Jared – The Escape Hatch

Namibia: Home of the Original Geogasm (Part 3)

Welcome back dear readers. When we left off, KT, Lisa and I were halfway through our trip around Namibia and had just arrived in the seaside resort town of Swakopmund on the Skeleton Coast. As promised, I saved the best for last!

After a nice dinner and a blissful night in an actual bed at a hotel in Swakopmund, Lisa decided to spend our free morning getting her hair highlighted, but KT and I were very focused on our goal: the Kristall Galerie, a smallish geology museum curated for Namibia’s multitude of rocks and minerals. We’d driven by it on the way to our hotel, saw the display of giant rocks outside, and were very anxious to get a closer look. We walked to the museum almost an hour before it opened, and thank goodness we did! The large specimens outside of the museum covered a host of rock types from Namibia, and we gleefully spent 45 minutes inspecting the rocks and having geogasms while shouting to each other about our finds.

One of the beautiful rock specimens outside the museum

Check out the size of these tourmalines and fluorites

Once the museum opened, we went inside for even more delights. The displays were full of beautiful geologic wonders from around the country, evoking geogasm after geogasm with each new specimen. We oohed, aahed, discussed origin environments and processes for the minerals, and in general enjoyed ourselves to the point that when we left, we both felt like we needed a cigarette and a nap.

Beautiful specimens of a quartz agate geode, pietersite (national mineral of Namibia), and rhodochrosite

While at the museum, they had mentioned there was a Roadside Geology book for Namibia, so we stopped at a local bookstore and bought the last copy on our way back to the hotel. Our long drive that day had us crossing mountain passes with many more opportunities to exclaim over the geologic wonders of the region, as well as crossing the Tropic of Capricorn.

It turned out that KT and Lisa had actually purchased the Roadside Geology book as a birthday gift for me, and what a fantastic gift it was—now, instead of speculating on what we were seeing in the roadcuts, KT and I had a detailed description and could watch for inselbergs and other items of particular geogasmic interest, making the drive much more exciting than spending hours in a dusty truck bumping over dirt and gravel roads would normally be. My excitement was compounded because we were heading for another of my “must see” destinations in the country—the Namib Sand Sea, with its incredible star dunes and the Deadvlei immortalized on Instagram.

The Namib is one of the oldest deserts on earth, formed approximately 21 million years ago. The current star dune system is estimated to have been active for the past 5 million years, composed of gigantic dunes that create a star pattern when viewed from above. Our first foray into the area was to climb Dune 45 and watch the sunrise. It wasn’t an easy hike to the top, pitched at a 30 degree angle, balancing on a crest a foot wide, climbing up 278 feet of loose sand, but definitely worth it to watch the shadows and colors change as the sun rose. Once the sun was fully up, we took the much easier hike down to eat breakfast and appreciate the beauty of the area.

Dune 45 at sunrise. People walking up the crest and standing on top give a sense of scale to this giant

Then it was on to the Deadvlei (dead marsh) that was created when a dune migrated across the Tsauchab River and cut off the floodwaters that had previously sustained the vegetation. We were herded into bumpy, open 4WD vehicles for the ride to the trailhead, then turned loose. Thank goodness it was still early because it was already hot, and we had a hilly 1.5 km hike through loose sand to actually reach the vlei. It was worth every step to stand in a desiccated valley between dunes hundreds of feet tall and look at the few live (and more dead) trees framed by the gorgeous red sands while the sun moved shadows across the faces of the dunes.

I spent a lot of time experiencing geogasms while inspecting mud cracks and other features on the clay pan and taking pictures of the dunes, trees, and sand ripples from every possible angle. When our time was up I reluctantly made the long, hot hike back through the sand, but luckily had some time to sit and admire the dunes from the parking area while watching birds and other critters go about their business.

So many mudcracks to inspect while taking photos laying on the ground for the best angle

Picture of the dunes that helped create the Deadvlei from the picnic area

Our next destination was nearly as geogasmic as the dunes: Sesriem Canyon and one of the thickest conglomerate layers I’ve ever seen, lying nonconformably over metamorphic basement rocks. KT and I scrambled around the dry river bed, happily inspecting the cobbles that were eroding out of the conglomerate and looking for the barely exposed contact with the basement rocks while also cringing a little at the large chunks of rock that had come loose from the canyon walls overhead. We were thankful there hadn’t been any rain recently to increase the possibility of a new chunk falling on us.

A small portion of one of the thickest conglomerates I’ve ever seen. Formed by erosion due to rapidly falling sea levels at the onset of an ice age

KT looking at a nonconformity of basement rock overlain by conglomerate

Next was Aus, a former prisoner of war camp. We stayed in a beautiful cabin in a very isolated portion of the property with stunning views of the surrounding rocks. We were also able to drop our laundry with the camp so we wouldn’t spend the rest of the trip stinking up the truck. After a night in the cabin, it was off to another of my must-see destinations: the ghost town of Kolmanskop (Kolmannskuppe).

Developed as a diamond mining facility in 1908, it was the location of the first X-ray machine in the southern hemisphere, a power station, school, and even a bowling alley. The town was abandoned around 1928 when a large diamond deposit was discovered in another area. Today, the buildings still stand, but the dunes are doing what dunes do and covering everything with sand. It’s a striking place to visit, and I spent a lot of time taking pictures (of course).

Inside one of the abandoned buildings slowly filling with sand at Kolmanskop

This building in Kolmanskop will eventually be covered by a dune

Just past Kolmanskop on the way to Luderitz was another geogasmic marvel – textbook perfect crescent dunes! And all of you (non-geologists) just thought sand dunes were sand dunes, but nope – there are multiple kinds and we saw all of them while traveling through the home of the original geogasm.

Textbook perfect crescent dunes located between Kolmanskop and Luderitz

The next stop, Luderitz, was superfluous in my opinion. There’s not much to the town, I don’t care about whatever Portuguese explorer stuck a cross in the ground, and the water on the beach we visited was really cold. The only saving grace was, you guessed it, more rocks! And some interesting critters on the beach, but mostly the rocks. On the way back from Luderitz we stopped to see the desert horses that live in the area. They were incredibly skinny, as one might imagine of mammals trying to live in a desert.

Folding on so many scales… Love me some migmatite! This was much more interesting than whatever Portuguese explorer yada yada #Idontcare

This lovely sandstone was visible in a small outcrop on the beach in Luderitz

Then to another must-see: the Fish River Canyon. We saw so many interesting formations along the way, including pink shales and limestones. KT and I were giddy at the prospect of seeing them, as those rocks are not normally found in shades of pink. We kept our Roadside Geology book close, following the descriptions and having mini geogasms as we headed south.

For the geogasm finale, the Fish River Canyon itself! It’s comparable to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and though it’s somewhat smaller, it’s incredibly impressive. KT and I immediately piled out of the truck, taking our very slow and sweet time walking along the rim of the canyon, oohing and aahing and geogasming at every turn while we inspected the area. Hiking into the canyon is controlled by permit, so we only got to see it from the rim, but that didn’t diminish our awe at the beauty of the area and the geologic forces that shaped the canyon over millennia.

KT and I at the Fish River Canyon, Namibia’s equivalent to the Grand Canyon in the US

Gorgeous! And no picture can capture the awe that comes from standing on the ledge looking into the canyon

Looking farther up the canyon at one of the benches marking an historic floodplain

After several hours of delighted exploration, we got back in the truck to see another of Namibia’s endemic plant species, known as quiver trees. The trees are actually aloe plants, even though they grow in a shape like a tree, and they are quite impressive. Some are thought to be over 200 years old; we enjoyed a quick walk through the “forest” during a gorgeous sunset.

Quiver trees are aloe plants endemic to southern Namibia and northern South Africa, that grow in the shape of a tree. KT for scale

After one last night sleeping in the cold on very hard ground, we were up early to hit one last geogasm-inducing site: the Giant’s Playground. The area is an exposure of one of the biggest sills either of us has ever seen, and covered in the spheroidally weathered boulders often seen when intrusive volcanics are exposed at the surface. The regional joint sets visible in the rock only added to our wonder, and we spent a happy hour playing in the rocks before getting in the truck for our return trip to Windhoek.

Cheelo and Broniel at Giant’s Playground

There were so many interesting stacks, it was hard to know where to look

Okay, one more because it’s such a stunning place

And that, dear readers, is a quick summary of Namibia: Home of the Original Geogasm. Namibia is a beautiful country with lovely people and many marvelous plants and animals. But for geologists, life is a field trip—and this field trip was the most geogasmic I’ve ever taken.

P.S.

For those interested in things other than rocks, here’s a partial list of the wildlife we encountered on our trip. We tried to write it all down, but honestly, we were much more interested in adding geologic wonders to our trophy list than birds.

Dik dik	Waterbok	Egyptian ducks
Hydrax	Wildebeest	Vival birds
Oryx	Wild hare	White pelican
Impala	Hartbeest	White flamingos
Ostrich	Wild boar	Pink flamingos
Hippo	Mongoose	Peacock
Zebra	Termites	Guinea fowl
Lion	Giraffe	Weavers
Hyena	Fur Seals	Cape starlings
Jackel	Wild horses	Gray warbler
Elephant	Beetles	Pied crows
Rhino	Ants	Parakeets
Tembox	Vulture	Cormorants
Springbok	Secretary bird

Namibia: Home of the Original Geogasm (Part 2)

Welcome back, Escape Hatch Fans! When we left off last time, Lisa, KT and I had arrived in Namibia and were just beginning our actual adventure. We’ll pick up with the trip on the first full day, after we finished assembling our tents and got the first inkling of the… quirks… of one particular travel companion.

After putting up our tents at the Mount Etjo campground, we went on our first game drive in the reserve. Since it was a fenced and managed area, we saw lots of animals, including elephants, rhinos, and a hippo. We also went to an observation area where the reserve feeds the lions. I’m not sure how I feel about this—it wasn’t enough food for a whole lion meal, so the feeding doesn’t stop the pride from engaging in their natural hunting behavior, but it does bring up some ethical problems in that the feeding teaches the lions there’s at least some food if they show up after dark in a certain spot with floodlights and lots of flash photography.

This hippo was dancing like nobody was watching and put on quite a show

Male and female lion at the ethically questionable nightly feeding on the Mount Etjo reserve

After the lion feeding, we went back to the tents and spent our first night camping. The ground was hard, though the sleeping pads helped more than I expected. We even got a little sprinkle of rain, but we all managed to sleep at least some.

The next morning, we were up bright and early to disassemble the tents and head to Etosha National Park, the area where most of the safaris in Namibia take place. We made another stop at a grocery store, with another delay (again, not unexpected if you’ve traveled in Africa) but some of the group, including the niña malcriada, were complete assholes to the guides about losing 30 minutes of their time on the trip. In my opinion, it was rude and completely unnecessary to be so ugly to the guides, but it was clear some of our tripmates felt differently. Yay.

Traveling from Windhoek to Etjo and Etosha, KT and I noticed there were a lot of road signs we don’t normally see in the US. I’m often delighted and amused by signs in other countries and take pictures of the ones I find of most interest. Having imparted that to KT, we spent much of the drive for the next eleven days taking pictures of road signs and road cuts whenever we weren’t shouting to each other about the awe-inspiring geology. Between these activities, I’m not sure whether the rest of the group was amused or annoyed, but we definitely had a great time.

Sample of road and other signs in Namibia

Our time in Etosha turned out to be a fruitful two days, as we saw elephants, ostriches, zebras, giraffes, many different birds, and most interesting, a pack of hyena eating a scavenged kill while a sneaky jackal darted in and out trying to get its own share of breakfast. We also saw elephants being very friendly with each other, and lots of other animals hanging out at a lighted watering hole. As you might imagine, I took tons of pictures of the elephants, only to learn a few days later that there was something wrong with my camera. It hadn’t recorded a single picture of the elephants, and the light sensor was apparently going out as well, because all of the night pictures I took came out terribly. Luckily, Lisa managed to get a great picture of the elephants using her iPhone, but my camera going out was definitely a blow to the photographs on this trip.

This sneaky jackal made sure it got breakfast along with the hyenas

Luckily Lisa caught this beautiful image on her iPhone, since our big camera decided not to record the approximately 600 pictures I took of this pair

One of the things KT and I were excited to see in the Etosha region was the large salt pan. KT figured out that there was karst underlying the pan, and springs were the source of the natural watering holes used by the animals. We saw the guides looking at some books, and upon closer inspection, it turned out they included small sections on the geology of different regions in the country. We were excited to have the information, but also disappointed with the tiny fragments on offer, forcing both of us to rely on distant memories from undergrad geology programs over 20 years ago to identify the geologic features.

In addition to pointing out the beautiful road cuts to each other, we spent hours every day hypothesizing about what we were actually seeing. Between the two of us, we seemed to figure most things out, but occasionally we were both stumped, or one of us couldn’t remember enough to confirm or deny what the other was saying. Once again, it kept us busy for hours every day while the rest of the group was probably wishing we would fall out of the truck.

I hardly ever get to see Lisa, and it’s always wonderful to spend time with her, until it’s not, because we are sisters after all!

Our suppositions and speculations were magnified at our last stop in Etosha, where we saw some type of varved rock, immediately identifiable by geologists because of the alternating dark and light banding characteristic of this type of sedimentary deposit. We spent much time on closer inspection, finally agreeing that the pattern was definitely varves from a lakebed deposit. The outcrop was beautiful, as were the moringa trees, a species endemic to this part of Namibia. We weren’t happy to see that there were hundreds of names carved into every single one. KT and I are both of the “take pictures, leave footprints” school of nature, and the damage to the trees was a sour note on an otherwise lovely experience. Why is it exactly that so many humans can’t look at something beautiful without feeling like they have to mar it to prove they were there?

Varves visible in an exposure in Etosha National Park

Every piece of this moringa tree was carved with names and initials. WHY????

Leaving Etosha the next day, we stopped at an Otjikandero Himba Village. I’m uncomfortable with this type of tourist activity, because while I like to see and experience the cultures of other countries, brown people dancing for a bunch of white tourists smacks of racist colonialism. So while I did interact with the women and children of the tribe, I’m not sharing pictures or giving more of a description here.

After the village, we went through the Etendeka Mountains and the Grootberg Pass. This, my friends, is where the geology went from interesting to geogasm. As we drove through, KT and I realized we were looking at layer upon layer of flood basalts from the Gondwanaland rifting, clearly exposed in flat-top mountains with large U-shaped valleys shouting out the glaciation that occurred after the rift.

The guides had by now realized that KT and I were geogasming about rocks, and any time the volume and speed of the conversation increased to a certain point, they would pull over to let us take pictures of whatever we were passing, because they are awesome guides. Flood basalts from the breakup of Gondwanaland are truly geogasmic, and we definitely took lots of pictures (and maybe a couple of rocks).

The northern part of Namibia is hot during the day, even during their autumn, and at the camp we took the opportunity to jump into the (frigid) pool with a few drinks to enjoy the sunset. Palmwag is also one of many darker sky places in Namibia, and we were treated to a lovely full moon after dinner.

Flood basalts visible in the walls of the valley

Gorgeous full moon over the campground in Palmwag, so bright it was light enough to walk around without a headlamp

The next morning, we got up bright and early to look at the mostly dry riverbed of our campground, which exposed the top of a flood basalt. We quickly realized that the regional joint sets were clearly and easily visible, as were scours of all sizes, evoking more geogasms. KT and I spent a wonderful hour taking pictures of rocks, discussing the fracture patterns, checking out scours for aquatic life, looking at the seed stems that had fallen off the local palm trees for which the area is named, and possibly picked up a few more rocks. After all, no self-respecting geologist is going to pass up the chance to own a piece of a flood basalt from the Gondwanaland rift.

Regional joint sets visible in a tributary to the Uniab River, with water bottle for scale

The hyphaena pertesiana, or fan palm, for which Palmwag is named

As we were leaving Palmwag, Broniel took us on a quick walk to show us a plant that could kill us. It’s probably a good thing, because it’s an interesting-looking plant, and left to my own devices, I would’ve been tempted to touch it, though probably not to eat it. Later in the morning, he pointed out another plant that’s highly toxic, proving that while Australia holds the crown for the most flora and fauna trying to kill humans, Namibia is no slouch.

Apparently even brushing against Euphorbia damarana (Damara milk bush) is bad news for humans

At this point we climbed down from the mountains, heading for the Atlantic and the true reason I’ve always wanted to visit Namibia: the Skeleton Coast. Along the way, we stopped to see another plant endemic to Namibia: a dwarf tree known as Welwitschia mirabilis, some of which are thought to be over 1,500 years old. They are indeed interesting plants, and it was well worth the stop to check them out and see the beetles that live on them.

Welwitschia mirabilis, a species of tree approximately 1′ tall that is endemic to the Skeleton Coast

Then, it was on to Skeleton Coast National Park. The coast, part of the Namib Desert, stretches for 500 km from Swakopmund to the Angola border and is famous for its wind, dense fog, pounding surf, and the skeletons of whales and ships that are probably the origin of the name. The approach to the coast is through an active dune system composed of the eroded mountains of inland areas, carried by wind and water—another geogasm! Other than the dunes and sparse, low vegetation, the area is flat and sandy with only occasional metamorphic basement rocks breaking the surface. From a geologic standpoint there are many interesting things about the Coast, and for me, it’s been one of the places I’ve dreamed of visiting for years.

Lisa and Lea at the entrance to Skeleton Coast National Park

Some of the dunes on the Skeleton Coast are vegetated with this low-growing plant

Other dunes are partially covered with the black sand generated by erosion of the flood basalts nearby, creating a lovely contrast between the dark and light sands

After driving through the dunes with only occasional glimpses of the water, the truck pulled over and Cheelo dumped us onto the beach to walk through a portion of this famous area. Finally, finally, I was here—and it was incredible. It’s very cold and windy, the surf is indeed pounding, and it’s gorgeous.

Metamorphic exposures crop up at the edge of the waves and provide a home for many types of aquatic life. Kelp bobs in the giant waves just offshore, and areas of the beach are covered in pink sand derived from rocks containing garnets. To stand in this place, taking in the splendor and feeling nature exerting her will, is an indescribable feeling. For me, it’s one that can only come from this type of experience. KT and I walked along the beach, inspecting rocks and critters, and reveled in the beauty of this barren stretch of earth while experiencing geogasms over the beach’s lovely garnet sand.

Garnet sands on the Skeleton Coast with human for scale

Close-up of gorgeous garnet sands present on the Skeleton Coast with human toes for scale

Vertically tilted formation exposed near the water line at the Skeleton Coast with human for scale

After almost an hour of joyful exploration, we reached the Benguela Eagle, one of the shipwrecks for which the Coast is rightfully famous. After some inspection and pictures, we grudgingly climbed the dune to rejoin the group for lunch overlooking the coast before getting back in the truck to visit our next destination: what may be one of the smelliest attractions in Namibia, the Cape Cross seal colony.

*Benguela Eagle* shipwreck on the Skeleton Coast with human for scale

Pieces of the *Benguela Eagle* visible from the top of a nearby dune

The Cape Cross Seal Reserve is home to over 100,000 Cape fur seals. While not as smelly as I was expecting, it was definitely odiferous and also LOUD. Seals make a lot of noise, and so many seals were loud enough that we had to raise our voices to talk over them. The seals are territorial, meaning lots of squabbles and fighting when there are so many close together. They also occasionally object to humans, and Cheelo had to encourage one to stop menacing us as we walked to the gated boardwalk overlooking the area.

Cheelo protecting us from an overzealous seal at the Cape Cross Seal Colony

After a night in the campground, we headed to the 2008 shipwreck of the Zeila. The recent nature of this site meant the boat was much more intact than the Benguela Eagle, and we spent some time watching waves crashing into the wreck. Then it was back into the truck to visit another endemic Namibian ‘plant:’ a gigantic field of lichen that survives on the water provided by the fog sweeping in from the ocean.

Tiny lichen, a symbiotic partnership of algae and fungus, with human finger for scale

From the lichen field, we journeyed through more desert dunes to our next destination, the town of Swakopmund. A small town that’s described as a beach resort by people who don’t understand what’s supposed to happen at the beach, it provided a nice break from time spent in the cold of the Skeleton Coast. It was also a reprieve from sleeping in tents, since we had one night in a hotel. We made the most of the afternoon, dropping all of our clothes at the laundry and walking around the city to change money and buy gifts. It’s obviously a colonial German city, and also obviously a tourist area, including a large craft market of Himba and locals hawking their wares. We enjoyed a pleasant afternoon complete with delicious, deep-fried brie and a springbok pie, then went to our hotel to relax and enjoy having four walls around us.

Overview of the local artisans market where Himba and other Namibian people were selling crafts

Dinner that night was at the Tug, a restaurant on the beach built around an old tug boat. This was also a farewell dinner for two of our companions who’d opted to take only a one-week tour, and thank goodness the niña malcriada was one of them. She’d remained pouty, childish, and unhelpful throughout the week, and we were all three relieved to be shot of her—her rudeness and bad attitude hanging over the group like a thundercloud, and her ass cheeks hanging out of her shorts every time she stood up. Pro tip: have some effing respect for the culture of the country you’re in, especially if that country has a dress code on the conservative side. And have some respect for the people around you who will be forced to avoid looking at your ass cheeks because you couldn’t buy shorts long enough to cover them.

The Tug restaurant in Swakopmund is a tugboat permanently anchored (sort of, apparently it’s broken loose a couple of times!)

And that, dear readers, was the end of our first week in Namibia and our stopping point for this episode. The next part of the geogasm tour is even more exciting, and here’s a sneak peek:

Namibia: Home of the Original Geogasm (Part 1)

Namibia. A beautiful, semi-arid, sparsely populated country in southwest Africa. When I told people I wanted to go, I got the normal questions about international travel in general, and African countries in particular: Where is that? Isn’t it dangerous? Why do you want to go there? I’ve wanted to visit Namibia for many years to see the Skeleton Coast in the north, Deadvlei on the central coast, the Fish River Canyon and quiver trees in the south. Researching these areas, it was immediately obvious that Namibia is a huge country (half the size of Alaska) with mostly gravel roads. Seeing everything on my list would require a lot of driving, and public transportation, always my first pick, is sparse in Namibia. While it’s a popular country for people to take pre-planned “self-drive” tour packages, I’m not really interested in changing tires or climbing up and down from a camper perched precariously on the top of a truck.

Regular readers of this blog know that Jared and I typically avoid long tours. Sure, we’ll take day trips to places that are inaccessible by public transportation or where there’s a benefit to having a knowledgeable guide, but group tours lasting weeks? We did it once (Morrocco) and while it wasn’t terrible, we also didn’t appreciate being on such a strict schedule and itinerary. With some reluctance, I started looking into tours of Namibia that went to all the places I wanted to see. Because of the distance between my must-see places, there weren’t many tours that went to all of them and even fewer that were affordable. In the end, I chose a tour that went the places I wanted to go, but in order to keep the cost down, I had to agree to sleep in a tent (no big deal) without an air mattress (very big deal) for two weeks.

At this point, Jared finally admitted he didn’t want to go back to Africa. No problem, my sister was willing to fly from South Sudan to meet me. Yay! With the details worked out, I was ready to book the tour for May 2022. Unfortunately, the world had other plans: the South African strain of Covid emerged, shutting down most of the countries in southern Africa. Meanwhile, my sister accepted a new job in Mogadishu, Somalia. With these two developments, I had to delay this long-awaited trip for a year until the world opened fully back up and my sister had built up some vacation time. While delaying the trip for a year was not what I wanted, it worked out that my friend KT (also a geologist) was able to come with us, and so we booked the trip for May 2023.

KT and Lisa, two of my most favorite people in the world

Having previously been to Africa, I was aware that some countries there have really big empty page requirements for passports. I’d previously checked the requirements for Namibia and counted pages in my passport to confirm I had enough. I’d also decided to take layovers in Johannesburg between the long-haul flights from and to the US. Not exactly a mistake, but when I finally booked my tickets, I checked the blank page requirements again and realized in the last week of February that I didn’t have enough pages in my passport for entry into Namibia (3 pages) and two entries into South Africa (2 pages per entry). Cue Three Stooges-style panic and rushing about to put my passport application together and mail it, along with an exorbitant fee to expedite both the processing and the shipping. Processing times for expedited service were supposedly running 5-7 weeks, and I had 9 weeks and one day before leaving. If you’ve seen the stories in the news about passport processing this year, you won’t be surprised that on April 20^th I had to call the State Department. Apparently, their processing pattern right now is “we do it when we have to,” so I received my passport the next day after 7 weeks and 4 days of dread that it wouldn’t arrive in time. Passport finally in hand, it was time to go!

My new passport, received 12 days prior to my scheduled departure date

After a very long flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg, KT and I met up at the airport. We were spending one night in Joburg before catching our next flight to Windhoek, so we wanted some South African rand to tide us over. This was when I discovered (again) that not every ATM will take every bank card, and also that I’d forgotten my PIN. Having spent most of the past three years sitting at home, there wasn’t much need to use my travel-only ATM card, and any information not used is flushed by my brain. I texted Jared and he couldn’t remember either, but luckily he was able to reset the PIN right away to let me to get cash from a different ATM.

Crisis averted, KT and I piled our luggage into the hotel shuttle. After checking in, we dropped our bags and immediately went to find dinner, as we’d both been in transit with long red-eye flights. The hotel where we were staying had a restaurant, and since we were too tired to do more than walk downstairs, we decided it was perfect. Dinner was awesome, and we had a lovely meal for a very reasonable price, including a wonderful dessert of malva (South African bread pudding). After eating, we were both ready to sleep before returning to the airport for our next flight, so straight back upstairs and into bed we went.

This combination appetizer had so much delicious food we couldn’t finish it

The next morning, we caught the shuttle back to the airport and were immediately enthralled with all the stonework on display. Southern Africa has been subject to many geologic events over Earth’s history, and the airport was a showcase of the many types of stone in the region. I guess it’s a good thing the airport is pretty, because it’s also confusing—we walked around for a good 45 minutes trying to find the correct check-in location for our flight. Bags dropped, we headed for security, then on to passport control, where the Western idea of a single queue in which each person waits until the officer to the left or the right was free was not to the left-side officer’s liking. While we waited, he repeatedly stood up and shouted “Keep moving! Left or right, make your choice and live with it!” We made our choice, had our passports stamped, and went in search of water bottle refilling stations. Which turned out to be the bathroom attendant, who filled our bottles from a hose in the janitorial closet for a small tip. Thus inspected, stamped, and refilled, we proceeded to walk what felt like six miles to our gate.

Stone panels and flooring in the Johannesburg, South Africa airport

Once in Namibia, we proceeded through a pleasantly quick immigration process and set about getting cash from an ATM. We also bought SIM cards for our phones while waiting for Lisa to arrive. The ATM gave us no grief, except that we could only take out a small amount of cash. It was enough for the SIM cards, shuttle driver tip, and dinner, so rather than making a second withdrawal, we decided to get more money later. The SIM cards, on the other hand, turned into a giant clusterf**k. The line for the only SIM card store at the airport was long, and it took forever for each customer. We were also watching for Lisa, and we knew her flight had landed already, so KT stood in the interminable line while I periodically checked if Lisa had exited immigration. Once we were finally at the head of the line, we both picked a SIM with a data package and the agents went about activating the new cards, only to find out that KT’s iPhone was locked and couldn’t accept the card. Sweaty, annoyed, unable to find our shuttle driver, and still missing Lisa, we gave up and went to the arrivals area. Apparently, our shuttle driver had been waiting for Lisa’s flight, so we were finally able to dump our heavy luggage in the van and head for our hostel.

We managed to check into our hostel with some effort before proceeding to our room and discussing dinner plans. We’d read about a local delicacy called kapana and were eager to head to the Single Quarters market in the Katutura neighborhood, which was supposedly home of the best kapana in town. However, our hostel staff wouldn’t agree to call us a taxi unless we agreed the driver would stay with us for the entire time we were in the market. This seemed unnecessary to Lisa and me, as we’ve both traveled extensively and frequented street markets all around the world. But the staff was insistent, we were hungry, and in the end they called us a driver.

On arrival, the market was relatively empty, but luckily the kapana sellers were still grilling up delicious treats. We walked through the grills, taking little samples that the cooks set out until we each found a seller we liked best. With gobs of grilled meat in our hands, our driver took us to another stall where they served fat cakes, which turned out to be some of the most delicious fried dough I’ve ever tried. Unfortunately for all of you, dear readers, we were so busy eating we forgot to take a picture, so you’ll have to use your imagination and take my word that the food was delicious.

After dinner, the driver narrated our return trip through town, pointing out landmarks and telling us the history of various areas in Windhoek. We stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few things for the start of our trip, and since we’d all been traveling for two days already, we went straight to bed.

The next morning, we were up and packed early, eagerly waiting to begin our safari. The tour started with a trip to the company office, where we met our guide (Cheelo), chef (Broniel), our fellow travelers, and had an overview of the upcoming stops for the next two weeks. Then it was into the truck and we were on our way!

Our first stop was Okanhandja Mbangura Woodcarvers Craft Market, the largest woodworking market in Namibia. Of course we all bought some things, even though it meant figuring out how to protect our purchases in luggage that would be thrown about repeatedly for the next twelve days. (It turns out that Tupperwear and dirty socks make great protection for trinkets while traveling.) The little town also had an ATM where we were able to withdraw a larger amount than the airport ATM allowed, and a Biltong shop that our guides assured us had some of the best jerky in the country. They certainly had a large selection of biltong made from local antelope-type animals, and we purchased a few to try, plus more for gifts. Lisa was especially excited about the biltong, but KT and I were less so. Neither of us is a big jerky enthusiast, and while the taste was okay, the texture—and especially the smell—were a little too much. After giving it a go, KT and I admitted defeat and gave a large package of biltong to Broniel, who was very excited about what he told us is his favorite snack.

We make a stop at a grocery store in Otjiwarongo for supplies, and after some amount of delay (not unexpected by Lisa and me but apparently unacceptable to some others in the group, more on that later) we headed to our first campsite, the Mount Etjo game reserve. Broniel and Cheelo showed us how to pitch the small but heavy canvas tents we’d be using on the trip, and we set about trying to find flat ground while avoiding the inches-long thorns on the acacia trees at the campsite.

The tents used for safaris in Namibia, and the so-not-joking thorns on an acacia tree

Lisa and I were sharing, and KT had the other single female in the group as her tentmate. Unfortunately, this pouty Italian niña malcriada turned out to be the single most unpleasant person on the trip. She had apparently never been camping before and was singularly unhelpful when it came to putting up a tent. Even after being told about camping practices like not wearing shoes inside the tent and zipping the door to keep out insects and scorpions, she was unwilling to go along. This was only the first inkling of what was to come from our traveling companion. It’s good that KT has lots of teacher skills, because that level of patience and repetition turned out to be a constant necessity.

And with that, the trip was officially underway! Tune in to The Escape Hatch next time for more of the story. Here’s a sneak peek from the next installment:

They Say it’s “One Happy Island,” But… They Never Tried to Leave

Welcome back, dear readers. When we left off, Jared and I had spent three days on Aruba, the One Happy Island, trying to find our equilibrium and make our vacation into the Kokomo mirage. Unfortunately, we were met with disappointment more often than success, and were now hoping that our remaining 4 days on the island would be Instagram-worthy tropical paradise perfection.

Day T-4: We lazed around the beach, swimming in the ocean and reading in beach chairs. The club from which we got the chairs was closed, as we’d discovered on our first dinner foray. At first, we thought the restaurant was closed for the low season, which we somewhat lamented because drinks would have been great. After some questions to the locals, however, it turned out that the restaurant had been doing something shady (we never found out exactly what) and the government was pissed off enough to fill their septic tank with sand. In Aruba, restaurants are required to have a bathroom, and filling the septic tank was the government’s way of making that impossible. During the week we were there, the club plopped one blue and one pink port-o-let into the blazing sun nearby and started serving beer, but they still hadn’t figured out how to remove the sand from the septic tank. Moral of the story: don’t piss off the Aruban government!

Having exhausted the (ISLAND EXPENSIVE) restaurants within walking distance, we decided to try out a well-reviewed Surinamese place for dinner. It required taking a $12 taxi to town (as we didn’t want to melt), but it turned out to be a great choice because it was also adjacent to a pharmacy that had hydrocortisone cream and aloe. We’d managed to get some rash and pretty bad sunburn despite our efforts to the contrary, and were in dire need of both products. After spending quite a bit of money on two tubes of medicine, we headed to the Surinamese diner. We loved everything except the almond drink, and will definitely be looking for Surinamese restaurants in the future. It was also very cheap compared to everything else, which was a definite bonus as our credit card was starting to get a little melty too.

After dinner, we decided to walk to a nearby grocery store in hopes of finding more Tuareg cookies to bring back to the US. The store, unfortunately, didn’t have any, but they did have something that I initially thought was an entire aisle of dishwasher tablets. They turned out to be some kind of Aruban Peeps, which look just as disgusting as the Peeps in the US, but thank goodness they’re gluten free because that makes all the difference when you want disgusting candy that looks like dishwasher detergent tablets.

Disappointed by the lack of Tuaregs and getting tired, it was time to catch a cab to the hotel. It was still hot and we were full from dinner, so we didn’t really want to walk the 20 minutes back. We decided to head in that general direction while we looked for a taxi, only to find out that once again we were in a residential area with no tourist infrastructure, including no freaking taxis. We ended up walking all the way to our hotel, cursing the heat and all the water we drank. We saw exactly one taxi the whole walk back, and it didn’t stop when we flagged it, leaving us almost running by the end of our trek because there aren’t public restrooms in the residential areas of Oranjestad either.

During this hell march, we saw a sign for Fookiu Vodka which I felt accurately captured the spirit of the moment:

The next morning (Day T-3) we were up bright and early for a tour of the rugged north shore. Our ride showed up, and the driver informed us we could sit in the front, middle, or back of the jacked-up Range Rover for “baby bumps, medium bumps, or added bumps.” Being old and grouchy, we chose the front. I’m glad we did, because our driver was running late and drove like a madman trying to make up time. Or so we thought, until we met up with the other vehicles in our group and went off-road. It turns out that our driver was actually quite tame in comparison to those of the other two Range Rovers.

Jacked-up Range Rovers on the northern shore

Most of the tour fell into the category of “drive-by with a brief tap on the brakes to shout some info at us,” but we did stop a couple of times. The first was at a church on top of a hill. I can’t remember what was special about it (because I don’t care) but we did get a nice picture with some cacti. The second stop was at Natural Bridge, a geologic formation that used to be a sea arch, but it collapsed in 2006. I’m not quite sure why it still qualifies as a tourist attraction, but there’s a gift shop and restaurant so I guess it’s a required economic stop, even though Baby Natural Bridge (where the driver hesitated for a moment) was much more beautiful and, more importantly, still standing.

Interesting cacti in front of a historical church on the north shore of Aruba

Apparently the waves on the north shore of Aruba are into WWE style wrestling with tourists

Our final stop was Natural Pool (Conchi), the supposed highlight of the tour. It was a very rough journey in our super-Rover, so bumpy that one of our fellow tourist’s cell phone bounced out of his pocket and into the road. (Though amazingly, once he realized it was gone, he was able to find it on the side of the road later.) Once at Natural Pool, we loped down the rock stairs for our close encounter with the north coast and its rough seas.

We were lucky that the waves were small that day. Even so, the sharp, moss-covered rocks that make up the approach to the pool were treacherous. Jared opted to stay on land, but I felt obligated to get a close look at this geologic marvel. After getting in and somehow managing to get back out of this tiny, dirty, crowded bowl, I can say—I should’ve skipped it. I suppose it’s pretty from above, and some people do jump off the rocks, but overall there was nothing really special about it. Had it been a day with high waves, I don’t think I could have gotten in and out without being lifted by a crane or seriously injured.

Waves coming through an opening at Conchi

Park staff attempting to remove the least of the hazards at the entrance to Conchi

We climbed back up the stairs for the trip home. The thing that made the whole day worthwhile was that we passed the restaurant near our hotel that had been closed earlier in the week, and it was open. We immediately decided to walk over and try it. The food was excellent, though I didn’t care for the funchi, a local delicacy of fried something similar to polenta. The dessert was even better than the dinner, a flan and a chocolate mousse cake that were both spectacular.

Jared and I don’t usually stay in all-inclusive resorts. They tend to be expensive, and they’re an obstacle to meeting people and getting a feel for the local culture. The only bad thing about not staying at an all-inclusive is that we didn’t have unlimited drinks 24 hours per day, which is a little sad during a beach vacation. While we enjoyed sitting on our beach chairs by our hotel, we wanted at least one day of unlimited drinks, so we booked a day on De Palm Island (Day T-2), a little barrier island off the south coast. It’s all inclusive, includes snorkeling and banana boats, and to compete with nearby Renaissance Island, it has a few desultory flamingos. The bus picks you up, takes you to the ferry, and you get to spend a whole day lazing around on your chair with alcohol and snorkeling.

De Palm is nice for a day of day drinking and snorkeling

De Palm Island is a very small place and there were a lot of people, but it was a nice experience overall. We met several people from around the US while we waited in line for drinks and lounged on our chairs. I spent lots of time snorkeling, seeing a few fish I hadn’t seen in other areas, and even caught an eel poking around the rocks. Jared found a different kind of eel close to the beach, where we watched it cruise around the rocks. We took pictures of the Chilean flamingos and listened to the caretaker explain that the crabs chasing the flamingos weren’t trying to hurt them, but rather were waiting for some nice, fresh flamingo poop to hit the beach so they could have lunch.

On our last full day on the island (Day T-1), we finally gave up and rented a car because there were several things we wanted to do that we couldn’t reach via walking. Our hotel had a rental car counter in the lobby, and it turns out that renting the car was the most cost-effective thing we did all week. We went to the butterfly farm on the west side of the island. We found a great crepe restaurant for breakfast, though we ate and left quickly because it was outdoors and the heat index at 9:00 am was already over 100°F. We went to the post office to get stamps for postcards and tried to visit the archaeological museum, which unfortunately was closed for renovations. We took pictures of the blue horse statues that were scattered around the tourist area, and most importantly, we visited five more grocery stores looking for Tuareg cookies and the local rum.

We totally scored, eventually finding 16 packs of cookies and two bottles of rum, as well as a 12 pack of Coco Rico soda for our friend Vikki. After a morning walking around in the inferno, quality time with our beach chairs was in order. Following a lazy afternoon and a beautiful sunset, we made the most of our car by returning to town for dinner at a wonderful little Italian restaurant which had outside seating. A good breeze made our last night more comfortable.

Aruba does have beautiful sunsets almost every night

The next morning, Day T-0, it was time to pack up. We very carefully rolled all our cookies into pairs of socks to protect them on the journey, and found room in our luggage for both bottles of rum and the 12 cans of Coco Rico. Dear friends, I can say with certainty that this is the only time in my life when I have hit the 50 pound luggage limit (24.5 kilograms!!), and had the attendant put a “Heavy” tag on my suitcase.

12 cans of Coco Rico, 2 bottles of rum, and 16 packs of Taureg cookies almost put our luggage over the weight limit

Did we like Aruba? Mostly. We enjoyed Surfside Beach and watching the planes land over the water. We saw lots of fish while snorkeling and enjoyed seeing the very different north side of this desert island. The lack of bus transportation was disappointing for a desert island that will be hit hard by climate change, but tourists in the tourist zone can walk or take the tram in that area. We got by with walking, a few taxis, and one day of a rental car. Would we go back to Aruba?

The horror story, the haunted house, the wicked twist to the plot… That’s the Aruba airport. It took what had been an okay (but not exceptional) trip and turned it into a “never again” moment that guarantees Jared and I will avoid the One Happy Island like the plague. But that’s a story for another day…

Even more bonus snorkeling pictures

The eel I found in the snorkeling area at De Palm

The eel Jared found in the swimming area at De Palm

These guys crack me up because they’re like 3D printed battleship fish

Not sure what it is but nice neon accents

Just checking to see who reads to the end lol

They Say It’s “One Happy Island,” But…

Oranjestad, Aruba – September 2022

Aruba. Jamaica. Oooh I wanna take ya…

That’s what springs to mind for most people when you say Aruba—the 1988 song “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys, eliciting dreams of umbrella drinks and coconut-scented tanning oil wafting by your nose as you lay on a perfect beach under palm trees while listening to a steel drum band. Holding hands with your lover while you walk slowly into the perfectly clear, Caribbean blue water to kiss in front of the sunset in picture-perfect fashion. The locals support and encourage this mirage, with the One Happy Island slogan festooned on everything in sight and spouted by the locals at every opportunity.

Aruba may be the perfect One Happy Island in some areas, just not where we stayed. We’d found a great deal on a hotel near the airport, and snapped it up with no more than a cursory scan of traveler reviews. We were lured by the (very) cheap price for the week, the very close proximity to Surfside Beach, the apparent array of restaurants within walking distance, and the presence of not one but two bus stops on Google maps. We reasoned that with two bus stops, a variety of nearby restaurants, and a short walk to one of the nicest beaches on the island, we’d be set for the week, spending our days lazing on the beach with drinks then catching a bus into the main part of town for cheap dinners of island delights. And thank goodness the hotel was cheap, because everything else on Aruba is ISLAND EXPENSIVE.

What is island expensive? Why would I make that kind of distinction beyond just saying that the vacation was expensive? My dear friends, if you have not spent significant time on an island in the middle of the ocean let this serve as your warning. ISLAND EXPENSIVE means whatever it is your heart desires is probably a) not located on the island, or b) costs at least 5 times more than it does on the mainland. In addition, there’s the tourist mark-up that accompanies the 5 times cost increase, meaning if you buy your heart’s desire in a store near the tourist areas, the cost is really more like 8 to 10 times more expensive than on the mainland.

This is understandable when you really think about having to put all of those things on a ship that uses lots of fuel to cross a huge water body to unload that stuff onto the island, and the fact that tourists are the main industry. Even though Jared and I know from many previous experiences about ISLAND EXPENSIVE, somehow we always manage to forget between island vacations, meaning we spent a week cringing at the cost of everything we ate, drank, or did. Seeing the cost in Aruban florins didn’t really help, because even with an exchange rate of 1.7 florins to the dollar, ISLAND EXPENSIVE is still really expensive.

Not that you need Aruban florins. Everyone we interacted with seemed to know the price of everything in dollars, and when we wanted to pay in florins, they had to pull out their phone to do the conversion. In hindsight we did not need to get florins from the ATM at the airport, but we should have brought a lot more US $1 and $5 bills. Over the last two years of sitting at home through COVID, we forgot all our travel rules and only brought twenties, except for one $10 we got at the Atlanta airport because I wanted peanut M&Ms for a snack.

Aruban florins. Used only by tourists in Aruba

But I digress. We arrived at the Aruba airport in the mid-afternoon, sailed through customs and immigration, went straight to the ATM, and were absolutely shocked at the lack of touts. It’s amazing to us that an island nation that relies on tourism for its main industry doesn’t have a hall of touts at the airport, but hats off to Aruba—nary a one grabbed us, yelled at us, blocked our way, or shoved pamphlets into our faces as we walked to the ATM and the taxi stand. I’d looked up the price of the taxi beforehand and knew it was going to be expensive, so it wasn’t unexpected when the driver charged US$18 after driving one mile from the airport to our hotel. No problem, we thought, because there were restaurants and bus stops nearby, and we wouldn’t need a taxi again until we were ready to go back to the airport.

Google Maps shows many restaurants and two bus stops near our hotel

Once we got to the hotel, it didn’t take us long to change and go out to the pool for drinks. It was very hot, so we spent the afternoon in and out of the pool while trying the resort’s stock of Venezuelan and Aruban rums. It was a nice afternoon that we thoroughly enjoyed until we were ready to head to dinner.

As I mentioned earlier, it appeared on Google maps that there were many restaurants within walking distance. We got dressed and headed out to look for a wonderful Aruban dinner to cap off our relaxing afternoon, only to realize… all of those “restaurants” were really just walk-up counters with the equivalent of hot dogs and popcorn. The focus of all of the places immediately around the hotel was definitely convenience foods and alcohol. While those things certainly have a place, they weren’t really what we wanted, so we walked toward the beach to check out some other places.

The beachside hamburger shack had small menus out that we mistook for the full menu, and not wanting fast food we passed it by. We wandered farther up the beach to two of the places that had tables in the sand, with beautiful views of the sunset to accompany the meal. One appeared closed, so we went to the other. Luckily, September is the low season, because it turns out we were at one of the most expensive restaurants on the island, one that normally requires reservations weeks in advance. But because it was the off season, we were able to get a seat on the beach and watch the sunset while enjoying an exceptional dinner and the best dessert we’d have all week. We went off to bed in a good mood, full and happy, with the intention to get up in the morning and catch the bus to the grocery store for supplies.

The next morning, we got up, got ready, and went out to try and catch a bus. We asked a couple of the staff at the hotel, only to learn to our dismay that the bus stops shown on Google maps were phantoms. Maybe they existed before the pandemic, but they definitely weren’t in use anymore. The hotel staff told us we could walk 15 minutes to a stadium farther inland to catch the bus, or walk 15 minutes down the coast to a grocery store. None too pleased, we set off into the burning heat of a clear sunny day to walk 15 minutes to the store.

It turns out that while the air temperature in Aruba tends to stay between 84-88°F year-round, the heat index can exceed 100°F. We arrived at the store completely soaked with sweat, hoping to quickly grab a few supplies and book a couple tours before hiking back. We walked around and around the tiny grocery store, looking for anything we could cobble together for breakfast and snacks, finally settling on some bread, lunchmeat, chocolate bars, and cashews, plus some soft drinks, 5 liters of water, and sports drinks to help avoid heatstroke. We decided to make one more pass to augment our snack stack, and there they were… miracle of miracles, 5 packs of Tuareg cookies peeking out like Captain Cook’s buried treasure.

We gasped and rejoiced, forgetting the heat and the missing bus, and grabbed all 5 packages to eat during the week. This was only the third time in all of our travels that we’d located these delicious coconut snacks, and with no immediate plans to return to Chile or Guatemala, we were ecstatic with our Tuareg treasure.

Leaving the store, we quickly walked up to the Renaissance Hotel to book a couple of excursions for the week. Giving in to the fact that we were carrying almost 10 liters of fluid and were about to melt, we grabbed a US$10 taxi back to our hotel where we found that the heat had melted our chocolate. Still starry-eyed about our Tuaregs, we put the chocolate in the fridge and went to the beach to cool off in the water. After a lazy afternoon on the beach, we were once more ready for dinner and hoping for a cheaper option than the beachfront restaurants.

We’d already established that the shacks facing our hotel didn’t really have dinner food, so we located a promising restaurant on Google maps farther inland and headed out… Only to arrive at the restaurant and find it was closed, even though the hours on the door indicated it should be open. Grumbling, hot, and annoyed, we walked farther inland toward what Google said was a sushi restaurant.

The farther we walked, the more we realized we were in a very residential area. There was the occasional car on the street as people came home from work, but mostly it was dark and deserted. After passing a couple more restaurants that were closed, we happened upon a hamburger stand and, not willing to risk additional walking in the heat to find out if the sushi restaurant was open, we decided hamburgers were a great idea. We also got some of the local soft drinks, in my case a Tropical Cherry, that were really pretty good. Yet another delicious drink that Coca-Cola serves the rest of the world while punishing the US with fart-flavored tonic water and Dr. Pepper.

Tropical Cherry soft drink. Infinitely better than most of the Coca Cola products available in the US

We woke the next morning and quickly got ready for a snorkeling tour we’d booked to Baby Beach and Mangel Alto. It turned out that we were the only ones on the tour, and we had a great morning looking at many kinds of fish we hadn’t previously seen. The currents in both locations were a little tougher than we’re used to, but our guide was wonderful and had a very keen eye for wildlife. He found trumpet fish, an octopus, and an eel among other things, pointing them out so we could take pictures. After a wonderful time on our tour, we headed over to the beach shack for lunch and were pleasantly surprised to find they had an extensive menu that included delicious chicken satay. We spent the rest of the afternoon on our lounge chairs with the occasional dip into the water to cool off, since the heat index remained stubbornly over 100°F. We also quickly realized that the beach was at the end of the airport runway, and we could watch the planes land over the water (which was rather entertaining and resulted in the occasional whiff of jet fuel on the breeze).

Airplane coming in for landing over Surfside Beach

After a pleasant morning and afternoon, we headed to the only overwater restaurant on the island, which was supposed to have food on par with the beach restaurant where we ate our first night. Alas, the overwater restaurant was somewhat mediocre in both food and service, while somehow still costing the equivalent of a small country’s annual GDP. Somewhat disappointed, we schlepped back to the hotel and collapsed in the AC while grumbling about the drag racing on the road outside our room and the thumpy club music next door. Almost halfway through our trip, we were beginning to realize that even though we love tropical beaches with umbrella drinks and snorkeling, we weren’t meshing well with the One Happy Island.

Dinner at the overwater restaurant near Surfside Beach

With 4 more days on the island, would we be able to find our way and create the perfect mirage invoked by the Beach Boys? Join us in our next installment of The Escape Hatch to find out!

Bonus snorkeling pictures

We saw a lot of sea life on our snorkeling trip. Here are a few of the denizens of the deep (well actually shallow) that we encountered.

This shoal of squid were following us around while we snorkeled at Baby Beach

There were many different kinds of parrot fish at both locations. This one is a rainbow parrotfish

Blue tang are all over the Caribbean, and were plentiful at Baby Beach and Mangel Alto

A flounder that was almost invisible except it kept giving itself away by moving its eyes

Bonus parrotfish, this one may be a stoplight parrotfish but who really knows

Not sure what kind of fish but they show up all over the Caribbean

Surgeon fish, another common Caribbean species

Yellowtail snapper. These show up even when no other fish are visible for miles

Some type of wrasse, possibly a slippery dick. I didn’t ask and they weren’t telling

These are hard to see because they blend in so well

Foureye butterfly fish next to a brain coral

At Last, Resort

Travel in the Time of COVID – Part 2

Previously: Our first vacation after coming home from South America was supposed to have been a resort stay in Cancun. Then the never-ending pandemic for which some of us are still wearing masks two-and-a-half years later (ahem) kicked in, and we put off our plans for as long as we safely could. We started going stir crazy. We dipped our toes back into travel with short trips to New York and Tampa. (Read it here.) Then the day finally came when we had to go abroad or go nuts, so Lea, our friend Melissa, and I were off to Mexico.

(But first… mea culpa. The events in this article took place a full year ago, I wrote it all down a month later, then I’ve sat on it for nearly a year. In that time, I’ve been distracted by finishing another novel and starting a job as a writer for Shortform, but that hardly excuses my new heights of procrastination. Anyway, back to the story in progress…)

Cancun, October 2021

Here’s the thing about resorts. You can book a stay for a very low price that comes with food, drinks, and airfare included. The catch is that they’ll want to sell you more. This is the dreaded “time-share sales pitch.” Sometimes it’s brutal; sometimes it’s benign. You just need to be prepared to spend part of your vacation having people try to sell you even more vacations. When you’ve been cooped up in a house for two years, even more vacations can sound very tempting.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After landing in Cancun, dashing through customs, and extracting some pesos from the ATM, we faced our first gauntlet. Between baggage claim and the exit is a hall of rental car, taxi, and tour excursion companies, with some degree of overlap between them. But oh no, the staff don’t meekly wait behind their counters; they’ll step directly in your face and grab you if they can.

In years past, I remember running through this scrum to escape from the vendors as fast as I could, but this time I didn’t feel the salesmen-induced panic that’s overcome me before. Maybe it’s because we had a specific group we were looking for—people in blue flowery shirts—that helped me avoid making eye contact and triggering my primal “run from the lions” instinct.

The Blue Flowery Shirt People were stationed at waypoints every fifty feet to help direct us to the shuttles conveniently located at the absolute far end of the ground transport lot. Once there, we were welcomed (and sales-pitched excursions to) while waiting on our actual van. We said “no thanks” several dozen times and were finally hurried along. Our room at the resort wasn’t ready yet, but not to worry—we’d planned for that and packed shorts in our carry-ons so we could sit by the pool and start drinking right away.

The promise of THIS makes many things possible.

However, before that, we had another “welcome” to sit through. This wasn’t a normal sales pitch, exactly—it was a sales pitch for a sales pitch. The rep gave us drinks, told us about the resort, and offered to schedule a tour the next day. (“Not a time share, I promise!” he said.) In return for a 90-minute presentation about this particular chain of hotels, we’d get a bottle of tequila and 2-for-1 massages.

We said, “Sure, why the hell not?”

For the rest of the day, we sat by the lovely adults-only pool and drank ourselves silly. Masks were required indoors but not outside, so we crossed fingers that we wouldn’t regret going face-naked in public. (This was between waves of Delta and Omicron.) Lea did the math on our beverage intake and calculated that if each of us drank at least eleven free cocktails per day, we’d have paid for the trip in alcohol consumption alone.

I swear we’re not drunkards. This only happens in all-inclusive resorts. The first time we’d gone all-inclusive like this was in Negril, Jamaica, 2007. Before that, I’d never been a drinker at all, but Negril began my love affair with rum, from which I’ve now branched out to tequila, whiskey, and vodka. Thank you, Caribbean! I never knew what I was missing.

Ah, sunrise over the… Wait, why are we up this early?

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah: the sales pitch.

The “90-minute presentation” took two and a half hours. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly a time share. The pitch was for a membership to the resort, with access to others all around the world. Instead of hotel rooms, members are given beachside suites anywhere in their network, with a small added fee if the resort is all-inclusive. The math was tempting when looked at as a cost-per-year basis. My eyebrows were definitely tingling at the view from the guest suite’s seaside balcony. Had the membership been an annual subscription, I think we would have considered it. The words “yes, please” tasted very good, and I hadn’t even had my first cocktail yet.

However, a subscription wasn’t what they were selling. Instead, they offered a 25-year membership, paid for up front as if buying a car (financed for two years). Once we said “No, that’s not going to work,” they kept coming back with more spins on the offer—try this portion, try our travel agency, use the membership every other year. But resort travel isn’t our style. We may do it once every five or ten years, but it doesn’t leave room to explore the way we like.

Still, after two and a half hours of being marketed to, I damn sure made off with that free bottle of tequila.

The next day we went snorkeling, something I hadn’t done since staying on Isla Fuerte in 2019. (In South America, Lea snorkeled more than I did—see also: Morro de São Paolo). On this trip, the swim was invigorating (a polite way of saying “holy crap, what a current”), but the views were certainly worth it.

The first site was a shipwreck, and unlike others we’ve seen, this one still looked like a boat. The second dive was over an undersea art installation (see above), and it was here that I suffered a wardrobe malfunction (one of my flippers broke loose, so with only one remaining I had a really fun time not swimming in circles). At the third spot, we snorkeled over a wide bed of grass that was a haven for turtles. We found one, whom the whole tour group stalked as it went about its little turtle business. Though our snorkel excursion took us off the resort, we never left the clutches of the Cancun tourist industry.

This poor guy couldn’t just eat his grass in peace.

So on the day after that, we got on the bus.

This was more in line with how we travel, and to be honest, I was nervous as hell. Google Maps doesn’t track Cancun’s bus routes, and though Moovit does, it’s pretty inaccurate (as we’d find out). We’d ridden Cancun’s buses before, so we weren’t in completely unexplored territory, but it still felt like stepping back into the unknown.

The market they normally direct tourists to is Mercado 28, so of course our destination was Mercado 23, where Cancun’s actual residents shop and eat. Nevertheless, many of the stalls sell tourist merchandise and, because ‘tis the season, Día de los Muertos paraphernalia. The “Ruta 1” bus from the hotel strip doesn’t go all the way there, but if you hop off at the McDonald’s on Avenida Tulum, it’s only a five-block walk.

And walking is the way to go. There are several streets that lead to Mercado 23, but why anyone would drive is beyond me. Traffic was deadlocked all around the market, and I couldn’t begin to guess where anyone thought they were going to park. The market itself was crowded and hopping, so we wandered all through it, bought souvenirs, and inhaled the smell of fresh tacos (we’d be back). Mercado 23 doesn’t take very long to explore, but woe betide any tourist who thinks they’re going to make it out without buying something. Can’t be done.

In case you need to make absolutely sure everyone knows you went to Cancun.

Where to go next? A graveyard, obviously! (Note for new readers: Lea and I go see dead people.) On our last time to Cancun, we visited a tiny cemetery on Isla Mujeres, but this time we searched for one in the city. The closest we found was the Municipal Panteón, but I grew leery when I realized that we’d have to take a mini-bus, which I’ve always found to be cramped, bumpy, and untrustworthy. (Looking at you, Lima.) Moovit showed the routes but not the cemetery itself, so I looked up the address in Google and off we went.

Of course, we ended up in the wrong place. After riding to where we thought the address should be and finding nothing but a string of auto repair shops, Google confirmed we’d overshot by a mile. Thankfully, the second ride didn’t take too long, but the cemetery was a little disappointing. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s the most poorly-kept cemetery we’ve seen in our travels. It appeared to have reached maximum capacity in the 90s, and no one had tended to the graves in a while. Some had even cracked open, and human remains were clearly visible. Apologies for the lack of photographic evidence, but taking pictures of someone’s skull in the dirt felt grisly and inappropriate.

After leaving, we waited and waited and waited for a minibus heading our direction. The first one we spotted with the right route number passed us by without stopping. The next one did stop, but the driver kicked us out well short of where Moovit said it would go, requiring us to hoof it back to Mercado 23. (Because tacos.)

The taco stall we found was the emptiest in the market; at that moment, Lea and I were its only customers. But dios mio, the tacos were good. Our server also brought us a mystery drink that looked like old milk. Being us, we said “Why not?” It turned out to be horchata —sweetened rice milk with a hint of cinnamon. We liked it enough that we bought a second bottle to have the barkeep at our resort mix with rum.

While we waited in the heat for the bus back to the hotel, my legs sore and shirt sweaty, Lea said to me, “See? You know you missed this.” Well… maybe? I think it helped that an ice-cold swimming pool was waiting for us, a luxury we’ve rarely had in other parts of the world.

Home sweet home, bright enough to see from orbit.

With only two days left, it was time to find out if fate would let us come home or if we’d be stuck for an extended stay abroad. To return to the US, we’d need a negative COVID test within 72 hours of our flight. The State Department didn’t specify which type of test was required, so we chose the rapid test—not the most accurate, but in case of a false positive, we’d have time to test again before departure. In case of a positive positive, Lea and I had lugged our work computers all the way to Mexico while dreading what a two-week quarantine room service bill would look like.

Thankfully, our tests were negative. While we’d been as careful re: COVID as we could, I attribute our continued good health to the Inverse Corollary of Murphy’s Law—any negative occurrence that you actually prepare for will not be the thing that goes wrong.

(Please note: I’m not a doctor, but I only play one on TV.)

(Second note: If you understood that reference, you’re old.)

We spent the rest of our days sitting by the pool, grazing on buffets, and getting up early to take pictures of the sunrise. And thus our time in Cancun came to a close.

The transit home was a full three-ring circus. But that, my friends, is another story…

Travel in the Time of COVID

Part 1: A long time ago…

…on a continent far, far away, Lea and I took a very long trip. So long, in fact, that for a while we didn’t even think about traveling again. Time passed, as it does, and at last came the day when we felt that… maybe… it was time for another overseas adventure. But not a stressful one, no. We wanted to sit on a beach, or perhaps by a pool, and have someone supply us with copious amounts of alcohol as we emptied our minds of all things work-related. In other words, we wanted an all-inclusive resort: a vacation spot that would collect us from the airport, drive us to the hotel, and let us turn off our brains.

Therefore, dear readers, at the dawn of 2020, we used a discount travel site to book a stay in Cancun a few months later, in April.

Then a plague happened.

Though we’d already paid, in light of COVID, the travel company let us postpone our trip to Mexico—but not forever. By December 2020, the pressure was on to pick a date and commit, so we did, with much crossing of fingers and gnashing of teeth. We knew that COVID might surge again, new problems might arise, and cannibal zombies might start walking the earth.

We spent quarantine watching The Walking Dead on the assumption that it was a documentary.

Time dragged. We went camping. We both worked from home. I published some books and sold some short stories. Vaccines were released, which Lea and I got as soon as humanly possible. For a while, it even felt safe to go in public (masked, of course). Lea’s sister Lisa was scheduled to visit the US from her job in South Sudan, so the question came up: How much were tickets to meet her in New York, and did we dare venture into airports and subways?

We dared.

New York, May 2021

The cheapest flights to New York are really into Newark, followed by a leisurely forty-minute train ride from Liberty International direct to Penn Station. I say “leisurely,” but after working from home for over a year, this was by far the longest time we’d worn masks in one stretch. Since we were being extra-cautious, we each wore two masks on the plane and on the train.

Breathing my own air for hours on end was a COVID-related pleasure I hadn’t enjoyed yet. Medical and service-sector employees have had to deal with that since Day One, but Lea and I spent our quarantine as hermits. This trip was our first taste of “Here’s what your breath really smells like—all day.”

But you know what we call that, folks? Inconvenience. Mask up, people. Cover your nose and your mouth. New Yorkers seemed to understand this idea. Why do I have to explain this?

(ahem)

Trains arriving from New Jersey are consigned to the deepest bowels of Manhattan’s underground. Any New Jerseyite readers out there, let me know if that’s a personal attack against your state. Once we rode the escalator up from Penn Station, our very first sight of NYC was the Empire State Building. No giant ape, but what can you do? Our hotel was only a few blocks around the corner, so we checked in and did the first thing you do when arriving in New York:

We got bagels.

Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, the bagels! After a year of home-cooked meals, exhausting ourselves of every recipe we could tolerate, those real New York bagels were sheer carb heaven. We bought enough for ourselves, Lisa, and our travel buddy Melissa, retreated to our room, and browsed for things to do that weren’t completely locked down.

Things that survive the apocalypse: roaches, Keith Richards, and food trucks.

It turns out that while New York was back in business, many of its people still chose to stay indoors. The subways, for instance, were never crowded. That is a sign of the End Times, my friends. Before COVID-19 and the subsequent plague of “Waaah, I don’t want to listen to doctors,” getting a seat on a New York subway was a thing almost unheard of. Another glitch in the Matrix was that it was never hard for us to find restaurants that didn’t require reservations. Some public buildings were closed, but businesses were open. Some put a cap on how many people could be inside at once, but most just required masks, a temperature check, and hand sanitizer before entering.

For those who haven’t been to New York, this counts as “not crowded.”

One of the first things I’d wanted to do post-quarantine was visit an actual brick-and-mortar bookstore, so we went to The Strand and spent money. We wandered Chinatown and Brooklyn, took a walking tour of Harlem, and went for the nighttime view from The Edge, a platform high above Hudson Yards (a futuristic mega-mall whose target consumers are probably Cylons from Battlestar Galactica).

Even masked, I could smell the fresh print.

Though vaccines were available before we went to NYC, they were still pretty new. We expected that everyone would get their shots sooner or later (har-har), but at that point it hadn’t been possible yet. We spent the whole weekend masking in public, maintaining social distancing when possible, but nevertheless enjoying ourselves. Once we came home (after another day of double-masked transit) it was a pleasure to peel the layers off my face and take in a few easy breaths.

Shortly after, the CDC relaxed its mask mandate for the fully-vaccinated. Which, of course, gave the hardly-maskers and anti-vaxxers permission to go around mouth-breathing at people. We already had another weekend trip planned, but grew ever more anxious about the inevitable rise in cases due to the swarms of careless people being asshats.

Totally cheating with a pic from 2017 because we didn’t take any photos in Florida.

Tampa, June 2021

The great thing about living a short ride away from the world’s busiest airport is that if you watch the sales, weekend getaways are a snap. Early in June, we took an extra-long weekend to visit our friend KT in Tampa. (We also took our computers so we could work while hanging out.) The number of incautious people were on the rise, so we spent more time “in” than “out.” It was great to spend a weekend near the water with some BBQ and first-class Cuban food, but as at home, we ate take-out or made use of outdoor seating. We went kayaking on the Homosassa, then spent an afternoon drinking cocktails in KT’s pool.

In the name of sanity and everyone else’s entertainment, and because there was no compelling reason not to, I got drunk. Drunk drunk, y’all. Me being intosic… insoxa… intoxicated is a sight that very few people have had the privilege to behold. Call me a lightweight: I never got passed-out, falling-down, hugging-the-porcelain drunk, but for Lea and KT’s edification, I made it my mission to clean out a couple unwanted bottles of rum. Lea says I get a little belligerent when drunk, but I rather think it turns off my inbred Southern inhibitions. And makes me dizzy. Real dizzy.

Meanwhile, COVID was back on the rise, quickly surpassing 2020’s peak. After returning to Atlanta, Lea and I put ourselves back into lockdown, especially once the Delta Variant kicked into gear. On top of all that, we lost our cat Miss Piggy to a series of medical issues. In August, going nuts in a cat-empty house, we decided to take a “working holiday” to visit Lea’s mom at her home in Myrtle Beach.

Myrtle Beach, August 2021

Instead of flying, this time we drove. Urgh. The advantage of driving is not having to wear two layers of masks for hours at a time. On the other hand, while the drive should have been five hours, it was made longer by torrential rain on the way over, and torrential Atlanta traffic coming home. The COVID rates in Georgia and South Carolina were dismal, and several vaccinated people we knew had come down with cases of Delta. Nevertheless, for better or worse, we had to get out of the house.

In Myrtle Beach, we worked, ate out, and sat on the beach in the evenings. I was glad for a beach chair and the sunsets by the waves, but in restaurants it was somewhat disturbing. It seemed that nobody was taking precautions. In one restaurant, even the wait staff weren’t masking. I cannot believe that we weren’t exposed to COVID; I can only assume that our vaccines did their job.

Get vaccinated, people! Why are we still talking about this?

(ahem)

About that Cancun thing…

Back when it came time to book a flight or lose our money, we rolled the dice and chose October 2021 as our vacation date of last resort. October was far enough away from 2020 that we’d hoped everyone would be vaccinated (cue hysterical laugher and/or sobs) and things would have returned to something close to normal. It was also the furthest date out for which we could purchase airplane tickets.

All through the summer, COVID cases crept up. We worried whether we could travel at all, or if we even should. The worst-case scenario was that we’d get COVID in Mexico and be stuck in Cancun for an extra two weeks. It wouldn’t be an extended vacation; we’d have to do our jobs (while sick) using a foreign hotel’s Wi-Fi and our tiny laptop screens while hemorrhaging pesos on room-service bills.

But as the date grew closer, infection rates inched down. We still didn’t trust it. We avoided going out as much as we could, but a mountain of necessities kept drawing us out of the house. A week before our departure date, we both got COVID tests to make sure we weren’t going to bring the bug with us.

At last, the big day arrived, the day we’d been planning for since January 2020. We packed our beach clothes and our work computers, took the train to the airport, and flew to Mexico. No matter what happened next, we’d at least have margaritas by the pool.

TO BE CONTINUED

Get Out of the House! – Camping 2020

Ah, 2020 – the year we went from traveling the world to not leaving the house. It seems that Lea and I took our Globetrotting Year not a moment too soon. Given the current COVID-transmission statistics and the fact that too many people still don’t know how to wear a f&%#^ng mask, it’s not even safe to set foot in a grocery store, much less get on an airplane. If we risked it anyway, what would we do once we reached our destination – confine ourselves to a hotel room and order delivery? But there’s still one way to cure cabin fever and get that much-needed change of scenery, that’s more or less the safest way to travel until the world gets vaccinated and it’s not irresponsible to leave our respective caves, and that’s camping.

Lea and I used to camp several times a year, then went through a phase when we hardly camped at all. This year has brought us back to camping in earnest, and from the packed-out campgrounds we’ve stayed at, many people feel the same way. While originally we’d planned to go to Mexico and England this year, instead we’ve stayed within a four-hour radius of Atlanta, visiting Chattahoochee Bend State Park, DeSoto State Park, and the Blanton Creek Campground. Blanton Creek usually closes in October, but due to popular demand remained open much later, which was lucky for us because Hurricane Delta scrapped our earlier reservation.

That being said, our experience has always been that there is a very narrow window in both the spring and fall when we are personally willing to sleep outdoors in a canvas box. In the American South, particularly in Georgia and Alabama, the temperate shift from freezing nights to summer heat only lasts for about a month, and planning a camping trip requires a certain degree of luck and/or precognition regarding the weather. Campground reservations fill up months in advance, so there’s no use waiting to see what the forecasts predict.

A little on the chilly side of “acceptable.”

Of course, the relevance of this window varies depending on where you fall on the “camping technology” spectrum. On one end are the primitive campers who hike to their sites with all their gear on their backs, and pitch their tiny tents far from electricity or water spigots. On the other side of the scale are the campers who show up in RVs the size of Metallica’s tour bus, with all the amenities of home: mattresses, kitchens, showers, big-screen TVs, and satellite hookups to watch the Big Game, can’t miss that!

Given that many of these RVs are more spacious and well-apportioned than some apartments I’ve lived in, I can’t help but think that these people are cheating. However, given that I crossed the half-century mark this year, I can’t help but see the benefits of bringing your whole house with you into the Wild. At Blanton Creek, in fact, Lea and I (and our friend and camping buddy Melissa, no stranger to this blog) drove around the campground to window-shop RVs. Our position on the caveman-to-RV spectrum has shifted over the years, and the day will eventually come when we’ll invest in a smaller pop-up camper. The plan, in fact, is to retire, sell our house, and spend a year or two roaming from park to park across the States. Maybe in something like this:

For now, we stick to what gear we can fit in our car. For years, that was a tiny Honda Civic, but our new vehicle of choice is a hatchback Honda Fit with seats that lay flat to make packing an awful lot simpler. We bring a tent, an air mattress, a propane camping stove, chairs, bedding (the thickness of which depends on how cold it will be at night), cookware, a cooler, lanterns (propane and electric), headlamps, toiletries, clotheslines, towels & washcloths, reading material, a selection of board games, twenty pounds of ice, and enough food for two dinners, two breakfasts, and one lunch (which we usually end up skipping in favor of chips and Little Debbies). This year we’ve added an extension cord to run inside the tent, from which to charge our phones, run a box fan, and power my C-PAP.

What never varies, though, is that we always forget something. Looking at the list above, I’m reminded that I forgot to pack my camera on our last trip, which I was supposed to bring to photograph the fall colors. Thankfully, Lea’s Olympus is better at making the colors pop than my Canon Rebel T3 (see below). When we went to Chattahoochee Bend in the spring, I forgot to pack our brand new stove and had to drive all the way back to Atlanta, or else we’d have eaten chips and cold cuts for two days.

Actually a better kitchen than we often had in South America.

What is there to do while camping? Cook, for one thing. As you’d imagine, when living like a caveman, a primary activity is heating meat and vegetables. After decades of bringing ingredients to chop and prepare on-site, this year it finally dawned on us to do the bulk of our prep-work at home (chopping up peppers and onions to go with eggs, mixing beef and sausage for patties, etc.) so all that remains is to heat everything up.

Cleaning without benefit of a sink or running water is a chore, but one we worked out years ago: Heat up clean water in a pan with a sprinkle of Dawn, use a rag and hot soap-water to wipe off dishes and plates, then rinse with whatever cold water is on hand. Often we’ll use the nearest spigot (which usually isn’t potable, just so you know) but at one of our sites this year that water was brown. (Let’s call it rusty and pretend that was all.) That site, thankfully, did have washing sinks down by the bathhouse.

Running water’s usually available somewhere.

Hiking is another activity one would expect to do while camping. We hiked a lot more when we were younger, sometimes wishing we hadn’t. Cloudland Canyon and Amicalola Falls are two that spring to mind where hiking down the trail was so arduous that hiking back up was near impossible. Lately we’ve traded hiking for kayaking, and found that much more suited to our enjoyment. (Kayaks, not canoes, which our kayak instructor cheerfully refers to as “divorce boats.”)

And of course, most campgrounds will have other attractions and activities nearby. In the fall, we went kayaking on the Little River above DeSoto Falls, near Mentone, Alabama (and raided the Tip Top Bake Shop afterward). In the past, we’ve gone caving, visited a diamond mine in Arkansas (waste of time) and Bill Clinton’s childhood home (fairly interesting). We’ve spent mornings on the beach and afternoons in shady pool halls. We’ve gone to museums, attended nature talks, and even went shopping at an outlet mall.

But in truth, our primary activity while camping is lounging. There are few things more relaxing than sitting outdoors in the shade with a good book, a pleasant view, a bag of Zapp’s potato chips, and no damn reason to do anything productive. Let’s be honest, much of camping is an ordeal: the preparation, setting up and tearing down your tent, fretting about the weather, shooing mosquitos, and dodging whatever acorns the squirrels above are throwing at your head. But once you kick back for a morning, afternoon, and evening by the fire, until your sense of the passage of time hangs up its coat and takes a nap beside you… That moment makes you wonder why we live any other way.

P.S. Fall Colors! We’ve been wanting to camp at Blanton Creek for years, specifically because of the brilliant red sourwood trees and the views across the lake.

P.P.S. Lea’s Macrophotography Returns!

The Disaster Diary

This is not the article I promised to write on camping. Lea and I were going camping, but then the South got smacked by Hurricane Delta. Experienced hurricane trackers that we are, we checked the weather daily to see if Delta would veer further north or west and maybe, maybe, maybe wouldn’t rain on us too hard… But such was not to be. Our campsite in west-central Georgia was destined to get hosed by endless rain bands straight from the Gulf of Mexico. We called the park and delayed our reservation.

This was disappointing, but not altogether unexpected. After all, Lea and I are travel disaster magnets.

On our very first trip together, Lea and I went camping at Fort Pickens National Seashore at Pensacola Beach on Labor Day weekend, 2000. That year had seen a typically hot summer, but we reasoned that by Labor Day it would have cooled enough to make camping tolerable.

Hah! Had we stayed home in Baton Rouge, we would have enjoyed a record high of 104°F according to Weather Underground’s historical data archive. On Pensacola Beach, the high was “merely” 94°F, with a nighttime low of burning up in a tiny tent without even a breeze to offer relief. At least the water was cool, but that summer had also seen a spike in shark attacks along the Gulf, so we weren’t too comfortable getting in.

A few years later, we again decided to camp in the Florida Panhandle, this time at Thanksgiving, 2003. Normally, late autumn in Florida is comparable to a cool summer in the northern states, but this year Florida rewarded us with nightly lows of 49°F, 41°F, and 32°F. Had we remained one more day, we would have woken to a balmy 26°F.

The second year we were together, Lea and I went to Tickfaw State Park, less than an hour’s drive from our house in Baton Rouge. We’d invested in a brand new waterproof tent that was larger and more accommodating for the two of us (well, for me) than the 6’x6’ tent we’d taken to Pensacola. That first night at Tickfaw, a whole bayou’s worth of water fell out of the sky and we discovered exactly how waterproof our tent wasn’t. The next morning we gave up on staying any longer, packed the whole mess into our car, and went home.

In 2005 we camped in Milton, Florida, to go canoeing on the Blackwater River. It rained that first night, but not enough to deter us – we were well-practiced now at keeping the elements at bay. The rain did, however, raise the level and the speed of the Blackwater so that our canoe trip the next morning was, shall we say, exciting. I remember having trouble simply getting our canoe in the water and pointing it downstream. At a bend in the river, we paddled right into a log that barely broke the surface, sending Lea and me flying into the drink. Somehow our gear remained in the canoe. At noon we pulled ourselves onto a bank to eat lunch and dry off, while a whole church group of teenagers calmly paddled past us in pressed khakis and unwrinkled shirts.

In April 2006, we planned to spend a weekend at Dismal’s Canyon, a private campground in northwest Alabama that’s one of the few places in the world where glowworms can be found. Bad weather and tornadoes were forecast, so at the last minute we changed our reservation to Red Top Mountain State Park in Georgia to get out of the storm’s path. What happened? The worst of the storm skipped Dismal’s Canyon entirely and came straight at us. We woke after midnight to the sound of hail on our tent, ran to the car, and sheltered at the nearest Waffle House until the front went through.

The mother of all bad weather events to coincide with us trying to camp was undoubtedly the May 2010 “thousand year flood” of Tennessee’s Cumberland River. We’d met with some friends at Cedars of Lebanon State Park and planned to take a nature tour on Saturday, May 1. The rain was steady all morning, making us hunt down a covered pavilion to cook breakfast and reducing the nature tour to an indoor lecture. That afternoon we retreated to our tent to wait out the rain – until the water surrounding our campsite started to steadily rise. We didn’t even bother to fold our tent up – we just rolled it into the trunk of our car and high-tailed to our friend Melissa’s house (south of Nashville) through a zero-visibility downpour. Even when we got there, I was somewhat dismayed by the water approaching Melissa’s back patio, and even more so when watching a building float down the Cumberland on live TV.

Does correlation imply causation? Do Lea and I have especially bad travel karma? Do we actually cause these things to happen by deciding to travel somewhere? The data isn’t limited to camping trips.

We spent a week in Negril in May 2006 for a friend’s wedding. May is the start of the rainy season, but even so we weren’t expecting the monsoon that trapped us in our hotel room for three solid days while we watched the area outside our window turn into a decent-sized pond. Our trip to the Yucatan in April 2007 was greeted with unseasonable wind and cold – which didn’t stop the snorkeling companies from trying to convince us to go swimming in that year’s extremely cold and choppy coastal waters (we didn’t). In October 2013 (admittedly, again in the rainy season) our cruise stop in St. Lucia was met with a downpour excessive even for that time of year. We took an excursion to see a waterfall, but ended up standing in one.

In July 2012, we spent three weeks in East Africa, with a layover both ways in Rome. In Rome we enjoyed a heatwave with highs in excess of 100°F, and the discovery that many buildings in Rome don’t have air conditioning. (Neither were the subways, which were packed with disgruntled futbol hooligans unhappy that Italy had lost to Spain 4-0 in the 2012 Euro championship.)

We landed in Dar Es Salaam to find out there was a doctors’ strike underway. There were riots in Zanzibar before we arrived, and shortly after we left, one of the ferries to the island sank with over 800 people on board. Bombings in Mombasa kept Lea’s sister Lisa from traveling with us into Kenya, and security at our hotel there was extra-tight. We had to pass through metal detectors just to get in the door, and armed guards wouldn’t even let taxis approach unless they’d been specifically called by the concierge. (Now, that’s service!)

During our South American Odyssey, a part of Argentina we traveled through was getting over a surge of Hantavirus cases. A Yellow Fever outbreak was just getting underway in the Brazilian state of Bahia as we arrived in its capital, Salvador. To be clear, we were vaccinated against Yellow Fever, but there is no cure, vaccine, or treatment for Hantavirus, according to the CDC. It was hard enough keeping the bus schedules straight, much less the potential contagion vectors.

Don’t get me started on volcanos. Whatever the “average proximal volcanic eruption rate per traveling couple” is, Lea and I exceed it. A volcanic eruption in the Galapagos delayed our flight to Ecuador, and the leftover fumes prevented us from exploring the tunnels on Isabela Island. Earlier that year, another eruption shut down Guatemala City’s airport shortly after our stay there. Two days after we bought tickets to Iceland – two days, I tell you – the Bárðarbunga stratovolcano erupted under the Vatnajökull ice sheet. Though that ended up becoming the highlight of our trip, but when I first read the news about the eruption, I called Lea from work and said, “Seriously? Seriously?”

Whether or not you believe that Lea and I have a “natural disaster fairy” who follows us around, I’ll give you the same advice we give everyone – Before planning a trip somewhere, email us first and make sure we’re not going.

P.S. Things are afoot on my fiction writing blog: Check it out!

Shelter In Place: Day 150

As you surely know, Facebook has this pernicious little gimmick where it’ll pop up old posts and pictures into your feed under the heading “Your Memories from xx Years Ago” – or, as it should be renamed during the Sharknado that is 2020 – “Hey, remember back when you were happier?”

This picture was taken two years ago today.

Case in point: Two years ago, Lea and I were in the first month of our South American odyssey. On this day in 2018, we arrived at the lovely eco-resort village of Mindo, Ecuador, and checked into the Hostal Melyang.

For my money, the Hostal Melyang was one of the most pleasantly relaxing places we stayed on the whole trip. The third floor is open to the breeze, with hammocks and rope swings and bird feeders galore for the countless avian species that swoop by to visit. After our short time in Mindo, we would head to the Pacific Coast, where I’d get to see whales and experience my first earthquake on the very same same day.

Facebook feels the need to remind me of this, and will no doubt do so daily for the next eight months.

Stop it!

Dear Readers, I know I’ve been neglecting you. My last article on this site was posted four months ago, and even that was hard for me to crank out. My motto on this blog is “The Escape Hatch will always be open,” but that hasn’t been the case this year, and I don’t think I need to belabor the reasons. Aside from some kayaking and a camping trip to Chattahoochee Bend State Park, Lea and I haven’t been able to go anywhere. This weekend we drove all the way to Taco Bell and parked under a tree to eat burritos, and in these times that felt like a far and distant land.

My point being: I haven’t felt motivated to write about travel. On the one hand, we haven’t gone anywhere to write about. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve already mined all the trips we took in the few years leading up to our South American sojourn, and would have to dig even further back in the murky depths of memory for new content.

On the third hand, the further back in time I go to churn up travel stories, the less accurate and relevant any information I relate will be to modern readers. On the fourth hand, and maybe this is only me, it’s felt like travel writing in these last few months would have been in bad taste.

Yes, I counted four hands. What’s your point?

But enough of my excuses. Even if we can’t (or shouldn’t) trot the globe, the blog must go on! I missed an opportunity with that camping trip we took, so when we go again (we’ve already booked the dates) expect an article on camping in general, as that’s the one way of getting out of the house and into the world that I can recommend during the current crisis.

Also coming soon: an article on how I learned to travel in the first place.

For many in my generation, our first travel experience was riding cross-country in the back of the family station wagon (or pickup truck; I don’t judge). Not for me: I spent from the latter part of the 1970s to the early 1990s seeing the country – and then the world – in the context of Choir Tours. Anyone who traveled with me, be warned: I have photos.

After that, there are plenty of natural wonders and sights that Lea and I have enjoyed in the U.S., so I’ll cover some of those. Until then, everyone stay as safe and healthy as you can. The Escape Hatch is back in business!