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5 top ways to get hurt traveling

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People like reading lists, they say. The problem is they (the lists) tend to get a bit same-y after a while (people do, too, arguably), so the trick as a writer is to come up with something new and exciting. Here is one you likely never saw before: 5 top ways to get hurt traveling!

Traveling gives me a great deal of joy, it is true, but it’s fair to say that ain’t always the case. So in ascending order of pain and hurt and general discomfort, here are the five worst experiences connected with my travels over the years:

5. Went kayaking off the wild east coast of Sardinia, wearing lots of sunblock but no good sunglasses. Fierce sun, wind and reflections on the water combined with intense heat to create a witches’ brew of salt and chemicals that got into my eyes, rendering me effectively blind, as I was utterly unable to keep my baby blues open – something of a problem when one has to navigate dangerously bad mountain roads to get back to base. In the end I drove at a snail’s pace, stopping over and over to pry my peepers open enough to rinse them with water. It took a night in absolute darkness before I could see normally again.

4. Went diving in the Andaman Sea on a live-aboard boat. That’s a small ship that is out in tropical heat for a week, with everyone living in close quarters. Long story short, I caught something that developed into high fever right as we were disembarking; flying home from Thailand via London with 39+ degrees’ temperature in cattle class was literally a nightmare – I was hallucinating, and so weak they had to get me a wheelchair to go from one plane to the next. Once home I slept more or less straight for 48 hours before finally recovering.

3. First time paragliding in Spain. One of the first attempts to get airborne properly, running down a gentle hill, I managed to rip a muscle in my groin just as I was lifted into the air. The pain was excruciating, but the forward movement and physics kicked in and I continued upwards, which meant I had to fly and land for the very first time while trying not to black out from the agony. To this day I don’t know how I managed. It took months of grueling exercise to regain something like normal function in my leg.

2. Another diving excursion, this time to the Seychelles. Made the rookie mistake of having local food that was probably washed in local water. Within a few hours our stomachs were rumbling, and before long we were two people writhing in gut-wrenching pain, before embarking on a night of horrors, as our bodies went into overdrive trying to purge themselves of the foreign germs; trust me, there is no feeling quite like switching back and forth between projectile vomiting and having your intestines go full fecal Jackson Pollock on the one shared toilet, whilst your friend is knocking on the door to be let in to have their turn, NOW.

1. A romantic trip to Granada and Alhambra might not seem like an obvious winner of this list, but my companion on this sojourn was someone I was very much in love with, and she had agreed to go only as a way to end our relationship on a high note, as she felt we weren’t right for each other. So while it was a lovely experience, and the sights of Alhambra a wonder to behold, it was still with very mixed feelings I went on it. And at the end she did what she had said she would, and ended things between us. She broke my heart, and it took years to mend.

So there you are. A Top 5 List like no other. Honorable mentions go to Barcelona and Amsterdam, where I broke my PBs for marathons – painful experiences in and of themselves, but disqualified because they also gave me a lot of masochistic joy. Hope you enjoyed. If you think you have my travel horror stories beaten, let me know in the comments!

2018 – S.M.A.R.T. or not?

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At the outset of every year I pause and think about what I want to achieve. This year was different.

Or rather, I wanted to make sure that I would be more likely to achieve my goals, so I resolved to be smart and make ’em S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Did I succeed? Yes and no.

Chess: ✅ I played every day for a month and got the rating I had set my mind on. (Then promptly lost it.)

Reading: ✅ One non-fictional book per month. Done.

Piano: ❎ I did play, but didn’t learn as many pieces as I had hoped. The temptation is to stick with the ones you know…

French: ❎ I didn’t learn anywhere near as much as I had planned, mainly because I had to focus on Danish.

Travel: ✅ I went to Morocco, Egypt, the Seychelles, Norway, Italy (thrice), and Denmark (plus Sweden), which is less than usual, but still acceptable, especially since Egypt, Italy and Norway was with the kids.

Fitness: ✅ The year was marred with injuries – first recovering after the paragliding incident, then a wonky neck, a messed up Achilles’ tendon, a tennis elbow, and finally a slipped disk – so running and biking and swimming suffered. I did manage the Paris marathon, and a runstreak of 100 days, but I’m nowhere near the distance goals I set myself for runs and biking. Nor did I learn to crawl, but I’ve racked up some 100 gym sessions, including an ironstreak of 40 days or so, which has meant three or four extra kilos’ worth of muscles.

Challenges: ✅ Apart from the aforementioned run- and ironstreaks I’ve successfully given up coffee, tried intermittent fasting for a month, I’ve become vegetarian, and I’m currently on a no sugar diet, so that’s gone well. Less well went my attempt at keeping a diary – I kept it up until Denmark, but then fell out of habit, unfortunately.

Work: ✅ I added Danish to my language combination, and continued working in Communications. In addition to that I MC’d a couple of conferences using participatory leadership, which was fun, too.

Blog: ✅ I increased my readership quite spectacularly this year (from just shy of 3,000 readers to 5,500, and from 5,000 views to nearly 10,000), which is really gratifying.

So. What worked and what didn’t? Some goals turned out to be insufficiently specific, such as “learn a piece of music”; others were unattainable due to factors beyond my control (the fitness targets) or had to be downgraded in terms of priority (French, when I was paid to go learn Danish), but overall it’s a sound principle, and one I will continue to use in 2019.

Now all I have to do is decide what those goals should be…

On balance

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It’s fair to say the year ended on a bum note. Things don’t always go as planned. But what of the rest of the year? Time to look back and reflect on what went according to plan, and what didn’t.

But for the butt injury, I might have had a sporting chance at reaching my distance goals for running and biking (averaging a marathon distance per week for each), but realistically that was too much. I did do that much on average when at home, but traveling got in the way, and that lowered total mileage significantly. Need to set more realistic goals, especially with next year’s runstreak requiring time every day.

I did set a new personal best on every one of the distances 1k, 5k, 10k, 21k and 42k, which was gratifying. It’s a clear sign the training pays off, after all. Two marathons – one as early as January – and even if my one attempt at an ultra didn’t end well it was still a good experience. Lesson learnt? Don’t try mountain trail running 70+ kilometres the first time you do it.

I did my first ever triathlon – an Ironman 70.3, and the result was better than I had hoped. Still not sure whether a full-length one is worth the trouble, but maybe… saying I did half-something jars my soul!

I didn’t lift weights, swim or do yoga anywhere near as much as I had planned. I did some, but found it difficult to fit it all into my routine. Will have to find another balance to make it all work. And actually learn how to swim.

So much for fitness. I didn’t read as much non-fiction as I would have liked, but what I read was good. I’ve played a lot of chess and piano, and studied French, too, but I’m still not sure how to measure progress here. I know I am progressing, but how to tell? The system of dividing up the day into half hours to ensure that things get done works, at least, so I will continue doing that. And only watching Netflix when I’m on the stationary bike will kill two birds with one stone…!

Travels and challenges, then? I certainly travelled a lot, and two themes emerged: island hopping around Africa, covering Pemba, Mallorca, and Madeira (following on from Malta), and hiking in the alps in France, Bavaria and Sweden (ok, so we don’t have alps, but parts of Bergslagsleden were really hilly!). Add to that the two(!) trips to Andalusia – once to see Alhambra, and once to learn how to paraglide – and a nice long weekend in Paris, and you have what I would deem a pretty good year of wanders. More of that, please.

Challenges? I went on a paleo diet with good results, I learnt how to fly – or at least fall really slowly – and camped in a tent for the first time in 35 years. And at work I got to try new things, like writing a movie script and leading a think tank, so that was very pleasant, too (and never mind that I applied for my dream job – it’s good to dream, as well!). Less pleasant was the aforementioned injury which left me incapable of running and in a lot of pain, but that only meant that I had one last challenge to overcome this year: rehabilitating myself and getting back on my feet.

Lest I forget, the year has brought some wonderful new people into my life, as eclectic a bunch of characters as one can hope for: an Argentinian telenovela starlet in Tanzania, a Scottish philosopher in Spain, my own personal stalker, a Phillipina philanthropist, a Swedish ultrarunner in Amsterdam… in fact, if I were to write a book about them all it would probably seem outlandish, which brings me to my last point: this blog.

I’ve continued to write throughout the year, about everything and anything, from great tits to particle accelerators, and my readership is steadily increasing (visitors up 25% (to 2800+) and views up 50% (to 5500+) at the time of writing), something for which I’m immensely grateful! It’s humbling to foist your words on people and have them not only actually read them but also come back for more. So thank you, dear reader. I hope you have enjoyed the ride this far.

It’s been a good year, on balance.

Perfect Pemba

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Spot the danger?

 

Just off the coast of East Africa, a thirty minute flight north of Zanzibar, lies the tropical volcano island of Pemba. And if that sounds like the first sentence of an adventure story, it is precisely because it is. 

It takes an effort to get here; from Brussels to Istanbul, from Istanbul to Zanzibar (via Kilimanjaro), and then one last tiny plane to Pemba domestic airport, an airstrip with a shed made of corrugated metal for a terminal. And even then the journey isn’t over. We’re picked up by a driver and taken on a bumpy ride to the northernmost tip of the island, where we finally arrive at one of the two resorts in existence here, the Gecko Nature Lodge.

You see, unlike its more famous neighbour to the south, Pemba is largely devoid of tourism, and all the better for it. This is also the reason why we have come here; its relative obscurity is one of the factors explaining why the surrounding waters are home to some of the best dive sites in the world. Corals are dying everywhere because of global warming and over-exposure, but here they are still perfectly healthy, and there is an abundance of them, too.

After last year’s less than impressive diving adventures in the Andaman Sea and on Gozo, my friend Lesli (of Sardinian and Appalachian fame) and I have high hopes for this place, and it doesn’t disappoint. The place is right on the coast, next to a local village, and surrounded on all sides by encroaching jungle of the kind you’d expect Tarzan to feel at ease in. 

Our hosts, Russian Ekaterina and French Lucas, have only been here for two months, but make us feel at home right away. The fact that there is only one more diver here at first makes it feel almost as if we are their personal guests rather than paying customers, which is lovely. 

We’re exhausted from our travels, and hide out from the midday heat in the guest huts that lie hidden in amongst the mango trees and banana palms and other vegetation. It’s a shock to the system, suddenly being subjected to heat and humidity on a tropical scale, but as the afternoon wears on, we acclimatise ourselves, and when the sun sets over the African continent we are seated on the water’s edge, sundowners at hand, ready for the spectacle to begin in every sense of the word. 

Light, camera, action!

 

The next day we start with an early breakfast of eggs and freshly baked bread out in the open (but under a roof made of bamboo and fronds to hide us from the elements), then we gather our gear and head out in the rim boat to the dive sites. 

I feel the usual excitement rise within as we follow the coast and take in the sapphire waters and emerald forests. Dara, our fellow diver from Ireland, has been here several days already, and Lesli is three times more experienced than I, but I’m always a little apprehensive when diving; it can be dangerous. 

We kit up, buddy up, and prepare to go in. Lucas warns us that the visibility is so good that it can actually be a problem; divers used to less impressive conditions might mistakenly think they are in shallower waters than is actually the case, simply because they’re not used to seeing so well. That doesn’t sound so terrible, but can be a real issue, as going too deep causes the body to accumulate more nitrogen than it can take, effectively poisoning your blood in a way that can kill you.

One last security check, and we roll backwards into the water. On the divemaster’s command, we decend into the blue, and like that, we arrive in a different world.

There’s a lagoon formed by the main island and two smaller ones, Njau and Fundu, and the best diving is found right on the edge of the islands and in the two gaps that lead into the lagoon, where the tide has furrowed underwater channels that are lined with an astonishing plethora of corals.

There are fire corals, so red they look like glowing lava, cream-coloured porcelain corals, orange staghorn corals, sky-blue corals shaped like trees and pink fans and black chimneys and yellow bubble baths and sponges and a hundred other different shapes and sizes and hues, and nearly every one of them is favoured by one or more different species of fish: Tiny multicoloured nudiebranks and fiercely territorial clown fish hide in amongst anemones, parrot fish munch on their favourite calcified snacks, shoals of golden glass fish crowd swim-throughs, giant moray eels and lobsters and mantis shrimp are backed into crevices, poised to attack if you get too close, camouflaged scorpion fish lie motionless amongst the corals, deadly to touch and all but invisible. The list goes on and on. Add to this that you are floating as if suspended in the air, and it’s an experience so different as to be almost impossible to explain to someone who has not had it. 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so…

 

Dara (who dives every week) and Lesli (with her daily yoga exercises) stay down like a couple of mermaids. Me, I’m using up air like I’m trying to corner the market. The excitement and adrenaline doesn’t help, but it’s all good. Never have I dived in such pristine waters, in such a rich flora and fauna. I surface with an enormous grin on my face. 

The build-up of nitrogen from our first dive necessitates a surface interval of an hour or so, so the captain – a local fisherman who finds all the dive spots with eerie accuracy – lands us on a secluded beach where we bask in the sun, have water melon and pancakes and tea before heading out for a second dive. After that, it gets too hot, so we make for home and a well deserved lunch. 

In the meantime a family trio from Argentina (a father and his adult son – Juan Carlos II and III – and daughter Jennie) have arrived, and over the next four days we will be the only guests at the lodge. Father and son joins us diving, and Jennie, who turns out to be a TV star back home in Argentina, takes lessons in the afternoons to get her certificate. 

It’s a simple routine, but a very pleasant one. In the mornings we go diving, after lunch (and a siesta to hide from the worst heat) we go exploring. We rent bikes and kayaks to see more of the island. We traverse the jungle with a guide and see silk monkeys and crested hornbills (think Rowan Atkinson in The Lion King) and flying foxes (a type of giant fruit bat), we paddle along the coast and into the lagoon and its mangrove forests – the trees look like giant spiders with their hundreds of air roots holding them in place on the edge of the tides, and the volcanic rock walls are alive with hundreds of crabs, clambering along the razor-edged overhangs as if it were the easiest thing in the world. 

Almost as exotic is the experience of interacting with the locals here. When I went running through the village I had a chorus of children calling me. For some strange reason they shout “bye bye” by way of greeting, and they laugh and smile and stare at me, obviously thinking it a very strange sight. If I stopped and tried to talk to them they grew very shy, and were likely to run away, but sometimes they ran after me instead. Once, when biking, we passed a group of serious-looking young girls in beautiful scarves and dresses all lined up and waving at us, and I blew them a kiss. The fact that children often marry very young and that polygamy is allowed is difficult to comprehend for a westerner, so for a moment I was wary of having committed a serious faux-pas, but much to my relief it resulted in an explosion of giggles. Even the adults seemed genuinely pleased, much like I expect they would have if a monkey had performed a particularly good trick. It’s a strange feeling to be find yourself part of a tiny minority, and quite the eye-opener.

Me and my seven new wives. Not.

 

And so the days go by. The place lives up to its name, as I discover when I find a gecko inside the toilet bowl one morning. At least it wasn’t a poisonous centipede, or a cloud of winged termites, or a bushbaby – all of which have found their way inside huts in the past. 

A couple of the dives are scary, because the currents are unpredictable, and toss and turn us every which way, making you feel as if inside a washing machine during the spin cycle. When that happens there is little to be done apart from hiding from it as best you can, but sometimes even that isn’t possible, and you get taken for a ride. 

The very last day on Pemba is a case in point. By now the Argentinians and Dara are gone, replaced by a Danish father and son. One of them has difficulty decending, and before he manages the current has taken us to another spot than the one we meant to dive. Before we realise this we are down to 28 metres instead of the fifteen we thought we would bottom out at. And the second dive that day, the very last dive of the week, is a wall dive that sees us drift so fast that the group becomes separated. It’s not unlike a rollercoaster, in fact, with the current pushing us up and down as we rush by the corals.

Eventually I get low on air and find a rock to hold on to for dear life while I do my safety stop, and when I finally come up I find that the two Danes are already back in the boat, having abandoned the dive earlier, while L&L are a hundred metres away, dragged there by the current. It’s a humbling experience, and one I will always remember as The Floomride. Even so, it was The. Best. Diving. Ever.

A Great White Swede.

 

We spend one last day on Zanzibar, in Stonetown, a place that will forever live in infamy as the biggest slave market in the world. 

The slavery museum is a moving memorial to the untold millions of victims of this heinous crime against humanity.  Raiding parties would find their way far inland, so that by the time they came here, slaves would have been marched for many months already, shackled together like animals day and night, and subjected to all manner of atrocities along the way. 

Having been taken across the sound to Zanzibar the traders would cull their stock, throwing the ones that didn’t seem worth it off the ships to drown rather than having to pay duties for them. The cargo would then be incarcerated in tiny, overcrowded cellars underground for a couple of days to weed out all but the strongest, who would finally be taken to the market to be inspected, bought and sold like so much cattle (or worse, since I gather cattle rarely get used for sexual purposes by their owners), before being taken by their new masters to all the corners of the world, for – lest we forget – this was a global commercial endeavour. It beggars belief. Hitler, Stalin and King Leopold are all amateurs by comparison. 

And with that sobering reentry into civilisation, plus a parting gift of torrential rain and ditto diarrhoea, Zanzibar speeds us on our long, separate ways home. 
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All photos curtesy of Lesli Woodruff. 

Gozo, the Isle of Calypso

I arrive at Malta airport late at night. I’m here to dive off the northern island of Gozo. Having learnt my lesson from Sardinia, I agreed with the dive centre to have someone pick me up and deliver me to my B&B. This turns out to have been a good idea, as I would have had to navigate badly signposted back roads* across both Malta and Gozo to get there. Also, people’s driving here is atrocious**. My taxi driver – a professional chauffeur – is a case in point; he has grasped all the fundamentals of driving apart from steering. He oscillates hither and thither, with no apparent notion of where he belongs on the road. Not even oncoming traffic alters his erratic approach, and I thank the stars it’s close to midnight and not many people about. 

I make it to the B&B at one in the morning, only to be greeted as enthusiastically as I’ve ever been – by a white cat, who purrs her heart out as I pet her – and rather less enthusiastically by the owner, who doesn’t purr (and whom I don’t attempt to pet). 

The next day the dive instructor picks me up and drives me to the north coast. The landscape of Gozo is like the Holy land, arid, stony, terraced, poor. People look remarkably similar, whether beggars or burghers. Someone told me there are twelve family names that are predominant on the islands since the time of the Knights of the Order of St John, and it’s easy to believe when you see how alike people look. It’s also quite eerie, being watched by an unsmiling man on one street corner only to have him (or a close copy) appear at the table next to you, then in a field as you drive past, then in a shop…

And so we go diving. The dives here are all walk-ins, meaning you start from the coast rather than from a boat. The coast is steep rock, however, often dropping five to ten metres straight down into the water, so after traversing salt pans and razor-sharp rock formations you have to clamber down metal ladders to get into the Mediterranean. The first dive goes well, but at the second site local fishermen – who don’t like divers – have sawn off the ladder, making decent difficult and ascent absolutely impossible. 

So we change plans and drive on to another place where we dive into an underwater cave. A million years of stormy weather has carved out a dome inside the rock above the waterline, so you can ascend inside it and breathe the salt-laden air of this secret chamber. It’s even light inside, because the entrance is situated near the surface, which means light is reflected on the sand of the ocean floor of the cave and up into the dome. It’s rather good – just a shame no pirate has had the good sense to hide their treasure in there for us to discover. 

Le grand bleu.

 

The third and last dive of the day is a wreck dive on the south coast. Poor visibility after the storm last weekend means we swim out and descend into a featureless blue space, only to have the wreck materialise underneath us, like a ghost, which I guess it is. 

It’s all nice, and the people at the dive centre perfectly lovely, but it is rather underwhelming after the Andaman sea. I might have to change my plans for tomorrow, but that’s for later, now all I want is a scoldingly hot shower and All. The. Food. 

Old villages are situated on hilltops here, the better to defend against invaders. Xaghra, where I’m staying, is no exception. Houses are huddled together, limestone and sandstone, all of them coloured in nuances ranging from dirty cream to creamy dirt, nearly all of them with sturdy stone balconies, often enclosed so as to create little extensions to the room, enabling its inhabitants to sit and watch village life from the comfort of their living rooms. 

Having had my shower and a change of clothes, night has fallen, and I imagine unseen eyes (belonging to yet more Maltese clones) following my progress through winding alleys as I make my way to the city square for dinner. It’s easily visible from afar, because that is where the church is, literally mitten im Dorf, as the Germans would have it. 

Mitten im Dorf.

 

The church is enormous, towering over the village. The vaulted dome is lit, and it reflects off the roofs of the surrounding houses, mere shades in its divine light, further enhancing the impression of dominance. The boom of the bells rings out over the landscape, as insistent, sharp and domineering as the call of mujaheddin in Marrakesh. 

Once inside, the church’s interiors could match the finest in Rome in its gilded gaudiness, its opulence in stark contrast to the surroundings. And it’s well attended this Tuesday evening, too. None of this should come as a surprise in a country where 80% of inhabitants are practicing Catholics, but I am a little taken aback, even so. Small wonder divorce and abortion are (mostly unwelcome) novelties in this insular world. 

My hunger is more of the body than of the spirit, however, so I set off in search of a pastizi shop. Pastizi are local savoury delicacies, and it’s been impressed upon me by several Maltese colleagues that I must try them. Seeing them is a bit of a shock. Oval pastries tapering to a point at each end, filled with cheese or peas to overflowing, they look like to me like mummified mounds, withered vaginas, brown and brittle to the touch, but the cheesy inside is surprisingly warm, moist and creamy, and I devour them with gusto. 

Erm…….

 

I break my self-imposed drought of alcohol on the town square, enjoying a draft pint of local lager together with a sampling of other dishes of Maltese cuisine, topped off with home made fig ice cream. It’s sweet, but not too sweet, crumbly but richer than you might have thought, with a note of something that I can’t quite identify juxtaposed against the sugar and cream. Rather like Gozo, I think, the beer having clearly gone to my head. Then I have another one. 

I stagger home, full and content, give the pussy cat a good cuddle, and pass out on my bed well before ten.

I wake at 0430, and can’t get back to sleep, so instead I go running. One of the two reasons I wanted to stay in Xaghra is that Calypso, the nymph that seduced Ulysses, is said to have lived in a cave right next to Ramla l-Hamra, the red beach below the village***. This is where I’m headed. Before six in the morning there is only me, birdsong and the report of rifles, as the happy hunters of Gozo do their damnedest to reduce the birdsong to zero. 

Alas, once I reach the site of the cave, there is a sign informing me that it’s “temporarily closed due to geological movement”. In my experience, when a sign is rusted and the inevitable cafés have turned to ruins, there is nothing temporary about things, and this proves to be the case. Try as I might, I cannot reach the cave. Possibly disheartened by previous experiences, Calypso is not seeing visitors.

There’s nothing for it. I turn and trot back up the hill, just in time for breakfast before the second day of diving begins. I do two dives, and they couldn’t have been more different. The first one marred by incidents, and abandoned before it really begins due to one of the participants having a blackout at fifteen metres, it’s as bad as the second one is good. The sun shines high in the sky, and visibility and colours are therefore very good, and since it’s just me and another diver we explore a long stretch of the coastline, teeming with fishy things. 

I decide to end my diving on a high note, so head back to the village for a quick change of clothes, lunch in the town square and the other reason I picked Xaghra: the Ggantija temples, or Temples of the Giants. There are two of them, and they are right here in this village. Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids, some of the megaliths erected here exceed five metres in length and weigh over fifty tons. 

How people did this 5,500 years ago no one knows, but it is somehow reassuring that people were as ingenious then as they are now. People being people even back then, one can safely assume that Neolithic Monolith Works Ltd. came in over budget and a couple of months late, but that’s another story.  

Neolithic Lego!

 

The temples are a sight to behold. As so often is the case, all that is known about them is guesswork, but even five and a half millennia after the fact, it’s clear they were built to impress. Standing pairs of stone slabs mark the doorways between chambers, and the way they use perspective and height differences between apses serve to increase the monumentality of the innermost sanctums in quite a sophisticated manner. 

My last excursion for the day takes me to Rabat, the island’s capital that the British impetuously renamed Victoria in honour of the queen during her jubilee, something which the inhabitants never bothered to pay any attention to. Perched high above it is the Citadella, a seemingly impenetrable fortress. And yet it was taken by Turkish corsairs in 1551, and the entire population of the island – all the 5,000 who had fled inside its walls – were hauled off to slavery.  

Here I also find an example of ingenious indigenous architecture. The centrepiece of the citadel is a church, and the centrepiece of the church is a vaulted dome. Or would have been, had the construction not cost so much money that they couldn’t afford it. What to do? Every self-respecting church here has one, after all. The church fathers came upon a brilliant solution: they had a painter do a canvas depicting a faux perspective of the interior of an opulent dome, and placed it in the ceiling! If you didn’t know, you would never guess it wasn’t real. A bit like religion, then.

Fake it ’til you make it.

 

I decide to walk home, having just missed the bus. Hiking along the road at dusk I couldn’t help but feel like an even bigger target than I had that morning. But I made it home alright, and since that evening was customer night at Bubbles, the dive centre, and I was placed next to Danish Eva, instructor-to-be, incandescently beautiful and a latter-day Calypso, I feel it’s safe to say the day ended very well. 

—-

And so my brief sojourn here is at an end. I’m sorry to report that it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. Two chilli pizzas and far too much red wine meant little sleep, in spite of the lack of company, and so it’s with weak legs, rumbling tummy and bleary eyes that this Ulysses waves goodbye to the Isle of Calypso from the ferry deck. 

As it recedes behind me, it’s easy to see why people have sought to possess this speck in the middle of the sea for millennia – unprepossessing, low key and rural, it is nonetheless a little emerald and gold gem set in azure waters, a treasure. 

*****

*Or poorly signposted in Maltese, which amounts to much the same thing. The language is a bastard mixture of Arabic, Italian and English, with letters and letter combinations unheard of in any other part of Europe. Here they don’t dot the i’s and bar the t’s but rather dot the g’s and bar the h’s.

**I have this confirmed the day after by one of the instructors: “Driving is mayhem. All rules are regarded as the slightest of suggestions, right of way an unknown entity, giving way is a sign of weakness, and might makes right.” So that’s nice.

*** I have a special place in my heart for this story, as I once fell in love with a Maltese girl, but elected not to pursue it any further since I was married with children. More the fool me.

Waving Calypso goodbye.

Halfway, 2016

imageRemember New Year’s Eve? And the resolutions you made way back then? It’s hard to believe, but the year is more than halfway over already, so it’s high time to have a look at how you’re fairing in regard to these promises – most likely they have fallen by the wayside already, long forgotten – but since I made a commitment to myself (and you) to report back occasionally on how I’m fairing, I will do so, even though – or perhaps precisely because – the results are less than fantastic.

I set out to improve intellectually and physically, and to go on adventures and challenge myself. To ensure that I did so I set myself clear, measurable targets, so how am I doing in relation to those?

In a word: poorly. At least on the intellectual side of things. I haven’t read more than very few books, my attempts at taking piano lessons were foiled by too much travelling, my efforts learning French came to a halt after two months (during which I did learn rather more words and phrases than I had thought possible, but still).

Improving my general fitness level is an area where I have been a lot more successful. Even though I have cycled nothing like as much as I thought I would do, and swum less, I have managed to work out a lot (as evidenced by a nice lady doctor asking spontaneously if I was an athlete of some sort only yesterday(!)). I’ve logged 160 workouts in the first six months of the year, or slightly below one workout per day nine days out of ten. I’ve run two marathons, both well below four hours, and I’m hopeful I will manage Ultravasan and its 90 kilometres come August. Who knows? I might even be reduced to swimming and biking afterwards instead of running, as a result…

On the other hand, my diet hasn’t been anywhere near as strict as I had planned – perhaps precisely because I had no concrete target in mind there. If anything I have been too indulgent, especially in allowing myself too much alcohol, so that’s something to improve upon in the second half of the year, as well.

So far, so-so impressive. Travels, adventures and challenges, then? Well, I did go for a refresher dive at Nemo33 in January, then went skiing in Sweden in February, and to Thailand to dive in March. April I got a new job part time, which wasn’t planned but must count as a new adventure, and May saw me hike Mallorca with my brother, which was quite the challenge – not because of him, I hasten to add! Then in June I explored Luxembourg, and this month I’ve taken the kids kayaking in the Ardennes, and gone to Edinburgh for a quick visit, so overall my track record isn’t too bad, even though I feel it lacks in challenges.

So what to make of all this? Reinforced efforts in terms of reading, playing the piano and learning French; more diverse workout schedule; better food and drink habits; more adventurous adventures and challenging challenges (and trippy trips? No.).

Lined up next: London with the kids, then two weeks without them (good time to improve diet and spend time playing piano/reading/studying, putting good habits in place) before going to Sweden and making final preparations for Ultravasan. After that I’ve got nothing planned apart from a few days in Lugano, as a post-race (re)treat, and then school starts and the rat race recommences. If experience shows anything, it’s that it’s time to start planning autumn now. Maybe that Ironman? Or a climbing course? Or something else entirely…?

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Paradise lost?

imageLast week I went to Thailand to go diving, somthing I have long wanted to do. So I signed up to go on a live aboard boat – an old Chinese junk, and a movie star, no less!* – and off we went into the choppy, tepid waters of the Andaman Sea. We were a motley crew of sixteen divers from all over the world – the U.S., the UK, the Philippines, Argentina, India, Finland, France and Sweden – but we got on splendidly, and this would have been just another travelogue – you know, blah blah Richelieu Rock blah blah leopard shark – had it not been for one last news feed via radio before we entered waters where no communications were possible.

There was talk of explosions in Brussels. No details, just a headline. It was agonising, not knowing, not having any way of finding out what had happened. As it turned out, of course, the explosions were the worst terrorist attacks Belgium have ever experienced. Over thirty dead and three hundred injured, and – even more devastating – the perpetrators men born and bred in Belgium who hate their fellow humans so much, have so little regard for the sanctity of life – their own as well as that of others – as to feel that this atrocity was the right thing to do with their existence.

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Fishy pearl of wisdom #1: Know thine anemones, as well as thine enemies. Don’t destroy the former to conquer the latter.

Society must have failed these men on numerous occasions for that kind of rage and hatred to grow in their minds. Where do these values come from, and who instilled them in the suicide bombers? Where have we gone wrong as a collective when members of our society lash out to destroy it? When people born and raised in western civilisations pledge their lives to a death cult with medical ideas of justice? These are questions I hope are being asked in ernest, but I doubt it.

In fact, I think mankind is doomed. We lack the collective will to protect what is dear to us and do the right thing. Global warming and pollution is killing off species at a rate last seen when the dinosaurs went extinct. We know this, yet doing anything much to stop it seems beyond us. We continue to use more resources than the world produces, year after year, as if we had an Earth 2.0 in reserve somewhere, which – I’m sorry to tell you – we don’t.

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Fishy pearl of wisdom #2: Judge actions, not looks. Most – however scary-looking – just want to be left alone to lead their lives as best they can.

Diving in Thailand is a case in point: the corals are dying due to bleaching, something which occurs when the water gets too warm (as global warming continues, this becomes inevitable), but also due to overexposure to humans. However, instead of protecting the reefs, Thai authorities let anyone who pays in, leaving the sites lousy with divers – and lousy divers! – bumping into corals that have formed for decades and breaking them, and what’s worse: the national marine parks aren’t even protected from commercial fishermen, as guards are bribed to look the other way. Short-sighted greed scores another victory.

Another example: if the entire world became vegetarian, it would help reduce greenhouse emissions by 60-70%, and would save millions of lives annually, not to mention giving fish stocks a chance to recover from constant over-fishing. But will that happen? No. We can’t even instill in our own citizens a sense of it being wrong to kill your fellow men and women – what hope can there be for a species that cannot even master that?

We evolved to be scavengers, hunter-gatherers with a built-in evolutionary advantage for natural horders, since resources were – by definition – scant. But then humans stopped being hunter-gatherers and started dividing up the land into yours and mine, and that same advantage became greed – the urge to own more, ever more – and since agriculture meant resources were plentiful in this new word order we grew to dominate the entire planet.

Well, we’ve come full circle, with resources being scant again due to overpopulation, and we have to go against our instincts to resolve that problem. To add insult to injury, with modern society now having removed us completely from our link to nature, there’s not even a sense of it being wrong to deplete resources. But: appreciating nature’s beauty, however fleeting, can instill in us a sense of urgency, a sense of what we’ve lost and stand yet to lose, on this paradisiacal planet we call home. It’s as close to a religious experience as I have ever had, and with good reason.

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Fishy pearl of wisdom #3: Be cool, little dude. And if faced with suicide bombers, BYOB – bring your own blast protection

We felt it, all of us aboard that ship, irregardless of nationality, religion, gender, age. And that gives me a little hope. That reverence for nature is perhaps the only thing standing between us as a race and extinction. So I leave the Andaman Sea behind, hoping that humans will do the right thing – it’s no longer a case of preserving nature for future generations, but preserving it so there will be future generations. I know I will try my best, whenever I can. I may have been cast out of Eden, but I won’t be hiding behind a fig leaf.

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*James Bond’s nemesis operated off of this ship in The Man With The Golden Gun.

 

Photo credits (apart from Little Dude): L. Woodruff

Reality check

Most people’s resolutions for the New Year flounder by February. Actually, most resolutions probably find themselves stillborn on January 1st, but even for those people who do honestly try to effectuate change in their lives, habits die hard, and so I figure it is high time I conducted a health check on my ambitions for 2016 and see what happened to them.

If you recall (and even if you don’t, never fear – all is revealed just one click from here), I set out to improve myself in terms of physique and skills and experiences and whatnot. My idea was to have specific targets for each of these areas, the better to be able to track my progress. So how have I fared thus far?

In terms of improving mentally and intellectually, I have been playing more piano than before, and I have been taking lessons, even though these were temporarily disrupted by my teacher moving to Vienna. I’m not sure I can claim to have played 30 minutes per day, though. I listened to the theme from The Piano and didn’t take to it, so am looking for alternative pieces to learn – Claire de Lune is the current front runner, but suggestions are welcome.

On the other hand I have been diligently studying French, and have accumulated a total of 506 words and phrases thus far, which is a lot more than I would have thought. Have I learnt them all? Not yet, but using CardsOnGo on my iPhone has proven to be a really good method, as I can pick it up whenever I have a moment of downtime and go through my lists. To be recommended.

I’ve only read two non-fiction books thus far this year. I experimented with audiobooks, but found the medium not much to my liking – possibly due to having to wear headsets all day at work – so have gone back to analogue books now, and am ploughing through Bill Bryson’s latest even now (I’m writing this in between chapters).

Staying healthy and getting fitter made up the second chapter in my to do-list. I can’t say I have been wholly successful in staying away from alcohol, as it seems intrinsically linked with going out – something I’ve been doing more of this year, too – but I have stayed away from carbs and sugar for the most part, at least.

Working out is an area that’s been, well, working out well for me so far this year. Even with a week of no physical activity whatsoever due to a persistent cold, I have managed to notch up 69 workouts over 70 days, which is a LOT. It’s been mainly running and strength training, as I had the marathon in Barcelona looming last weekend, but I’m hopeful that biking and swimming will enter more prominently into the equation as the weather improves.

Finally, my ambition was to go on adventures and/or experience something new every month. January saw me go diving down to 30 metres in Nemo33, but in February I didn’t find anything new to do. I did take the children skiing in Sweden, which turned out to be more adventurous than we would have wanted, as one of their cousins fell and broke her leg, but it wasn’t a new experience as such*. All the more reason to look forward to Thailand next weekend!

In conclusion then, I don’t think I’ve been doing too bad so far. Some things haven’t materialised quite as I imagined them, but I’m on track, at least. After all, a map can never fully predict a path, merely point out its direction and features more or less accurately. I will be back with more updates later on.

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*Having said that, I doubt even Scott (of ill-fated polar expedition fame) had to coax and cajole his companions into pushing on as much as I and my brother-in-law did when stuck on a wind-whipped slope far from the cottage as the sun started to set on day one. Then again, if his fellow explorers had been ages seven to ten and he had promised them unlimited access to iThings once home, I dare say they would have overcome any obstacle.

The Dominican Republic

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May 2015

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I’ve come here ill prepared. I realise this very quickly after having sat down behind the steering wheel of my rental car.

There’s just one road leading across the island from the south coast to Las Terrenas in the north, a fine toll road that will take me straight where I need to go. Should be easy, right? Only the motorway from the airport to Santo Domingo doesn’t connect with the toll road. Between the two lies the old road, and between that and the motorway are concrete walls, preventing me from getting where I want to go.

After an exasperating hour of trying in vain to reach it via back roads I return to where I started (guided by a car full of giggly, drunken, grotesquely overweight young women), and resort to reversing off the motorway via an entrance ramp to get onto the old road. I only execute this desperate manoeuvre because I’m now safe in the knowledge that my fellow road users would approve, as they all seem to be treating basic driving rules as laughably restrictive.

The ride across the island is beautiful, over lush green hills and through verdant fields, but the Department of Transport has another surprise for me; there are no less than four tolls to be paid along the way. Now, just as there seemingly was no way to get on it, there is really no way to get off the road either, so why they feel they have to get you to pay in incremental steps I don’t know, but pay I do, thanking the stars that I got enough pesos to get me all the way.

Once off the toll road I again get immediately, frustratingly lost as tropical darkness descends upon me (and what precious few signposts there may have been), and it’s only with the help of a local woman – who actually gets in the car and guides me the last seven kilometres through labyrinthine village roads – that I finally arrive at my destination.

Buenas noches.
Day 1

The first thing that strikes you here is how familiar the scenery is. I’ve seen this beach in a hundred movies and a thousand pictures, the palm trees hanging out over white sand in the water’s edge, the waves rolling in to lap at your feet. I half expect Captain Sparrow to careen around the corner at any moment, cannibals in hot pursuit.

The second thing that hits you is the technicolor quality of the landscape; the turquoise sea and azure sky, the crystalline salty white beaches, the cascades of colour exploding from the rampant vegetation – fleshly purple hibiscuses, translucently pink grasses, ripe red mangoes.

Not to be outdone, the Dominicans adorn their houses with colours seldom found outside of Italian ice cream vendors’ counters: electric blue, acid yellow, poison green and countless other outlandish nuances jostle for position, making me feel as if I’m the last spot of white on a child’s painting, waiting to be coloured in.

It’s an odd sensation, expectant and abandoned in equal measure, and yet it sums up my first day here perfectly.

Day 2

Remember how I said I didn’t feel well prepared coming here? Well, I’ve been swatting – as well as sweating – and now I know that I’ve landed on the great island of Hispaniola, so named by my namesake C Columbus, who did likewise in 1492, bringing the local Tainó people the traditional gifts of trinkets, baubles and measles, and changed the world forever.

Christopher’s brother Bartholemew went on to found Santo Domingo, the oldest colonial settlement still in existence, but after that the Spanish pretty much forgot about Hispaniola as they went on to conquer the Incas and the Aztecs. The French were thus able to promptly snatch it up and turned it into Haiti (after a Tainò word meaning “land of many hills”). Some time later people in the east of the island rebelled against their French masters’ rule and formed the Dominican Republic.

The name means something like the Sunday Republic, and if it conjures up images of amateurism (e.g. Sunday drivers) you aren’t far wrong, since the fledgling republic has had a long and onerous journey to democracy. It holds the distinction of being the only country in the Caribbean that voluntarily returned to its colonial masters once the yoke had been cast off, it was occupied by the US in the 1920’s, then run as a dictatorship for thirty years (the original banana republic) and was torn by civil war as late as in the 60’s(!).

On top of that, the relationship with their co-habitants the Haitians has always been fraught – in the 30’s they even engaged in a spot of genocide of ethnic Haitians, which I feel is a bit short-sighted when you consider that more than half the island’s population is made up of the brethren of their victims. Suffice to say that even today locally produced maps of the DR depict it as being an island unto itself, completely ignoring the existence of their neighbours.

Trouble in Paradise? You betcha.

Day 3 and 4

I’m finally getting acclimatised. The jet lag has eased, the heat is becoming bearable (though still oppressive) and I’m beginning to come to grips with this alien society.

Houses here are small, mostly one or two rooms, rickety things constructed of wood or concrete, shockingly colourful, with a covered veranda in front if the owners can afford it – always protected with wrought iron bars, because shade is a valuable commodity here.

Mostly though, life is lived outdoors, in the cornucopia the jungle provides; mango, avocado, guava, papaya, cocoa, coconuts all grow in abundance. The climate is such that if a Dominican wants to make a fence she simply sticks branches in the ground, which take root, turning it from fence into hedge in a season. It works both ways though: the jungle will reclaim anything, and fast.

The car isn’t the mode of transport of choice – the moped is, and it will have 2,5 people on it on average (sometimes literally, as the aforementioned cavalier approach to road safety takes its toll). In the mountains mopeds face stiff competition from horses – all of them steeped in the same mould as Rosinante (of Quixotic fame) and ridden in vaquero style – and for longer journeys there are hua huas, the 50’s Jetsons buses that my friend Laura claims you can “flag down and ride for a peso, often seated next to a rooster”.

The police aren’t much trusted – a memory of the bad old days – so instead there are people who provide private security for homeowners, banks, gas stations et cetera by means of a sawed off pump-action shotgun. That, combined with the odd guy sauntering through the streets with a machete in his hand, makes it a bit unnerving to move
about, but at the same time I have never encountered a more laid-back society. They even measure time in Dominican minutes, which of course are slightly longer than ours.

It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.

Days 5 to 7

Tourism is by far the largest sector of the local economy here, and it’s easy to see why: the Dominicans are blessed with a climate that rivals just about anything I’ve experienced, and tourists are coming here in great herds, like wildebeest crossing the savannah (and often with the same delicate approach). How tempting it must be for the locals then to make a quick buck – especially when domestic monthly salaries are a fraction of what an average tourist is happy to dispense with over a week.

Unfortunately, this means that you’re constantly running the risk of getting ripped off, if not worse. 3,000 police and military personnel were recently dismissed as they had all been involved in armed robberies. That’s coppers and grunts threatening to kill you if you don’t hand over your money! To continue the metaphor, it’s as if zebras and giraffes suddenly turned out to be lions and crocodiles in disguise. Not a happy thought, that.

Even legit operations seem to be geared towards extracting the maximum amount of dollars with a minimum of effort, so every excursion I’ve made has turned into a gauntlet, negotiating with or just plain dodging locals who are hawking their trinkets and services, often making completely bogus claims in the process. “Wanna see famous waterfall, señor? You need horse and guide, esta impossibile otherwise. Forty dollars US.” No horse required, nor guide. Entrance fee? One hundred pesos, or about two dollars. And on it goes.

On a larger scale, money speaks even louder. Anything is for sale, without regard for the public good. So for instance the village I’m staying in is effectively divided into two valleys because a local politico owns the land in between and won’t allow a road to cross his dominion. Foreigners are buying more and more properties along the coast, making it impossible to access the sea for locals and tourists alike. And with the new toll road, the time it takes to get here from the capital has been reduced by two thirds, which I fear will only exacerbate the situation.

For now, woodpeckers are the only ones enjoying high rise condos, as they make their nests in the coconut palms, but give it another five years and I am convinced that las Terrenas will be another Punta Cana or Costa del Sol – a concrete tourist ghetto with not a hint of authenticity.

Paradise Found equals Paradise Lost, seems to be the inevitable conclusion.

Outro

They say travel writing is the most self-indulgent form of writing bar autobiography, and so in self-defence I stay away from what I think of as “and then I did this”-writing if I don’t feel it has some general interest.

However, someone pointed out that this has the effect of making it sound as if I don’t do anything much at all on my holidays sometimes, and so to debunk that, here are some of my top experiences in the Dominican Republic, big and small:

– Hiking through the jungle to a 50 metre high waterfall and swimming in the water right underneath it,

– Watching a gazillion stars at night uninhibited by electric lights during one of several black-outs,

– Having a humpback cow and calf surface right next to our speedboat and watching them splash about for half an hour,

– Having another whale appear just as I was about to go scuba diving for the first time in well over a decade (even though it made me hyperventilate),

– Learning how to surf, and feeling on top of the world when I rode my first wave (and my second, and my third…),

– Exploring Tainò cave paintings deep in the mangrove labyrinth of Los Haitises,

– Watching the setting sun set the ocean on fire, calming the waves and turning them into something akin to molten mercury every evening.

Not too shoddy. But now the trip is at an end, and as the flight takes me across the Caribbean (named after an extinguished tribe) and the Atlantic (home of the fabled lost continent) I can’t help but ponder the inevitable demise of everything. In the end all you can do is keep on travelling, keep on moving forward.

After all, what’s past is prologue.