Beer and High heels in Machu Pichu

The five words most guaranteed to strike terror into the heart of any incentive travel Director is “we’ve run out of beer’.

Now I go to great lengths to make sure that this doesn’t happen. On each site inspection I spend an extraordinary amount of time discussing this issue with suppliers. In fact, I stress the importance of sufficient quantities of beer so much that I’m sure they think that it’s got nothing to do with my group at all and that I am in fact a closet dipso.

They just won’t believe me when I say that Australian groups drink a lot of beer and that should the worst happen and supplies run out then it could get ugly…….

Fortunately, most of my suppliers humour me and functions swing happily along with no disasters but once in while, despite my best efforts (and due to the best efforts of my beer-loving companions) the worst happens. And wouldn’t you just know it, it always happens in the most impossible location.

Take Peru. Chugging through the mountains between Cuzco and Machu Picchu on the Orient Express, one of the most luxurious trains in the world. Fine dining, stunning views and a carriage full of excited Aussies, all looking forward to climbing the famous ruins. On the outbound journey they were all very well behaved and heeding my warnings about drinking at high altitude with the prospect of some heavy exercise ahead.

Machu Picchu….. we arrived, we walked, we climbed, we marveled, we took a group photo, we had afternoon tea.

(I’m not being flippant, I just can’t begin to put into words how special this place is so please, please, if you ever get the opportunity, go and see it for yourself)

At this point I must mention a very special woman. I had been incredibly specific about the clothing and footwear necessary for Machu Picchu in the itinerary and everyone had appeared in the required attire. All except one. This lovely lady turned up in 4 inch wedges and refused to change them even when I begged. I started the day anticipating multiple broken limbs or at the worst, her tripping and freefalling down into a Canyon but she walked, climbed and scaled with the best of them with not a single complaint and not a single blister. Not that she’d have dared utter a word I suppose after my entreaties of the morning…..

By the end of the day she’d escalated from foolhardy to a goddess in my eyes. Talk about stamina!

By the time the group had had a quick squiz around the markets at the train station and was back on board the train they were ready to really enjoy themselves on the three hour or so journey back to Cuzco.

Dinner was served and savoured and then, not wanting them to miss out of the entertainment in the bar I led a 60 person strong conga line down the train to start things off. Waiting there were two of the best musicians I’ve found in a long while – armed with nothing but a guitar, a tambourine and a wooden box seat which doubled as a drum they swung straight into Waltzing Matilda (They didn’t speak a word of English so I’d sent them the words and music and they’d learnt it especially for the group). From there into Beatles, Rolling Stones and so on and so on and the party began.

About 1 hour into the trip the train manager, looking very concerned, pulled me to one side.

“Miss Lisa, we’ve run out of beer…..”
“What? We went through this, you promised me you’d triple your supplies just so this didn’t happen!!”
“We did Miss Lisa! But they’ve drunk everything!”
“Well, where can we get some more?”

She gave me a very odd look and at this point even I realized how stupid my last question was. We were chugging through the mountains, dark, quiet, not a house in sight.

“Are you telling me there’s not a single village between here and Cuzco?” I asked.

“Well no, there is one about 10 minutes up the track. There is a small station but we don’t stop there.” She replied.

“We do now”

15 minutes later some very surprised, sleepy villagers were roused from…..whatever they were doing, putting the llamas to bed or something……and relieved of every bottle of beer they possessed. They charged a very reasonable price (if the beer had been Moet & Chandon that is) and beerless but happy they waived our train off.

My group, still partying in the bar, greeted the beer with cheers and applause – keen to try the local brew.

Whatever was in it worked. I’d have given my left arm to have been standing on the platform in Cuzco when our train pulled in. The entire train was empty, except for 60 jumping, dancing, crazy Aussies bouncing around to the music in the bar car. Our coach drivers, waiting on the platform couldn’t speak for laughing and I had to more or less physically hold them back from boarding the train to join in.

So reluctant was this incentive group to call it quits it took me 30 minutes and the combined efforts of the train manager, the train guides, the train driver and the chef to get them off the train. And the lady in the heels? She carried on dancing all the way to the coaches. Ah me, what a night……..

Serves Me Right or, What goes around comes around………..

Coach travel is boring and should be avoided at all costs.

(There is only one exception to this rule and that is when travelling between Hanoi and Halong Bay. By coach is the only way to travel. It’s about a 3 hr drive on more or less a single lane road and all you can see coming in the opposite direction is a constant stream of trucks, cars and mopeds carrying men, women, children, pigs or the kitchen sink (and sometimes all five at once). It’s the best game of chicken I’ve ever played. They all hold their course and at the last moment the most cowardly driver swerves out of the way – it’s brilliant!!!. I don’t think my group were as impressed – at one point I turned around to look and they had all moved on to the ‘kerb’ side of the coach ‘just in case’. With 30 people on a 45 seater coach this meant that nearly half the passengers ended up sitting on someone else’s lap but at least it meant that the group had bonded well and I put the high spirits at dinner that night down to the sheer joy of having survived the trip!! Of course I wasn’t at all nervous. I was sitting at the front of the coach and kept my eyes on the driver’s hands. I figured that as long as his knuckles didn’t turn white we were all going to be fine.)

Anyway, back to my point. Coach travel is boring. Even when there is no other way to get from point A to point B there’s always a way to break up the journey, sometimes by visiting point C on the way or sometimes by arranging a little ‘technical hitch’ en route and having an alternative method of transport available just to cover the last stretch.

And this is what we’d done in Prague. We boarded the coaches in the morning to head out to Nelahozevez Castle. The journey was about an hour and a half or so and the last bit was through some beautiful countryside, perfect for a bike ride along the river. All we had to do was stage a fake breakdown at a designated spot.

The coach driver took his new acting career very seriously and starting pumping the brakes about 10 minutes too early. Finally the coach came to a juddering halt at which point I explained to the group that obviously there was something wrong with the engine thingy and that Second In Command and I would just take a quick sprint up the road to see if we could fetch help. (Can’t believe they swallowed that one, it had been pretty obvious up to that point that neither of us could speak Czech so God knows what sort of help we’d have come back with if it had been a real emergency).

We disappeared around the corner to check that our fleet of beautifully branded bicycles were waiting in the arranged spot and 5 minutes later the guide led the group after us. I’m assuming that they’d decided that Second in Command and I were bound to get in trouble and need rescuing.

They were all delighted at the sight of the bicycles, and after donning the appropriate safety gear we happily set off along the river with the fairytale castle in the distance as our final destination and the sun shining brightly overhead – idyllic!

They loved it. They also loved the elegant morning tea that we’d arranged with the real live Prince who owns the castle and were fascinated at his stories of how his family reclaimed their many properties and treasures from the State following the fall of the communist government. They loved his personal tour of the castle and they loved the fine lunch set up in the courtyard and the very impressive synchronized cloche removal from the plates by the waiters.

All in all a success. Finally it was time to reboard the coach and head back to Prague. The clouds were closing in and it was about to rain but everything was set and it was time to leave. The driver took his seat and………nothing. He turned the key a couple of times more but the engine was dead so he let off the handbrake and cruised down the long drive of the castle. The group was so busy chatting about the morning’s activities that they didn’t notice at first but when the coach failed to jump start itself and came to rest just as it reached the road they couldn’t help but figure out something was wrong..

Normally in this situation a group would get cranky and impatient. Their afternoon was free for shopping and if there’s one thing you absolutely never do with a group it’s get between the girls and their shops.

However, this time their reaction was one of triumph. A lot of these people are regular attendees of the annual incentive trips and are used to (and expect) our little surprises and tricks. We catch them every time and our subterfuges have to get more and more complicated every year. Each time they find out what we’ve done they scold us affectionately and say something along the lines of ‘Oh, you girls. What will you come up with next…..”

The group was jubilant. Our little stunt with the coach breakdown in the morning had come back to bite us in the bum and they couldn’t have been happier.

The hysterical giggling didn’t start until I got off the coach to head up the drive to ask Prince Lobkowicz for help. I’d got about 20 metres before the torrential rain started. Hence I had to beg a bona fide royal for assistance looking like a drowned rat. He jumped into action (didn’t seem to hold it against me that I wasn’t in the mood for curtsying) and immediately organized for a spare battery to be brought from his storage dungeon or some such.

Thirty minutes later we were all fixed and on our way back to Prague with plenty of time for shopping.

This group have never let me forget it though. Every time something ‘unexpected’ happens to them now on a trip I can just see them waiting for me to get my just desserts………

Walking Wounded In Vietnam

Occasionally on our travels someone in a group will become ill or hurt themselves but to have three injured on the same trip is unusual to say the least.

Our stay in Vietnam was half over. We’d done Ho Chi Minh; the group had been rendered speechless at

a) the sheer numbers of mopeds and bikes and
b) the amount of cargo it’s possible to load onto the back of one (4 people at a time, a fridge, a door – you name it we saw it wobbling along).

We’d visited the Cu Chi tunnels (one of the group got stuck) and now we’d arrived in Hanoi for one night before heading up to Halong Bay.

The first casualty occurred as we checked into the hotel and funnily enough it wasn’t a member of the group at all, it was my Second in Command. She was very helpfully trying to assist one of porters with someone’s case (why?) and just like that – pop – her back went.

That was her ‘out’ for the rest of the trip but the very reason we tour managers travel in pairs is in case of situations like this so I mentally prepared myself to have all 66 of the group to myself. Like Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter Books, I’d need to be in several places at once but I’m pretty fast on my feet so I dashed up to get changed for dinner, did a quick advance check of the local restaurant and was waiting to greet the group as they boarded the coaches.

Dinner was superb. It was at Bobby Chin’s – Vietnam’s answer to a celebrity TV chef – and I knew the group would love it. The food was superb, the décor was quirky and we’d brought in a DJ for after dinner.

Come 10.30pm the dance floor was crowded and the party was in full swing. Energy was high and at least 50 mature, well-heeled, successful dealers were strutting their stuff like something out of High School Musical.

The first sign of potential trouble was when the very glamorous wife of one of the dealers hiked up her skirt and did a cartwheel across the dance floor. I was mid-dance myself and stumbled uncertainly for a moment, not quite believing what I’d just seen as the culprit was now bopping about quite demurely on the edge of the crowd but the expression on everyone else’s face convinced me that I hadn’t imagined it and we all carried on. (Under sustained interrogation the next day the perpetrator told me that it’s her party trick, she waits for the right moment, knocks out a little cartwheel and then carries on innocently. I tell you, it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch and whoever said life begins at forty got it spot on!!)

This display of acrobatics seemed to ramp up the energy on the dance floor and chuckling to myself I turned to get a drink, just in time to see another of the wives finish a startling Billy Elliot impression and then crumple to the floor.

We got her to a quite corner, summoned waiters, ice packs, doctors and whatever else we thought might make her more comfortable. (Someone offered tequila but I’ve never seen it on any list of acceptable medical treatments so felt I should put my foot down at that point (which is more than my invalid could do).

One visit to the casualty department later and her leg was impressively strapped up with an official diagnosis of a torn hamstring.

The next morning, I left her and Second in Command settled comfortably at the hotel (being lovingly attended by a fleet of hotel staff) and departed for the train station so that the group could get to Halong Bay for an overnight stay on a beautiful boat.

All I had to do was get them on the train. They had to get off the coaches, walk about 5 minutes along the street and then onto the train platform. Sounds simple eh?

But no, another one of the wives (yes, I know, what was it with the girls on this one?) was so distracted by the sight of a passing moped carrying 3 people, 4 cages of chickens and 3 boxes of fruit that she stepped off the kerb into a pot-hole. You didn’t need to be a doctor to figure out that she’d dislocated her ankle – it was hideous!!.

I had 64 people waiting for me to get on a train so the only thing to do was to get my latest casualty and her husband into a taxi and send them off to the local emergency room with one of my English speaking guides. I rang the hotel and Second in Command and told them to expect the wounded and to make sure that they were taken very good care of overnight until the group returned from Halong Bay.

Deciding not to take it personally that my group appeared to be dropping like flies I pressed on and the rest of the day/night proceeded smoothly and with no further disasters. The train ride was fun – especially when the group saw the local farmers and water buffalo that we’d positioned in one of the fields en route – all wearing client t-shirts (yes, even the buffalo) and waving branded flags. Everyone loved Halong Bay, loved the candle lit dinner in a remote cave even more and by the time we returned to Hanoi late the next day they were relaxed and in very good spirits – the perfect mood to undertake one of our specially created team challenges in Hanoi’s old markets..

And what of my 3 wounded soldiers? Concerned that they’d been bored and in pain whilst we’d been off enjoying ourselves, the first thing I did on setting foot back at the hotel was call their rooms and try to track them down to make sure everything was OK.

It took me half an hour. When I eventually located them they were lined up on sun-loungers by the pool, mid manicure/ massage/facial, complimentary cocktails in hand, drunk as skunks and in the process of the longest giggling fit I’ve ever seen. It was like a Beverly Hills 90210 remake of M*A*S*H and it appeared they were quite happily recovering without me – so leaving Second in Command to convince the hotel that more alcohol was the only solution I resisted the temptation to prod a few bandages to check for malingerers and left them to numb the pain to their hearts’ content while I went to check that the troupe of vietnamese dancers I’d booked for our colonial french gala dinner had learnt how to do the can-can (now that nearly gave me my own injury…….)

Another thing to blame President Bush for……

Have you ever played airport cricket? You should, it’s…..different.

But before you dash down to your local airfield to set up your stumps perhaps I should explain the rules.

1. Your group must be checked in and waiting patiently at the departure gate to board their flight
2. The floor of the departure gate must be tile, not carpet
3. There can’t be a sporting equipment shop within 30 miles of the airport
4. There must be a bar within 30 feet of the gate
5. The airport has to have stopped all flights in and out due to President Bush’s decision to fly into Europe that morning.

Picture the scene, a few days spent exploring the wonders of Prague (more of that in the next blog) and now we were off to Dubrovnik. However, having discovered that flying direct between the two cities was impossible (save for one Wednesday a month, at about 2.30am, in a leap year etc etc) we’d chartered our own plane, checked in at Prague Airport, done the security thing and were waiting happily to jet off to Croatia.

15 minutes after our flight was due to board, the gate staff informed me that there would be a short delay. 30 minutes after that they told me the same thing. By this time the group was ‘over’ the excitement of having their own plane and had become bored and a bit cranky.

Now, getting assertive with airport staff is a skill which needs to be finely honed – one false move and they’ll accidentally lose your luggage or put you to the back of the queue with air traffic control but sometimes there’s nothing for it but to roll up your sleeves and wade in. Finally, I got some proper answers – dear old President Bush was flying into Europe and all the airports had closed the flight paths to let him through. Now I supposed that’s a better reason than many to give a group but I knew it wouldn’t go down well. Especially as the airport couldn’t give me an updated departure time and as a charter we would be well down the priority list when the flights opened again.

Half the group was now happily ensconced in the bar but the other half were still at the gate. What to do, what to do…….?

Food first, then some form of entertainment. We bought out the nearby sandwich shop and distributed the spoils to the group. Once they were happily munching we went in search of some inspiration. After wandering around for a while we were losing hope but suddenly, in the distance, wonder of wonders, a toy shop!! Surely we’d be able to buy some sort of game in there?

Nothing, nada, zip. This situation obviously called for a bit of improvisation which is why 5 minutes later I proudly presented a medium-sized children’s “Sleeping Beauty” umbrella and a small stuffed turtle (the cuddly toy version, not a dead stuffed version – Prague airport isn’t that bad!)to the remaining sober members of the group as our equipment for the inaugural Prague Airport Cricket Test.

They took to it with gusto. Once they’d mastered the limitations of Sleeping Beauty as a bat, figured out the aerodynamics of the stuffed turtle and pulled in a rubbish bin to act as stumps they were hitting sixes all over the terminal. Things got even more exciting when the noise lured the rest of the group out of the bar to join in.

Meanwhile, I was making calls all over Europe getting our flight re-routed and our departure time pushed up.

End result, we took off the moment the airport re-opened, before all the scheduled flights, and the stuffed turtle was adopted as the group’s mascot for the rest of the trip. (Stuffed Turtle – renamed Lobbie – got up to some amazing antics but that’s another story……..)

And the funniest thing? The amount of times the gate staff had to duck as the stuffed turtle whizzed past their heads and smashed into the wall behind them – it was almost as if the group were doing it on purpose – surely not…….