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Sometimes your guiding duties took you away for a whole day. One such trip was a day out with the guests to the water park, known as the Aguamar. It was a fun day out that lets us visit the park and try out all the slides and generally have great fun. For the reps it was the easiest day out there was. You took your guests there and then simply killed time until they were ready to come home. On the coach on the way you warned them about the dangers of the sun and how it could burn them if they were not careful. Reps are great at giving this advice, but they are not always so adept at heeding it. I decided that on one particular day I would kill my time sunbathing in the park. It seemed such a good idea at the time. Five hours later, I had changed colour from a very pale white to an angry deep red. I was unable to sit down due to the searing pain in the back of my legs from my frying skin. My head felt as though my brain was far too big for the encasing skull. Very painful and very embarrassing. Needless to say I wasn’t keen to repeat my role as a walking demonstration of why the guests should heed our sun-care advice.
Anna and I learned to tolerate each other during our time working together in San Miguel. As long as I didn’t moan about the fact that she was hardly ever at work, due to her commitments at the water-ski school, then we got along fine. She was, though, very good at doing the paperwork and reckoning up the money we had taken for excursion sales at the end of the week, and there were times when she used her experience to get us out of some sticky situations. We didn’t like each other; the relationship was all about tolerance. There were occasions, though, when we had to make sure that we worked closely and seamlessly.
One such occasion came towards the end of the season. We had gone away to the capital of the island for a team meeting. As we left the resort, it started to rain. While we were at the meeting it continued to rain. It continued for the next few hours and proceeded to flood large parts of the island. When we returned to San Miguel some four hours later, it was pouring down. This in itself didn’t bother me at all. I thought nothing of it. Indeed it was quite welcome, as we had seen very little rain at all for months. I went back to my room and, as I had a couple of hours before I was due to start work, I decided to have a siesta. I drew the curtains and dozed off for a nap. I awoke later that afternoon to the sound of raindrops. I stretched and opened the curtains to let the light in. As I looked towards the hotel at the bottom of the hill, I thought I must have still been dreaming. The hotel appeared to be in the sea. I blinked. It was not a dream. Cars were floating around the hotel towards the open water beyond the building, jostling for position like a surreal marine traffic jam. Metal fish swimming to the open seas.
I dressed as quickly as I could, and made my way towards the hotel. By the time I reached reception I was thigh deep in water. Confusion and panic greeted me. Understandably, guests were fretting about the consequences of what was happening. The entire ground floor was under three feet of water; the pool had disappeared, and it was still raining hard. The guests were demanding answers to impossible questions: ‘What shall we do?’ And making impossible demands: ‘Get us out now!’ ‘We want transfers to higher ground now!’ I ushered as many guests as I could to the first floor. Some were happy with this, but others were not, as they thought that if the water level rose, they would be trapped. I couldn’t quite work out this logic, as if they stayed on the ground floor, they would drown. Oh well. I thought I’d phone the office and try to get some reinforcements. This proved to be impossible, as the phones were out of order – this was only a few short years ago, but mobiles were not a part of our everyday life at that point, and so, without a land-line, we were stuffed.
I knew things were quite bad because, although the lights were still working, they were in fact all leaking. It was bizarre, all these lighted cascades. Quite pretty as well, though. Normally when it rained, one of the lights leaked, but never all of them together. The manager had the bright idea of ordering all his staff to fetch every available blanket in the building and push them up to the doors, in an attempt to prevent any more water entering the hotel. Predictably, this proved to be a useless exercise and the blankets were later seen floating around reception in mute defiance.
After about an hour of rushing around and trying to help people who were very scared, I realised I hadn’t seen Anna for some time. At least an hour, in fact. I hoped she hadn’t done anything too ambitious in trying to save the guests, and managed to fall in and get washed away. I made my way to the roof of the hotel so I could get a good view of the surroundings, and see if I could spot her. The rain was still raging. Cars and other objects were still floating all around the hotel. It all looked very dramatic and dangerous, to say the least. Alongside the building the water was flowing so fast, white-water rafting would not have been out of the question. A person could quite easily have been washed away. I called Anna’s name. No answer. I called again. All right, we didn’t get on so well but I really didn’t want her to become fish food. I called her again, this time a little more panic in my tone. A shrill, angry cry rang out from behind me.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing up here?’ It was Anna, and she seemed to be all right. ‘Get downstairs now, the manager wants you!’
‘You’re all right then,’ I muttered meekly.
‘Of course I’m all right. Get downstairs now.’
Lucky escape for the fish, really. They would probably have been sick anyhow.
Downstairs, confusion reigned all around. Guests were wandering around clutching their belongings and their children, and demanding action immediately. I was helpless. The rain was still pouring down; the phones were out, and it had become clear that the roads in and out of San Miguel were also blocked or washed away. The manager, Miguel, wanted all the guests to make their way to the first floor, where he was planning to serve them dinner. Not everyone was convinced this was such a good idea. Then he announced that he would be giving away free drinks as well. I was nearly killed in the rush. His reasoning was to get all the people out of the way so he could try to block the flow of water into the ground floor. The problem on the first floor was that there were only two staff in the restaurant; normally there were ten, so this was not an ideal situation. I immediately rolled up my trousers and waded in, serving the guests their free drinks in my bare feet. I worked solidly for about four hours, serving all and sundry, until every guest, British and German alike, had been fed and watered.
I didn’t even notice that the rain had stopped and the water had begun to subside. Not one of our own British guests thanked me or any of the other staff. They just kept whingeing about the rain and demanding more free drinks. One German couple who had stayed in the restaurant throughout this time came up to me at the end, thanked me for my efforts, and gave me 500 pesetas ‘to buy new shoes’. How nice. I was back downstairs at 10 o’clock in the evening, where I met all of our guests in the hotel, who were now demanding to be moved immediately. I explained to them all that this was impossible, as all the roads were blocked and the phones were down, but that the hotel would do anything they could to make them comfortable for the time being. They were angry and unreasonable, and later all wrote to the company and accused me of doing nothing to help them. (Wherever you all are now, I hope it is raining on you.)
The clear-up operation had begun. It was all hands on deck as every available receptacle was used to bale out reception. It took a good two hours before the water was completely cleared. The entertainers worked tirelessly, as did the maintenance man operating an antiquated water pump, and the German guests also slaved away to clear the water. Not one Brit lifted a finger to help out, but when the manager opened the bar at the end of the ordeal to give everyone a free drink for helping out, the Brits were first in the queue. How predictable.
The next day the sun was shining, and within hours there was no sign that it had rained at all. The road was repaired and the phone lines were restored. We