ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701030026
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CRISTOPHER REYNOLDS LOS ANGELES TIMES
HERE'S to 1996, the year I was introduced up close to Southeast Asia and the time-share industry (I liked Southeast Asia better). It was also the year I found a slice of Northern California nirvana in the underappreciated national park that surrounds Lassen Peak.
All told, my journeys this year touched on four continents. They landed me in 30-some different lodgings, though I looked at probably 100 more, and positioned me amid various extremes. There was the unstinting service, spick-and-span cabins and perpetually open bar of the Song of Flower, a smallish luxury cruise ship that charged about $460 a day to carry and feed me along the coast of Southeast Asia. And there was the eccentricity of La Gaffe, a London inn whose proprietor has filled the walls with framed texts of his own poems on local and universal concerns.
Thus, each day before venturing forth from La Gaffe, a guest like me could sample - in fact, could scarcely avoid - hotelier Bernardo Stella's rhyming observations on rain, birds, forbidden love, the Queen's Silver Jubilee and so on.
Think of me now as your Mr. Stella and this as my rhymeless, unsolicited and occasionally cranky ode to the peaks and valleys of the travel year just past.
Favorite U.S. destination: Drakesbad Guest Ranch, within Lassen Volcanic National Park, about 75 miles southeast of Redding in Northern California. The main lodge, wood-paneled, warmed by a big stone fireplace, ringed by an old-fashioned porch, takes you back 100 years. Deer lounge at dusk in the surrounding meadow. Lassen Peak (10,457 feet) rises above. Uncrowded hiking paths and horse trails lead to the most spectacular geothermal springs this side of Yellowstone. A hundred yards from the lodge, an outdoor pool, fed in part by hot spring water, allows you the luxury of floating under the moon and gazing through rising steam at those deer in the meadow. An hour's scenic drive away lies Manzanita Lake, a fly-fishing favorite.
The place does have drawbacks: Drakesbad only opens for the summer months, its 19 rooms sometimes book up far in advance, and the lodgings are plenty rustic (outdoor showers and lighting by kerosene, not electricity, are predominant.) Also the rates (about $100-$110 per adult, per day, meals included, riding excluded, and about $60 per kid ages 2 to 11) may give some pause. But in three days there I saw no unhappy guests. (For more information, call (916) 529-9820, the lodge management company's number.)
A public apology: To the fellow Drakesbad guest who, one night around the Drakesbad campfire, welcomed me to the fold and half-seriously swore me to secrecy about the place. Sorry. You erred. You trusted me.
Favorite foreign destination: A tie, between a British place full of Arab money and an Arab place full of British colonial footprints.
Half of me inclines toward London, not just because of its architectural and historical wealth, and not just because the taxi drivers speak English, really know their way around and drive responsibly (what other city can claim such a combination?), but because visitors and residents alike agree that the city these days resounds with more energy and optimism than has been seen there in three decades. In a week there over the summer, it was a joy to shoulder my way through the crowds on the streets, to negotiate with my wife, Mary Frances, over a restaurant (far more to choose from than the usual pub grub and Indian food), and to slip into Soho for a show or into St. Martin-in-the-Fields church for a concert.
The other half of me (the contrary half) leans toward Africa, specifically Egypt. Cairo is noisy and dusty and poverty-marred and crowded; in fact, it could be a poster city for those traits. But remote areas such as the Sinai can seem as unearthly as the moon. And Egypt's layered landscape and culture make distant history - and the current ideological struggles within the Islamic world - as palpable as your living-room furniture. Just don't get hustled by the perfume merchants.
Most unforgettable face: At a pagoda in long-isolated Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar, a wizened 72-year-old man elegantly clenched a cigar between his teeth and practiced on me with English words he'd learned from missionaries 50 years before. He wrote down his address so that I could send him a copy of the photo I took - but later I realized that mail from an American journalist (who had written critically about Myanmar's leaders) was likely to bring more trouble than pleasure.
Most excruciating five hours: The sales pitch from the friendly time-share-marketing folks at Vacation Break of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Having lured thousands of prospects with direct-mail certificates offering promotional vacations, they tried everything they could think of to sell us a ``vacation ownership unit.'' The saleslady guessed my age six years too young, then told me I resembled Fabio. They cut prices once, twice, three times. They bullied us. They stared at us for long periods of time without blinking. And when finally it became clear we wouldn't buy, they ushered us quickly away, so as to keep other prospective buyers uninfected by our vibes. We were happy to be free, but we didn't yet know the next day would bring the . . .
Worst cruise: Port Everglades, Fla., to Freeport, the Bahamas. The Discovery 1, our ship, held about 1,000 travelers, a good number of them Vacation Break customers. By the end of the wind-raked, six-hour journey, I'm guessing that 600 of them had thrown up. Queasy people, and their bulging little white bags, were strewn everywhere. As many thousands of satisfied travelers will quickly point out, not every Bahamas cruise goes this way; Mary Frances and I happened to be aboard on an unusually cold and windy day. But I'll never forget the master of ceremonies and his cheery suggestion, on microphone before a room full of miserable, nauseated tourists, that we choose the peanut butter sandwiches for lunch ``because they taste the same coming up as they do going down.''
Biggest hotel telephone outrage: The Shangri-La Bangkok, regularly a contender in listings of the world's top 10 hotels, charged me $5 for each local call made from my room, and 50 cents for each time I dialed up a busy signal.f+bf-b
Most notable squash: Arriving in Half Moon Bay, Calif., in late October, I rolled right into the middle of preparations for the annual pumpkin festival and found myself humbled before the most highly decorated pumpkin - more than 800 pounds.
Most alien culture to that of Southern California: Half Moon Bay. The pumpkin alone would have been impressive enough. But then I read the full tale of the victorious vegetable - sorry, fruit - in the Half Moon Bay Review.
At the first weigh-off of the growers' competition, a pumpkin from San Jose, Calif., tipped the scale at 836 pounds, prompting great applause and apparently earning a $2,500 check for its grower, Scott Solomon. But even as Solomon fielded questions from the media and posed for photos kissing his big squash, the needle of the scale began to fluctuate. Downward. To about 790 pounds. Causing murmurs among those assembled.
In the first sign that they do things differently in Half Moon Bay than in Los Angeles, no one called his attorney. Then Solomon agreed to an immediate reweighing of the pumpkin.
This time, Solomon's entry came in at a more modest 783 pounds. And a pumpkin lugged into town by Kirk Mombert of Harrisburg, Ore., sent the needle to 808 pounds. Mombert was declared winner. Solomon, his fame snatched away and his prize money shriveled to $500, was quoted saying this:
``If it didn't weigh right the first time, I want it to be weighed again. conflict between the growers. ... They're the greatest guys.''
Of course, now that millions of Southern Californians have been encouraged to visit Half Moon Bay, this will all have to change
LENGTH: Long : 141 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS/Los Angeles Times. 1. A pumpkinby CNB(above left) weights in at 836 pounds at Half Moon Bay near San
Jose, Calif. 2. An old man elegantly clenches a cigar between his
teeth at a pagoda in long-isolated Yangon, Myanmar. 3. Egypt is
noisy, dusty, crowded and poverty-stricken, but it does have its
beauty, specifically the pyramids (above) and the Sinai Desert. 4.
Another beautiful spot: Drakesbad Guest Ranch (right), within
California's
Lassen Volcanic National Park. color. KEYWORDS: YEAR 1996