The Adventure Geezer

Belfast: Bloody Past, Hopeful Future

2011-10-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

To compensate for the 850-900 word limits on my published articles, I have decided to use my blog to provide supplementary information for every article I publish. So, instead of daily minutiae on what I eat, what I do, who I see, and my thoughts on topics I know little about, my blog will provide information on places and activities mentioned in each article and recommendations for other places to stay, dine and visit
In most cases I will only mention places and activities that I have personally experienced. If I haven’t, I will say so. In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that many of the places cited have comped me or provided a significant discount. Whether they comped me or not, I will not include places or activities where my experiences have been less than satisfactory.

The Best Way to Belfast

Many major airlines offer one stop, connecting service to Belfast, including United, Virgin Atlantic, British Air, Air New Zealand, and Continental. Current fares from LAX start in the low $800s.

Telephones

To call the numbers below, dial 011 (the international access code from the USA), 44 (UK ‘s country code), and 28 (Northern Ireland’s area code)

Where to Stay

Avenue House, 23 Eglantine Ave., Belfast, 9066 5904, http:// www.avenueguesthouse.com. Spacious, sunny rooms with flat screen TVs and free Wi-Fi on a quiet, leafy, tree-lined street in the Queen’s Quarter, the neighborhood Queens University. Doubles from $97 including breakfast.

my room at the Avenue House

Queen's University

Hotel Europa, Great Victoria Street, Belfast, 9027 1066, http:// www.hastingshotels.com. Historic, elegant hotel near the City Centre. Reputed to be the most bombed hotel in the world, it is a pretty quiet place these days, other than the traffic on Great Victoria Street. Doubles from $134.

Where to Eat

Beatrice Kennedy, 44 University Road, Belfast, 9020 2290, http:// www.beatricekennedy.com. Old world elegance in the heart of the Queens Quarter. Expensive, but a limited “pre-theater“ menu offered from 5-7 pm (think early bird special without having to be in South Florida) makes this a more affordable option. Two courses for $25, 3 for $30.

Cayenne, Shaftesbury Square, 7 Ascot House, Belfast, 9033 1532, http:// www.cayenne-restaurant.co.uk. Hip, sleek Asian fusion about a half mile from the City Centre. See comments above about the “pre-theater “menu.

Café Conor, 11a Stranmillis Road, Belfast, 9066 3266, http://cafeconor.com. Comfort food in an attractive, unpretentious setting near Queens University. Main courses range from $12-17.

Other Places to Visit and Things To Do

McHugh’s Bar, Queens Square, Belfast, 9050 9990, http:// www.mchughsbar.com. Check schedule for music, though it all looked pretty spontaneous to me, with musicians sitting in as the spirit (and spirits) moved them.

Saturday Night at McHugh's

The John Hewitt Bar, 51 Donegal St., Belfast, 9023 3768, http:// www.thejohnhewitt.com. One of the most popular destinations in Northern Ireland for beer and music. Check schedule for dates, times, and performers.

Historical Pub Tours of Belfast, 9268 3665, http:// www.belfastpubtours.com. You can walk from one pub to another in the historical narrow alleyways in the old section of the city called the “entries” on your own. Or you can sign up for the historical pubs tour. Either way, it’s a great way to spend a late afternoon and early evening. The pubs are not overly crowded, but have just enough customers to make them lively. On Saturday evening there is live music almost anywhere you go.
Taxi tour of murals, Falls Road. At the recommendation of the owners of the B&B where I stayed, I used Fona Cab (9033 3333) instead of the more popular but more expensive black taxis. Fona charged me $63 for a two hour tour.

Murals on the Catholic Side of the Peace Wall

Mural on the Protestant Side of the Peace Wall

Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, 216 Falls Road, Belfast, 9096 4180, http:// www.culturlann.ie. A very friendly Irish cultural center in the heart of Falls Road featuring books, CDs, live music, and a café. This was the highlight of my walk up Falls Road. I didn’t know anything about the place when I started, but its 19th Century red brick exterior and colorful murals pulled me across the street for a closer look. I entered the building and discovered a world of Gaelic music, culture and warmth. As I walked around, looking at the endless CDs of Irish music, three men introduced themselves, and asked me to join them for a cup of coffee. We had a great conversation for about an hour talking about what it was like to live in Belfast then and now. The bottom line, according to one, a former member of Sinn Fein who spent three terms in jail during the Troubles, “thousands of people are alive today who wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for the peace agreement.” I could have stayed there for hours talking to them, but it was Saturday night and the pubs and music beckoned.

My New Friends at the Irish Cultural Center

Don’t miss the lush and uncrowded botanic garden in the Queen’s Quarter (the Ulster Museum is near the entrance to the gardens). The 1830s era Palm House, filled with palms and flowers, is one of the earliest examples of curvilinear glass and cast iron hothouse architecture. Also, make sure to visit the aptly named Tropical Ravine, especially on a dark and dreary day.

Inside the Palm House

The Palm House

The Tropical Ravine

Belfast Welcome Center, 47 Donegal Place, Belfast, 9024 6609, http:// www.gotobelfast.com. General info, maps, tours, music venues and schedules, etc.

McComb’s Giant’s Causeway Tours, 9031 5333, http:// www.minicoachni.co.uk. Some of the most dramatically beautiful scenery I have seen is only an hour or so drive away. The UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Giant’s Causeway, is the highlight, a peninsula of basalt columns near ground level stretching into the sea. The drive/ride there would still be worth it even if the causeway were little more than a goat path. My recommendation would be to take the tour rather than drive it yourself. The views are much better from a bus window several feet off the ground than from a little car being squeezed off the road by one of the buses. The only problem is that you have to put up with the nonstop banter and bad jokes from the driver. It’s a tossup, though not having to drive that narrow winding road on the wrong side of both the car and the road was the deciding factor for me. Besides some of the driver’s banter was informative and his jokes were occasionally funny.

The Giant's Causeway

A Final Note….

In general, I found the people of Belfast to be among the friendliest I have ever met. They came up to me on the street and in the pubs and cafes to welcome me, ask where I was from, and give advice on what to see and do. The first time it happened to me, I thought I was being set up for a scam or a sales pitch, but the gentleman in question just wanted to be helpful. This happened constantly, people figuring I was an American and coming up to talk and welcome me to Belfast. It took a while before I completely let down my guard and stopped bracing for a con or pitch, but when I finally did, I fell hopelessly and unequivocally in love with the city and its charming, garrulous people.

In the Land of Oz

2011-10-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

To compensate for the 850-900 word limits on my published articles, I have decided to use my blog to provide supplementary information for every article I publish. So, instead of daily minutiae on what I eat, what I do, who I see, and my thoughts on topics I know little about, my blog will provide information on places and activities mentioned in each article and recommendations for other places to stay, dine and visit.

In most cases I will only mention places and activities that I have personally experienced. If I haven’t, I will say so. In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that many of the places cited have comped me or provided a significant discount. Whether they comped me or not, I will not include places or activities where my experiences have been less than satisfactory.

I usually don’t provide specific prices since prices change and special deals are often available, but I will make general comments (e.g., “pricey,” reasonable,” etc.) and provide links to websites where rates and prices are available.

I am initiating this feature to provide additional information to supplement my article on a recent trip to Australia in Vibrant Living Magazine (http://www.vibrantlivingmagazine.com/) and Active Over 50 (http://www.activeover50.com/), both of which will be available on line in November.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Getting there
Qantas Airlines flies to Perth, the largest city in WA, via connections in Melbourne or Sydney. If you are planning on visiting more than one city or region in Australia (and given the distance, expense and time needed to get there, I strongly recommend that you do) consider an Aussie Airpass which includes international round trip flights from several US cities plus 2-3 internal flights (http://www.qantasvacations.com/aussieairpass/index.asp).

Where to stay in Perth
You will fly in and out of Perth, one of the most remote cities in the world (the closest major city is Jakarta Indonesia, not Sydney or Melbourne). Perth is a graceful city beautifully situated on the Swan River, a short drive from the Indian Ocean and the historic port town of Freemantle. In Perth I stayed at the Pan Pacific (www.panpacific.com/perth), a comfortable, conveniently located hotel overlooking the river. Monterey’s Restaurant in the hotel offers an excellent buffet featuring local seafood and produce.

What to do in Perth.
The Kings Park Indigenous Heritage Tour in the Botanic Gardens (www.indigenouswa.com) combines a pleasant stroll through the gardens on a ridge overlooking the city and river with stories about the original inhabitants of the area, the Nyoongar Aboriginal tribe. Greg Nannup, our guide and the owner of the company, did a great job of linking the natural history of the area with the cultural history of the local aboriginal people.

Getting to the Ningaloo Reef
Skywest Airlines has one flight a day between Perth and Learmouth/Exmouth, the closest airport to Ningaloo (http://www.skywest.com.au/). The flight takes about two hours.

Where to stay near the Ningaloo Reef
Sal Salis (http://www.salsalis.com.au/) lives up to its marketing tag, “wild bush luxury.” In addition to its remote, private, natural setting and attractive, comfortable accommodations, the food was excellent. Over the two days I spent there we had Moroccan lamb and shrimp, Greek salad, tempura oysters with wasabi aioli and caviar; scallops in soy and lemongrass; goat cheese and pancetta soufflé, Black Angus w/ bacon and pancetta, garlic potatoes; and Red Emperor fish in a turmeric curry sauce, all accompanied by excellent wine from Western Australia.

Sunset at Sal Salis

A less expensive, less remote alternative with the amenities that go along with civilization is the Novotel Ningaloo Resort in the relatively nearby town of Exmouth (http://www.novotelningalooresort.com.au/).

Other
To book a tour or transportation in the area, contact Exmouth Bus Charter and Tours (exmouthbuscharter@westnet.com.au).

The Pinnacles Desert in Nambung National Park (http://www.naturebase.net/) and Yanchep National Park (www.dec.wa.govau/yanchep) are also worth a visit. Both are about a two hour drive from Perth. The Pinnacles Desert derives its name and fame from the calcified remnants of trees, long covered by sand then uncovered when the sand blew away. They look vaguely humanoid in a silent sentinel, sci-fi/horror movie kind of way. Thousands are scattered over a plain of red sand, with white sand dunes in the background and vivid blue sea and sky in the distance. The overall effect is very weird and very beautiful.

The Pinnacles

Yanchep National Park features walks around a pleasant lake and several koalas hanging out in the trees in a protected enclosure.
Contact Pinnacle Tours (http://www.pinnacletours.com.au/) to arrange a tour if you decide to skip the hassles of driving on the wrong side of the road in a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car.

The Pinnacles Edge Resort (http://www.pinnaclesedgeresort.com.au/) is a good place to stay in the area. The restaurant in the resort was a pleasant surprise. It didn’t look promising at first with a stern warning that members of motorcycle clubs should not wear their colors in the dining room – Hells Angels, Mongols, Devils Disciples were among the many that were listed -- but the food was excellent. As far as I could tell, nobody wore their colors, if you don’t count my Philadelphia Eagles t-shirt (the bums!!!).

NEW SOUTH WALES

SYDNEY (although Sydney is not covered in the articles, you shouldn't visit Australia without stopping for at least a couple of days in Sydney)

Where to stay
I stayed at the elegant, old world Observatory Hotel (www.observatoryhotel.com/au) in the heart of the historic Rocks district, the happening restaurant/shopping/drinking/clubbing area of downtown Sydney within a short walk of the harbor. Pricey, but well worth a splurge for a night or two. Or perhaps you might choose to save your money for a splurge at the even pricier Wolgan Valley Resort in the Blue Mountains (see below).

What to do
A week before my trip a well-traveled colleague told me that Sydney was his favorite city in the world. It’s easy to see why. Besides being arguably the most beautiful city in the world (yes, even more beautiful than San Francisco and Vancouver), there are loads of things to do. In an occasionally frantic one and half days:

I climbed (more of an uphill walk than a climb) the famed Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was not as scary as I thought, and the views from the top were even more spectacular than I expected http://www.bridgeclimb.com/):
I took a three hour cruise through the harbor for an equally spectacular sea level view of Sydney. For lunch we anchored in a scenic cove and ate fresh poached salmon and drank lots of wine (http://www.seasydneycruises.com.au/):
In the evening I took the best night time photos I have ever taken -- of the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and Sydney skyline – under the tutelage of Alfonso Calero of Sydney Photography Tour(http://www.photographytravel.net/):
The next morning, I went on a backstage tour of the Sydney Opera House conducted by one of the funniest, most erudite tour guides I have ever met (http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/): Unfortunately I forgot to write down his name. Just ask for the stand up comic/playwrite.

Sydney Harbour Bridge at Night

Later that morning I passed on the surfing lesson at the world famous Bondi Beach to take a stroll around the neighborhood. I’m sorry I did. One of the people on the trip with me was riding waves within the hour (http://www.letsgosurfing.com.au/). I was told that she looked very cool doing it.

Where to eat
Australians are serious foodies, and the number of quality restaurants in the city reflects that. The Waterfront Restaurant on the harbor is one of them (waterfrontrestaurant.com.au). As you might expect from a good seafood restaurant in one of the most desirable locations in the city, the Waterfront is pricey. Less expensive ethnic restaurants, especially SE Asian, can be found throughout the city.

BLUE MOUNTAINS

Where to stay
As you can tell from the article, I was blown away by the Emirates Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa (http://www.wolganvalley.com/). Luxury accommodations in private villas with swimming pools, set in a beautiful valley with lots of wildlife, plus excellent food and wine – what’s not to love? Prepare to pay big bucks, but you’ll enjoy every dollar you spend. If you have any money left, take the 50 minute helicopter ride back to Sydney.

Opera House from Helicopeter

What to do (besides hanging out in your villa, swimming in your own pool and looking at the ‘roos)
Tread Lightly Eco Tours (http://www.treadlightly.com.au/) offers interpretative ecological tours and bushwalks in the Blue Mountains World Heritage area. My guide, Tim Tranter, seemed to know almost everything about the flora, fauna, geology, indigenous culture and history, and what to do if bitten by one of the many highly venomous snakes in the area (wrap the bitten area tightly and stay calm – yeh, right!).

Where to eat while out and about.
The Conservation Hut in Wentworth Falls serves hearty, healthy and tasty food for breakfast, lunch, and snacks (http://www.conservationhut.com.au/.).

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

THE ADELAIDE HILLS AND THE BAROSSA VALLEY
This area, just a few minutes to a couple of hours drive from Adelaide, the point of entry for South Australia, is the wine and food capital of Australia. The area looks very much like California with rolling green hills dotted with small lakes and charming towns. Lots of produce is grown in the Valley and the Hills, so it is a center for foodies. There are more restaurants per capita in this area than anywhere else in Australia.

The Barossa, in particular, is the Napa Valley of Australia without the traffic, tourists and development. The first vineyards were established over 160 years ago, and the wines from the region are world class. I did my best to confirm that in the one and half days I spent in the area.

Mary Anne Kennedy, who runs personalized wine and food tours in South Australia through her company A Taste of South Australia (http://www.tastesa.com.au/) hosted my all too brief tour. She is a fount of knowledge about the wines of the region, knowledge that eventually exceeded my ability to comprehend as I sampled more and more of the local product.

Where to stay and eat
Unfortunately I had only one night in the area, but it was a memorable night indeed. I stayed at the Jacobs Creek Retreat at Moorooroo Park (http://www.moorooroopark.com.au/), a decadently romantic and lush Italian rustic/French provincial/Australian colonial property in the heart of the Barossa Valley. The property was filled with Greek statues, fragrant gardens of lilac, honeysuckle and jasmine, chandeliers, fountains, courtyards, paths leading to hidden corners where you can sit and contemplate the wine and food you will have for dinner that night.

The owner, Wyndham House, is also the chef. His nine course meal with paired wines from his winery was the best meal of a trip that featured one excellent meal after another. Some of the more memorable courses included a shaved Italian style handmade air dried salami paired with Wyndham’s signature sparkling shiraz; king prawn in bisque paired with a 2009 Grenache rose; a beetroot salad with preserved lemon mayonnaise and crispy skin duck breast, julienne Beurre Bosc pear, baby basil and beetroot jelly paired with a 2006 organic Shiraz; Barossa Lamb cutlet with parsnip cream fresh peas and crab apple reduction paired with a 2007 Cabernet; and a local fillet of beef on pumpkin paste with celariac puree, wok seared onion and fennel and shiraz beef jus (can't remember the wine).

Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop in the Valley (www.maggiebeer.com.au/farmshop) offers picnic style meals you can create from a wide selection of pates, terrines, cheeses, olives, wood-fired bread and other delectables, and eat on an outside deck overlooking a pond.

In the Adelaide Hills, The Lane Vineyard (http://www.thelane.com.au/) offers wine, tasting plates of cheese, full lunches featuring local produce, and great views of the rolling hills and vineyards.

Things to do
The morning after my incredible meal at Jacobs Creek Retreat, Chef Wyndham took off his tocque and took me on a two hour walk in the hills ringing the valley to burn off the alcohol and calories consumed the night before. On the hike, which took us past vineyards and through fields of blue and yellow flowers, we saw only one car and no other hikers the whole time. It is what I imagine Napa and Sonoma were like 50 years ago. Wyndham leads these hikes as well as cycle trips via his tour company Ubercycle Adventures (http://www.ubercycle.com.au/) to showcase “the other side of the Barossa.”

Hills Ringing the Barossa Valley

At the Cleland Wildlife Park (www.environment.sa.gov.au/clelandwildlife), just 20 minutes from the Adelaide airport, you can wander freely among and hand feed kangaroos, wallabies, and emus. You can even get your picture taken holding a koala. This gentle, fuzzy creature personifies cute, and will melt the heart of even the most cynical person as he (she?) clutches your shoulder and gazes up at you with his (her?) soft brown eyes (sigh..).

The Author Gazing Fondly at his New, Fuzzy Friend

KANGAROO ISLAND

How to Get There
The fastest way, about 35 minutes, is by Regional Express Airlines (http://www.regionalexpress.com.au/). You can also take a ferry, which is cheaper but also requires about a couple of hour drive from Adelaide (http://www.sealink.com.au/).

Where to Stay and Eat
The Southern Ocean Lodge (http://www.southeroceanlodge.com.au/) is quite expensive – about US$ 1000/night/person for the least expensive room – but well worth it if you can afford it (price includes all meals, drinks, transfers, and tours).

A less expensive alternative is the Seascape Lodge on Emu Bay (http://www.seascapelodge.com.au/). The Seascape is a peaceful, attractive, and comfortable lodge with sweeping views of horseshoe-shaped Emu Bay. Mandy, the co-owner with her husband Paul, is a great cook and excellent company. One of the advantages of this more intimate place to stay became clear on my second night when the after dinner conversation was so lively and interesting that I went to bed at least an hour later than I intended.

Other Things to Do

Mandy and Paul also run Kangaroo Island Wilderness Tours (http://www.wildernesstours.com.au/). For a day and a half I toured the island, seeing sea lions up close on the beach at Seal Bay, large inland sand dunes, Remarkable Rocks, large eroded rocks that live up to their name, and fur seals at Admirals Arch, a natural bridge that is all that remains of a cave broken up by crashing waves. The highlight was walking through a forest at sunset to see kangaroos up close.

Curious Kangaroo Checking out Strange Biped with Camera

Often I was only a few feet away. One mother had her baby (a “joey”) partially hanging out of her sack. Two pairs of eyes, mom and joey, peered at me as I approached, then bounded off before I could take their photo. Yet another ephemeral sighting of the totemic animal of the Land of Oz.

The Lost World of Venezuela: Climbing Auyantepui

2010-07-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

The wet, slanted face of the boulder looks treacherous. To make matters worse, the bottom edge hangs over a precipitous drop-off with nothing below but air. I’m not sure how I am going to work my way up its slippery surface. As Alejandro reaches his hand out to help me, my boots slip and I slide out of sight. For what seems like an eternity, I am in free fall, not sure how far I will fall or what I will land on when I hit bottom.

It was the third day of an 8 day trek up, on and down Auyan Tepui, the largest of the table top mountains of Venezuela (tepui means “house of the gods” in the language of the indigenous Pemon people). There are over 100 tepuis in SE Venezuela, ancient sandstone mesas that jut thousands of feet straight up from the jungle and savannahs below. The most famous tepui is Mt. Roraima, supposedly the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World.” Auyan Tepui is larger, more difficult to climb and receives far fewer visitors. It is also the source of Angel Falls, the world’s highest waterfall at 3000 feet. Since the tepuis are very old, the flora and fauna that have evolved on the tops of the tepuis are very different than those in the jungles and savannahs below. In fact, the tepuis are like islands in the sky, so each one has plants and animals unique to itself. One of the things they all have in common, though, is that there are no dinosaurs despite the fanciful speculations of Sir Arthur.

My wife Katherine and I were invited here by the owners of Venezuela Elite – a tour company offering trekking, mountain biking, yoga and other trips in the region – to “show Americans that there is more to Venezuela than Hugo Chavez and Miss World” (http://www.venezuelaelite.com/). We only visited one region in our 16 day trip, Canaima National Park, and only Auyan Tepui (the focus of this story), the Gran Sabana and Angel Falls, but from what we saw in those 16 days, their claim is well justified.

Day 1: Up!
Katherine passed on the tepui trek and opted instead for a car-based tour of waterfalls, indigenous villages, and the Gran Sabana – the huge savannah that takes up much of SE Venezuela. In the first hour of the trek I wasn’t sure that she hadn’t made the smartest choice. After flying in a 4-seat, single engine plane to Uruyen – a tourist camp on the edge of the savannah that is the staging point for our trek – and watching our six Pemon porters distribute and pack the load, we were ready to begin.

Auyan Tepui loomed several miles in the distance, forming a backdrop for Uruyen and the broad, flat savannah leading to the trail. The tepui is layered like a cake with a steep jungle-clad slope leading to a sheer rock wall, topped by another savannah. The entire tepui seemed to consist of three such layers. Getting to the top of the first layer was the goal for our first day of trekking.

The plan was to get to the top, an elevation gain of over 6000,’ by lunch on the third day. Since we were starting in late afternoon, that would add up to slightly less than two full days of climbing. The total distance we would cover in the 7.5 days of the trek was about 23 miles. It didn’t take a calculator to figure out that this was going to be a steep, difficult trek .

The first part was easy. To save a couple of miles and an hour of walking during the hottest part of the day we rode in a truck over the savannah to the base of the tepui. Then we forded a stream and walked a few hundred yards to the hill that marks the base of the tepui. “So far, so good,” I thought.

The porters, carrying 30-40 pounds apiece and wearing flip flops, made it look easy. My two guides – Alejandro, one of the owners, and Eduardo, one of his most trusted guides – were also carrying full packs and seemed to barely break a sweat. But after about 10-15 minutes, carrying just a small day pack with a rain shell and lots of water, I was breathing heavier than I had in years. The late afternoon sun beat down on me and the oppressive humidity began to take its toll. I was about ready to give up.

I stopped to catch my breath and wipe the sweat out of my eyes and told the guys, “I’m not sure I can do this.” Eduardo ensured me that I could and suggested that I slow down my pace. That did the trick. After an hour and 45 minutes we were at the top of the first escarpment looking back to see how far we had come.

The view was breathtaking across the wide and deep savannah below, punctuated with clumps of jungle and the geometrical silhouettes of other tepuis in the distance. No signs of civilization, no trails other than our own, no houses, no wires, no wispy airplane entrails. The only footprints were our own.

Forty five minutes later we made it to our first camp. We took a dip in the first of many streams warm enough to slide into but cool enough to refresh. After a surprisingly sumptuous dinner I crawled into my tent and sleeping bag for our first night on the slopes of the tepui. It was only 8 pm. I felt content and hopeful, thinking as I drifted off to sleep that maybe I could do this after all.

Day 2: Further Up!
The next day the climb continued. This was the steepest, rockiest trail I had ever climbed. It’s actually not much of a trail at all, just an uneven staircase of rocks, boulders and roots through the jungle, only occasionally, but mercifully, broken up by a relatively flat stretch of sandy trail across the savannah to the next staircase through the jungle. Along the way branches scraped my arms and legs as I passed by and vines grabbed at my ankles.

The only thing that distracted me from the sheer effort of climbing and the concentration needed to avoid a misstep through this ankle-crunching, knee-twisting mine field of rocks and roots was the thought that as difficult as this was, it would be nothing compared to coming down, especially on my bad knees.

Day 3: To the Top and Beyond
The last stretch to the top was one challenge after another. The first part involved another long, steep climb through the jungle, then we picked our way over and through a maze of large roots until we reached the base of the last wall, an escarpment of sheer rock several hundred feet high. The trail led up a gully through a break in the wall between a large rock spire on the outside and the rock wall on the inside. This was the “Enchanted Garden,” a corridor of boulders and lush ferns and other flora, like an exotic, giant rock garden. To make things really interesting, at several points we had to use fixed ropes – “rope passes” – to pull ourselves up the faces of the largest and steepest rocks. The overall effect was like a combination of a jungle gym, playground and obstacle course, with incredible scenery!

I was so absorbed by the challenge, and having a great time doing it, that I was surprised when Alejandro informed me that we are on the top. I made it! I was almost sorry it was over. Then it started to rain, hard. The water had no ground to sink into so the rivulets of rain in the rock soon turned into streams, then rivers. The rock surface became very slick, and we picked our way carefully over the slippery surface for the next two hours. I did OK, falling only once, until we were within a half mile of our campsite.

It was when we were negotiating a particularly difficult jumble of rocks that I slipped and slid down the rock, out of sight. A retrospective of my life did not flash before my eyes, but I did have enough time to realize I was in serious trouble. But instead of crumbling, broken, on a pile of rocks, I plopped thankfully into a moss-lined pool of water!

After patting myself down in a search for broken bones and looking around for a place for a rescue helicopter to land, I realized I was unhurt except for a couple of sore ribs, but I was visibly shaken. We soon found another way through the boulders, only slightly less hairy, and made it to our campsite a few minutes later. I was happy to see that the campsite was protected from the rain by a huge slab of overhanging rock. That night I slept fitfully, constantly trying to find a comfortable position that spared my sore ribs.

Days 4 and 5: Resting and Testing
We decided to stay at our protected campsite for a couple of days to take time to recover, test my ribs and explore the area within a couple of miles of our camp. The landscape looked like Mars -- black, craggy sandstone cut into rough, bizarre shapes by wind and rain, broken up with patches of low bushes and shrub. The plain that stretched out before our camp was actually a valley between two continuous sandstone cliffs on each side. The vast view across the rocky plain was cut through with cracks and canyons where rivers run, eventually turning into waterfalls. Tannins from the bushes and shrubs on the banks stain the rivers bright orange. The raw, mysterious beauty seemed to change by the minute as the sun came out, mist drifted through the canyons, clouds rolled in and rain transformed the channels in the rocks into temporary rivers.

This the place where we come across the only other people we saw since we started – a party of six surly Russians, with porters. The apparent leader was a broad-browed Neanderthal wearing camos with cut off sleeves, straight out of a Robert Ludlum novel. His fashion model girl friend was dressed in a see-through net top, a long duster and a stylish over-the-shoulder handbag more appropriate for night clubbing in Moscow than climbing a tepui.

We learned later from their porters that one of them was carrying a gun. We noticed that he was always separate from the others, keeping at a distance where he could watch them and see anything or anybody that approached (dinosaurs, assassins, CIA agents?). We guess that he was a body guard and that the broad-browed guy was a high up in the Russian military taking a break from his negotiations with Chavez over the sale of arms. From his unfriendly demeanor we figured that we were not supposed to see him…

Days 6-7: Back to the Brink, Then Down…and Down!
On our last day on the top we headed back to where we emerged a few days before from the Enchanted Garden and reached the top of the wall. It was a relatively easy hike with just a few steep sections and rope passes. We camped almost on the edge, and by leaning close to the edge, we were able to see the trail through the Enchanted Garden. The ghostly shapes of the rock spires framing the route peeked through, then faded in the drifting mist. We could see the tops of other tepuis in the distance floating above the clouds. Occasional breaks in the clouds revealed the entire tableau of jungle slopes leading down to the savannah below.

Early the next morning we started our descent. The plan was to descend in two days what it took three days to climb. I guess for most people that makes sense since it is generally easier going down than up. But on my bad knees this was possibly the most grueling day of hiking in my life to that point. It was a very steep, muddy and rocky descent that required constant focus on each step. We had to climb over and around large rocks and slippery roots that were ready to trap and break errant ankles. I ran out of gas by mid afternoon. Even though we were 2-3 hours short of our goal for the day, I just couldn’t go on. We stopped for the day at another campsite protected by a rock overhang. It was a good thing we did since it poured all night.

Day 8: The Big Finish
An even longer and more grueling day; about 11 hours of tough downhill hiking. But I was in a better state of mind since I knew what I was in for, and I also knew that it was the last day. My wife and a shower waited for me at the end. We kept up a good pace throughout the day, but we still didn’t reach the top of the first escarpment until late afternoon. We could see our goal – the long valley leading to Uruyen and the road where the truck would pick us up. But it was still 2-3 hours away.

As we got closer to the end, we really started to hustle. The sun was setting, the fireflies were out and all I could think of was the stream we had to cross at the end, the one we had picked our way across rock by rock on Day 1. How was I going to do that in the dark? I went all out like I was finishing a race in a desperate attempt to get to the river before it grew completely dark. I felt like a runner entering the final lap at the end of a marathon – lots of people around (mostly the porters and guides) cheering (actually shouting instructions). I remember someone telling me to forget walking across the stream on the stones, just step in the water. No need to worry about wet boots at this point. One of the porters guided me across, bracing me in case of a misstep.

I made it across without a problem. Only a hundred yards or so to the car. It was almost completely dark now except for the fireflies and the silhouettes of three figures above us on the road. One silhouette looked familiar as it moved toward me in the dark, and then I heard, “Mankin, you made it.” Katherine ran up to me and we embraced in a very sweaty hug. Only one other thing came close to matching that moment – the ice cold can of beer that Eduardo took out of the cooler in the back of the truck and passed to me in celebration.

On The River To Angel Falls

2010-07-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

The old man’s eerie monotone chant rose into the star-speckled sky, along with the embers from the large bonfire. He beat on the drum under his arm as the crackle of the fire provided counterpoint. The shadow of the flames flickered against the wall of the jungle surrounding us.

We were in a camp on the edges of the village of Kamarata in the remote reaches of SE Venezuela. Kamarata is one of the principal villages of the Pemon people, the indigenous Amerindian people of the savannahs and tepuis (table top mountains) for which this region is known. This was the first day of our 4 day river trip to the legendary Angel Falls, the world’s highest waterfall at over 3000.’

My wife Katherine and I were invited here by the owners of the tour company Venezuela Elite (http://www.venezuelaelite.com/) to “show Americans that there is more to Venezuela than Hugo Chavez and Miss World.” We only visited Canaima National Park in our two week trip -- particularly Auyan Tepui , the Gran Sabana and Angel Falls -- but from what we saw in those 16 days, their claim is well justified.

During the first eight days of the trip I trekked up, on and down Auyan Tepui, the largest of the table top mountains in SE Venezuela (see http://www.yourlifeisatrip.com/ for an account of that trip) while my wife, Katherine, toured the Gran Sabana. For the remainder of the trip we would ride in a “curiara,” an indigenous dugout canoe, to Angel Falls.

Before heading to Angel Falls, the plan was to spend a day with the Pemon people of Kamarata, a village in the heart of the park. Although all of the porters on my trek were Pemon, this would be the first opportunity to meet them where they lived.

We spent much of the day watching a woman make casaba, the cracker-like staple made from the yucca plant. We ate it hot off the grill while it was still chewy and moist with home made kumachi, an indigenous hot sauce that is as fierce as anything this chile-loving chowhound has ever eaten.

While watching and munching, I talked, via translation by our guide, with the woman’s husband, a teacher, about his and his colleague’s efforts to preserve their traditional culture – making casaba and pottery, practicing traditional medicine, and preserving the stories and songs that are the heart and soul of their oral tradition. The setting -- the backyard of his home with his wife making casaba, his young daughters playing, and the savannah, tepuis and waterfalls as background – made the experience seem even more intimate. I felt completely immersed in the moment and the place.

Our cultural immersion continued with a visit to another house to watch a woman, a locally renown potter, make a bowl in the traditional Pemon method and style. The day was capped off by a barbeque with the porters from my Auyan Tepui trip, who all lived in or near the village, and the haunting, strangely moving singing of the “old man” (at 66 he was two years younger than me!). We went to sleep in hammocks with mosquito netting under the thatched roof of the churuata, an open sided indigenous hut. This was our first of four nights sleeping in hammocks. It took a while to get used to it, but I eventually drifted off and slept like a baby.

For the next two days, nine of us, including a 4 man boat crew, made our way down the Akanan and Carrao rivers in a sturdy dugout canoe with, in the only apparent concession to modernity, a large outboard motor. Other than three other canoes, without outboard motors, and an occasional churuata, there were few signs of “civilization” on or along the river. But we did see swarms of butterflies and lots of birds including cormorants, parrots, toucans, kingfishers, egrets, vultures, hawks and swifts.

We usually made camp by lunchtime. Campsites were rustic, but roomy and comfortable. The thatched roofs of the churuatas shielded us from the sun and rain. We had the campsites completely to ourselves. Late in the afternoon, as the storm clouds built up on the tepuis, the guides served us hot tea and snacks. We watched the late afternoon downpours from the comfort of our churuatas.

The second campsite was my favorite, a spacious pavilion situated about 20 feet above the river with a large, almost luxurious covered deck. We spent most of the afternoon on that deck gazing at the panorama before us -- the river and jungle, of course, but especially the majestic tepuis on both sides of the river including the one I had climbed just a few days before, Auyan Tepui.

We were close enough to see cracks in the 3000’ sheer rock walls that jutted out of the jungle. They looked, in Katherine’s words, like “the ramparts of massive prehistoric castles” – dark, gothic, and imposing. Wildly shaped clouds swirled around the tops, and the waterfalls looked like pencil thin lines of white against the black rock. I counted at least 15 waterfalls. We sat there for hours, reading, scanning the tepuis and waterfalls through our binoculars, and watching a cormorant silently skim the tree tops in front of us.

The last full day of our trip featured a wild ride up the Churun River to Angel Falls. The walls of Auyan Tepui closed in around us as we neared the falls. We headed into the mouth of a narrowing canyon, bashed against the current through the rapids and skirted the huge boulders that had thundered down over the years from the walls of the tepui. We saw many waterfalls along the way. Then we caught a glimpse of the big one. Angel Falls in all of its vaunted vertical glory loomed through a break in the trees across the river as we pulled into camp.

After setting up camp, we ferried across the river and hiked through the jungle, then up a steep rocky trail to the overlook for a full frontal, top to bottom view of Angel Falls. It was less than a kilometer away, but it’s full-throated presence made it seem much closer. We not only heard and saw it, we felt it -- the spray, of course, but also the wind from the air displaced by the plunging water. We leaned back and tracked globes of water as they fell from the top of the falls until they vaporized before reaching the bottom. We sat there held in its thrall until we were cold and wet, then lingered a few minutes more.

Back at camp at sunset, we sat and watched the sky change color above the falls, listening to the exotic cackle of parrots across the river. An hour later we fell asleep to the music of its distant roar.

Cambodia Off the Beaten Track

2010-07-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Our narrow wooden boat churns upstream powered by what looks like a motor from a small lawn mower. The wide, almost empty river is straight out of “Apocalypse Now.” I feel vaguely like Martin Sheen looking for Colonel Kurtz as I scan the sparsely populated river banks. The small boat has barely enough room for the four of us -- my wife Katherine, our guide, the operator and me.

We are heading to a small, isolated village buried in the jungle about 45 minutes up a tributary of the Mekong River, deep in the heart of Ratanakiri province, a mountainous region in the far northeastern corner of Cambodia. This is as far away from our home in Los Angeles as you can get in this world -- geographically, culturally, and in pretty much any other way you can imagine.

The village we are visiting is home to the ethnic minority people known as the Tompuon, one of the most isolated groups of people I have ever seen – no TV, internet, electricity, or modern sanitation. They survive by cutting timber, growing rice, raising pigs and chickens, and selling trinkets to the few tourists who come their way.

The Tompuon inter their dead in the jungle less than a hundred yards from the village in small pavilions guarded by carved, life-sized wooden figures representing the people buried there, usually a husband and wife. The figures and pavilions are often decorated with objects that reveal something about the deceased – drums for a musician, a figure wearing glasses, and in one case, an electric fan, a curious artifact in a community where the only electricity is provided by car batteries recharged every few days by a diesel-powered generator.

Ratanikiri is not easy to get to. As of this writing there is no domestic air service anywhere in the country other than flights between Siem Reap (the closest town to the ruins at Angkor) and the capital city of Phnom Penh. It takes two days to drive from Phnom Penh, much of it over rough dirt roads, to get to Ban Lung, the provincial capital and the closest town of any size to the Tompuon village. Fortunately, we did not have to do any driving since we had a driver and a guide/interpreter for most of our 15 day trip (NOTE -- We booked this custom tour through Asianventure Tours, http://www.asianventure.com/).

Travelers who make the effort to get here will see that there is more to Cambodia than Angkor Wat and the Killing Fields. Ratanakiri has much to offer besides strange cemeteries and bad roads. The province is also home to other ethnic minority communities, a bustling market that offers a colorful array of local handicrafts and often unrecognizable food, and numerous waterfalls. The closest waterfall to Ban Lung, Chaa Ong, is the most inviting. A short walk through the forest and down some stairs leads to a rocky ledge behind the falls where you can view the jungle-fringed gorge below through a gauzy veil of crashing water and hanging, dripping roots.

Of course we couldn’t leave Cambodia without visiting ruins and temples. Since Katherine and I had already visited Angkor Wat and the other ruins that comprise the famous Angkor complex 10 years earlier, our plan was to focus on several newly-accessible and lesser known sites on the way to Siem Reap as well as sites in the outlying area.

Getting there was half the fun. It took three days. We drove part of the way along the mighty Mekong, stopping to take a sunset boat ride in Kratie to see the rare freshwater Irawaddy dolphins, and past blocks of crumbling colonial French buildings in the riverside village of Chhlong. Outside of the towns and villages, we drove through watery fields of rice, sparkling in the sun, with water buffalo soaking in muddy ponds to escape the heat.

We also stopped at several temples and ruins along the way, varying greatly in terms of style, period, degree of restoration, and function. Some were primarily of historical or archeological interest, such as the pre-Angkor Hindu ruins of Sambor Prei Kuk scattered throughout the forest. Other sites were of more recent origin and still in active use as Buddhist temples, such as the hill top pagoda of Phnom Santuk, which requires a sweaty but scenic climb up an 809 step stairway. We often had the sites almost completely to ourselves.

But it was the sites near Siem Reap that had the most impact. Beng Mealea, about an hour and half drive from Siem Reap, is dark, sprawling, overgrown, crumbling and remote. It looks like it is being slowly taken over by the jungle. Trees, branches, roots and vines encircle collapsed walls and roofs. I felt like a character in an action-adventure-fantasy movie (a Lara Croft with less testosterone?) climbing over piles of rubble from one room, hallway and courtyard to another. Again our timing was perfect, just before sunset, so hardly anyone else was there for most of our visit.

Closer to Siem Reap in distance but even further away in historical time is the Roluos Group. Dating back to the 9th Century, these sites predate the larger monuments of Angkor and served as their inspiration. It was here at the Bakong, the largest of the group and the last stop in our whirlwind tour, that I finally got it. With help from our guide, I began to see how the designs and artifacts of the Bakong were adopted, modified and enhanced in the imaginations of those who came after them to create the grandeur of the Angkor empire. His words morphed the crude chiseled carvings and stone-stacked towers of the Bakong into the more intricate filigrees and soaring structures of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Banteay Srei.

The highlight was a visit to a school on the road to Koh Ker, a very remote site in northern Cambodia near the border with Thailand that had only recently been partially cleared of land mines. Once again we were back on very rough roads in an area with little tourist traffic. Visiting a school was on our itinerary, but where and when we stopped was up to us and our guide. We were prepared with a gift, a world atlas in English with lots of illustrations.

Although he wasn’t expecting us, the teacher graciously tolerated the intrusion and seemed grateful for our gift. Most of the kids gawked in amazement, not sure what to make of us. Without electricity for TV and computers and situated far off the beaten tourist track, most of them had probably never seen a Westerner before. Their faces – some shy, most staring in wonder, others playing towards our cameras as if they were ready for Hollywood, all unbearably cute -- made me teary. My memories and photos still do.

The bottom line – especially for anyone willing to venture off the beaten track -- is that Cambodia is not the easiest place to visit, but it is well worth the effort. The bad roads, noise, and endemic poverty are more than made up for by the gentle, good natured people, the charismatic children (even the ones constantly hawking post cards and scarves), and the hauntingly majestic sites. Cambodia will wrench you out of your everyday bubble and thrust you into another reality, making it all too clear just how different other parts of the world can be. In addition, the dollar goes far, the country is safe, and if you like your travel experiences seasoned with a hefty dose of weird, it doesn’t get much weirder than the life-like totems in the Tompuon cemetery or the tree-wrapped rubble of Beng Mealea.

Most important, the country has a fascinating, unsettling and complex history that will snap you out of your Western-centric complacency. From the ancient majesty of the Khmer Empire to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge and the poverty and corruption of the present day, Cambodia offers a sobering perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations. It makes you wonder if some future archeologist will one day sift through shards of plastic and metal in the remnants of our cities and towns and marvel at how advanced our own civilization once was and how far it had since fallen.

Moose and Mousse on the Gaspe Peninsula

2010-05-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

(photos by Eric Brodnax)

The clang of crashing antlers echoed through the clear, cold mountain air as two huge moose butted heads just 50 yards away in the early morning sun peeking over the ridge in front of us. This was our reward for getting up at 5 am to hike a steep two uphill miles to this moose playground/battleground in the heart of the Gaspe Peninsula in the southeast corner of Quebec. It was the last day of our “familiarization” trip hosted by local tourism boards and tour companies to promote this relatively easy-to-get-to region that is as rugged as it is civilized.

While I watched this amazing wildlife tableau play out before me, I was still digesting my gourmet meal from the evening before – possibly the best smoked salmon I have ever had, a spicy clam and crab soup, veal in gorgonzola sauce, and a decidedly decadent chocolate mousse. Such is life on the Gaspe Peninsula -- wilderness and nature plus French food and culture without the inconvenience and expense of a trans-Atlantic flight.

The trip began with an afternoon canoe trip down the Bonaventure River on the southern coast of the Peninsula. The sky was clear and the air was brisk as we paddled down the fast flowing river and bounced through the benign rapids. There were just enough rocks and ripples to make it interesting. Our paddle ended as the setting sun turned the few wispy clouds into rosy streaks across the sky.

Our reward for braving the “wild” waters of the Bonaventure was an outstanding dinner, prepared and served by our hosts from CIME Aventures (www.cimeaventures.com) in their rustic but comfortable ecolodge -- grilled codfish in a miso marinade, soup made from oranges and root vegetables, beet salad with a ginger, garlic and Dijonnaise seasoning, barbequed salmon marinated in maple syrup and served with rice, almonds and cranberries, vodka and Malpèque oyster shots, and homemade apple pie. We were really roughing it! By now we were thoroughly immersed in the charm of the region -- the yin-yang combination of nature and French culture, especially the food.

Day 2 was more rigorous. After a drive of several hours to Gaspesie National Park in the interior of the Peninsula, we embarked on an 8 mile hike on the international extension of the Appalachian Trail in the Chic Choc mountains, guided by our hosts from Absolu EcoAventure (http://www.ecoaventure.com/). The trail snaked up and down over rocks and tree roots and -- since it was mid October, at the very end of the tourist season -- through patches of ice and grainy snow. We covered a total elevation gain of less than 1000 feet, but the ups and downs made it seem higher.

The views from the cliffs, outcroppings and the rocky mountain tops were well worth the effort. The Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain chains in the world. Originally thrusting 40,000 feet above sea level, they have been worn down by 480 million years of wind and rain, giving them a soft, rounded, ancient look. The view over the rolling, tree-covered hills and snow-dusted ridges and through the wide valleys to the St. Lawrence River evoked ancient connections and primal memories. I felt like I was looking at my prehistoric history, when my cellular ancestors were brewing in the vast waters of the earth, perhaps even in the very body of water I was looking at that very moment.

After the hike we checked into the picturesque Gite du Mont-Albert, a four star hotel with a zillion star restaurant in the heart of the park. Just as the gourmet meal and fine wine started to lull me into a relaxed sense of well being, our guides announced the plan for the next day – a well-before-dawn wake-up call to hike up a short but steep trail to watch the sun rise, and if we were lucky, see a couple of moose frolicking in their natural environment.

Only about half of us made the early morning wake up call. I was glad that I did. Watching those two moose bang antlers in the soft glow cast by the rising sun was pure magic. We saw over a dozen moose that morning – at least three adult males with big sets of antlers and several mothers with their kids. The setting was also spectacular – trees, rocks and rolling snow-covered hills with not a sign of civilization in sight other than the trail, a simple wooden viewing platform, and a handful of other, early rising hikers. There were also no sounds other than the clanging of the antlers, a high pitched keening from the youngsters, and our excited but hushed whispers.

As we descended the trail to head back, I stopped to gawk at one male with a big rack (not a phrase heard often in everyday life) just a few yards off the trail. When he started to move in my direction, I decided that it was time for me to also move, in the opposite direction. I’ve seen moose before – mostly in Newfoundland by the side of the highway – but rarely in their natural environment like this.

From there on, it was all downhill – literally. The hike down was easy and fast. We got back to the hotel in time for a fast cruise through the breakfast buffet and one last chance to immerse myself in the gustatory delights of the Gaspe Peninsula (with apologies to Homer Simpson, “hmmm, crepes, hmmm”). Then we hit the road. Since we had to catch a ferry to take us across the St. Lawrence, there wasn’t enough time for another leisurely gourmet meal, so we made a quick stop at a local market on the way. My knowledge of French, which consists of little more than “bon jour” and “merci,” (I pronounce it “mercy”) limited my choices to an already prepared, “to-go” sandwich of brie and beef on a crusty French roll topped with sautéed peppers. Somehow, I made do.

The Hidden Venice Beach: A Walking Tour in the City Where No One Walks

2010-04-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

Someone once wrote that if you tip the United States on edge, everything that’s loose will slide down to Los Angeles. I would add, if you tipped Los Angeles on edge, it will all slide down to Venice Beach.

The best place to see all those loose odds and ends is the “boardwalk,” which has no boards but lots of asphalt. That is the Venice Beach known far and wide – the low rise mix of vintage buildings and radical modern architecture lining one side of the boardwalk and the vendors, entertainers, and champions of obscure causes with provocative signs -- “meat is murder” and “circumcision is worse” -- lining the other. And then there are the people walking along the boardwalk in outfits they would never wear at home.

Few visitors stray far from the boardwalk. Those who don’t miss the best show of all -- the other attractions that make Venice Beach the largest spontaneous outdoor theme park/playground and one of the most interesting communities in the world. To discover the hidden highlights of Venice Beach, just follow this easy, leisurely walking tour. It should take about three hours or more if you want to shop, linger, and eat, or less than three if you are in a hurry.

THE BEACH
The first stop is the beach, which begins just a few yards west of the boardwalk and extends for over 100 yards to the water’s edge. On the way to the beach, stop and check out the new skateboard park at the foot of Market Street and watch the boarders sail into the air, frozen in mid flight against a dramatic background of broad sandy beach, crashing waves, coastal mountains and big sky.

From here, you can take off your shoes and shuffle on the sand to the water. Most days the beach is almost empty except for a few sunbathers, surfers, or meditators gazing at the sailboats gliding off shore or, at the right time of year, dolphins playing in the breaking waves. Look south and you can usually see the outline of Santa Catalina Island in the distance; look north and you can get a better look at the background that framed the soaring skateboarders -- a beach curving around a vast bay all of the way to Malibu and beyond. Behind that, the Santa Monica Mountains taper down to the ocean. When visitors tell me that they think that Los Angeles is ugly, this is where I bring them to change their mind. I have never failed to do so.

CANALS
The next stop is the Venice canals. To get there head back to the boardwalk, then walk south past the basketball courts, paddle tennis courts and Muscle Beach. South of Venice Boulevard the boardwalk turns completely residential – no stores or stands selling T-shirts and sunglasses, no tattoo parlors, no entertainers, just some of the best architecture on the boardwalk, including a house designed by Frank Gehry, one of his earliest commissions. If you know anything about Frank Gehry, you can’t miss it; if you don’t, it’s the one with the faux life guard stand in the front on the second story. Enjoy the relative peace and quiet here, far from the hustle and bustle of the boardwalk several blocks to the north.

Turn left on 27th Avenue, a walk street (not actually a street, just a wide sidewalk between two rows of houses). At the end of the block carefully jaywalk across Pacific Avenue (disclaimer -- I am not responsible for jaywalking tickets, injuries or death). Follow the path on the other side of the street past the very large, very modern, high tech house with big windows – a hint of things to come – for a few yards until you reach the first of six canals. Once home to motorcycle gangs and drug dealers, this neighborhood is now an architectural showcase with some of the most expensive homes in Los Angeles.

Cross the bridge over the canal and head left. Wander along the canals at will, heading generally in a northeasterly direction. Walk up one canal, cross one of the rustic bridges, walk along the other side, cross another bridge, etc. There are no design constraints in Venice, other than height limits, setbacks and engineering requirements. This, coupled with the money, ego, hubris and imagination of the creative community that lives here -- screen writers, directors, producers, successful musicians and artists, and high end professionals -- produces a colorful and eclectic mosaic of architectural styles. The houses, canals and bridges, along with the flocks of ducks and geese that also make the canals their home, provide a picturesque and serene contrast to the crowds of vendors, entertainers, and tourists on the boardwalk.

INLAND WALK STREETS
After you have had enough quirky, cutting edge architecture head to the NE corner of the canals, at Carroll and Ocean Avenues. The next stop is the inland walk streets, a community even more hidden than the Venice canals. Walking along these walk streets is like strolling down an English country lane.

Although it is less than a half mile from the Venice canals, it requires an intricate, seemingly random walk to get there. To avoid getting lost, which wouldn’t be so bad since you would no doubt discover other interesting neighborhoods, just follow these directions.

1. Turn left on Ocean Avenue,
2. Walk one short block to Venice Boulevard,
3. Turn right and walk east along Venice for a couple of blocks to Abbott Kinney Boulevard (AKB).
4. Cross AKB, then turn left and cross Venice Boulevard
5. Walk along AKB for a couple of blocks. Take your time, note the restaurants, galleries, stores, etc.
6. Make a right on Palms Boulevard, walk a short distance on the right hand side of the street to Electric Avenue
7. Cross Electric Avenue, walk a few more yards, then start looking for the narrow pathway through the bushes and trees on your right.

This is Crescent Place, the portal to the inland walk streets. Tall trees and bamboo and overgrown ivy and bushes line the path on both sides and arch overhead. Turning down this path is like entering a wormhole into another universe, or falling into a rabbit hole like Alice on her way to wonderland. Follow Crescent until it ends one block later at Shell Avenue. Shell is marked by a landscaped traffic circle, but with little if any traffic, it is more like an urban park than a traffic circle. Turn right and follow Shell for a block or so until you see the beginning of another walk street, Marco Place, on your left.

This is when things really get magical. Marco, like all of the walk streets, is little more than a sidewalk lined on both sides by houses as architecturally diverse as those on the canals with striking, often whimsical gardens in front. Walk for two blocks until you get to Linden Avenue, make a left, cross Superba Avenue -- a real street, with cars -- then make a left when you get to the next walk street, Nowita Place. From this point on, you are heading back down two more blocks of walk streets to the no-traffic circle at Shell, then to Crescent Place, Palms Boulevard and eventually to Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

THE REST
Turn right and walk down AKB, checking out what are arguably the hippest galleries, restaurants, bars, cafes, and stores in Los Angeles. Walking up and down this street is a constant stream of young men and women tweeting on their Blackberries and IPhones.

After you have had your fill, turn west on Westminster Avenue and walk about three blocks to the boardwalk for the sunset (or walk another block on AKB and turn west on Brooks). If its Friday or Saturday, go to the roof-top lounge of the Hotel Erwin in the heart of Venice (1697 Pacific Avenue, one block from the beach, just south of Windward), appropriately named “High.” Here, you can have a pricey cocktail and observe the mating rituals of twenty and thirty somethings. In the ultimate triumph of hormones over aesthetic appreciation, they seem more interested in each other than the view.

I have been all over the world but this is still one of the most spectacular and memorable views I have ever seen – 80 feet above the madness of the Venice Boardwalk at the height of its insanity in the late afternoon on a clear, warm, weekend day. There may be better views, in more exotic locales. But I doubt that anywhere else in the world has as rich a stew of people, architecture and scenery that can be sampled so easily and leisurely as the one in Venice Beach.

Dental Tourism: Getting Drilled in Bangkok

2010-02-22T10:22:00.000-08:00

It’s Colts 13, Houston 0 as the half winds down. My wife and I are watching Peyton Manning lead the Colts to yet another NFL victory on a big flat screen TV. Nothing strange about this, except its Wednesday afternoon and we are sitting in the lobby of the Dental Hospital in the heart of one of the poshest districts in Bangkok. Like many other cash-strapped seniors, we are dipping our toes into the wave of the future with our first adventure in medical/dental tourism.

This is not my first dental experience in Thailand. In the late 1990s, on a flight to Thailand for a business trip, I cracked a temporary bridge eating some nuts. It didn’t hurt and wasn’t much of a problem at first, but as I talked and chewed, the sharp edge of the broken bridge jabbed into my tongue. The easy solution – don’t eat or talk for two weeks -- was not an option, so the first thing I did upon landing in Chiang Mai was to ask my colleague who met me at the airport to recommend a dentist.

The dentist office did not look promising. It was dark and dinghy with equipment I hadn’t seen in years. The possibility of pain was the least of my worries, though. It was at the height of concern about the spread of AIDS throughout SE Asia, and I wasn’t at all sure that I wouldn’t get the disease from this hapless dental adventure. My heart started pounding and I broke out into a sweat. “Should I leave and risk looking like a wimp and insulting my colleague,” I asked myself, “or should I stay and risk pain and death?” The risk of embarrassment won out over the risk of pain and death, as it usually does for me.

As the dentist lowered my chair to get a better look, I gulped, or at least the closest thing to a gulp given the wad of cotton in my mouth. I caught a glimpse of my colleague in the waiting room smiling and waving to me as if I had nothing to fear. In just a few seconds I realized that he was right.

She was the most careful, cautious and gentle dentist to ever thrust hands into my mouth. I barely felt a thing as she filed down the sharp edge. It was all over in just a few minutes. She charged me five dollars for her work.

On a more recent trip to Thailand a few years ago, just as dental and medical tourism in the country were beginning to take off, another colleague explained to me how the Thais were able to develop such high level competence in dentistry and medical surgery. “When Thai women catch their husbands cheating on them,” he explained, “they cut off their penises while they are sleeping.” As a result, Thai doctors had a lot of practice reattaching the “offending member” and, in the process, developed world-class skills in microsurgery, skills that come in handy in gender reassignment, cardiovascular, and complex dental surgery. I don’t know if his explanation is accurate, but it sure got my attention.

This past fall my wife and I, facing looming dental bills, decided to give dental tourism in Thailand a try. Unlike the dental office years ago in Chiang Mai, the Dental Hospital in Bangkok is a gleaming white and chrome three-story building in Sukhumvit, the heart of the international district. Inside is an atrium, the waiting area, with a large man-made pond and a floor to ceiling wall of glass in the rear looking out on lush gardens and Koi ponds behind the building. The overall effect is serene, as serene as one can be while waiting for a dentist.

Most of the people in the lobby were Westerners, ergo the football game. For those not interested in American football, there is fast Wi-Fi access for those who bring their own laptops and a computer work station for those who don’t. This facility is clearly devoted to affluent Thais and tourists from the US, Europe, Middle East and elsewhere in Asia.

Katherine is the guinea pig for this experiment since her dentist in the States told her a few weeks earlier that she had two cracked fillings and needed to replace them with expensive crowns. After waiting for a few minutes in the atrium, she was ushered into an office where a dentist checked the X-rays, looked into her mouth and recommended, in excellent English, replacing the fillings instead. A second opinion, from another dentist across the atrium, was the same.

Over the next couple of weeks, Katherine returned three times to replace the two fillings in question and fill seven other cavities. The fillings were done so painlessly that Katherine – a serious dental chicken – only needed Novacaine twice. She claims that it was the easiest, most comfortable, and pain and anxiety free dental work she has ever had. The total bill came to about a third of what it would have cost in Los Angeles and a tenth of the cost of the work recommended by her dentist in LA. Six weeks later, the fillings are still intact and trouble free.

The overall experience exceeded even our most optimistic hopes. Everyone on the staff – dentists, receptionists, technicians and others -- spoke excellent English and was professional, attentive, and meticulous. The dentists were gentle and reassuring and seemed to be sensitive to the kinds of concerns that wary Westerners might have, like the concerns I had years ago in Chiang Mai. We appreciated the efficiency of the inclusive team-oriented approach, with all services from general dentistry to complicated implants, all available under one, gleaming roof.

To make sure that our experience was not the exception, we spoke to a Western couple we met in the waiting area. They told us that they live in Hong Kong but travel to Bangkok at least once a year for medical and dental procedures and exams and are very satisfied at the results, and especially the cost.

The overall experience was so positive that we almost look forward to doing it again next year. Hard to believe we are actually talking about going to the dentist….

Mahout Training in Northern Thailand

2010-02-22T08:37:00.000-08:00

My wife, Katherine, likes large mammals – gorillas, bears, whales, hippos, even me. That is why I am sitting on a very large elephant, riding bareback, at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center (TECC; http://www.changthai.com/) about 20 miles outside of Lampang in northern Thailand. We are here for three days of mahout training, an introduction to the basics of elephant care and handling.

The TECC is one of several centers located throughout Thailand dedicated to protecting this revered national symbol. For centuries, elephants were used to log teak forests, transport goods through the mountains, and perform any task that required serious muscle. Since logging was banned in 1989 to protect Thailand’s forests, these magnificent beasts have been put out to pasture, literally and figuratively. Many have been exploited in tacky tourist shows; others by their desperate mahouts who bring them to the big city to cadge a few baht from tourists who feed them bananas and take photos. Even more tragic are the hundreds, maybe thousands, that have been poached – murdered – for the ivory in their tusks.

The elephant preserves, like TECC, help save Thailand’s elephants by providing a financial incentive to the local communities to protect rather than poach the animals. The centers also educate tourists and school children about the role of the elephant in Thai history and provide them with medical care and treatment. The main attraction at most of the preserves are the elephant shows which showcase traditional skills such as moving, hauling and lifting logs, and responding to the commands of their mahouts, as well as more gimmicky tricks like painting pictures and playing xylophones.

MY OWN PERSONAL ELEPHANT
The center also offers 1-3 day courses in mahout training, the reason we are here. We are signed up for the three day course, along with three others. Our group of five ranges in age from 30s to the mid 60s and represent three different countries.

Just a few minutes after our 8:30 am arrival at the Center, we are wearing our blue mahout suits (with pants big enough for both my elephant and me) and trying to memorize the basic commands, in Thai, from a one page cheat sheet. Before I have barely mastered what I consider to be the most important command, “how” for “stop,” we are each introduced to our very own elephants and mahouts.

Mine is huge (the elephant, not the mahout). Won, my mahout, barks a command, and Poomphwoum (or something like that) bends her front leg back towards me. Won motions for me to step on her leg and pull myself up by holding an ear in one hand and a roll of skin in the other. Somehow, with absolutely no skill and less grace, I manage to get on. Before I can even process the idea that I am actually sitting on an elephant 8-10 feet off the ground, Won starts running through the basic commands and I practice getting on and off.

It’s a bit scary at first sitting on top of this behemoth bareback with nothing to hold on to. I balance myself with the palms of my hands resting on the two lumps on the back of her head. It is my only means of support and seemingly all that keeps me from falling off.

Soon, too soon, we are riding our elephants in single file to the lake a hundred or so yards away. The elephants ease into the lake just as a tour bus pulls up. With the tourists’ cameras clicking away, the elephants dunk themselves -- and therefore us -- for the first of several times over the next two and half days. After the initial shock of being up to our shoulders in muddy, but thankfully, warm water and realizing that we won’t drown, we laugh and frolic as our elephants dip, rise, and spray us with their trunks. With instructions from our mahouts, we make our first clumsy attempt to wash our elephants.

Then it’s back to the open air amphitheater for the show. Instead of watching the show, we soon realize that we are still part of it. We ride into the amphitheater waving triumphantly to the amazed audience. After a few minutes of demonstrating how to get on and off, we are finally off duty for a few minutes as the real mahouts lead the elephants through their paces for the rest of the show.

Following the show, we check into our rustic bungalows at the adjoining Chiang Thai resort on a lush, green, jungle-covered hillside, change out of our wet mahout suits, and have lunch. After a brief rest, we return to our elephants and ride them deep into the jungle. It is an amazing way to experience the jungle – a quiet, swaying ride on the back of a huge animal, at “chirp” level, to use Katherine’s words, an animal that is as intrinsic to the setting as the trees and brush.

We ride for about two hours, get another dunking in a lake, then leave our elephants behind, tethered in place with a very long chain, and walk back on the trail for a ride to our bungalows. The image of “my” elephant as I look back, feeding in a field with the jungle as background, is unforgettable.

The Center’s staff cooks us an excellent Thai dinner featuring lots of fresh vegetables and tall bottles of Thai beer. The air is cool and there are few mosquitos. As we get ready for bed, Katherine pretty much sums up the day -- “There is nothing as thrilling as riding your own elephant through the jungle. Temples are great but this gets my heart pounding.” For the first time since we arrived in Asia three weeks ago, we don’t hear a thing as we fall asleep except for the occasional chirp of a bird or insect.

RIDING TALL
We return the next day to the jungle and walk up the trail to where Poonphoum waits for us. It’s a strange feeling walking through the jungle, spotting a large elephant ahead of you and heading directly towards it. My instincts say stop, but of course it’s OK. We carry treats – stalks of bamboo – and Poonphoum seems glad to see us, or at least to see Won.

Over the next day and a half as we ride further into the jungle, I begin to feel more steady and comfortable, aside from a sore butt and inner thighs, and am able to appreciate what an extraordinary experience this is. I even begin to feel a little control – just a little – as I shout “bai, bai” (go, go) and nudge her with my knee in the direction I want her to go.

Riding bareback, I can feel the powerful muscles undulate under me. It’s not a fast power, like an overpowered automobile, but a slowly-push-through-anything kind of power. And its live power, driven by muscle and sinew, just like me but orders of magnitude greater. And it’s a power that I know I could not control if she ever got it in her head to ignore me or Won.

As we say goodbye to our elephants and mahouts on the last day, Katherine is moved to tears. So am I. Every one of us has been deeply touched by the experience and by the beauty, intelligence, agility and almost human-like qualities of these extraordinary animals. It’s hard to think of a three ton beast as gentle and lovable, but that is exactly what we feel. We turn often for one last glimpse of our elephants and a final wave to the mahouts who looked after us and put up with our bumbling but earnest attempts to live in their world, if only for a few days.

A Tropical Idyll in the Pacific Northwest: Part I Kayaking the Sunshine Coast

2009-10-13T08:58:00.000-07:00

My two Teva clad feet poked above the water, framing the view of the mouth of the cove opening into the broad channel that wrapped around us. The silhouettes of several tree-covered islands and mountains overlapped in different shades of pastel and receded in the distance across the channel. I was floating on my back in the waters of coastal British Columbia. Not exactly the Caribbean – no palm trees, no rum drinks with paper umbrellas, and the water temperature was more than a tad or two colder. But the water was warm enough for a late afternoon swim, the scenery was more dramatic, and there was no one else to be seen other than my four sea kayaking companions relaxing after a long day of paddling in the warm bright sunshine of the aptly named Sunshine Coast.

The Sunshine Coast is just a relatively short drive and an even shorter flight northwest of Vancouver (about 3 hours by car but most of that time is spent on two ferries; about 30 minutes by plane). It’s easily accessible but still feels somewhat remote -- most of the coast above Powell River, the “urban” center of the region, can only be reached by boat or float plane. Like almost all of the BC coast, it is strikingly beautiful -- islands of all sizes covered in Douglas fir, hemlock, cedar and madrone; narrow inlets and fjords indenting the rugged coastline; and jagged snow capped mountains in the distance framing long views across wide sounds. But unlike most of the BC coast, the Sunshine Coast is in the rain shadow of the low mountains of Vancouver Island to the west across the Georgia Strait, so the weather is usually sunny, dry and warm, sometimes very warm. The convergence of two ocean currents, one from the north and the other from the south, also keep the waters warm enough for swimming, especially for the hardy Canadians who frequent the coast and the occasional American, kiwi, and European willing to explore beyond the immediate vicinity of Vancouver.

I was here because it was easily accessible and, therefore, relatively inexpensive, not an unimportant concern in this era of bursting economic bubbles and fiscal uncertainty. The trip that lured me here was the seven day “Into the Majestic Mountains” kayaking trip offered by Powell River Sea Kayak Ltd. (PRSK). There were five of us on this trip, our guide Jaime, Kathy and Tracy, a 50ish couple from the San Francisco Bay area, Tania, a 36 year old woman from New Zealand, and I.

The opportunity to paddle a single kayak was another reason why I chose this trip for my annual kayak adventure. I have taken many sea kayak trips over the years, but have rarely had the chance to paddle a single kayak for any length of time. Most trip operators use doubles because they are more stable, not an unimportant consideration when there are relatively inexperienced kayakers on the trip, as there usually are, or when the waters are rough and cold -- challenging and potentially dangerous conditions for even experienced paddlers. The warm, protected waters of the Sunshine Coast create ideal conditions for relatively inexperienced kayakers to try out single kayaks. The four of us, not including Jaime, rotated among two singles and one double so we all had ample opportunity to paddle the more maneuverable singles and go off on our own – but not too far off – to explore the rocky shores or to spend a few minutes in thoughtful silence.

But don’t let the phrase, “warm protected waters” fool you. This trip was no piece of cake. We paddled 10-16 miles a day, probably closer to the upper reaches of that range on most days. In addition, the steep, rocky beaches presented their own challenges, requiring both agility and muscle to shlep camping equipment, food, and other supplies to and from the kayaks and our campsites which were often back in the trees or high on the beaches, well above the tide line. On many days, the kayaks also had to be hauled up at day’s end, and back down to the water the next morning. So, despite the seductive ease of the weather, it was a fairly demanding trip. We ate well, sometimes very well (see shortly), but I still managed to lose a few pounds.

SEVEN DAYS OF SUNSHINE AND SERENITY

At the top of the Sunshine Coast is Desolation Sound, one of the most popular boating destinations in the world. Despite the name, the Sound is anything but “desolate.” It was named by Capt. George Vancouver, one of the first Europeans to discover the Sound, who had the misfortune to arrive on a damp, foggy, ergo “desolate” day.

This is not a wilderness but a wild area, an area where humans have worked and lived since the earliest years of the First Nations people who first inhabited the region. Signs of humans, past and present, are all over – oyster farms, vacation homes, boats (both power and sail), and logging. This is all part of the historical, cultural and visual fabric of the area. But the wildness of the place is also easy to see in the scenery and in the wildlife -- bald eagles, loons, ducks, seals, orange and purple sea stars, and the occasional porpoise, as well as in the wildlife that we didn’t see but are there, nonetheless -- black bears, grizzlies further up the remote inlets, and cougars, though from what I hear, you don’t see actually the cougars until it’s too late.

We crossed the Sound the first day of the trip and spent most of the second day putting some distance between us and the boat traffic in and around the Sound, especially the big power boats and the yahoos on deck. But with each day that passed, the scenery grew more beautiful and dramatic, and we felt more remote from civilization. By the third day we were into a semblance of wilderness, a wild, scenic, and serene landscape with few signs of civilization other than the occasional boat, vacation house, or distant patch of logged and partially re-grown forest. We set up our tents on a high, mossy rocky point jutting out into the water and went for a swim in the warm shallow waters of the cove below.

Our fourth day was sheer ecstasy. It was a layover day so we didn’t have to pack up camp and had time for a leisurely breakfast of eggs Benedict with smoked salmon made by PSRK’s owner, Adam Vallance, from locally caught wild salmon. The plan for the day was to poke around and explore the nearby islands and channels. It was overcast at first, and the water was like glass. Everything was hushed. It was one of those magic paddles – a couple of hours of muted light and sound as we glided past rocky banks on the lookout for seals poking their heads above the water and eagles diving for fish.

The sun peeked out, then burst out in full as we pulled onto the beach for lunch. This spot was even more magnificent than our camp site. Beyond the small grove of trees behind the oyster- and mussel-strewn beach was a high point almost surrounded by water on all sides. Stretched before us was a vast expanse of water broken up only by islands and mountains in the distance. This is where we ate our lunch, in reverent silence accompanied by the occasional squawk of birds. After lunch we dug for clams and gathered as many of the oysters and mussels as we could carry to the kayaks and paddled leisurely back to camp in time for another swim before dinner.

The next day we paddled to our last destination, Toba Inlet, a long fjord that cuts deep into the coastal mountains which had been only a distant backdrop for our trip until now. It was another great day of paddling, but the highlight was dinner. Jaime, ably assisted by Tania, cooked the oysters, mussels and clams we had gathered the day before. He steamed the oysters and mussels in garlic and butter and chopped up the clams in the veggie chili. I am a big fan of oysters – raw, steamed, pan fried, whatever – and I eat them whenever I can. I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur, so I don’t think that this is just a case of camping-compromised taste -- where everything tastes good, even the freeze dried crap we would never consider eating at home -- when I say these were some of the best oysters I have ever had! Realizing that we were nearing the end of our trip, we spent the rest of the evening sitting on the beach looking silently at the mountains growing dark across the inlet.

The last full day rivaled Day 4 for highlights. The plan was to paddle deep into the inlet, then return to our campsite for our last night. The first highlight was the waterfall only a quarter mile or so from our camp. Everyone had the opportunity to paddle their kayaks under the waterfall for our only shower of the trip. It was cold but the air was warm so it really didn’t matter. Then after a couple of miles of paddling, we rafted all four kayaks together, hooked two corners of a spare rain fly to the two outside kayaks and rigged the other two corners to paddles held vertical on the decks of the outside kayaks. With this improvised sail, we sailed briskly down the inlet. It was a wild ride with Jaime and Tracy holding the paddles upright, me in the stern of the double holding onto the stern of the two kayaks on either side, and Kathy and Tania just holding on.

In what seemed like no time at all we were pulling onto the beach for lunch. It was one of the most beautiful spots of the trip, except for the logging in full operation a quarter mile away on either side, reminding us yet again of the tradeoff between accessibility and intrusiveness – the easier it is to get to the wild, the less wild it will be.

We didn’t linger long. We ate our lunch, took in the scene with enough tunnel vision to block out the sounds and sights of the logging, then headed back, but only after a few minutes of wrong way white water kayaking up the stream that ran by the beach – i.e., paddling upstream against the current through a small rapids just far enough for a brief thrill. The wind that had been at our backs and filled our sail on the way in, was in our face on the way out. I’m sure I burned more calories heading back than were saved by our brief sail in the other direction, but the thrill of sailing in kayaks down the wild, narrow fjord was well worth the extra work.

The next day, we packed up camp and paddled several miles to our pick up point. After an exciting, 45 minute, high speed ride in a Zodiac, I was soon on my way to the airport for my short flight to the Vancouver airport to meet my wife for a long weekend in what is one of the most beautiful and cosmopolitan cities in North America, perhaps the world. I felt as relaxed as I had felt in months and fitter than I had been all year. I was also as tan as a South American tourist on Venice Beach and as slim as I ever get. Within just a few minutes of landing we were off to one of the many outstanding Chinese restaurants that can be found in this glorious city in a successful attempt to regain some of the weight I had lost during the trip. There is a lot to be said for accessibility, other than its easy to get to.

FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information on the kayak trip and the trip operator, Powell River Sea Kayak (PRSK), go to www.bcseakayak.com. Besides their home made smoked salmon, bread, energy bars and other goodies, PRSK also features top of the line equipment including new, high-end fiberglass touring kayaks.

I stayed at the Cedar Lodge B&B (www.cedarlodgebb.ca) the night before the trip. It is an attractive, affordable, quiet place to stay that is only short drive to the offices of Powell River Sea Kayak, where the trip begins (the friendly owners, Mary and Andy, will drive you there if you don’t have a car), and a 10 minute walk to an excellent gourmet restaurant, the Laughing Oyster (http://www.laughingoyster.ca/).

Vancouver has some of the best, most authentic Chinese restaurants to be found outside of Asia. My personal favorite is Sun Sui Wah Seafood (www.sunsuiwah.com). At the other end of the elegance/cost (but not quality) scale is Sha-Lin Noodle House for fresh, hand cut noodles made right before your eyes. Great entertainment, great food. They don’t have a website but they are easy to Google.

A Tropical Idyll in the Pacific Northwest: Part II Hiking and Backpacking on the Olympic Peninsula

2009-10-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

The sun is shining as I pass the town of Sequim (pronounced “Squim” like some kind of squishy, low tide cephalopod) on Washington’s State’s Olympic Peninsula (OP). I am on my way to Olympic National Park, one of “America’s Ultimate Parks,” according to National Geographic Adventure magazine.

Times are tough and money is short, so that is why I vacationed this year on the Olympic Peninsula, home to one of the most diverse and accessible wilderness areas in the United States and one of my favorite destinations in North America. In my opinion the Olympic Peninsula, especially Olympic National Park, offers the best value for the money -- variety, solitude, beautiful scenery, and easy and inexpensive to get to and enjoy once you are there. It is just an hour or so drive and a 30 minute ferry ride from Seattle, and its varied attractions -- a rugged coastline, empty beaches, glacier-capped mountains, alpine meadows, pristine lakes, and thick rain forests – are a relatively short drive from one another.

There is another reason I am here, to see if this 67 year old itinerant adventurer could still haul a fully loaded backpack into the wilderness and survive a few days on my own. From my mid 30s to my mid 50s, I used to do solo back packing trips almost every year, several of them on the OP. It was always a deeply satisfying experience – a meditative, reflective, man-alone-with nature, listening-to-your-inner-voice, getting-in-touch-with-your-primal-self, city-boy-alone-in-the-wild kind of thing. I loved it.

I stopped backpacking altogether, solo or with company, about a dozen years ago as my knees and back started to give me trouble and the goop collecting in my arteries began to remind me of my mortality. But I’ve missed it. So, after getting the go ahead from my cardiologist and my knee surgeon, I decided to give it another try, to see if I could recreate those seminal experiences of my earlier years on the relatively flat, low altitude trails of Olympic National Park.

Before heading off into the wilderness with my overloaded pack, I did a couple of practice hikes first, one on Dungeness Spit, a 6.5 mile narrow stretch of sand poking into the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, and the other to Klahhane Ridge, a 3.7 mile hike from the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center in the heart of the Park. These two hikes illustrate the accessible but diverse attractions of the Olympic Peninsula – a flat walk along a narrow beach and, just a short 18 mile drive away, a hike up a rugged switchback trail at over 5000 feet.

THIRD BEACH: DAY 1

For the first of my two back packing trips, I planned an easy three day, two night hike into one of the rugged, relatively remote wilderness beaches that run almost continuously along Washington’s Pacific coast. I chose Third Beach, about a two hour drive from Hurricane Ridge. It was an easy hike in, only 1.4 gently sloping miles through a thick, green forest down to the beach and only a little bit further to the more secluded section at the far end. This was, indeed, backpacking for geezers.

At the trail head, I hefted my pack with nervous anticipation. Would it live up to my expectations? Will I get eaten by a black bear? Will I collapse from the effort?

The latter was of particular concern since the pack weighed at least 50 pounds. In my younger days, weight was not an issue. I just packed what I wanted and figured that I could handle it. It soon became clear that those days are long gone. Although I’m in pretty good shape, my body just doesn’t respond the way it used to. The hike wasn’t a struggle, but it sure was uncomfortable.

It all seemed worthwhile when I reached the beach. Third Beach is about a half mile long, bracketed by a rocky headland at each end. All of the campers on the beach were clustered around the stream at the beginning of the beach, the only source of fresh water. The rest of the beach was deserted, except for a beachcomber or two or the occasional backpacker heading to or from the even more remote beaches to the south which are only accessible via a steep rope ladder over the headland at the end of the beach.

I found a great campsite on a level bench of sand, several feet above the high tide line. The edge of the forest was just a couple of yards behind, and the waves crashed just a few yards in front. Big driftwood logs served as my “furniture” – an easy chair to lean back in, a counter top for my stove, and branches and roots to hang my sweaty clothes. I could see a virtual rock garden of sea stacks jutting out of the water off shore in the distance just past the first headland. I had the beach pretty much to myself.

After I finished setting up camp, I took off my boots and it wasn’t long before I dozed off in the warm sun. When I awoke a few minutes later, I began to feel feral, that state of being that defines the wilderness experience -- a bit funky, but in a good way, and a shift in focus from the obsessive internal buzz of the work-a-day world to the immediate tasks of keeping track of my gear and avoiding the annoying bites of mosquitos and the possibility of the more significant bites of hungry bears.

THIRD BEACH: DAYS 2 AND 3

The next day was pure ecstacy – sunny and warm with enough ocean breeze to keep me reasonably comfortable. I packed a lunch, a bottle of water and a shirt and headed to the rope ladder at the end of the beach. To get to the next beach and beyond requires hiking across the headland at the end of the beach. Trying to walk around it at beach level is hazardous, even at low tide, requiring climbing over a jumble of very large rocks while dodging the large waves crashing all around. So like everyone else with any sense, I worked my way up the rope ladder like a commando – about 50 feet up at approximately a 60 degree angle -- to the top of the bluff overlooking the beach.

It was so much fun, I did it twice. It would have been a different story with a 50 pound pack – very strenuous, a bit scary, and somewhat risky. I watched several backpackers go up and down the rope ladder with varying degrees of difficulty, but most were significantly younger and carrying lighter packs. I was glad that I decided to camp on Third Beach and do this as a day trip rather than try to backpack into the more remote beaches on the other side of the headland.

The 1.2 mile trail across the headland took me through a cool and silent rain forest dappled with sun light filtering through the thick canopy overhead. The muffled thunder of the distant surf was the only sound I heard other than the thud of my boots on the soft, mossy ground, the clink of my hiking poles against the rocks, and the rhythmic sigh of my breath. The trail ended at another rope ladder which took me down to a beach looking out onto a rocky bay filled with the same needle-like sea stacks, some topped with trees, that I could see from my camp site.

I spent the next several hours exploring this wonderland. I poked around in the tidepools, gazed over the crashing surf at the sea stacks, and climbed up another bluff and hiked across the headland to the next beach. I ate lunch and watched the tide come in, then headed for the rope ladder to return to Third Beach. The hike back across the headland was so quiet that I whistled a good chunk of the Thelonious Monk songbook – even more atonally than he intended -- to scare off any black bears hiding in the forest. I hoped they weren’t jazz fans.

I was back at my campsite by mid afternoon. After a short nap in my tent to get out the increasingly hot sun, I leaned back on my “sofa” and alternated between napping, reading and, liberated from the need for conversation, listening to my increasingly languid inner voice. After a while, I even stopped that and just watched a family of deer wander out of the woods onto the beach a few yards away and the fog wrap around the distant sea stacks. It’s for moments like this that I haven’t yet given up on this solitary exercise.

The hike out the next day was easier than the way in, even though it was now slightly uphill. My pack was lighter – no food and less water – but I am convinced that I was just getting used to carrying the weight. The next trip would be the real test -- a four night, 38 mile round trip hike along the Hoh River through the rain forest, up to a 4300 foot-high ridge overlooking the Blue Glacier at the foot of Mt. Olympus, the tallest mountain on the Peninsula at 7980 feet. But first I had to find an air-conditioned motel room. It was getting hot, really hot.

THE HOH RAIN FOREST

I listened anxiously as the weatherman on the morning TV news show predicted record breaking heat in Seattle, 103 degrees F, shattering the all time record for the “rainy” city. The forecast for Forks where I had spent the night was not much better. “Oh well,” I thought, “it should be cooler in the rain forest.” Wrong! When I checked in at the ranger station, I listened carefully as the ranger warned the backpackers in front of me about the heat, a predicted 105 degrees in the sun and 95 in the shade!

She seemed especially concerned when I stepped up to the counter. Maybe it was because I was the oldest person in line (how could she tell?), or maybe it was because I was the only person in line who wasn’t as thin as a wisp. My water filter gave me some trouble on the last trip, so I started to worry that I might not be able to pump enough water to avoid a potentially lethal case of dehydration or heat exhaustion. I did this trip many years before and remembered it fondly. Five days surrounded by the lush green cathedral of the rain forest was as close to eco-heaven as I’ve ever been. But the intense heat on this day washed out the metaphorical color from the trip and made me realize that, even if I wasn’t putting myself in danger, I probably wouldn’t have much fun.

I decided to bail on the back packing trip and went for a nine mile up-and-back day hike instead. That relatively easy hike convinced me that I had made the right decision. With more than a mile left in the hike, I was exhausted and had drained a full Camelback and a 1.5 liter bottle of water.

I headed back to the hellish heat of Seattle. After a sleepless night in my friend’s spare bedroom (no air conditioning), I found a cheap one way air fare home and returned in time for the heat wave that helped spark the largest fire in the history of Los Angeles County.

EPILOG

Despite the heat and my cancelled trip, I still had a great time. Those three days on the beach made me realize that I wasn’t quite ready to give up on solo backpacking. But it also made me realize that if I wanted to continue I would have to go ultra light, or at least figure out a way to trim a minimum of 15-20 pounds from my pack. The problem is I am not sure that at my age, it is worth the expense of replacing my present gear with light weight versions. How many years would I get out of the investment? Should I spend $1000-2000 just to squeeze out a few more back packing trips before I have to throw in the towel and make the full transition to geezer hood?

Maybe I need to try this again and take another shot at the hike in the Hoh rain forest. Maybe next year…..

OTHER PLACES TO GO ON OR NEAR THE OLYMPIC PENINSULA

Point Flattery is the rugged wind and wave battered northwest corner of the State and of the “lower 48.” It is just a short (half mile) scenic walk from the end of the road. Port Angeles is the jumping off point for almost all of the OP and has a certain rough hewn historical appeal of its own. You can also catch the ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island across the strait to spend the day soaking up the English influence, looking at the flowers in the world famous Butchart Gardens, or walking or riding a bike along sea wall. Quaint, somewhat touristy, but still charming Port Townsend is also worth a stop to check out the Victorian architecture as well as the art galleries, antique stores, fine dining, and the live music. For something different check out Crescent Lake, Sol Duc Hot Springs, and a couple of ferry rides away, the San Juan Islands. Their attractions are apparent from their names. There are also numerous other beaches and rain forests to explore.

Riding the Hulahula to the Arctic Ocean

2009-08-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

Condensation of a chapter in

“Riding the Hulahula to the Arctic Ocean:
A Guide to 50 Extraordinary Adventures for the Seasoned Traveler”
(Mankin and Stowell, National Geographic Books, 2008)

My doctor’s words were like a punch in the stomach. “Don, I think its time we looked into this,” he said while looking at the results of my latest blood test. I was leaving in a couple of weeks for my latest “trip of a lifetime” and did not want to hear about anything that might get in the way. I had been dreaming of this trip for years – an 11 day raft trip starting near the headwaters of the Hulahula River deep in the Brooks Range in northern Alaska, running through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and ending on a mere sliver of an island a mile or so off the coast in the portion of the Arctic Ocean known as the Beaufort Sea (the river was named by a crew of homesick Hawaiian whalers trapped in the ice near the mouth of the river in the late 19th century).

The doctor scheduled me for some further tests. The problem was, besides the potentially life threatening implications of the results, there was no way I would get the results back before leaving for my trip. He assured me that there was no reason I couldn’t go on the trip. The worst case scenario would be serious but not imminent, and there was little that could happen on the trip that would make the situation worse. Being a true obsessive, and a hypochondriac to boot, I couldn’t imagine enjoying the trip with the test results hanging over my head until my return, but my doctor and, most important, my wife prevailed. Several days later I left for my trip as originally planned.

Flying Into the Alaskan Bush
Like most Alaskan adventures, the fun began with the flight into the bush. After an hour long flight to Arctic Village, a Native American settlement at the southern edge of ANWR, we were ferried in groups of three to our put in point in a small plane specially designed to land and take off in places too confined for more conventional aircraft. I would soon see why this was so important.

Our pilot was the prototypical Alaskan bush pilot – rangy, weathered, and nonchalant. I had the good fortune to get the front passenger’s seat with a view to die for. From the looks of the plane and the terrain, I wasn’t all that sure that I wouldn’t have to pay that price. Snaking through the mountain passes and river valleys at low altitude, it sometimes seemed as if our wings almost brushed the tundra covered slopes. The pilot would occasionally swoop even closer to the ground to give us a better view of musk oxen, moose, or grizzly bears just below.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better or more breathtaking, the pilot pointed out a small gravel beach beside the river a mile or so ahead. “That’s where we’re landing,” he calmly noted. It was a very short and uneven stretch of beach, hardly what I would call a landing strip. I gulped and replied, “I’m impressed.” He smiled, “Don’t be, not yet. Wait to see if we make it.” I assumed he was kidding. Whether or not he was, he slowed the plane to what seemed like an aeronautical version of a crawl, hovered for a second or two before plopping down on the gravel, and came to a stop in just a few bumpy feet. It was probably the strangest airplane landing I have ever experienced.

Adapting to a Unique Environment
After we set up camp for the night, it was time for our orientation to life in the Arctic – high rubber boots for walking on the spongy, mossy, marshy tundra; individual canisters of bear spray, also for walking on the tundra; and the ubiquitous shovel and ditty bag of toilet paper for….well, you get the picture. David, the lead guide from Arctic Wild, our tour operator (http://www.arcticwild.com/), also showed us the shotgun that he would always have at the ready, just in case, and instructed us to be sure to talk, sing and otherwise make noise whenever we wandered off for a walk or to take care of “business.” Although the terrain was pretty open – bluffs, rolling hills, and stream beds – there were depressions and obstructed views that could hide a bear. The key was to avoid them when you can see them, and to make sure that you do not surprise them when you can’t.

While our guides made dinner, we explored our surroundings, slogging up and down hills with the spray canisters grasped firmly in our hands, constantly scanning ahead for bears. We also had to keep our eyes on the ground just ahead. Much of it was made up of tussocks of moss, lichen and tiny yellow, white and purple flowers. In between the tussocks were boggy depressions a foot or so deep. It was tricky going. Miss a step and twist an ankle, or worse. There were also low woody shrubs, mats of tightly clumped plants, lots of rocks, and tufts of grass but no trees or bushes. The views from the many bluffs, ridges and rises up and down the river valley were stunning – snowcapped peaks flanked the meandering river, its wide ice-crusted banks sparkling in the rays of an evening sun hanging low in the sky. The sun, which never set through the entire trip, cast long shadows and brought out the varied hues of green that make up much of the color palette of the Far North.

Getting Into the Flow of the Trip: In the Mountains
For the next two days, we drifted and paddled down the river, past huge banks of ice still remaining in the long, first few days of the Arctic summer. Mountains lined the river on both sides and waterfalls cascaded down to meet us. I thought of little else but maintaining a steady paddle stroke and the beauty that surrounded me.

In camp and on the river we saw lots of wildlife – arctic birds, musk oxen, sheep, the occasional caribou and moose, and several grizzlies, usually and thankfully from a distance. One evening a wolf almost wandered through our camp until he (she?) noticed the strange creatures in colorful GoreTex gear emitting unfamiliar chattering noises.

At the end of the third day we set up camp on a high bluff near a bend of the river. The views from this spot were particularly impressive. Looking up the river from where we had come, the view of the river, valley and mountains was expansive. We had several hours of free time before dinner, so after setting up my tent, I took off on a short hike along a ridge overlooking our camp.
Standing on the ridge surveying the Arctic landscape that stretched before me in the extended dusk of the midnight sun, I started to think about the still unknown medical test results awaiting my return. Curiously, I did not seem to care. I was aware of the potentially life changing news waiting for me at home, but I was thoroughly immersed in the here and now. I knew that I would eventually have to deal with that other reality, but all that mattered at that particular time and in that particular place was the awesome beauty surrounding me….and the very large grizzly bear traversing the ridge across the river!

For the rest of the trip, thoughts about the test results would occasionally pass through my mind, but they would quickly be pushed aside by more immediate concerns – keeping warm and dry and out of the clutches of wolves, grizzlies, and moose – and the unmatched majesty and solitude of that very special place.

Through the Foothills, Down to the Coastal Plain
Over the course of our 11 day trip, the scenery changed dramatically. After about three days floating through a broad, relatively level river valley, we hit a patch of faster, more turbulent water as the river dropped through a narrow canyon in the foothills before spilling out onto the coastal plain. The set of rapids in this canyon were rated an adrenaline-pumping Class IV and looked and felt every bit of it. It was quite a ride paddling in the front where I was. Just as I was about to celebrate our successful run through the hardest part of the rapids, I was slapped in the face by a standing wave. It barely dampened my enthusiasm, but did a pretty good job on my clothes.

Soon the river took us through the foothills and down onto the wide open coastal plain. In the coastal plain the Hulahula turns into a very different kind of river – wider, slower, and very shallow, so shallow that we sometimes had to get out and guide the raft as it bumped along the bottom. The scenery here is quite different than it is in the mountains. To the east and west, the views went on forever and to the north, a misty haze hung over the pack ice a few miles off in the Arctic Ocean. To the south, the mountains and deeply carved valleys of the Brooks Range, where we had been just a day or two before, frame the unbroken expanse of the plain. I have rarely felt so insignificant and small, nor so exhilarated by such dramatic, untouched beauty.

The wildlife viewing was also exceptional. The trip was scheduled to overlap with the annual migration of the Porcupine Caribou herd from Canada to their calving grounds on the coastal plain of the refuge. In good years, thousands of caribou would be scattered over the tundra as far as the eye could see. This year, a heavy snow fall late in the year had trapped most of the caribou herd in Canada, so we saw fewer of them, and therefore, fewer grizzlies than usual. Nonetheless, we did see more caribou than I have ever seen before plus musk oxen, arctic birds, and enough bears, including one very close encounter, to keep us on our toes and the shotgun and bear spray canisters close at hand.

As we neared the coast, we entered the river delta and the river broke up into a series of very shallow braided channels. Not all of the channels reached the sea, and picking the wrong one meant carrying the rafts and all of our equipment for a half a mile or more over soggy ground. Fortunately, we only had to portage once, but that was more than enough.

To the End of the Continent and Beyond
Our trip ended on a small island, little more than a gravel bar, about a mile off the coast in the Beaufort Sea. It was as close to the end of the world as I had ever been. After a short paddle down the last channel of the river, we poked our way into the sea. From the edge of the continent to the island, the water is only a few inches deep. We could have walked most of the way without getting our knees wet. The water was too shallow to paddle, so we pushed the raft along by digging our paddles into the sand on the bottom. The guides often had to get out of the rafts and pull them through especially shallow sections.

The view from the island south, back in the direction from which we came, was incredible, with the Brooks Range framing the horizon as far as the eye could see. But just as incredible was the view in the other direction from the north side of the island. Just a couple of feet offshore was the edge of the polar ice pack, which stretched into the distance until it met the sky. That is where we spent the last few hours of our trip, walking on the pack ice, as far out as we dared, keeping our eyes open for seals sunning on the ice or most important, a polar bear looking for his next meal. In fact, we spent the summer solstice walking on the ice casting long shadows in the midnight sun. This was the high point of a trip that was filled with high points, a fitting end to a long-delayed adventure that I almost did not take.

Oh yes, about those test results. They were negative!

A Life Transformed on the Back Roads of Cambodia

2009-08-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

first in series of profiles of people whose lives have been transformed by adventure travel

Less than five years ago, Daniela Papi, age 30, was teaching English in Japan, the latest in a string of jobs ranging from management consultant to ski instructor in her ongoing search for a meaningful career after graduating college in 2000. Today, she is the founder and Executive Director of the PEPY Ride, one of the most highly regarded volunteer adventure tourism organizations in the world.

The PEPY Ride is an annual bike ride across Cambodia to raise awareness and funds for improving rural education and supporting a wide range of educational projects throughout the country. The letters of the name stand for "Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself," reflecting the organization’s basic ethos that “by making small changes in our lives and continually striving to educate ourselves and those around us, collectively we can truly make a difference.” PEPY's mission is “to aid rural communities in improving their own standards of living, with a focus on increased access to quality education.”

Since the first PEPY Ride which raised enough money to fund the construction of a school in rural Chanleas Dai, Cambodia in 2005, the PEPY Ride has grown dramatically. This nonprofit organization, in conjunction with PEPY Tours, the for-profit adventure tourism company spun off in 2007 to help cover operating expenses for the non-profit, has generated over $1 million for education, health, and environmental programs in Cambodia in less than four years. Through the schools the organization has built and the education initiatives it has undertaken, PEPY is currently supporting education for over 1,700 families in 12 villages and 10 schools in rural Siem Reap, the nearest town to the world famous Khmer ruins at Angkor Wat. In addition, many clients have been inspired by their experience and gone on to pursue related activities of their own – e.g., several are graduate students doing research on Cambodia and others are working with non-profits and NGOs to support education in other developing countries.

How did Daniela get here, from an impromptu career path as management consultant/ski instructor/English teacher to mover and shaker in sustainable tourism and education in the developing world? It all started with that first cycle trip across Cambodia in 2005. Daniela and her five friends, most of whom were also English teachers in Japan, first viewed the trip as a fun adventure, a welcome respite from the hectic pace of urban life in Japan. Then they thought about using the trip as a one-off fundraiser and found an organization on-line that was raising money to build a school in the country side around Siem Reap. They created a website to solicit the required $16,000 in sponsorships from their family, friends and colleagues, and by the time they had left on the trip, they had over $100,000 in commitments. Many of those who pledged funds also wanted to go along on the ride, but Daniela and her friends had to turn them away. This, however, planted the seed of the idea that eventually grew into the PEPY Ride.

The six friends rode for five weeks along the red, dusty back roads of rural Cambodia from the Thai border to Vietnam staying local guest houses as they traveled from village to village. Their first stop was the school that was the focus for their fund raising efforts. They also visited other schools and orphanages along the way, often serving as guest instructors teaching lessons about the environment, sustainability, and the wide world that the students could only glimpse via their village’s TV.

It was not an easy trip. They pedaled up to 50 miles a day, the roads were rough and the accommodations were often rougher. They often ended up in places rarely, if ever, visited by foreigners. The strange environment, unfamiliar culture, and most of all, the heat, humidity and especially the bugs made for a physically and mentally challenging trip. Daniela often felt way out of her comfort zone. But the rewards were great. As they sat around in the evenings, making up games, sharing their thoughts about the day, and talking about their lives, their aspirations, what they were learning about themselves and how the trip was changing them, she grew closer to her friends, bonding in a way that she never thought possible.

The physical activity cleared their minds and the well-earned soreness and fatigue lowered their defenses and opened them up to connect with each other and with the people they met along the way. The intimacy of the conditions and the opportunity to experience the environment and the people on their own terms, not from the safe but distant remove of a tour bus, luxury accommodations and guided activities seemed to feed the intimacy of their relationships with each other.

Just as significant was the daily excitement of learning about another culture and most of all, seeing the impact of their fund raising and teaching on the Cambodian children in the school they helped build and in the other schools they visited. The tragic history of Cambodia had almost wiped out an entire generation, so most of the children they met were the first in their families to go to school. Many even took their lessons home to teach their parents. Everyone, kids and adults, recognized that education was essential for their future and the future of their country and were ready to embrace any promising educational opportunity that came along. “It is great time to be alive in Cambodia,” Daniela notes, a place when it wasn’t long ago that people could not take being alive for granted. “People are working hard to change their lives and their country so that it is a better place for their children.”

The problem is that educational opportunities are scarce in the rural areas, so Daniela saw an opportunity to make a difference by sharing the experience with others – the excitement of meeting new people, seeing a new place, experiencing a different culture, of learning more every day, and most of all, helping bring educational opportunities to the children of Cambodia. Daniela realized that there was so much more that she could do and that whatever she did could have a profound impact on the children and possibly even the country. She decided to do the trip again, then again and do it better each time. From that, PEPY was born.

This fateful trip in 2005 transformed Daniela’s life as well as the lives of the many children of Cambodia who are touched by PEPY’s programs and trips. She now has focus, motivation and a fulfilling career. In her words, “this is something I really care about.… It’s what makes my heart beat faster… “I never worked hard like this for anything, but now I am doing something that I believe in, and I want it to succeed so much that I am willing to put in the time to learn and improve to make sure that it does.” This is one of the best examples of the transformative power of adventure travel and demonstrates how it can change our lives, our work, and perhaps even the world.

For more information on PEPY, go to http://www.pepyride.org/ and http://www.pepytours.com/.