Wandering the World

There are 40,000 Americans sailing boats around the world right now, I’m told. There are lots of awesome places you can’t see any other way.

For a few years, it was my big dream. I bought a starter-boat, a cheap old Columbia 28, and took lessons. I parked the “L’Chaim” in Jack London’s old yacht club (in Alameda) and sailed around the San Francisco Bay, a little. The cabin ceiling was one inch shorter than me – I bumped my head a lot.

Then I spent nine days on this nice big sailboat touring the Galapagos Islands, and my dream died. I still want to experience sailing in beautiful places, but I learned something important: what I really want on a sailboat trip is to sip a glass of wine, one hand trailing in the water, daydreaming while someone else does the work. And I want to get off when I get tired of it.

The Galapagos are famous for a few things: Darwin’s work, isolation, unique fauna, giant tortoises, blue-footed boobies, smelly iguanas… I had a comfortable cabin, good food, and we had a trained naturalist to show us around.

Nights were best: below us, the dolphins would swim around the ship leaving glowing stardust trails in the phosphorescent water. Above: incredibly clear stars and the Southern Cross. It’s dark out there, 600 miles from the coast of Equador.

Also, there’s only one place in the world that has both penguins (on the equator!) and flamingos. And of course, a 220-year-old land tortoise the size of a Smart Car is pretty damned cool.

The thing was, after five days, I was done. I felt cooped up. Blue-footed boobies are fun, and the Galapagos Islands are well worth seeing, but nine days is a long time on a boat. Five is perfect, seven is okay, but nine… jesus tap dancing christ, get me back to Quito.

So I sold my little boat to an elderly gent who’d just been wiped out in a divorce and needed a place to live. And started reworking my life list.

For me, one lure of travel is eating like the locals. Usually delicious and cheap, often surprising and only occasionally revolting, local food connects you with other cultures. If you go to South America and stay in a nice comfy hotel with a modern toilet, and eat at McDonalds, you haven’t really left home. You’ve brought your nicely insulated home with you. Comfort is the enemy of peak experience – it can cripple you.

So I had to try “Cuy.” It was a traditional ceremonial food of the Inca empire, and is now the national dish of Peru, Bolivia and parts of Equador and Columbia. Basically, it’s a kind of guinea pig, or cavy. They have lots of advantages – they reproduce quickly, they’re cheap to raise, and they’re small enough to keep in urban settings.

When plated, mine had a small carrot in its mouth, and looked exactly like a ten-inch skinned rat. It was a pretty nice restaurant, so I used a knife and fork instead of picking it up and gnawing on it as usual. Very bony – there was almost no meat at all.

It tasted like chicken. Duh, right? My stomach hurt for three days afterwards, but that may have been psychological.

Also, Machu Picchu rocks. Wild llamas wander around inside. At its base, the Urubamba River runs fast and wild, colorful birds are everywhere, and the Amazon jungle is just a few miles away.

Iconic minimalism. The great travel writer Paul Theroux, on meeting a buddhist monk on a train in Myanmar:

“Do you have another bag?” I asked, because the smallness of this one seemed an improbable size for a long-term traveler.

“No, these are all my possessions.”

Everything, not just for a year of travel, but everything he owned in the world, in a bag he easily slung under one arm. True, this was a warm climate, but the bag was smaller than a supermarket shopping bag. 

“May I ask you what’s inside?”

Tapa Snim, tugging the knot loose, gladly showed me the entire contents.

“My bowl, very important,” he said, taking out the first item. It was a small black plastic soup bowl, with a close-fitting lid. He used it for begging alms, but he also used it for rice. 

In a small bag: a piece of soap in a container, sunglasses, a flashlight, a tube of mosquito repellent, a tin of aspirin.  In a small plastic box: a spool of grey thread, a pair of scissors, nail clippers, Q-tips, a thimble, needles, rubber bands, a 2-inch mirror, a tube of cream to prevent foot fungus, Chapstick, nasal spray and razor blades.

“Also very important,” he said, showing me the razor blades. “I shave my head every fifteen days.”

Neatly folded, one thin wool sweater, a shawl he called a kasaya, a change of clothes. In a document pouch, he had a notebook and some papers, a photograph showing him posed with a dozen other monks (“to introduce myself”) and a large certificate in Chinese characters he called his bikkhu certificate, the official proof he was a monk, with signatures and seals and brushwork. 

And a Sharp electronic dictionary that allowed him to translate from many languages, and a string of beads – 108 beads, the spiritual number.

As I was writing down the list, he said, “And this” – his straw hat – “and this” – his fan. 

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing.”

“What about money?”

“That’s my secret.”

Then he carefully placed it in the open cloth, and drew the cloth together into a sack, everything he owned on the earth. 

– from “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” by Paul Theroux.

Sometimes you read something and it sticks with you for the rest of your life.

For a small fee you can ride on top of a cargo boat down the Mekong river in Laos for a few days.  It’s a gas. There I met two middle-aged women traveling together.

“We’ve been traveling almost eight months,” they said. “We started at our home in Zurich, took a train to Moscow, then took the Trans-Siberian railroad across Siberia to Lake Baikal. From there, we traveled all summer throughout Mongolia, then down through the deserts and mountains of western China for a few months. We crossed the border from China into Laos a few days ago.”

What is Mongolia like? I asked.

“It’s like Montana,” they said. “Like a golf course the size of Texas.”

That’s quite a trip, I said.

“Oh, we’re having a great time,  just like last year, when we spent eight months exploring Bolivia and the Amazon.”

You do this every year? How do you manage that?

“We’re both nurses in Zurich. We work all the shifts we can for four months each year, save our money, then travel for eight. We travel cheap. Then we go home and do it again. We don’t own anything. No car, hardly any clothes. We don’t go out much. We live in my dad’s basement.”

Laos is beautiful, friendly and cheap. Bongo optional.

See the cub peeking out? It was such a relief – I was worried there might not be any animals left. Not only are there a lot of animals, they put zoo animals to shame.

Do you remember that spectacular “Circle of Life” opening scene in “Lion King” – the huge range of animals thronging on the savanna? There are places in Africa that still look like that, especially the Masai Mara (Kenya) and the Serengeti (Tanzania).

Looking out from the safari van, in one glance I could see a huge variety – elephants, zebra, giraffe, antelope, gazelles, lions, warthogs, baboons, ostriches, cape buffalo, wildebeest, and a range of bizarre birds. Teeming.

I love zoos, but the animals there sometimes look a little dusty and shabby. The animals in Africa look like Muhammad Ali in 1966 – sleek, healthy, fast and powerful. No sick or slow ones, obviously.

My six-day safari in Kenya cost me $280 in 1991. Of course, that was a no-frills safari, sleeping in a tent-circle, a Masai standing guard all night. A bonfire and ten-foot spear to keep the lions away.  I slept fine.

After a few days in the Masai Mara, we also visited Lake Nakuru for the clouds of flamingos.

You can arrange all this from home, but it will be expensive paying all those middle men. Unless you’re wealthy, it’s better to fly to Nairobi or Dar es Salaam and arrange it there for a fraction of the cost.

Cocky bugger, glad to be done with college. Crete 1980.

The travel-bug is an addiction. Like a disease. Once you get it, your eyes will always be on the horizon, and restlessness will gnaw at you. There is a tribe to sustain you, though.

It bores even me, but if you’re interested, here is my travel list thus far:

Early 1960s – Family vacations – mostly Yosemite, Tahoe and the Mojave.

1969 – Arizona & Colorado. Three weeks.

1973 – Started hitching around the Bay Area, mostly camping at Big Sur and Point Reyes.

1976 − 12,000 miles hitchhiking across the USA and Canada, and back. An adventurous learning experience, with two buddies. Ten weeks.

1978 – England, Scotland and Wales. Comfy UCSB choir tour. Six weeks.

1980 – Israel, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and Paris. Five months.

1983 – Hitchhiking: Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, UK, Ireland, Northern Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco. Thirteen months.

1991 – My first round-the-world trip. London, Kenya, India, Nepal, Bangkok, home.

1994 – Second round-the-world trip. NY, London, Hungary, Japan, Hawaii, home.

1995 – Peru and Equador. Lima, Cusco, Macchu Pichu, Quito and the Galapagos.

1999 – Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Four months.

1997 to 2007 – A lot of 2-week trips, often for scuba diving, mostly to Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica and the Caribbean.

2007 − 2008,  A one-month road-trip around the USA, then nine months around the world. Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Bali, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, India, South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Denmark, then home to Hawaii, where I sit today, dreaming of the next big adventure.

Coming in for a landing, I fell on my ass like a clumsy clown.

Standing at the plane’s open door, the person before you steps out and just…disappears. Your brain can’t comprehend how something could be right here, then instantly so far away. It’s disorienting.

“Free fall” from 14,000 feet doesn’t feel like falling in your dreams, or jumping off the roof. It’s more like you’re suspended in air, motionless, with a huge blowdryer blasting cool air in your face. It’s loud, like sticking your face outside the car window at 65mph, but there’s no real sense of movement. The earth approaches too slowly for that.

You are intensely focused. Will the chute open? Will the chute open? Remember the backup plan if it doesn’t. Okay. Breathe. Then it does open, and you’re safely drifting down, nothing to do but enjoy the scenery. Peaceful.

These days it’s quite safe, not too expensive, and you can do it in half a day. If you don’t mind being strapped to an expert, you only need a one-hour training course. Mostly they just tell you over and over about the backup cord. Statistically, the riskiest part is the ride up in the small plane. It’s safer than driving to work.

At Sega, where I worked that year, our department had about 16 people. About half  joined us on the excursion. Confronting primal fears together is not a bad team-building exercise.

Well, yes, actually, New Zealand is the most beautiful country in the world. You saw “Lord of the Rings.” It really looks like that. 

A country the size of California with only 4.5 million people (compared to California’s 30+ million), and most of them in one world-class city, Auckland. Mountains, rivers, glaciers, volcanos and geysers, lakes, fiords, wine country, farm land, rolling hills, islands, beaches, penguins, the Shire. Plus, the people are all super nice. Polite. Friendly and helpful. Rugged and outdoorsy, like an REI ad. It’s a wonderful place. They invented bungee jumping. If they had deserts and tropics, and they’d take me, I’d probably move there. 

People have often asked me which places are my favorites.

Here’s how I answer: if you could take four 2-week trips, I’d recommend (not in any particular order):

• Two weeks in Italy
• Two weeks in a tropical paradise (Polynesia, the Caribbean….)
• Two weeks exploring the national parks of the American West.
• A two-week African Safari

Of course, that’s just me. Lots of people would prefer Disneyland, Broadway musicals or a night at the Ritz Carlton and room service. That’s cool. I say do it all.

Photo: Ravello, Italy

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that there are several things on my “Life List” that I could do right now (or at least begin this week) if I just got off my ass. Some can be done anywhere. Many are available right here in Kona. These include:

1. Go paddleboarding
2. Test my batting eye in a batting cage (oops – Kona’s closed in February)
3. Sail on a “dhow.”
4. Submerge in a submarine
5. Go deep sea fishing
6. Try spear fishing
7. Write a song
8. Go “zip lining”
9. Volunteer in a hospice
10. Do a three-day fast
11. Get to ideal weight, strength and flexibility
12. Institute a “daily practice” including physical, mental, spiritual and social practices.
13. Go vegetarian for a season
14. Give up alcohol for a season
15. Become a minimalist. Get down to 100 possessions.

To be fair, I’ve made a fairly good start on #15 and #12, and I’ve decided to do #1 in Hanalei, since I’ll be on Kauai soon. Still, that leaves several I could get done in the next couple of weeks.

Reminder to self: Commit to your dreams. No excuses. It’s like the meditation teachers say. Sometimes you will slip off the path a little. The mind likes to wander. Don’t beat yourself up, just note what happened, laugh at yourself, and get back on your path.