The Best Travel Writing, Volume 10

by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, Sean O'Reilly (ed) (retail) (epub)

  The Wave sneaked onto every landscape photographer’s wish list in 2004, when it was featured in a German documentary called Faszination Natur Seven Seasons. Today, about a third of the visitors are from Europe (and, more recently, China and Japan).

  But seeing the Wave in situ requires luck and planning. The BLM, which administers Vermillion Cliffs, uses a strict permit system to protect the fragile area from overuse. Only twenty people are allowed in each day. Ten permits are issued online, four months in advance; the rest are awarded by lottery at the National Monument office in Kanab, Utah, at 8:30 A.M. (the permits, $6, are valid the following day). During high season, March-November, as many as 120 hopefuls show up each day. All but ten will leave disappointed.

  Bribes don’t work.

  Tom Reep, thirty-two, is a nine-year Army Veteran who served two tours in Iraq. He’s currently the point man for Wave permit requests. Reep has an open flame tattooed on his arm and a deep affinity for the desert. But he has little patience for people trying to buy their way into the Wave.

  “The monetary record is $2,000,” Reep remarks as he, Wright, and my small group hike from the Wire Pass parking area and trailhead toward the Wave. “I’ve even had a lady on the phone ask, ‘Well, what if I take you to dinner and a movie, and we’ll see what happens afterward?’”

  Kevin Wright has also turned down multiple requests—from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition to representatives of the Occupy movement (who wanted to hold a candlelight vigil at the Wave). “Even National Geographic had to get a permit,” he says reverently. “We do give permission for research: science in the public interest. Otherwise, we never make an exception. I can’t think of a single case.”

  “Come on,” I nudge. “Not even the President?”

  “If the President wants a permit,” Wright pronounces dryly, “he will get one.”

  We cover about three unmarked miles, meandering through a landscape pocked with vivid red and orange bumps and valleys—like acne writ large. The land is sparse, but not bare; we pass sagebrush, twisted junipers, and hills bristling with Indian rice grass.

  After ninety minutes of rugged walking, a short, sandy hill leads us up to the Wave itself. It’s a weird feeling, to be approaching a rock formation with the same anticipation one might feel at Angkor, or the Taj Mahal.

  “This whole area is amazing,” I remark. “Will I even know the Wave when I see it?”

  “You’ll know it,” Wright says.

  He’s right, of course. So much of the Southwest is wild and magical that it’s hard to think “Best of Show.” But the Wave is a contender. I stare at the layers of whorled stone, trying to come up with a good visual metaphor. The sandstone ribbons range in color from beet to pumpkin, cayenne to saffron. Farsi finger painting? Tutti-Frutti taffy? A stretched-out sand mandala? One friend comes even closer: “Stacked Pringles.”

  We pass between the undulating Wave walls. It’s only 10 A.M., and the sun hasn’t penetrated the interior; it’s cool and mysterious in the “tube.” After a few yards, the wall opens up to our left. A dozen other visitors are sitting on a saddle above us, capturing the postcard view of the Wave. They wait gamely as we pass through their viewfinders.

  “We’ll come back later,” Reep says. “There’s lots to see.”

  Our little group continues walking, emerging from the Wave onto an exposed outcrop. The view beyond is alien, fantastic, a scene from Dr. Seuss. Reep leads us on a long loop behind the Wave, pointing out some of the area’s lesser-known dreamscapes. We stop at a viewpoint over the “Second Wave”; to the east stands a group of tall, cauliflower-topped hoodoos called “Brain Rocks.” A 200-foot scramble up to a harrowing ledge (“Don’t look to your left . . . or to your right,” Reep grins) leads to Top Rock, our lunch spot: a wind-carved arch with a staggering view across the landscape below.

  My favorite site, though, is a simple pool of rainwater, filling a sandstone dip just a few steps from the Wave itself. Reep reaches into the water, and shows us a black creature that looks like a fat tadpole. “A horseshoe shrimp,” he explains. “The oldest living species on Earth.” Exquisitely adapted, her eggs can survive up to twenty years between rains.

  At about 2:30, Tom and Kevin head back to their truck. The other visitors have left, too. I’m left blissfully alone with a few good friends, the Wave, and the oldest shrimp on Earth. Good company.

  My fantasy is to head toward our car at dusk, but the group’s greater wisdom prevails. We start back at 4:30 P.M. It’s a good thing; the BLM’s route-finding map has you navigate using a half-dozen small photographs of the local landmarks you see (or don’t) around you. It’s hard enough to follow the path in the late afternoon; it would be nearly impossible in the dark. Even now, we almost take a wrong turn up what seems to be a trail, but is only a wash between two tall hoodoos.

  Getting lost here would be easy—and possibly fatal, as it was for an unlucky exchange student in 2011. He’d arrived at sunrise, and stayed until sunset. Dehydrated and disoriented, he took a wrong turn toward Buckskin Gulch—and fell into a slot canyon.

  With a collective sigh of relief, we find our way out. As the dark, weird shapes of the buttes loom against the moonlit sky, the desert seems eternal. But even that view—like the false trail that snaked off into the sagebrush—is an illusion.

  “This landscape is ever-evolving,” Colorado Plateau author Ron Blakey points out. “The Wave you can touch with your hand is probably less than 1,000 years old. It’s constantly changing, constantly eroding, grain by grain, layer by layer. What you see today is not going to be there 5,000 years from now.”

  The Earth is a living planet. Even the Wave, one day, will collapse.

  Oakland-based Jeff Greenwald is the author of six books, including Shopping for Buddhas, The Size of the World (for which he created the first international blog), and most recently Snake Lake, a novel set in Nepal during the 1990 democracy revolution. His stories and essays have appeared in Smithsonian, Afar, Wired, National Geographic Adventure and Salon. Jeff also serves as Executive Director of Ethical Traveler, a global alliance of travelers dedicated to human rights and environmental protection (www.ethicaltraveler.org). Shopping for Buddhas has been re-released in a new, up-to-date edition for its 25th anniversary.

  LAVINIA SPALDING

  Feliz Cumpleaños

  Youth is wasted on the young. —Oscar Wilde

  It’s late afternoon, and Erin and I have occupied the sunny courtyard of La Canchanchara for hours, drinking cervezas and taking turns dancing with José Luis. Now he’s tutoring Erin on the güiro, a traditional Cuban instrument made from a hollow gourd. He leans close as he teaches her the rhythm, locking eyes with her, and in unison they scrape thin sticks over the carved ridges of their instruments: cha, cha, chachacha, cha, cha, chachacha. The band plays son, and the sweet smoke from his hand-rolled cigar encircles our heads. As the sun crosses the sky and we order another round, José Luis takes my hand and begins serenading me in Spanish, soft and low. I sing back. Across the table Erin grins: missions accomplished.

  Four days ago she picked me up at the Calgary airport. “I’ve been in a foul mood for months,” she said, backing her car out of the snowy airport parking spot. “I promised Drew I’d come back with an attitude adjustment.”

  Erin is my best friend, and Drew is her Canadian husband. We met him in an Australian backpacker bar ten years ago and shared a pitcher of beer, and within minutes I knew he would marry her. What I didn’t realize was that he’d whisk her away to the cold plains of Canada, after which the only way I’d ever see her would be to bribe her with sunshine.

  “I’m sick of my job,” she said, driving us toward the spray-tan salon where we had appointments to turn our grayish skin bikini-ready. “And this weather isn’t helping.”

  She looked sideways at me, apologetically, as if I might judge her. Erin and I had been friends for twenty-five years; if I didn’t judge her when she was our high school’s head cheerleader, it was u
nlikely to happen now.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll find you a new attitude.”

  The last time we traveled together I drank so much Tecate with two guys named Miguel that at the end of the night I decided to sleep in my Subaru outside our rented casita. “Are you crazy?” she’d hissed, holding the car door open. “I am not letting you sleep in a car, alone, in the middle of Mexico.” Now, three years later, we were off to Cuba—Erin in search of a new attitude, me in search of a cure for the insult of turning forty. At least if we failed, we failed together.

  Our flight to Cuba kicks off with two complimentary glasses of champagne, and following Erin’s announcement that it’s my birthday, two more appear. While she reads a guidebook, I study See It and Say It in Spanish, enlightening her occasionally with useful phrases like Caramba! Eso es ridiculo. No tengo un gorilla en casa. Inexplicably—alarmingly—she appoints me our official translator.

  I have never in my life taken a Spanish lesson, and even if I had, my brain isn’t as absorbent as it once was. But I did bring this handy kindergarten-level language book, along with several Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, whose glossaries should at least add some practical vocabulary to supplement See It and Say It in Spanish gorillas, geraniums, radishes, and accordions.

  In addition to the dried-up sponge in my head and other obvious indicators of age—gray hair, wrinkles, sunspots, flabby waistline, unforgiving hangovers—one area in which it’s clear that forty is old is when packing for a trip. Between the ever-expanding first-aid kit, ugly-but-comfy shoes, just-in-case jackets, healthy snacks and emergency provisions, guidebooks and back-up documents, packing has turned complicated. In my twenties I could squeeze three weeks in Vietnam and Cambodia into a tiny zip-on daypack. Now I feel chastened each time I lift an overstuffed pack onto my shoulders or—so very much worse—admit defeat by opting for the expandable rolling bag. But this time was easy. My boyfriend Dan had just returned from Cuba (his guys’ trip to my girlcation) and called to offer advice. “Cuban women wear skin-tight spandex and low-cut shirts,” he said, “but if you don’t want to get whistled at and have men following you around making kissing noises, dress modestly. Wear jeans.”

  “Right,” I said, tossing tiny tank tops, skimpy sundresses, skirts, bikinis, and shorts into my pack—and leaving the jeans on my closet floor. I was turning forty: damn straight I wanted men following me around making kissing noises.

  Dan offered other helpful advice: bring Imodium; change dollars to euros first; go to Staples and buy a new memory card for your camera; bring your iPhone but keep it on airplane mode; pack light. When I shared his suggestions with Erin, she said, “Does he know this isn’t our first rodeo?”

  It really wasn’t. Our friendship was founded on movement and adventure, and sustained by both. It began in high school: bored with the entertainment offerings of our small town of Flagstaff, Arizona, we spent nights driving the highway, through the desert or mountains, in search of little more than an elsewhere. We drove to Prescott late one night to see if their Jack in the Box burgers tasted different from ours. We drove to Sedona and peered into darkened shop windows filled with incense and dream catchers. We drove to the north rim of the Grand Canyon and sat on the side with our feet dangling over, talking about the boys we loved. We drove to Phoenix, gassed up, and drove home. We drove to see how far we could go and make it back before anyone noticed we were gone.

  Freshman year in college we crossed the border into Nogales, Mexico, on Friday nights to do tequila shots. Sophomore year we scribbled the names of ten cities on scraps of paper, threw them in a mixing bowl, and spent our summer in the one we’d blindly chosen, Seattle. Senior year we backpacked through Europe. After university, we lived in South Korea, vacationed in Bali and Saipan and Thailand, went scuba diving and hang gliding in Australia. And eventually we married her off on a beach in Costa Rica. We fell in love with the world together, and our lives were stitched together with the threads of a thousand overlapping stories. And now we were turning forty and crossing destination numero uno off our list: Cuba. It offered art and history museums and salsa dancing for Erin, guitar concerts and food and confusing politics for me. But mostly, it offered a place we weren’t actually, technically, allowed to go. Sí, por favor.

  When we land in Varadero, Erin and I are immediately singled out as Americans. Standing in the center of a one-room airport while all eyes watch with interest, a trio of immigration officials question us. We entertain them with feeble, comical attempts at Spanish until their concern finally turns to laughter and they send us on our way with a “feliz cumpleaños.”(Because Erin doesn’t know how to say, “It’s her birthday” in Spanish, she simply wishes everyone she meets a happy birthday, then points at me.)

  A shuttle drops us at our hotel, which looks fine from the outside. But inside it’s dark and dingy, like the foyer of a small-town prison. We wait nervously while the desk clerk looks up our reservation, and when after a few minutes he announces he can’t locate our reservation, we both smile with relief. The only redeeming feature of the hotel is the patio bar, so we sip our first Cuban mojitos while we weigh our options. Do we walk around Varadero seeking alternate lodging? We’re in this ritzy town for just one night, and only because hitching ourselves to the Canadian resort-goers’ wagon was the cheapest flight from Calgary. In every other town on our itinerary we plan to stay at casas particulares—private homes of Cubans who have licenses to rent rooms to tourists. But we’ve read that in Varadero, casas particulares are not legal; all our guidebooks state it’s impossible to find one. We are therefore tremendously pleased with ourselves when ten minutes later we’ve secured a lovely, reasonably priced room in a charming casa particular, after being approached by a man who asks in a whisper if we need a place to stay. As Erin and I perch on our double bed with the pink-and-yellow flowered quilt, our hostess sits between us with a town map, indicating sites of interest and miming.

  “Aquí,” she says, “su casa,” pointing at the floor and marking it on our map with a star. “Aquí comida,” making an X on the map and lifting an invisible fork to her mouth. She circles the market, beach, bus station. Then she becomes serious. “Ahora,” she says, making sure we’re listening intently. “Muy, muy importante.” We wait for the warning about sketchy neighborhoods, or perhaps another plea to keep her casa a secret. Something about the government? A rule that we, as Americans cannot, should not break?

  “Aquí,” she says, carefully circling a spot and tapping it several times with her pen for emphasis, “es casa de la música.” She mimes dancing, and we all laugh—but she’s right. This is muy, muy importante. Later, we follow her map to a bar where professional dancers circle the floor. At one point there’s a pseudo-Santería ritual featuring flashy dancing and fire. Meanwhile, locals salsa in the street outside. While I drink my Cristal beer and laugh at the cheesy tourist show, Erin dances with a tall Cuban named René. He’s handsome, with a gentle demeanor, and after twenty minutes tries to kiss her. “No,” she says.

  “Just one kiss,” he insists.

  “I’m married!” she says, showing him her ring.

  “And you?” he asks, suddenly remembering I’m sharing their table.

  “I have a boyfriend.”

  “So you,” he says to Erin, “are dead, and you”—pointing to me—“are very sick.” Then he tries to kiss her again. A few hours later, outside another bar, a friendly, corpulent gold-toothed CD seller approaches us. After Erin buys a disc from him, he too asks to kiss her. “I love you, Erin,” he insists, calling after her as we head home.

  I’m reminded of our summer in Europe. We were twenty-three, and everywhere we traveled—Greece, Spain, Italy, France—the men called Erin “Miss America.” At a London hostel, an Australian named Troy climbed our fire escape and perched outside the window serenading her on the guitar as we drifted to sleep. In Greece two bronzed boys, Mikhal and Christophe, followed her around begging for attention. But Erin was faithful to her
boyfriend back home and left them brokenhearted. One night at the end of our week on Corfu, as I danced with Mikhal, he whispered that he loved me.

  “But Mikhal,” I teased, “last night you loved Erin.””

  “Yes,” he nodded earnestly. “But tonight . . . it is your turn.”

  As we walk home from casa de la música, Erin tells me she read in her guidebook that sex is the only thing not rationed in Cuba. And as our week on the island unfolds, we begin to see the effects of this. It doesn’t feel seedy, though—there’s something thick and sultry about it, yes, but equally playful. It’s in the way middle-aged men with unbuttoned shirts lean in doorways and watch women passersby; how they flirt—smiling, eyes sparkling—but it’s also in the way those women look back, flirt, sparkle. It’s in the way those same men smile and flirt with us. When we were younger, it would have made us squirm. Were we available for romance, it might make us nervous. But no—this attention is welcome and we let ourselves soak it in, absorb it like expensive wrinkle cream. Of course we’ve read about jineteras (women) and jineteros (men) who trade sex or love for money, favors, the remote possibility of a life lived elsewhere. This doesn’t feel like that—this just feels like a place where joy and sexuality and music are celebrated, the way capitalism is celebrated in my country.

  Still, there are rules. Later in the week we’ll meet a woman traveling with her husband, and she’ll tell us men don’t even look at her here, much less speak to her. There’s a code of respect: if you’re already partnered you won’t be spoken to or propositioned or invited to dance. And so we finally understand why Erin is always approached right away—within minutes of entering a bar or finding a table. Once someone establishes himself as her dance partner, no one will bother her for the remainder of the evening; she’s off-limits. And since we don’t care who we dance with—we only want to dance—we find this positively charming.