I’m unsure what the new word “staycation” accurately means, being unable to find any two sources agreeing on a definition.
Travel with Dusty Miller
Spawned by bank crises and credit crunches in the USA and Europe, coupled with plummeting purchasing powers of the pound sterling, euro and the once almighty greenback, this neologism apparently means to take a holiday (from work) by staying at home, ie in the family dwelling and having day trips out, or to holiday in your own country (especially very near home) as opposed to trekking overseas.
Clearly this means more to overseas folk, where the non-insular Americans who do actually travel are almost inveterate world explorers. But most of them never leave the state in which they were born.
British people, faced mainly with dreadfully depressing grey weather, have for many generations been used to holidaying in sunnier climes almost as a god-given right.
But the traditional UK’s family fortnight in Benidorm on the Spanish coast, or Spain’s Balearic Islands, Portugal, Italy, Greece or — more recently — Croatia, Turkey, North Africa, the Caribbean, Goa, Florida or California . . . or cruising the world’s sunnier seas . . . has been challenged by a severe lack of liquidity, and tour companies and airlines going bust.
Although you and I, living in a landlocked southern Africa with relatively little history, might cheerfully give a limb to visit historic Bath, Bristol, Blackpool, Broadstairs, Bournemouth, Bridlington, Burford or Broadway (either the one in The Cotswolds, or New York City!) these are second choice destinations for Britishers more used to holidaying on the Med, Adriatic, Caribbean, Red or Black Seas, Indian Ocean or warmer bits of the Atlantic.
If a staycation means moving from your own dwelling into a comfortable hotel in the same city for a short break, then I probably pioneered them in Harare!
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I’ve stayed at Meikles Hotel several times, usually being involved in some function stretching on frenetically to the wee hours or having to leave before sparrow fart from the hotel on an expedition; and also at Rainbow Towers Hotel for similar reasons, plus once because I left my cottage keys locked in the office 500 metres away and twice due to being more than usually hacked off by having no Zesa and/or water for long periods.
One visit there was down to having a free accommodation voucher RTG gave me for helping judge an inter-hotel cooking competition, due to expire (as so many of them do!) unclaimed when I realised that using it was an excellent way to watch the fascinating results of a British General Election; more especially BBC’s super-slick TV coverage. (On the same night . . . not three months later, as per Zimbabwean “democracy” and super efficiency!
“Suite talk” I usually write up these mini-stays here in AMH papers and/or for a tweely-named “Suite Talk” column contributed to a regional travel magazine.
So they’re certainly not all play and no work! Amiable Ivan Kasozi, whom I first met at Vic Falls, when he was an RTG general manager, has been GM at Crowne-Plaza Monomatapa Hotel for some years and asked would I like to give his newly refurbed rooms (part of a US$2 million facelift) the Miller once over.
Ivan and I — over a splendid lunch in the hotel’s fine dining restaurant — talked about the history of the place as if its 30th anniversary were upcoming. Then I thought deeply and said: “No, Ivan . . . not 30 years. Monos opened in 1974, that’s 40 years in 2014!” Time does fly when you’re having fun!)
Thirty-nine years after I first gawped at its then very modernistic architecture rising over what was Jameson Avenue, I drove from my office into the basement car-park.
“Have you had a good trip?” I was asked several times by smiling staff.
“Well not really. I’ve been nearly side-wiped twice, missed being T-boned by half a metre, dodged and braked to avoid suicidal pedestrians, was held up by two broken down bakkies and stuck in a traffic jam for ages because the robots didn’t work.” Not bad for a 774 metre nightmare journey from The Kopje on an average Friday lunchtime in Ha-ha-ha-rare (Africa’s fun capital!”) It was lovely to book into the hotel for a bit of peace and quiet.
I’ll tell you about lunch in “Monos Restaurant” (it used to be La Francaise) and breakfast next day in the Park Lane Brasserie in one of our other papers, soon, but hope to find space on this page for a photograph of at least one of the wonderful dishes.
Sparkling pool My room overlooked the thick green tree canopy of Harare Gardens. Below was the outside eating area for the help yourself brasserie, with the hotel’s swimming pool sparkling on a terrace on the second floor. Also in view was the amazingly clean looking Les Brown Pool, where I taught both my lighties to swim. My son, in Australia, commented that it seemed much smaller in a photograph than he remembered it.
The room had a huge plasma TV set, two ultra-comfortable beds the size of snooker tables the Crowne-Plaza brand pushes for guests to enjoy “the sleep experience” — translation: a good night’s kip!; (untouched) mini-bar freezer, welcoming fruit basket, mini-safe, trouser press, iron and board, tea and coffee maker, air conditioning (or heating), enormous bath, overhead shower and WC. I know from a previous visit the suites have the bidets demanded by continental guests but often lacking in Africa.
A standard room at Monos is $165 single, US$210 double, King Leisure Room $240 single, US$260 double, suite $440, all on bed and breakfast terms and makes a memorably luxurious interlude in life without flying thousands of kilometres.
(If you read or hear about a “naycation”, that’s when the recession’s really hit: it means no vacation whatsoever . . . shame !)
