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I AM not sure what the neologism “staycation” accurately means, being unable to find any two sources agreeing on a definition.
Spawned by bank crises and credit crunches in the USA and UK, coupled with plummeting purchasing powers of the pound sterling and once almighty greenback, this new word 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 travel are almost inveterate world explorers. British people, faced mainly with dreadfully depressing grey weather, have for several 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 (the one in The Cotswolds, not 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’ve probably pioneered them in Harare!
I’ve stayed at Meikles Hotel several times, usually being involved in some function stretching frenetically to the wee hours; and also at Rainbow Towers Hotel for similar reasons, plus once because I left my flat 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.
My latest visit there was down to having an 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 the British General Election; more especially BBC’s super-slick TV coverage.
I usually write up these mini-stays here or for a tweely-named “Suite Talk” column contributed to a regional travel magazine. So they’re not all play and no work!
At a chef’s table in the kitchen feeding punters at Le Francais’ fine dining restaurant at Crowne-Plaza Monomatapa, Harare, the African Sun flagship hotel’s general manager Ivan Kasozi, who I first met at Victoria Falls, when he was an RTG general manager, asked would I like to repeat the TV viewing exercise there…possibly to see the end of the World Cup?
Although the round ball game and I are almost total strangers, I grasped the invitation, having never spent a night in the crescent-shaped hotel I’d watched (occasionally) being built (my late father-in-law, at the time and unbeknown to me was in charge of the plumbing and mechanical engineering services there). I’d attended its official opening in 1974.
Thirty-six years on, I drove less than a kilometre from my office in The Kopje (five clicks from home) into the sprawling basement car-park at “Monos”. “What room number?” a demanding security guard barked!
“How the hell do I know? I’ve not checked in yet!”
Well it was good room…a great room…a luxury suite (one of the best appointed and most sensibly laid out I’ve seen in this country) on the top floor of the hotel, enjoying stunning views over a Harare Gardens which could be the Garden of Eden, from above a tree canopy masking the rubbish, filth, pan-handlers and muggers lurking there.
The suite had TV sets in living room and bedroom, comfortable bed the size of a snooker table, mini-bar freezer, welcoming fruit basket, mini-safe, trouser press, iron and board, tea and coffee maker, air conditioning (and heating on a chilly weekend 19 floors up in the clouds!), enormous bath, walk-in needle point shower, WC and the bidet demanded by continental guests but often lacking in Africa.
I literally unpacked, stowed away my kit, declined lunch or a drink and drove to an afternoon poolside thrash at tobacco shipper Graeme Pattinson’s superbly planned and appointed townhouse in Avondale. As usual, there was a gregarious bunch of folk drawn from all walks of life.
I left GP’s just in time to make a Saturday dinner date in Le Francais: the restaurant’s trademark thick French onion soup with runny cheesy croutons, rolled roast lamb which was good, but, candidly, not as nice as leg o’ lamb or lamb ribs rack often on the menu and fruit salad with Cornish ice-cream.
Average price of a three-course lunch or supper in this a la carte outlet is $21. That’s a buck more than breakfast, lunch or supper buffets at the hotel’s Parkview Brasserie, next door.
Le Francais shuts Sundays, so I had the excellent breakfast and supper help-yourself meals at Parkview and, as there was so much choice, an almost totally different breakfast there on Monday.
Having already packed the car, I wiped the last toast crumbs off my lips, gulped a final mouthful of tea and was in our board room for the 8:45 production committee meeting, sometimes known as the prayer meeting or “O-Group”, exactly four minutes after checking out!
A standard room at Monos is $95, King Leisure Room $130, suite $190, all bed only.
(*Apparently you have a “naycation” when the recession’s really hit: it means no holiday!)
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BY DUSTY MILLER
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