that the entire shower and me were suddenly illuminated in bright purple light. A radio also blared into life.
Several safari camp beds in Africa followed a few weeks later: ‘‘Do not leave the door into your outside bathroom unlocked,’’ I was warned. ‘‘The monkeys and the baboons will steal everything. Keep your toiletries inside too as they cause chaos with them too.’’ One morning I was late to breakfast because an elephant and her baby were parked outside the entrance to my tent.
Only a few beds to go for the year and I was in Torshavn the capital of the Faroe Islands. The hotel receptionist handed over my key. ‘‘I hope you like your room,’’ she said. If I could open my suitcase, the shower didn’t double as a disco and there were no landlords checking for men under the bed I was sure I would.
I followed her directions and came to a halt in front of my room. The Bill Clinton Suite. It turned out I only had half the room that Bill had, the connecting door which presumably had the lounge, was locked. I just had his bed.
The room was so small that I couldn’t open my case fully ... the lack of space was more than made up for by the veranda that was cantilevered over the river. From the hammock suspended there I could watch men towing their boats through the rapids.