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Hotel Yang, Part 4

While it’s true I’ve saved the yangiest for last in my account of zero-star hotels, since I continue to find new flops I reserve the right to revise my top picks in the future. To review, we have the Tortuga Surf Lodge in Playa el Tunco, El Salvador, and the Hotel Happy House in San Salvador, El Salvador, at numbers two and three, respectively. A while back I described the beach town of Monterrico, Guatemala, but I didn’t offer details about lodgings. There are actually several decent hotels in town, but I never stayed at them. Instead I restricted my patronage to two—El Delfin, which is only somewhat yangy, and Johnnie’s, which is the archetypal third world flop.

El Delfin had the misfortune of hosting two days of my traditional birthday fortnight a while back, an affair that saw a number of friends fly in from various chilly northern climes. They arrived fairly well revved, and El Delfin seemed the perfect choice for them to cut loose, with four groups of large bungalows clustered around four swimming pools. We had reserved a group of bungalows in advance, but when we arrived there were problems checking in and the pool hadn’t yet been filled. The management wasn’t particularly responsive to the problems, and this gave us the idea they weren’t eager to host us. But with people arriving all day by car and ferry we couldn’t change hotels without creating mass confusion, so we checked in—but with attitudes.

Not long afterward the manager wandered over and told us we had to leave. Seems the desk clerk had erred checking us in—the place was reserved already. No, we couldn’t switch bungalows. The entire hotel was booked. As a Central America vet I can tell you this is what is called a shakedown, and it’s because of this sort of foolishness that a hotel reservation in never quite safe in Guatemala. We had long ago learned to play the game—I mean, what’s an extra twenty in the scheme of things? But sometimes enough is enough, and so we surprised the manager—we told him, in so many words, that we weren’t moving but he was welcome to try if he had (a) the huevos and, (b) ten to twelve security guards.

We didn’t see the guy the rest of our stay.


We had brought everything a good party needs—loud music, fresh fish, steaks, veggies, beer, coconuts, deadly Zacapa rum, and plenty of mojito fixings. But we soon realized we didn’t have enough firewood. It’s always something, isn’t it? We reconnoitered Monterrico’s few tiendas for replenishments, but to no avail. Somewhere along the way we saw a monkey chained to a car, and my friend Charlie hatched a plan to spring the poor creature, a plot he dubbed Operation Monkey Smuggle. This scheme never came to fruition, which was unusual, because Charlie and I had smuggled animals before, specifically coatimundi, which we conducted from mainland Honduras to the island of Roatan. But I’ll discuss that episode—and I know this is getting tiresome to hear—in a later post.

Anyhow, back at El Delfin my friend Brendan, a brilliant and violent lunatic who I may dedicate an entire post to someday, decided that the easiest way to remedy the wood shortage was simply to break up the hotel furniture and toss that in the fire. It was an uncool move, I admit, but he was still angry with the management and knew repercussions were unlikely because Delfin was a cash only establishment—which meant they didn’t have anyone’s credit info. By this time everyone had arrived and the pool, which had taken an hour-and-a-half to fill but was brimming now, became less a place for a dip than a place to piledrive unsuspecting friends. I won’t go into details about the party itself, save to say it was like all my parties—except wetter.


The next morning we awoke with the idea of a dip foremost in our minds, but stopped short as we neared the pool. We couldn’t see the bottom of it—the water looked like lobster bisque. We spent a long time puzzling over this and finally decided the filth was a mixture of dust, sand, sweat, spilled drinks, dropped food, and various biological emissions which shall remain nameless. I asked, with a tone of horror, “Did it look like that last night?” The answer: “It must have.” I hit the showers immediately.

Cleansed and marginally more alert, I emerged to survey the full extent of the carnage. Empty bottles, scattered plates, fish bones, shrimp shells, plastic cups, and unclaimed clothes were everywhere. And besides the usual post-party detritus, there was also burnt furniture in the coals of the cooking fire. We shifted quickly into get-the-hell-out-of-there mode. I mean, you can face down a hotel owner, but Guate cops are a different story. Before we left, Brendan decided to play one last trick—he buried the uncooked seafood behind our bungalow. Again, an uncool move, but Brendan specializes in this area—on a previous trip to town he stole a horse. We managed to get out of there before the owner saw what had become of the place, but word arrived from the coast a week later via the Guate grapevine that my friends and I are barred from El Delfin for life.

I certainly don’t blame the guy.

Luckily there are other dives in Monterrico, and only a few doors down the beach from El Delfin is the infamous Johnnie’s. Doubtless there are far scummier hotels in the world, but my room (pictured below) looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since Cortez landed. The bed was a straw mat on a concrete slab, the shower (far left in the photo) looked like it had been used as a spittoon, and the toilet (at right) was triple-crusted with filth and had no seat. I took a look at it and said to Diana, my longsuffering girlfriend, “I’m sorry to say this, but if the toilet and your skin make any kind of contact I’m not going to be touching you this weekend.” Anytime she went into the stall and I’d yell out, “Are you squatting? You better be squatting.”


Despite these flaws, Johnnie’s occupies a special place in my heart because it was the first hotel I ever stayed at in Monterrico, during the events detailed in my post Clan of the Drum. Basically, Johnnie’s is part of a weekend during which I realized a more fulfilling life awaited me outside the States. The hotel and the nearby bar El Animal Desconocido are a tandem in my mind, extensions of one another. It’s always the same—Johnnie’s for a swim in the pool and a few beers, then a trip down the beach to El Animal. My first visit there was during a blackout. Second trip, a fella pulled up on a five thousand dollar runabout, unholstered what looked like a nickel-plated .44, and fired a full clip into the air to announce his presence. It’s always something. Another time, the aforementioned Brendan went for a nude swim after dark and lost his clothes. He walked into El Animal completely naked, picked up his glasses and walked out.

Johnnie’s is a catalyst for romance. Difficult though that may be to believe based upon the photo, several of the great expatriate romances began there. I won’t name names. I’ll just say that after Monterrico weaves its tropical spell, Johnnie’s is the hotel du nuit for consummations. Returning there in the wee hours can be like walking into a symphony mid-movement, so abundant are the sex sounds. Once, I accidentally left a bottle of pretty good red wine in a room that was being used by friends for a tryst, and my friend Peter simply walked in and grabbed it. I asked him what he said to the lovers. His response: “I didn’t say anything. What is there to say? We needed the booze, they had it.”

Because the walls of the rooms are only eight feet high, while the thatched ceilings are about eighteen feet high, each wing of Johnnie’s is actually more like a single room with dividers. Moans and cries travel from one end to the other with nothing to muffle them. Unless the surf is rough enough that night to drown out some of the noise, you get a ringside seat. The next morning you ask your friends, “Did you hear X and Y going at it?” The answer is always yes. You ask your other friends, who were further down the hall. They say, “Oh God, yes we heard them. It was like they were in the room with us.” And you realize that nobody is getting any sleep. You’re either having sex, or waiting for it to finish. When the lovers are done and the noise fades to sighs and whispers, the whole hotel seems to let out a deep breath, roll over and go to sleep.

So for its role in facilitating some of the epic romances of our time despite looking like cellblock C at San Quentin, Johnnie’s earns my highest rating—five yangs, and first place on the list of yang hotels. In my collection I found one photo of the place that makes it look passably habitable (left). In the very best light, after an amazing night sampling the wonder, romance and danger of Monterrico, you awaken and realize you've survived again, and this is what it can look like.

This concludes the Yang series, and I hope the info is of some use, if you have Googled your way to my little blog while looking for Central American lodging info. In the meantime, I am in search of more yang hotels even now, as I make a loop through Portugal. I will certainly keep you posted on my discoveries.

Paz y amor.

posted by Egan Ehlers @ 3:23 AM