Posts Tagged With: travel

Something To Think About

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Mike

Randy Brameier lived 13,904 days. He died 14 years ago at age 38. Diabetes gradually overtook him.

He was a friend and colleague. We would leave the office at least twice a day to go on “jaunts” to buy coffee and snacks or lunch, but the underlying purpose of our walks was to talk about and clear our minds of the insane things we had been working on that particular day as news reporters in New Jersey shore (United States) towns with ample crazy news. Randy had his serious side, but also a great sense of humor and he could make light of a bad situation like no other. We would laugh when we really should have been shaking our fists and cursing the planets.

“What we have is a failure to communicate,” was his favorite saying around the office. It seemed our bosses were always failing to communicate. Randy used the “failure to communicate” line in the face of challenge and adversity brought on indeed by a failure to communicate. After so many failures by the head office, what else was there to do but make light of the repeated missteps.

As I’ve stated here before, hours and hours spent traveling on a bus leads to hours upon hours thinking about the mundane, but sometimes about life. What should I do? Where should I go? Should I return home to find another job in journalism? Should I settle down? Should I just plain settle? Am I doing the right thing? Should that guy really be wearing yellow? Questions, questions.

When I recently saw the above poster on the Internet as I sat on a bus at work picking up a weak wi-fi signal, Randy came rushing back into my brain. As if it were yesterday I could hear him saying his classic failure to communicate line. Made me smile. But then I paused to examine the content of the poster, oddly placed on some Malaysian website written entirely in Malay except for the words on the poster: “Your Failures Do Not Define You.”

I’m not sure Randy would have run with this particular mantra. He was too much of a wisecrack to go around reciting such hefty prose. But then the whole notion of failures in life hurled my cluttered brain toward a conversation-turned-debate I had earlier in the week with a friend.

We were chatting via Skype. When we began to discuss turning points in our lives, I didn’t think it would be such a big deal when I told her “I love my life.” Her expression quickly changed and she responded that it was alright to love my life, but to voice that sentiment was not okay. She argued that it amounted to crass bragging and was insensitive to others whose lives aren’t going so well. Ohhh-kaaay!

I don’t claim to be Mr. Sensitivity, but I’m far from insensitive when it comes to the downtrodden. Been there myself, after all. I know a thing or two about being down and out. But how is expressing one’s happiness wrong?

After a volley of exchanges on the subject we agreed to disagree and moved on. (Hmmm…maybe I should have said I hate my life and gone for the sympathy).

In life we are pleased when we are doing what makes us happy. One of the things that makes me extremely happy is travel. My love of travel came at a very young age. I was always drawn to maps and could study them for hours. Geography was my favorite subject. It still is.

So now that I am fulfilling one of my life’s dreams – to travel around the world – I can truly say I love my life. Not that I didn’t love it before. I’ve been blessed with experiences few can claim: Visits to all but one of the U.S. states – Alaska get ready for the celebration of my arrival – travel to all but two continents – Australia and MAYBE Antarctica here I come. Meeting some incredible people worldwide, with more ahead.

Now I realize that there are countless others who would love to do what I’m doing, at least so they tell me, but because of circumstance and happenstance they can’t – or won’t.

Randy’s life was short. Jon Chamber’s life was short. Gayle Westry’s life was much too short. The list of peers who have died young is too long. Their brief time on Earth serve as a reminder that life is too short and there’s much to be seen and to be done. Follow your heart. If you like to cook, cook. If you like to climb, climb. Fulfill your dreams! A don’t fail at communicating to yourself and to others what makes you angry, sad, but above all, happy. And recognize that indeed your failures do not define you. Dust yourself off and next time around do for you that which makes you stand up and say I LOVE MY LIFE!  There is no greater feeling.

For me, it’s the love of travel. Or a simple matter of remembering an old friend.

TTT

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Pilgrimage To Ayquina

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Mike

Aymara women stop for a quick prayer in the square just outside the church in Ayquina

I have to say that lately I have been too comfortable. I don’t like it. Comfort hardly ever amounts to motivation. A person gets comfortable and it makes them not want to get out and explore beyond that “comfort zone.” I get home from a long day of teaching English, weekend comes, and the part of me that wants to stay home wins out over the part that wants to get out and see the world. Too much of that and we’re in “stagnation zone.”

All week I had been talking about traveling to Ayquina to experience the annual religious-cultural pilgrimage that draws people by the thousands. People from Northern Chile, Southern Peru, Bolivia and Northern Argentina  – and tourists from every corner of the world – come to this dusty small town to pay tribute to the Virgen de Guadalupe de Ayquina, who according to legend appeared in the spot where the tiny church stands in her honor. Thousands walk across the desert from Calama to reach Ayquina.

Me, at nearly 10,000 feet above sea level, giving thanks for safe travels

Chris and I arrived in Ayquina in the late afternoon by bus. We had made a last-minute decision to experience the annual religious-cultural pilgrimage in the desert town where about 50 mostly Aymara people live. Incredibly, the town swells to almost 75,000 people for this week in September. During the week, the faithful come to pay their respects to the religious icon known locally as “La Chinita.” I didn’t want to miss this event and so the voice that tells me to get out and discover doled out a bruising defeat to the one that promotes idleness.

I must say it felt good to be back on a bus headed to some unknown place. Chris and I joked that the bus company had pulled a fast one by displaying one of those new, double-decked buses with comfortable reclining seats and other modern conveniences, then at the time of departure revealing the actual bus we’d be traveling in. It was tucked way in the back, hidden from view: an old, rickety, smelly bus that had seen better days. Oh, it didn’t matter to me, really. During my travels across South America I had been on worst modes of transportation, some downright dangerous, if not cruel and unusual to man and beast aboard. I was just happy to be off on another adventure, even in a bus that looked like it could not make it down the street.

The Virgin Guadalupe of Ayquina

We arrived in Ayquina in the late afternoon and immediately launched into snapping photos. Chris – oh did I not introduce this Canadian character Chris? He’s from the sticks somewhere just outside of Toronto. He’s my newest housemate – with now five people in the house. He wears the Maple Leaf on his sleeve like some Americans wear the Stars and Stripes. I’ve never met a Canadian more patriotic. At every opportunity he talks up Canada – Canada’s tourism board ought to give him a medal – and takes good-natured swipes at the United States. We have this ongoing Canada versus U.S. banter that provides for some comic relief. But I swear the man has maple syrup running through his veins!

So Chris and I walked all around the town shooting pictures of the Aymara dancers dressed in their traditional dress. The Aymara remind me of the Incas. Their dances, their manner, their traditions are similar. The Incas did conquer this part of Chile, but their culture did not really take root because the Spaniards arrived soon after. Still, the Aymara – heavily concentrated in neighboring Bolivia – are close cousins of the Incas. In Cusco, I was fortunate to experience the traditions of the Incas. And now in Northern Chile, which was once part of Peru and Bolivia, I was now witnessing the traditions of the Aymara. It was simply spiritually uplifting.

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Don’t Even Go There!

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Mike

It’s been a year since I met Anna and Michal. Seems as long since I’ve thought of them.

The young married couple from Bydgoszcz, Poland, wrote me last August to ask if they could stay two days at my Miami condominium that overlooks Biscayne Bay. They had just flown to the Magic City from Honduras on their way back to Poland after an amazing two years traveling around the world.

When I received their request for lodging through the www.couchsurfing.org travel and hospitality Web site, I initially thought to say no because of the short notice and I was already hosting two women from Berlin, Germany. Anna and Michal weren’t arriving in weeks or even days but in a matter of hours. Although some members of the Couchsurfing community are able to receive guests on short notice, my schedule simply did not always allow for that. But when I looked at their couchsurfing profile, I rechecked my schedule and quickly agreed to host them. Two people who had just traveled around the world, I just had to meet. I needed some insight, as I was planning my own global adventure.

Anna and Michal on the Western Coast of Australia

The photographs of their two-year trip spoke to me, and so did their travel philosophy, which was similar to mine – independent, unstructured, free-spirited. And by golly, after two years of planes, trains, boats and automobiles, and of climbing and jumping out of and off of things, these two people, with no place to stay for their two-day layover in Miami, needed any comfort Miami could provide.

With the two women from Berlin, the guest bedroom was already taken. Michal and Anna had no problem sleeping in the living room – she on the couch, he on an air mattress and sleeping bag on the floor. It beat the alternative: pitching a tent in a park or some parking lot behind a McDonald’s. At least that’s what they said they were considering. That may have worked fine in Vanuatu or the Australian Outback, but not a good idea in urbanized Miami.

When Michal and Anna arrived, I instantly took to them. Great sense of humor, a real sense of adventure, a fearless spirit, and as I pointed out at the time, newlywed love for each other even after two years on the road together. Don’t people who travel that long together want to kill each other? 🙂

Chilling out in the living room, Michal and Anna showed me some of the videos and photographs they shot during their journey, and all I could say was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

With each picture, Anna and Michal shared stories. They had spent much of their time traveling to remote areas of just about every country they visited. And they toured some countries I could only dream about.

With breathtaking video footage and photographs as evidence, Michal and Anna didn’t have to convince me that those places were worth visiting. But alas, I told them that as an American some of those places would not be safe for me to go traipsing through. Parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan or any part of Iran, which views Americans as a threat to their society, is unsafe for anyone holding a U.S. passport.

In some countries around the world, Americans are taken hostage, decapitated or shot on sight, I reminded my well-traveled and well-meaning guests.

“Ah yes,” Anna said jokingly. “Half the world hates you.”

Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal in Iran

This week I’ve been thinking about that “hate” Anna spoke about. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “half the world” is unsafe for Americans, but when I was mapping my global adventure, it wasn’t easy. Flying from country to country is easier given you are hopping over hostile territory. But trying to go by road, as I am, from one country to the next creates some logistical problems. How do I get from Egypt to Israel then Jordan then Turkey with Syria in the way? And from Russia to India with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China as obstacles? And to Thailand with Myanmar ahead?

Unlike my dear Polish friends, I had to be more conscious of where I was and was not welcomed. Iraq? Pakistan? Afghanistan? Iran? No way. For them, when asked, all they had to say they’re from Poland and nobody cared. If anything, my guests joked, some had never even heard of Poland 🙂

Anna and Michal and countless other travelers I have met have no such concerns over geopolitical conflicts. Iran has no beef with Poland, so a Polish person can crisscross that country and feel very welcomed, as Michal and Anna were. I’d probably be arrested, thrown in prison and tried for spying, as e Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal were.

The reported conviction of the two American hikers this week is what made me think of Anna and Michal, who now run a family owned hotel in picturesque Tlen in Bory Tucholskie National Park, about 60 kilometers north of their hometown, Bydgoszcz. Our conversation a year ago resonates with me today. Sure, I wish I could freely travel to Cuba, or see the antiquities in Iran, or see what Syria looks like from the ground.

People have asked me if the South America part of my trip includes Venezuela. The truth is, with all the hate, the disrespect shown to U.S. presidents, the going out-of-the-way to befriend sworn enemies of the United States, I don’t feel I would be welcomed there. Unfortunately for the Venezuelan people who would love to get their hands on some of the billions in “yanqui” tourists dollars, many Americans now view Venezuela as an enemy of the United States and refuse to support the government of Hugo Chavez. So as a result, my world travel looks very different from that of say, someone from neutral Switzerland.

I have to be very alert about shifting sands in the global community. Egypt in an uproar? Change in Tunisia? Unrest in Morocco? How does that impact my plans to travel there as an American?

Shane and Josh, unfortunately, apparently didn’t give serious thought to location. If I’m hiking anywhere near the Iranian border, I want to make damn sure where I’m standing. Friends and relatives say the hikers may have been forced by Iranian border guards into Iran, but again, if you’re that close to Iran, well, you’re just too close.

Personally, I wouldn’t have found myself hiking even in Iraq, which is still unstable, as witnessed by a string of recent bombings. Time and time again, Americans around the world do foolish things and expose themselves to danger. Recall the case of the American journalists who unknowingly entered North Korea. If the border is unmarked, and the avowed enemy is on the other side, stay as far away from it as you can!

According to the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, an official television station, Shane and Josh were convicted of illegal entry into the country and for espionage. They were sentenced to eight years in prison. Their Iranian lawyer said he was not aware of the convictions and sentences and that he would inquire. Really Mr. Lawyer? Are you sitting down on the job or is the Iranian system of justice simply so flawed that the defense lawyer is not aware that his clients are going to jail – for eight years on top of the two already served while awaiting trial.

The two men, who have been held in Tehran’s infamous Evin prisonfor more than two years, said they were hiking near the Iraq-Iran border in the Kurdistan region when a soldier of unknown nationality told them to approach. It was at that point they learned they had crossed into Iran, which shares an unmarked border with Iraq. They were with Bauer’s fiancée, Sarah Shourd, who was released for “humanitarian” and medical reasons on $500,000 bail in September 2010, after more than a year under arrest and months in solitary confinement. Her case is still pending, according to Iranian officials.

Sarah Shourd

I do share Shane and Josh’s passion for learning about other cultures and travel. I understand why they would want to venture, especially Shane who like me is a freelance journalist always on the trail of a good story. I feel a kinship with the two backpackers and anyone who looks at their travel videos and photographs will immediately see that these guys are no spies – they’re just a couple of backpackers, like me, just trying to see the world and hopefully make it better. They ought to be released now!

As for me and my travels, maybe I ought to start telling people I’m Polish. Nah! It won’t work.

A profile of Josh and Shane from CNN:

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