This Book Is About Travel

by Andrew Hyde

  —Elizabeth Bishop,

  MONTREAL, CANADA

  The sign outside the only restaurant in town reads “Great food, reasonable prices.” It says everything and nothing at the same time. I’m supposed to feel comforted, I suppose. As if they know just what kind of music I like and their song is just like the other one only cheaper, and, perhaps even a little better. Of course, it is especially comforting when it is the only English written nearby.

  The thing is, I see this sign everywhere I go (the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, Greece, Japan, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Kenya, and on it goes). The signs can be different, but the theme is always the same. And finding a sign with improper grammar is like the Where’s Waldo of travel. One of my personal favorites was in in Thailand: “your finest food thoughts CHEAPER.” Perfect.

  I find such colloquial though universal signs to be endlessly charming. They exist everywhere, though to me they add very little value or insight to their context. “Ice Cold Beer” is one. “Magical Coffee” is another. “Hello, Friend!” is a close third.

  After all this travel, I can tell you one thing for sure: you really have to work to get a quality experience. Be very concerned, very alert, if you are ever dealing with someone whose professional job is to get you to say “yes.” When you are in new areas, you frequently encounter this challenge.

  A boat tour salesman will do anything and everything to get you to pay for the trip. I’ve seen tour salesman promise the bathrooms are spacious and cleaned twice daily only to find a hole in the ground behind the shed. If their only purpose is to sell, your purpose must be to defend.

  After almost two years of dealing with this, I’ve found a somewhat simple solution: ask a ton of questions. You don’t want to write off every person selling something (many of the best experiences are only possible with experienced guides and specialized equipment). Your goal isn’t to be a bother necessarily, but to distance yourself from the suckers and give the salesman a chance to show just what they really have to offer.

  If you are going to put yourself in a new situation daily for an extended period of time, you have to have a plan as to how you are going to deal with the tired, old scripts of tourism sales.

  In addition to any specific content inquiries, I have seven general questions that I ask before signing up for any paid tour. These seven questions are like little tentacles I have learned to deploy to feel out the actual quality of an always promised, “amazing experience.”

  1. Can I tell you about what I like?

  This whole strategy is based on forming a trust bond and seeing if you can put the operator through some exercises that, on the sales side, they don’t usually find themselves in. Describe what you are looking for in terms of feel. If you want a younger party scene, ask for it. If you want seclusion, then ask for that. By loading the conversation with a question they have to process, you are getting them to understand right off the bat that you are not going to follow their usual script.

  2. Do people come back to you at the end of their trip and tell you stories? What do they talk about?

  You should be more interested in if people come back than what the sales person has to say in his pitch — what they say will amazingly match the brochures, almost verbatim.

  3. What do the online reviews look like for your company/product?

  This is another example of a question that you are not necessarily looking for the answer to, but it is a means to try to understand the way they view the company outside of their memorized sales points. And anyway, reviews are generally worth it. The wisdom of crowds plays true almost every time — but, then again, many online reviewers rate fast food as five stars. Ask them, then check them out on your own. If there is a big difference between what they say and what the reviews say, take note. Further, if they have no idea, they don’t care about the end experience of a tour — simply take your business elsewhere.

  4. If I book with another company, which one would you go with?

  Again, not an important question in terms of a specific answer, but you get more of a feel for the salesman and culture of the area.

  5. Is this booked on commission, and/or how are you paid?

  Commission is a fine way to go, as the person generally sells with a few companies and can make a great living based on this. I want to make sure to be fair to you.

  6. What is the cancelation policy? When was the last time you saw a cancelation get refunded?

  I’ve booked tickets with companies because they were fair to other travelers with poor weather conditions. If they don’t offer a cancelation policy, especially around weather, look around.

  7. How long has your average staff member been working?

  If it is short, that means that they are not treating or paying their staff well. You will see some operators with a brand new staff — and that is also always a red flag. And anyway, I like having an experienced staff when I am placing my life and trust in their hands.

  There is this great improvisational comedy game that I know where you have to answer every question with a different question. “How are you?” can be responded to with “Are you looking forward to the weekend?” which can be responded to with “Do you have a girlfriend to take to dinner?” You lose the game by accidentally saying a statement, not a question. This is exactly how I feel and behave when dealing with aggressive peddlers. I keep asking questions in order to slice through the typical sales rhetoric. I never offer up statements right off the bat. Sooner or later, with this method, a glimpse of the reality of the situation will be revealed.

  If you do happen to book through someone like this, an aggressive peddler that has only the sale on his mind no matter the circumstance, you are continuing to support this style of business. Such a style will only exist if you keep doing what those before you have done. So ask questions and disrupt the script! Play with it. Use the above, or come up with your own. This is useful for taxis, hotels and tours alike.

  Chapter 9

  HOSTEL SHARKS

  Adventure, such as mountaineering, diving, flying, sailing and exploring is a form of escape from mundane existence, true, but it is more. It brings us back into contact with the simple things of life.

  Simplicity is often the soul-mate of happiness. Simplicity is a desire to be alone with one’s self or with another person in like circumstances.

  —Luther G. Jerstad

  GREAT BARRIER REEF, AUSTRALIA

  “Sharks don’t eat people. Sharks don’t eat people. Sharks don’t eat people.” It is just about pitch black and swimming three meters above a group of divers are roughly 20 sharks — feeding on something at the surface. Your body reacts to predators like an unwelcome dinner guest — horror, followed by relief that you saw them with time enough to plot your strategy: be incredibly polite until they leave.

  Australia was one of the first places I wanted to go on my trip, but the exchange rate and general cost of living kept me away. After two years of the exchange rate not really doing anything but go up, I finally decided to hop on the flying restaurant, bar and sleeper coach that is the Airbus 787 — I was headed to the land of Oz.

  The first day, as are all first days for me, consists of a long session of “Mark, Sue!” I started from the “#1 rated hostel in Australia” which was next to a sex shop and across the street from a brothel. Always a sign. You could buy a kangaroo themed towel with a “special massage.” Oh, the red light district: home of cheap accommodation, accompaniment and copious amounts of pills with the letter “a” on them. I’m doing my best to be my usual out-of-place self and found some coffee to start the day.

  A flat white is like a latte without foam, which you will never order here because cappuccinos come with impressive amounts of cocoa powder on them. Seriously, they don’t serve any other coffee products in the country. Cocoa powder on the light foam. Yes, please. I’ll have four before a shaky fifth.

  A long walk. My favorite part of travel. Walk until you are tired, buy a dr
ink or some lunch, walk some more, follow some people like a stalker and end with a big dinner and a game of Stay Up Until Bedtime (a game also known as Jet Lag, You Fucker). The directions I got from a South Korean traveler had me walking down a narrow street, down a staircase “at the building,” and then to a lookout of the Sydney Opera House, an iconic piece of architecture that perfectly accents a beautiful skyline. The park is crowded with tourist after tourist getting their “just off the tour bus” look configured into the perfect “I am a unique, inspired individual” picture.

  Actually, I muse to myself, you are a beautiful and unique overused line from Fight Club. Picture, turn, and snap (a tourist version of the bend and snap from Legally Blonde). 98% more effective in getting the attention of the opposite gender. This could be turned into a musical. The running of the tourists. I look around and of course see that there are just as many people viewing the park from tour buses. No outside observation, here. Same as it ever was.

  “Sydney is shit. Shit shit shit.” my friend texts me. Melbourne and Sydney share a rivalry in sport and culture. Melbourne is much smaller, and would be much more celebrated if there weren’t the bigger city to the north stealing all the press and international contracts. “Get here as soon as you can.”

  I find a couch to surf in Sydney with Sebastian Terry, a friend I met in Bogotá, Colombia. The last time I saw him, he was getting in a cab to get shot with a handgun to cross “get shot with a gun” off his list of 100 things to do in the world. Bucket lists are a funny thing. He wrote a great book about his list, which now includes helping others with theirs at http://100things.com.au/

  Six gluten free muffins and twelve cappuccinos were consumed over a week of writing in a great organic food shop in Manly Beach. In a feeling of accomplishment, I booked a flight up to Cairns. My bucket list was in need of some lightening, and, on this occasion it included the Great Barrier Reef and sharks. You know, the kinds of sharks that had problems as adolescents and changed their life direction from accounting to the arts. Just kidding, diving was the item on the list. Not. Sharks. I wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef as quickly as possible as climate change has been destroying it since the 90‘s, they said. We booked a three day “How to Dive” course leading into another three days on a ship with an all-you-can-eat buffet. Classy. Day one on the boat we found ourselves with both an overconfidence with the equipment — “oh yeah, I got this!” — and a belly that would make an extra weight on the SCUBA belt required.

  “What is the worst thing that could go wrong?” the dive master asked the group. I cheerfully quipped

  “Death, destruction, Home Alone 4 — Kevin Has Kids.”

  “You can get lost,” is the answer she was looking for. “Don’t worry, we will find you.” If Cormack McCarthy writes a water themed novel, this is the setting. Five points to descend, as per the rules. One: Ok to go down to your dive buddy. Two: Check surroundings: boat, sky, water. Water. Water everywhere. Three: Put the air tank tube in your air tube. Check. Four: Note time on imaginary watch. Freckle o’clock. Five: Imagine yourself sinking, let out the air from your pack and slowly start pondering the depth at which your organs will compress to the point of bursting. Our certification goes to 18 meters, so most likely deeper than that.

  Every dive you go on in the Reef makes you question the purpose of every relationship in the world. Symbiotic is the word of the reef. Everything seems to be taking care of one another. The fish clean the bigger fish as the coral cleans the water so the big fish can see the little fish well enough to eat them. The entire cast of Finding Nemo is swimming by humming “The Circle of Life.” The colors all around are wordlessly stunning. The fish in that movie have their scientific names (Isurus oxyrinchus, Chelonia mydas, Amphiprion ocellaris and Echinaster spinulosus, to name four) removed in favor of their Pixar character names. Nemo is the hero! Diver is the unwitting villain. Isn’t Dory lovable?

  At depth, this feels like Atlantis. Perfection of sight, sound, and the flow of movement. A drop of the beat in the song. A swaying of the trees in the wind. A fiction writer tricking their reader into believing there was a level of sobriety in their process.

  You look up to see the bright sun beaming off the surface waves, gazing through the silt, jellyfish, and schools of fish to hit the bright corals of the reef. The sway of the tide gives a rhythm to the game the entire system seems to be playing. Breathe in, breathe out. Darth Vader in, tiny little bubbles out.

  “Muuuurrrrrmmmmmlllleeeeee” my dive buddy Miles seems to yell as he points to a turtle. A beautiful sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) had gotten up from a night’s rest, kickstarted the ol’ heart, and was heading up for a quick breath of air before returning to his safe spot in the reef.

  The checklist of the perfect dive for Miles and I was:

  1. Turtle

  2. Shark

  3. Sting Ray

  4. Jellyfish

  5. Cave

  6. Boat

  After the “Muuuurrrrrmmmmmlllleeeeee,” came a shark, a sting ray, a jellyfish, a cave we could swim through and finally the boat we started on. Dive 7 was complete — only a night dive left and this portion of my bucket list was complete. Perfect.

  The night dive is the native species of the “it is really boring to be on a boat” biome, for some reason. While a seemingly endless sunset is fading over very distant mountains, the guests of the boat gear up to dive into darkness. Oh, and there are sharks.

  A freaked out guest is crying to her friends while the lead instructor is saying “there are no sharks at this site, that is tomorrow night.” All this crying and denying of the sharks was very odd to the eight divers watching the sharks circle below us. This group can’t really be that stupid, can they? She joins the group, unaware of the circling teethed creature a few meters below. If I was scared of sharks to the point of tears, I would sure as hell, you know, look into the water to see if any were there before I had my girls-night-out-Cosmo-style cry with my mates. A fire red sunset seemed exceptionally bright as we swam away from the boat. We looked at each other — five checks — ok to go down.

  You carry a flashlight when you dive at night. But the full moon that graced us that evening illuminated the sea floor just enough so that our lights were unnecessary — minus scaring off the feeling that you were being watched. Your light can still be used to help find the creatures below. Red eyes: shrimp. Green eyes: sharks. If you spot a turtle, don’t point the light on them for too long as they are resting and you will get their heart rate up causing them to have to go to the surface in the danger of night. If you spot a school of fish, you have also just announced them to the cod — who use your light as a fishing guide.

  We were told we should only spotlight one fish during the dive for the cod. I felt what being a Flashlight God was like. The cod were happy to follow us, and our light, all around and were very well fed throughout the night. We check out a few red bass and then a part of the reef with some active mollusks. Some shrimp in the coral that were almost invisible during the day, were now vivid and bright in the artificial lighting environment.

  The signals for being low on air were communicated and we started our ascent to sea level. At five meters we see the first set of green eyes through the silt. We stop our ascent. More green eyes. Someone from the boat is throwing food into the water that the sharks competing over — just a few feet from the ladder we use to get back into the boat. We are keen on the spectacle. Our diving group lingered beneath, watching — completely alert, every second deep and intense. Your heart rate rises and falls when you see a predator. A rarity. A euphoric high. You sound like a Star Wars climax. Where is John Williams?

  We see a diver from another group panic (yes, those are real sharks Mr. Disneyland) and make a rapid ascent to the ladder. Clearly freaked out by the situation, he fights or flights himself into a pretty stupid and dangerous situation — looking like he is attacking or being aggressive to the sharks. His reaction to the feeling of danger was to put himself in an e
ven more dangerous position. Fortunately, he was okay. We watch the sharks until they get uninterested and then we finally ascend.

  We sat on the deck and asked each other just how we were feeling. A bit tired. A bit frenzied. A bit beat up — as if our minds had just gotten into an accidental fistfight and were now trying to calm down and relax. It had been an event to put on an experience list, to say the least — but not necessarily our list.

  In a traveling society filled with declarations of living our own dreams, an odd feeling sometimes creaks in; Even if the dream is not yours, at least you are living someone else’s. We look at the barcodes on the experiences we have. Tour packages with imported beer. Forty years ago, this week might have been the trip of a lifetime for the elite. It was a Tuesday for our middle class group, not ungrateful in our experiences but verbose in our dreams. Our dreams. Our dreams? What happens when we start seeking the highlights of others? How do we know what is unique to ourselves? Is there anything that is unique to ourselves?

  Breathe in, breathe out. Lessons not revisited are never learned.

  Chapter 10

  INTERVIEW: LISA BESSERMAN

  One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore.

  —Andre Gide

  YOU RUN

  I found myself on a beach north of Santa Marta, Colombia in the middle of a party held by college students from the local University. A large drum circle was set up and everyone was taking turns dancing in the middle, calling out each other to join for a move or two before joining the outer edges. My group from the hostel was invited in with open arms. A few seconds later, Lisa jumped at the opportunity and joined the middle of the circle with a Colombian man, to the cheers of the group. Her black dress stood out in a sea of white apparel. I took a picture. I found her at our hostel the next day to share the photo.