“Excuse me,” I approach her. “By any chance were you having dinner at Chuflay Restaurant in Portofino, about seven months ago?”
“Yes,” she says, barely meeting my eyes.
“Do you remember me?”
Finally, she makes eye contact. “Yes, a little.”
“Are you still with the man you were with that night?”
“No, I’ve left him, and I just arrived in London two days ago.”
This is my lucky day. “May I take you to dinner?”
She gives me another second’s glance, and I’m filled with hope. Then, she says, “No.”
Deflated, I thank her anyway and get on the treadmill for a long run. I run hard and fast, trying to push her out of my mind.
After a while, I go back downstairs and ask her again.
“Dinner with you?” she says. “I’ll think about it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Otavia.”
It sounds like the name of a queen, and I have to know more. “Where are you from?”
“Brazil.”
And just like that, I’m hooked.
I leave to chair the World Tourism and Travel Council’s annual meeting in Dubai, which I am cohosting with the ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. During the meetings, I text Otavia every day asking her about a date and time for dinner. Finally, after two days, she answers and agrees to let me take her out.
Dinner turns into a second date, and a few dates turn into a trip together, and it’s when she agrees to go white-water rafting with me in 2010 in Africa that I realize I cannot live without Otavia—she’s the only woman I know who loves adventure as much as I do, and the woman who shows me over time that she is always there for me. We marry in a small ceremony in London, just the two of us present. And take off immediately for a honeymoon in Brazil—where else?
There’s new energy in my life, and in the business, as well. Into the twenty-first century, Abercrombie & Kent creates an Antarctic cruise unlike any other, equal parts lavishness and daring voyage: a luxury expedition. Today we sail Le Boreal, a ship launched in 2010 that offers everything from state-of-the-art polar technology to an outdoor heated pool and balconies off of every room for immediate views of landscape and wildlife.
In November 2012, when we cruise to Antarctica with a group of clients and one rather high-profile guest, no one is more surprised at how sought-after the ship is than Otavia. “Oh! Sweetheart,” I tell her the first morning as we’re leaving breakfast in the ship’s dining room. “There’s something I forgot to tell you about this cruise . . .” I haven’t forgotten at all—it’s that I haven’t dared tell her until she was on board that the supermodel Kate Upton is on our ship.
“What is it, love?” she says.
“They’re shooting the cover for the 2013 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue on this cruise. It’s the bestselling magazine in the world! Can you believe, Kate Upton, the famous model, is on this ship!”
“You forgot to tell me that Kate Upton is on this ship?!” she says.
During the photo shoot, the photographer directs Kate Upton, and Otavia directs me. “Look now—don’t look now!” she says with every click of the camera. Not the most harmonious moment in my marriage . . . but it’s certainly proof that on land, sea, or ice, nobody does it better!
{Harold Lassers}
With Otavia at Port Lockroy, Antarctica.
{A&K staff}
Flying an English Electric Lightning at Thunder City in Cape Town.
Chapter 17
The Edge of Space
2004
When I develop A&K Space around 2004, my team and I have already explored and designed trips on each continent, and Abercrombie & Kent has close to four dozen offices around the world. It’s finally time for me to test the ultimate limits—is there any place in the universe too daring for the avid traveller?
Well, I determine, there is no way to know what the final frontier holds for my business without trying it out myself. “Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted” is one of the principles of war and was one of General Frost’s favorite slogans from my British Army days. I’ve employed it throughout my career. The English Electric Lightning was built in the 1950s as Britain’s first aircraft able to travel at a rate of Mach 2: approximately 1,520 miles per hour, or twice the speed of sound.
To this day it’s the fastest fighter jet in Britain’s history; and even having been a guest on the Concorde’s last flight in 2003, I’ve never seen anything like this.
It’s four in the morning and I’m inside Thunder City, currently Cape Town’s site for ex-military jet flights. Reading the release form for the flight, I realize I was right not to have told one person that I was doing this. Any true friend would have called me up and told me not to be an idiot. One line reads:
BEFORE BOARDING, PASSENGER MUST PROVIDE A DEPOSIT OF TWO THOUSAND POUNDS STERLING IN THE EVENT THAT IT IS NECESSARY FOR US TO FLY YOUR BODY BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY OF CITIZENSHIP.
I feel a wave of nausea, not at all helped by the fact that I haven’t eaten a single thing in two days to avoid getting sick while in flight. I hurry and mentally review the training I’ve received over the last week: how to work the oxygen mask, how to activate the mechanism that releases the parachute in the rear of the plane that slows us down when we land, and, of course, how to work the ejection seat. There are two distinct ways of ejecting, they told me: one while you’re on the ground, which is completely different from the way you eject while you’re in the air. “If you make a mistake, you’re dead,” said the pilot.
“Listen,” I tell him, “these seats were made in the 1950s—has anybody tested them?”
“No, it’s difficult to test them,” he says. “But we run electronic tests on them all the time. I assure you, it’s fine.”
A young man comes out and hands me a racing track suit, similar to what a Formula One driver wears: all-black with THUNDER CITY written on it in gold, and a helmet for the real official feel. “You’ll just wear your T-shirt and blue jeans underneath,” he says. I scan myself, remembering another slogan I turn to often, Life is not a dress rehearsal—but no pressure suit? No nothing?
My mind goes instantly to loyal Caroline Wheeler, the only person who knows where I’ve been for the past week—and the one who will manage everything if by any chance this doesn’t go as I hope . . . if, God forbid, they have to ship my body home to London.
My watch reads six o’clock in the morning when the pilot wrangles himself into the cockpit and turns to me with a relaxed grin. “Are you ready, Geoff?” David Stock is handsome, no older than forty-five, and wears a wedding band and a perpetual grin. I’m relieved he is so affable—that will make this slightly less intimidating.
“Am I ready?” I ask him. “Absolutely.”
With the jet’s canopy up, we taxi across the apron to the start of the runway. The jet sounds like the most incredible race car you’ve ever heard in your life—it’s thundering, it’s roaring. Everything’s shaking. When I tell this story later, I’ll say that it felt like a Ferrari on steroids.
When we reach the takeoff point, David brakes. He turns to me, and in his South African accent he says, “ChristGeoff!” all in one word. “This is your last chance to bail out!”
“No bailing out,” I tell him.
“You’re sure you want to go on?”
“Yes, I want to go on!” I laugh. “I’ve been training for this.”
“All right,” he says. “Then you remember this one instruction: if there’s a problem, and I want you to eject, I’m gonna call One. I’m gonna call Two. And then, there’s no Three, because I’ll be gone and you’re the captain of the ship.”
“Oh, Christ’s sake, let’s go.”
The canopy closes; I hear it seal tight. Then—
BOOM!
We shoot off, going vertically from zero to forty thousand feet in one minute. At the very top of this climb, he does three loops, an
d we climb to sixty-five thousand feet and level out. We then accelerate to the full speed of Mach 2.2. David’s voice pipes into my ears through the intercom in my oxygen mask. “Would you like to fly it for a while?” he shouts.
“Yes, please!” I take over the controls and fly the jet straight, not particularly interested in doing anything fancy . . . because I can’t.
He takes over the controls again.
“You want to see earth?”
“Yes, please!”
BOOM!
Instantly, we’re looking down at the purple curvature of the earth.
“You want to see the sky?”
“Yes, please!”
BOOM!
Instantly, I’m gazing up at an endless blue sky.
Then he flies us down, very low at just eight hundred feet over the sea—I can almost feel the jet creating waves beneath us. “ChristGeoff!” David says into the intercom. “This would be a really bad time for me to have a sneeze!”
“I’ll say!”
From there we fly around a few minutes more, and within forty-five minutes of takeoff, I pull the lever as David instructs to release the plane’s parachutes for landing.
When we get out, my legs are as wobbly as jam. I return the uniform and helmet and get my car back to my hotel. I call Caroline to check in at the London office, and then I can’t sit still. I’ve got to get some of this adrenaline out of my system.
I head out and run five miles, thinking, This has to be one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever done. I took on 5.5 Gs. How could a normal business guy do that? It would kill him, his heart could stop. I’m a sixty-two-year-old man who runs an average of twenty miles a week, and that was intense even for me. I’m not sure if most Abercrombie & Kent clients would be up to such a feat, especially because this would be one of our more expensive trips, which would mean that in general, only our oldest clients would be able to experience it.
I call the head scientist and engineer on my A&K Space team; he had worked on the American Blackbird spy plane. “Listen,” I ask him. “I just need to know one thing. If we go into space, what are the chances that we will not have an accident? Can we be one hundred percent sure that won’t happen?”
“Let me reword that for you, Geoffrey,” he says. “There’s a hundred percent chance that you will have an accident.”
“What? There’s a one hundred percent chance that we’ll have an accident?”
“A one hundred percent chance, Geoffrey. Make no mistake: space is dangerous.”
All that night, I lie awake and think about it—and the next morning, there’s only one thing to do. I call the head of A&K Space again. “We need to let everybody go,” I tell him. “All twenty of them. We cannot pursue this with those odds.”
One year later, it became clear that the old English Electric Lightning needed more than electronic testing of its ejection system. David Stock, the pilot who took me to the edge of space, met his own tragic fate. While the plane was at full speed in flight, its main hydraulics collapsed, which meant that David could no longer control the plane. His only hope was to eject—and the ejection system didn’t work. David was killed when the plane flip-flopped and plummeted straight down into the ground.
Today it’s a relief, not a disappointment, that we had to determine that this was one product we’d never be able to make good on. Starting A&K Space was one of my most audacious enterprises, but a good leader knows when to pull the plug. For me, that was before we could make any mistakes.
{A&K staff}
Iguaçu Falls is one of the most impressive sights in the world, with a breathtaking 275 cascades spread across a gulf of nearly two miles.
Chapter 18
Iguaçu Falls
BRAZIL ( . . . AND ARGENTINA), 2010
One of the prevailing rules that I’ve learned about travelling with friends is this: come the end of the trip, you’ll either like the person a whole lot more or a whole lot less! Travel is the best test of compatibility there is—especially when you and your companion are both thrill-seekers.
My staff and I go to great lengths to ensure seamless timing and logistics when I travel with Jeffrey Katzenberg, a revered client and friend, as well as one of the most influential figures in Hollywood. I’ll never forget when I accompanied Jeffrey to the Masai Mara in Kenya on one of our early trips together. Our guide spotted a family of warthogs by the side of the road. “Pumba!” he said. “Pumba!” Then he turned to us with excited eyes. “Have you ever seen The Lion King?”
Jeffrey smiled. Over the guide’s shoulder, I whispered, “This man made The Lion King.”
So anyone can imagine that when he travels, Jeffrey wants the ultimate on-the-edge adventure and scenery that could inspire his next big-budget film. He also needs as exciting an experience packed into as short an itinerary as possible: three-week vacations aren’t typically feasible for the Hollywood executive who works eighteen-hour days. With this in mind, in 2010 we agree to travel together to the most daring waterfalls in the world: South America’s Iguaçu Falls, which divide Argentina and Brazil from each other.
The Iguaçu Falls themselves stretch the length of over a mile and a half as part of the Iguaçu River. The falls follow a dramatic horseshoe-shaped curve such that it is possible to be surrounded on three sides by water that flows vertically with such force that it creates a mist that rises with the illusion that the falls are cascading in slow motion. The water flows at an astonishing rate—over 66,000 cubic feet per second—which is twice the average volume of Victoria Falls’s flow. I’ve never considered myself a spiritual man, but there’s no denying that witnessing these falls inspires wonder about who or what might have created something that’s simultaneously so beautiful and so intimidating.
At a maximum height of 269 feet and a width of just over 1.7 miles, the Iguaçu Falls are second in the world in height and width to Victoria Falls in Africa—but in my opinion, the falls of the Iguaçu are the most dynamic anywhere. Also, the Iguaçu Falls don’t pour down in one constant curtain of water—instead, there are some spots where the water cascades down from one crest, travels along on flat land for a brief moment, and then crashes down a couple hundred feet to a lower level. It’s Mother Nature’s waterslide.
It’s this view that makes the falls most compelling from the Brazilian side. However, reaching this side takes a little savvy, as our flight planners and I discovered on my trip with Jeffrey.
We start our trip in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, one of the oldest deserts in the world and known to be the most arid—some of its highest mountain peaks don’t possess a single glacier. On an airstrip in the desert, we board Jeffrey’s Gulfstream V jet—a really cool high performance jet—and settle into our soft leather seats, sitting across from each other with an aisle between us, both working at our own separate burnished wooden tables.
As we buckle in, our guide receives a phone call. Good news, he assures me, our helicopters are confirmed and are already waiting to meet us on the Brazilian side of the Iguaçu River. The first leg of logistics for the day is locked in and ready for execution.
Our takeoff is particularly smooth; Jeffrey has some of the best pilots in the world. Through our windows, we gaze out over the desert, a ghostly kind of a place that’s nevertheless worth taking in for its vastness, which is almost spooky, and for what one of our brochures describe as “the occasional signs of life”—the rare glimpse of vibrant desert flowers, a llama, an Atacameno village of tiny red-clay homes.
Jeffrey and I settle in and discuss our itinerary for the day:
After our three-hour flight to Iguaçu, we’ll land the jet and climb directly inside a helicopter for an aerial tour of the falls. Then, a speedboat-sized watercraft will take us right up to the falls—a wet and wild experience at the point where the storm of water meets the river. The falls from that point are like a fickle lover, both drawing you in with thrill and pushing you away with force.
From there, the schedule only get
s more exciting: we’ll descend the rocks on the bank of the river and board an inflatable boat for an afternoon’s white-water rafting expedition. Iguaçu’s course is rated between a three and a five, depending on how the weather conditions interact with the river and the flow rate of the falls. After the day’s tour, again we’ll board the jet—this time flying to Argentina for dinner in Buenos Aires.
Jeffrey turns on his iPad, working as usual, and I look out the window, feeling confident that everything is very much in order. The first half of our flight is pure ease. I take out my BlackBerry to get through some e-mails.
Then, suddenly, the polished wood door into the galley opens. Our guide beckons to me discreetly. “Mr. Kent!” He waves his hand in urgency for me to come.
{Arlue Briggs}
Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia is one of the most remote places on Earth and one of the least populated.
Come in, I motion. What’s wrong?
“Mr. Kent!” More gesturing.
Jeffrey turns around in his seat, curious at the commotion. I rise calmly. “Let me go and see what’s up.” Careful not to give him any reason for alarm, I step quietly into the galley and gently push the wooden door closed behind me. “What is it?”
“Mr. Kent, you’ll never believe what’s happened.”
“What? Is there something wrong with the plane?”
“No,” he says. “I’ve just been with the pilot, I was looking at the flight plan—and there’s trouble, Mr. Kent.”
“What is it?”
“We’re flying to Iguazú.”
“Of course we’re flying to Iguaçu, that’s the plan.”
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