Feature photo and photo above by Robin Esrock.

Picture me, sitting in a black leather chair with a fluffy bunny tail sewed onto the backrest.

A drop-dead gorgeous waitress is dressed like Alice in Wonderland, serving a group of girls with a stuffed teddy bear at the head of the table. The décor is purple velvet, with private mirrored booths cloaked behind thick curtains.

My pint glass is lit from above by a 10 foot desk lamp, and the girls are chattering away like grannies at a late-night dungeon tea party. It’s innocent and perverse and culturally extreme.

This is Tokyo through the looking glass.

It’s tough not to feel like someone has turned the cultural sweater inside out. The brands are all here– Prada, Gucci, KFC, McDonald’s– but they’re re-imagined, adapted for a country that is… different. Hence, shrimp burgers and sky rise Prada stores.

Photo by Robin Esrock.

Bigger, brighter, bolder, in creative directions the west might not handle. Take the Elvises. Every Sunday for over a dozen years, these guys have dressed up in black leather, slicked back their hair, and danced to 50’s rock n’ roll. They do this in Yoyogi Park, publicly, and they bust their moves all day, rain or shine.

A few yards from them, another group has started, and this brewing park side rivalry has all the makings of a West Side Story. We call this theater, but in Tokyo, this is life.

Further along the path, young rock bands are performing for their enthusiastically supportive girlfriends. They are so close together that the music blends into one distorted punk-folk-Japanese-pop-metal-ballad. My stomach grumbles, so I pick up a chicken yakitori stick from a street vendor, which cost $5. Next time, I’ll let my stomach grumble, because street food anywhere shouldn’t cost $5.

The contradictions perfectly sum up modern Tokyo.

Here, there’s nothing you have to see, and subsequently nothing to get disappointed about when you see it. Of course, with a city that has double the population of Scandinavia, there’s no shortage of sights.

Like the deafening pachinko parlors, in which little metal balls are fed into digital machines as a form of approved gambling. Or the Ginzu district on the weekend, when the main thoroughfare is turned into a pedestrian mall, complete with garden furniture and with tarmac scrubbed so clean you can eat off it.

Photo by Robin Esrock.

Shibuya has that famous intersection where thousands of people gather every few minutes to cross the road, rapidly dispersing when the traffic light changes. Most are carrying shopping bags from high-end western stores, although how they afford to buy this stuff is a mystery to me. Without a doubt, Tokyo is the most expensive city I’ve come across.

It makes London and New York prices seem positively reasonable: $6 just to get into a cab, $10 for a drink in a cheap bar, $120 for a haircut, $550 a month for parking. The price of small things, like batteries, or toothpaste, shocked me more than the $80 entrée restaurants or $400 t-shirts.

All of this, I have to confess, is fantastic. Although it represents the pinnacle of hyper-commercialism and brand consumerism, Tokyo is unique. I felt like a complete alien, which, honestly, can be one of the most rewarding joys of traveling. Without my generous hosts, friends working in Tokyo, I would be lost, broke, dazed and confused, sleeping in a capsule and foraging through yesterday’s budget bento boxes. The opportunity to see this whacked-out planet, on my budget, was music to my ears.

Fortunately, you don’t have to hear my music in your ears. No visit to Tokyo is complete without karaoke, which is taken more seriously than Canadians take ice hockey. Themed rooms are hired by the hour, costing anywhere between $40 and $5000, although I just made that last figure up. You can sing from jacuzzis, swimming pools, bedrooms, bars, coffins and bubbles.

Photo by Robin Esrock.

If you can think of something bizarre, someone in Tokyo is doing it.

Tokyo also has historical contrasts, and this is where you see those quintessential Japanese photos of temples, shrines and little girls dressed in kimonos. To get to the Meiju Jinku Temple, you have to walk past the Harujuku Girls, through a beautiful forest, and into the wooden complex full of calligraphy, lanterns, gongs, and everything else Japan.

The attention to detail, the level of service and the pride of work here filters through all facets of society. At the bank, a representative ran from her desk to the counter to help me. Ran! Taxi drivers smile and nod and turn off the meter when they get lost. The efficiency is unnerving.

While they have taken so many parts of the west and are clearly fascinated with American culture in particular, the Japanese have added their quirks and customs to create this bizarre culture unlike any I’ve ever seen before. The balance of progress and tradition, politeness and hostility, and rules and deviance make Tokyo the most fascinating city on the planet.

Feature photo and photo above by Robin Esrock.

I was stumbling around a music festival near Budapest when a young Serbian girl invited me into a warm tent for a cup of tea.

I’ll always remember her reaction when I told her I was traveling to several dozen countries around the world for a year. Her mousy nose scrunched up, and she asked, sincerely, “why?”

I have plenty of heavy ammunition for just such a question: different cultures, experience, yada yada.

But I’ve never quite found the real answer to that question, the reason behind visiting so many places in such a short space of time (although one year might not seem that short; two weeks in countries like Peru, Bolivia or Poland barely scratch the surface).

Perhaps something inside tells me this is my one, only and last chance to see the world.

No, that’s fatalistic nonsense.

This week I think I may have found the answer, and it’s very simple.

Photo by Robin Esrock.

Finding Laos

I had no intention of visiting Laos at all. It wasn’t on my itinerary; it wasn’t a place I had to see. I knew hardly anything about the country, and no clue what the capital was (do you?)

I know that the U.S. conducted a secret war in Laos in the 1960’s – knowledge gained primarily from watching “Air America” and “Lethal Weapon” with Mel Gibson. Frothing at the mouth, Mel told me Laos is a center for opium and heroin production, full of Vietnam vets heading up massive drug rings, and also contains thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance.

A landlocked country bordering Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, China and Cambodia, Laos is run by a communist government and is the poorest country in Southeast Asia.

Also, if one more cute kid smiles at me, I’m going to have to start adopting.

Luang Prabang, north of Laos, is the religious center of the country. I arrived at dusk and was jolted by the pace. The lack thereof. My ragatg group of eight walked through the night market where women sat by their colorful bags and cloths, chattering amongst themselves, or sitting back peacefully, playing with their children.

Destinations

Community Connection to Laos

No one yelled at us. No one tried to sell us anything.

We walked along the narrow market path, marveling at the quality and price of the goods on offer.

Patience And Beer Lao

We were fresh meat with backpacks, and yet the starving masses were leaving us alone. Could these people actually respect our right just to be? The Thais sure didn’t; in fact, not many people in third world countries do (and who can blame them?)

The tuk-tuk drivers descended on us like mosquitoes, but even they took “no” for an answer. A few minutes away, in a lush, paved neighbourhood, we found a guesthouse, handed in our laundry for 80c a kilogram, and investigated the rumour that Lao beer, named Beer Lao, is amongst the finest in the world.

The French influence is heavy in Laos, being a former French colony, and a French businessman setup the Beer Lao brewery with the very latest technology and brewing techniques. Beer Lao lives up to its reputation, which is why every traveller you meet in Laos is wearing a Beer Lao T-shirt. A big beer costs $1, about the same price as the T-shirt.

The locals appeared extraordinarily content with nothing, an attitude that seemed to rub off on travelers too.

Waiting over an hour for a salad, it’s just impossible to get upset with the guy in the restaurant because he won’t quit smiling. I got the impression that if he could serve the food for free, he would.

There is something tangibly beautiful about the people of Laos, most clearly evident when you see children playing in the streets. Their greeting of “sabadee” is yelled out with such enthusiasm it can break your heart.

Photo by Robin Esrock.

This innocence and warmth is all the more touching when you consider the violence of Lao history.

Half the country is waiting to explode; the US bombed the countryside into oblivion, in secret, for nine years (at a cost of $2 million a day), a civil war followed, a communist government still runs things into the ground, drugs are illegal, yet rampant.

There is little industrial development, no railways, the state controls all media, and the national highway is as smooth as a bowl of rocky cornflakes. This was weighing heavy on my mind, so it was time to chase the dragon.

The Golden Triangle

Like sex-tourism in Thailand, narco-tourism is strongly discouraged in Laos, but many people come here for exactly that.

In Colombia or Peru, you can buy grade-A cocaine for as little as $8 a gram (in New York or London, it can cost as much as $160 a gram). Laos is part of the Golden Triangle that supplies most of the world’s raw opium, later refined into heroin.

Opium itself dates back 6000 years and has been used as a powerful medicinal agent ever since, primarily in cocktails like morphine.

Quite simply, opiates take away the pain, but due to their highly addictive nature, quickly bring it back, and then some. Still, opium has inspired famous writers for centuries, and if Conan Doyle could puff the magic dragon, why can’t Modern Gonzo?

Although I had moved out my first guest house to escape screeching early morning roosters, the friendly young manager had offered to procure us some sticky opium resin, and quickly fashioned us a bong with a water bottle, tin foil, empty pen cartridge and candle wax.

We sat around taking hits while sweet smelling smoke filled the room.

Photo by Robin Esrock.

Although I got a slight buzz, after several inhales I saw no dragon to chase, and soon enough we had smoked all the black gunk.

Somewhat to my relief, my experience with opium did not lead me to some wet, back alley, where a leathered, hairy guy named Chang was ready to fill my pipe.

But if opium is so addictive and widespread, maybe that’s why everyone in Laos is so happy. I would investigate my “happy” theory later.

“Sabadee!”

Some locals have offered me some traditional Lao whiskey, made from rice, and I can’t refuse.

Their generosity and warmth are unnerving, and totally inspiring. “A top ten day?” asks my friend, Minesh, a fellow round the worlder. “A top three day!” I respond.

I have traveled to enough places and seen enough things to know when something is truly special. I don’t know how long Laos will continue to exist in its current, bizarro state, but I feel blessed to have discovered it at all.

To the Serbian girl: I travel because every once in a while I stumble across a universe so unexpectedly inspiring it can change everything.

Cultural understanding, beautiful scenery, wonderful people, food – it’s all important, but when new worlds blossom where before there were none, you cannot help but feel some of the magical power of life itself.

New Caledonia is a cigar-shaped island in the South Pacific, a colony of France, with a population of about 250,000.

Half the people are descended from white French colonialists; the other half are black Melanesians, called kanaks, descended from Papua New Guinea.

The currency is linked to the Euro, the government is run out of Paris, so what you have here is basically a little chunk of France floating 10 000 miles away from the mainland.

Gourmet mustard, Bordeaux wine, Fois de Gras, patisseries, prominent noses, stable administration. Basically, New Caledonia is unlike any of the other islands nearby (the French colony of Tahiti is a five hour flight away).

Although it is staggeringly beautiful, New Caledonia does not get many tourists.

Given its high cost, its remoteness, its inaccessibility, and its, well, Frenchness, most foreign tourists tend to hit Fiji and have never heard of New Caledonia. (Incidentally, the name was coined by the explorer James Cook, who on discovering the island’s rich greenness and hospitable nature, named it after his native Scottish homeland).

I was convinced that I was also exploring new ground, probably the first South Africanadian to walk these shores, and nobody could tell me otherwise, because they all spoke French.

Channeling Hunter S. Thompson

Clutching a 6-gauge shotgun outside our cottage at
the Paddock de la Boutana.

I am here to visit Phillipe Renauld – Gonzo Jump Photographic Specialist, wing man, multi and cunning linguist, and my cheese-loving backpacking companion of Brazil, Croatia and Albania.

He’s third generation New Caledonian, a guy who has grown up hunting large fish with a spear gun in seawater warmer than pee in a wet suit.

After enduring months of stories about coconut-lined beaches and hunting this, that or the other, I accepted his kind invitation to visit his island and see for myself.

A friendly face at the airport (at last!) and within a half hour out of customs I’m freshening up in a crystal warm stream surrounded my mountains. Philippe has a big 4×4, a swank apartment, and likes to shoot things with his big guns.

The two-and-a-half hour flight from Auckland had cost a bucket, so everything was his treat, starting with a night in the bush, hunting Bambi and blowing away empty beer cans with .22 rifle. Now before you report me to PETA and start packing ziplock bags of blood to attack me outside my apartment, know that deer are plentiful in New Caledonia – in fact, there are more deer than people.

Beside the odd redneck Yankee trophy hunter with a mullet and a nickname like “Colorado Bob” or “Mississippi Pete”, local hunters eat what they kill.

I know this, because just about everyone had a storage freezer packed with chunks of meat.

Revelations At Sunset

Paddock de la Boutana lies in the north of the island, on a massive stretch of land, and attracts not only hunters but anyone looking to chill out around large bonfires under a beauty pageant of galaxies.

Phillipe brought his .22 rifle, and his 6-gauge shotgun, so powerful that it practically obliterates any creature unlucky to get slugged. Violence is best preceded with calm, and during a tranquil sunset 4×4 drive along the property, I ruminated on four things:

• New Caledonia is a very big island with a very small population.
• The interior reminds me of Africa, the coast reminds me of Brazil.
• All girls sound sexy with a French accent
• Deer know how to hide during the day, which is why we’d go hunting at night.

After grilling some steaks over a wood fire, we joined up with some French tourists for the night hunt.

No less than a few meters out the yard, and the spotlight revealed dozens of deer, grazing on the grass. They were as plentiful as alcoholic blue-haired grannies in Vegas, as abundant as giggles in a Catholic girls high school.

Killing Bambi

The sun sets over the biggest plain on the island. It’s
almost African.

After the novelty of nature wore off, the hunter selected tomorrow night’s dinner with the spotlight.

A sharp explosion, and Bambi dropped dead. Her buddies ran for about three meters, stopped, and carried on grazing, as if the mourning period was over.

We drove up to the deer, which Phillipe insisted was dead but the legs were still shaking. The hunter sliced its throat like you might slice a cucumber, picked it up and threw it into the back of the 4×4 with the rest of us. I put my hand on Bambi’s coarse hair, still warm to the touch, and positioned my feet so that the blood wouldn’t stain my sandals.

Bambi didn’t look sad. Bambi just looked dead. She smelt of musk.

We drove back to the Paddock, where Bambi was hung up and her innards removed, the way you might pull your laundry out the washing machine. And that was that.

I was worried that the experience might traumatize me into a vegetarian, but to be honest it all seemed quite natural in a primeval sort of way. I was offered a kill but declined when I learnt that I’d have to gut and clean my victim. Plus I don’t have a storage freezer in my backpack for the meat.

It took about 10 minutes for the deer to
be emptied, with the experienced
precision of a surgeon.

Instead I opted for sitting on the porch blasting empty beer cans, in the time honored trailer-park hick tradition. Even from some distance, I am happy to report that I have a sniper’s eye, although the shotgun’s recoil was so immense it left a large yellow bruise just below my shoulder.

Instead, I am happy to shoot with my camera and kill with my photographs.

Food For The Bold

When a New Caledonian asks you to guess what it is you’re eating, shut up and keep chewing.

The veal was delicious, until I found it was turtle. I’ve tried turtle soup before in New Orleans, but this was steak, and well, all I could think about was that old, wise turtle character in Neverending Story.

Suddenly I was chewing on Yoda. Strong in the taste it was. The chef, Michel, is a former gendarmerie with enough guns to start another French revolution.

His storage freezer was stocked with all manner of creatures, the strangest of which were two frozen fruit bats, fortunately averted from the menu by Phillipe’s knowledge of my love for Batman. Throughout the week, Phillipe was determined to flaunt the island’s culinary offerings, both French and indigenous.

I tried Fois de Gras for the first time, various local deep-fried delicacies, chocolate croissants, fruits, tropical fish, octopus, and the unfortunate cheese-tasting incident that left me gagging, my breath smelling like the underwear of a coal miner with gastroenteritis.

Man vs Fish

Man vs Fish, but hungry man will always win!

On a hot, windy day, we jumped in a boat and motored out a couple kilometers to the reef that protects the island from heavy waves and hungry sharks.

Snorkeling above, I watched Phillipe and his friend Jan spear all manner of fish, and one enormous lobster that put up a vicious fight.

As we know, I’m not the ocean-faring type and pretty soon the strong currents and wind took its toll, plus my shark phobia kicked in when Jan mentioned he’d seen a five-meter tiger shark a few weeks back right where we were hunting.

So I fed the fish with my breakfast and we headed back to shore, divvying up the spoils for a sensational fish BBQ that evening.

I gutted my first fish, cut myself posing with the lobster (weighing heavier than a break-up conversation on the alter), met some friendly locals, and soaked in the sun with the number one local beer, creatively named, Number One beer.

That night, I heard a gunshot in the distance. One less Bambi was walking the plains.

A Glowing Jewel

On the way back to the capital of Noumea, home to half the island’s population, we drove past dozens of hill tribes, men with thick dreadlocks smoking marijuana under coconut trees, cappuccino kids with afros diving from bridges into the sea below.

Old kanak men would walk along the winding highway with a rifle slung behind their back, just in case they see anything for dinner.

New Caledonia did have some political turbulence in the late 1980’s, when the France had to send the army in to restore peace after tribal liberation movements got nasty, along with over-zealous whites storing too many guns.

But peace has reigned for twenty years, and given the volatile state of other islands in the South Pacific, locals are confident peace will continue.

I felt that special buzz of truly discovering one of our planet’s glowing jewels, hidden deep down in its cleavage, as if only for the eyes of its most persistent lover.

Whatever that means.

A Warao child plays in the government water collection lids.

The morning was nigh for a week long jungle adventure deep into the heart of Venezuela’s Orinoco Delta.

We’d be leaving at 5am, packing light into dry bags. Accommodation would consist of hammocks, meals of camping basics, or whatever we can catch.

The second largest river drainage system after the Amazon, the Orinoco has an average temperature of 27C degrees, and is 25,000 square kilometres of unspoilt, undeveloped eco-system, protected, owned and inhabited by the indigenous Warao people.

But first, we’d have to get there, and in hot-blooded Latin America, this can become an adventure unto itself.

All is well racing along the highway, until suddenly, the cars in front stop moving, which is never a healthy sign for a highway. Chris pulls the Land Cruiser across into the oncoming lanes and makes his way at a steady pace into oncoming traffic, passing hundreds of stationery cars on the right.

But then, this lane becomes choked too. There is a demonstration up ahead, a village has blocked the road to protest lack of civil services.

Apparently, this is quite normal. Since the car isn’t going anywhere, now’s the perfect time to drive into the world of the continent’s most controversial political leader, the outspoken never-a-dull-moment Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez.

Leftwing Fire

Hugo Chavez on the wall.

You may have heard of Chavez. He’s the guy who waved a Noam Chomsky book in front of the UN and compared George W. Bush to the Devil himself.

He’s best buds of Fidel Castro, a huge critic of the US hegemony, the rare meeting of a left wing radical with pockets so full of oil he can put his money where his mouth is.

All around the country, large billboards of Chavez shadow the streets, graffiti and T-shirts comparing Chavez to Che Guevara, the ultimate symbol of the radical revolutionary.

With one of the richest oil reserves in the world, Chavez is not dependent on the US business to float his empire, and is not afraid to say so.

With Morales from Bolivia and Lula in Brazil, he’s the spark behind the leftwing nationalistic fire that is sweeping Latin America, much to the horror of US business interests, which would prefer everyone just stay at home, watch Friends, and buy a new blender.

Instead, Hugo’s channeling massive oil profits back into the country, which explains why a litre of gas in Venezuela costs a staggering 5c, or 2.5c if you use blackmarket prices. Chris fills up the 50litre Land Cruiser and it costs $3. Go Hugo!

Trouble In Paradise

Except, wait, what’s this, Hugo shuts down the largest and most popular independently run TV station in the country for criticising his policies.

And now he wants to be El Presidente for life. These are not the signs of healthy democratic regime, which might explain why intellectuals and students are peacefully protesting in their thousands, and world media (with a wee bit of help from US business interests) is slowly but surely painting Chavez into a fruit and nut bar past its sell by date.

A populist, a voice for the silent masses, no wonder the small, wealthy elite are threatened, and the Church is convulsing over Chavez’s goal to permanently split the Church and State in this Roman Catholic country.

He’s pissing off the people who are benefiting from the status quo, in which millions live without running water or electricity, and dozens of people get murdered in the slums that border Caracas every weekend.

Chris is on the fence, but has definitely seen improvement from Chavez’s policies on the local villages around him. So very few of the right people step onto the historical political stage at the right time. Mandela, Ghandi, Churchill. Most arrive with good intentions, and leave bloated with fat bank accounts.

Chavez – well, we’re going to have to wait and see what becomes of him.

In the meantime, there seemed little he could do to get us into the jungle, and the local governor wasn’t worth a fart in a frat house since his wife busted him in bed with his male bodyguard. Ah, Latin America.

The Sinking Car

We could try drive the old route, but with the heavy rains of late, it might be a little dicey. We fly along a cracked path until we hit a bridge, washed out in muddy brown water.

Stalled on the highway

Chris shifts the Cruiser in to 4×4, and decides to take a chance. Have you ever heard the sound of a sinking car? Or seen water rise above the windows?

He’s revving it and we’re screaming and God-Help-Us if somehow we don’t find the smallest chunk of road for the tire to grip and the car lurches forward to reach the other side.

Shouts of victory! High fives all round! No other cars dare attempt this sort of madness. The roads will be clear for miles!

When. The car begins to throb, the engine groans, the iPod goes dead, the battery fails, and the Land Cruiser comes to a hopeless halt. The alternator has been flooded by the bridge crossing, we are stuck in the middle of nowhere, the mid-day sun is batting us hard over the head.

We hail down a pick-up, and within minutes they’ve tied a piece of rope to our cruiser and are pulling us along, about two metres separating the two cars.

Well and good, sure, except these guys decide to hit about 120 km/hr, overtaking big trucks on a narrow highway, and then, oh, yes, and then it starts to hail.

Dying On The Highway

Fear is not jumping off a waterfall. Fear is not swimming in shark infested waters.

Fear is being pulled along at 120 km/hr on a dangerous road in a blinding tropical storm, without windscreen wipers, when a single brake will result in massive rear-end and almost certain damage to all occupants within.

There was good reason to tighten my sphincter because Jungle Chris, the kind of guy tough guys want to be, had white knuckles on the wheel and crazed animal fear in his eyes. We drove like this for an hour.

All I could think about was that dying on a Venezuelan highway seemed somehow beneath me.

Of course, the clouds parted just as quickly as they stormed, a brilliant sun burst forth, we finally had some vision out the front window, and the guys in front decided to take us right to the bridge where we would meet our boat.

J.P would stay behind to sort the car out, we would load up the kayaks, the motorboat, and finally, this time I mean it, head into the Delta.

Three days later. Red Army Karl must have spiked the drinks, because if I didn’t see the photos, I wouldn’t believe we dived into piranha-infested waters at sunset to swim with the pink dolphins.

Yet there it is on tape – us in the water, and a few metres away, a rare pink dolphin leaps into the air. Memories of that night at the Lodge are blurry.

Jungle Fever

I played with a tucan, a macaw. I see a Palestinian flag, news clippings above the bar mentioning the Hizbollah.

Swimming with the pirhanas

The lodge is owned by two Palestinian guys, and in my head, drunk from sun, from exposure, my liver fighting the toxins from spider bites on my mosquito bites on my sand flea bites, I concoct conspiracies and mad fevers of paranoia.

A puma roars from a nearby enclosure, rescued by the brothers. Wild parrots fly overhead, I remember strong jungle rum, playing classic rock on the stereo, passing out in the cabin, our one night of luxury.

There is a hole in the net above the door handle, someone punched through the door to get in, the bloodsucking mosquitoes are everywhere! I slap my neck and the corpses of a dozen sand fleas are on my hand. A giant black tapir runs down the wooden boardwalk.

I look up in time to see the cow sized creature in a sprint, chasing the girls into their rooms, the sinister cloppity-clop, cloppity clop of its hooves on the wood. I feverishly dream of beasts and heat, sweat and danger.

We are the only guests this night in the Lodge. This is a good thing.

I had jungle fever, and I had it bad. Sleeping in a hammock takes some getting used to, and even Chris’s homemade repellent of baby oil, vitamin B12 and a dash of Deet was no match for the hordes, the armies, the full frontal invasion of jungle bugs.

I counted 136 bites on Julia’s lower leg. Just one leg. The humidity sticks to you like Velcro, and swimming is not too advisable since these waters are home to man-eating piranhas, hungry for human fingers and toes.

Add in the giant snoring of our Director of Photography Sean, lack of sleep, and well, you’ve got the making of one unforgettable, incredible, now-this-is-the-real-gonzo adventure.

Into The Wild

Paddling into the Delta

We had 150km of river to get through, a twin-engined open-roof speed boat, a couple of kayaks, a few days of food, and invaluably, Jesus and Pina, two quiet but good-natured Waraos who knew these labyrinth tributaries the way a bus driver knows his routes.

Also, Chris has been guiding jungle expeditions here for ten years, has enormous experience with the Waraos, the elements, the challenges of life inside the planet’s green lung.

The unspoilt beauty of this wilderness is staggering. By kayak, but speedboat, the water is a mirror to the lush tropical trees that tower above it, the sky as big as Dali’s imagination.

Wild macaws and parrots fly in love pairs above, while in the trees, cappuccino and howler monkeys swing on the vines. Fresh water sting rays gently float like orbs in the universe, the sound of the jungle at night becomes a hum of life, and yet 99% of it is beyond view, behind the curtain of darkness.

And intertwined are the People of the Canoe, the Warao, a tribe who live by the river in open-walled shacks, worshipping their tree of life, the morichi palm, which provides food in the form of giant worms, fruits and elixirs.

Physically resembling Mongolians, they talk in hushed tones, if ever, communicating in what Chris believes is “jungle telepathy.” Children learn to kayak before they can walk, families are nomadic, moving between different parts of the jungle.

It’s a beautiful dream, mixed up in the misguided concept of the noble savage, beyond the grasp of modern life. It’s a beautiful dream that has been woken up.

Old Meets Modern

First came the engines. 500 boat engines given to the Warao in some sort of political manoeuvre for votes, resulting in a swift change in how they move, how they interact.

Then came the villages, small concrete houses and generators, the government gathering the Warao into communities that never before existed (and the social conditions that come with poor, rural communities too).

Then came the satellite dishes and TV sets, the DVD players to napalm an unsuspecting people with messages of the west, without giving them the social tools to understand that advertising is all bullshit and television is television, not the real world.

Then came the movement towards the towns and cities, the breakdown of family units. Then came the German tourists, taking pictures from their speedboats at another exhibit in the human zoo.

Then came the missionaries to tell them that thousands of years of tradition are all wrong and they should all believe in a bearded white god who died on a cross.

Like the indigenous tribes of the Amazon, like the indigenous tribes anywhere, these gentle people don’t stand a chance.

We head into the brackish water, the Black Water, where the salt of the sea meets the fresh water. The channels are becoming narrower, the trees thicker and darker. The boat gently pulls along, barely sending a ripple in the water, as smooth as a polished granite.

A small channel breaks to the right, and there is a half naked boy fishing. It’s the kind of photo you see in National Geographic, a vision of humanity that is both inspiringly and frighteningly different.

I wonder what hope there is for the Warao, wherein lies their future.

A Little Prayer

Catching dinner.

We awake on the final morning in a small wooden camp on the water. Two hours on the boat to a small town where we would be met by the Land Cruiser.

The rain held up, sparing us the torture of the heavy downpour at high speed we experienced a few days back.

Waiting for the car, I walk in the village, houses painted in bright colours, past a Missionary Church. These “urban” Warao kids are wearing crosses, but one guy tells me it’s just for fashion.

A long drive back to Barcelona, a short flight to Caracas, choking traffic to a nearby hotel, early morning flight to Houston. The jungle has disappeared, the bugs, the river, the piranhas, the Warao. I see overweight people for the first time in a week.

“The Department of Homeland Security has declared the current terrorist threat level as: ORANGE. Please be aware of your surroundings and fellow passengers.”

I sit down, close my eyes. Imagine the red beach of Playa Colorado, dolphins and waterfalls, the channels of water in the Orinoco, piranhas and tapirs, the gentle stares of the Warao.

I open them to see an orderly line-up for the plane home, and say a little prayer.

Jakera (hello) to the shy, beautiful sisters who live with their parents near our small camp jungle camp / Photo Robin Esrock

According to the overweight missionary with braces, Jesus was coming to save me tonight, deep in the heart of the Orinoco Delta.

Not an emissary mind you, but Jesus himself, and he would save me, and save the primitive Warao people, because even though we’re quite happy (me the travel writer, them the indigenous people of one of the world’s remotest jungles) she knew, she just knew, that he was coming tonight, not in spirit, but in person!

I thought about the practicalities of this second coming, and made a fair attempt at some intelligent discourse, but when faith blinds people, it robs them of more than just vision.

“Do you know much about the Warao way of life,” I ask, “their respect for nature, the gods that make sense in their lives, as opposed to the god that makes sense in yours?”

“Oh, they practice witchcraft, but in their heart, they love Jesus,” she replies, my words bouncing off her head like an over-inflated soccer ball.

The Warao, it seems, will find Jesus whether they want to or not.

What is the difference between these blissed out misguided missionaries, followers of a 2000-year old Middle Eastern guy/Son of God named Jesus, and me, a gringo with a camera taking pictures in an exotic world that doesn’t want nor need me?

We’re both using these people, this place. I came to learn and write, they came to convert.

And stuck in the middle: fragile, timid, lacking ideological filters and completely vulnerable to religious, cultural or physical attack, are the People of the Canoe – the Warao of northern Venezuela.

Back The Beginning

Hugo Chavez and Che look on / Photo Robin Esrock

I’m going to row the boat back, paddle to the start and a frenetic arrival in Caracas, where graft is thick and with a few dollars one can skip the immigration line-up altogether.

It was immediately clear that, although the official currency is the Boliviano, this was not Bolivia. The airport was big and new and when you have the fifth largest oil reserves in the world, money counts for something.

Just don’t use the banks. They’ll give you a 2000 to 1 exchange rate, whereas just about anyone you talk to will gladly give you around 3200 to 1. The black market thrives, 70% on the dollar, despite the best efforts of president Hugo Chavez, of whom I’ll return to later.

There was no time to join in the fun of Caracas on a Friday night. Into a van, and we’re off to the north, a six hour bus ride to a beach town called Playa Colorado, and from here a further five hours (hopefully) to the world’s second largest delta, the Orinoco.

Caracas showed all the signs of a big South American capital: traffic, pollution, insane drivers, desperately poor and violent barrios, sexy mestizo girls, pounding reggaeton, neon-lit love hotels.

After spending time in La Paz, I was desperate to get out the urban jungle and into a real one.

To The Beach

The six lane highway slowly turned to four lanes, and finally into two. It was 11pm, I’d been in transit for 16 hours, but the journey into the jungle was only beginning.

Fat chickens roast on a large rotisserie at the roadside buffet, and like the late night air, the meal is hot and sticky. It reminds me of northern Brazil – the coconut trees, the humidity, women wearing their sexuality the way a yuppie wears a tie on Wall Street.

After a minor altercation with an SUV (a few dollars change hands, we drive off), we’re back on the road, I’m DJ’ing up front with my iPod trying to keep Harold the driver awake.

At last, Playa Colorado, a room with a few beds in a strange house, shown around by welcoming young girls with skin the colour of brown sugar. Mosquitoes are in abundance, a warm-up of things to come. I climb into my sleep sheet, reposition the fan, collapse in total transit exhaustion.

Awake to the sound of kids playing, a camera in my face, we’ve overslept, too late to drive to the Delta, but no worries, Chris has got plenty planned to keep us busy.

And so, enter to the left of the stage, Chris Patterson, the Scot of the Jungle, real-life cigarette-commercial man, host to this lush new world.

The Marlborough Man

After sailing in the Caribbean for ten years, Chris found himself the dream chaser for decadent Russian billionaires, organizing multi-million dollar adventures around the world for oligarchs, from balloons over the Serengeti to castles in Ireland, ice palaces in Iceland, to heliskiing in Whistler.

Chris, Scot of the Jungle, explains where we’re heading
/ Photo Robin Esrock

How do the rich have fun? Chris knows the answer, but after a few years riding the perfect wave, he had made enough to build his Jakera Lodge – backpacker heaven, school of life, one block away from Paradise, and just down the road from Dream Street.

Wiping away sleep from my eyes, I wander over from the overflow house to Jakera Lodge to find a cage housing a dozen Scandinavian girls in bikinis, swinging in hammocks.

“We have mosquito nets around all the enclosures,” explains Chris, “and we call this room, the Bird Cage.”

“You realize, nobody will believe a word of this when I write it,” I tell him in a low voice.

“Want to play with a baby river python?” he moves on.

“Sure, why not.”

“We found it on Google”

The Jakera Lodge is a hostel of sorts (think hammocks instead of bunks), a Spanish school, a Salsa school, a Scuba school, a Climbing school, a Whatever school.

Fishing off the dock

The clientele are mostly European, although all nationalities breeze through at some point, and people stay for anywhere from a few days to six months. It’s about immersion in a culture, in a language.

A few minutes away is Playa Colorado, a beach of red-hued sand, coconut trees, turquoise water. “We had a big night last night,” explains Chris’s partner Brendan, “the guys are a little hung-over.” This explains the tanned limbs poking out of hammocks wherever I look.

Tanya from England has been here for two months, and leaves today. “Everyone thought it would be dangerous to come to Venezuela,” she tells me. “But it’s been totally safe. The locals are friendly and encourage us with our Spanish. The people have been dynamic, there’s always fresh travellers arriving, it’s really a way of living.”

I ask her how on earth she found this place. “Google,” she tells me. “I typed in Spanish and Scuba.”

I speak to some other students – Dutch and Swedish girls. They typed in “Spanish Lessons in South America” and “Volunteer Travel”. I ask my travel partner Julia how on earth she found this place.

“I typed in Jungle Adventure in Google,” she answers.

I make a note to write a story about travelling through the power of Google.

Shark-phobia

Swimming with dolphins. Brendan organizes an old wooden speedboat from an old wooden pirate and we depart the beach, crowded with Sunday afternoon locals.

There is a nigh a gringo in sight. The water has the sparkle of a paparazzi flash on the tooth of a movie star.

“Today’s your day,” says Chris enthusiastically, his thick brown curls an affront to balding 39 year-olds everywhere (the secret is aloe vera). And then we see the curved fin of a pilot whale, breaking the surf just a few metres away from us.

“Mucho queso estente vista tacos boutros boutros ghali,” says the weathered pirate of the Caribbean. “He says it is a good omen for today, and the trip,” translates Chris.

Sure enough, within minutes we encounter a pod of dolphins. Two of them leap in the air as if to welcome us. Chris grabs the knee-board. I’m ready for the ride of a lifetime. But first, two bits of personal information for context:

• 1. I have a shark phobia since I saw Jaws on a beach holiday when I was six years old.
• 2. I have ear problems that prevent me from diving, and have prevented me from swimming in the past. Thus with when it comes to water, I am a water baby.

That’s when I find out that a tiger shark bit half the arse off a tourist just last week. And another attacked a fisherman the week before that. Right here at Playa Colorado.

Hungry tiger sharks, cruising around looking for tasty tourist butt. But, screams Robert Plant, “now’s the time, the time is now,” so I ignore the cello in my head, and jump in. The water is as warm as the kiddies section in a public pool.

“Go Gonzo!”

An Eye With A Soul

The boat pulls off, and I’m being towed behind like a piece of bait on the end of a fishing hook. I read somewhere that dolphins protect humans from sharks.

About to swim with the dolphins.

I know that sharks….a dolphin pops up a few metres to my right. Then another. Then they vanish together.

The boat swings left in an arc. I’m looking this way and that way, and then three more dolphins break, and two of them leap in the air in perfect unison.

We swing around again, but they seem to have disappeared, until a minute later, just as I begin to wander if pilot whales are dangerous, two dolphins pop up on either side of me.

For a fraction of a second, I stare into an eye looking right back at me, a playful eye, an eye with soul.

I know I am safe, I know I am alive, I don’t know what I know, except, I just connected with something, something real, something transcendent, and every muscle tenses up and hair stands up and screams and tears well up and organs chime and it’s toccata and fugue on the strings of my soul and in a flash it’s over.

They’re pulling me towards the boat.

“You just swam with dolphins, as people are meant to swim with dolphins,” says Chris. “In their space, at their welcome. ‘Something else, eh?”

I blubber something in response, to the camera that recorded it all, and after a few minutes, realize I’m wading on my knee board like a big fat turtle in shark infested waters.

Moments after I pull myself aboard the boat, as unbalanced as the old, weathered pirate guiding the outboard engine, as Chris decides he would be a good sport and take me canyoneering off a 28m waterfall in the nearby jungle.

Next Time: Welcome to the Jungle

I call it the People Chain. It’s like Facebook, offline, with edge.

The idea is to get random contacts in random places and see where it leads you. Might be a palace, might be a dark alley, but knowing anyone here who knows anyone there usually leads everywhere.

In this case, an old friend passed on the details of Joseph in Addis Ababa.

I knew nothing about him, who he is, what he does, only that we had a mutual friend and since the rest of Addis Ababa’s 5 million population were complete strangers, that was a start.

I called him from the hotel bar, and we arranged to meet the following evening over coffee. I’m still grappling with the firengi frenzy, this sense of wanting to give back but not perpetuate, when Joseph rolls in, sent from above to answer my prayers.

Born in Ethiopia, Joseph immigrated to Canada at a young age, settled in Montreal, later Vancouver.

He became the Canadian cross-country champion, competing in the World Championships against Ethiopian greats like Gabriel Hailleselassie, and then made a fortune in the dotcom days as an entrepreneur.

Able to retire in his mid-30’s, he decided to pack his family up and move to Ethiopia to give something back.

Investing In The Future

Investing in various start-ups, Joseph founded a charity called UniqueProjects.org to support orphans, and most recently has become passionately involved sponsoring a group of young kids from impoverished backgrounds who show promise of becoming professional runners.

Many consider Ethiopia to be the capital of Charity, the Home of the NGO. So it’s inspiring to find somebody independently making a difference, one kid, one dream at a time.

“Is it challenging to live here?” I ask Joseph, as a local minibus taxi narrowly avoids smashing into us from the left, another from the right, one in front and for all I know one above us too.

“I’m a long distance runner and entrepreneur,” he replies. “I’m made for challenges, but sometimes I think it’s hopeless.” He talks about the crippling bureaucracy, the constant corruption, the pollution, the problem of “thinking poor” in a country with so much potential.

But Addis, he explains, is the kind of city that grows on you, the kind of city you come to miss.

We’re climbing up Entoto Mountain, 8000ft above sea level, one of the few forested areas that remain in the area and offering a stunning view of Addis.

Joseph has arranged for me to go for a run with some of his sponsored runners, along with Megeysa Askule Tafa, one of the country’s top female athletes who won the Paris, Milan and Dubai marathons.

Running Uphill

Joseph and his Athletic Club

I wanted to find out more about his programs, plus it would be a great opportunity for the kids to meet a running hero, and leave my ferengi ass in the dust. I had however planned to keep up with them, at least for a little while.

“If you can beat these guys up the hill, I’ll give you a million dollars,” Joseph offers, and I begin to entertain the idea of being a millionaire. My backpack will have golden zippers.

Then the group takes off, running their “normal” pace, which translates into Robin’s full throttle, push-every-muscle-to-the- breaking-point-dash-to save-my-life sprint. Less than a hundred metres later, I’m hacking my small intestines out and the kids are laughing.

Workeneh was a shoeshine boy, Tibebe was homeless, and Kidest a domestic servant. Now they have a trainer, shoes, a place to stay, a basic allowance, and a shot at running on an international level.

Joseph explains. “Look, even if they don’t get to the Olympics, running encourages them to succeed, to discipline themselves, to focus on good, healthy behaviour. I understand what it can do for an individual. These guys were training with no shoes, no homes and one meal a day. This will give them confidence no matter what they decide to do.”

The Reason I Started Traveling

Joseph’s idea has caught the attention of friends and fellow athletes back in Canada, who are assigned a runner and can watch their charity run for gold. As I realized by the constant begging throughout the country, charity can be an overwhelmingly big hole, ready to swallow your money and hope.

And while every NGO needs donations, here was a small, unassuming man making a big difference in the lives of kids who showed him the dedication to succeed.

Meanwhile, I dropped to my knees after the first kilometre, but the kids carried me up the hill on their shoulders to the car. If I had won the million dollars, I’d have a much better idea on how to give it away.

We travel to learn. We travel to challenge ourselves, our expectations, our thoughts of the world.

If I want a holiday, I’ll book an all inclusive hotel on a beach. If I want to party, I’ll go to Ibiza. It’s never easy travelling in developing countries, and harder still in a country where foreigners are largely associated with financial aid.

Ethiopia’s landscape is inspiring, its culture and history fascinating. As more travellers discover it, perhaps the frenzy will subside, perhaps it will get worse.

Either way, the country just might be the very reason I started traveling in the first place.

Have you had an experience that captured your motivation to travel? Share in the comments!

It can get a little intense. / Photo Robin Esrock

I wake up to the sound of a women screaming in sexual climax.

Unfortunately, she’s not in my room, but rather, in the room next to mine, although with the cardboard walls she may as well be lying in my bed. A cockroach runs across the floor. It’s 6am.

The plane from Lalibela made it back to Addis late last night, a few hours late, not bad considering what it took for us to get there. I had hoped to check my email, but the email is down at the hotel.

The entire country is still using dial-up, and it takes a few hours to check my inbox from an internet cafe down the road. There is only one service provider, the government. There is only one cell phone provider, the government. There is one TV station, the government.

After decades of brutal communist rule, in which thousands were murdered and starvation was used as a political weapon, the current left-wing liberator is conforming to the typical pattern of African rule – when power comes, so does corruption.

The most recent elections were declared a farce by UN observers. Most people voted for the opposition. The opposition lost. Sounds like the U.S, in a way.

These are the things I’m thinking about, while the woman continues to scream, a different kind of rooster, a cock will doodle doo.

Heading Out

It will take three days by Land Cruiser to the Lower Omo Valley, one of the most culturally diverse regions on the planet. 53 nations live in Southern Ethiopia, most with unique customs and traditions, as different from western life as whales are to shitsus.

It takes some time to navigate out of Addis, stuck behind trucks and buses puking thick black smoke directly into the back of our throats. There are cows in the middle of the road, herds of goats, overloaded donkeys.

Children run in front of the car, and before long, we see the first of many road kill, a donkey, split in half in the middle of the road.

Our driver Ayalew honks repeatedly, at animals and people – the road is an obstacle course requiring absolute concentration. Bob Marley on the iPod, we leave the city behind, the lanes become narrower, but the countryside is lush with all the shades of green from the rainy season.

After a few hours, the asphalt disappears into a strip of never-ending craters. Tin shacks become mud houses become wooden huts with thatch ceilings. Small towns are crowded with people and livestock. Kids play ping pong and foozball under the shade of trees.

Shacks sell everything, and the only building that looks like it’s from this century belongs to the ominously sounding Ethiopian Insurance Corporation.

Hand painted street signs show donkey carts, and celebrate” Happy Millennium”, and show a dead baby, and the only word I can recognize is AIDS. Ethiopian writing is all dashes and squiggles, with English words appearing occasionally and usually misspelt.

The Land Modernity Forgot

After 250km, we drive through Shashamane, welcomed by a hand painted billboard of Bob Marley. Rasta colours are prominent, as are tall foreign men, their dreadlocks towering over locals.

Shacks sell everything / Photo Menfes Geddus

Each kilometre along the bone shaking, acacia-tree lined dirt road seems to wipe another century off humanity’s recent progress.

No glass, no cement, no electricity, or phones, or wide screen TV’s. No tennis courts and swimming pools, no basements, no driveways, nor cars to drive them. No windows or patios, or dishwashers and washing machines.

Forget about laptops, battery-powered toothbrushes, mattresses, linen, or bathtubs. Throw out the microwave, blenders, desks, cabinets and sofas. Here we are exactly how we were, before words like Globalization, or the Renaissance, or the Industrial Revolution, or Cyberspace.

Living in round huts, working fields during the day, sleeping around a fire in the dark, using wooden headrests as pillows, on a bed of thin, dried animal skin.

Then a mosque, with a single minaret, and the huts have a crescent symbol above. After the Eastern Orthodox Church, Islam is the country’s second religion, and unlike the civil war in neighbouring Sudan, Christians and Muslims live in peace.

The purpose of the road trip is to visit tribes along Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, and the Alaba, would be the first.

The Frenzy Begins

The Land Cruiser pulls up, and immediately we are surrounded by desperate, impoverished looking people. Children are wearing western style clothes that resemble rags, torn and filthy. Hands are out. I feel sick to my stomach, and so it begins.

However right, moral and well intentioned, the fact that you are expected to pay money to locals for photographs has hideously backfired in Ethiopia.

I see nothing wrong with remunerating someone who appears in my photographs. It’s only fair to reward them for the right to capture their image. The problem is that it has become a business in this country, encouraging desperate people to appear in tourist photos as a means of making easy money.

When I take pictures of people in foreign countries, I aim to capture an image that speaks, ( a thousand words?) about life, and the people who live it. It is never the intention to manipulate people, or take photos of them without their permission.

I look for the authentic, the real, the moment.

So consider the impact of a mob demanding I take their photo, and pay up seconds after I do. Gone are the moments of people being people, replaced by people doing whatever it is that will get foreigners to pull out their cameras, and their wallet.

It’s undeniable exploitation, by both parties, and the result left me taking timeless pictures with an accompanying memory I’d rather forget altogether.

Money Makes Everybody Crazy

One of many examples: We stop to join a group of locals on a donkey cart on the side of a highway. I ask first for permission, and then how much it will cost for the fare. I am told 20 birr.

Julia and get on the cart and the poor donkey heaves on, a few pictures are taken. People are laughing and smiling and I feel generous so I pull out a 50 birr note (about $5).

What ensued was a pushing match, the group turning on each other, demanding more money, grabbing me from all directions, literally ripping the money out of my hands. I was threatened, shoved, and had to run for the safety of the car. All because I wanted a photo, for which I was prepared to overpay the agreed price by more than double!

How could it not taint an experience? As one guy told me in Jinka:

“The money makes everybody go crazy!”

“All they know of ferengis is of NGO’s and tourists,” Da Witt, tells me over coffee in Addis.

He’s a local nutritionist who works for an NGO. Like our guides and drivers, he laughs off the Ferengi Frenzy, as it is called, but there is little doubt it has left a negative impact on our team.

There is an Ethiopia where it is customary to refuse gifts and handouts. There is an Ethiopia where people care and support one another, are warm and open and friendly to strangers, eager to learn from each other.

Unfortunately, if you’re a tourist in town for two weeks and plan on visiting locations suggested by a tour agency, chances are you won’t see it.

The Universal Language

I needed to find a way break through, and while music may be the international language, football trails a close second. We stop in a town and I buy a soccer ball.

After the game, I donated the ball. / Photo Robin Esrock

For the Konso people, well known for their agricultural terraces, I wanted to break the cage of the human zoo. Right away, things were different. Tourists pay a fee up front and get a local guide, who told me that the money is split with the tribe.

Although children flooded us with their familiar hands out, our local guide named Chu Chu kept them in line. He explained the significance of tribal walls, how unmarried men live together and serve the community, how trees are used to determine the age of the village.

At last I was learning something, and then I pulled out the soccer ball, and learnt a whole lot more. Whether I was merely distracting the kids or tapped into a desire to genuinely interact with a strange ferengi, we chose sides, played some soccer, and had some fun.

Whether I’m deluding myself or seeing the truth, for a half hour I wasn’t a human handout, just a traveller in a strange land trying to connect.

Next Chu Chu showed me a traditional game called grayka, involving a piece of wood and a lot of jumping (the jump being my forte), and soon everyone was in on the act. It was only once we began to make our way to the car that the frenzy took hold again, the calls for money, or “Highland” – empty bottles of packaged water.

I tipped Chu Chu well, he responded with genuine sincerity, and I left feeling a little better about the way things could be. It’s a catch-22 in any country.

Tourists want to interact with indigenous locals, but the process of interaction changes the way locals live, and in the end, what you get is the extreme dysfunction of the Mursi Tribe.

Next Week: Show me some Mursi

Dark tunnels and crumbling passageways, all
carved out of solid volcanic rock.

It must have come as a surprise to European missionaries arriving on the Dark Continent, eager and ready to convert heathen savages, only to discover that Ethiopia was the second country to adopt Christianity as a state religion, as early as the 4th century.

An ancient kingdom, known as the Aksumites, was one of the largest, most civilized, and prosperous nations of its era, benefiting from its position as a vital trading post between Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

While Europeans were living in caves and hogshit, northern Ethiopia was awash in colourful art, incredible architecture, music and commerce.

The Aksumites faded with the rise of trading posts along the Red Sea, but a new kingdom arose in the 11th century, led by a King Lalibela, who decided to build a New Jerusalem in Africa, just in case the rising Islamic empire swept the real Jerusalem into the paper shredder of history.

And thus began the construction of the churches of Lalibela, hand-carved into red volcanic rock, a mind boggling accomplishment. Jordan’s Petra is similarly carved into a rock face, but the 11 churches of Lalibela stand on their own, like the finished masterpiece of a sculptor.

Built alongside its own River Jordan, Lalibela is rich with symbols, icons and religious images. And uniquely, they have survived and are still in use to this day.

Carved Out Of Rock

Lalibela attracts tourists – Italians, Spanish, Japanese – the resulting influx barely enough to support the town that surrounds the churches.

The Ethiopian word for foreigner is “ferengi”, and be it an accident of decades of foreign aid, or just irresponsible tourists who should know better, ferengis in Lalibela (and elsewhere, as we’ll soon discover) are good for only one thing, and that is, handouts.

Seconds after departing our van, my ass still vibrating from the stone road, I’m surrounded by children asking for birr (Ethiopian currency). I’m prodded and poked and stare into dozens of upturned hands.

An old toothless woman walks up from behind and gives me a sloppy wet kiss on my arm. So accustomed to my personal space, I try not to freak out. A guard walks up, raises a stick, and the children scatter.

I enter the main gate and buy $20 tickets and pricey $30 video camera permits, and are assigned a compulsory guide as well as someone to watch our shoes when we enter the churches.

UNESCO, in an attempt to preserve the main church of Bet Medhane Alem, have installed ugly scaffolding around it, designed, no doubt, to ruin all photographs. Still, the fact that this huge building was carved top-down from solid rock is staggering.

Raiders of the Found Ark?

We take off our shoes, and enter inside. It is dark and cold and still has much of the original carpeting on the ground (we were warned to wear long pants because of the fleas).

Light streams in from small windows, the ceiling blackened from centuries of candle smoke.

Side view of St George. Hard to believe it
was carved top down from the rock.

Voices echo, dark corners hide piles of carpet and wood, angles and demons. Forget the polished gloss of Europe’s superstar churches. Here, you can feel every one of Lalibela’s 800 plus years, breathe in the past (along with the thick dust).

A robed priest is happy to pose for pictures for a few birr, protecting the sacred inner chamber, housing a replica of Ethiopia’s holiest object, the legendary Ark of the Covenant.

Recall Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indiana Jones gets wind of a Nazi plot to find the ancient Ark of the Covenant, built by the Israelites to house the tablets of the Ten Commandments, given to Moses by God.

The Nazi’s believed the Ark to be nothing less than a powerful weapon, and they were right, the suckers, as Indiana cleverly looked away and the Ark unleashed its supernatural power, killing all the bad guys, and melting the creepy Nazi guy with the glasses (which gave me nightmares for months).

Classic movie, mixing myth and history – and the best part is, the truth is possibly not too far off.

Lost To History

I first became inspired to visit Ethiopia after reading The Sign and the Seal by Graham Hancock.

An English journalist formerly with the Economist, Hancock spent over a decade researching the real story, becoming a literary Indiana Jones, with the resulting book a fantastic mix of history, myth and adventure.

For what became of the Ark remains one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

Its disappearance has been linked to the Knights of Templar, King Solomon’s relationship with Queen Sheba (which resulted in the birth of the first great Ethiopian ruler, Menellek), and all manner of conspiracy theories.

Since Ethiopia’s holiest object is the Ark of the Covenant, and its language shares many Hebraic commonalities, and the country even held tribes of “lost” Jews, Hancock spent much of his time figuring out how this all came to be.

His logic and conclusions are controversial but sound, and having briefly met the guy many years ago, I can testify that he’s definitely no conspiracy theory nut.

Accordingly, the Ark (or an ancient replica) is believed to exist in Aksum up north from Lalibela, where it is zealously guarded by priests, and not even the President of Ethiopia is permitted to see it.

An Israeli traveller tells me her investigations lead her to believe the Ark was destroyed, or maybe it’s sitting in a big warehouse somewhere in Washington D.C, we’ll probably never know. But here in Lalibela, where the Ark passed through, you can still feel the magic of the mystery.

Return To The Beggars

I explore the rock churches, walking inside carved rock tunnels, peering inside doorways to find weathered priests reading leathered bibles. If only I could blink and take photos with my eyes – the images are unforgettable.

“Weathered priests read leathered bibles
behind ancient wooden doors…”

As I return to the surface, I see the open hands again, pleading and begging. I walk down the main street, and the harassment is thick.

I’m warned that children, speaking good English, will tell heartbreaking stories and ask for money for school books, only, it’s a scam, the books are actually exchanged for money, or never bought at all.

They surround us like a swarm, fighting amongst themselves for priority. It’s hard to keep things in perspective. I want to connect with locals, I always do, but I also want to connect with real people, and I want the communication to be pure. I don’t need to buy friends.

A boy named Jordan tells me, it’s OK, he doesn’t want money.

“Look, Jordan, I want people to visit this amazing place, but you guys make it very difficult and uncomfortable, and then nobody will come, and that hurts everyone.”

“We are not all like that,” he explains, somewhat annoyed. So we begin to chat. He tells me that his parents are farmers, and he looks after some crops, and is never hungry, and is going to school.

I begin to feel awful about my earlier sweeping generalizations – here I am, another white, rich, western asshole ready to dismiss the natives as beggars and thieves. Everyone’s not out here to use me, to get a buck. I feel much better.

Then Jordan tells me, after all this, that he needs some school books. Damn. I sweep, I generalize.

Goodnight Heartbreak

Africa can be like a beautiful girl you meet at a party. There’s an incredible connection, you laugh, you cry, you open your heart, you embrace. Then she puts out her hand, and tells you to pay up.

I told Jordan to stay in his fictional school, and decide then and there to find a real charity, and make a sizable donation.

I’m saved that night by a guy named Kassa, who I meet at a small hole-in-the-wall bar selling 40c beers (new record – the cheapest I’ve ever found).

Local reggae music, spiced with Bollywood, is blearing from the TV, and I’m perfecting my local dance moves, which consists of twitching my shoulders while keeping my legs still. I’ve got a nice buzz from the tejj, local fermented honey wine.

There are no girls in the bar, since no decent Ethiopian girl would ever go to a bar, unless they are willing to sleep with you for money, which I am told, is perfectly acceptable in this part of the world. Kassa and I talk about life in Ethiopia, in the west.

We sympathize, we laugh, and naturally there’s no financial arrangement at the end of the conversation. But if I thought I’d made peace with being a walking money bag, I was yet to experience the true ferengi Frenzy.

For that, I’d have to fly back to Addis, and drive five days into the south.

Next: Tribe Watching in the southern Omo Valley

Our Fokked Up Fokker 50. When a replacement
plane finally arrived, it broke down too.

The Nigerians on board the flight from Dubai to Addis Ababa were losing their minds.

Pushing, shoving and screaming at each other at the check- in counter, one woman ran her overloaded trolley directly into my legs, another woman shoved my back while waiting in line at security.

There was nowhere for me to go, Dubai Airport – now officially my worst airport in the world – was slammed from all sides, yet both women were unapologetic.

Then, our names weren’t on the e-ticket list. Then, someone forgot to tell someone something and no one knew nothing about anything. Then, we finally rushed to board the plane.

Then, a fight broke out a few rows down, and women started screaming at each other, and babies started crying. Then, the plane sat on the tarmac for an hour.

Then, we took off, and Ethiopian Airlines served up curry chicken, and the pretty flight attendants, battered by verbal abuse, somehow managed to smile at me, and then I realized that I was returning to Africa, and I better get used to it.

Birthplace Of Humanity

Fortunately, and with no disrespect to Nigerians in general, 98% of the plane continued onwards to Lagos, depositing us in the alliterative capital of Addis Ababa .

Ethiopia does more than follow its own Christian calendar (the Julian, as opposed to our Gregorian), they also tell the time differently, with 12 hours of day, and 12 hours of night, so we arrived at eight, but it was really two. Thus, I arrived in the country a full seven years younger and ahead of my time.

Our luggage, on the other hand, took an hour to make its way to the conveyor time, or, if you prefer, just a few minutes in Africa Time.

Oh Africa! Birthplace of Humanity, Land of Beauty, the Place that Progress Forgot (or at least, Overlooked).

Addis was still aglow with festive colored lights, its roads wide and dusty, snaking through tin shacks and creaky wooden scaffolding, holding up leaky cement construction. The Greeks called this the Land of Burnt Faces, a politically incorrect term that has nevertheless given the country its name.

It is one of only two countries on the entire continent that has proudly never been colonized, but it is also a highway lined on either side with war and famine – the tragic car wrecks of history.

Speaking of which, there was no time to explore the capital just yet; an early morning flight was ready to take us north, to incredible rock churches that have survived from the ancient kingdom of Lalibela.

Breaking Down

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and the coffee ceremony
is taken slowly, and seriously.

As if. Cars break down, boats break down, I’ve been on a train that broke down, and a gondola once got stuck too.

So it came as no surprise when the twin-prop Fokker 50 took off after a quick stop in Bahir Dar, circled over Lake Tana – the source of the world’s longest river, the Blue Nile – and bumpily landed again. The plane had broken down.

So the passengers, made up of adventurous international tourists, Rastafarians, and a few locals walked into the airport to be served up coffee, bread soaked in berbere sauce, and rain drops of misinformation from the airline. It was the weather, no, the weather instrument, no, we’re not sure, more coffee?

Five hours later, a replacement plane arrived, but unfortunately, it broke down too.

So the passengers from the replacement plane were transferred to our plane, which apparently now worked, and we would have to wait for a replacement replacement plane.

Fixing Itself

I didn’t mind so much, because one of these fokking Fokkers was bound to go down, and my bet was the one that “suddenly” fixed itself.

The airport toilets didn’t flush and there was no water, but I sat through my first Ethiopian coffee ceremony (which can take an hour) and unplugged the cafe fridge to do some work on my laptop.

Three hours later, an unmarked Fokker arrived to the cheers of the by-now somewhat irate passengers.

Then the airport staff, with whom we’d be mindlessly bantering with all day, turned all professional and emptied our bags as a security precaution, barred us from going outside, and wanted the tape from my camera guy Sean’s camera.

It was all rather odd, but eight hours later the plane took off, and, where was I, yes, back en route to the ancient kingdom of Lalibela.

Next week: Tuning into your Indiana Jones

The crowd gathers / Photo Robin Esrock

The irony of looking for a steak restaurant in the frenzied height of a protest about beef did not escape me.

The citizens of South Korea were out in force, vocalizing their discontent at their government’s decision to allow US beef to be imported into the country, after being banned for fear of importing Mad Cow disease along with it.

If cows were being infected in the fields of the United States, you can bet Americans would be dropping like the flies feasting on their corpses.

Thousands of people on the streets, riot police, water canons, blockades – you can also bet this is a more complex issue than bovines going bonkers. And I had a window seat, since the action was taking place below my hotel window at the Somerset Palace in downtown Seoul.

A rock narrowly misses my cameraman Sean’s head, slamming into the armoured police bus barricading the road to City Hall. Out on the street, he’s encouraging me to get closer to the BBC/CNN cameras, who are mobbed up front around an important protestor spokesman.

The police “chicken buses”, as the locals call them, are covered in eggs, spray paint, stickers, and the overall discontent of the masses.

A Real Riot

I estimate there are over 50,000 people protesting tonight, after the government declared that it would in fact go ahead and lift the ban on US beef.

A long line of people form a chain to bring sandbags up front, creating a makeshift bridge to walk over the buses into the thousands of armed riot police waiting on the other side.

A water canon rises threateningly, a couple youngsters high tail it through the masses, but the sandbags keep coming. A few rocks get hurled, but besides an eerie female voice telling everyone to “Go Home” the cops seem content to wait it out.

Fortunately, tear gas is banned in South Korea. Members of the press are wearing hard hats and protective gear, except that is, members of Word Travels, who shamefully are just enjoying the thrill of being close to their first major urban riot.

I’ll admit that things like this can turn dangerous very quickly, but there was a buzz being a part of democracy in action. Plus, the protestors were mostly calm, if a little angry.

If this were China, or the U.S, rubber bullets would be flying and trust me, I would be enjoying the view from the Jacuzzi on the rooftop of the Somerset. Danger on the road is a judgement call, and we all rightly judged we were in no harms way.

More About Money

The working media / Photo Robin Esrock

Meanwhile word and gushing water on the street indicated there was more action just a block away, and here, in a narrow alley, a robotic water canon was spraying a mass of determined protestors.

A stream of water rushes over my sandals, and there’s a peppery smell in the air, possibly because the water is laced with an irritant.

After drenching the faithful up front, the canon stops, and a large rope gets picked up and pulled in a tug of war to tip the buses over. I took hold of the hard rope to figure what the chances are, and since the buses were no doubt anchored on the other side, chances were slim.

Ripping the grates and wooden boards off the chicken buses was an easier task, and inside I could make out the shadows of riot police, no doubt shitting a beef patty in fear of the thing actually overturning.

A girl next to me tells me she is studying in North Carolina and flew home specifically to take part in the protests. “I can’t believe this is happening in my country,” she says, dismayed, as the chanting kicks into another gear and the water canon renews its projectile into the crowds.

She blames the government for not listening to the people, but since Korea is America’s third largest beef importer, I imagine it’s less about people and more about money.

Interesting Times

It’s getting late, so we decide to head back to the hotel, which sits behind the barricade. Riot police let us through a small crack (oh, the things you can get away with being a tourist!) and we walk back to the hotel through the dark, eerily quiet streets.

We see the anxious faces of young policeman, eyes as innocent as calves to the slaughter.

South Korea’s mandatory conscription has all men serving in the army or the police force. It is highly likely that these kids have friends on the other side of the barricade, girlfriends, family.

If they were not in the police force, they might be there too. Instead, they sit on their shields, row after row, five cops deep. We walk without hindrance, even stopping to play around with some of the riot gear.

We can hear the livid chants of the protestors on the other side of the buses. It is one of the most surreal and tense scenes I have seen throughout my journeys.

And it is all about meat, and where it comes from, while just a few hundred kilometres away, North Koreans are dying in a famine.

Like the rest of us, Koreans live in interesting times.

Chiang Kai Gonzo

There are only 23 countries that recognize that the Republic of China (also known as Taiwan) has a right to exist.

For a democratic country with a free press and healthy economy, it bespeaks the awesome power and influence of its neighbour, the People’s Republic of China. Confused? Here’s a quick history lesson:

Originally discovered by the Portuguese, the lush, tropical island was known as Formosa, a fertile paradise located a few hundred kilometres off mainland China.

The Japanese occupied it for decades, using it as an important base during World War II. They lost the war, they lost the island. In 1949, mainland China was embroiled in a devastating civil war that pitted the communist forces of Chairman Mao against the incumbent Chiang Kai Shek.

Kai Shek lost, and fled to Taiwan, where he proclaimed Taipei to the new capital of the Republic of China. Mao established the PRC and was about to wipe out his sworn enemy across the Taiwan Strait when the United States got involved as a means to establish a presence in the region.

Two million people fled the mainland for Taiwan, mainly intellectuals and supporters of the previous government. Neither would recognize the legitimacy of the other to exist, and for a while Taiwan became an important piece on the Cold War chessboard, backed by the US, China backed by the Russians.

China’s threatening to invade poised the world on the brink of war, and Taiwan’s outspoken criticism of its ethnically homogenous neighbour did little to help.

Twist Of Fate

As China descended into agrigarian communist chaos, Taiwan embraced a free market, rapidly industrializing and pouring in cash. It became the fourth leg of the powerful economic Asian Tiger.

Time passes like gas, and things change. The Asian Tigers were wounded in the 1990’s, and China has embraced economic reform. Although China still has between 700 to 800 missiles aimed at Taiwan, a defrosting of tension is inevitable.

Taiwan elected a new government, which has placed more emphasis on economic development and less on independence posturing. The first high-level talks in decades have opened up Taiwan to Chinese tourism.

Just about every major country in the world refuses to acknowledge Taiwan’s independence for fear of pissing off the Chinese, who have a billion potential customers for their products.

When I ask some locals what they think the future holds for Taiwan, they look to Hong Kong. Might Taiwan become another Special Administrative Region of China, part of the whole, yet undoubtedly different?

Manufacturing has shifted to the mainland, but Taiwan remains one of the world’s leading suppliers of electronics. The country is prosperous, democratic, optimistic if under threat, and a strange glimpse into what China may have become if the communist forces were defeated.

Or perhaps, what China may become in the future. Class over.

A Crappy Restaurant

Ice cream shaped like poo? That’s Modern Toilet.

I read about this toilet themed restaurant online, and I’ve become quite fascinated with proving that sometimes you CAN believe what you read on the internet.

So here we have a restaurant where customers sit on designer toilet seats, eat from toilet shaped bowls, drink from urinal-shaped cups, and buy poo paraphernalia. I ordered the number two, a delicious chicken curry.

It arrived in a miniature porcelain toilet bowl, and the carrots floating in the brown stew reminded me of the last time I drank beyond my talent. I’m not taking the piss, but the potential for puns here are endless.

Rock bottom prices, fit for a king on a throne, the food was anything but crap, which explains why there are now 10 stores across the country. I ask the owner what inspired such a scatological take on dining?

“Just for fun,” he says. The same answer applies if you ask me why I chose to eat here.

Charming The Locals

Taipei’s Snake Alley offers a tourist market,
sex shops, and serpentine delicacies.

What I won’t eat is snake, and I won’t drink the bile of snake bladder either.

Snake Alley was once home to whores and superstitious inequity, but today it is the home for tourist stalls, out-of-place sex shops, and somewhat distasteful (and therefore thoroughly fascinating) snake kitchens.

Drinking the bile is supposedly good for virility, eating snake soup is good for skin conditions. Since I owned a pet snake once (albeit one that bit me), my gut sank watching them hung up, skinned and split for this bizarre serpentine cocktail.

Large cobras atop a cage were taunted by a creepy old man, and he picked one up and threw it towards the camera. For a big man, my cameraman Sean moves quick.

Our tourism board guide Wen showed remarkable and admirable restraint. Normally, government officials do their best to sanitize the experience of a travel writer, and we often have to break rank to see this kind of thing. It’s pretty horrific, but it’s there for the locals, not for the tourists.

Real travel often offends the sensibilities. That’s what makes it so much fun.

Architectural Porn

There are some interesting rock formations at Yehliu Geopark, up the scenic north coast, eroded into spongy phallic shapes by wind, water and time. The coastline is beautiful, but there are no leisure boats to be seen, for reasons of national security.

Women give birth to life, it appears men give birth
to phallic symbols of longstanding greatness.

A large number of surfers are in the still ocean water, waiting for a freak wave from a typhoon nailing the Philippines to the south. It’s a rare blue-sky day during monsoon season, when heavy rains unleash themselves onto all those poor scooter drivers.

Like the mainland, the sky here is mostly a haze, fogging the view from the way up high. Taipei 101 is not a lecture class; it was the world’s tallest building.

An engineering marvel with 101 floors, it has only recently been pipped by the Burj Dubai, but remains a symbol of Taiwan’s economic power. Women give birth to life, it appears men give birth to phallic symbols of longstanding greatness.

Inspired by the flexibility of bamboo, the building is covered in symbols, from massive coins on the exterior for good fortune, to stylized dragon gargoyles for protection.

It has the world’s fastest elevators (60km an hour, you reach the 85th floor observation deck in just 37 seconds), and four massive damper balls to stabilize the building from strong winds and earthquakes.

Architectural porn, if you’re into this sort of thing.

This has been fun, but now I’ve got stories to write, pitch and hopefully sell. Hosting a travel show is one of the best jobs in the world, but there’s more work than you realize setting up those beauty shots, improvising decent dialogue, shlepping from one place to the next.

10, 12, 14 hour days, every day, and then comes the writing, the photo galleries, tying up interviews and frayed nerves.

Not that I’m complaining, just that I have to wrap this up before we take off to Korea, and a new adventure begins.

Next time: Robin reports from the annals of South Korea!

Observing the city below.

Sunday night, the band is still playing when I kiss my friends goodbye, climb into my car, deposit it in the underground parking of my parent’s apartment, and get dropped off at the airport approaching midnight.

My mom and dad are used to me coming and going. I might as well work at the airport.

The crew gathers for the 2am EVA Airlines flight to Taipei. There are six of us in total. With a slight shake-up of directors, these are the people I’ll be spending just about every waking moment with over the coming months.

Four of us are veterans of season one, which took us to 12 off-the-wall countries, including Venezuela, Ethiopia and Lithuania. We know the score of a life in motion.

Meet The Crew

My co-host is Julia Dimon, who writes a weekly travel column for METRO in Canada. We met in Turkey on my first trip around the world, and have become unlikely partners on this escapade. The fact that we are so different, as people and as writers, gives the show its appeal.

Shooting us is Sean Cable, a tall, shiny cameraman of legendary status within the industry. Although Sean is known as one of the best sports shooters going, he’s also an artist capable of capturing images that saucer the eyes.

Paul Vance (pronounced as one word, Paulvance) is our sound guy, our ears. He is born and raised in Whistler, and is therefore laid back to the point of horizontal. Chris Mennell is our production packhorse.

Nicknames abound, as they do on these kind of shows. Chris is called Chewie, although I confess I can’t remember why. He looks like a young Tom Berenger, and lives on an orchard in the B.C interior. Directing a couple episodes, including Taiwan is Jordan. He’s a former comedy writer, sharp with the wit.

I round out the crew. Esrock. Ing. The Free World.

Maintaining Independence

Monday disappears, somewhere between jet lag hell and the international date line. I know very little about Taiwan, other than I once stopped here en-route to China, and spent a painful night at a golf resort.

We arrive in Taipei at 5am, meet and greet, and breathe in the soup they call air over here. It’s already cracking 30C, the humidity sheening everyone with a flattering glow. Too early for traffic, we arrive sooner than expected at the Grand Hotel, billed as one of the world’s finest. It is.

Built in 1952 as the fledgling nation’s flagship hotel, it looks like a massive Chinese temple. We come to stay here because Taiwan’s Government Information Office is supporting our production, and we are all grateful for it.

It’s important for the production (and as travel writers) that Word Travels maintains its editorial independence, and does not sink into a tourist promotional video. But we love travel, and that love reflects in the show, and my writing. If something warrants negative observations, I say it.

Travel writers are notorious for becoming jaded bastards, but my unique journey to this unlikely career will hopefully keep me immune. Meanwhile if tourism boards offer to support us, who I am to say no? Admittedly, this is not backpacking, but does that make the experience any less authentic?

Some of you might argue yes, or no, but that is a debate for another time. When you live out of a backpack in perpetual motion, you appreciate being treated in style, and when you’re filming a TV show, you appreciate all the help you can get.

Introducing Fire Therapy

Ready to be set on fire by Master Hsieh Ching-long.

For our Word Travels in Taiwan episode, I am here to meet Master Hsieh Ching-long, the creator of Fire Therapy. It’s a hot story, allowing me to understand what a steak feels like when thrown on a grill.

Using open flame, Master Hsieh (pronounced Shay) realigns the energy in your body, healing muscle ailments and sports injuries. Judging by the polaroids of the Master posing with dozens of local celebrities, the hour-long treatment seems to work.

First he applied cupping, using heat suction to massage the airplane-seat out my back. Then he had me lie down, pasted my back in a thick gooey mixture of herbs, covered me with a towel, doused me with alcohol, and set me on fire.

What does it feel like to be lit up like a BBQ? It feels warm, in a pleasant sort of way.

I was more nervous of the other polaroids on display in the small clinic, depicting people’s reactions to the treatment. Some of them looked like well-done steak.

Inner Strength

The clinic is suffused with the smell of various Chinese herbs, and Master Hsieh oozes confidence – important qualities in a doctor that literally plays with fire. He looks like Jet-Li, and developed his practice after years of martial arts, and a stint in Beijing.

To prove his inner strength, he rips an apple with his bare hands, and then hands me a sledgehammer. Sandwiching his hand beneath two bricks, he asks me to smash the top brick over his hand. Who am I to argue?

My first swing breaks the brick over his hand, but does not transfer the energy to break the bottom brick. Master Hsieh wants me to giv’er. So I take another swing to the replacement brick, which shatters over his hand, the sledgehammer ripping a piece of skin as it does so.

Now there’s blood, but Master Hsieh is determined to demonstrate his power, and his belief that I can actually pull off this stunt without killing him is flattering. Another swing, and thank God, the bottom brick crumbles. Scars and burns on his arms exhibit that the good fire doctor has had much practice honing his art.

“Now, for the dangerous part,” says Vic, the Master’s brother, acting as an able translator. This would involve me, an open flame, and the potential for Esrock Mignon. It’s amazing what one will do when there is a camera around.

Britney forgets her panties, I set myself on fire. To find out what happened, you’ll have to >wait for the show. Check out the full pics here.

Next time: Robin sorts out the difference between the two Republic of Chinas!

Gonzo Aint in Kansas – Ethiopia

I am that guy. The one you see on TV and think: That must be the luckiest guy in the world

Can you imagine having his job?

Three and a half years ago, a car ran me down at an intersection and broke my knee. It hurt. Not in a “I’m disappointed in you” kind of way. In a “give me the effen morphine!” kind of way.

For my pain, my insurance company awarded me $20,000. I was about to turn 30, and my career was flailing, along with my relationship. So I cashed it in, put my stuff in storage, and went to backpack the world, on a tiny budget and a round the world ticket.

One year later, I had been to 28 countries, and written for a couple major newspapers. Two years later, I had been to Central America, rocked the Trans-Siberia Railway, along with a national speaking tour. To finance the continuation of my dream, I slept on couches, and ate a lot of cheap pizza.

A short while later, I pitched a TV show. The stars aligned, the fates smiled, angels broke out in hymn. Word Travels is a half hour show that follows the lives of two travel writers around the world.

You can watch it on OLN in Canada, and National Geographic Adventure in over 40 countries. Over the next 12 months, I’ll be visiting 26 countries on 6 continents, with a TV crew to capture my experiences.

I am stunned just writing this. This all happened, essentially, by accident. But I suppose someone has to get paid to travel the world. Might as well be me.

These reports will give you some insight into a life of travel, on the road, on camera. I call them Modern Gonzo, since Gonzo is about the best word to describe my world of adventure.

I hope you enjoy the trip as much as I do.

Look for Robin’s first column “The Gonzo Traveler” later this week!