News from the North

Only 48 hours away from 60 hours of travel (but less than 2 calendar days; aren't time zones wonderful?) with the routing: Sydney-Auckland-LA-Miami-Lima. I do it for the love, yes, but mostly for the frequent-flier miles. The Blue Mountains Easter weekend was spent camping in the Blue Mountains, an hour west of Sydney (ok, 4 hours with Easter traffic), with two old friends of mine, who in order to protect their identities I shall call Chris & Chris, rather than Chong & Andrea. It was an uneventful weekend spent sleeping in tents and walking through peaceful verdant eucalyptus forest. Except for the eventful bits. The driving pointer rotated to me on Saturday, and I was eager to drive, as I'd never driven a left-hand-side stick-shift before - in fact, had only driven a stick maybe 10 times total before. My travel companions were considerably less eager. I thought I might get some pointers from them, some benefit from their vast experience, but sadly they unhelpfully spe...

Aotearoa I spent all of 72 hours in New Zealand, which is long enough to realize that the whole country is clearly some kind of elaborate scam. The people are too friendly, the landscapes too beautiful, the atmosphere too agreeable. Actually I think they're overdoing it. I mean, who hears bus passenger after passenger call out "Goodbye, thank you," to the driver when exiting - during rush hour, no less - without getting a little suspicious? I don't know whether they're trying to lure settlers in order to sacrifice them in some kind of Shirley-Jackson-esque unholy blood rite, or if the body snatchers have taken over, but there's clearly some kind of catch. A three-day stopover in NZ is a bit like taking a single sip from a single bottle from one of the world's great wine cellars. All I really had time for was a quick rentacar drive to the to the Coromandel Peninsula, where I took an increasingly narrow and windy road north, ocean to my left, Mirkwood to my...

By far the most exciting event that almost happened on this road trip was my Jessica Simpson moment in Tijuana. ( context for non-North-American readers.) I went into McDonald's, continuing my policy of dining in as many of their international branches as possible. Hoping to find another country-specific delicacy like Japan's Egg Teriyaki McBurger or India's Maharajah Mac, I ordered the most incomprehensible item on the menu, the McPechugo. The girl behind the counter somatically indicated that it would take a little while. I nodded and moved to the side. Picking at my French fries, it occurred to me that in French, a language which is at least a cousin of Spanish, "peche" means "fish". I came to the shocking conclusion that for the first time ever, in all my hundreds of McD's dining experiences in over a dozen countries, I had ordered a Filet-O-Fish. I decided to let the order stand; ordering such in Tijuana seemed somehow fitting, and also a good ...

Monday I was a little weak but basically recovered, and got about six hours of skiing in at Brévent-Flégère. I hadn't been on skis since January 2002. On the other hand I started skiing when I was 5, and it is, in fact, just like riding a bicycle; I was bombing down the black slopes in no time at all. Tuesday, at La Tour, was one of my favourite ski days ever - my legs were strong, and I found one of my favourite runs of all time, "Belle Place", and spent most of the day going up and down its variations. Wednesday, at Les Grands-Montets, started off poorly. "In French," said the man who had just recovered the poles I had abandoned about 50 feet upslope, when I hit an unexpected ice patch, caught an edge, faceplanted into the mountain (bestowing a large bruise beneath my right eye which I still proudly wear) and tumbled for a fair ways, "we call this un jour blanc ". Thick white squalling snow, visibility of about 5 feet, which makes skiing extremely...

Today I trekked 45 minutes upriver through primary jungle into a cave, a cave made of rock forged by the dinosaur killer that hit the Yucatan 65 million years ago, a cave infested by vampire bats and blind chittering spiders, a cave used a thousand years ago for Mayan bloodletting rituals and at least 13 human sacrifices whose calcified remains still litter the cathedral-like grand chamber. What I'm trying to say is: You want atmosphere? We got atmosphere. It was a damp journey. The cave was carved by a cold river which is mostly wadable but is often chest-deep and sometimes required swimming, not to mention a fair amount of (very easy) rock climbing. The river is also responsible for the phantasmagoric rock formations found everywhere inside, formations that look like glittering crystalline curtains, arches draped with rippling fabric, frozen waterfalls, enormous columns of melting candle wax, Gigeresque fluted tenebrous ribs, pockmarked by perfectly spherical holes in the ceiling...

Burning Man Avant-garde apocalypse, beatnik bacchanal, counterculture carnival, Discordian Disneyland, Mad Max meets Mardi Gras. "Burning Man is a self-service cult. Wash your own brain." Dehydration, dust storms, and decadence, a potluck Las Vegas, a pyromaniacal playland, a true Bazaar Of The Bizarre. "Burning Man is all about finding playmates. It's like recess for kids." The Road Warrior crossed with Fellini Satyricon as co-written by Pynchon and DeLillo. Sex, drugs, and psychedelic trance, sorrow and survivalism, a camping trip in a neon wonderland, a mad scientist's mirage made flesh. And ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, and only the desert remains. People have written a lot of things about Burning Man, some of it even coherent, but I didn't find any actual description of the mechanics of the event, so I think I'll take a hack at it -- partly for others, partly for memory, partly because I think I may be using the playa as a fiction...

ONE DAY IN EXPATLAND 9AM Wake in luxurious, high-ceilinged expat mansion in expensive Ma'adi suburb. Drink grande cappucino. Host gives me keys to apartment, introduces me to driver, tells me car and driver are at my disposal. 9:30AM Slightly confused by situation; unaccustomed to travelling with own transport. Humbly request of driver that perhaps he could take me to pyramids at Sakkara, if it isn't too much trouble. Apologize profusely for taking up his day. 10AM Arrive Sakkara. Visit step pyramid. Hot out. 11AM Politely ask driver to stop to buy water and then go to Dashur pyramids. No water stop. Remind driver of water request. Buy water, visit Dashur pyramids. Very hot out. 1PM Ask driver for lunch recommendations. Driver recommends McDonald's. Give driver sidelong look and have him take me to Nile Hilton for lunch. Hilton pleasantly air-conditioned. Blistering heat makes exterior difficult. 3PM Have driver take me to Giza Pyramids. Look around briefly. Glimpse Sphinx ...

All credit to Moses. Nowadays Mount Sinai is a straightforward two-hour hike up a well-worn trail, but three millennia ago it must have been absolute murder. I was expecting a mob of people and was amazed to find myself absolutely alone at the summit for sunset. Amazed and grateful. Standing atop a fantasyland of jagged, pitted, striated crags and canyons, eroded by the wind into twisted coiled dragon-shapes, stained by the last crimson rays of the sun, on the very mountain where Moses, so legend has it, received the Ten Commandments -- a magical moment. I suppose I can't in good conscience leave you with the notion that I have become lone-wolf-in-the-wilderness Intrepid Man. I wasn't that alone. Not far below the summit are a half-dozen Bedouin huts/shops providing tea, Coke, chocolate, and mattress/blanket rental; two more overnighters showed up shortly after sunset; and just before dawn an Italian tour-group horde arrived. But still. In the middle of the night, unless all t...

"dude, that town is fucked up ." Sarajevo is battle-scarred. Mostar is gutted. There has been enough reconstruction that it isn't obvious at first. Stand on one of the hardly-used bridges, above the steep and beautiful ravine atop which the city perches, and it looks postcard-pretty. If you look closer you notice it's too pretty. All the buildings are new. Go a block to the west and you step into a war zone. This is where the front line was. Rows of half-collapsed heaps of gray concrete and brick, torn open by ragged misshapen gaps like Godzilla took bites out of them, punched full of bullet holes, many of them roofless, covered with dust, full of rubble and trash. Chimneys and random jagged spurs that happened to survive the tank and shellfire jut out like broken bones. Don't get me wrong. This is not a dead city. The streets are lined with parked cars, bright billboards are posted right in front of the wrecks, and every second or third lot boasts a brightly pain...

The discreet charm of the Kosovarese Parts of Kosovo are very pretty. It was exhilirating, even after an exhausting 11-hour bus ride through the Albanian outback, riding through watching dawn rise above its green misty rolling hills. Unfortunately the pretty parts do not include the towns. And definitely not the hotels. I checked into the Stalinist-concrete-block Hotel Iliria, whose terrifyingly pallid receptionist had obviously gone to Gulag charm school, and discovered that my room's "ensuite bathroom" was a cube of rotting concrete featuring a sink, a shower head, a towel ring, and a hole in the floor (to be fair the rest of the room was reasonable). And then I went down and ate breakfast with 200 Bangladeshi peacekeepers. I guess NATO-UN territories tend to have more than their share of Luis Bunuel moments. Kosovars love three things: cigarettes, ice cream, and the Internet. In a town of 150,000 there must be at least 100 establishments vending each of the latter tw...

Ancient Roman ampitheatre in Durres, Albania. Athens: an elaborate hoax? Athens. Cradle of civilization, where 2500 years ago the ancient Greeks invented democracy, philosophy, and the Olympics. Or did they? I ask you: where's the proof? Yeah, yeah, I know: "the proof's all around you! The Acropolis! The Parthenon! The Temple Of Zeus! The Olympic Stadium!" Uh-huh. I seen 'em. The Acropolis is a construction site, the Parthenon and Temple Of Zeus are covered in scaffolding, and the Olympic Stadium is flanked by a pair of enormous construction cranes. It really makes you wonder. Athens itself is a nice place, a bit of a dive, but I like dives. The Greeks very sensibly herd the vast majority of tourists into a warren of shops and cafes just below the Acropolis. The entire rest of the city is under destruction for next year's Olympiad, and the streets are labyrinthine, but fortunately it's a good place to get lost in. I like the way that glitzy shopping areas ...

Gut-wrenching terror. Repeatedly hurtling towards what seem like inevitable collisions at breakneck speeds. There's only a little consolation in being surrounded by other people doing the same crazy thing. It's hard to think in the fog and confusion, with the ceaseless noise and chaos all around, but only perfect coordination and split-second timing stand between you and certain death. Yes, driving a stick shift through rush-hour Barcelona is not an experience for the faint of heart. I also went skydiving. That was fun, in retrospect. It was also fun, way fun, wowee-zowee-this-is-amazing-my-God-I'm-flying! fun, at the time. It was less fun in advance. I'd been edgy all week. It's one thing to think of skydiving "gee, that would be fun to do someday." It's quite another to actually go. "Painfully nerve-wracking" would be a best-case description of the first time you sit on an ascending aircraft, knowing in a few short minutes you will throw yo...

Notes from Down Under, part the fourth (and final) Sydney, Australia: Remembrance Day All good trips must come to an end. And so in a few short hours I will fly from springtime in Sydney to the brooding gloom of London. Yeah. (At this point the author pauses for a brief interlude of uncontrollable weeping, wailing, kicking, screaming, gnashing of teeth, wearing of sackcloth and ashes, and a Richter 9.5 fists-beating-on-the-floor tantrum.) Ahem. As I was saying. Right. Leaving Australia. Going to England. (Repeat above interlude. Calm is only restored by a tag-team combination of trauma counsellors, Zen masters, and powerful antidepressants.) At least I'm leaving on a high note. Yesterday I went out for a day of canyoning in the Blue Mountains, which was all kinds of fun. The day kicked off with a fifty-foot cliffjump into water, followed by donning a wetsuit and going crosscountry down a steep river ravine so narrow it nearly turned into a spelunking expedition. The water was abs...

Notes from Papua New Guinea, part the only Port Moresby, PNG But of course you're not really an intrepid traveller unless you're crammed into the back of a battered Japanese minibus with a dozen families and their produce and their livestock, picking your way along a stomach-churning Third World road punctuated by roadblocks where menacing drunken machete-wielding men demand a "toll" before allowing you to continue on to the rat-infested rooms-by-the-hour flophouse where you're staying. Anything more comfortable than that, and you're just a tourist. Sigh. The really sad thing is that I'm only mostly joking. So I went up to Papua New Guinea for a week, partly just to see what it's like, partly because Australia, while wonderful, seemed a little bit...tame, partly because having already been through cities and beaches and ocean and jungle, and with deserts next on the agenda, I felt like spending a little time in the one terrain Oz does not offer: mount...