Monsoon Weather Balloon

From Tulum we took a bus to Valladolid, and though the ancient Mayans were not manipulators of the wheel for the purpose of transport, Bob and I favored the convenience of such means to the authenticity of the long walk.  Once in Valladolid, however, we quite enjoyed a slow stroll through it’s quaint pastel corridors, and sitting on park benches in the shade of large laurel trees which lined the plaza at the center of town, listening to the rustle of breeze through the tree leaves, and the somehow charming machine gun drum practice from the school band, though more than occasionally off-beat like a chorus of drunk officers at the firing range.  

From Valladolid, we were within shooting distance of the famed ruins at Chichen Itza, and it’s grand central temple, El Castillo, which, tragically, can no longer be ascended thanks to too many tourists taking the initiative of sacrificing themselves upon the steep stone steps through cumbrous feats of imbalance and asymmetry (somehow I think the Mayan priests would have been okay with this).  We arrived at Chichen Itza early, before the lines of tour busses had begun to dump their contents, but not before the relentless hawkers of Mayan crafts and novelties, commanding attention with whistles and shouts, and if that didn’t turn our heads, employing a not-so-secret weapon: the call of the jaguar.  By noon, when the site shimmered with midday heat, the narrative from nearby German tour groups was drowned out by the fierce growl and howl of the jaguar, echoing off the ruins from all directions; a ritualistic Mayan cat symphony performed to the Gods of commerce. 

We enjoyed our morning at Chichen Itza, but by mid-afternoon the jaguars had chased us out,  and we were ready to cool down in a ladder-less cenote (see previous post).  The most impressive cenote we’d yet seen was only a few miles from Valladolid, and it afforded the opportunity to jump from a platform eighty feet high.  Even without the threat of nefarious ladders lurking at the bottom, Bob and I decided that we had nothing to prove, but encouraged our new Canadian friends that they had much to prove, and should stop being such babies and jump.  One of them finally mustered the courage to do so, and after securing his life jacket, leaped from the dizzying height.  While he plummeted silently, we all screamed.  He landed with a great splash and when his head finally popped up safely, we all congratulated ourselves for the team effort.  

Later, as the sun went down, we swam at an adjacent pool (a real swimming pool, lacking the character of a cenote, but also the bat shit), and the proprietor of the hacienda/cenote (a kind, generous man who offered us small Coronas free of charge…I felt bad telling him that I only drink beers 12oz or larger, and thus would require two Coronitas) took group photos of us with great care and pride, knowing that they might soon be on Facebook, he seized the opportunity to advertise through the gueros, insisting on capturing the best angles with his fine red ranch-style estate in the background.  The photo shoot was all well and good until he prompted me to pose with his stiff, patchy stuffed puma, making it difficult to feign a smile with the dead cat in my embrace. 

The next day Bob left me, and though I was sad to see him go, I knew that I’d been treated to an unexpectedly full week with the Red Jaguar, when few are fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse outside of the zoo.  He moved east, and I west, taking a bus to bustling Merida, the capital of Yucatan state.  Merida lacked the charm of Valladolid, but was a great jumping off point for exploring the outlying ruins of Uxmal.  With nary a cat-call to be heard, or tour group to be seen, I surveyed all corners of the sparsely toured ruins, feeling like the love-child of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft: armed with disgustingly snug shorts and a leather whip, I excavated the temples of Uxmal almost alone, the intense heat and humidity sustaining the solitary spell, a great adventurer, I brushed away dense forest foliage to uncover untouched temples, ever aware of the snakes and scorpions awaiting a careless misstep, and the obvious threat of booby-traps, poised to trigger the wrath of Gods and the thundering collapse of great stones tenuously supporting the sacred temples upon which I tread.

I got so wrapped up in the illusion of rogue explorer-anthropologist-archaeologist-fortune hunter with short-shorts and a whip that I lost track of time (and identity), and missed my bus back to Merida.  I passed the three hours awaiting the next bus, talking to a taquito vendor, consuming his time and most of his taquitos, and when I finally arrived back in Merida, I was ready to hop on a night bus for Palenque.

Ten hours of restless half-sleep, unable to combat the chill of cold breaths blown from the overhead air conditioner (I was still in my Lara Croft outfit), I emerged in the sweltering Chiapas jungle with teeth chattering and limbs shivering from the long night in a mobile igloo.   It wasn’t too long though, before I was sweating profusely, traipsing over more Mayan temples at the well preserved site of Palenque.  The roar of howler monkeys and the incessant buzz and screech of the invisible insect kingdom beyond created a jungle cacophony seemingly filtered with distortion through a Marshal Amp turned up to eleven.  This large site offered ample opportunity for running up well-worn limestone steps, getting to the top like Rocky, and looking out over the ruins and vast expanse of surrounding jungle with arms raised in victory.

I visited two more Mayan sights in the south of Chiapas, one of which required a thirty minute river ride in a long-boat carved from one of the massive trees which comprise much of the jungle canopy, and also house howler monkeys, toucans, and other various plants and creatures, like nature’s condominiums.  The site at Yaxchilan was as difficult to get to as it is to pronounce, but didn’t disappoint as the main structures, cleared and accessible, rose up to reveal their towering prowess, while, straying off the path, lesser structures were at the whim of the wild: covered in creepers, vines writhing around the derelict dwellings, barely identifiable amongst the dense overgrowth, and the pulsing screech of cicadas, as if sounding the security alarm from above while stirring lizards patrolled grounds.

Now thoroughly immersed in the ways of the Maya, and slowly losing my grasp on the life I once knew, I continued toward the Guatemalan border, further into the heart of darkness.  In this region, local people speak less Spanish than their Mayan tongue and make ends meet selling beaded jewelry to tourists.  Even the six-year-olds are in on the hustle, and after some pleasantries and even a real conversation (her Spanish slow like mine) exchanged with a kind-hearted Mayan mother of double-digits, I couldn’t refuse spending most of my remaining Mexican pesos on beads made from seeds selected from the bounty of jungle flora.

Border crossings have a tendency to arouse paranoia even when you know you’ve done nothing wrong (like a cop in the rear-view), but any fears were quickly put to rest (pun intended) when I approached the Mexican side of this isolated, sparsely traveled post, and had to wake the agent from his mid-morning slumber, insisting that he not get up, and stamp my passport from his hammock.  Crossing the river, the Guatemalan side was just as casual, as agents moistened their passport stamps only after they’d finished moistening their lips with Cerveza Modelo, revealing mild irritation at our presence having interrupted their poker game. 

There was an immediate contrast in crossing into Guatemala, as smooth paved roads turned into coarse dusty paths.  We wrapped handkerchiefs across our faces, not as a gesture of Zapatista solidarity, but to keep the clouds of kicked up dust from violating our respiratory tracts.  Four hours of bumping around collecting dust, we emerged in Flores a shade of Guatemalan.  This attractive island town with brightly colored buildings, and sitting in the middle of a pristine lake, was the perfect remedy for the long, hot travel day, and I immediately shed my grimy attire and jumped into the cool waters of the lake, rinsing away the day’s stress and the last layers of road collected from the journey there.

It’s fair to say that, by this point in my trip, I’d seen more Mayan sites than most would care to hear about (sorry), but, from Flores, the crown jewel of the Mayan Empire awaited, shimmering on the horizon: Tikal.  If you can only visit one Mayan site in your life, this should be it.  Cortez might have called it “El Dorado without all the Gold,” but probably not.  Tikal is special though, like Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or Machu Picchu in Peru, it retains an enigmatic force which somehow goes beyond the aesthetic grandeur of it’s stunning physical presence.  

My day began before dawn as I reluctantly woke to my 4am alarm clock (this better be f’ing special)…so did the rest of my dormitory room, and after a groggy predawn bus-ride, half-asleep, my unconscious head bobbing off the shoulder of the stranger next to me, I arrived at Tikal as the sun came up.  I’d been informed that Templo IV was the place to be at sunrise, so I made quick strides to arrive there promptly, promising to return to the other ruins I passed along the way.  Streaks of early morning light penetrated the gray clouds above, and shrieks from schoolchildren competed with calls from birds and bugs.  Arriving at the other end of the massive park, I ascended the grand temple, up rickety wooden stairs (presumably constructed for a safer ascent, but bending beneath each step).  I could hear a hushed chanting (Temple of Doom?!?!), and upon turning the corner, toward the magnificent view which awaited, I saw that I was far from the first visitor.  A group of thirty or so: middle-aged, light-skinned Spanish-speakers, sitting in the lotus pose, taking cues from their wild-eyed, long-haired, New Age guru, entranced, singing softly toward the great space before them.  Rugged pyramidal piles of stones, poking upward, white in contrast to the lustrous green shag of the enveloping jungle, and above it all, a rising disc, the sun, filtered and blurred by cloud-cover, but sending shards of resplendent silver light upon the exhilarating scene.

Adjacent to the large group of morning mystics sat three Guatemalan juveniles, conspicuous in their unsuppressed mockery, unable to stifle their high-pitch adolescent laughter.  I sat somewhere between the two camps, and while I couldn’t resist acquiescing an internal chuckle at the cult-for-a-day tour group, I was, nevertheless, awestruck, touched by that transcendental hand which pats one on the shoulder when one is fully immersed in the enchantment of an extraordinary place (and sleep-deprived).  Fifteen minutes later, the group of screaming schoolchildren arrived and the spell was hastily extinguished.  I spent the rest of the day exploring the ruins, as I’d become accustomed to doing, and though Tikal is a well-known, well-traveled site, the size and scale of the park is such that it allowed for getting lost (literally); providing a full-day’s adventure, and the appropriate climax and closure to my Mayan World Tour. 

Well aware that the clock was ticking ever faster on my three-week campaign, I left Guatemala for Belize in hopes of finding an island beach that could revive the sunburn I’d left in Playa del Carmen.  In a span of only five hours, I was transported from the land of the Maya to the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of Belize, the character changing abruptly, like crossing continents as Spanish was swiftly replaced by a strange island hybrid of English-Spanish-Creole-Bob-Marley.  A short boat ride from Belize City, and I arrived at my island destination, Caye Caulker.  Not much to say about my first two days on Caye Caulker: Sleep, eat, beach, swim, hammock, sleep, eat, beer, sleep, repeat.  

After two days with little variance from the aforementioned routine, I did muster up the energy to take advantage of the second largest coral reef in the world, and go on a snorkel trip.  A sailboat cruised us out along the reef, with crystal-clear visibility of the coral below, toward the perturbing proposition of swimming with sharks and stingrays.  Though I’d previously escaped the snakes and scorpions of Uxmal, the thought of entering the realm of Kevin Costner without gills, the water-world which mortalized the great Crocodile Hunter, was quickly becoming a daunting reality.  Fortunately, the stingrays didn’t sting, the sharks didn’t bite, and the moray eels did little more than creep me out.  The sea turtles were also amiable, and the myriad rainbow spectrum of colorful fish and coral dazzled more than any screensaver I’ve ever seen.  Really, the scariest part of the cruise was on the way back, when our Rasta Captain sparked up a joint as fat as a coconut.  But even this fear subsided when the complimentary “rum” punch began to make the rounds; “rum,” in this case, short for “rubbing alcoholm.” 

The next day I was border bound, and after a full day of travel, I landed back in Tulum, Mexico for one more night of feverish taco consumption before my flight the next day.  A great trip capped off with a great meal, with just a little too much habanero sauce, sure to make my intestines scream on the flight home.  I’d heard many rumors about the potential hazards of traveling in Mexico, but when all was said and done, the most unnerving stretch was the 10pm walk home from BART to my West Oakland residence…

My trip to the land of the Maya began in San Francisco, employing tequila, cerveza, and imported Tijuana tranquilizers in order to convince my friend Bob that joining me the following day would promise to be an epic journey to ancient lands…or modern beaches…really, whatever you’re into.  Actually, it didn’t take much convincing and by 8:30 AM the next day, we were waving good-bye to America in favor of Cancun, which might actually be more American than San Francisco.  That said, we skipped Cancun, and upon landing went directly south to Playa del Carmen. 

The center of touristic “Playa” is 5th Avenue, a street which when walked from one end to the other, begins to feel like a revolving treadmill track of Starbucks, Burger King, Señor Frogs, Haagen Das, Jewelry Store, Overpriced Restaurant With Watered Down Happy Hour Margaritas, etc…a lot like San Diego with only slightly more Spanish spoken.  Not really the departure we sought, but straying one block off of Avenida Quinta, we found the Mexico we were looking for: in one direction, cheap tacos, and in the other, unbleached flour powder sand giving way to crystal clear water, then turquoise, indigo, an indefinite horizon finally yielding to royal blue sky pocked with puffy marshmallow clouds…mmmmm. 

So, we found plenty to like in Playa del Carmen…until Bob realized that his new method of spot-application sun-screening had produced alarming results.  Though his left arm, and mid-right pectoral emerged delightfully light-bronze, the areas which had been neglected, primarily back and feet, were raging hotter than Mercury during the day, redder than an angry chameleon on a fire-truck, ankles swelling like frankles overdone at a 4th of July BBQ.  Mayan folklore is steeped in the legend of Chac Mool or “Red Jaguar” and though he never admitted it, I believe that Bob was paying homage in the Mayan tradition: offering sacrifice, blood-letting to the great Chac Mool.  We soothed our sunburns with more sun, a little aloe, and enough Dos Equis to make us think we were drinking Seis Equis.

From Playa del Carmen San Diego, we continued south to Tulum, a town also situated on the coast, and boasting postcard Mayan ruins set on cliffs with a Caribbean blue backdrop.  The ruins were crowded, by French tour groups and iguanas, and for good reason, as they were spectacular.  A small beach at the bottom of the bluff allowed for swimming out, looking back at the towering stone structures ashore, imagining oneself as a Mayan in his ancient kingdom, immersed in tranquility, cool thoughts and warm water refreshing body and mind, swimming further still, and then…a disturbance, a disconnect from my daydream harsher than predawn alarm clock…the lifeguard, blue in face, blowing his whistle feverishly in an effort to corral those brave swimmers bold enough to wade past knee-depth.

Fascist lifeguards would not dampen our spirits in Tulum, and a pleasant day turned into a memorable evening, initiated by the pulsing beats and blinking disco lights of a double-decker, roofless fiesta bus down the street from our hostel.  Intuition, and that general, impregnable magnetism toward blinking lights, commanded us to check it out, and we soon found ourselves in the town square, amongst the masses in the midst of a Mayan festival, alive with rooftop trumpeting, teenage torredors fighting preteen torros, balloons on a board so closely clustered that throwing my four darts in the general vicinity all but guaranteed the prized Luis Miguel poster, at least eleven churro stands, a grand stage for a band that kept the crowd in eager suspense, sound-checking for hours before performing at almost midnight, and so many sugar-fueled children running crazed, wild, spinning in circles until momentum and nausea hurled them to the floor; the ratio of screaming children to stern-faced adults more lopsided than the Utah State Fair.  We sat in the plaza and took in the sites, sounds, and smells with broad smiles, having stumbled into a genuine cultural experience which can only have come about from a sense of adventure and the rapid-fire disco lights of a Mexican fiesta bus.

The next day we rented bikes with nearly-flat tires, and rode along the highway shoulder, attempting to maintain balance and momentum as semi-trucks whooshed past us.  Our destination was one of several outlying cenotes, or freshwater limestone sinkholes, which offer respite from the midday heat in the form of cool water for swimming and snorkeling.  Our first stop, Gran Cenote, possesses a network of over 120 miles of underwater caverns.  With our snorkel gear, we were limited in our exploration of Gran Cenote, so after some surface snorkel-swimming, we played funny jokes on the divers there by blocking the narrow exits. 

Another cenote down the road was far less crowded, and allowed for jumping and diving from a rocky ledge into the ominous dark of the water below.  When we decided we would photograph ourselves leaping into the water pit, I thought I’d impress Bob and the camera by leaping as far as I could: first, a powerful thrust of arms and legs in perfect synchronicity, one harmonious motion ejecting me above the water, into midair, so free, an arcing cannonball-swan, then gracefully descending the twenty feet toward the water…CRASH, splash, the aforementioned liberty disturbed and replaced quite suddenly by instincts of survival as I smashed hard into a wooden ladder below, having jumped just a little too far.  Fortunately, I’d landed feet first, or it might have been much worse, and in the end, I only sustaining bruises to my foot, buttocks, and pride. 

After the cenotes, we met up with some new friends, also from San Francisco, and also raised in New Hampshire, just like Bob (you must come to a different country to meet these people), and decided we would find the diviest bar in Tulum.  I protested that after the incident with the ladder in the cenote, I didn’t do dives anymore, but they encouraged me to suck it up, so I did.  A long walk past anything touristy led us to the dimly lit part of town, and just the sort of watering hole we sought (not the cenote kind).  We knew it would be good right from the start as, upon entering, a large screen projected poorly dubbed, fuzzy 70’s music videos from the likes of Kansas, Foreigner, and late-era Elvis, chubby and glistening with rhinestones affixed to his white suede tasseled tuxedo.  So we took in the scene, and the scene took us in as well, casting curious glances at the misplaced gringos currently occupying their “Cheers.”  A few drinks, and music videos, and we were inspired to head down the block to the karaoke bar, also a locals only establishment.  After scrutinizing the entire catalog of songs, there emerged only two I could call myself remotely familiar with.  The margaritas having numbed both the pain in my foot and the notion that I’m not a particularly good karaoke singer, even in my own language, I took to the mic to perform “Me Gustas Tu” by Manu Chao.  This rendition was received with less than moderate enthusiasm: off-beat clapping from my three friends, and a drunk local (whom they wouldn’t let sit inside, and whom they were forced to cut-off…not from booze, but from karaoke). 

I knew I could do better, and when the first bars of La Bamba struck, I was transported to that place commonly referred to as “the zone.”  I can’t say I remember too much from the performance, as tequila and adrenaline raged through my veins, but for the first time in my life I felt like I actually knew Spanish, even rolling my r’s, like a long lost Los Lobos member, not even needing the words on the screen, singing straight from the heart and soul with such conviction methinks I would have made Randy Jackson weep.  There was just one thing that could approximate the raw emotion of the experience at the karaoke bar: a ride around town in the frenzy of deafening beats, and blinding, blinking lights that is the double-decker roofless fiesta bus.  We packed so much party-dancing in that five minute ride that we barely even noticed the tree branches and power lines from which we were required to dart and duck to avoid, or the reckless weaving across both lanes of a two-way street from our party-dancing driver, which threatened to topple the careening fiesta bus, breaking it open like a pinata struck by an unblindfolded Pujols after three Red Bulls.  We lived to tell about it, and left the next day, knowing that Tulum could not produce another such night.

In Brussels, during a layover that turned into a hangover, we observed Europeans in their element: clean, sheik, styled in thoughtful suits and spectacles, and we felt more than a little out of place, as though we’d mistakenly wandered from Goodwill to Prada; haggard, ragged, with baggy Indian linen MC Hammer-pants affording us liberating in-flight comfort at the cost of terminal stares of mockery and contempt.  Our egos were further bruised upon finding that our leftover rupees and dirhams would be of little value in the land of Euros and Norwegian Kroner.  When asked if we were bringing any gold bars into Scandinavia, I hadn’t realized that this was the preferred medium for tipping.  Even though our bank account balances ticked down in perfect harmony with Greenwich Mean Time, our spirits were lifted upon discovering that in Europe, particularly Belgium, sweet-delicious-golden beer is not the sacrilegious, clandestine beverage we’d become accustomed to coveting in dimly lit, sour-smelling Moroccan man-taverns (if this image instills fear in you, as it does me, you can imagine how Mel felt).  

As we descended toward Oslo in the late evening, the sun was still up, casting a soft glow across the expanse of rolling velvet green, polka-dotted with the dark blue from countless lakes and ponds.  That night we were reunited with my parents, and the next morning a short flight brought my thirty-one years of existence full circle as we arrived in the industrious fishing-port-city of Stavanger — the fourth most expensive city on Earth, and the place where I was purged from my dear mother’s womb so long ago, before it was the fourth most expensive city on Earth.  Much had changed there in over thirty years, and since I’d left at three months old, I wouldn’t know.  But, my folks did an excellent job at reconstructing all of the important events (my conception excluded, thankfully), guiding us through the city so immeasurably profound in sculpting my three-month-old self.  The pronounced development which had transformed this oil-boomtown, rendering it almost unrecognizable to my parents, was a secondary obstacle to the often misleading Norwegian street signs.  After several awkward episodes which required that we roll down all four car windows, we realized that “farts dempere” was not a call to relieve the abdominal discomfort so commonly prompted by Norwegian cuisine, but a warning to slow down for the speed bumps ahead.  Going over those speed bumps as fast as we did was enough to shake something loose, and was pivotal in coining my favorite Norwegian phrase (picture Tom Cruise saying it): “I feel the need, the need for farts.”  It took awhile, but eventually we were able to stifle the sophomoric jesting and enjoy Norway on more grown-up terms.

Adolescent snickering would have impeded the necessary man-strength required to access Norway’s preeminent natural treasure: Preikestolen.  A short ferry ride was followed by a long uphill hike over deposits of rounded boulders, through patches of alpine forest, eventually leading us to Pulpit Rock.  This sheer cube of stone juts out, then drops sharply almost two-thousand feet to a milky-blue fjord below.  The views are breathtaking, but to appreciate Preikestolen fully, one is required to crawl (or skip, depending on your stability) to the ledge, and peek over, glimpsing the abysmal drop while fierce mountain winds swirl about, and vertigo that you didn’t know you were prone to seizes every nerve in your body.  Fortunately, we hadn’t been drinking that day, our steps were sure, and we didn’t lose anybody over the edge.  

The rest of our trip to Stavanger was spent in bittersweet reflection, wandering once familiar streets, the rejuvenated waterfront, the quaint island hamlet I once called home on nearby Vassoy, overwhelmed by the nostalgia of simpler times — when I didn’t have to walk on my own two feet, or feed myself with my own two hands, or speak coherently, or use toilets…youth is wasted on three-month olds.  We left my old crawling grounds for a return to Oslo, a charmingly sterile city, which might enjoy a vibrant nightlife except that it’s the first most expensive city on Earth, and few can afford more than a couple drinks in a given outing.  So, we bypassed nightlife in favor exploring Oslo’s art museums, where admission was free!  The galleries of Oslo were excellent, and not just because of the price to get in.  The highlight was viewing the work of Edvard Munch, a typically disturbed turn-of-the-last-century artist, whose grim interpretations of love, fear, death, and anxiety hinted at expressionism before there was expressionism.  His most famous work, “The Scream,” is a haunting allusion to the cost of nightlife in Oslo.

After two quick days in Oslo, we flew to Copenhagen — the city in Denmark, not the chewing tobacco.  To our relief, beer was slightly more affordable, and the city seemed alive with the recent arrival of summer.  In Copenhagen there are not automobile traffic jams, but on a sunny day, there might be a back-up in the bike lanes; bicycle being the preferred mode of transport.  There is a strangely beautiful concordance within the varying architectural styles of Copenhagen, as sharp, steely modern buildings share sidewalks with old bronze-turned-green statues of griffins and elephants (both native to the region), while towering parliamentary buildings and ornate cathedrals loom in intricate historical design, as if rising from the fairy-tale past penned by Hans Christian Andersen.  In Copenhagen, we strolled: to the renowned “Little Mermaid” statue which sits, looking longingly across the water, perhaps despondent because her head is routinely severed from her comely amphibious form, stolen by mischievous Danes with Viking vices, then replaced, to await future decapitation.  We also strolled through “Christiania,” or “free-town,” an autonomous region of Copenhagen which somehow exists as a commune immune to the law the of the land.  Within Christiania are artists, poets, and drug dealers (“Mom, those aren’t brownies…”).  Christiania was cut short upon realizing that all the hippie garb and incense, so enchanting in India and Nepal, was thrice the price in “free-town,” and the barrage of “brownie” smoke was making us all a little dizzy.

Our last day was spent in Tivoli Gardens, an amusement park in the center of Copenhagen.  After all the wild rides we’d experienced in five months on the road, it seemed appropriate to be enjoying our last hours abroad spinning, jerking, screaming, and almost vomiting.  The bumper cars were particularly cathartic, providing perfect couples therapy for Mel and I, as we recklessly smashed into one another, finally getting even for that argument at the train station at five in the morning when we had nowhere to stay and felt lost and tuk-tuk drivers pried at our arms and madness and frustration and sleep deprivation got the better of us.  

Now we have landed back on home soil, and it feels great to once again be comforted by familiarity, even if familiarity in San Francisco and Whittier, Alaska is as bizarre as any place we travelled to.  I finally had the burrito I yearned for…Mel is caught up on So You Think You Can Dance and we will look forward to continuing our adventures here in ‘merica…Happy 4th everybody…

In adventures abroad, one becomes accustomed to employing a magical phrase which, in most cases, brings closure to an interaction between eager merchant and disinterested tourist: “no, thank you,” or “no, gracias,” or “mai, khaap khoon khrap,” or, in this instance, the Arabic “la, shukran.”  But, this phrase is not magical in Morocco.  Somehow, the Moroccans have powers of their own which render the phrase useless.  Typically, it goes down like this: Mel and I are enjoying a leisurely stroll through the cobbled medina — the time-worn, stone-walled medieval section of many Moroccan cities, aimlessly wandering through labyrinthine alleyways as children play soccer in the narrow corridors or fake-professional wrestle (is that redundant?), older men in hooded robes called djellabas, sitting for hours in front of cafes, discussing, smoking, sipping from a single cup of mint tea (the amount of sugar in one cup of authentic Moroccan mint tea is enough to sustain a human for several years), passing veiled women whose curiosity is expressed in their striking eyes, the only exposed portion of their natural form, the occasional destitute glue-huffer, wild-eyed as he methodically raises a rag of solvent to his savage face, leaving more than a trace of the heavy liquid in the air…and then, inevitably, we are confronted by a shopkeeper, standing outside his empty shop, arms crossed, gauging our approach, waiting, licking his thin lips with his silver tongue, waiting more, patient, poised, ready to pounce, burning holes through our soul with his sharp stare…

Then we blackout, and the next thing we know we are seated on soft cushions, drinking mint tea, surrounded by hookahs, bright pointy slippers of camel leather seemingly made by elves for elves, silver jewelry, Gnawan drums and castanets, and carpets, always carpets, and we wonder how we stumbled into Alice’s Wonderland, but we are mesmerized while our shopkeeper, with his Cheshire Cat grin, fans all variety of ornately weaved tapestry, whose colors and shapes dance upon their canvas…he maintains the trance like a snake-charmer.  After unrolling his entire stock of authentic, one-of-a-kind-handmade-for-four-months-in-the-Atlas Mountains-by-Berber-tribeswomen-if-you-find-another-like-it-I-give-for-free rugs, he forces us to choose a carpet we like, and after picking one for the sake of courtesy, he names a disgustingly inflated price which we are expected to counter, thus beginning the back-and-forth barter boxing that is shopping in Morocco.  But, as we are still retching from the price he just named and the sugar content of the mint tea, we tell him how much we like all of his wares, but just aren’t interested in buying a rug.  Tension creeps in, his smile quivers, quakes, then turns carpet-ward, and he extends his arm as if to wish me well with a warm handshake…but his hand won’t let go, and his grip is taught, strong, my arm turning white, softening like Country Crock, his vice-grip tightening, and I ask him, pleading, if he has a carpet that flies so we can leave this place NOW!!!  He feigns laughter, mutters an Arabic curse under his breath, and we are finally released, feeling briefly free like escaped convicts, hoping to evade the gaze of the next carpet warden…

We began our Moroccan carpet ride in Casablanca, a city far removed from the romance of the Humphrey Bogart film.  Finding Casablanca to be more of a commercial center then a touristic destination, we promptly left for Marrakech.  Marrakech exposed us to the Morocco of our wildest dreams, even though sometimes those dreams are marred by cold sweat and panic attack.  The central square of the medina is a vast bazaar of the bizarre, a sensory feast as cobras dance out of their wicker baskets to the deafening shriek of flute, monkeys perch on the shoulder of their master, chained at the ankle, well trained or drugged, and ready to pose with tourists or steal their jewelry or both, troupes of musicians chant and drum and dance to the rhythmic trance of Gnawan music, food vendors bark, selling couscous, orange juice, dates, cookies, snails (which I had to try…doesn’t taste like chicken…tastes like snail), women grab at your bare arm, seeking to adorn it with henna, tarot cards are flipped to reveal fate, fortune, or go fish, horse-drawn carriages clip-clop over weathered cobblestones, and the carnival goes on and on.  In our first five minutes immersed in this seeming hallucination, our awestruck expressions perhaps revealing our naivety, Mel had her arm hijacked by a rogue henna artist who wouldn’t stop drawing, or let go, until a handsome sum was paid.  After that, we found the swirling Marrakechi circus to be best dipped into briefly, like a an overheated jacuzzi, then viewed from the sidelines, at one of the numerous cafes lining the square.  In addition to the aforementioned entertainment, I had the good fortune of reconnecting with a friend who now lives and teaches in Marrakech, and whom I’d not seen in twenty-four years.  It made me very happy to see him, but very sad to know that I am so old as to have friends that I haven’t seen in twenty-four years.

After a week in Marrakech, we were ready to escape the heat, the chaos, the cobras, and the thieving monkeys, and so we departed to the artsy seaside town of Essaouira.  The weather here was not the departure we sought, windy and wet, the dark sky a similar stone gray to the high ramparts of the former Portugese outpost, but we enjoyed the slow pace of the town sitting at cafes, rummaging through antique stores and art galleries, and exploring the the fishing harbor, where seabirds compete with cats for scraps of fish entrails.  The pace slowed further when we arrived in Oulidia, on the Atlantic coast north of Essaouira.  Here, the skies opened up, as did our accommodation, as we negotiated a three-bedroom beach house (we only needed one bedroom…we wished we had friends to share it with…the price was right) for three days of utter relaxation in the sun and sand.  Actually, it wasn’t all relaxation: our expert smashball rallies on the beach left us aching by sundown (I might be out of shape…).

North to Tangier, a city almost bordering Spain, the Tijuana of Morocco, where the soothing sound of Atlantic surf was abruptly replaced by aggressive Mediterranean touts unsure of exactly how best to approach us, thus employing a strange combination of Spanish, Italian, French, and English with a bad Australian accent…mate.  We swiftly passed, avoiding eye contact, feigning and not feigning incomprehension, avoiding conversation by claiming we were from Poland.  Tangier was most interesting for its expat history, having hosted William Burroughs while he wrote Naked Lunch, and Mick Jagger while he smoked hashish.  Two days here, a few angry carpet-mongers, and we were off to greener pastures.

Chefchaouen is the Florida of Morocco: adorable elderly folks run rampant (actually, they don’t run at all, they walk very slowly), cloaked in their djellabas, strengthening their gait with crooked wooden canes, looking like little yodas, they pervade this quaint mountain hamlet, enhancing the charm and allure.  Painted in uniform pastel shades of blue and white, the Rif Mountains looming in the background, this sleepy town provided ample opportunity to sit at cafes, reading, writing, and photographing the cute old folks with our telephoto zoom lenses. 

When we weren’t busy spying on the elderly, we went hiking in the mountains.  One trek took me far out of town, following upward trails past rural rock dwellings, gazing at grazing sheep and donkeys, accompanied by a young boy, the two of us attempting to communicate over vast language barriers, but enjoying each others company nonetheless.  The incline led us over a ridge, and the boy pointed at a plant, saying ”kif.”  This being the Moroccan slang for “marijuana,” I looked around, and everywhere, in well irrigated patches, the signature leaf I’d seen on so many t-shirts at reggae concerts.  I began to panic, quietly, so as not to alarm the youth, visions of my imminent kidnapping, held hostage at gunpoint, made to consume copious amounts of kif to keep me complacent, and stuck in these gorgeous mountains with the fresh air and beautiful views…wait a second…is this kidnapping business such a bad thing?  I’m snapped out of my waining paranoia by a shout from a few hundred yards away.  The keeper of the kif emerges from a shelter of sticks and branches supporting a blue tarp and waves me over…he has no gun, but I am terrified.  I approach cautiously.  He welcomes me with a wide, toothless grin, and my fear begins to subside.  I sit with him for awhile, speaking in Spanish about his life in the mountains, and just as I am starting to feel comfortable with the situation, CRASH! BANG! SHIT, WHAT WAS THAT!!!  A goat has fallen through the roof of the shelter, laying ruin to the makeshift dwelling, splashing over our keeper’s stewing lunch.  The goat hobbles away, startled, shocked, shaken, and begins to nibble at the nearby pot leaves, thus lending an explanation as to how the normally surefooted mountain goat fell through the shelter in the first place.  I walk away unscathed, finding the kif grower to be far less threatening then the carpet merchant.

We spent our last days in Fes, a city likely designed by an ancestor of M.C. Escher, maze-like in ways that led us pleasantly lost and found throughout this lively cultural epicenter of Morocco.  After one whole month of frustrating the ambitions of carpet merchants throughout the country, we finally caved in, confidently, having learned how to bargain like locals (during the latter half of our stay in Morocco, Mel was repeatedly referred to as “Berber” for her hard-nose negotiating…I sat back and watched the show).  So, we bought a rug, caught a train the next day for one last night in Casablanca, and in an effort to save time and money getting to the airport the following day, spent one last night in a cockroach infested hotel with dirty sheets and suspicious characters roaming the halls with shifty eyes.

Presently, we have arrived in viking country, where most of the raping and pillaging now occurs at the consumer level.  If I may impart one piece of advice to fellow travellers: don’t end your round-the-world trip in Norway…unless you roll cigarettes with Franklins.  Fortunately, my loving parents have met us, and their generosity has kept us from sleeping in the streets.  More to come on the Norwegian leg, but for now we are content to enjoy our final week of travel with family, and looking forward to coming home in one week!
 
  

As we descended upon Cairo, the plane shook, rattled, bumped about unstable pockets of air, and we once again questioned our timing for an Egyptian holiday.  Ten weeks earlier, we’d sat in a stuffy Bangkok hotel room, flipping channels between BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and Nick at Night, watching with awe the sudden momentum of revolutionary events unfolding in Tahrir Square and beyond, and wondered: will Egypt be a battlefield by April?  Will it be safe enough for us to visit?  Should we change our plans, go somewhere safer?  Libya?  Syria?  What effect will it have on the royal wedding?  And, will Maria Shriver ever find out about the Governator’s ten-year-old bastard child?  As our departure date approached, these hotly debated uncertainties were far from being resolved.  We read and watched the news closely, but of course there is no news unless a bandanna-masked youth is throwing rocks at a tank.  We listened closely to friends and family, whose input was heartfelt, if only slightly impacted by the images they’d just seen of the guy with the bandanna-mask throwing rocks at a tank.  We solicited the opinions of bloggers and the U.S. State Department, and even perused the 10,000 top secret CIA foreign affairs files released by Wikileaks, and still we felt unsure of what to do.  We found guidance in the least likely of locales: Nepal, where the Himalayan peaks ascend toward the heavens, bringing answers from above.  We met Adam and Karim, Egyptian/English brothers living in Cairo, on an incline of the Annapurna Circuit, and their firsthand insight into the state of affairs in Egypt, barked down to us as we gasped for the breath with which to barrage them with all of our questions and fears, quelled our paranoia, and gave us the courage to go on…and to go to Egypt.

Once landed, our experience in the land of the Pharaohs unfolded as smooth and soft as Egyptian cotton.  Adam was there to pick us up from the airport and direct us through the dizzying sprawl of modern Cairo, a city of seventeen million people, built up of brown and red bricks which coalesce with the surrounding rock and sand of the desert, and somehow, this metropolis, humbled in the shadow of the three great pyramids at Giza, visible on the western horizon.  We spent our first week in Egypt exploring the old and the new, satisfying our grade-school curiosity and fascination with the ancient Egyptian culture with visits to the Giza pyramids (the world’s most impressive stack of blocks) and the overfilled, undersized Cairo Museum (the world’s most impressive episode of Hoarders), and also seeking awareness of contemporary Egypt, and the myriad forces and factors which led to the dramatic mobilization of Egyptians and the consequent usurping of the longstanding Mubarek regime.

Through our gracious Egyptian host, we met many intriguing people who’d participated in the overnight revolution, and were eager to share their varied experiences, borne of enthusiasm and collective intoxication as the energy in Tahrir spread throughout the square, throughout Cairo, throughout Egypt, the middle east, and the world, but acknowledging the palpable tension in respective houses and neighborhoods as tanks rolled in, and check-posts were established on every block, and ordinary citizens were inclined to arm themselves (some with guns, others, like our friend Ludy, with a Skeletor knife), and the entire country remaining in a nervous, hopeful state of flux.  Then Mubarek stepped down, and presently Egyptians can be proud that the will of the people was realized.  Most recognize, however, that the honeymoon is over; much hard work remains, and the unity that initiated this largely peaceful revolution must carry on.

Contrary to what the last paragraph may have implied, most Egyptians are not revolutionaries by nature, and our best experiences with our new friends were not spent debating the tenets of Marxism in dimly lit Bohemian cafes.  No, the best times were had at the beach: on the Red Sea, playing Frisbee, snorkeling, barbecuing, playing cards, telling stories, and drinking beer…then, after too many beers, discussing the tenets of Marxism.  One such trip took us to the eastern coast of Sinai via five-car convoy, which became a four-car convoy when the formidable off-road conditions proved too harrowing for one of our transport.  The harsh memories of the long, sweaty drive through the rocky desert gauntlet, and the missing car with our friends in it, were soon forgotten when we arrived at the secluded lagoon of blue topaz, sapphire in greater depths, banked by white sand and coral, and the sun setting, aglow behind the red ridge from where we’d come.

The water of the Nile, by contrast, is not the hue of sapphire, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to employ any gemstone metaphor to describe it.  That said, our cruise down the Nile was not only a highlight to our Egypt trip, but to my existence on this planet.  Though Mel and I have been comfortable in our budget, backpacker accommodation, and our budget, backpacker apparel, and though in traveling we often go days without bathing, we felt justified in celebrating our two-year anniversary in style, opting to splurge aboard the five-day/four-night Sonesta Star Goddess.  The boat-staff, unaccustomed to such dereliction on their excessively polished five-star liner, acknowledged our vagrant-chic appearance with nervous smiles, but soon warmed up to us when they realized that we had paid, and were far less demanding then their typical clientele (e.g. “we don’t need a pool that goes to infinity, just a regular pool is fine…”).  The sublime leisure of the Nile cruise transported us to many euphoric states, and, more specifically, from Luxor to Aswan.  From the infinity pool we saw all, even getting out of the pool on occasion to view more closely some of the most impressive monuments of the ancient Egyptian empire.  While Mel was entranced by the crowning architectural achievement of Ramses II at Abu Simbel, or the towering masterpiece erected over several millennia at Karnak, or even the elaborate network of ornately detailed tombs branching from below the Valley of the Kings, I was somehow distracted.  A flute echoed in the recesses of my mind, and I could not figure out why.  Finally it came to me: we were in the presence of, traveling down the Nile with, the quintessential rock and roll flautist (flutist?).  When I introduced myself to Jethro Tull, he said “my name’s not Jethro Tull.”  But, I’d like think that I redeemed myself in the eyes of Ian Anderson on the cruise’s Nubian Dance Night, for it was on this last night of our voyage that he referred to my moves as “exquisite” (truthfully, he commended me for simply getting up and dancing when nobody else would, however awkward and unsettling the dance moves may have been).  

So, I will part with the image of me dancing like a Nubian.  Egypt provided many a fond memory, and we were fortunate to meet a number of amazing people, who will remain lifelong friends (like Jethro).  Currently, Mel and I find ourselves in Marrakesh, Morocco, and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that we’ll have no shortage of good stories to tell on the Moroccan leg…so, salaam to all of you!