Wandering the World

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

Sometimes travel will hold up a mirror and let you encounter your own prejudices. There have been several times when I arrived in a country with a set of opinions that didn’t last the exposure.

After hitching through Ireland and Northern Ireland for six weeks, I was forced to completely reverse my opinion about the political troubles there. Due largely to our media, the great Irish poets and Leon Uris’ “Trinity”, I arrived 0n the island staunchly pro-republic and anti-orange. I left as a chastened Orangeman. It turned out the protestants in the North supported equal rights for women, the separation of church and state, non-sectarian education and science, while the institutions of the republic at that time were in the grip of superstition and ignorance.

I changed my sympathies in that struggle while simultaneously developing an appreciation for draft Guinness, properly poured. Like the Irish say: as good as food. ‘Tis.

 

After several months in Israel, I spent a few nights with a Palestinian family in East Jerusalem. Experiencing just a tiny shred of the oppression they suffered forced me to examine my prejudices, take a hard look at Israeli policies and modify my views. There were a lot more shades of grey than I had realized. Of course.

In Vietnam, I worried I might encounter some anti-American feeling. There was none – they forgave us long ago, and love to see Americans now. It’s enough to restore your faith in humanity. Never have my fears of any country survived a visit to it.

On the other hand, my weeks in Vietnam also confirmed for me that communism really is a shitty way to organize things.

In China I met a very bright young graduate of Beijing University – the country’s most prestigious. She told me she’d been there during the Tiananmen Square massacre, and knew some of those killed. When I asked her about it, her comments surprised me.

“I opposed the demonstrations, which demanded changes similar to those occurring in the Soviet Union. I believed then and now that China badly needs a strong central government as it transitions to capitalism, lest tribal-nationalism rip the country apart as in the Soviet Union. If that were to happen, the entire planet would be destabilized. Further, the one-child policy would collapse. Without that program (only possible in a harsh authoritarian state) there would be about 300 million more Chinese right now – completely disastrous for our planet.”

It makes you think.

She later moved to the US at the age of 25, and soon made herself a millionaire. It hasn’t changed her mind about China’s government, though.

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

Hitchhiking south from Copenhagen, I was picked up by an odd duck – a Danish capitalist hippy. Nice guy.

He was driving the quintessential hippy van, reeking of weed.

This long-haired entrepreneur had created a pretty good business for himself. Every few weeks he’d drive south to Cologne, Germany, load up his microbus with hundreds of posters, drive back and hawk them to tourists in Copenhagen.

The posters were all the same – orphans and kittens with big eyes.

“I tried selling real art, but couldn’t make a living. This is what the tourists really want. I buy them for a dollar in Cologne, sell them for five in Copenhagen. Denmark is all about cuteness. Hans Christian Anderson – all that. I’ve been doing it for seven years now, and I’ve saved a lot of money.”

“Thanks for the ride,” I said. “I’ll go all the way to Cologne, if that’s okay.”

“The reason I picked you up is that I need a driver. I haven’t slept in three days and I’m just too tired.”

“Oh, gee, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to drive a stick shift, and I don’t have a license.”

“Well, then, your job is to grab the wheel if I start to nod off.”

The next eleven hours were nerve-wracking. Every few minutes he’d nod off and the bus would start to drift. I’d grab the wheel, he’d wake with a start, and the bus would swerve sickeningly.

Meanwhile, sleek BMWs were passing us on both sides at 160 mph. There’s no speed limit on the autobahn. My eyes couldn’t leave the rear-view mirror, my teeth wouldn’t stop grinding. It was exhausting – we had several close calls.

When he finally dropped me off, ten hours and 470 miles later, I badly wanted a break from hitching. I decided to catch a train. But first I had to see the legendary Cologne Cathedral.

It was a knockout, but I was so tired I could barely see it.

The train station was just a few blocks away, according to my map. I set off for it, and promptly got lost. I saw a policeman directing traffic. Oh, good, I thought. I can finally put my high school German to use.

“Bitte, wo ist der…wo ist der…” I started.

Crap. I couldn’t remember the German word for train station. People were watching.

“Wo ist der…chooo chooo..?” In desperation I made a gesture like pulling a steam whistle cord. There was laughter.

The officer was  a little snotty.

“Wouldn’t you prefer to speak English? The train station is three blocks that way, on the right.”

I set off again, and soon was lost again. At a crowded corner I stepped off the sidewalk to get around the crowd and take a look down the side street.

Someone grabbed my backpack and gave a sharp tug. Stumbling backward, I tripped on the curb and nearly fell. I angrily turned, fists out, ready to pummel whoever’d laid their hands on me.

It was little old German lady, no more than five feet tall. At least eighty years old.

“Nein!” she barked at me. “You are setting a bad example for the children!”

She gestured at the gutter and made it clear that, in Germany, one doesn’t step off the sidewalk. One follows the rules. Or else.

It is my usual policy to avoid punching old women in foreign countries, so I retreated toward the bahnhof. I’m not sure, but I may been muttering “nazi bitch…” under my breath.

True story: an old friend of mine, Bob, and his buddy decided to go to Kenya. They landed in Nairobi, rented a jeep at the airport, and set off on a self-guided Safari. 

They asked the rental car guy: where should we go for a good safari? He told them to drive west a few hours. 

They drove late into the night. Street lights and homes thinned out, then stopped.  The roads got progressively worse. After a while they were on dirt roads. They saw no signs. 

Finally around midnight they stopped, threw their sleeping bags on the ground, and went to sleep. They were lost.

The first thing Bob saw when he awoke was a large black boot, inches from his face. He looked up – it belonged to a tall black man with an automatic rifle. Luckily, it was a park ranger. 

“You’re Americans, aren’t you.” 

Um..yes. Why? 

“Get up.”

They got out of their sleeping bags and stood up.

“Look at this.”

The ranger pointed at the ground. All around their sleeping bags were lion tracks. Dozens of them. 

“You’re lucky they weren’t hungry. If they had been, you’d both be dead.” 

How did you know we were Americans? 

“The only tourists who ever die out here are Americans. They’ve been camping in America’s national parks, and they think this is the same thing. Each year we lose about a dozen guys like you.”

After a stern lecture about the dangers of Kenya’s national parks, he gave them directions to a safe camping spot, and let them go.

The next day, Bob wandered too close to the river with his camera, and was charged by a hippo.  He had to run. I really like my friend Bob – I’m glad he’s still alive. 

I was raised by educated people to be science-oriented and skeptical. The latest mathematics say: it’s appropriate to party.

For a long time, I didn’t believe in miracles. Now, some days, it seems like I don’t believe in anything else. What aspect of reality is not wondrous? Is there an atom somewhere that is not somehow connected to us all?

A couple of years ago, a childhood friend won the California lottery.

The only winner. Fifty million bucks. After taxes, I hear he took home about $30 million. I haven’t seen him, but mutual friends tell me he’s the same old guy. Thank goodness.

Funny thing is, of all the kids I knew growing up, he was the one most obsessed with luck. Superstitious. He’d say stuff like “If I make it all the way to school without stepping on a crack, that means I aced the math quiz.”

His news got me thinking about miracles, luck, and odds. And fate. And existence. And so on….

Mathematicians have been doing some interesting work along these lines. The latest research suggests that the probability of your existance is basically indistinguishable from zero. They approach it this way:

1. Odds your parents ever meet: 20,000 to 1
2. Odds that once your parents meet, they hook up and produce kids together: 2000 to 1
3. Odds the right sperm and egg meet to create “you-ness”: 400 quadrillion to 1
4. Odds all your ancestors reproduce successfully in an unbroken line for 4 billion years: 10 to the 45th, to 1
5. Odds all your ancestors produce the right sperm/egg combo in each generation to ultimately create “you-ness”: 10 to the 2,640,000th power, to 1

Multiply all these odds, and the odds of your existence come to 10 to the 2,685,000th power, to 1.

For perspective: all the atoms in the universe come to just 10 to the 80th. A vastly smaller number. This begs some obvious existential and theological questions.

If the odds of your existence are mathematically indistinguishable from zero, doesn’t that make you the ultimate accident?

Or, maybe, you have every right to be here, and the universe is unfolding as it should. Maybe it’s kind of an “all or nothing” deal.

Thirty million is nothing. You’ve already won the biggest lottery in all of eternity. Me, too. It’s a miracle.

Let’s live it up.

A white water rafting trip through the Grand Canyon is full of surprises.

The guides tie down your stuff in a dry-bag, so it stays safe and dry when the boat flips over. All I had to bring was clothing, a tent and sleeping bag.

The trip starts at the edge of Grand Canyon National Park.

The first surprise was the water – it was green, clear and shockingly cold – about 35°. It flows from the frigid lake-bottom behind the enormous Glen Canyon dam, upriver. The contrast feels pretty strange when you’re baking in 105° desert air, and the water is painfully cold. Some of the more experienced rafters brought fishing gear, and several cases of beer. They tied the beer into nets, and dragged them behind the boat – better than an icebox.

The first couple of days I was sometimes cold, even in the desert heat – the rapids soak you with freezing water, the river is often in shade, and just as you begin to dry out and warm up, you hit more rapids.

White water rafting can be pretty exciting. Some of the rapids are massive; you’ll need to paddle hard and follow orders. Sometimes there’s a touch of danger, but these tour guides know what they’re doing. I didn’t get ejected from the boat on this trip, but I did in Nepal, once. I remember holding onto my glasses with one hand, madly trying to claw my way to the surface with the other. Holding my breath, tumbling over and over…it was… excellent.

Breakfast on the riverbank: bacon, eggs, pancakes, yogurt, fruit, coffee. The captain was also the cook. The food was fine. He’d wake us early each morning with a long, loud call: Coofffeeeeeeee is Readyyyyyyy…. echoing through the canyon.

We camped on sandy river banks. You can’t pitch your tent too close to the river because the water level changes quickly, depending on the dam’s release schedule. It’s no fun to find the river creeping into your sleeping bag at midnight.

They set up a surprisingly comfortable chemical toilet behind some brush outside camp, and a jerry-rigged “occupied” sign system, but it’s only for number “two”, as they say. If you need to pee, the park regulations require you do it in the river. Easy for the guys, who can just stroll two minutes from camp, but a pain for the ladies who have to go wading in the freezing water. Apparently, the scientists have determined that peeing in the sand and soil in a desert clime does more long term damage to the environment than doing it in the river.

We’d take a couple of hikes up the side canyons each day. You need to pay attention to where you put your feet – I saw a few rattlesnakes.

My favorite part (along with the rapids) was hiking up the side canyons to find these perfect little Eden-like oases. You can’t really see them when you look down into the canyon from the rim, but lots of little rivers and streams carve their way down to join the mighty Colorado.

Sixty five miles in, the gorgeous Little Colorado river meets the Colorado. A stunning turquoise, nice and warm – it makes for more pleasant swimming the rest of the trip.

The river cuts through the earth’s history – each band of color in the rocks exposes a different era. The white ones near the top are 200 million years old. The darks ones near the river are ten times older. Pick up a rock that’s two billion years older than you, and make it skip.

It’s an idyllic week. If you don’t mind hiking out on the last day, you can do it for about $1500. Or, you can pay a bit more for a ride across Lake Mead to Vegas, if you need a change of pace.

“Ahhhh, Venice.”

— Indiana Jones in “The Last Crusade”

It’s the finest city in the world for idle wandering, day dreaming and getting purposely lost. Each alley is a mystery and potential treasure.  It may lead you to a remote canal, an amazing restaurant, or a graceful church full of vivid Caravaggios.

To be a truly beautiful city, it is not enough to be merely visually striking. It also requires romance.

It’ll set you back $100 for a serenaded gondola ride. It’s something at least half the population wants to experience at least once in their lives. For most, once will be enough.

Legend says that if you kiss your lover under the Bridge of Sighs, you will be granted eternal love. Worth a shot.

Sure, it’s a tourist trap. Expensive. Crowded. The water is sometimes filthy and reeking. The buildings are slowly rotting away – elegant decay is everywhere.

Who cares? It’s the most romantic and beautiful city in the world.

It was Europe’s richest and most powerful city-state for a long time. Now it is slowly sinking into the Adriatic Sea, with no hope of rescue. During high tides, the central St. Mark’s Square (above) can be flooded up to your knees, which makes getting to dinner a bit of a soggy slog. My pants, shoes and socks made a big puddle on the cafe floor.

There are thousands of pigeons wheeling around the square. If you want to cause a stir, buy a pack of bird food and fling a handful into the air over your sweetie’s head. She will be instantly mobbed by hundreds of pigeons, flapping in her face, landing on her head and shoulders, pecking, pecking…. it’s a dirty trick, right out of Hitchcock, but everyone does it.  Best not try it with a stranger.

We caught this Venetian dog planning his next move. In this beautiful city, there are pleasures great and small around each corner.

First, you climb through the yellow tunnel into the center of a large, sturdy double-walled beach ball. They add about fifty gallons of lukewarm water.  Now you’re sitting in a bath, in a beach ball, feeling vaguely ridiculous.

Then they push the ball off a cliff. You (and the water) flip and spin, willy nilly, all the way down the mountain side. You pray the ball stays on the course.

I laughed uncontrollably all the way down. It was one ride for $20, or three rides for $50. I should have bought the three-pack. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Rotorua is a bit like Yellowstone. Lakes, mountains, lots of thermal activity – geysers, hot springs, etc. It’s famous for trout fishing, mountain biking, Maori culture, and now Zorbing.

Not far away is Mount Tongariro, which served as Mt. Doom in LOTR. New Zealand is uniformly spectacular.

Vermont is beautiful, but more importantly, the Ben and Jerry’s factory is there.

The place has a cheerful, playful vibe. You can take the tour, see the stuff being made, and get a free sample of the day’s batch. Our day was Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream day. Not bad, but it’s no Cherry Garcia.

I was hoping for Coffee Heath Bar Crunch.

Some of the top-ten best sellers surprised me:

1. Cherry Garcia
2. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
3. Chunky Monkey
4. Chocolate Fudge Brownie
5. Half Baked
6. New York Super Fudge Chunk
7. Phish Food
8. Coffee Heath Bar Crunch
9. Peanut Butter Cup
10. Vanilla

It astonished me that a banana ice cream can break the top five.

My favorite part was the flavor graveyard out back, a monument to the 200 different flavors that died.

Some were unpopular, some were discontinued because a key ingredient got too expensive, and some were just kind of bad.

Each headstone has a fun little poem:

Now they’ve made it possible for people to request the revival of their discontinued favorites. You can see the list of the 200 dead flavors and make your case here:

https://secure.benjerry.com/contact-us/resurrect.cfm

Bring back Rum Raisin!

“You took the Marrakesh Express? What was it like?” I asked him.

“Good. Smooth, fast and comfortable, and, best of all, air conditioned. We sang the song over and over, all the way there.”

“What was Marrakesh like? I’m going there next week.”

“You’re going to Marrakech in July? Are you an idiot? It’s in the Sahara desert!”

“It’s the only chance I’ll get.”

“You know when you bake a potato, and you open the oven, and that blast of heat hits your face? Imagine stepping into that 400° oven. That’s what it’s like when you step off the Marrakech Express in summer.”

He was right. That’s exactly how it felt. Marrakech is a beautiful rose-colored city in the desert, but it was 135° in the daytime. No joke. You can’t move, or eat, or function at all in that kind of heat, so no ones does anything until 10pm when it cools down to 95°.

At night the large central square comes alive.

Snake charmers, kick boxers, monkey acts – performers from all over Africa make their way to the famous Jemaa el Fna. It’s a wondrous thing. I love saying “fna.” Ffffnah!

The locals stay cool by taking all-day warm baths and steadily drinking incredibly sweet hot mint tea. I was incredulous, but it really works. Something about the sweating, I guess.

At night, they wrap themselves in wet sheets and sleep on the roof. Every few hours someone has to get up and re-soak the sheets.

I’d never been so miserably, helplessly hot. After three days I’d had enough. A local invited us to his uncle’s house in the mountains for some relief. About an hour away.

It was beautiful and cool. There was a babbling river running through the backyard. I immediately jumped in. It felt so good to finally cool off.

The local walked over and watched me.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“What do you mean? It’s fantastic.”

“Well, there a lot of other homes up this canyon.”

A big wad of toilet paper floated by. Reality dawned on me. Oh, god. I exploded out of that river like a cartoon character.

Later, I met a man in the nearby village.

“Is this your store?” I asked him.

“Oh, yes. I also own that hotel over there. Also that gas station. I am the richest man in this village, so I can afford three wives.”

“You really have three wives?” I had never met someone with multiple wives before.

“Yes. One has thirty four years, the second has twenty six years, and the third has fifteen years.” He was very proud.

“Which one do you like the most?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was an idiot. The kind of idiot who goes to the Sahara in July.

“Why, the youngest one, of course.”

“In this jungle, there are seven things which can kill you.”

Our young guide counted on his fingers.

“These are tiger, leopard, rhino, crocodile, cobra, python and spider. If we see such creature, you must do as I do. If I run, you must run. If I climb tree, you must climb tree. Okay?”

I thought he was teasing us.  If it was really dangerous, wouldn’t he carry a gun, like safari guides in Africa? All he had was a thin bamboo walking stick. Dead tourists can’t be good for business.

Moments later a crashing sound in the thicket to our right. Our guide immediately ran away and scurried up a tree. After a moment’s confusion, we scrambled after him. Two rhinos trotted out of the brush.

“Don’t worry. They are so blind they will charge a tree if the wind moves it. Just wait.”

After a long twenty minutes, the rhinos wandered off and we all climbed down. For the rest of the four-hour walk we had big nervous eyes and a new attitude. We saw more rhinos, but no tigers.

If the weather is good, for $50 you can fly around Mt. Everest in a small plane.

There is a small village in the jungles east of Katmandu. Surrounding the jungle are enormous snow-capped mountains. Every day around 4pm, a troop of monkeys runs through the village, hooting and knocking over all the bicycles. The locals call them “the bad monkeys gang.” Also, in this same village, there is a buddhist thief who will break into your hotel room and steal exactly half of your cash. Greed, after all, is not enlightened.

Nearby jungles mean good fruit, even in the high mountains.

You will be gazing at the mountains and temples, your mind drawn to the ethereal and sacred, then realize you have just stepped into human shit. A cosmic joke. No one has plumbing or sanitation.

The Nepalese are hard-working and honest, but very poor.

These men were shoveling river rocks in the hot sun.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We collect these rocks for sale to the construction industry.”

“What are those frames?”

“We build wire mesh with different size holes. Shovel the rocks in. They separate the rocks into three piles – big, medium and small.”

“How long is your work day?”

“Sunrise to sunset. At this time of year, about twelve hours.”

“That seems like very hard work. How much do they pay you?”

“Standard wage. For each day, we earn one dollar.”

Across the river someone’s body was burning on a bier.