Feature photo and photo above by Ross_Goodman.

1. Survival Against the Odds

“Men wanted for hazardous journey… Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition of 1914 would ultimately fail, but the hardy crew he mustered would still win honour and recognition for its ability to survive against the odds.

After their ship Endurance was crushed in pack ice, the crew abandoned the plan to cross Antarctica on foot and the aim became merely to survive. Over two years, Shackleton led the crew across ice floes, then in lifeboats to a camp on Elephant Island where for six months the main group would subsist on seal meat and blubber.

Shackleton took five men around the island to the north and then across 800 miles of treacherous ocean to South Georgia Island. He then hiked with two others for 36 hours across the island’s uncharted interior to a whaling station with another three months to go before he could safely reach the crew left on Elephant Island.

He later wrote, “We had suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory… We had reached the naked soul of man.”

2.Lost in the Amazon

“I was obsessed with the idea of exploration,” Yossi Ghinsberg told CNN Traveller magazine on the recent release of his book Lost in the Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Adventure and Survival.

It describes how in 1981, Israeli-born Ghinsberg and three companions set off into the depths of the Bolivian Amazon. When they realized they were ill-equipped for the journey, and lost, the four broke off into pairs; two were never seen again.

Ghinsberg and his friend Kevin were to float a raft downriver, but it caught on a rock and they were split up. For 19 days, Ghinsberg wandered helplessly in a brutal environment.

Fortunately, some local men had found Kevin and helped him search the river for Ghinsberg. Miraculously, they discovered him, alive and with a new understanding of his weaknesses and strengths.

Photo by *Zara.

3. Two Weeks in an Ice Cave

In 1982, Mark Inglis and Phil Doole were high up the slopes of New Zealand’s highest mountain, Aoraki Mt. Cook, when a blizzard hit.

They built an ice cave and waited for the storm to pass, but it would be 13 days before help could reach them. They survived on meagre rations, but in the cramped cave they lost circulation in their legs, which had to be amputated.

This hasn’t stopped the men’s climbing careers. Both have gone on to summit Mt. Cook, and in 2006, Inglis became the first double amputee to conquer Mt Everest, losing five fingertips and more flesh off his legs to frostbite, though none of his strength of character.

He told the New Zealand Herald, “When you lose your legs when you’re 23… something like this is just a minor hiccup, just a bump in the journey, really.”

4. Stranded in the Andes

It’s a story so extraordinary it has spawned several books, a Hollywood film, an acclaimed documentary and an official website, and can be recognized with just one word: Alive.

When the plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes in October 1972, the story should have ended there, but it was only just beginning. Of the 45 people on board, 12 died in the crash or shortly afterward, another five passed away the next morning from injuries, another on the eighth day, then eight in a later avalanche.

The remaining 16 struggled through extreme cold and starvation before resorting to cannibalism of those who had perished.

When it became clear help wouldn’t come to them, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa hiked for days out of the mountains and eventually found help. The most recent, and arguably the most sensitive retelling of the 72-day saga is Gonzalo Arijón’s 2007 documentary, Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains.

5. Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Amputating your arm with a blunt knife is a task the average person would find virtually inconceivable. But on May 1, 2003, it was the only option left to Aron Ralston after an 800-pound boulder fell on his arm, pinning it to a canyon wall.

After five days, the little food and water he had was gone and it was unlikely anyone would find him in the remote canyon in Utah.

In his book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, he describes how he managed to literally break free, first using the boulder to leverage his arm until the bones snapped and then sawing away at muscle and tendon with his pocket knife. He then had to rappel down a 65-foot wall. He was walking back to his car when hikers found him.

The 33-year-old continues to climb, including all of Colorado’s 55 peaks higher than 14,000 feet, and is also a motivational speaker.

Photo by lexdennphotography.

6. Mountain Odyssey

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were descending from the summit of the 20,813-foot-high Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes when disaster struck-twice. First, Simpson slipped and broke his leg. Then, while Yates was lowering him down, Simpson went over a cliff and was left dangling on the end of the rope.

Yates couldn’t see or hear Simpson and held on for an hour as he was pulled down the mountain.

Controversially, he cut the rope (which some say was against the mountaineering code, while others say it ultimately saved both men’s lives) and safely descended. Simpson dropped into a crevasse, and though severely injured, was able to abseil down to the bottom from the ice shelf he landed on. From here, he spent three days dragging himself across five miles of rough terrain, with no food or water and in great pain.

He crawled into base camp in the middle of the night and was reunited with Yates, who, after recovering from his own injuries, was planning to break camp the next morning. The harrowing tale of survival is told in detail in Simpson’s book, Touching the Void, and the documentary of the same name.

7. Struck Down in the Pacific

Sailing the South Pacific may seem like an idyllic pursuit, but when American Tami Oldham Ashcraft and her British boyfriend Richard Sharp were caught in a category four hurricane 19 days into what should have been a 30-day crossing, the dream turned into a nightmare.

It was 1983 and they were en route from Tahiti to San Diego to deliver the 44-foot sailboat Hazana. Battered by Hurricane Raymond’s 50-foot waves, Hazana capsized. Ashcraft, sheltering below decks, was knocked unconscious. When she woke 27 hours later, Sharp was gone, his safety line broken, and while the boat had righted itself, the mainmast had snapped.

In the May 2002 issue of National Geographic Adventure, Ashcraft described how she had to fight the desire to just give up, how she fixed a makeshift mast and sail, rationed her supplies and plotted a course for Hawaii, 1,500 miles away.

Forty days later she sailed into Hilo Harbor, still in shock but thankful to be alive. She continues to sail and in 2000 published an account of her ordeal in the book, Red Sky in Mourning.

Photo by daren_ck.

8. Three Months in the Outback

When a walking skeleton over six feet tall appeared in front of his jeep in April 2006, Mark Clifford, a farm manager on a remote property in Australia’s Northern Territory, must have thought he was seeing things. The skeleton was 35-year-old Ricky Megee, who had been lost in the outback for an incredible 10 weeks.

Apparently drugged and left for dead by a hitch-hiker he had picked up (though he also claimed his car had broken down), Megee survived by staying close to a dam and eating leeches, grasshoppers, and frogs.

While police and the public had doubts about the story, especially when it came to light that Megee had minor drug convictions, there’s no question he was lost in the outback, for whatever reason, and lucky to have survived.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

For more unbelievable travel stories, check out 8 of the Greatest Non-Fiction Adventure Stories Ever Told, and 8 of the Greatest Fictional Adventure Stories Ever Told.

Editor’s Note: Upon leaving the U.S. Marine Corps, David Danelo, a former infantry officer who also served as a convoy commander, intelligence officer and provisional executive officer in Iraq, was commissioned by the U.S. Naval Institute as a freelance correspondent. Writing from the U.S. Gulf Coast, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Vietnam, Danelo became increasingly interested in border issues affecting the United States and Mexico.

After spending three months traveling along the border, Danelo wrote The Border: Exploring the U.S.-Mexican Divide.

In this interview, BNT talks with Danelo in-depth about his experiences and the book.

Julie Schwietert Collazo

(BNT): You were an Marine Corps infantry officer who served in Iraq. When did you become interested in journalism, and what path led you to your current career?

During my 2004 tour in Iraq, I corresponded… with Steven Pressfield, a screenwriter and novelist best known for “The Legend of Bagger Vance” and “Gates of Fire.” Pressfield told me I was a great writer and I should give it a shot professionally. It made me feel like Michael Jordan had said I was a good basketball player.

I didn’t really know the first thing about professional writing, but I wanted to see what life was like outside the Corps and I figured it was worth a shot. I’m still doing it, so I guess it worked out.

How did you become interested in border issues?

I attended high school in San Antonio, where I was a white minority, and I didn’t understand the illegal immigration protests and the Minutemen — my experience had been different than the political rhetoric.

I was also interested in the national security implications of the border issues, but, because of my military background, I thought the story was much more complex than a Lou Dobbs sound bite.

Julie Schwietert Collazo

Tell me a bit about your research process– this wasn’t a book only about your in-person observations along the entire U.S-Mexican border, but clearly involved an extensive amount of research…. How did you choose your sources, how did you evaluate their credibility, and what kind of effort did the research involve…?

I read before my first trip– mostly to get some sense of where to go and how to get there– and then I looked deeper into issues that pinged my interest. Going back and forth was useful for me; each time I took a trip, that led to contacts, which led to new sources of information.

Assessing source credibility is something we all learn to do, whether we’re journalists, officers, businesspersons, engineers, etc. My own process is simply to observe, check my gut, and keep questioning my conclusions (which I’m still doing, by the way)….

One of the attributes of your book that I appreciated was that you tell a lot of stories overlooked in the very bipolar debate about immigration in the United States…. Why do you think these important border stories tend to be overlooked by the mainstream media?

Groupthink. Mainstream media reporters (both right and left wing) see the border as an illegal immigration issue, and the border itself gets diced into policy soundbites or prescriptions because journalists inevitably pick sides. It’s human. Our biases are hard to avoid.

In combat, I learned the necessity to distill “noise” from facts. When you command a convoy, you’re betting dozens of lives on what you know, and also what you think you know. Much of that knowledge works in shades of gray– ambiguity, hunches, instinct.

From that, you make assumptions; from assumptions, you might eventually find facts. But your life depends on knowing the difference between a fact and an assumption.

As you can tell from reading the book, my views conflict with both political sides. It isn’t that I’m trying to be “in the middle” just for the sake of it, but my own experience and study has led me to form certain conclusions.

I’ve taken a different route than most into studying this issue, which probably accounts for some of the different results.

In terms of the border issues, the reporters who avoid groupthink the best are (unsurprisingly) those from border states.

What would you identify as a few of the biggest myths and misconceptions about the U.S-Mexico border?

From the right, I get annoyed every time the media makes a stink about a “Mexican military incursion.” During the late 19th century, Texas rangers and Mexican rurales used to ride back and forth at will — the U.S. and Mexican governments had a hot pursuit clause to deal with Apaches, Comanches and bandits. Today, if the Mexicans accidentally drive on our side, you’d think we were back in 1848.

The “military incursions” fall into two categories: 1) Mexican soldiers have gotten lost or 2) Cartel elements have stolen uniforms and are posing as law enforcement. This isn’t a threat to our sovereignty; it’s an indication of Mexico’s failed local police and our failed security policy.

From the left, I’m troubled by the idea that legalization represents a panacea from the violence. I support legalization for many reasons, but even if/when that happens, you’ll still have security issues. Even if it’s legal, why will the cartels allow their trade to be legislated? Who would enforce taxation? And what happens now that Mexicans have seen
their police and military fail when it really counted?

In the mid-1980s, smugglers were doing big business in pet tarantulas; it was a temporary US. fad, but customs required 90 days to import new arrivals. Cartels were literally killing each other over the turf to move spiders into the US.

I can’t speak for Mexico City, but my observation in northern Mexico leads me to believe the threat to law and order goes well beyond drugs and cannot be contained by legalization. The north has been overwhelmed by banditry before in Mexican history, and I think we are seeing it happen again.

Julie Schwietert Collazo

One of the conclusions that you reach…is that the border is not a monolith– it’s characterized by distinct zones, relationships between cities, industries, and many other qualities. Taking this into consideration, how can we develop and implement border policies that are effective and consistent while recognizing these crucial differences?

The anarchy and violence on the border as not on the same level as illegal immigration, water rights, or English-only schools. Our geographic and economic ties with Mexico make this a “red alert” problem. It should be treated as such.

A start might be to institutionalize a security cooperation zone instead of a hard line. Take the 100km US-Mexico free trade zone (50 km on both sides) and create an binational government organization/task force authorized to freely navigate both sides at any time.

Julie Schwietert Collazo

Because of the current conditions in Mexico, this would probably have to include US military (to work with Mexico’s soldiers), as well as Border Patrol and federal/state/local law enforcement. You’d also have to re-examine some Posse Comitatus issues, which might raise eyebrows. It would also be expensive. In my view, it’s worth a shot.

Another observation you make is how US policy efforts (I’m thinking, for example, of counterterrorism coordination efforts) lack effective coordination among multiple law enforcement and/or military entities. Even when coordination efforts are made, they don’t seem to function well, as your poignant story of Esequiel Hernandez illustrates. How can this improve?

In many ways it has improved — especially since 9/11 and Iraq. Keep in mind that Esequiel Hernandez was in 1997. Institutionally, the military has probably changed more as a result of the Iraq War than it would have otherwise.

Had the war in Iraq not happened, and had the military not been so incompetent initially in confronting counterinsurgency, we probably would never have seen any discussion of language, culture, or the military/law enforcement/judicial relationship in the nature of war.

If a squad of Marines who were Iraq veterans were sent down to the border today, there’s no way they would buy any of that “sit in a hole and don’t talk to anyone” crap. Their schools– all developed post-Iraq– have taught them to work under a different set of tactics that leverages more law enforcement techniques.

I’m not trying to use this answer as an argument for going to war in Iraq. Just because some positive unintended consequences unfolded does not make the decision strategically wise. But the military, like all human
organizations, is forced to adapt under pressure and adversity.

Interagency coordination is better than it once was because government organizations have learned from Al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents: coordinate or lose. Prospective failure helps clarify your options.

Finally, what’s the take-away lesson for readers? And what was the biggest take-away lesson for you?

A reader’s take-away might best be summarized by the advice I received before starting the project: “Do not understand the border too quickly.”

My own take-away is to not understand ANYTHING too quickly! Information is easy to find, but new, wise, insightful thoughts are hard, really hard, to obtain. I couldn’t have written this to you even a year ago. So my lesson is to put attention, patience, and energy into learning something– and then trust that it will pay off when the time is right.

Oops- that’s not all. One more question! What’s your current project?

I’m working on a novel — and, for superstition’s sake, I’ll not say more until I am finished!

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

To learn more about David Danelo, visit his website.

Photo: Andrew Ciscel

Stepping into an anthropological frame of mind, I’d like to take a crack at debunking a few of the myths that seem to cling to traveler consciousness, in the hope of getting beyond the same tired givens and conversations.

Before travelers become too easy to pin down, maybe we can create new variations on the myths that often form the center of the traveler worldview.

Myth #1: Cheaper is Better: Sleeping On a Filthy Mattress in a Hotel that Smells Like Urine Makes You A Better Traveler

Photo: Morrow Less

To a certain extent, this is true. The further towards comfort, familiarity, and privacy one moves, the closer to a globalized and sanitized version of culture one gets:

• Take a private taxi in China vs. a local minibus and save yourself the experience of peeing on the side of the road in the rain with 15 other people.
• Eat at a McDo in Mexico City and spare yourself the havoc the chilaquiles might wreck on your stomach, and the hectic experience of securing a table, flagging down the waitress, and briefly being the confused gringo at the center of attention.
• Stay at the luxury hotel in Malaysia and save yourself the buckets of sweat under a lethargic ceiling fan and the view of massive red underwear hanging on the balcony.

But then again, the McDo might turn out to be the chosen make out joint for Chinese teenagers. The luxury hotel might serve the most amazing Malay lahksa you’ve ever tasted, and give you the energy to go on a five-day trekking expedition through the jungle.

The private taxi might let you relax enough to notice the hills of pines wrapped in fog, the factories and the barefoot children outside of them, the soot that coats the walls of every town you pass.

Perhaps cost shouldn’t be the defining factor here-perhaps it should be contact and awareness.

Does a traveler having beers with other travelers every night on a hostel roof necessarily learn more than a tourist having a conversation with a Malay businessman over a plate of satay?

Does splashing out from time to time mean one is betraying some sort of inherent travel pact to suffer in the name of understanding? I don’t think I could travel standing on a Chinese train for 20 hours, but I don’t think that means it’s impossible to comprehend the fact that the majority of migrant workers do just that.

The key, I believe, is balance – not self-righteous, self-flagellation, or dependence on luxury and comfort that one grows immune to daily life in a place.

Myth #2: More is Less: Places Are Ruined by Tourism

I remember reading an article by a very well-known travel writer, who bemoaned the arrival of “the tourists” in Laos and reminisced about the “penniless” woman serving him, the sole traveler, a cup of juice in the street so many years ago.

He went on to rant, in typical fashion, about how places had been colonized by tourists on the banana pancake circuit.

Photo: indi.ca

Now, I’m not going to slip so far into relativism as to say that eating banana pancakes with a mishmash of Americans and Australians is just as “authentic” and eye-opening a travel experience as, say, sipping noodle soup in a dimly lit local joint with a Lao family.

When tourism begins to colonize a place to the point where local culture is nearly replaced by travel culture (hostels, internet cafes, banana pancakes), I find that troubling.

And yet, isn’t there a paradox for travelers here? In the idea that, while travel is a magically transformative experience that should be undertaken by (almost) everyone, and undertaken cheaply and independently and “off-the-beaten-track”, only they, the select few, truly have the right to experience and understand the off-the-beaten-track places?

There is an egotistical assumption here, that an elite group is privileged in its appreciation and understanding of travel and therefore should be uniquely allowed to experience it and decide its reach and limits.

They avoid being tourists; they avoid polluting an area with their culturally different presence and their gaze and needs as outsiders, because…because they suffered more on longer bus rides to get to more distant villages? Because they, and only they, appreciate the real, the authentic, the down and dirty of travel? Because they’ve never held 9-5 jobs?

A host of factors seem to select someone to be part of this group who bemoans the arrival of the other, the tourist.

And once a traveler of this way of thinking identifies with a place and starts the ranting about the arrival of tourism, a particular imperialist tone creeps into the discourse: the traveler somehow takes ownership of the place, waxing poetic about the need to protect it, to keep it poor, isolated, exotic.

A Fruitless Debate

This tendency of travelers to berate tourism as some sort of tragic, corrupting presence, is blatantly ironic and, in my opinion, fairly useless.

It encourages an irresponsible and selfish way of thinking that says, “Get there now, before they spoil it!” It is the rhetoric of a club of wealthy explorers who are in a race to be more exclusive, more exotic, the first; to control, intellectually if not physically, an area by determining what it should and should not be and who should or should not be allowed in.

Instead of focusing uniquely on the traveler vs. tourist dichotomy-a well-worn debate dealt with eloquently in this article- why not emphasize the way places can retain the culture that makes them unique and attractive to travelers in the first place? And the ways in which locals can have the maximum say possible in how tourism affects their communities?

This expands the dialogue from vain bitching among travelers to constructive conversation between the people who are actually being visited-the “hosts,” as anthropologists call them, and the visitors, or “guests.”

Myth #3: The More, the Better: The Longer, Farther, and Harder You Travel, the More You Learn

A travel conscript, as Claire Moss called it in her excellent article on the subject, is that hostel-goer with a weary look, who spends hours wistfully writing e-mails back home, who keeps going, boarding another tour bus, eating another plateful of something strange and spicy, sleeping in another strange bed, and counting the days, accumulating…what?

Notches on a stick? Anecdotes? Factoid after factoid? Bits and pieces of language, a “thank you” in Indonesian here, a “cheers” in Hungarian there?

Photo: Karen Sheets

There is a fine line between the thrill of creating new routines in new places – the walk with a cup of coffee through the strange half-familiar streets each morning, the hello to the same juice vendor, the mini-life in a foreign land-and the monotony of going through the routine of traveling, backpack, bus, bed, backpack, bus, bed, beer, backpack, bus, bed.

One can easily give way to the other.

I have felt that weariness several times and known, okay, enough. After awhile, traveling can become a 9-5 affair, just like sticking in the old punch card at the office.

It becomes a routine that blinds just like any other, carried out with a vague sense of boredom and repetition and obligation. The days pass more as sun-filled, distant films than as actual, fully realized experiences. There will always be another exotic destination, another bed in another dorm, another beer in another bar, another cultural event, tour, park, museum.

And when they turn into one spectacle, one forced journal entry after another, they are just as rote as tedious lessons recited in a lecture in which you’re half-asleep and hung over.

Sometimes, stopping in one place for awhile, or turning one’s travel eyes upon home, can be more rewarding than going through the motions for months, years on end.

As sites like Matador and the vastly growing array of travel literature can testify, the travel movement which has grown up in the past several decades has its own priorities, belief systems, and myths, just like the more static communities that have been the traditional focus of anthropologists.

Can we dissect ourselves anthropologically from the inside out? And, when we need to, remake our own myths?

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Got strong opinions on the “Banana Pancake” trail? Join this discussion in the Matador forums: Is the “Lonely Planet Trail” really so bad? For more on Myth #3, check out Hal Amen’s article, Sounding Retreat: Why Seasoned Travelers Aren’t Afraid to Call it Quits. And for one Matador member’s perspective on the traveler/tourist debate, read Jay Martin’s blog post, The Travel Spectrum.

Photo: Leonard Low

The Best Job in the World promotion is a worldwide sensation: applications have been received from over 160 countries. Although only one person can win the position, the PR machine has been successful in attracting significant attention to the unique Queensland coast.

But environmental and cultural issues have been ignored by many in the frenzy of applications and paradisaical dreams.

What’s at risk?

The jewel in Queensland’s crown is the Great Barrier Reef.

Photo: Wibble Roisin

Covering 345,000 square kilometers, it’s the largest living structure on the planet. Changing weather conditions are threatening the existence of reefs around the world, but Nicole McNaughton, Tourism Queensland’s PR project manager, is positive about the outlook:

“…The Great Barrier Reef is one of the largest and healthiest reef systems in the world. While it can cope with stress better than most reefs, the Great Barrier Reef is not immune to climate change.”

Environmental concerns

Rising water temperatures cause coral to expel certain algae, destroying themselves in the process. The dead coral quickly become bleached and start to erode.

I was concerned that further promoting mass fly-in tourism could do more harm than good. Nicole, however, was quick to point out air travel makes up a very small percentage of carbon emissions– around three percent.

Reynaldo Ramos is a civil engineer applying for the Best Job in the World with the handle ““digital environmentalist.” He outlined three activities which impact the marine environment:

1. water-based activities (diving, snorkeling, fishing);

2. marine life interaction (watching of whales, turtles, seabirds, fish feeding);

3. ship/boat-related activities (anchoring, mooring, fishing, racing); and waste generation (liquid and solid wastes from the above activities)

These activities are likely to increase as Queensland heavily promotes the recreational opportunities available.

Green credentials

Ramos emphasized that these problems are not unique to Queensland and that the island ecosystems of his home, the Philippines, are under much greater threat due to large-scale commercial fishing and the illegal use of explosives by fishermen.

Can the winning applicant do anything to mitigate the environmental effects of mass tourism? Ramos believes:

“A six-month contract is not enough to focus on the environmental issues and challenges that this marine ecosystem is facing. But in my own little way, taking advantage of my position as the island caretaker, I will do my best to identify short term strategies to mitigate these impacts for Tourism Queensland; to implement [strategies] towards proper long term management of this heritage site.”

Tourism operations in Queensland do seem to have very respectable “green” credentials. Just under half their tour operators are certified under the Australian ECO system, which promotes guidelines for sustainable travel. This is a higher percentage of certification than any of Australia’s other states.

Marine research is also partly funded through tourism income and marine biologists are directly employed by some companies. Nicole McNaughton emphasises, “By showcasing the Great Barrier Reef to the world, we are actually helping protect it by building a love and respect for what is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders in visitors from around the globe.”

But recent public awareness of environmental issues hasn’t led to the drastic policy changes necessary for determined change.

A missing piece

Photo: spudmurphy

Prior to European colonisation the land and “sea territories” surrounding the Great Barrier Reef were used by over 40 Aborigine and Torres Strait Island groups.

Indigenous Australians have struggled with displacement and institutional discrimination to a much greater extent than neighbouring New Zealand, which was colonised just a little later.

Last year saw the first-ever apology from the Australian government for the atrocities of the Stolen Generation.

One year later, little seems to have improved. There seems to be little direct gain for indigenous groups from the best job in the world. I failed to discover a single mention or image featuring indigenous culture on the Island Reef Job site.

Questioning this, I was told that Tourism Australia,

“encourages the increase of Indigenous people in all facets of tourism in Queensland and to encourage economic and socially sustainable Indigenous tourism ventures. There are a number of indigenous tourism products within the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef region and the successful candidate will have the opportunity to visit many of these and experience indigenous culture first-hand.”

An amazing opportunity…

Whoever wins the best job in the world will be given a very large soap-box from which to speak. We hope they don’t stay silent regarding the urgent issues of the global environment or fair compensation for those who lived amongst the islands for thousands of years before video applications were possible.

Community connection

Want to know more about the best job in the world? Find out how to win, meet an applicant or find out what it’s all about.

idrewuk

The Best Marketing Ploy In the World

Interactive travel magazines like Matador are establishing a serious online presence, and tourism promotions like the Best Job in the World are garnering thousands of applications. It’s proof that the tourism and promotion game is changing, again.

• Is the best job in the world a competition?
• Is it a job application process?
• Is it a marketer’s wet dream?

Yes.

A win-win situation

There aren’t many people who wouldn’t like a job involving marine recreation on a resort island. Even city slickers might consider it for six months. Throw in something approaching a six-figure salary– and free lodging– it’s a very persuasive package.

Photo: andrewcparnell

But the real genius lies in the huge amount of PR being generated. Gary Arndt, who writes the most popular travelogue-style blog in the world and possesses a background in internet marketing, says, “The whole thing was very clever. The cost of the actual job is trivial.”

While AUD$150,000 sounds like a great six month’s work to me, the investment of the Queensland Tourism Board is minimal… because the publicity it has generated is worth millions.

By forcing candidates to show their knowledge of the Great Barrier Reef, Tourism Queensland has collected an immense amount of quality user-generated content. They couldn’t have bought this coverage if they tried. Every time someone watches an job applicant’s video, they learn something about the area… and that something makes people want to visit.

When viral isn’t bad

In new-media parlance, a campaign has gone “viral” when it grows exponentially and beyond the control of the company who started it. The way top videos have spread, the chatter on Twitter and Facebook, and the websites and blogs of applicants are all indicators of a viral campaign.

Fast-spreading media can bite the hand it feeds, though. One video showed a woman getting a tattoo to prove how committed she was to winning the position. Sharp eyes recognised this as a bogus clip and quickly pounced with hard-hitting headlines.

As suspected, the video was created by a marketing agency. Seeding dummy videos, like reviewing your own products, is considered very bad form.

Realising this, Tourism Queensland responded with an apology on the official site. In the social marketing age, a quick apology can do a lot of good.

Community is king.

Susie Parish is the founder of the Island Reef Job Ning community. It’s a place for applicants to chat, discuss tactics, and share their videos.

Reflected in the tag line, “We need more than 60 seconds to tell our stories,” she started the site because “applicants needed a space where they could say more about themselves.” Over 100 have taken advantage of the platform and more are added daily.

An applicant herself, Parish says, “[Applicants'] friends and family only want to hear so much [about the job]. Within the community, they can talk all they want about it and continue to hope that they will be the chosen one.”

A social web

A niche community is further proof of the power of Tourism Queensland’s campaign and the changes in traditional marketing. Susie makes it simple:

“The social web enables companies to interact with and develop a relationship with their potential customers…They have to interact on [many platforms] or they risk conversations about their company taking place without them or having their competitors do it and be that one step closer to their customer.”

This closely relates to the official view from Tourism Queensland’s PR manager, Nicole McNaughton:

“Travellers these days are placing increasing importance on first-hand reports from other travellers when they choose a holiday. So when Tourism Queensland was looking for an innovative way to promote our new Islands of the Great Barrier Reef campaign, what could be better than having a real and independent traveller based on a Great Barrier Reef island reporting on their personal experience?”

The travel and tourism sector can learn a lot from this campaign. Copycat efforts aren’t the message though. The real gold is in learning to use new media tools in mutually beneficial ways: if the consumer wins, the companies will too.

Community Connection

Want to know more? Win the best job in the world, meet an applicant or find out what it’s all about.

Photo: Nessa Land

Haruki Murakami, despite being one of the biggest cultural cross-over novelists of our generation, not to mention a freelance journalist, a translator, and a marathon runner, doesn’t have many pretensions.

He once reflected, “With nothing but my writing, I had made a number of human beings want to drink beer. You have no idea how happy this made me.”

His books are full of mysterious metaphors – wells, zoo animals, catalyst-forming toilet paper – that take immense chances by combining fantasy, mystery and existential … drinking.

Many fans wonder exactly what makes the Murakami machine work, and lucky for them, one of the chief operators– his translator, Jay Rubin– has written a chronicle of his career called Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words.

After consulting Murakami, hashing through the nuances of his writing, and being a fan of his work in general, Rubin has produced countless insights into the author’s life and style. Brave New Traveler was able to catch a moment of the translator and Harvard professor’s time to discuss the task of translating Murakami’s most recent works.

(BNT) What made you decide to write Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words and what was your approach to discussing translation with an audience of fiction readers?

I foolishly thought I could help introduce Murakami to an English-speaking audience by compiling a number of his short stories with commentary.

No one, including Haruki– and eventually me– liked this plan, and the more I worked on the book, the more the commentary – and the factual information – grew, and the use of quoted passages shrank.

Eventually it became quite obvious that Murakami didn’t need any help getting read by foreign audiences.

I’m not sure who bothers to read my book, but I’m pleased that UK Vintage values it enough to have printed two updated versions (the latest just a few months ago, including a discussion of After Dark).

What sort of creative writing do you do, and how does it contribute to your method of translation?

Years of translating have been a marvelous workshop for teaching myself English style, which has in turn improved my translating, but I don’t do my own creative writing.

Haruki Murakami uses many non-traditional (to a Western perspective at least) symbols in his works alongside of frequent cultural references. How much does translating these artifacts to a Western target language change the content?

In other words, what differences would someone who was fluent in both Japanese and English notice when examining both versions of a Murakami work?

Murakami’s most frequent cultural references are Western, so translation almost never involves such changes. He certainly invents a lot of unusual similes, and he has his own pet symbols (wells, corridors), but these strike a Japanese reader as unusual and fresh as they do a Western reader. There is very little difference.

What brought you to Haruki Murakami?

An American publisher asked me to evaluate Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World for possible translation. I told them it was an amazing book that they should by all means publish and volunteered to translate it, but they ignored my advice.

A couple of years later, Alfred Birnbaum’s translation came out from Kodansha International. Reading that one book hooked me.

Many translation theorists believe that translations are most beneficial if they leave elements of the original language in the translation, while others believe this results in a text obviously written in a type of “translatorese.”

Japanese is an especially interesting example, because sentences avoid mentioning subjects so that in a first-person narrative, the “I” is much less present than Americans are used to. How did you decide to deal with that difference?

Photo: pixie_bebe

I hope I’ve given some idea in my appendices on translation how hopeless it is to try to produce a literal translation of a Japanese text. The absence of subjects in Japanese sentences, however, is no more of a problem than the absence of a name in the sentence: “He ate a peanut butter sandwich.” Who is “he”?

How can speakers of English possibly know what “he” stands for? It’s so mysterious! Please read my Making Sense of Japanese (Kodansha International) if you want to learn more about the myth of the subject-less sentence in Japanese.

Describe your process of translation. Where do you do your work? How long do you work for? What particular methods do you use?

I work at my desk at home on a computer for about four hours at a time, beginning after breakfast and ending when my brain turns to mush. I’m not good for much of anything after lunch.

I try to do as finished a job as possible in the first draft, and I always keep the original text close by when working on later drafts. Some people translate first into a kind of literal mishmash and then polish it without much reference to the original, but I’ve never been able to work that way. I try to capture all the nuances right off the bat.

Does translating Japanese make you hyper-aware of other translations you encounter? What is the worst translation that you have ever found in mass-circulation?

I do find myself reading “through” other translations, guessing what the original might be. It can be annoying. I often refer my students to the translation of Natsume Sōseki’s Light and Darkness as an example of how wrong you can go when you translate grammar instead of ideas and images.

Do you think your experience as a translator could apply to translating from one medium to another (intersemiotically)? How would you translate Kafka on the Shore into a film?

Translating is the closest reading anyone could ever do, and near the end of a work it can give you a megalomaniac sense of the truth of your own reading. If you asked me this question at such a time, I would probably say that ONLY a translator could do what you are suggesting.

Fortunately, I’m in a calmer state of mind at the moment, and can only reply, “Huh?”

Does being a translator make Murakami aware of the potential for his works to be translated?

Yes, aware, but not obsessed. He is not writing primarily to be translated.

Community Connection

In Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Rubin quotes Murakami discussing translation: “Rather than worrying about the details, I’m just happy to have my work translated.” A rare opinion in the academia of translation, but Murakami is a rare individual.

If this interview has intrigued those new to Murakami, After the Quake: Stories
is a good starting place, while Rubin’s Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words is a an intriguing treat for long-time fans.

Photo: austrini

When I graduated from college, broke, badly in need of an adventure, and with little in the shape of a plan or commitment, I decided to set out solo on the long, open road.

Heading out on the highway alone and driving thousands of miles was something I’d always wanted to do; I just didn’t know when I was going to do it… until gas prices sunk to the $1.75 a gallon mark.

Not that I would mind the companionship, but there is an unsung liberation about the ability to stop and go on your own accord. Eat stick after stick of beef jerky. Accumulate a pile of ketchup packets on the passenger seat. Stop for coffee at 10 PM. Take in a beautiful vista. Listen to the music of my own choosing. Drive the speed limit of my choice through the Kansas prairie.

Photo: Nicholas T

The road: there is no truly accurate way or poetic to describe the surreal of cutting loose at 85 miles per hour down a paved and painted Interstate highway 2,100 miles long. When driving solo, you exists on your own terms while factoring in highway conditions and psychological factors, such as the ability to find self-amusement while pulling the 400-some mile haul through Kansas or Nebraska or Texas or the Dakotas.

Time takes on a temporal meaning and distance becomes the only way of calculating your progress. Turn off the music, scan the horizon, and just drive… listen to the cylinders pulse and hum blend with the subtle harmonic pitches of white noise when the wheels drive over different conditions: bridges, tunnels, concrete-slab highway, paved asphalt, passing trucks, grates, and the other variations that make the ultimate soundtrack of the road.

When Kansas City or Chicago or the arch over St. Louis rises over 8-lanes of highway glory after the monotony of the fields and farms and truck stops and travel plazas of the Midwest, it sends an electric pulse through the veins. The urge is to drive faster, even in heavy traffic.

Passing billboards, you acquire hawk-like instincts for the next town along the route, the next pull-off for a piss or a cup of tepid truck stop coffee or a quirky, amusing roadside attraction. These become primitive instincts for highway travelers. After all, who isn’t lured by sheer curiosity about claims of the world’s largest armadillo, a park of replica plastic dinosaurs, a Corn Palace, a cowboy boot emporium, or a pit of exotic South American vipers?

Photo: ljcybergal

Long miles on the highway and all that time for self-reflection have the tendency to lull you into melancholy. There is ample time to study license plates or think about hobbies not pursued, friendships or relationships lost, those who never left your hometown, mortality, books never read, strangers never acquainted, a project never started.

Perhaps better still is how all that time for reflection can lull you into the Zen-like nothingness coexisting with the alert mindfulness of driving. There is a maddening balance to spending days at a time in motion; the dotted-white line down the divided highway blurs with the phosphorous-mirrored glow of red tail-lights of tractor-trailers.

However, your existence as a social being can easily be reclaimed at night, while dining in no-name roadhouses or yapping it up at 1 in the morning with the front desk clerk at a characterless Econolodge and then heading to the dim-lit bar to toast a cheap Budweiser with truck drivers and talk sports with the road-weary, who can also be chock-full of compelling road stories and tales of Interstate romance.

Photo: cloudsoup

This is truly the great thing about solo highway driving: it squeezes out one’s xenophobic tendencies through miles of reexamination.

Eventually, one gets to a destination. Long-haul truck drivers drop-off at a delivery point and even Kerouac’s adventure came to a close looking west at the sunset, dreaming of America the Brave and woefully reminiscing about crisscrossing the continent.

The car is parked, the doors are locked, and – hopefully – you arrive safely over many miles traveled. The brain throbs, thinking it is still in motion, like a Psilocybin mushroom trip at a freewheeling Grateful Dead concert. This is worth a crooked smiling, just at the sheer delight in knowing the accomplishment of covering a significant distance on one’s own terms.

Why do Americans insist on driving when we have Amtrak and cheap, characterless coast-to-coast budget flights? Because the highway-as-symbolism is a working monument to the Jeffersonian ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Highways are a testament to equality in democracy, allowing anyone with the ability to be mobile to access beautiful, spacious skies and amber waves of grain, giving Woody Guthrie’s refrain of “This land was made for you and me” a truly unique meaning.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Inspired to take your own road trip? Check out our 10 day guide to driving the skinny panhandle of Idaho. And if you need help planning, check out “6 Rules of the American Road Trip.”

Photo: World Resources Institute Staff

At a hostel in Lençóis, a few hundred kilometers inland from the famous city of Salvador, Brazil, the owner asks me to translate. Fluency in many languages is a boon and a bane. On this occasion it is the latter, for I am translating for two budget travelers, so frugal that I would not hesitate to call them cheapskates.

After first traveling and now living in South America, I’ve begun to wonder why some travelers are obsessively cheap. I admire anyone who seeks to travel independently, but question those who turn thriftiness into a sport.

Is extreme frugality ethical? Is it even worth the trouble? Here are some of the scenarios I have encountered that led me to question the thrifty intentions of some travelers.

Budget accommodation

Photo:krebsmaus07

A foreign couple stayed in a room costing R$40 per night (at that time, approximately $20 USD). When checking out, they offered to pay R$30 instead. The room did not live up to their expectations and, in their opinion, was worth R$10 less. They had stayed two nights, so their intention was to save R$20 ($10 USD).

Their savings would have amounted to a measly five dollars per person.

The travelers lost the argument and almost missed their bus out of town. They left cursing at the owner, as if a great fortune (and, perhaps most importantly, a sense of victory) had escaped their grasp.

Still, it’s hard for me to imagine that those five dollars would have had a catastrophic effect on their long-term finances. On the other hand, multiply that amount times many travelers, and the effect on the local economy is huge.

Sadly, this was not the only time I encountered the scenario. It repeated itself in other cities, in and out of Brazil, suggesting that the phenomenon is not uncommon. And that fact makes the traveler’s handful of saved dollars gain considerable importance in local economies.

Brazilian Carnival

Budget travelers struggle with Carnival in Brazil. Travel during the biggest party in the world, logic dictates, is more expensive than normal, but many foreign travelers are surprised by this fact.

Photo: Luciano Guelfi

They want to visit Rio de Janeiro or Salvador, and are astonished at the price hike in airfare and lodging, destroying their South American budget travel fantasy.

If the budget is so tight, travel in low season, or spend Carnival in a small town, away from state capitals and the most famous parties. Remember, Carnival is celebrated everywhere in Brazil. If someone chooses to attend some of the biggest parties in the world, such as those in Rio and Salvador, they should expect to spend a couple of extra dollars.

Work to extend your holiday?

Photo: Meanest Indian

Budget travelers who wish to find service industry work in order to support their extended vacations, such as waitressing or working in a hostel, are often unaware of how that decision affects local economies.

The first consideration is that work permits are usually easier to get if you have a formal education and skill set in a high-demand area. People who don’t have these skills seek countries that are relaxed in the enforcement of their work visa laws, and thus become havens for foreigners.

But you could find yourself being deported from certain other countries, like Brazil, if you lack the proper authorizations and get caught. Some people will idealistically argue that breaking work visa laws hurts no one…but there is one reality you’ll quickly encounter: jobs are scarce everywhere.

In Buenos Aires, foreigners looking for work are as easy to find as qualified Argentines living on the streets. Is it fair to compete with the locals in a country with high levels of unemployment and where the minimum wage is about a tenth of the cost of your airfare?

Budget travelers are not destitute migrants looking to support their families or going abroad because they’re unable to find work in their home country. They are seeking to extend their holiday. Competing with lowly paid service workers definitely hurts someone.

Hitchhiking

All cheapskate travelers attempt to justify their stingy ways, and one practice I especially tend to question is that of hitchhiking. While trying to hitchhike in a country where you don’t speak the local language could be considered an adventure, it’s rather silly.

I’ve heard the argument repeated like a mantra: “I want to meet the locals.” Every traveler seeks some form of contact with “the locals,” but how do you expect to establish a significant connection with “the locals” if you can’t communicate with them?

This is not a reason to hitchhike, but an excuse to justify being a cheapskate.

Hitchhiking in a developing country raises another interesting dilemma. In some countries, the person providing the car ride might earn, in a year, what the traveler earns in a month back home. Is that fair? How about at least giving the driver some money for gas?

Photo: Zach Klein

Would it be more responsible to catch a bus and contribute to the local economy? While traveling in South America, I have met interesting and kind locals who, by sheer luck, were sitting next to me on the bus. Meeting people is more about attitude and personality than the means of transportation.

Frugality as a lifetime commitment

Why save five dollars in a hostel in Brazil only to spend four times that on a DVD you don’t really need back at home? Why hitchhike in a developing country while making payments on an expensive new car? Why seek cheap meals on the road while eating and drinking at fancy restaurants and bars back home?

Thoreau put it best: “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”

Life is the biggest trip of all, and that’s why I’m a budget traveler at all times, not just while on the road. Being frugal at home means I can avoid being cheap while traveling.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Have you encountered cheapskate behavior on the road? What are YOUR thoughts on these and other practices?