The answers to some questions are so long I don’t even know where to start.
Those trips he referred to, to Europe and Africa in 1974, and Central and South America in 1976, were indeed free form and open ended. I made them up on the fly; no reservations, no route, no itinerary, just the barest of plans. The idea was to see as much of the world as possible. I did grow up on a dairy farm after all, and until I was eighteen rarely slept anywhere else but in our farmhouse. When you live on a dairy farm you can go anywhere you want as long as you are home by 5:00 to milk the cows. My family and I lived on a pretty short string.
I went to Europe intending to go back, didn’t, worked to save money, took my one year’s cash out of teacher’s retirement, adopted a radically cheap lifestyle, and stretched a 56 day tour of Europe into a seventeen month trek across Europe and North Africa.
While between jobs in Aberdeen Scotland, hanging out at the public library I studied their big World Atlas and planned a general route. When spring came I would head back to Morocco, follow the Mediterranean coast east to Cairo, Egypt, head down the Nile River through Sudan to Kenya, and get a freighter in Mombasa to India. I’d have to work along the way. With any luck I could be in Goa for Christmas. In Cairo I would visit the pyramids. That was the plan.
I did about half that. I went back to Morocco in March, stayed three months, headed across North Africa, settled into a cheap hotel in Cairo, and made my way one day to Giza, which held the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids. There were very few tourists. I stayed all day, repeatedly refusing camel rides and soaking up the ancient feel of the desert plain and the amazing structures built there. In the largest of the pyramids I found a small and dark angled shaft, with a wooden ladder that took me up through the blocks of stone into a royal chamber. Suddenly I was standing inside a large and completely bare stone room. Just me. It was lit by a single light bulb. It smelled like urine. Evidently, travelers before me needed to relieve themselves and did before making their descent back to daylight. All the way from Danvers Illinois, I thought, to this room. I stayed there for a while and went back down the ladder.
I got to know some Egyptian men fairly well who worked the feluccas, the distinctive sail boats that make their way up and down the Nile. From them I learned it was highly unlikely I would find work anywhere along the route I described. That and a visa were required to enter the Sudan. I had visited the Sudanese embassy, presented my passport and a new photo to a gracious man in flowing white robes, and sensed he was not eager to grant me a visa. I may have looked a little rough. He kept asking me how much money I had at my disposal for the journey. I told them I could draw money from an account at home at any time with no problem. He may have sensed that was not true. Nothing happened. When I visited the embassy in subsequent days I was told that the man who interviewed me was not available and that approval of my visa was being reviewed at another level.
Discretion being the better part of valor I gave up. I had met travelers stranded without money in out of the way places and it was not pretty. It seemed smarter to head north. I abandoned my plans of travel to Sub Sahara Africa and the Indian continent and hopped a plane to Greece. There I worked at a hostel in Athens and finally made my way back to Amsterdam and home. I have never been to the Sudan, Kenya, or India. That’s just the way it worked out. But I made it to the pyramids.
I went back to America intending to leave again as soon as I could. Nine months later I said good bye to friends in the Smoky Mountains just off the Appalachian Trail and headed to Florida. I visited a grade school buddy there who was in the Air Force. From there I hitchhiked to New Orleans, already stretching my money by asking my ride to drop me off outside the city so I could sleep in my tube tent and avoid the cost of a hotel. The ground was so soft and shaky I could feel it move when the semi trucks went by on the Interstate. I made my way hitchhiking through Texas, crossed the border at Laredo, and moved quickly through Northern Mexico to the Pacific Coast, Santa Cruz. There, sleeping alone on a beach, completely conked out in my sleeping bag, my backpack used as a pillow, a man tried to rob me. I stood up, yelled, and scared him away. Putting my contact lenses in so I could see I sat awake the rest of the night. Around sunup two figures strolled down the beach with back packs. Australians. I was very glad to see them.
We spent time together off and on as we made our way through Central America. I caught up with them in Popayan Columbia where we rented a casita in the mountains. One of the Australians had been joined by his Swedish girlfriend for a short time. Life in the little cabin was cheap and exotic. We enjoyed Columbia and what it had to offer to the fullest.
Together we imagined the ultimate. Living absolutely free on a beach by the equator, maybe building our own shelter. We consulted maps again, and thought the spot might be somewhere south of Esmeraldas, Ecuador. We split up in Pasto, Columbia. I met them again in Atacamas, Ecuador.
We were right. That stretch of coast was green and lush. It was banana and papaya country. Fish were plentiful. We stayed in a cheap hotel and began to scout the coast. Land belonging perhaps to an American fruit company, perhaps not seemed available. We walked the coast south of Sua and discovered a spot where the coastline was indented, where fresh water flowed into the sea, and where we could scale the stone and clay face of the cliff. We bought tools, cookware, and mosquito nets, built a crude shack there atop the cliff, and moved from the cheap hotel to that Pacific coast spot. It was as close to perfect as I could imagine.
However nothing lasts forever and tranquility is not for everyone. I spent my days capturing stone crabs to cook with the rice, soaking in the tide pools, writing, and gazing out from the cliff. The sky was pure blue on a greenish blue sea. Pelicans rode the thermal currents morning and evening, black wedges, wings never flapping, silently sliding by overhead. We went back into town every four days or so for supplies. I was prepared to stay for, I don’t know, a very long time.
The first to leave was my Australian friend with the Swedish girlfriend. They were anxious to explore their relationship further and she scheduled a return flight to Quito. He packed up and said his farewells. His friend, who had been his travelling companion for over a year (Australians take very long trips) seemed itchy move. He packed up for Guayaquil and points south. I stayed on alone. I felt at home there.
An Ecuadorean from a village miles inland from the shack showed me how to harvest oysters at low tide. I bought some crude tackle and caught fish. I stretched my trips to town to every seven days. I grew lonely, then joyful, in fits and starts. I felt I was there for the long haul. Life seemed perfect, except for one aggravating detail.
Determined to travel light, I began my trip with one pair of shoes, sturdy Wolverine brogans bought in Ottawa just before I left. I was back at the hotel in Atacames, invited to a party by the locals, and sleeping in a hammock between palm trees on the beach. I left my shoes under the hammock. Either the tide was unusually high or they were stolen, but I woke up to the awful reality of having no shoes. I went immediately to the general store in town. They had shoes but none my size. 11 ½ is a rarity in the world of Ecuadorean feet. I made my way to Esmeraldas with the same result. A cobbler wanted to make me a pair of shoes for $100, which was out of the question. Instead I bought plastic sandals, which quickly wore out and broke. I took to wearing no shoes, like most of the people in my seaside community. My feet got tough, thick with calluses. I actually forgot about it, until I realized my Ecuadorean visa, 120 days at issue, was soon to run out. That would mean a trip to Quito without shoes. That could be bad.
At 9,350 feet, Quito is the highest national capital in the world. I went there by night bus, making the slow trip up the mountain switchbacks in a converted school bus, from Esmeraldas at sea level to the rare air of Quito. During the night I began to feel sick. The higher I went the sicker I got. By the time we unloaded in Quito, just before daybreak, I was in big pain. Everything ached. I threw up. I felt feverish, then chilled. My fellow travelers assured me it was only altitude sickness, and that it would pass. That helped little.
I made my way from the bus station to a Catholic church. They were always open. I lay on a pew inside. I wore a thermal tee shirt, a wool poncho called a ruana, a felt hat from an Indian market, khakis that were stained and too big, and thick gray wool socks. No shoes. A tiny bag of belongings. When the sun came up I went outside on a park bench to take some sun and warm up. As I sat on the bench a well dressed Ecuadorean man stopped, looked at me, and reaching into his pocket, handed me money.
“It’s not necessary,” I said in Spanish.
“I insist,” he replied in perfect English. He tucked put the bills inside mi ruana and walked off.
So it’s come to this, I thought.
I recovered some and made my way to an English bookstore. I was crazy for something to read beside Newsweek. While I was there I talked to the proprietor about extending my visa.
“Frankly” he said “you’re not a good candidate for a visa extension. Are you working? Do you have an address in country?”
“I’m living on a beach and writing.”
That doesn’t count much to them. Besides that you don’t look good. You look thin, your clothes are shabby, and you have way too much hair. Haven’t you noticed how well dressed and meticulous Ecuadorean businessmen appear? That’s what they’re looking for. People like them. They just don’t trust hippies anymore.”
“You think I look like a hippy?”
“Yes I do. And I’m afraid the authorities will share my opinion. I’ve got some used books in the back. You’ll need them on your trip. Where are you headed next?”
“Peru. I’m going to Machu Picchu.”
“That’s a long haul, but worth it. It’s a beautiful place. Good luck. I hope you make it.”
Hoped I made it? Why shouldn’t I?
He was right. I was given but a ten day extension to leave the country. Stumbling over my address didn’t help, nor did my relative lack of money. I had bought fairly snappy looking brown vinyl bedroom slippers but I don’t believe they impressed the official interviewing me. I left feeling sad that I would soon be saying good bye to my shack and my spot on the Pacific. The thought of moving on made me tired.
On a Quito street I spotted a coin operated scale which registered in pounds. I put my coin in the slot, stepped on, and found I weighed 158 pounds. I hadn’t weighed that little since I was a sophomore in high school. I went to a Chinese restaurant and had an order of chicken fried rice, followed immediately by another.
Back in my little town on the coast, before I went down the beach to the shack, I checked the post office and discovered six letters. I’d been waiting for general delivery mail since we decided to build the shack and I knew I’d be staying for a while. One was from my Mom and Dad and the other five from the woman I had taken up with before I left. Lovely letters. I read them over and over in the town square.
Knowing the tide was going out and I had time to safely walk the beach beside the cliffs to the shack I stopped into a barber shop. It was a barber shop without electricity. Just scissors, razors, a thick leather strop, and bottles of colored after shave. I asked for a short haircut and a shave. The barber was enthusiastic. He used hot towels from a pan warmed by an alcohol burner to soften up my beard. Shaved me with a straight razor. When my whiskers were gone he poured a liberal amount of some blue liquid into his hands and spread it over my face. My face felt like it was on fire. He picked up a big woven palm fan and quickly fanned my face dry. I looked in the mirror and surprised myself. I hadn’t been without a beard since Rome more than two years earlier.
At the shack I packed to leave. I carefully counted my remaining money. Not as much as I hoped. I sold the pot, pan and kettle; the machete and the hatchet to the man who taught me how to harvest oysters. I left the shack as it was, the macramé with seashells made by the Brazilian woman hanging in the front window, the mosquito netting, the crude backgammon board made from driftwood. I simply walked away. It was afternoon. I’ve never been back.
I went to the bus station in Esmeraldas. Quietly, with little regret or soul searching, I bought a ticket north to a place where I could easily get to the Pan American highway. I knew it was time to go home. It felt right. I just did it.
In Panama, in the U.S. zone, I bought cheap foam tennis shoes that fit. It was hot and I wore them without socks. It felt strange wearing shoes after so long without them. My calluses began to soften, my feet began to sweat, and within days those shoes took on a powerful stink.
I hitchhiked to Nogales, made it to Tucson, sold my blood at a blood bank there I (extra money for plasma) and made it to Alamogordo New Mexico where my brother, an officer in the Air Force, lived with his family. At night my sister in law put my shoes on the patio. He put me up for a few days, and I was reunited with my Danvers friend I had started the trip with in Florida, now stationed at my brother’s base. He wanted to know about my trip. We talked long into the night.
My brother dropped me at the edge of town, hugged me, and I began to hitchhike back to the farm. In Oklahoma a big Cadillac Coupe Deville pulled over to give me ride, an aqua blue two door with the long heavy doors. As I ran to the passenger side an older man, tall in a black cowboy hat was spraying Lysol on the white leather upholstery covering the passenger seat. I pretended not to notice.
He was a hell of a nice guy, as are most people who pick up hitchhikers. He was going a long way and it turned out to be a great ride. As he learned more about my trip he asked this question:
“So what made you decide to come back?”
“I don’t know. It just seemed like time. Besides that I was running out of money.”
“You didn’t have money,” he said. “You had rope. If you had real money you’d still be out there.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, well you’re young. Here’s the thing. If you had real money, as in a pile of money that makes you money, you would still be out there. You had a dwindling supply of money that was certain to run out. It was just a matter of time, and you had to decide the time. Next time, try putting together some real money and stay as long as you like.”
Smart guy. I nearly hitchhiked all the way to the farmhouse but I got to the Purple Martin station in Bloomington in the middle of the night and couldn’t get a ride West on Route 9 to Danvers. I was dog tired. I called my older brother Darwin. When he got to the station I was asleep in a chair. After he dropped me off at the farm I woke my parents and went up to bed. In the morning Mom explained that Dad was taking me to Farm and Fleet to buy me some shoes.
“Where are my tennis shoes?” I asked.
“We burned them with the trash.”
That’s how I got hung up in Ecuador in 1976 and never made it to Machu Picchu.
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