December 2006: Iguana Red Team

The last month has been a blur. Thanksgiving ushered in a new era at the Iguana. With Danielle, Ruth and Flo's leaving, Jimmy and Alice's arrival and Airek's enthronement as Bar Manager, December saw the full-on establishment of the Nuevo Iguana and what I personally refer to as Iguana Red Team (to distinguish it from all other Iguana teams past and yet to come).


Sadly, that's the only team photo I've got. Here's another one, sin Jimmy:


This team has lasted, with no comings or goings, longer than any other team since I've been here—and there are enough staff that we can actually have a shift rota. We also genuinely enjoy spending time together, which is our downfall. We're like a bedraggled bunch of Breakfast Club misfits: the problem is that this detention hall serves alcohol. Day after day for the past month has had us moaning into our morning coffee, cursing our hangovers and sleepy heads and vowing to make the next night a quiet one. We even did manage to have a couple of movie nights all cozied up on the floor of the dive classroom. But since one of the gang always had to stay behind to run the bar, our team spirit usually prevailed and more often than not our "quiet nights" involved finishing off the previous Saturday's batch of flavoured vodka shots before they went bad. Not always a good idea... but it does make darts more interesting.




Anyway, whoever let a little work get in the way of having fun? Things start to get a little suspicious when the staff have bigger bar bills than the guests, though...

(Alice and Jimmy)


(Did I mention I cut my hair?)


(Justin and Airek)


(Alice and Rich. Rich finally got what he wanted this year: his very own pair of massive breasts. Oh, the possibilities...)


Besides our random (but regular) hey-it's-Wednesday-let's-have-a-party parties, December was a pretty eventful month. The last week of the month so a near week of rock-star calibre partying, starting with Rich's birthday on Christmas eve—which followed directly on the heels of a stellar Saturday night: no chance for recovery. After starting the day off with mimosas, and despite the rising panic over Christmas dinner preparations, Rich whisked the staff off to the lake's hot springs, where we spent the next several hours drinking Cuba libres and soaking in the sun while Deedle ran the business (maybe not the most responsible or charitable of actions, but what the hell. At least we took all the hotel guests with us...). Hedge, the wealthy English finance guy who lives next door and has more money than sense, came out in his fancy speedboat and plied us with more booze and and a few spliffs—including Deedle's 83-year-old father, who mocked us as only an 83-year-old Englishman who's never worked a day in his life could from his perch on Hedge's ridiculously fast boat, joint in one hand and bottle of wine in the other. When our hired boat got tired of waiting and took the group back to the hotel, the stragglers piled into Hedge's boat and cruised around the lake with still more joints and rum. Which are very hard to consume when you're going at James Bond speed, I might add.

The afternoon went from 007 to Mission Impossible when a phone call from Deedle had us on a last-minute stopover in Pana to buy cream and butter for Christmas dinner. We made a grand entry, which was probably the best thing about the whole affair. Just picture it: stylish little jet boat appraoches the public docks at stupidly high speed with our heroes on board (Cuba libres in hand) sweeping out a wide arc as it closes in on the shore. Just as we pull into the beach, Rich makes a perfect swan dive off the bow, and we've arrived. We. Are. So. Cool. Barefoot, still in our swim suits, significantly intoxicated and in possession of 20Q from Hedge (about US$3), Alice and I found ourselves marching through the streets of Pana desperately searching for a tienda that could sell us the necessary goods. We walked an hour to the supermarket only to find that a pound of butter and a litre of cream cost Q71.25. Fortunately I'd found another Q50 in my pocket, so we only had to beg the cashier for an extra 1.25, but that still meant we were out of cash for the tuk-tuk ride back to the docks. We hailed one anyway and upon arriving at the docks, I waited as insurance against payment while Alice went back to the boat to get the cab fare. When we finally got back to our bored and disgruntled shipmates, who'd been waiting well over an hour for us, Rich clarified the directions for us: we'd only needed to stop in at our office and pick up the shopping bags that were already paid and waiting for us. Thanks for nothing.

Safely back at the Iguana and with Christmas preparations safely out of the way, we continued to celebrate the birth of our lord Richard Kerr.

Until the next day when we feted Christmas.


Then Boxing Day.

Then New Year's.


But Justin's birthday is when it really got out of hand. Though he doesn't work directly for the Iguana, he's basically our in-house energy manipulator (masseur, he says, is too narrow a label). He's been here longer than most staff, and his girlfriend Romi is an integral part of the Iguana team, so he's pretty much one of us whether he wants to be counted in or not. He celebrated his 40th birthday two days before New Year's Eve and it was a, er, memorable evening—though I'd managed to wipe a few of the night's events from my memory until seeing photographic evidence the next morning.





I don't know how this happened. I have no words for this.

Anyway, to quote an old friend, we partied more than rock stars. And I'm still waiting for a day off work...