Ten Years! (+ a belated blog post)

Tags

Brittany, coastal hikes, Dinard, France, impromptu travel, Paris, quickie trips, Saint-Malo, travel

I recently saw another blogger’s 10-year anniversary news and realized I must be at that point myself. Indeed, I had been notified a few weeks ago, but like everything related to my blog in recent months/years, it went unnoticed and ignored.

What has kept me away? The top reason is certainly a refocusing on what is happening in the real world – the day-to-day life events that have piled up heavily in ways both good and bad. There is also the feeling that writing all about me, me, ME is self-indulgent at best and mind-numbing to others at worst.

Since my last post, we have relocated from Houston, Texas, to Durham, North Carolina. It was a difficult move, occurring days before Christmas and ending with lost and broken items. The moving company was outrageously bad, and it took several months to sort everything out. Too many things in the new house seemed to have problems, and the weather for the subsequent three months was awful – rainy, dreary, and apparently uncharacteristically cold – an unpleasant development after living in a place where the climate suited me perfectly.

The stress of the move, coupled with constant demands to leave our new “home” to tend to other family matters, created a sense of disconnection from my own life and settled deep into my body. For the first time in my life, I struggled to sleep, I fell woefully out of shape, and my physical being kept trying to let me know it was not happy about things. I didn’t have time to care or to try to fix it for many months.

As I write now, I think I have turned a corner. I’ve thought this for days or even a week or so before, only to have things smack me in the face again, so I am a little leery of celebrating quite yet. But the weather has finally turned, our extended family is in a good place (new babies help a lot!), and I have decided to return to working out hard, beginning to train for what is likely to be my steepest physical challenge ever later this year. I’m also convinced the spotty eating I’ve done (both under- and over-indulging in a vicious pendulum swing) has contributed to my troubles, so I’ve kept myself on a steadier course there as well. Best of all, I’ve started planning trips that sound a little like vacations!

In keeping with the nature of the blog, I will veer away from personal agita and document one of those happier times, a very quick little journey we took back in September before all hell broke loose.

The trip involved the wedding of my college roommate’s daughter in the Brittany region of northwest France, and because we would have little control over what we did there, and just a short day and half in Paris at the end, we made no major plans. “No major plans” has become my favorite way to travel these days; there’s less pressure to see everything, more time to roam, and no expectations to be dashed.

We enjoyed every improvised hour we spent in Paris, strolling all over the city, starting in the Latin Quarter where we stayed, stopping in the Marais for falafel, eating a classic brasserie dinner on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, wandering the Tuileries, licking ice cream cones on the Île Saint-Louis, checking out the progress of the Notre-Dame repairs, and ambling through the Luxembourg Gardens with what seemed like half the capital’s population on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon.

We paid for nothing but our hotel and simple food, stood in no lines, and took very few photos. We also crammed in a half-day trip to Fontainebleau to see an old blogging friend (so happy to meet Estelea!) for a hike and a drink, a delightful addition to our time in the Paris area.

But it was our three days in Brittany that made this little sojourn a special one in many ways. For one, this region had been one of the first places we ever took our three young children overseas, and our memories were very fond. We had stayed at what was then, and might even remain, one of the nicest hotels I’d ever been in.

I looked it up and found the miraculous news that it had been fully renovated during Covid and was less than half the price we had paid 24 years ago. (What? How?) A good sign for sure; we booked immediately for our first night in Dinard, and it lived up to our very rosy memories.

Free for part of the next day, we took a short ferry ride across the Rance estuary in drizzly morning rain to Saint-Malo, the medieval walled city famous for its role in World War II.

Expecting my usual bad luck with the weather, we set off with rain jackets, hats, and umbrellas, only to see the sprinkles slow and the clouds part as soon as we docked fifteen minutes later.

We spent the sunny morning walking a full circuit on top of the city walls, descending into the warren of quiet, mostly empty streets for more rambling, and eating a lunch of moules frites and eggy, cheesy galettes at a heavenly outdoor café.

By afternoon, we were driving an hour west to Pléneuf-Val-André, the wedding destination, and checked into our less fancy seaside hotel for two more nights. We are known to pack in as much outdoor exercise as possible before weddings (a weird habit, I know), so we left almost immediately for a short, brisk walk to Ilôt du Verdelet to get our bearings before the first evening’s event.

The wedding was as lovely as you might imagine in this ruggedly charming place, with a castle as the backdrop and many pleasurable hours of eating and drinking on a crisp late summer evening.

But before that elegant event, we threw on our trail shoes and snuck away for a very long hike along the coast, a route that reminded us of the Big Sur area in California, with incredible ocean views at every turn.

We passed old stone buildings, a WWII bunker, black sand beaches, and quiet coves. We walked about ten miles round trip, up and down the shoreline path that is part of GR34, Brittany’s long-distance hiking route, filling our heads and lungs with all the fresh air we’d been missing all summer in south Texas.

It was a short little trip, but it was filled with activities that we love that required no special planning or effort. Good food, good movement, good friends – worth the journey to be sure.

Apologies to those whose blogs I have ignored or semi-ignored for a while as I shifted my priorities even more off-line. I can’t say I will reappear as regularly as I used to, but I will try!

Best Job Ever?

Tags

air travel, airports, feelgood, jobs

I’ve had a lot of jobs, both paid and volunteer, full-time and part-time, enjoyable and dreaded. In rough chronological order, I’ve been a cashier, lifeguard, ESL instructor, international banking analyst, oil and gas corporate lender, project finance banker, financial writer, college English professor, Spanish tutor, memoir editor, community board chairperson, foodbank volunteer, and urban farm office helper. But I might have just finished the sweetest little job of my career: information desk lady at my local airport!

I worked at the smaller of two airports in the fourth largest city in the U.S. It’s small but mighty, and it is the first and, to date, only 5-star airport in North America (according to air transport rating agency Skytrax). If I may brag about “my” airport, I will say that despite my own anecdotal evidence and probably yours, most flights really do leave on time or very close to it. The airport is constantly being cleaned, and the janitorial staff really seems to care about how things look. The TSA men and women are serious but generally kind (do not roll those eyes), open to helping find lost items and announcing every little thing that has been left behind. We have artists-in-residence, live musicians, and an art collection, all of which I’m convinced add to civilized behavior and attitudes. I’m proud of the clean facilities, amenities, and service-oriented employees that helped us earn and keep this status.

Most photos here are of the traffic signal control boxes in the neighborhood around the airport.

I only work a day or two a week, and they’re not even full days. I sit in a huge, stainless steel “command center” right after the security checkpoint, and nearly everyone traveling that day needs to pass my desk. I am so eager for interaction that I rarely look down at my computer screen or notepad, instead constantly turning my head left and right and smiling at everyone who passes me, letting people know I am friendly and open to questions. As a result, I serve anywhere from two to three times as many airport customers as my fellow workers do on a given day.

Even when I’ve been very busy in my outside life, I have looked forward to my days at the airport, settling into my high swivel stool, knowing that the coming hours will keep me from my texts, emails, phone calls, and other annoying problems. It’s hard to worry about things at home when I am jumping up every minute or two to direct someone to the right gate, keeping people from pushing wheelchairs onto a moving sidewalk, or calling the operations center to clean up dog poop (yes, people leave that behind in airports, too, not just your yard or city sidewalks).

What are the most popular questions I get? Some days, I have dozens of people asking me where the Chick-fil-A is; other times, no one at all asks me this, and instead I’ll have multiple queries about our lounges. (We have none, I am always sorry to say.) I’m frequently asked where passengers can go to smoke between flights, and I spend plenty of time explaining all the food and beverage options to people. I help travelers find Ubers, pet relief stations, ATMs, rental cars, diapers, and iPhone chargers. I know where everything is here, right down to the exact locations where passengers can find Starbucks, the USO, an interfaith chapel, the shoeshine stand, the coldest water fountain, the shortcut to Eco-Park, and the quietest place to take a conference call.

My small job has miraculously shown me the very best in people. I would have guessed that air travelers would be stressed out and, therefore, rushed and cranky. On the contrary! I would estimate that over 90% of the people I have seen are relaxed, friendly, and largely unhurried (clearly they do not use my last-minute strategy for arriving at airports). There is very little rage, an emotion we see so often in public and online. In a world that seems less and less polite every day, the denizens of our airport have renewed my belief that people are mostly good. We read such awful news every day, and we see social media accounts that celebrate terrible behavior and attitudes, so one of the very best perks of my job has been seeing just the opposite. I come home feeling good about people; how many jobs can do that these days?!

People who miss flights are frustrated but stoic, asking only for help in finding another option. It is surprising how many adults are flying for their very first time, and I love making them feel more comfortable and confident. Dozens of people turn in found cell phones, glasses, bulging wallets, licenses, clothing, toys, and even a complete engagement ring and wedding band set, and they truly care about getting these items back to their owners. I’ve been warned that stopping parents from taking strollers onto the moving sidewalk will get me vitriolic responses, but when I smile and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ I discover most people are perfectly happy to wheel their baby off to the side and even thank me for keeping them safe.

If you’re a natural people-watcher like I am, this is an amazing job. I study and admire all the snappy travelers – their clothing, bags, shoes, and even hairdos. I marvel/wince at some others; bare midriffs are everywhere in public now, in case you haven’t noticed, and pajamas appear at the airport with startling regularity just as they do in roadside hotels these days. (Luckily, these PJ’ed people are wearing shoes, unlike the hotel breakfast crowd.) I enjoy the juxtaposition of professionals in business suits and high heels with the athleisure crowd, the scantily clad, and even people in costume (like those headed to Mardi Gras in massive dresses and bonnets). An unscientific survey would have the Astros and LSU tied for first place among the sports jersey wearers, joggers as the traveling pants of choice, and upright spinner bags as the most popular luggage.

As much as I dislike stereotyping, I need to make a short women-vs-men comment here. I sit close to a very large sign that directs people to Baggage Claim, Gates 1-5, etc. Most women read this sign. Many of their male partners or colleagues do not, and when the woman begins to veer off, or they both slow down to ascertain their direction, the male invariably wants to keep following the crowd, even when it is clearly in the wrong direction and his female companion is trying to tell him this. I watch with amusement and in anticipation of my next interaction. I won’t get into the whole “men don’t ask for directions” cliché, but let’s just say that when they eventually come back and ask me where to go, the women usually nod in an “I told you” way.

In a similar vein, I have noted in my anthropological survey of the airport species that young parents have a very distinct division of labor. The mother generally carries one child, holds the hand of another, loops the diaper bag and a carry-on over that same arm, and pushes the stroller that the second child has refused to get into. Occasionally, the dad has a car seat to carry, but usually his only baggage is a cell phone, into which he is talking while mom schleps everyone and everything else toward the gate. (To my son who is reading, you are exceptional in this way as well! 🙂 )

People glaze over a bit at airports. There is a brain fog that must be triggered by security or a plane change. Some of these zombies walk straight onto the oncoming moving sidewalks, the DO NOT ENTER signs apparently too high for their locked-in gazes to see. They leave their passports, phones, and keys in the security bins, they drop their jackets and blankets while walking and don’t even notice, and they are incredibly oblivious to gate change announcements that are crystal clear and abundantly loud for most ears. An enormous number of people mistake their boarding position or seat number for the gate assignment, and I have had more than one traveler who booked connecting flights without realizing that they were going into and out of totally different airports (that are 30 miles apart and on opposite sides of the city).

But back to the good stuff, which is the main reason for my post. I see our travelers as being on an adventure, even if it’s just a work trip, and they are mostly on their very best behavior. I see very little sniping between spouses and partners, parents and kids. People are nice to me and nice to each other. I have seen how powerful a smile can be, whether it ramps down a Type-A executive facing a delay or comforts a young woman rushing to catch a plane to her little brother’s funeral. Our airport is a microcosm, and it’s a benevolent, efficient, lovable one, and I’ll very much miss both working and traveling in and out of here when we leave the city in a month for our new home in another state. Of course, they have an airport, too, so maybe I’ll take my resumé there and move up to a bigger desk!

Fresh Air! (and much more)

Tags

Alps, Dolomites, hiking, Italy, mountains, trekking, WWI tunnels

After the thick soup of Southeast Asia’s skies in March/April and an interminable string of days over 100 F (39 C) in Houston this summer, the prime attraction of our hiking trip to northern Italy might well have been the weather. Crisp, cool mountain air and a vigorous weeklong hike in the Dolomites were the perfect balm for our heads and bodies.

For the first time since Covid, J and I were joining a small-group hike with an existing team of trekkers, only two of whom we knew. One was our daughter’s father-in-law who, along with his wife, has become a true friend (what a bonus for us!). We flew into Venice and immediately transferred to a small town, Selva di Cadore, several hours north and close to the Austrian border. From here, we would spend the next three days exploring this section of the Dolomites before moving on to several others.

From the minute we entered the mountains about midway through the drive, it was clear that the landscapes would be different from anything we had hiked in before, and the views on this trek would soon surpass even the sublimely cool air in our affections. Technically part of the Alps, the Dolomites have all the visual appeal of their mountain relatives in France, Switzerland, western Italy, Austria, and Slovenia. But here, striking vertical cliffs, pointy pinnacles, and craggy towers rose dramatically from the land.

As the dolomitic rock was pushed up and shaped by running water and ice over five glaciation periods, the landscape took on other distinct characteristics, including heaps of rocky debris at the feet of many of the sheer cliffs. At times, the space between peaks was as soft and green as a typical Alpine meadow,

at others, the base of the mountains was more of a sere moonscape,

and in between those extremes were hybrid fields of clumpy grasses strewn with rocks and boulders of many sizes.

The night before we began hiking in earnest, our guides informed us that the weather for the first few days would be quite bad – not just rain, but thunderstorms and lightning that would create dangers we’d have to avoid, perhaps even to the point of abandoning our plans. We got lucky the first morning, staying dry as we hiked at lower elevations for the first few hours.

With a bit of blue sky peeking through, we reverted to the original plan of hiking up to the Pelmo, a throne-shaped chunk of rock, but by lunchtime, we were getting pelted by rain, scampering into a hut, peeling off wet layers, and contemplating the long, steep descent we would have to make back to the town.

We chose to use a trail in the woods, thinking the tree cover would keep us a little drier, but alas, we slipped and slid down a muddy, root-filled trail for the rest of the afternoon.

Getting back to our lodging, we remembered why Europe is such a great place to hike: you get a full day of serious activity, but you come back to a warm shower, a real bed, and spectacular food!

***

Day two was forecast to be the worst day of all, so instead of an exposed hike, we took a quick gondola ride partway up the mountain and when the skies surprised us by staying blue and clear, we completed a steep ascent up to Ristoro Belvedere, a mountain hut (rifugio) with stunning views of the Pelmo, Monte Civetta (the “wall of walls”), Marmolada (the Dolomites’ highest peak), the Pale di San Martino, and more. The panorama was astounding, and feeling inspired and invigorated by our weather luck, we climbed a bit farther to Fertazza peak and its added view of the valley and Lake Alleghe.

Although the clouds began to darken, we pressed on to a cheese factory, stopping to sample the goods and endlessly photograph the cows – a distinctly touristic activity!

We’d added a group member by now, an Australian sheepdog who had been following us for at least the last 2-3 miles, running ahead, circling back, and herding us down the mountain like his sheep.

Our culinary adventures were just beginning as we clomped right back up the hundreds of feet we had just hiked down in order to get to Chalet Col di Baldi, a gourmet hut high in the range. We stuffed ourselves with venison, trout, ravioli, and barley soup (in my boring case) before setting off for an up-and-down traverse and eventually a long, steep descent back to Selva di Cadore.

We reunited with our doggie friend who was now many miles from home. One of our guides called the phone number on his collar tag, we roped him up, and made the final trek into town with him in tow. It was a very long but rewarding day in every way.

***

The next morning, we packed small bags for an overnight at the very high Rifugio Lagazuoi, not a place anyone could transport our duffels. Yesterday’s rain caught up with us a few times before lunch, and the varied terrain was a challenge for all. There were boulder fields to start out – gorgeously studded with wildflowers,

a super steep and narrow climb up a set of exposed switchbacks known as “Oh Shit Hill,”

then a long slog in drizzle to a rifugio where a few people decided to leave us for a rest, and finally an endless trek up a slanted, cliff-hugging slab of stone to the oldest hut in the Dolomites, Rifugio Nuvolau, built in 1883. We were now completely spoiled by the vistas, here getting stunning views of the Tofane, Cristallo, and again the Marmolada.

After another hearty lunch, we hiked three miles down to Passo Falzarego to catch a cable car up to Rifugio Lagazuoi.

At the hut, it was difficult to tear ourselves away from admiring the scenery from the sunny deck, but we eventually checked into our dorm-style rooms and headed back out to explore a World War I tunnel system that runs through the mountains here on the Italy-Austria front. We strapped on our headlamps, used cables to inch our way down to the tunnel entrances, and crouched our way through some of the trenches and tunnels used during the war. It was quite a sobering, physically uncomfortable, and slightly creepy experience. It was hard to imagine how thousands of Italian and Austrian soldiers endured 20 months, including two winters, locked in hand-to-hand battle and sheer deprivation on these forbidding peaks.

That afternoon and evening, our cameras got a good workout as the scenes from the rifugio spread out before us, first in deep greens and blues

Can you see our rifugio way up there at the edge of the rock?

and then tinged with the rosy hues of sunset.

(We will descend into this scree-filled valley tomorrow)

***

The next morning, we began our most ambitious descent, a nearly 5000-ft (1524 m) drop down through a hidden valley into Cortina d’Ampezzo.

(Our initial descent from the Rifugio Lagazuoi)

This challenging day took us behind the Tofane – three peaks renowned by climbers and alpinists and all over 10,500 feet (3200 m) in height. Walking right from the Lagazuoi refuge, we took a series of scree-covered switchbacks around the peaks of the Tofane down into the remote Val d’ Travenanz and the Rio de Fane.

The river was at the bottom of a deep gorge, and we had to shed our shoes multiple times to cross and re-cross the ice-cold flow. Left to our own devices, we came up with a variety of crossing strategies, and a few people got a little wet!

After a picnic lunch in a sunny field, we continued on to a huge waterfall near the bottom, then finished off our 11-mile day with a walk to our vans for a short shuttle into Cortina.

***

I have no good memory or notes on where we hiked the next day, but it was a tough uphill climb all morning to the Lago di Foses,

followed by an undulating path through velvety green fields,

another delicious rifugio meal of giant omelets, and a long gravelly descent back to Cortina. This was the first day we ran into large groups of hikers as the latter part of our day passed through areas easily accessible by car. We’d been lucky all week with empty trails, especially yesterday in the “secret” valley where we’d seen no one at all.

***

We chose to rise very early on our last day of trekking to beat the crowds to the Tre Cime (Three Peaks) area, another location that attracts day hikers. Our knowledgeable guide also suggested we hike opposite to the route taken by most of the expected crowds, and she knew of a special little hut (Malga Langalm) that would only be about an hour into our hike if we went this way.

Here, we would stop for breakfast instead of a later meal as others would, so we left Cortina with empty bellies that were happily filled with cappuccino, fresh yogurt, honey, fruit, and homemade cakes a short time later.

All of us deemed this stop to be one of our very favorites; we had spectacular views of the Tre Cime massif, the food was outstanding, and the chill of the morning and our wake-up hike were rewarded with a warming morning sun as we relaxed on the outdoor patio.

Because of our reverse routing, we only ran into crowds at the main viewpoint of the Three Peaks. Until that point, we again had the otherworldly landscape mostly to ourselves.

(All ours!)

We jostled with the day hikers for a few photos, but we’d already gotten such great views in several hours of skirting the massif that we were happy to leave the final stop to the hordes.

After a boisterous farewell dinner a week after we’d meet the group, J and I spent a short day in Venice before flying home. Our cool, refreshing break was over, and the city of canals got us ready for the heat and humidity we would face the next day.

It was a highly successful trip, full of brisk activity, spirited friends new and old, exceptional cuisine, and some of the best hiking scenery we have seen. I’m always drawn to exotic locales for my hikes, but the good old European mountains deliver every time!

Sailing into the Apocalypse

Tags

boat cruise, crop burning, hill tribes, Hmong, Laos, Mekong River, pollution, slash-and-burn

It was supposed to be a scenic 190-mile cruise up the atmospheric Mekong River, a ride through nature, fresh air, and small, remote villages after almost two weeks in big and/or busy cities in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Instead, we found ourselves exposed for two full days to the smokiest air I have ever experienced. With an AQI score of over 500, the air pollution in Laos and northern Thailand tinged the skies with a sickly yellow/gray/brown hue and left its acrid taste in our mouths and noses. Slash-and-burn agriculture is alive and well in this part of the world, and we hit the peak of the crop-burning season, unfortunately.

We left Luang Prabang in the morning and boarded our boat in the small town of Ban Xang Hai. At first glance, we were skeptical, but once aboard, we quickly noted the many charms of our vessel. Long and lean, the wood boat had a variety of seating options, tables, and even a few bed-like couches along the edges. This would be our home for the next two days although we did disembark for the night in between.

Our first stop was Pak Ou, also known as the Buddha statue cave. The shores of the Mekong are riddled with caves, and this one, about two hours into the journey north, is one of two now-famous ones.

We climbed the steep stone staircase and were met by the unexpected sight of thousands of small Buddha likenesses. None is in great shape, but the imperfections – chips, broken limbs, and peeling paint – add to the cave’s aura.

Back on the boat, we continued north, snacking, drinking, chatting and lunching in the comfortable interior. Soon we were also sneezing, coughing, and squinting, as the smoke and its particulate matter settled deep into our nostrils and throats, the crevices of our fingers, and the folds of our clothing.

We tried hard to ignore the air quality, but it was certainly making things a little less pleasant with each passing hour. Although there was no escaping the air, we tried to take our minds off of it with the bucolic river scenes – an elephant being bathed by its owner, small gatherings of animals, passing vessels of all sizes and colors.

To add to our dustiness, we stopped at our first small village, Ban Bor, in the early afternoon. We trekked up a steep hill of sand and dirt to meet a classroom of children whose teacher is a friend of our guide. This enclave was well-kept and calm, and I mostly enjoyed the visit, something I had worried about because I have an aversion to “poverty tourism” in general, and the stops we had planned gave me pause as we moved upriver.

By evening, we got even creepier views of the smudged horizon; as we crept forward, it felt like we were sailing the River Styx, with the filth in the air backlit and yellowed by the setting sun. We got an overnight respite from the air in Pakbeng, a small town in the middle of nowhere but still home to a lovely set of cabin-like rooms high above the muted Mekong.

The following morning brought 90 more miles of smoky, blurry cruising up the river, as well as a second and much more unsettling village stop. We could immediately see and sense that Ban Huoy Lamphane, a poor Hmong village, was very different from the prior day’s visit. Known as one of the most fiercely independent hill tribes, the Hmong resist outside pressure to change; while not a bad thing in theory, the attitude has nevertheless left villages like this one adrift.

There was none of the industry (by which I mean weaving and other arts) of the first village, many children were clearly not in school, and the pride of place we had seen earlier was not to be found. I felt uneasy about our presence here; were we in any way helping, or was this exploitative tourism pure and simple? I happen to be fairly informed about the Hmong – one of my favorite books about a clash of cultures is Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down – and after having worked with several Hmong families resettling in the U.S., I was loathe to judge what we were seeing and torn about the efficacy of any help some passing tourists could really offer. A rough visit for me.

We completed our journey up the Mekong, crossing into Thai waters at Houay Xai in the mid-afternoon. We had high hopes, but of course we quickly learned that smoke knows no borders, and the thick air would stay with us until we left for Bangkok a few days hence. In spite of the miasma that enveloped our boat for two days and nearly 200 miles, the boat ride was a pleasant suspension of time, both literal and figurative, and I’m glad we did it.

Monks, Elephants, Rice … and Smoke

Tags

crop burning, elephant sanctuary, elephants, Laos, Luang Prabang, rice fields, rice paddies, slash-and-burn, smoke, sticky rice, Tak Bat

Laos might have been the most confounding destination on my trip to Southeast Asia. It started under blue Bangkok skies with the most cheerful turboprop ever, and it offered a multitude of unique experiences, but everything about our time there was dimmed – quite literally – by horrific, smoky fires.

From our first stay in charming Luang Prabang, through a 200-mile boat ride up the Mekong River, and on into northern Laos and Thailand, the pervasive fires lent a sickly grayish-yellow tinge to everything we saw.

Still very much a user of slash-and-burn agriculture, Laos in late March/early April 2023 was in the midst of one of the most extended crop burns in recent history. Even before we touched down in our plane, my nostrils and throat began to register the smoke, and a quick glance outside made me think the pollution here was even worse than in Hanoi. We deplaned onto the tarmac and were hit by eye-watering particulate and the realization that this was no temporary haze.

Feeling a little bit ill both emotionally and physically, we proceeded into Luang Prabang for almost a full day of sightseeing before we could check into our lovely hotel. We started with the National Museum (formerly the royal palace) and went on to Wat Xieng Thong, both just outside the main downtown area.

The main attraction for me at both the museum and the temple were the stunning cut-glass designs on the walls, both inside and out.

Our young guide initially appeared to be very serious, but we were quickly surprised and amused by his deadpan delivery of some rather salacious facts about the palace’s residents. As our time with him continued for the next five days, we were regularly entertained by his blunt, slyly-joking manner.

Our lodging here was one of the places I had booked for J and myself in 2020, so I was eager to see if it lived up to my lofty expectations. The good news was that it did; the bad news was that we were unable to enjoy the gorgeous amenities because of the suffocating smoke. The pool, the outdoor bar, and the private patios outside our rooms were all off-limits if we wanted to protect our lungs. We partook of some of them in very small doses, but for the most part, we were stuck in our rooms when we were not out touring the city and countryside.

(Lest you think I am being dramatic about the air quality, for that period and the surrounding weeks in Laos, the AQI was a shocking 500+ for days on end. As a comparison, the recent fires in eastern Canada resulted in several readings of about 400, with the worst day in New York City registering 377 and causing all sorts of cancellations and flight stoppages. Unlike the mostly accidental fires in North America, the weeks-long fires in Laos and a few other Southeast Asian nations are set on purpose every spring despite educational efforts about the effects on the environment and human health.)

Still, we tried to avail ourselves of all of the charms Luang Prabang offered: cute little shops, a huge night market, distinctive architecture, delicious cuisine, and more.

One morning, we rose extra early to participate in Tak Bat, the giving of alms to the Buddhist monks who live in Luang Prabang. At about 6 am, the monks began their procession through the town, where locals and tourists alike lined the streets with baskets of sticky rice.

In fact, we saw very few tourists, which surprised and pleased me as I had worried that the whole alms-giving thing was just a touristy thing to do. On the contrary, the rice and other food handed out each morning is the main sustenance for these monks, and we saw many local people, women especially, who sat and supplied the monks long past our brief 30-minute stint of placing small handfuls of rice into the bowls that the monks carried.

After breakfast at the hotel that day, it was still early in the morning, and we had some free time before our next outing. Smoke be damned, I was eager to climb Phousi Hill for a little exercise as well as a view of the town. Although no one would join me, my inner badass compelled me to do this short hike after an innocent comment made by our van driver the day before.

Upon arrival in town, we had parked at the base of a long set of stairs up a hill, and when asked what was up there and if we could climb them, the driver let out a small laugh and said yes, we were allowed, but certainly no one in our group should attempt it. Challenge set and accepted, buddy!

As it turned out, the hike up was not difficult at all; it took me about 15 minutes to walk from the hotel to the top of the hill even with a second set of stairs that were hidden from view at the bottom. The joke was on me, though, because (a) there was no view to speak of given the air quality, (b) my lungs were now choked with that heavy, dirty air, and (c) I dutifully followed the “Way Down” signs and ended up semi-lost up on the back of the hill (with a bunch of gold Buddhas) and then totally disoriented when I arrived on the complete opposite side at the bottom, along the river and nowhere near the streets back to the hotel.

Using a general sense of direction and a landmark electrical pole I had spotted the night before, I half-ran, panting, my way back in the thick, hot air and barely made it before the van left for our next stop. (As a funny aside, I learned firsthand what our guide had warned us about when I asked for directions. I would point left and say, “Avani hotel?” Big smile and nod yes! “Or that way?” as I pointed right. Big smile and nod yes! Back to dead reckoning, I guess.)

I was reluctant to participate in our afternoon activity that day because I have a big problem with most kinds of animal tourism, and we had an elephant sanctuary on our schedule. After much questioning and my own research, I became comfortable that this place was ethical and positive. There were no elephant rides, no bathing of the animals by tourists, and only four elephants were in residence at the time, with a few mothers and babies out in the nearby forests but not in the visitor part of the sanctuary.

Despite my worries, it was an amazing afternoon. After an informative and enthusiastic talk by the sanctuary spokesman/manager, four mahouts brought out their elephants and “introduced” them to us. I don’t imagine I will ever stand so close to such magnificent creatures again, and I’m glad that this chance was one that felt acceptable to take.

After the trip, I happened to read a long, fascinating article about the musical genius of some elephants; apparently, they have naturally perfect pitch and an uncanny sense of rhythm. In that essay, I also learned that in some places, female Asian elephants are used by human mothers to babysit their children because of the elephants’ very high levels of intelligence, sense of nurturing, and responsibility. Having seen them up close, I can very easily picture this scenario. They are gentle, sentient souls.

Our last outing in the Luang Prabang area was another activity I initially pooh-poohed but ended up really enjoying. We traveled outside the city to a working rice farm that allowed small groups to come in and both learn about and help out with every aspect of rice cultivation. Over the years, I’ve seen rice paddies and terraces, watched farmers plow with their water buffalo, and cooked and eaten rice (obviously), but I have never really thought about the enormous number of steps involved in getting rice to my table.

We got started by taking off our shoes and wading into a small square of clumpy mud into which we scattered rice seeds (grains) to start the process. Rice fields must be flooded at planting time and remain constantly waterlogged; there is no clean way to do most of the jobs in a rice field. A short distance away, we stepped into a section a bit farther along in the growing process; here we pulled up small clumps of rooted rice plants that had just started to grow, carried them to another field, and planted them in new mounds of mud.

In the next paddy, we learned (out of order) how the water buffalo-powered plows turn the soil for new plantings (with a few of us getting to “drive”), and in a final section, we helped cut the mature rice with a scythe before knotting the bunches and carrying them under a roof for the next series of tasks.

Threshing, dehulling, winnowing, cleaning – the list went on and on until the rice was finally hanging over a wood fire, cooking in its bamboo basket before being spooned onto a plate. Here, as in most of Laos, the rice is sticky rice, and I am now an ardent fan.

In fact, I might miss sticky rice more than any other food in Southeast Asia … those plump grains all glutinous and full of nutty texture, baked to a slightly crusty perfection inside their baskets, scooped out in chunky spoonsful, and piled with fresh vegetables, meats, sauces, or just eaten plain and simple … Oh, I miss that rice!

It was a highly instructive day overall, and we felt like we’d been in an outdoor classroom while also helping, in a very minor way, with the work of the farm. Covered with mud to our knees and an ashy film everywhere else, we shuttled home and blissfully showered before our final stroll around town and a much-enhanced appreciation for the scrumptious sticky rice we consumed at dinner!

Next up: a cruise (seemingly into the apocalypse) on the Mekong River

Cambodia: Reality Meets Expectations

Tags

Buddhism, Cambodia, Angkor, Angkor Wat, Preah Khan, Banteay Srei, Banteay Samre, Bayon, Angkor Thom, Siem Reap

Expectations and I have a rocky relationship. I am a wishful thinker, an eternal optimist, and an unreasonable believer that everything is going to go my way. I’ve tried, really and truly tried, to tamp down my travel hopes and dreams because I’ve learned the hard way that a thick blanket of fog can get stuck over Mt. Fitzroy the whole time you’re there, a week of rain might materialize at a Mexican beach, and a heavy snowfall on a trail in Bhutan can and will cancel a trek that can probably never be rebooked. So, when things not only follow my scripted expectations, but even exceed them, I am a pretty happy traveler. Cambodia as a whole, and the Angkor complex in particular, can be happily filed in this category.

I have spent at least the last decade pining to go to Cambodia. During that time, I went plenty of other places, but I kept pushing this one down the list because I wanted to combine it with its neighboring countries since that is a very long trip for me. So many of my blogging friends have been there, and all I could do was read and dream. My son went years ago, and I was pretty jealous. Then my sister who rarely travels managed to get there, and I was even more envious. Finally, we booked a long, painstakingly planned, independent trip to the region in February/March of 2020. You know what happened to that attempt.

We rebooked for that November (this Covid thing wasn’t going to last that long, right?) and watched that itinerary blow up as well. I tried for the spring of ’21, then the fall, then twice again in 2022, but every time we tried to wedge a 3-4 week outing into our schedules, it just wouldn’t fit. Knowing that most of the conflicts came from his calendar, my husband finally suggested I find a small group and take the trip myself. I needed no extensive coaxing and was booked a few months hence within days of our conversation. Sorry, honey!

So there I was, finally in Siem Reap, Cambodia, getting ready to see the largest religious structure in the world. We would also spend days covering the vast overall complex of Angkor, the capital city of the Khmer empire, a site which many researchers believe was the largest pre-industrial city in the world. Sprawling over nearly 400 square miles (1000 square kilometers), Angkor had an estimated population of up to a million people in its heyday, the 9^th to 15^th centuries.

We started with Ta Prohm, the temple made famous by the Tomb Raider movies (which I have never seen) but so striking in its own right that it hardly needed a bunch of Angelina Jolie movies to recommend it!

When the Angkor temples were found and slowly rebuilt, Ta Prohm was left more untouched than others, apparently because it was one of the most imposing temples in the ancient city and also because it had melded with the jungle in a particularly picturesque way – man’s creation and nature intertwined to glorious effect. As our first stop of the morning and introduction to Angkor, Ta Prohm was a big winner, eliciting dozens of photos and much energetic roaming about the grounds.

We moved on to the city of Angkor Thom (the largest of all sites within Angkor) and Bayon, the grand temple at its exact center. With 216 smiling Buddha faces carved into its towers, and an incredible three-tiered bas-relief that depicted scenes of everyday life and historic events, Bayon was captivating.

The bas-relief alone might have kept me there for days (we covered only the exterior galleries; these were mirrored by a set of interior carvings), but by the end of this site tour, at the peak of mid-day, we were huddling behind every column we could find, in search of any thin strip of shade in the 100-degree (38 C) heat and stifling humidity.

There were so many stories in the bas-relief that I couldn’t begin to photograph or memorize many. A woman giving birth, a cockfight, kings carried on elephants, battles between Khmers and Chams; all were realistically carved into the stone and have survived centuries of weather and neglect to tell the stories of the Khmer people. Many are quite funny or charmingly quotidian: a woman holding a turtle so that it bites the man in front of her, a seller’s fingers tipping a scale to cheat the buyer, scenes from a beauty parlor, the tweezing of chin hairs, etc.

Angkor Wat itself was, as anticipated, the highlight for me. It was followed by a number of delightful surprises, but still, this monumental structure and its grounds are a tourist hotspot for a reason. Despite its scale and popularity, there was something very quiet and peaceful about Angkor Wat, perhaps because we visited in the late afternoon as the sun hit the edifice at a slant and most of the visiting hordes had left for the day. Even in its busiest areas, though, the temple exudes a quiet spirituality that even the non-religious can appreciate.

We approached over a vast moat that surrounds the temple and reflects its western face, an anomaly among Khmer temples, which mostly face east. Like Bayon, Angkor Wat features a long wall of bas-reliefs, in this case spanning 800 meters of wall space (nearly half a mile!) and centuries of history. Here, they are more deeply etched, and with a bit more shade in which to view them, we were able to study the carvings at leisure.

As we stepped inside, one of my favorite aspects of the site appeared – a stack of partially sunny doorways – and to my delight, similar scenes were repeated over and over throughout the first and second floors of the temple.

At one point, our guide pointed out a different colored stone in the floor and laid his phone’s compass down to show us that the temple was centered at exactly 0 degrees north; how did they calculate that and build from there with absolute symmetry over 1000 years ago? I’m a sucker for this kind of evidence of ancient expertise.

On the second floor, there was a large plaza from which Angkor Wat’s five iconic towers rise, all with tiny, vertiginously steep stairs leading to their tops. One set was for the king only (and he was carried up them); on a different set, some metal steps had been added on the corner of another tower so we peons could climb to the third floor ourselves. A few of us scrambled up and were rewarded with golden hour views of the lower floors and the grounds.

Our final day in Angkor began with a tour of Banteay Srei, also known as the pink temple because of the red sandstone used to build it.

The name translates as “citadel of the women;” though the origins of the name are unknown, theories include the more petite dimensions of the structures, the intricacy of the bas-relief carvings, and the existence of many female deities carved into the rock walls.

Because it is so small with such immaculate handiwork, Banteay Srei is a visitor favorite, a tiny gem in the lineup of temples at Angkor.

We continued on to Banteay Samre. Also much smaller than the places we had seen the day before, this site featured a single tower reminiscent of the ones at Angkor Wat and the same rosy limestone used at Banteay Srei.

Although I was almost at max temple absorption by this time, we undertook one last outing, to Preah Khan in the afternoon. Here we observed even more clearly the flip-flopping of religions that occurred at many of the sites, first Hindu, then Buddhist, back to Hindu, and Buddhist again.

Preah Khan was the least restored temple we saw, and that in itself was revelatory, putting into perspective much that we had seen in the days before. I love puzzles, but when I contemplated the jumbled heaps of giant stones inside and outside the tree-encircled outer walls, I could hardly imagine the jigsaw skills that would be needed to recreate even this one temple, let alone the assortment of reconstructed temples we had visited in our time in Cambodia.

Beyond the Khmer treasures, Cambodia was also my favorite stop in the region. The people were exceptionally kind and gentle, and we were able to talk with several individuals whose lives had been terribly torn apart by the Khmer Rouge in the time of the killing fields. The grace of these survivors, their ongoing ability to find joy, and their pride in what their country has done to restore itself in ways far beyond ancient ruins were powerful and humbling. I am so grateful that I had a chance to meet them and see a small bit of their past and present lives.

A Week in Vietnam: Halong Bay and Hoi An

Tags

Bay cruise, Halong Bay, Hoi An, Overtourism, Southeast Asia, Vietnam

Outside of bustling Hanoi, Vietnam felt like a very different place. Not a huge surprise with the change from big city to smaller locales, but the two other locations we visited each left very distinct impressions themselves – one a remarkable but understated natural atmosphere, and the other a sunny and cheerful yet somewhat overdone destination.

Halong Bay was, in spite of gloomy weather, a wonderfully moody excursion. Our group was able to rent a private boat for a four-hour cruise in the Gulf of Tonkin, located in the northeast of Vietnam. The drive itself was a great way to see the new-ish (2021) major expressway connecting Hanoi, Hai Phong (the 3^rd largest city in Vietnam and the largest port in the north), and Halong Bay in half the time it used to take.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Halong Bay contains over 1600 islands and islets, nearly all of them uninhabited, and the limestone karst landforms rise almost eerily from the warm bay waters – usually turquoise, but more of a murky green on this rainy day.

We sailed through the foggy, misty landscape, taking cover when the sprinkles became real rain, emerging again and again to ogle the clumps and pillars of land covered in tropical vegetation, the rock beneath etched by centuries of erosion into arches, caves, cones, and lateral cuts.

For once, I allowed myself to enjoy the scenery as it was, not how I expected and wanted it to be – all sunny and shiny, the light glinting on the gem-colored water – and I found myself actually feeling glad for this muted view. The bay was serene for our visit, with few boats out, and the peaceful, quiet cruise was a welcome diversion from the activity of the past few days.

*****

We arrived in Hoi An at night after a final, full day in Hanoi, a flight to Danang, and a drive south. The city at night had me a bit flummoxed, uncertain about why this small town collected such accolades. Its trademark lanterns were beautiful and festive, and the streets away from the river were busy in a fun way, but the raucous, brightly-lit party atmosphere along both sides of the riverfront felt like we had accidentally landed in Las Vegas or Disney World.

Inebriated and minimally-dressed tourists roved the riverside promenade, sloshing drinks and cutting us off as we walked and tried to find a photo shot without dozens of heads in it. Put off by the scene, I retreated to the quieter streets lined with shops and restaurants, and all was okay again.

We stayed in an attractive old colonial-style hotel away from the downtown but easily accessible by “buggy” or on foot. It turned out to be a haven in the heat and bustle. Here in Hoi An, we had our first days of real sun, and after a few short hours, we were beginning to regret what we had wished for in cloudy, gray northern Vietnam as the temperatures soared into the 90s (30s C) and the humidity ratcheted up even more.

For me, one of the highlights was a Japanese covered bridge from 1593, totally intact and the centerpiece of the old town.

In the light of day, I enjoyed walking street after street, even along the river, popping into small shops, looking at art, trying on a few pieces of clothing, and admiring the centuries-old homes and bright, modern coffeeshops. My companions were avid shoppers; I am at best a reluctant one, so I split off and walked the town on my own, free to peruse the goods but buy nothing.

In spite of its popularity and sporadic excesses, Hoi An still charmed with plenty of signs of simple, daily life. These humble vignettes, along with the upbeat cheer at every turn, will remain happy memories of my visit to this small, ancient town.

A Week in Vietnam: Hanoi

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city walks, Hanoi, Hi Chi Minh, Hoa Lo, Hoan Kiem, POW/MIA, Southeast Asia, street markets, Temple of Literature, Vietnam, Vietnam War

It was 1971 or ’72, and I remember sitting at my school cafeteria table, wearing my POW/MIA bracelet for the first time. For those too young to remember, during the Vietnam War, many of us wore a metal bracelet with the name of a prisoner of war or missing-in-action soldier on it. (About 4-5 million bracelets were sold at about $2.50 each.) A recent story I heard about a woman who has spent over 50 years searching for “her” soldier made me realize what a loser I must be. I don’t even remember the name or the outcome for my soldier – how sad! I hope that means it ended well and I was able to forget for a good reason.

What I do still remember is the way the word “Vietnam” made me feel back then; it was a very scary place to imagine for a naive teenager. Later, as an adult, I watched so many sobering movies about the war and its aftermath (Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Good Morning, Vietnam, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, among others), and the frightening view I had of this time in history was only reinforced. Given those dark and upsetting memories, I was thrilled to see what a vibrant and joyful place Vietnam is today.

The first week I spent in Southeast Asia last month was dedicated to Vietnam, and it wasn’t nearly enough to see the country in full. We spent three days in Hanoi and its environs, including a day trip to Halong Bay. Then we flew south to Danang and drove on to Hoi An, two very different cities.

(Parenthetical note from this linguistics geek: I learned while there that the Vietnamese language only contains one-syllable words, connecting them in speech to form different meanings. All of the place names above are more correctly written as Viet Nam, Ha Long, Ha Noi, Da Nang, etc. I would prefer to write them this way because it more accurately reflects the local pronunciation, but I feared that would be too distracting, so I have Anglicized the spellings. Thank you for reading this aside that is basically for me to see in the future!)

As expected, Hanoi was a big, noisy, crowded, gray-skied metropolis, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Like many cities outside the West, this one had a full range of socioeconomic levels living side-by-side. The elegant old French Quarter with its wide streets and monumental buildings had plenty of tiny side streets, some not nearly as nice as the big ones, and the Old Quarter (Hoàn Kiếm) and City Center pushed right up into each other with a mish-mash of architectural styles and old-new contrasts. As an inveterate walker, I took the opportunity to wander this safe-feeling city in multiple directions.

My first outing on foot was not alone. Because my husband finally gave up his chance to join me on this trip, I signed onto a small group adventure and met the best strangers I could have ever found to spend three weeks with. On the very first evening, four of us decided to walk about 20 minutes to dinner. I slipped on the only pair of nice sandals I’d brought and set out into the humid night. The very humid night. The moisture in the air is the only explanation I have to explain how the 2-inch woven wedge heel on my left shoe separated from the sole and began to slap against the pavement, tenuously connected to the front of the shoe.

At the restaurant, I removed the offending thwapper altogether and kept it in hopes I could glue it back on at the hotel. Alas, no – as I left to hobble home after dinner, clumpity-clumping as if I had one much shorter leg, the right heel detached itself from the sole! That one I ripped off with little fanfare and tossed both woven wedges from my very favorite sandals into a garbage can on the street. The next afternoon’s foray into the city on my own was to find and purchase a replacement pair of sandals, and I had so much fun hunting around and then chatting with a charming salesgirl at a shop that I deemed my shoe disaster to be a lucky addition to my adventures in Hanoi.

Official sightseeing in Hanoi was hit or miss. We visited the Temple of Literature, whose raison d’être was commendable – built in 1070, it is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars, and the site of Vietnam’s first national university – but it just didn’t really grab my interest aesthetically, and our guide went on a little too long as we stood in the dusty grounds. It was still a fun visit as throngs of local high school students were taking their graduation photos there.

(Another side note: Vietnam’s literacy rate growth is seriously impressive. After WWII, about 5-10% of the population was literate; now it is over 95%, one of the highest rates in the world. By way of comparison, the U.S. literacy rate ranges from 79% to mid-80% depending on the source.)

Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and home were similarly tedious, especially because we failed to go in the morning when we could have actually seen his body. I’m not particularly morbid and interested in corpses, but the stories about sending (or not; there is controversy) “Uncle Ho’s” body to Russia for refurbishment each year was just too sensational to ignore! The park and presidential palace were literal bright spots in an otherwise gray day. Without getting too far into political ideologies, it was also interesting to learn about Ho Chi Minh’s goals that transcended simple Communism, namely Vietnamese independence and the idea of blending Communism with nationalism, including his success in allowing markets to continue to flourish within the system.

The last touristy thing we saw was the most interesting – the Hỏa Lò Prison, aka the Hanoi Hilton. Many of us have heard so much about the American prisoners held there during the Vietnam War, but a number of fellow travelers and I were unaware that this famous prison was actually built by the French in the 1880s and used to imprison, abuse, and torture Vietnamese detainees. Left there in the brief period between French control and the war as a symbol of colonialist exploitation and the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French, it began a new life in 1967 when the North Vietnamese began using it to hold and similarly mistreat American servicemen. Needless to say, it was a depressing but eye-opening place to behold.

As is often the case, the parts of Hanoi I enjoyed most were the daily street scenes and experiences. One morning we walked in a local market with zero tourists and saw all kinds of strange produce and an even larger assortment of squirmy animal products.

We crammed into a coffeeshop for egg coffees, perching on tiny stools and sipping this odd but tasty combo. I so enjoyed seeing the industrious local ladies in what looked like silk PJs, pushing their carts and balancing their huge woven baskets on a pole throughout the old part of the city.

Another afternoon, I left the group and walked the mile around Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the historical center of the city. It was a brutally hot, humid, and smoggy day, but it was great to get in a brisk walk while watching local families and couples enjoy their city.

We ended our time in the capital with a fancy dinner in the French Quarter, the only really high-end meal we had on the trip. Housed in a restored French colonial villa, the restaurant served traditional Vietnamese cuisine and provided a calm oasis in the middle of this bustling city. It was a perfect last evening in Hanoi, itself a great introduction to Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

A Bonus Destination

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Doha, layover, MIDDLE EAST, Qatar

As I booked my flights a few months ago for a trip to Southeast Asia, I was reminded that I could just as easily fly east rather than west and connect through the Middle East. I had actually done this several times in the past with great results, once through Abu Dhabi and once through Doha, Qatar. This time I could fly the whole way from Houston to Hanoi on two flights with a 9-hour+ layover, again in Doha. Add in the fact that I would pay only a little over half of what I would spend taking three flights over the Pacific, and it was a no-brainer.

I booked on Qatar Airways, an airline I had successfully flown about five years ago. Regardless of how I felt about some of the controversies that gripped Qatar before and during the World Cup, I was not willing to cut off my nose to spite my face with so much money and time on the line. I knew from my Abu Dhabi trip that I could probably leave the airport, so I sought and easily found a way to get a transit visa, store my bags, and skip out of Hamad Airport for a few hours, and just like that, I found myself with a long evening and night in the capital city of Qatar.

Doha is a relatively new city (1820s, with independence declared from Britain in 1971) and is situated on the eastern shore of this small but wealthy Persian Gulf nation. It is home to about 80% of Qatar’s population, the majority of whom are not native Qataris. The economy is fueled primarily by oil and gas, which supplanted pearl diving a century ago, but in recent years, the country has been boosting their coffers with major sporting and other events, as well as a heightened focus on tourism. The latter was, in part, what made my outing so easy and rewarding.

My first stop was at the Museum of Islamic Art along the city’s famous Corniche, the promenade and road that arc along the waterfront. Although the museum was closed at the late evening hour I arrived, it was a great vantage point for the glittering skyline of West Bay across the water, a stroll past some older boats in Dhow Harbor, and of course the outside view of the museum itself, a splendid mix of Islamic and modern architecture designed by I.M. Pei.

We then followed the Corniche around the curve of the bay to immerse ourselves in that colorful clump of skyscrapers in West Bay, a glitzy district of the tallest buildings in the city. These are home to government offices, foreign embassies, hotels, shopping, dining, and luxury living. It almost looked like a computer simulation from afar with the neon colors rising high into the sky and reflected in the dark water, but it was definitely thumping with energy at street level.

The older, more established Souk Waqif more than held its own in the thumping-with-energy department! By the time I had circled back and started walking around the core of Doha’s traditional quarter, it was almost 11 pm, but the area was wide awake and brimming with activity. Knots of thobe-clad Qatari men, local families with children, and tourists all mixed with local merchants and restauranteurs in the warren of streets.

One moment I was admiring old wheelbarrows for moving goods, and the next I was passing a modern pizzeria or trendy coffeeshop. I ping-ponged from displays of old artifacts to upscale eateries. The one thing I did not see in this bustling area was anything reminiscent of a girls’ night out; local women were always accompanied, and vastly outnumbered, by men. Still, there was no discomfort at all in walking around the quarter on my own as a single woman, and I seemed to draw no extra attention.

The only part of my evening sightseeing that initially looked staged for visitors was Katara Cultural Village, an educational and commercial center opened in 2010 between West Bay and The Pearl. It had all the makings of a Disneyesque set, and I entered reluctantly, assuming it was a touristy showpiece. I was pleasantly surprised to find it filled with local people on a Friday night, strolling the air-conditioned streets (yes, there were vents in the sidewalks to cool things down in this city that often reaches the 120s F (high 40s C).  The area was so attractive I couldn’t help but enjoy my stroll in spite of an internal cringe about the energy usage. Originally opened for the Doha Tribeca Film Festival, the “village” contained museums, an opera house, fine arts and Arabic poetry centers, a planetarium, and a long list of other cultural amenities, all built to reflect the country’s cultural and architectural heritage.

By a little after midnight I was back on a bus to the airport and ready for my 2:45 am flight to Hanoi. Did I get to really know and understand a new country? No, of course not, but I had a great time seeing another of these small Persian Gulf countries that straddle a strange line between traditional and modern life. That chasm is far greater than anything I see in my daily life or even other travels, and for good or for bad, it was illuminating to see. The bottom line is that my three hours in Doha were far more fun and interesting than the airport, so it was a win-win for me!

Maltese Memories

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football, friends, island, Malta, Mediterranean, soccer, World Cup

My memories of Malta, formed mere weeks ago, are jumbled and not altogether sensible. Like many recollections of past trips, the ones formed here make no sense on paper, but the associations are somehow even more solid for their inexplicability to others. I’ve written before about some nonsensical links I’ll always have from my travels and how they sound absurd to outsiders but are so tightly connected for me. Think Boy George and St. Petersburg, Russia. R.E.M. and the roads of the Peloponnese. Beyond those questionable musical connections, I’ve reminisced about toilets in France, paper products in Tibet, a mysterious white horse in Ecuador, my radio claim to fame in Cape Town, and so many other random but powerful memories.

As our trip to Malta was planned, we only really had four days to explore and get to know our travel mates better. As executed, we were down to three days and two nights, and a chunk of that turned out to be devoted to a couple of World Cup football matches, a sporting event I don’t think I had ever watched – or really wanted to watch – in my life.

The trip started poorly, with our Turkish Airlines flight leaving Houston so late that we missed our connection and had to spend what would have been our first evening of cocktails and dinner with old and new friends at Istanbul airport instead. It could have been worse. IST has been massively updated, and the place was hopping with activity, had a decent airside hotel, and offered an array of fun dinner options. Not Plan A, but we made the best of it.

Arriving early on day two, we met Kelly and J, along with J’s brother and his wife (an amazing bonus couple!), at our quaint little hotel in Valletta. After a quick breakfast, we were off for a walking tour of the capital city, some barely-past-noon beers, and then a boat ride to the Three Cities, which the group had explored a little bit the day before we arrived. Here we were treated not only to toasty yellow stone walls and narrow streets, but to the brotherly banter of J and T. My J is one of two brothers as well, and it was clear even in the first hours of strolling and chatting that we would be a compatible, and often goofy, group!

Kelly and J had spent the previous week in Doha at the World Cup, and like true World Cup fans, their schedule in Malta would include a double header of matches on our second night. Not certain we would be able to sit through both contests, we showed up for match #1, Croatia vs. Brazil, with intentions of politely watching for a short time and having a small amount to eat and drink with the group before venturing out on our own for the evening. In short order, however, we tumbled headlong into the excitement of the match and a cascade of drinks and cheers. Buoyed by the upset results, we hung around for a change in venue and the start of the next quarterfinal, Netherlands vs. Argentina, only to find ourselves once again entranced by a sport we had only ever suffered through as our children played youth soccer for the few years we all could tolerate.

We did manage to see more of Malta than the two bars that hosted our soccer-viewing marathon. In addition to the Three Cities, we ventured out on a bus to Marsaxlokk, a small fishing village south of the capital.

We ambled for hours above, below, and within the burnished stone walls of this fortified little island, and we even had a Michelin-star dinner at Noni in Valletta.

We admired doors and door knockers,

San Francisco-style urban hills,

and a full complement of beguiling streetscapes.

We burned a path in Merchants Street, up to the city gates and Christmas market, back down to the hotel, up to St. John’s cathedral and its Caravaggio paintings, down to Fort St. Elmo, over to Old Bakery Street, and out onto the ramparts on all sides of the city.

We got a solid feel for this unique little island that sits between Sicily and Tunisia, and we had a great time with our friends old and new. It was a joy to be back in Europe again and, in spite of its newness to us, it had the familiar old feel of so many beloved places on the Mediterranean.

We’ll remember the walks and the walls, the cuisine and the scenery, but when we think about Malta in the future, my bet is that we’ll always associate it with soccer (ok – football; see how fast I’m learning?!) and the simple good times of watching those exciting matches with beers and snacks in hand and convivial friends by our side. We even watched the finals when we got home; we’re hooked, and it’s all because we met Kelly and J and T and R in Malta!

Taking a Leap

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Canada, Decision-making, leap of faith, Malta, roadtrips, Vancouver, western U.S.

It’s fitting that my blogging and real-life friend Kelly introduced me to the expression “Leap, and the net will appear.” Not much leaping has gone on here for a while, but it was an innocuous message from Kelly a few days ago that launched a swift and thrilling decision to meet her and husband J in Malta just four short weeks from today. That has, in turn, prompted my first blog post in quite a while. Not exactly a high-wire act, but a pretty nice shot of adrenaline after these last few years!

Lake Tahoe: the last place we saw Kelly and J

I go through phases of throw-caution-to-the-wind leaping. There are times like the one where I decided on a whim to cash in my airline miles and fly for 48 hours in order to meet other blogging friends Lisa and Fabio on their sailboat off the coast of Madagascar for a week, and other stretches when I settle into a safer existence in which any sort of impulsive decision-making seems irresponsible or just too damn hard to pull off.

Madagascar: Lisa, Lexie, lemurs!

Jumping back onto the blog feels scary and impetuous, too. I’ve drafted plenty of posts that fizzled out mid-composition in recent months; they just felt boring and uninspired, perhaps because my blog is about travel stories, ideally set in exotic or far-flung locales, and all I had done in the last several years was drive our car back and forth across the U.S. and western Canada.

You’ve read all about my road trip addiction, the pull to the west as summer gets underway, the call of blue byways when the days are long and a sense of giddy adventure rises in my chest as we exit a new hotel on a warm morning. But even the granddaddy of our road trips to date (over 5000 miles, starting in Houston and making our turnaround in Whistler, British Columbia, and in between big chunks of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Utah) failed to inspire a riveting, or even good, tale. A little follow-up drive of some 3000 miles up the spine of the Appalachians was equally beautiful … and equally devoid of mass interest. You’ve been there, done all this driving with me before!

Sure, it was fun and very scenic at times, and the people part has been great. Lots of family, some more bloggers like Alison and Don in Vancouver, our now-IRL pals Pam and Sean in Oregon, my 29029 gang at Whistler Mountain, and my best high school and college friends in Montana and South Carolina.

Vancouver and Whistler probably did deserve a write-up; they were first-time destinations for me and were breathtakingly gorgeous, but I just couldn’t flesh out a compelling story.

Bend, Oregon was a photographer’s dream, the southeast and Appalachians offered somewhat fresher driving routes, and there was even a new grandbaby visit in there for good (the best) measure! Still, a narrative eluded me, photo essays aren’t really my stock-in-trade, and personal stories have been mostly off-limits here.

In our non-travel life, we’ve been contemplating other big leaps as well. Our reason for establishing a second base in Colorado two years ago (our son’s growing family) suddenly disappeared when he took a new job in Ohio in July. That tipped the east-west scale a little farther to the right, with kids now in San Francisco, Ohio, and Boston, and precipitated a now-endless discussion of whether we should stay put in the middle of the country to be able to fly quickly to any of the three places (really four, since my parents are still in Pennsylvania) or try to move somewhere where three of the four could be reached by car in a day’s driving? With my husband J’s job allowing him to work from anywhere these days, we began to contemplate a relocation, but we know better than to follow peripatetic children, and part of our mostly-practical selves keeps saying to be patient.

I think we can sit on that decision a while longer, but the overseas travel itch was not as easy to push off. Perhaps a sudden or last-minute opportunity is more conducive to decision-making, at least in our household. We can’t seem to make dinner plans with friends or neighbors for months on end, but when one of us suddenly proposes an outing that evening, it works! In this case, Kelly casually suggested we join them, I latched onto the idea, J was impressively open to it, and two days later, everything was booked … I hope she really meant it! Next post from Malta!

On Repeat

Tags

Costa Rica, family, family travel, Jaco, Manuel Antonio National Park, repeat travel

I’ve written before about my penchant for repeat travel. I don’t really understand people who check places off a list, who believe that going anywhere more than once is a waste of time, money, or a chance to bolster a count of some kind. Some travelers – I am clearly one! – happily return to places they have enjoyed (and even places they have not), perhaps to deepen an understanding or maybe to change their minds about a subpar initial experience. (Believe me, there is no value judgment intended here; I want to keep seeing new places as much as anyone else.)

Much of the last two-plus years has been a more painful exercise in repetition, not just in the travel realm, and when I looked back at where I had gone since my last post in July of 2021, I couldn’t help but see many of the same places over and over again. There were good reasons for that – family most of all – but the main one was that we hadn’t been able to really spread our wings in all that time.

Home

Now, I’ve recently returned from my first journey out of the country since February of 2020 and it was, you guessed it, a repeat: my third trip to Costa Rica. It was the least ambitious of my forays there but still a great way to triangulate what I know about this small Central American country. Like many, we have cancelled our fair share of travel plans in the last few years, so when my son and his wife asked if I wanted to join them on a trip in late April, I jumped at the chance. They had their own travel goal: getting one final country stamp in their daughter’s passport before she turned two and had to start paying for a ticket!

Our family’s initial trip to Costa Rica was twenty years ago, a spring break trip with our three kids to the west coast of the country and our first experience with eco-tourism. The hotel had no A/C or TV, was strategically built into a jungly hillside to catch ocean breezes and optimally manage water and waste, and served food from sustainable and organic sources.

At our kids’ ages at the time, it helped that it was also a veritable wildlife refuge, with howler monkeys in the trees outside our room and giant iguanas that roamed the pool deck. A short jaunt down the road was Manuel Antonio National Park, a tiny gem that we spent several days exploring with knowledgeable nature guides.

We returned in 2005 to spend nine days of our Christmas break volunteering in a small village in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. This was not the same cushy vacation we’d had a few years earlier! We stayed in a rustic motel that cost $10/night, where my daughter and I found a spider the size of my fist in the ice-cold shower on day one. We dug trenches for pipes, mixed concrete by hand, moved endless piles of cement blocks, painted, hammered, and cleaned.

Overseas volunteer trips were in their infancy at the time, and we have always been happy we took such a trip before many of these ventures became little more than vanity projects. We felt truly connected with the villagers who worked alongside us for a week and a half, and we were required to take our work cues from them, whether or not we might do it that way at home. It was a valuable lesson in servant leadership. As simplistic and hyperbolic as it may sound, I still believe this trip was the initial driver for our children’s later careers and other life choices.

Last month’s excursion had no such lofty ambitions, unless bonding with my granddaughter and her parents counts (I think it does, actually!). This time, as we did on the first visit, we spent a day near San Jose to recharge after the long trip with a toddler. We were especially happy with that plan after our flight was delayed, our car rental became a series of mishaps, and we reached our hotel after midnight.

The rest of our days – again, on the west coast, this time in Jacó – were pure vacation as we walked the beach, played in the pool, and ambled into and around the small town for groceries, dining, and of course, ice cream. In a full-circle kind of outing on our last day, we took little E to revisit the eco-resort as well as Manuel Antonio National Park, and both were just as delightful as they were when her daddy was 14 years old!

It felt great to break the seal on staying put in the U.S. Now I’m itching for more, so I’ll need to twist J’s arm to get back out there in the near future. Until then, I’m savoring one more repeat stamp, even if I’ve got a couple of new ones in mind for this year!

On the Road Again

Tags

29029Everesting, Bald Mountain, California, hiking, Montana, Oregon, roadtrip, traveling with dogs, western U.S., Wyoming

It was finally time for a more comprehensive tour of the western U.S., especially now that Covid was on the wane and we had a mini-HQ in Colorado from which to depart. We’d seen a decent assortment of places out west over the years; in fact, no state we would see was a stranger to us, but we had never committed consecutive weeks of time to just rambling around the region.

The Itinerary: Our schedule and destinations were predicated on seeing friends and family in a number of cities, and I had the added incentive of spending some active, prolonged time at higher altitudes to prepare for a mountain event I planned to do in Idaho in the middle of the trip. I drove from Houston to the Denver area in late May, spent a week in our little Colorado abode, and trained in the foothills on my own and with a fellow event participant. I loaded up the pup in early June and headed over the Rockies to Salt Lake City and on to Boise, Idaho, where I stopped long enough to pick up my husband at the airport and walk Boise’s mellow, refreshing Greenbelt for an hour or two before setting off once again to make Bend, Oregon by nightfall.

After three days in Bend, we meandered through southern Oregon to Crater Lake National Park and on to Northern California and the Mount Shasta area. San Francisco was next, a city stay that still featured plenty of hiking in Muir Woods and Angel Island, and after the weekend, we pointed the car east to Lake Tahoe. A stunning drive north into Idaho landed us in the Sun Valley/Ketchum area, where we split up – husband and dog to a nice hotel for work and some play, and me to my Bald Mountain hiking challenge and decidedly less cushy lodging (a tent). Four days later, we followed the Salmon River on a jaw-dropping drive through the Sawtooth Mountains to Bozeman, Montana, and a few days after that, we were traversing the Beartooth Highway, northeast and northern Yellowstone National Park, and then western Yellowstone and the Big Sky area. The incredible Tetons were our final stop before returning to Colorado after three glorious weeks.

Friends and Family: A big part of our motivation to stop in the places we did was to see our kids and some old (and new) friends. As a bonus to start my trip, I overlapped for a few days with our daughter and her husband who were visiting Colorado, and I also got to spend some joyous days and evenings watching our one and only granddaughter try to take her first toddling steps with our older son and his wife. In Bend, we reunited with friends with whom we had done volunteer work in Costa Rica and Mexico, and in two minutes, the twelve years since our last get-together disappeared in a rush of old memories and fondness.

A weekend in San Francisco was our first chance to see our younger son’s new life since a job change during Covid took him cross-country with his girlfriend. In the Lake Tahoe area, my fourth-ever blogger meet-up was a big success; Kelly (Compass and Camera) and I had always joked that we must be sisters from other mothers, and I think our dinner together supported that notion! “The Js,” our two husbands, got along great also – always a plus.

My J got together with an old work colleague and friend in Sun Valley, and I must note that in the first two days without me, he managed to fall and skin his arms and legs on both a trail run and a mountain bike ride (and people think I was the crazy one doing the mountain challenge …). In Montana, we had a too-short visit with my dear, best friend from high school, and we arrived back in Colorado just a few days after grandbaby E became a bonafide walker (hiking with Gigi cannot be far behind!). What a fantastic way to add love, friendship, and context to all the new places we went!

Travels with Tashi: We got a new puppy last spring, and I am still not used to the complications he adds to our lives after more than a year, even after being a former dog owner for fifteen years. The two-and-a-half-year gap between dogs must have spoiled me because now I can almost not tolerate having to think about his schedule and all the gear we have to haul around for him, especially in a city hotel where the car is nowhere near the room.

Still, he was a trooper. Like our other pup, Tashi is great in a moving car, on some days chilling in his crate on and off for up to nine hours while we stopped in small towns and pulled off the road for one of my 7 million photos. We introduced him to various cabins, hotel rooms, and strangers’ houses over the weeks on the road, and he was impressively nonplussed. After a few attempts to hike with this energetic little guy, we gave up and left him in our accommodations while we did the longer trails because he is still in the eat-everything stage, and one night of severe illness was enough to dissuade us from trying that again on this trip.

Yes, he is small, but the chair is enormous!

Hikes Galore: Our goal is always to find a hike or two anywhere we go, and this trip produced the goods. In Bend, our friends pointed us to Smith Rock State Park, which exceeded all expectations by a mile (or five). The climbs were a great warm-up for me, afforded stunning views, and wound us through all sorts of rock formations (see “Monkey Face” below) before a steep descent.

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Crater Lake offered a series of snowy walks, which we had to let Tashi enjoy with us. Being from Houston, he found the cold, wet stuff to be a captivating novelty, and we were happy to give up some longer walks to see him scampering around the rim of this enormous, deep-blue lake. (Hard to ferret out cigarette butts in the snow anyway.)

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Our SF son knows we are not content to just sit around and eat at fun restaurants (which we did both nights), so he took us to Muir Woods to reprise the Dipsea Trail hike we did a few summers ago, and he tacked on a nice, steep descent and climb back up out of a woodsy ravine to end our morning. The next day, he and his girlfriend booked us all a ferry ride to Angel Island, where we biked and hiked the entire island on a crisp, sunny Sunday.

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Kelly pointed us to many, many hikes and other sights in the Lake Tahoe area, and we ditched Tashi again to marvel at the scenic east coast of the lake on the Tunnel Creek-Sand Harbor walkway, hike down into the Emerald Bay area, poke around Sugar Pine Point State Park, and take an easy amble through more historic lodges at Tallac Historic Site at the end of one day.

In Sun Valley, I hiked Bald Mountain more times than I ever need to again (fifteen, to be exact), and J got in some solid elevation on Proctor Mountain and then Bald Mountain himself when my event was over. Like a normal person, he summited once, but he did have to get down on his own, which is a knee-buster of a descent.

Bozeman was my cool-down, but we had to get a few little hikes in, trekking up Drinking Horse Mountain trail for a grand view of the Bridger range in the morning and capping the day with a sunset stroll up Peet’s Hill, a local mound that was surprisingly satisfying and enjoyable … and we even let Tashi do this one with us, lucky little guy.

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In the big national parks – Yellowstone and Grand Teton – we mostly took abbreviated strolls with the dog, snapping photos at turn-outs and walking short distances from there. We did sneak away for an easy four-miler at Taggart Lake one morning at GTNP, and it was a beauty.

Lakes Galore: I knew we had Crater Lake and its deep cobalt waters on the agenda, but I hadn’t stopped to think about all the magnificent lakes we’d ogle on this trip. Lake Tahoe – Big Blue itself – was a worthy rival for the Oregon national park site, and many smaller lakes on the trip caught our eye as well. From serene and still to deep and powerful, the lakes all reflected and magnified the splendor around them and quickly became a highlight of the trip.

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Big Skies and Wide-Open Spaces: The West is dominated by its skies, and we couldn’t get enough of the clouds – from pale, wispy strands to pregnant white poofs to looming gray masses  – adrift on the overhead sea. Entire days passed with us seemingly inside an Old Master or impressionistic painting – the vast fields lime and lemon hued, the pines adding a punch of dark green, the peaks a bit of stony punctuation, and the waters a mirror of that gigantic canopy of sky. The expansiveness got under our skin, and we both commented on how hard it would be to go back to city life and its confined spaces.

Geothermal features: Hot springs and geysers have never attracted me much, but the spectrum of colors and ethereal mists at Yellowstone were a worthy addition to my “geo-art” series of photos over the years. I might have snapped more pictures here than anywhere else on the trip, and that’s saying a lot with Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe’s over-the-top photogenic appeal.

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The “road” in roadtrips: I love a good non-interstate, and we naturally hit a lot of “blue highways” on this trip and went out of our way to drive others. Highway 75 from Sun Valley to Redfish Lake, Idaho, a twisting ascent up through the Sawtooths and over Galena Pass, was one such treat (secondarily because we had absolutely no cell service for hours, so there was no temptation to be distracted), and it was followed by an equally-isolated drive that followed the Salmon River for many miles and hours. We drove two hours out of our way from Bozeman, Montana, one morning in order to start our Yellowstone trip from its northeast entrance. After that eastern swing landed us in Red Lodge, we hooked back west to drive the entire length of the Beartooth Highway (US Route 12) from there to Cooke City/Silver Gate and into the national park.

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In Summary: The trip brought home our desire to live at least part of the year amid mountains, streams, woods, and open skies. We have taken a baby step in that direction with a small apartment in Colorado, and only time will tell if that is enough … or too much? … with our kids spread from coast to coast, and ongoing jobs and life changes for family members in all four of our time zones. Meanwhile, we have the memories of this brilliant road trip, which I would have been happy to continue for at least a few more weeks. Responsibilities lured us back to our humid home, but we’ve already agreed a western journey will be a permanent fixture on our summer docket.

Road Trip to the Border

Tags

Acuña, Del Rio, girls' trip, Mexico, on the border, road trip, Texas

There are no guns or robberies in this story, no convertibles, and, I’m sorry to say, no trysts with a young Brad Pitt. We are no Thelma and Louise; we’re just L and L on our own girls’ road trip with plenty of laughs, a whole lot of talking, maybe a little bit of wine, more than a few foodstuffs that rarely pass our lips on a regular basis, and even a few “daring” border crossings.

In pre-pandemic January, my friend L flew from Chicago to Houston to take a four-day road trip with me into the middle of Texas. As a little background, L is one of those people who is interested in everything (that is a good thing), and the mere mention of a place or activity, no matter where it was heard or read, can send her off on a quest. (I still thank our lucky stars for her voracious guidebook reading, or we would have never screeched to a halt a few decades ago to herd our six kids into the best sheep farm ever in New Zealand!)

With that in mind, you must know that this trip largely came about because of an article L saw on a plane in American Way magazine, in which the tiny city of Del Rio, Texas, was featured. She was convinced by the flattering multi-page spread that Del Rio had to be the best kept travel secret ever, “a peach of a town” she kept calling it, and she wanted to make it the centerpiece of our trip.

I did some research of my own and quickly determined that the small town on the Mexican border sounded like a good place to drop in. For a day. Max. It did have some appealing draws – new art galleries and craft beer bars in the small downtown, a curious mix of vegetation and wildlife based on its location, and nearby, incredible prehistoric cave drawings and an International Dark Sky Sanctuary. A nice bonus would be a walk over the bridge linking Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, if we got our way. (Lots of people tried to dissuade us from getting our way. Before we left, we got the usual friends-and-family lectures on U.S./Mexico border towns, and even the front desk employees at our hotel looked at us in dismay when we asked how we could make the crossing. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

We left Houston on a weekday morning, hoping to get to San Antonio for lunch and Del Rio for dinner. We planned to spend the evening and the next day in that peach of a town, and then move on to Fredericksburg, Enchanted Rock, Dripping Springs, Luckenback, and every farm-to-market road we could find on the way back home. While many of those places deserve to be, and have previously been, chronicled here, the rest of today’s story is all about Del Rio and its Mexican sister city, Acuña.

Our first glimpse of the magazine-lauded qualities of Del Rio turned out to be the bright yellow Julio’s tortilla chip factory and restaurant, right on our route into town. We resisted a stop, but we did succumb to a supermarket purchase of a jumbo-sized bag of the famous chips to power our ride the next day. (As a side note, there were also Buc-ee’s sea salt caramels, home-made chocolate chip cookies from another hotel, and a few more wonderfully unhealthy treats consumed along the way.)

We “explored” downtown Del Rio that evening; almost everything was closed, but we did find a great little craft brewpub with good beer, some comfort food, and most important, a couple of young girls who worked there who assured us that a walk into Acuña the next day would be safe and fun.

Wednesday dawned wet and dreary, with a heavy mass of swollen clouds nearly touching the ground, so we had to ditch our bird sanctuary hiking plans and replace them with a nature museum and a drive across the Lake Amistad dam – half in the U.S. and half in Mexico – in case we got rained out (or chickened out) of the walk across the border later.

Having accidentally driven into Mexico from El Paso a number of years ago, and then getting stuck there for hours trying to get back into the U.S. with a rental car and a minor daughter with no ID, I was a little more skittish than necessary about driving past the sign that warned “LAST CHANCE TO TURN AROUND BEFORE ENTERING MEXICO.”

So we made mistake #1. We parked outside that gate and walked in. It appeared that only vehicles could go to the right, so we went left … apparently into an official area where entry was forbidden. We walked for about two minutes before we were approached by the border police and pointed right back out to our car.

Still confused but slightly emboldened by the instructions he gave us, we got in the car, crossed our fingers, and went through the official lane to cross the bridge. A quarter of the way across the bridge/dam, we saw a parking area on the side and got out to see what we could see. Almost before we saw anything, shots rang out, a peppery rat-a-tat-tat that sent us jumping back into the car and hightailing it down the ramp into the U.S entry checkpoint, our minds full of violent scenarios.

The immigration officer was semi-amused. “Those were shots to ward off the turkey buzzards,” she smiled, barely. “Did you at least get to the commemorative plaque in the middle?”

“Umm, no,” we replied sheepishly. “If we actually enter Mexico, will we be able to get back in here easily?”

“It’s hardly a border; you’ll be in the middle of the bridge. You can park and then turn around. I’ll be here,” she added. I could sense her trying hard not to roll her eyes.

Since there were no other travelers and no lines, we finally went to stand with one foot in each country, straddling the Rio Grande, sort of, and contemplating the forbidding terrain on either side of the river. Re-entry was quick and easy, as promised, and we were on our way back to Del Rio.

We couldn’t really say that was going to Mexico, could we? Googlemaps and some other online sleuthing led us next to a bleak parking lot on the U.S. side of the Del Río-Ciudad Acuña International Bridge. We waded through giant mud puddles, slogged for a mile down the berm of a 4-lane highway, crossed the bridge, and finally reached an impressively large and modern Port of Entry complex. We went through customs with about two other visitors on foot, wound through a series of corridors, and landed in Acuña just before noon.

The welcome sign suggested it was party time, but unfortunately, the town was a bit less colorful, with only a few little bodegas and kitschy shops open for business. (To be fair, the weather was truly dismal.) We strolled up and down the main drag, Miguel Hidalgo, and finally lucked into the one spot we’d read about for lunch: La Fama, a more modern bar/restaurant with a homey atmosphere and good food and beer.

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In the past, Acuña apparently had quite a late-night scene; a string of clubs and bars drew crowds of students and others, and during the day, citizens of both towns crossed the border for work and school. Even though much of the after-dark revelry ramped down with the rise of warring cartels, the cities avoided much of the drug-fueled violence of other border towns, and today, as in many places along the Rio Grande, Ciudad Acuña and Del Rio still have a symbiotic and easy relationship.

Hundreds of workers continue to go over the border and back each day for work, children are driven to private schools on the other side, and the economy is inseparably integrated. The mayors of the two towns are friendly, cooperating daily on big things, like international trade and infrastructure projects, as well as smaller details like easy border crossings for their residents. It all works just fine, as far as we could discern. No big walls, no big deal, just the way it should be.

By mid-afternoon, we had crossed back into the U.S. for the third time (the immigration officer asked us why we had two stamps in the last four hours!) and were on our way north into the better-known Hill Country. Although the next three days had many highlights of their own, I had to admit the unlikely destination L had discovered in her in-flight reading ended up being the part of the road trip that stuck with us longest. There’s a whole other world out there, and a lot of it is just a short road trip away from home!

A Better Kind of Isolation

Tags

Cadillac Ranch, Colorado, isolation, New Mexico, open road, road trip, Texas, Texas Panhandle

For the second time in little over a year, I point my car northwest on a 1000-mile journey, and then retrace it, through some of the bleakest land in the country. There and back in 32 hours last year, and there and back again a few weeks ago, this time sweetened in the middle by a most joyous event: the birth of our first grandchild. That the trip follows on the heels of a solid two months sequestered at home makes it all the more liberating, and I savor the trip almost as much as the heart-bursting reason behind it.

Like the previous trip, I do this one alone and almost in silence – no podcasts for me, or playlists, or even the radio most of the way (there really is no radio reception most of the way!). These are the times my thoughts get to meander as far as the land does, without limits or defined edges.

My mind yawns open like the arroyos out the window; the past and future wander into my head while the present plays out amid the rocking horse oil pumps, the wind turbines, the fields of grain and cattle, the ridges and folds and dusty flats that are palpable beneath my wheels. I point my phone camera out the bug-splattered windows over and over again, trying to capture a strange bliss I could never properly explain.

I savor mile after mile, hour upon hour, of the Texas Panhandle – beige and chalky, then red and earthy, reeking of cows, and beaten by wind. For long stretches I hear what sounds like a thin metal whip flaying the roof of my vehicle. It abates as I slow from 80 mph to pass through tiny, rural towns – a few battered houses, a feed store, a gas station from the ‘50s, a BBQ joint, a Chinese or Mexican restaurant from time to time.

In a few spots, I might catch a glimpse of a strip joint like the (surely beachy) Player’s Bikini Club, or perhaps a big-ass gun shop, or an ad for a steak the size of New York, none of which feature in my daily life and are therefore endlessly amusing to me.

In a matter of seconds, I’m through these towns and back on the open road. Many people would find the sere landscape dull or depressing, but I find its scoured featurelessness profoundly pleasurable. It’s a blank backdrop for old camp songs, writing ideas, life-plan reviews, a phone call here and there. I barely need to turn the wheel, and the hours effortlessly slip by.

I’ve started from barely above sea level, and by the time I hit Amarillo, Texas, I’m at 3000 feet, riding the high plains ever higher, to almost 4000 feet by the time I reach Dalhart, nearly 5000 by the Texas-New Mexico state line. I never feel I’ve left flat ground, though, inching through those feet of ascent ever so slowly.

Deeper into New Mexico, the gradual rise becomes steeper; by the time I get to Raton Pass and thunder down into Colorado, I am at almost 8000 feet, and both before and after the pass, my views become more three-dimensional and colorful. Late spring growth softens the land, and pine trees begin to replace the drier juniper, cottonwood and mesquite varieties. Distant peaks poke out of the corrugated foreground, some still snow-covered, adding a depth of field that I welcome in spite of my contentment with the monotony.

There are even some less natural sparks of color from time to time. My favorite is Cadillac Ranch, a field of half-buried cars outside of Amarillo, a scene I have wanted to see on the first three passes over this route. On the way home, I finally go out of my way to stop.

The installation is surreal – a garish row of spray-painted Caddies with their tail fins rising out of a sun-bleached cow pasture – and I roam the perimeter as much as I can, avoiding the painters who are encouraged to make their own marks on the “sculpture” of ten cars, originally buried nose-down here in 1974.

It is an hour before sundown on a scorching evening; the western rays are blinding, and the hot wind out in the field has me parched within minutes. Still, I walk slowly back to the car, prolonging what will be my last night in the vast emptiness.

As I drive closer to low ground, humidity, and the big city, I don’t want the trip to end. I choose an alternate way into Houston, sticking to smaller roads that bisect horse farms and white-fenced meadows. And then I am back to the 13-lane Katy Freeway, the gauntlet I must run to get home. Muscles tensed and brain overloaded for the first time in weeks, I finally snap the radio on. Already buffeted by stimuli, I figure a little more won’t hurt. I’ll stay in overdrive in my lush green surroundings for the next month, and then … I’ll make the same soothing trip all over again!

Hello from Houston

Tags

coronavirus, COVID-19, home, pandemic, quarantine, rule breakers, rule followers

The group of friends moved together on the pier, jostling and laughing, one boy hip-checking another, three girls giggling in a group hug … “Noooooo,” I find my brain screaming,”Separate! You can’t be that close to each other!”

Six feet apart, fellas, six feet!

Is my hometown another place where people are not following government restrictions on gathering? Well, yes, sort of, in a few places, but that scene described above is an example of what I’ve been yelling at people in movies and on the pages of the books I’m reading! Our new normal has become so firmly entrenched in my mind already that I am not even distinguishing real-life physical contact with fictional or virtual closeness. What will this do to our post-COVID lives and attitudes, I have to wonder?

Silly reactions and philosophizing aside, we are here in Houston being rule-followers, like many of my blogging friends from all over the world. We canceled our trip to Southeast Asia in February for fear we might get stranded there, and now we are looking at those destinations as perhaps safer places to be right now than in our own individual-liberty-obsessed land (1).

My beloved running routes along the bayous are now packed with stir-crazy people wanting to get out of the house. Most are well-behaved, sticking to their side of the paths and maintaining appropriate physical distances. Some are still way too bunched-up with groups of friends, and a few infuriating idiots are passing balls and tackling each other, climbing over the closed dog-park fence, or taking turns pressing their grubby fingers down on the water fountain spigot. As of today, I will be running in the streets; they are emptier anyway, and I am less likely to work myself up over the rule-breakers.

Here in my house, my husband is working non-stop from an upper floor, trying to keep his company and its customers solvent. We are lucky to have his continued salary and the ability to buy some extra food and leave a few generous tips when we get takeout meals. My own paltry pay (barely worthwhile in normal times) has stopped as I cannot do much work for my employer from home. Last week I was a whirlwind, cleaning and baking and organizing, and now I’m feeling like a lazy slob.

Yesterday, we escaped with an outing a few hours west to see the bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes that sprout each spring on the roadsides of Texas. The giant freeways were empty on our way out of the city, the shopping centers and car dealerships eerily deserted. Being in the country was therapeutic and temporarily calming, but now we are back in the house, J very stressed and I at loose ends.

I’m aware that this is the worst post I’ve ever written – disjointed, incohesive, and just plain boring – but like others, I wanted to connect in some way with the wider world (2). Please stay safe and healthy and sane as we all work together to stop this virus.

ADDENDA:

(1) It bears noting that I greatly value the individual freedoms our country affords us, and I am very lucky to have been born here. But I also value science, common sense, community spirit, and public health, so sometimes those personal rights need to be subjugated for the common good, and I think there are people and places that are understanding that better than we are right now.

(2) I need you, readers! My three kids have about had it with my incessant texts and emails, jokes and cartoons! 🙂

Where Ruins Rule

Tags

Antigua, Art, earthquakes, Guatemala, memory, ruins, the past, volcanoes

When we suddenly find a flight to Antigua, Guatemala after a last-minute change of travel plans, we’ve got to act fast. In the next 24 hours, we need to find lodging, a list of top sightseeing stops, a few active outings, and a way to get around. We do an obligatory Google exploration and then hit the search bars on the websites of a few blogging friends we seem to remember have been here (thank you, Alison and Don and Nicole!), and in a few short hours, we have a preliminary plan.

We quickly see what we expected to see: the cheerful metal of the chicken buses, the alabaster church fronts, the small Mayan women wrapped in jewel-toned garments and stooped under their loads of street wares. The chock-a-block markets, the volcanoes that loom over the town and stud the countryside. The chocolate, the coffee, the jade.

And then a strange thing happens. We really have no major objectives here; in fact, we have a perfect excuse to just be – we’ve had no time to plan! – to take things in, to let the city in through our eyes and our minds for a few days. We slooowww down, and J patiently lets me stop and photograph things that do not tell a typical kind of travel story.

Writers and readers love whole, substantial things – buildings and shrines, temples and monuments. Histories, records, narratives. The more we amble aimlessly around Antigua, the more I am drawn to its pieces, and the bits that draw me the most are the walls – both the scuffed-up sides of ordinary buildings and the decaying exteriors of the enormous number of ruins in this earthquake-terrorized town.

What draws me so insistently to these panels of imperfection? At home, I like modern architecture and clean lines, sleek surfaces and a dearth of clutter, yet the chipped and faded paint on the crumbling walls pulls me in, as do the hulking structures, half hollowed out, strewn around the town, their deterioration conjuring the past even as they sit among the trappings of modern life.

They please the eye first, a patchwork of color and texture, a random splash of shapes not specifically formed by man. The elements have crafted this art; the rain has faded the reds, the volcanic dirt has darkened the yellows, the brush of body parts and clothing has burnished the blues. Then they begin to work on memory, evoking time gone by both here and everywhere – the rise and fall of civilizations, of peoples and ideas.

Which color came first? Was it the oxidized reds and ochres that appear most frequently? The yellows seem old, too, and so soft, almost as if they were done in colored pencil.

I imagine the whites being added later, maybe the blues also, as later generations cooled the colors down, an attempt to add a little crisp cleanness to the hot, dusty town perhaps.

Paul Cooper, writing in a BBC art and culture article, says “[ruins] are places an observer can get lost, where time slips away.” I feel this happening at the sanctuary of San Francisco, a complex of religious structures outside of the main streets that is without question my favorite place in town.

There is a functioning church here, a faded beauty after multiple earthquakes altered its form over the years, but it’s the gardens around the church where a trance sets in and time does slip away. There are fields of stone rising from the earth, heaving up from the grass and among the palm trees.

Bougainvillea languishes on a shattered stairwell; splintered archways admit huge ovals of sky, and more gaping holes yawn in pitted walls. New green growth sprouts from dirt-filled crevices between stone and brick; I’m transfixed by the apposition of destruction and regrowth.

At a certain point, though, I snap to, and begin to question my infatuation with the decay. Is this like disaster tourism, wanting to exalt for the sake of art and literature what was a horrific time for generations of Guatemalans? Am I imposing a developed world appreciation for those “artistic” mottled walls on the modest city shops when they are really just a result of poverty, a fix that is simply unaffordable?

Cooper comes to my rescue on the first count. “Mankind has always lived among its own ruins. Since our earliest history, we have explored ruined places, feared them and drawn inspiration from them, and we can trace that complex fascination in our art and writing.” I study the pockmarked walls again and decide they have been left this way on purpose, and thankfully so. They are stunning and warm, simple and inviting.

We do hike our volcano, climb up to the cross on a hilltop overlooking the town, stray into a church or two, but for the most part, this stay is all about wandering and wondering for me.

Antigua – so aptly named – is a reminder that we carry the past, both good and bad, with us always. The things we build may not last what the earth throws at them either, but what is left has its own beauty and power. Especially here in Antigua.

 

This is Not Thailand!

Tags

Antigua, CENTRAL AMERICA, changing gears, coronavirus, Guatemala, Southeast Asia, travel problems

The bags were 99% packed, and all systems were go for our trip to Southeast Asia on Wednesday evening. And then they weren’t. What changed? As I noted in my last post, we’d wavered a little on leaving for a long vacation in a place increasingly affected by the coronavirus outbreak, but all of our knowledge, intuition, and local contacts suggested that we were extremely unlikely to actually catch anything.

Including our flights! We’d already rebooked our return flights (a time-consuming and stressful task), which had a problematic Hong Kong layover. As the number of virus cases mounted, however, we began to rethink the seven regional flights we had booked and even our return via Tokyo. We didn’t have that many destinations, but many of our flights involved layovers back in Bangkok, and we started to eliminate some of them in an attempt to salvage our trip.

With every adjustment, we ran into a domino effect of problems. Eliminate Cambodia and the four planes associated with just that one stop? Oops, no flights from Luang Prabang to Danang a few days earlier. Spend more time in Chiang Mai? Nope; Laos was already getting short shrift, and what was the point of flying for over 24 hours to get to Asia and then cut our top destinations short?

Neither our friends on the ground in Thailand and Vietnam nor our families in the U.S. pushed us in any one direction, but there were plenty of signs that this might not be the carefree and fun vacation we had planned six months ago. We are not retired and have obligations at home, and we could ill afford a problem at any point with a return. Though getting sick was not even on our radar, getting stuck or, worse, potentially quarantined based on where we had been, was a worry.

It did us in. Call us wimps, but we wanted to really enjoy this trip and not just get through it. Thirty-six hours before takeoff, we pulled the plug. Before I canceled all the flights, hotels, guides, and drivers, we went online, searched for cheap fares to anywhere we’d never been, and bought tickets for Guatemala for one day after our original departure date. We didn’t even really have to repack the bags!

So here we are in Antigua, the old capital of Guatemala, where we landed two hours before we would have in Bangkok even though we left a full day later! It’ll be a short stay, but it’s a nice consolation prize for the trip to which we sadly bid adieu. For the next few days, we’ll speak Spanish and climb volcanoes, but we’ll be headed back to Bangkok and all of our other SE Asian stops in November if all goes well!

Buenas noches, all, and thanks for all the support throughout our decision-making process!

To Go or Not to Go?

Tags

Cambodia, coronavirus, Hong Kong, Laos, Southeast Asia, Thailand, travel dilemmas, Vietnam

It’s countdown day 10! A mere week and a half separates us from takeoff on our long-awaited flight to Bangkok and Southeast Asia. We drained a couple of frequent flyer accounts for some cushy Business Class seats, and we cashed in a bunch of hotel and credit card points for a string of comfortable hotel stays throughout Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

We made plans to meet several blogging friends; we have tours set up and hikes charted out. I’ve practiced my Vietnamese greetings and refreshed my internal map of Bangkok’s streets and the way to a fun rooftop bar. I’ve even started a little pile of clothes and toiletries, shoes and sunscreen, plane entertainment and sundry supplies.

But with each passing day this week, our trip becomes a little more untenable. The Wuhan, China-based coronavirus is putting a growing crimp on things, and it’s not because we have any real fear of getting the disease. Our concerns now are that we could get stranded in a country that has decided to close its airports (we route home through Hong Kong, for example), or that once in Southeast Asia, we will find things shuttered or devoid of life.

A few days ago, we were still gung-ho on going. Fewer crowds – yay! We are not going to China itself – no problems for us! The news media always overblow everything, we rationalize. Today, we are beginning to worry for real. Bangkok department stores are scanning temperatures, Hong Kong’s streets are emptying out, a few more cases are cropping up in the countries to which we are heading. What if …? we keep asking ourselves on a burgeoning list of topics. Wahhhhhhhh!

Unwinding the trip may take as long as planning it out. Can I shift everything to fall; will we be safely out of the woods with the virus by then? Will my airlines and hotels let me make changes or cancel without massive fees? Where else might we escape in these two and a half weeks we have carved out of our busy schedules?

I’m curious to hear some of your thoughts. Do we stay or do we go?

Battling a Mountain

Tags

29029, endurance events, Everest, hiking, jesse itzler, Seven Summits, Snowbasin, Utah

Foreword I

I have barely posted here for months, and the biggest reason for that has been my laser focus on something that no one but my husband has known about since early December of last year. For those few souls who have missed my words, here are more than 5000 of them crammed into one post for you to enjoy! (Or skim, or skip …)

Foreword II

How can I possibly explain this folly?

There was nothing – nothing – I liked less than walking up a long, steep hill. I hated to breathe hard, I hated to sweat, and I hated the feeling of being physically and mentally uncomfortable. I do love to hike, though, and I do love to stand on top of mountains, so I have suffered through these grueling, awful ascents for years. I walked slowly and breathed hard, but my modus operandi was to just keep moving. I was almost always slower than other people going uphill, but fortunately, hiking involves plenty of flat, rolling, and downhill sections, where I walk quite briskly, so it has been hard for others (and even me, to some extent) to tell that I completely sucked at walking uphill. I have hiked very, very high (to almost 18,000’) and I have hiked for a very long time (almost 3 straight weeks), but in the midst of those achievements and others, I have been 100% miserable and cranky with myself on every long, difficult climb.

December 4, 2018

So, what do I decide to do when I read an article about an event that involves walking up 2310 very steep vertical feet in the middle of August in high-altitude Utah? But wait, let me expand. I was not just going to walk up that steep hill and then mosey down a few hours later and have a beer. I was going to try to walk up Snowbasin Mountain thirteen (that’s 13) times over a 36-hour period for a grand total of 29,029 vertical feet. In the debut of this event in Utah last summer, only 35% of the participants went all the way. And they probably never truly loathed or were bad at walking uphill. Oh, and I’m going to pay someone thousands of dollars to make this happen.

To put this in perspective, event founder Jesse Itzler told us that elevating one’s heart rate and shredding one’s leg, core, and even arm muscles for 36 hours is like running nine average-speed marathons back-to-back, or doing 2.5 Ironman triathlons in a row. I’ve never done more than a 10K race. When you reach a normal cruising altitude in a jet, look down; that’s the height we are going to have to climb. On my most ambitious hiking days, I’d maybe go up 4000 feet. When I decide to finally test my limits, could I not be a little more reasonable?

I read the article at 7:30 am in Outside Online and almost impulsively sign up immediately. I send the link to my husband, J, and write “I want to do this!” I am so pumped. The year of the event will contain a big birthday for me, and I have been feeling a need to show myself I can still cut it, to go BIG, to escape the limiting thoughts and negative self-talk that have consumed me in the last few years. I click the Chat button and bombard Matt, VP of Sales, with questions. I head out for the day, brain afire, and return afterward and call Matt to talk more. I crunch numbers, I read reviews and testimonials online, and I get more fired up.

This opportunity to face many of my personal fears and weaknesses should be my 60^th birthday present to myself, I decide. And the significance of the number 29029 cannot be overstated. This is the height of Mount Everest – my dream, my fantasy, my obsession for years and years. (Surely you’ve noticed my header photo for the last five years!) I’d like to believe that I could still climb Mount Everest, and I still dream of it regularly, but at my age, with no alpine climbing experience, and no $50,000+ to spare, I have accepted realistically that this is not going to happen for me. The 29029 event lines up so beautifully with the biggest dream I’ve ever had for myself, and it now seems like a bargain basement way to test my physical and mental limits.

December 5, 2018

I’m still high, but I have to face the fact that I probably do not have the ability to do any of this. I have another conversation with Matt. I read more, calculate more, debate more, and then I decide to see what I can even do as a baseline. I try walking the length of one summit hike on the highest ramp on my treadmill (not even close to the real thing), after a full tennis match to simulate tiredness, and then I do all the calculations to account for altitude and slope and the necessary ride back down after each ascent. I figure I’ll need at least two hours per summit, and there are thirteen summits to do. I have 36 hours total, and I will need 26 hours just to walk it all with no major breakdowns. That leaves me with ten hours to sleep, rest, eat, pee, and deal with any screaming muscles, joints, bones, and mental collapses. I can do that!

December 6, 2018

But have I discounted the pain of a real climb? I get on the Stairmaster at my gym the next day and make it about 8.5 minutes before I feel my steps are shaky. I am breathing hard and sweating; I usually stop before this happens (typed sheepishly, but true). I get off and decide this event is likely not for me. Thousands of bucks to do something for 36 hours that I just hated passionately for 8.5 minutes?

Later that afternoon, I realize I can’t give up the whole event just because I am unlikely to finish it or even do well at it. I just wanna be with these people! Colin O’Brady (first solo trans-Antarctica trekker and all-around endurance badass AND exemplary human) has done this twice! Olympic sprinters have participated. NFL players. Duke’s Coach K has had Jesse Itzler speak to his teams. It’s a hell of a lot of money to “just be with these people,” but … can I perhaps lower my expectations? Can I just train as hard as I possibly can and go and do whatever I can? They say it’s about “you versus you,” not a race, and I can buy into that mentality.

December 7, 2018

I tell Matt I am wavering. He sends some testimonials by others – a woman who does the whole thing in Vermont, a different woman who doesn’t make it and still extols the event, a guy who trains his butt off (literally; he loses 45 pounds) and gets it done. Another guy who goes hoping to summit once and makes it up five times (and is thrilled). I am reinvigorated. Maybe I should go to just be inspired by all these people and do whatever I can.

Or maybe I really can train enough to do it all?! F— it – I’m in! I don’t even wait for Matt to respond to my last email; I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and push the Buy button. Holy crap; what have I done? I justify. I can get some money back if I withdraw by late February. Won’t I know by then if this training business simply can’t get me ready after years of half-hearted cardio?

April, 2019

Flash forward to the start of our training program. I’ve spent the last four months training for the training program. Sad but true. I’ve gone from ten minutes on the Stairmaster to thirty. I am regularly running hill repeats and trudging uphill on an inclined treadmill. I can now run about three miles at a conversational pace and have found my latest high-altitude hike in Bhutan quite manageable. Easy, in fact, which makes me feel much more confident. And now the real work begins.

April-August, 2019

I’ve become a running fool. My running shoes go with me everywhere. Georgia, Pennsylvania, Northern California, Boston, Arkansas. I run four, then six, then eight miles at a time. I run five miles to my health club, do six hours of stepmill and treadmill workouts indoors, then run the five miles back home. I experiment with on-the-go hydration and nutrition, seeing what I digest well and what upsets my stomach.

This is all well and good, but will it get me up a steep, steep mountain thirteen times in a row? All day and through the night? At 9000 feet of elevation? At up to a 47% incline? Nothing I can do will truly prepare me for this event, I feel sure.

Our trainer Brent says, “the bigger the base, the higher the peak,” and this becomes my mantra. The more miles I put on my legs and feet now, the more ready they will be to go high and far in late August. At the same time, he urges us to “train where you are.” There is an online group for participants, and many are wearing weighted vests and spending hours at a time on a stepmill or a real mountain. We don’t even have hills in Houston. Some are organizing outings to the event venue. Others are doubling the mileages and times. But I plug away at my own pace, trusting in Brent’s reasonable philosophy. At my age, I also have to think about preventing injury; what good will I be at the event if I go overboard now?

Mid-summer brings certain facts into focus. One moment of truth is a grim reality check: after a one-hour run on June 4, in stifling heat and humidity, I try to do the required hill repeats and then my hip mobility exercises, and simply cannot finish them. The incline at my small Houston hill is 40-60%, about the level of the toughest slopes at Snowbasin, and I think I will die if I have to keep going … and this is after only 1.5 hours of exercise. How am I going to repeat that infinitely longer hill for 36 hours? Really, I am a fool to think I can rack up all thirteen summits in just a few months from now. Perhaps I can crunch out five ascents … maybe, maybe go up seven times?

Then again, after I get in the car and come home, I think about how OK I feel after fifteen minutes, and that I might actually be able to go out and start again. Time will tell. But I will need to push myself a lot harder, and that’ll be tough given that I am feeling wasted, hungry, and tired all the time.

A month out from the event, I experiment with the advanced slanted treadmill at my gym. I set the machine at a 20% incline right from the start and walk up 2310 feet in 67 minutes at a fairly comfortable pace and heart rate. If only the event could replicate this! At this pace, I’d have time to ride back down and even take a short rest before turning back up the mountain. Of course, 20% is only the average incline of the real mountain, and the real mountain also has gravel, rocks, boulders, straw, and uneven earth. It has blazing hot days and 40-degree nights. It has sections at double these slopes … okay, so maybe I can still hope to finish in less than twice this time. A two-hour ascent will still let me take a few short breaks, but there goes any chance to actually sleep at night.

By the end of July and into early August, we are at the peak of our training. We have three straight weekends of multi-workout days – days when we run or hike or cross-train for eight, ten, or twelve hours straight. This has become my weekend life, but I refuse to fall into the endurance training rabbit hole. One day I get up at 5 am so I can get the training done and still throw a dinner party for visiting relatives that night. We stick to our plans for dinner with friends at other times, and I attack my food like I’ve just burned it and a few more days’ worth of calories off beforehand (I have).

I feel strong! As I go into the taper weeks, J and I head west to hike in Idaho and Utah for almost a week before my event. I take it easy on my hikes, and I watch my footsteps like I never have before. No turned ankles allowed right now. No sore knees or hips, please. At the end of the week, J drops me at the site. I am a nervous wreck. Ready physically, but how will I ever know if I have the mental fortitude to climb up, up, and up, over and over again, all day and all night for the next day and a half.

I listen to the pre-event speeches, tucking tidbits of information and advice away for tomorrow, settle into my tent for a night of tossing and turning, and set my alarm for 4 am. Tomorrow at 5:45, we will strap on our headlamps and start up the mountain.

***

We start at 6 am, in the dark, with headlamps illuminating only the rocky patches of ground beneath us and the already-dusty trail shoes of the hiker in front of us. Perhaps this is good; we have seen the first one-tenth of the hill from the base, and it is beyond daunting. At about a 47-degree slope, the pitch makes our heartrates jump and our calves scream from minute one. When we see the first sign, meant to be helpful but certainly not, it says we have climbed a mere 500 feet. Most of us stop for a breather, a drink and a few hundred calories about 300 vertical feet later, at Aid Station 1. Taking care of our hydration and nutrition will be critical in the next day and a half as we burn thousands of calories and sweat out our water and salt stores with every ascent.

In spite of my careful plan to hike only at my own comfortable pace, I reach the first summit quite a bit faster than I had calculated. As I take the 15-minute ride back down to the base, I feel good. Strong and optimistic. I’ve just saved myself a good 45 minutes over my estimates, I calculate – time later for a nap or a real meal or a mental or physical breakdown. “Stay ahead of the clock,” we were advised. No time to gloat now; I need to keep moving and not even think about those extra minutes I’ve stockpiled.

Getting off the gondola and heading back to the starting chute is an eye-opening reminder that this is not going to be a walk in the woods. Our group of 220 hikers has spread out, and as I approach the board where we brand each ascent into the wood, I don’t see anyone I know, so I trudge to the starting line alone and begin to labor uphill on my own. It is light enough now to see, and I soon realize that the first 750 feet of this hill is perhaps the longest and most difficult stretch of all. It’s a sobering discovery; every time I start over, I’m going to have to find the will to walk through serious discomfort and exhaustion.

But Jesse and other speakers have addressed just this. “Be where your feet are,” we were told. I need to think about nothing but the next step – not the section above this, not the last hike where a steep jumble of boulders almost caused me to tip over backward, certainly not the fact that I have finished only one hike out of thirteen. One-two-one-two, click with the right pole, clack with the left. Breathe calmly; don’t outpace your breath. For me, a key will be to not stop between stations. Others are walking faster than I am, huffing and puffing, churning uphill past me. Minutes later, I am passing them as they bend over their poles, catching a breath, stretching a calf muscle. Already I feel a Zen-like calm, an autopilot rhythm that is propelling me up the mountain.

Last night a few speakers suggested we not put in earphones, letting our own thoughts and the nature around us fill our heads. This was heresy, I thought at the time; my music and my GPS watch have been my security blankets for months of training. Now I realize I have forgotten to push the Workout button on my watch for the first lap and the early part of my second. But by now I know my breath and heart rate patterns; I don’t think I’m exceeding a safe zone, and somehow the lack of music really IS keeping me focused on my feet.

And so go laps 2, 3, and 4, which I decide to do without any real breaks even though my pre-event plan was to stop for lunch after three climbs. Our rewards come in two ways: ascent count and a summit count. We are going for all Seven Summits, and it will take these first four ascents to get me to the equivalent of Mount Kosciuszko (Australia’s highest mountain), the lowest of them all. When I descend after lap 4, I not only sear my fourth symbol into the scoreboard, but I receive a checkmark on the back of my white bib for my first summit.

I take a break from the afternoon heat and sun, stripping off several layers, eating a brief lunch, and switching out my socks. So far I am immune to many of the afflictions my fellow hikers are experiencing: blisters, chafing, altitude headaches, nausea, or intestinal problems. I attribute my early hardiness to hiking experience; I am used to using poles to push my way up a steep slope, my calves and Achilles tendons are accustomed to being stretched this way for long periods of time, and I am very consciously focusing on balanced hydration and getting non-irritating calories into my system.

I head back out for two more rounds, hoping to finish by dinnertime and before it gets dark again. Lap 5 is like most of the ones before it, but by ascent number 6, I am feeling a crash coming on. It’s becoming harder to take a deep breath, even while stopping at the aid stations, and my inner thighs are cramping whenever I stop. I am alternately hot and shivery cold, and I feel certain that my next sip of an electrolyte drink will make me throw up. Slow down, I coach myself; I’ve stayed ahead of the clock all day so far, and I can afford a very slow lap. “Just keep moving,” we’ve been told, “the tents and the lodge are your enemy.”

Somehow, I plow my way uphill for a couple of hours, my slowest hike yet, and collapse into the gondola. I’ve been on the mountain for over twelve hours now, the longest sustained heavy physical activity I have ever experienced. I am thankfully alone on this lift run as I moan and whine like a blubbery child in my own little capsule the whole way down. I think back to my initial goal for the event: 7 laps – one more than half – and still more than doable if I get a good night’s sleep and wake up able to locomote.

I stagger into the lodge at the bottom and drink good, plain, cold water. I eat the blandest real food I can find and settle into a chair before I give up for the night. People are headed to their tents for a nap or a full sleep, with a number of my early hiking buddies saying they no longer feel compelled to go the full way to Everest. I am feeling the same, but somehow I think I have some reserves left today that my friends do not. I sit for longer than normal and catch the eye of one of our coaches. He has run marathons and competes as a triathlete, and I pick his brain about the body’s ability to spring back from a low point like the one I am in. We talk for a few minutes, and when he leaves, I decide to get up and try one night hike; the HQ team has been saying that everyone should try one, and at this hour I’m sure there will be people on the mountain for me to walk with.

I walk stiffly to the start line and look around. The base area is quiet; a group hike has left about thirty minutes ago, too late for me to catch up. No one else wandering around looking for a companion? Nope, this is going to be a solo run; I’ve done a few of them, and in many ways, I’ve liked them better. The less chatting I do, the more I fall into a rhythmic trance and the less I feel the toil of my legs and lungs. But I soon realize this is a different animal being all alone on a huge mountain in pitch darkness. And speaking of animals, I hear noises. I hope that’s the hoot of an owl and not the howl of a coyote. A triangular flag marking the trail edge licks its tongue at me as my headlamp illuminates its flickering edges. Every stick on the trail seems to slither like a rattlesnake as I get ready to place my feet down over and over again.

I want to go slowly to keep my tired lungs under control, and I need to be deliberate with my footsteps among the stones and – higher up – boulders all over the path.  At the same time, I want to race to the next aid station to see other humans, to get close enough to others who can hear me scream if something should happen to me. I crest the ridiculous hill that takes me about a fifth of the way to the top and start to see the lights and hear the thumping rap music that’s been playing at the rest stop all day. I glance at my watch and am startled to see I’ve come up here as fast as I did on the very first fast lap, and this after my near-complete meltdown at the base a short time ago.

I take great encouragement from that and after a two-minute rest I’m back on my feet and starting the long 1.25 miles to the next station. I’m practically humming now, feeling wonderfully resilient and sturdy. I high-five and fist-bump the volunteers at the next waypoint and keep on trucking. I reach the summit under a star-studded black velvet sky and ride down in pure elation. I’m more than halfway done, I’ve reached the summit height of Mount Vinson (Antarctica), and I’m feeling strong and capable.

The roller coaster ride is continuing, though, and by the time I’m at the bottom contemplating one more ascent, I’m back in a trough. My neck hurts from looking down at the path for hours at a time. My upper arms are starting to ache from the pole use, and my legs are beginning to feel rubbery. I find a friend who wants to keep going, and we fall into step in silence. Just having her nearby makes me feel better, and knowing that this fit young woman twenty to thirty years my junior is on the same lap as me makes me feel proud of myself. We struggle uphill together, chatting briefly in the aid stations, and finally separating briefly as we each tackle the final rocky slopes on our own. Mount Elbrus (Russia) – check.

“I’m done for a while,” I tell her on the ride down. I’m not only physically tired but I’m mentally fried, and I’ve got to rest my head and neck more than anything else. “Not me,” she says, “I feel like I’ll be better off just going all night.” It’s after 1 am, and I stumble to my tent, frozen to the bone. My teeth are chattering uncontrollably, and my legs feel disconnected from my torso. I slip as quietly as I can into my tent. My tent mates are slumbering as I lower myself to the edge of my bed, wincing at the pain in my screaming quads, and peel off my filthy clothing. I re-dress in tomorrow’s hiking togs and take a futile stab at cleaning my dust-covered feet with a wet wipe before crawling under the covers. I’d hoped for more than a few hours of sleep, but it’s almost 2 am by the time I set my alarm for 4 and try to relax.

I must have slept because the alarm startles me, and I rise quickly to my feet to stave off any attempt to lie back down. No contact lenses going in at this hour; I throw on my glasses and hat, bundle up in a few more layers, pack my waistpack, and unzip the tent flaps in the chilly pre-dawn air. I walk alone to the base, already calculating my chances of finishing. I’m on the murderous first hill by 4:30 am, and by the time the sun has begun to lighten the eastern skies, I am already on the way down. I barely remember the climb at all; half-awake and fuzzy-headed, I have cranked out lap 9 like an automaton and picked up two more of the Seven Summits – Denali and Kilimanjaro – with little pain at all. I catch a glimpse of my nighttime friend in the lodge; on the lap after I left her, she pulled a groin muscle and is done, joining the scores of others who have dropped out of the event for all sorts of reasons.

Aconcagua is another quickie. I’m astonished at how awake I am now, and I turn out one of my fastest laps since early the first day. I’m beginning to visualize snagging all of these peaks, and I alternate between wanting to laugh out loud and sob. This is not a situation I imagined. Me? One of the oldest participants here, still walking strong, with no injuries or complaints of any sort beyond bodily exhaustion. I’m highly emotional as I get my last red check mark on my back, knowing that I only have to walk up two more times before I get the coveted red bib, the outward sign to all that I’m on my last ascent.

The hubris! Did I celebrate too soon? Each climb is no joke, and the euphoria I feel as I climb into the gondola at the top quickly dissipates as the truth sets in back at the bottom. “Only” two more until I get the last bib? Umm, that’s three more total, almost a third of what I’ve already done. And there will be no more peaks to bag between Aconcagua and Mount Everest; I’ll have to take comfort in simply branding my board each time I do one more lap.

I don’t remember ascents 11 and 12 well at all. I am slowing down, but only by about two minutes or so with each new climb. The red bib is nigh, and once again I feel an outpouring of emotion combined with some sort of hysteria, surely brought on by sheer exhaustion mixed with jubilation. I am truly filthy at this point, and I’m down to a sleeveless tank, trying not to torch my arms, neck, and face as I climb higher and higher into the thinner air. I’m getting reports of people dropping out, oxygen masks being applied, knees being wrapped, and stomachs being emptied at the top of the mountain.

Although I have not traditionally been good at blocking out negatives or dealing with pain, I plod on and before I know it, I have arrived at the next-to-biggest moment of the weekend. The event announcer sees me disembark the gondola for the 12^th time, doing a herky-jerky walk back toward the starting chute. I can barely extend my legs by now, my limbs heavy with lactic acid, my muscles aching and tight, my feet clenched in my trail shoes. An event volunteer ties the red bib onto me, wishes me well, and tells me she’ll see me in a red finisher’s hat when I get back down. It sounds so imminent, but the minute I enter that chute for the final time, I know this will be the hardest lap of all. Luckily for me, I have plenty of time, at least four hours to do what has never taken me more than two, even on my one very slow climb.

I try to enjoy that last ascent, pausing to snap (terrible) photos of the signs and a bit of the scenery. It’s impossible to capture the intensity of the slopes or the feel of the loose stones under my feet; I will never be able to truly convey the energy of the aid stations with their upbeat music and encouraging volunteers. I chat with everyone I see on that final lap, but I find myself alone and utterly drained on my final trudge up the relentlessly uphill fire road at the top of the mountain. As I pass the last ¼-mile marker, I see a hiker twirl slowly as if in a ballet and then crumple onto the gravel. I rush ahead to offer help or to send a medic back down, and only then do I fully absorb what I have done – climb just over 29,029 vertical feet, the height of Mount Everest from sea level, a feat that only 139 of us would eventually accomplish that weekend. From what I understand, I am the oldest woman to finish.

Of course, I’m tremendously proud of my effort over the 30-some hours it took me to complete this challenge, but I’m also unendingly grateful for the chance to have even done the training and, as I expected from sign-up day, to have the opportunity to spend a weekend with the kind of people who want to see what their own Everest looks like. Even those who did not make all thirteen summits fulfilled certain goals for themselves, and there was not a cynical or disappointed heart in the house that evening. I have no need to replicate my journey here, but I am a believer in the mission of the challenge. “I am strong. I am capable.” Colin O’Brady’s words to himself on his Antarctic crossing ring though my head. I have a very different notion of what I am made of and what I can do in this world. I have battled a real, physical mountain, and I have owned it. Time will tell what I make of that on the other hills of my life.