Summary:The film opens in suburban Virginia, where Episcopal minister T. Lawrence Shannon has a nervous breakdown right in front of his congregation.
It turns out that he had been having an affair with one of his younger parishioners, which turned him out of his church forever.Now he has to be a guide for Blake's Tours("Tours of God's World Conducted by a Man of God.")
He ends up showing Mexico to a group of vacationing teachers from a Baptist Female College, which includes a seductive little Texas teen Charlotte Goodall(Sue), who falls for Shannon.
When Shannon and Charlotte are caught in his hotel room alone, Charlotte's chaperone threatens to expose Shannon's history.
In fear, Shannon takes the bus to the only place he ever felt free in, a run-down "Hotel Costa Verde". The owner is a widow and Shannon's best friend.
Even though the hotel is closed, the teachers soon enter, along with a penniless spinster artist and her grandfather, who is the world's oldest living poet.
Soon Shannon and the artist discuss philosophy and the meaning of life, and the hotel owner, Maxine, gets jealous.
Finally, Charlotte's chaperone lets out his history, Charlotte ends up with the bus driver, the artist leaves after her grandfather dies, and Maxine and Shannon stay together.
rest of cast listed alphabetically
