At the Prince Phillip Hotel

                                                

                                                               Part II

The following day, we stumbled out of the early afternoon heat into the cool damp air of the hotel.  We had spent the morning not far from Georgetown on a jungle trail that led to the banks of the Demarara River.  The heat and humidity had been numbing, but we had seen a black nunbird.  This small black bird with a very large red bill burrows nests in the ground and, if luck is with the birders, can be found near rivers in Guyana.  We were lucky that day.

            Mike had advised the group to skip the hotel elevator unless we wanted to risk spending some very hot and airless time in it, since the power generator functioned rather intermittently.  We slowly climbed seven flights of stairs to our rooms.  Showers and beers from the room fridges refreshed us.

            The only place to rest inside and still enjoy a cool breeze was the lobby.  The large marble-floored area was cool even in the heat of the afternoon.  As we descended the seven flights of stairs, we heard the crunching grind of the generator shutting down.  We exchanged looks but were too tired to comment on our good  luck.  The lobby was dim and quiet.  It was shaped like a cross with wide, marble floored hallways lined with small shops and offices.  The central portion held the massive wood main desk and entries to the restaurant and two bars.  Small shops lined the lobby.  We could hear John’s laugh coming from the nearest bar where the rather ingratiating Indian bartender regaled him with well-polished stories of unusual travelers.  Along the quiet hallways, potted reddish-green banana plants with four-foot leaves reached to the skylights. Flame-like red and pink ginger blooms nodded in the breeze from the open walkways leading to the garden.  We settled in rattan chairs near a trickling indoor fountain, where tiny brown birds flitted down, drank and disappeared into the surrounding ferns.

            “Hello, would you like to see a bird nest?”   The soft, familiar voice came from behind us.   Verna stood in the doorway of a small bookshop. 

            “Verna, hello,” I said.  “Come join us.”

            “I would like to show you a bird nest.”  Her soft accent made “bird” sound like “buhd”.  “My brother is a gardener here.  He showed me.  It’s just outside.”

            We  followed her down the cool hallway into the heavy brightness and damp heat of the tropical afternoon. She walked easily ahead, stepping from stone to stone.  We followed the cobbled pathway through the manicured lawn and tame roses into the back garden where the overgrown greenery looked like jungle transplanted inside the hotel walls.

            “Here, this way.  Follow me exactly now,” Verna said.  She turned to wait then directed us carefully off the path into soft, moist soil.  She pushed tree fern leaves out of her way and slowed to let us catch up.  Barb tried to detour around an especially large and wet looking heliconia but Verna caught her arm.  “No, this way.  Step here.”  She  obeyed.

            As we  pushed through a dense growth of scrubby, twisted figs, a hummingbird jetted by.  I felt the turbulence from her tiny wings as she flew past. “Damn - I think that’s a female blue-tailed emerald - wow,”  Barb said reverently as she turned to follow the tiny bird’s flight.  A blue-tailed emerald is a kind of hummingbird that we had been hoping to see.  The green feathers glow like emeralds in the sun, and the tail is iridescent blue.  The female is a duller version, but still wonderful.

            “That is she.  We are close to her home now.  Look,” Verna said.  She gently lifted the side of a three-foot wide gunnera leaf to reveal a brown and gray nest suspended like a tiny hammock from the underside of the leaf.  “No eggs yet, but my brother said that last year she had two babies here.  She will again.”

            The nest could fit into a child’s hand, yet it was sturdy and tight.  Ingeniously built under a leathery, thorned leaf, the nestlings would be protected from rain, heat and many predators. 

            Verna smiled.  “Isn’t it lovely?” she said softly.

            “Verna, this is a gift.  We would never see something like this on our own,” Barb said as she stooped to examine the nest.

            “It is my gift.  But we should go before mother becomes anxious about us discovering her home.”

            Following Verna, we carefully retraced our steps back to the stone pathway and from there to the cool depths of the hotel bar to celebrate our find.  John was no longer there, so we shared our excitement with the bartender who seemed a little surprised that a tiny green bird could cause the North Americans to be so happy.  Oh well, tourists are an odd lot, his look seemed to say.

            Later that evening the group gathered in the restaurant for our last dinner at the Prince Phillip Hotel.  A celebration was planned because of the outstanding number and variety of species we had seen during our short stay.

            “No John tonight?” asked Mel.  They sat at their usual table in the dining room, cocktails in hand.  Lunch was hours ago and we all were ready to order dinner.

            “He won’t be joining us,” Mike said.  “Got himself into a bit of a fix this afternoon.”

            We all made appropriate murmurs of concern while burning to know if he finally ran afoul of the local community.  There was plenty of trouble for an over-confident northerner to find in Georgetown.

            Mike’s face looked sober, but his eyes held an amused look he couldn’t quite hide.  “He heard a rumor about an occupied blue-tailed emerald nest somewhere on the grounds in the back garden and tried to find it on his own.  Son of a gun stepped into a nest of biting ants and they really played hell with him.”

            Verna stood quietly behind them with her order book in hand.  She smiled and asked softly “Will you be having wine tonight?”

           
              I bumped Barb's foot under the table but neither of us said a word.       

                                                               *





b

At the Prince Phillip Hotel

This is a short story  I wrote following a birding trip to Guyana.  Guyana is beautiful and primitive, but any mention of Jim Jones or that fatal experience, brings blank looks and comments of "...long time ago.  Far away from here."
  Guyana is beginning to be known as a birding hot spot and it is indeed an incredible place to bird. Anyone who travels there must be able to be flexible,  ready for the unusual and comfortable with occasional discomfort.  I haven't traveled anywhere quite like it nor have I met more polite, soft spoken people.

                                                          

                                                The Prince Phillip Hotel

            “Well, speak up, please. Do you know this wine or not?  Is there someone else whom I can speak to about this wine?”  Holding the parchment wine list, John twisted in his chair to look up at the silent, smiling black woman.  Like most of the hotel staff, she was from one of the Amerindian villages near Georgetown.  Not more than nineteen, tall and statuesque, she had luminous eyes and black hair pulled tightly into a bun at the back of her head.  The waitress continued to smile silently as she backed away from the table.  The rest of the group around the table had either buried their heads in their menus or were staring at John in pained amazement.

            “Really, John, you’re in the third world.  You can’t expect a native woman just in from the bush to discuss a Chateau Neuf du Pape with you.  Give her a break.”  This came from Mel, one of the older men in the birding group.

            “If they have a Chateau Neuf on the wine list, then they’d damn well better have someone who can tell me if it’s still good.  Oh, what the hell.”  John turned again in his chair and motioned impatiently to the woman who waited, order book in hand, a few feet away.

            “This one, please” he said, enunciated the ‘please’.  “We will have this wine.”  With exaggerated movements he pointed out a wine on the list.  She nodded silently, eyes down, as she wrote in her order book.   Near the main restaurant door, the hostess, an older Asian woman, watched with narrowed eyes as the waitress retreated.  She shook her head slightly, unsmiling. 

 When the wine arrived, the group waited tensely as the waitress skillfully removed the cork and poured a taste for John.  Fortunately, the wine was acceptable and the rest of the meal passed without incident.

            This was the second leg of a two-week birding trip in Guyana.  Our  group had returned to Georgetown from Santa Mission, an Amerindian post deep in the bush.  We  had planned a three-day rest before embarking on a boat trip down the Demarara River, then cross-country by jeep to Shanklands, a resort on the shore of the Esiquibo River.  While in Georgetown  we  planned to tour a ginger plantation, then take a boat ride down the Mahocany River to find howler monkeys and hoatzins.  The picture in A Guide to the Birds of Venezuela, the book most of the birders were using as a reference, describes the hoatzin (pronounced what-zin) as a chicken-like bird with striking spiky  feathers growing out of the blue-skinned head, in the style of a Mohawk haircut.

            Georgetown, the capitol of Guyana, is a rough, rowdy city where tourists are strongly encouraged not to wander unescorted.  Masked with a lush, thick garden, fortress-like walls surround the Hotel.  Just outside the city the jungle is an impenetrable mass of green.  Most travel in the bush is by river; the few roads are deeply rutted and muddy.

            The surrounding Amerindian villages provide staff for the big hotels and government agencies in the city.  The people are dark, soft-spoken and extremely polite. Those who have been educated in the local schools speak with a delightful slurred British accent.  Their habit, when embarrassed by the behavior of others, is to smile politely and not say a word.

            Our group was up with the sun the following morning.   Breakfast was served in the elegant dining room where, outside the generous window, a dainty jacana, a long-legged wading bird, stepped delicately from one lotus leaf to another in the pond.  He flashed brilliant yellow under-wings as he darted after small fish.  Blue-gray tanagers flitted through the shrubbery and a flock of raucous, screeching orange-winged parrots flew over on their way to a day of foraging in the nearby jungle.  It was seven in the morning and the temperature was already seventy-five degrees.

            The professional guide, Mike, was a veteran tropical birder.  He could name most of the birds  by hearing their songs.  My  travel partner Barb and I  were moderately experienced birders from the Northwest.  We loved finding birds in remote countries whenever we could afford a trip.   Bill and Mel, seventy-eight-year old native New Yorkers and lifelong friends, had birded together since grade school.  They were made of shoe leather: tough, flexible and so far, inexhaustible. They told wonderful, opinionated tales about each other.  John, who’d been rude to the waitress, was a New Englander who let it be known that he was a Princeton grad with a law practice in New York City.  He had left his wife behind so that he could enjoy ‘roughing it’ for a few weeks.  He looked pristine that morning, as usual.  A crisp seersucker shirt was tucked into creased khakis and a clean baseball cap covered his sparse light brown hair.  No matter how hot and dirty the bird walks were, John seemed to stay clean and cool.

* * *

            Mike had downplayed the safety aspect, but the group had overheard the East Indian bartender at the hotel’s main bar talking about a British man who had wandered alone  into one of the rougher parts of town and was “chopped” for his wallet.  This was the local description of a machete attack.  So, rather than wander outside the walls in search of a restaurant, the group gathered again that evening at the hotel to eat and go over the day’s bird list.

            The same tall young black woman was our waitress.  The name tag on her maroon uniform read “Verna”.

            “What will you have for dinner tonight, please?” she said, starting at the end of the table farthest from John.  We all ordered, then enjoyed reliving the discovery of a silver-beaked tanager earlier in the day.  Intense red-black with an over-size blue-silver beak, the tanager flitted low in a cecropia tree, allowing what birders call “soul-satisfying”, long looks through scopes and binoculars.

            When dinner arrived, Verna and another waiter served the table.  John’s voice rose above the general noise of conversation in the restaurant.  “Excuse me, this is not what I ordered.  I ordered the baked chicken and yam soufflé.  This is beef.” He motioned imperiously across the table at Verna, who was still serving.

            She hesitated and pulled the order book from her pocket.  “Sir, I have written down what you indicated on the menu,  roast beef and potato.”  She started to walk toward him with the open order book.

            “I don’t care what you wrote down, this is wrong.  I don’t eat beef.”

             Verna was still for a moment.  “Yes, sir.  I will bring the chicken.”  Verna removed the plate and with lowered eyes, moved quickly to the kitchen doors.

            Barb  leaned over and said quietly to me  “I’ll bet he ordered the beef.  He’s such an ass, he probably just changed his mind.” 

            “ You know that ‘chopping’ thing the bartender was talking about?  He should watch it,” I said from behind my napkin.

            Again the hostess had watched the entire scene; her mouth formed into a tight line.  She followed Verna into the kitchen and her raised voice carried through the swinging doors.

            “Great,” Mike said.  “You got her in trouble.  She’s just a kid.”

“Oh, they all holler at each other all the time.  Maybe it’ll make her pay more attention next time,” John said, sipping his drink.

            Verna brought the chicken dish and quietly placed it in front of John.  He didn’t say thank you.

            The group broke up early.  We were all exhausted from the heat and humidity, both consistently in the mid-nineties.  We were heading for the stairs when I had an idea. I pulled Barb aside.  “Wait a minute.  Come on,” I said as I walked toward a small open office near the main restaurant door.  The hostess sat inside, running down a list of figures, her fingers flying over an abacus.

            “Excuse us, please,” I  said politely.  I waited for the hostess to raise her eyes and acknowledge us.  “Yes?” she put down the abacus and smiled.

            “We,” I pulled Barb up next to me, “want to let you know how much we enjoy the food here.  It’s wonderful.”  Barb nodded emphatically in agreement.

            “Oh, thank you so much,” the hostess said.  “We are happy to give you a good experience and good food.”  She preened a little and fiddled with the ivory chopsticks in her pulled-back hair.

            “Yes, and also, we are so taken with Verna.  She is an excellent server.  So attentive to our needs.”

            “Oh, yes?  Do you think so?  She is very young and I worry about her around for- uh, visitors from other countries.”

            “She is so polite and thoughtful.  Yes, I think she’s the best waitress we’ve had this trip.  Tell her that we are very pleased. And we plan to leave her a big tip tomorrow.  It’s our last day.”  Mike had told the group that the tips were shared among staff.

            “So nice to hear!”  She positively glowed and relaxed in her chair.  “I will tell Verna.  She will be so happy.”

            “It’s our pleasure.  We know how hard it can be to get good help.”  At this point Barb pulled me gently out the door.  She whispered  “Too much of a good thing, girl…”
            We  giggled all the way to our rooms.

                                                                             *

 Stay tuned for the last pages of the story.  John meets with an unusual adversary.