By the Seat of My Pants

by Lonely Planet

  We were at a standoff when Lothar came into the room wearing nothing but a pair of purple bikini briefs. He took the racquet from me and strode up to the sideboard, kneeling down to see beneath it. He wiggled back a few feet and then, using the side of the racquet, swung hard, making a sickening, muffled thump as he beat the rat to death.

  When he stood up, the wall beneath the sideboard had been splattered with blood and the black corpse was shiny with gore. He handed the racquet to me.

  ‘Now we’ll smoke a cigarette’, he said.

  I had to get back to Tokyo.

  SNAKE KARMA

  LINDA WATANABE MCFERRIN

  Linda Watanabe McFerrin has been travelling since she was two and writing about it since she was six. A poet, travel writer, novelist and contributor to numerous journals, newspapers, magazines, anthologies and online publications, she is the author of two poetry collections and the editor of the fourth edition of Best Places Northern California. Her work has also appeared in Wild Places, In Search of Adventure and American Fiction. Other book-length works include the novel Namako: Sea Cucumber and short-story collection The Hand of Buddha. In spite of everything, she is still a great lover of snakes.

  The fer-de-lance is an extremely venomous snake. More deadly than a rattlesnake, this pit viper is also missing its genetic cousin’s one redeeming virtue – a warning rattle. It strikes suddenly, and when it bites, it injects a substance that is part neural toxin, part anticoagulant and part digestive enzyme, so that the process of digestion can begin at once. You don’t have long once it bites: a minute, maybe two.

  My friend Dixie and I weren’t looking for snakes. We were looking for quetzals, scarlet macaws and other beautiful birds. We were staying at Lapa Rios, a resort built in the middle of Costa Rica’s ‘snake territory’. We’d been told the terciopelo, as the fer-de-lance is known in these parts (the name is Spanish for velvet), was in abeyance but that they used to turn up in the rooms. The resort was just north of Panama, on the Osa Peninsula – often called the armpit of Costa Rica – known for gigantic Corcovado, one of the country’s most imposing national parks. Preserving hectares of virgin rainforest, it’s the slithering grounds of some of the world’s most dangerous serpientes. Our eyes were fixed on the thick, epiphyte-laden jungle canopy overhead, but in the back of our minds lurked serpents. Was that an eyelash viper snaking its way up the side of a tree? A terciopelo waiting patiently for us in the tall dry grasses of the savannah?

  I’d just finished reading a cautionary tale by biologist Donald Perry. In his book, Perry relives his encounter with a local who was bitten by a fer-de-lance. The last time he saw this man, the fellow was in a rowing boat being taken back to the mainland, bleeding from his mouth and all of his pores. I shared this gruesome image with Dixie.

  Before I left home, Lawrence, my husband, who is entertained by these things, had shared all of his snake stories. He told tales about rattlesnakes and boa constrictors, and recalled a National Geographic special he’d seen about the Amazon. In one exciting sequence, he recounted, an Indian guide went up-river to fish, leaving the main party. The Indian didn’t return, and the party began to worry. Later, a six-metre anaconda came floating down the river with a big bulge in its middle. Unable to move, it was easily caught and killed. The party, suspecting the worst, cut open the snake, and there, of course, was their Indian guide – all in one piece, but no longer alive.

  ‘I’m not going to the Amazon’, I said dryly.

  ‘There’ll be plenty of snakes in Costa Rica’, Lawrence had assured me.

  I was suitably outfitted against snakes, I thought, as I prepared for our day-long hike through the rainforest. In spite of my warnings, Dixie wore high-top tennis shoes, which she replaced with rubber boots for jungle trekking. But I was prepared. I am the happy owner of the world’s most perfect and attractive pair of waterproof Timberland hiking boots. These boots have hiked through Death Valley. They have been immersed in the muddy bottom of the Okefenokee Swamp.

  ‘I’m safe from snakes’, I announced to Augusto, our guide, proudly tapping my boot. He smiled and shook his head slowly.

  ‘They bite through animal skins’, he laughed. ‘Your boots cannot stop them.’

  I must have looked as deflated as a week-old balloon.

  Then, suspecting the impact his comment had made, and in an effort to hearten us, he whipped out a snakebite kit to give us a demonstration of his medical prowess. This kit consisted of a small plastic glass, a match and a piece of cotton. According to Augusto, all jungle guides must carry them. To demonstrate, he doused the cotton in alcohol, threw it into the bottom of the glass, lit the match, threw it in too, and applied this to the selected body part – in this case, his side. Instantly, all of his flesh was sucked into the glass. The whole operation took only a few (maybe thirty) seconds – fast enough, he assured us, to prevent the poison’s spread.

  We headed off for our trek through the rainforest, but when we reached the edge of the forest, Augusto grew suddenly very serious. Strangler figs overshadowed land that had been planted and cleared. Banana palms formed long, leafy corridors edged in high, sun-bleached savannah grass. Augusto walked ahead of us, arms stretched out dramatically. He was muttering something in Spanish. I asked him what he was doing. ‘I am clearing the path’, he said, his eyes sparkling like beads of obsidian.

  ‘Tell me what you are saying’, I pleaded. He tried to teach me his chant. It was a strange poem in which Jesus figured. I repeated it in Spanish and promptly forgot it, trusting his odd mix of Indian and Christian lore to see us through. It worked like a charm.

  That night Dixie and I prepared for bed in the usual way. We washed and hung out clothes that would never dry because of the damp. Every day they made great progress towards further fermentation. Every night we rinsed them out to reduce the thick, yeasty smell that swelled through our bungalow and threatened to throttle us. Then we filled the room with the muffled tattoo of our palms slapping against the sheets, condemning to perdition the insects that had managed to permeate our protective membrane of mosquito netting. We sat up in our beds with our maps, our reference materials and our Deet, an insecticide strong enough to remove nail polish and melt plastic. The rainforest’s nocturnal breeze blew in through the rattan walls. It was quiet. Suddenly, high and tremulous, a scream broke the silence. It was right outside our door.

  ‘Of course a woman’s scream breaks the silence’, I snapped. ‘How predictable. How stereotypically lame.’

  ‘Maybe she saw a cockroach’, Dixie offered, bringing to mind a particularly large red specimen that we had encountered on one of our late-night rambles.

  ‘Well,’ I observed snottily, ‘if she’s afraid of bugs, she shouldn’t have come to a rainforest.’

  Dixie and I decided to ignore the scream and the commotion right outside our door – footsteps, yelling, muffled noises. Sensationalism. We didn’t want to be bothered. Besides we had, by now, managed to kill every bug that crawled, wriggled or flew within our protective netting. Our seals were complete. We didn’t want to invite further intrusion by breaking the mosquito net barrier.

  At breakfast the next morning we heard the whole creepy honeymoon story. Two newlyweds had taken a moonlit walk down the winding resort steps. The bride told us that she had turned her torch on right outside our door. I had to wonder what life-saving instinct had prompted this action. There, inches from her sandaled foot, was a six-foot fer-de-lance. She backed up slowly. Then she let out her scream. Hotel staff arrived and dispatched the snake, but the newlyweds were sorry they’d done this. Toxic snakes are a fundamental part of rainforest ecologies, and they believed it was best to adopt a laissez-faire attitude. I told the new bride that we’d pegged her for some sissy girl, squealing because she’d seen a bug. She told us about the time a poisonous green snake had slid across her belly at a beach in Indonesia.

  ‘Everyone says I have Snake Karma’, she added with pride.

  I considered this for a momen
t. Snake Karma. Here was a concept I’d never entertained. I flashed back on my own snake encounters: the cobra I’d come across on a run through a Malaysian cemetery; the highly poisonous European adder I’d encountered one morning when I was running alone on a mountain called Radmunderberget, in Sweden; the green mamba that liked to camp out on the top of my tent in Kenya; the rattlesnake I’d met one fine Easter morning on a hike in the hills near my Bay Area home. Perhaps the fer-de-lance on our doorstep had come calling for me, not her. Perhaps I have Snake Karma, my inner being shrilled, and I trembled.

  That same morning a group of surfers reported killing a 4.5-metre boa constrictor at a spot a few kilometres up the coast. It had a coati-mundi still in its stomach. The coati-mundi is a pleasant animal that looks like a cross between an anteater and a raccoon. It’s bite-sized for a 4.5-metre boa. The coati-mundi’s eyes were apparently still open. The surfers said they’d cut up the snake and eaten some of it. It tasted, they said, like very tough chicken.

  That night while preparing for bed I could not stop thinking about snakes. Adders, anacondas, asps, cottonmouths, coral snakes, kraits, king cobras and sidewinders – a host of vipers slithered about in my mind. Bugs wriggled and sawed their way through my mosquito netting, climbed clumsily over the coverlet, nibbled away at the exposed parts of my body. I paid them no heed. My Deet sat on the table beside my bed, my maps and my reference materials next to it. When Dixie finally turned out the light, I lay in the silent dark and waited. Do snakes have families? Maybe the terciopelo’s mate would come to the door in search of its murdered spouse. Maybe this time the serpent would snake its way into our room. I waited and waited with a strange mixture of fear and excitement. If snakes were my destiny, I was ready to meet them head on. After all, hadn’t I managed to survive all my prior ophidian interactions? The sultry tropical breeze whispered through the bungalow walls, ruffled our leafy roof of palms. Insects and frogs filled the air with nocturnal arias. I fantasised about dropping in on the East Bay Vivarium when I got home and buying a cute baby corn snake. The minutes ticked by. I finally fell asleep.

  Dawn broke, orchid pink, on another paradisiacal day – Eden, yes, but minus the serpent. It had been an uneventful night. No screams had broken the darkness, no fer-de-lance had paid us a midnight visit. The conclusion was unavoidable. It was the young bride, not me, that the snake had been drawn to, and like a jilted lover, my disappointment was soon replaced by indignation.

  Later that morning when Augusto came by and tried to interest me in a hike, I was less than enthused. When he mentioned the incident of the snake and started to prattle on about venom and the victims of vipers, I looked bored. My sudden change in attitude seemed to take the guide by surprise. He turned his attention to Dixie while I leaned back in my chair, sipping at my fruity breakfast cocktail, and squinted off into the sunlight. Maybe later I’d read a good book, sunbathe, go for a dip in the pool. Snake Karma, I thought – who needs it?

  SNAKING THROUGH ITALY

  WICKHAM BOYLE

  Wickham Boyle is the daughter of a foreign correspondent and an anthropologist, a combination that provided the perfect springboard for travel writing. After a peripatetic childhood, her first job was working for the international experimental theatre LaMama. Since then she has kept her bags packed and her mind open. When not on the road, she lives with her family in a funky loft in TriBeCa, a New York neighbourhood she and other artists helped colonise decades ago. She has an MBA from Yale and writes for National Geographic Traveler, Forbes, the New York Times and Uptown magazine, among others.

  Experimental theatre is an acquired taste. You have to be willing to suspend disbelief and relegate logic to another quadrant of your brain. Such theatre usually involves a nonlinear plot and naked thespians writhing, chanting and emoting. There is commonly a sense of occupying a foreign dreamscape. In short, this can be the worst theatre of all, or it can be transporting. Being a producer of experimental theatre, especially on an international level, requires the ability to carry out tasks that would stop any other executive in their well-paid tracks.

  I was the executive director of the LaMama Experimental Theatre company for a decade, nearly all of the eighties. In 1986 we produced a trilogy of Greek plays – The Trojan Women, Medea and Elektra – performed in an environmental setting. They were a sensation. The thirty-two-person cast represented nearly as many countries and all seemed comfortable emoting, singing and running through invented theatres nearly naked, screaming at the top of their lungs. The plays were chanted in a guttural version of ancient Greek with wildly percussive music and lighting provided by rough-hewn torches carried by the actors. The audience had to run after the performers in order to keep up with the action.

  After one gut-wrenching, heart-stopping weekend we received a letter from a woman who claimed that the show had driven her crazy and she was now in therapy. Although I doubted the veracity of her claim, I wrote a condolence letter. Such was the power of our theatre.

  The actors brandished swords, whips and a gigantic boa constrictor that wound its way around Elektra’s neck in a harrowing climax that never failed to produce gasps from the audience. The snake was named Lola and was the responsibility of a cast member who had to share a room with her when the company was on tour.

  In the summer of 1987 the LaMama Company and the Trilogy were in residence at the famed Spoleto Festival. This festival, held in the medieval jewel-box town of Spoleto in Italy’s Umbrian hills, attracted artists and audiences from around the world. I sent the company off to Italy without me, believing I could use a summer with less drama and more fund-raising.

  Three days after the company landed in Italy I received a frantic phone call from the stage manager. ‘Lola has escaped!’ The director and the cast were disconsolate. I told him perfunctorily to hop a train to Rome and buy another snake. End of drama. He called back the next day with a long tale of regulated commerce whereby snakes cannot be purchased as easily as in New York City. There was no time to waste.

  My assistant got on the phone and in a jiffy I was riding off on my bike to make a quick tour of Manhattan’s available boa constrictors. There wasn’t much of an audition. I held the damn things – I actually like snakes, so this was fine; I wanted to see how they crawled, if they were too lively or if they had a sense of laconic movement that would hold the audience’s attention. There was one with good colour, which seemed calm but not catatonic, so I took it. I gave the pet shop owner 250 bucks and called my assistant to pick up the newly dubbed Max in a cab. I thought the bike basket and bumpy pavement might be too much for the fledgling star.

  Back in the office I had to decide the best way to smuggle Max into Italy. There was no time for import visas or cargo shipping. Luckily this was 1987 so security was pretty lackadaisical, especially entering Italy. But I needed to know what to do with this reptile. Most of the snakes I had travelled with were the human variety and I knew you just had to keep the cocktails coming to keep them quiet. I needed expert advice.

  I called the herpetology department of the Bronx Zoo and after a protracted explanation the expert on duty sighed, ‘You’re really going to do this? I can’t talk you out of it?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘you can only make it better for the snake.’ I felt as if I had taken a hostage. The scientist told me that reptiles become very sedate, slow and quiet when they are cold. The trick was to keep Max chilly without freezing him to death. My herpetologist felt this could be achieved by putting Max into my carry-on bag the night before and storing him in the fridge. Once on the plane, if I put him on the floor under the seat, the generally chilly temperatures should promise an uneventful flight.

  I felt relatively calm. After all, this wasn’t a bag full of illegal drugs, it was a boa constrictor. But when I started to spin out various scenarios, I freaked out. I imagined the prospect of spending twenty years in an Italian prison for smuggling with the intent to produce experimental theatre. It was daunting. I had a glass of wine, fed Max
a hapless mouse, carefully rolled him into a blue plastic shoulder bag and put him on the bottom shelf of the troupe’s refrigerator with a giant note on the door: ‘There is no food in the blue bag.’ Theatre people are notoriously hungry, always grazing and eager for free food.

  The next afternoon I picked up the blue bag, my purse and no luggage and headed for the airport. I would fly to Rome, catch a train to Spoleto, drop the package and head straight home again. I needed to get back to work and to my toddler. I took my aisle seat and slid Max under the seat in front of me. The plane was full, which worried me a little, but I fantasised about sleeping and waking up in Rome.

  I had just drifted off to sleep when the woman to my right nudged me. ‘Hey, what’s in your bag? It’s moving.’ There was no time for small talk. I stood up, took my bag and headed to the back of the plane. I noticed that the cabin had become very stuffy and hot. I took a deep breath and looked squarely into the eyes of a stewardess standing next to the drinks refrigerator.

  ‘Okay. Please listen to everything I have to say before you stop me.’

  I thought she might think I had a weapon in my bag, or was a lunatic, but she leaned back and I let fly.

  I told her about the play, about Lola the escapee snake, the fact that I was the producer and had a new snake, Max, in my bag and was on a mission to get him to Italy for the opening. I imparted what the scientist at the Bronx Zoo had advised, that we’d be fine if the snake stayed cold, but something had happened.

  ‘The cooling system is on the blink’, she said, cool as a cucumber.

  Suddenly her back was towards me and she was shovelling cans of drink out of the refrigerator the way a dog flings sand at the beach. Cans of Coke and Seven Up were flying around. Tomato juice collided with beers. In an instant there was a snake-sized space in the fridge.