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La Poderosa’s Final Tour

Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Due to a premonition, Alberto didn’t want to drive [the motorcycle nicknamed “La Poderosa,” “The Mighty One”], so I sat up front though we only did a few kilometers before stopping to fix the failing gearbox. A little further on, as we rounded a tight curve at a good speed, the screw came off the back brake, a cow’s head appeared around the bend, then many, many more of them, and I threw on the hand brake which, soldered ineptly, also broke. For some moments I saw nothing more than the blurred shape of cattle flying past us on each side, while poor Poderosa gathered speed down the steep hill. By an absolute miracle we managed to graze only the leg of the last cow, but in the distance a river was screaming toward us with terrifying efficacy. I veered on to the side of the road and in the blink of an eye the bike mounted the two-meter bank, embedding us between two rocks, but we were unhurt.

…. [W]e were put up by some Germans who treated us very well. During the night I had a bad case of the runs and, being ashamed to leave a souvenir in the pot under my bed, I climbed out on to the window ledge and gave up all my pain to the night and blackness beyond. The next morning I looked out to see the effect and saw that two meters below lay a big sheet of tin where they were sun-drying their peaches; the added spectacle was impressive. We beat it fast.—Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries

Travel Ain’t What It Used To Be

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Cool & Luxurious—No More!

Cool & Luxurious—No More!

I was just looking at photographs of some old travel posters and thought how cool and luxurious all the posters seemed. Now one is more likely to see backpackers wearing camouflage shorts with cargo pockets and staying in hostels. What you don’t see is the pilferage that takes place in their youth hostel and the lost sleep resulting from drunken young partiers who stay up to the wee hours of the morning. Nor do you see the TSA groping your private parts to make sure you’re not carrying a Thompson submachine gun there.

Travel has become at one and the same time more proletarian (no problem with that) and more security-conscious (using procedures that are more annoying than efficacious).

Also, since the heyday of those old posters, the United States has become a whole lot less popular than it used to be. Border crossings are fraught with arcane rules and odd fees such as reciprocal entry, departure and airport taxes. When Martine and I went to Argentina in 2011, for instance, we each had to pay a reciprocal entry tax of U.S. $160.00 to match what we were charging Argentinians entering the U.S.

Of course, it is nowhere as bad as my visit to Czechoslovakia in 1977, when my parents were held at a police station in Presov-Solivar because their papers weren’t in order. (Mine were, but that’s only because I used a visa service that was up on all the regs.)

Still, there is nothing in the world like travel. Whether you plunk yourself down on some sandy beach or—like me—go all over the place taking in the sights, it is at the evry least a balm for the tired soul. At best, it is life at its most exciting, with every minute being a new opportunity for learning.

 

Bucket List

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The Inca Ruins at Machu Picchi

The Inca Ruins at Machu Picchu

Every once in a while, I take stock of places I would like to visit, despite the fact that the amount of time I have remaining looks ever more finite. What is particularly difficult for me is that Martine is afraid of going to most of the places on my bucket list, whether for reasons of health (mosquitoes, altitude sickness) or because of socio/political prejudices (Russia, Turkey).

In random order, here are ten places I would give my eye teeth to visit:

  1. The Inca ruins at Machu Picchu in Peru, plus several of the archeological sites near Cuzco.
  2. The Trans-Siberian Railroad from Moscow (if I had the time and money, from London) to Vladivostok.
  3. Visiting Greek ruins in Turkey, Italy, and—oh, yes—Greece.
  4. Pompeii and Herculaneum, for a look at an ancient world buried by a volcanic eruption.
  5. When I went in 2001, I didn’t get a chance to see enough of Iceland, so I want more. And maybe I can add Greenland and the Faeroe Islands as well.
  6. The Shetlands and Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
  7. Argentina’s Iguazu Falls.
  8. A cruise on the Danube to see the lands of my forefathers.
  9. Mauritius and Réunion in the Indian Ocean because, well, I had to pick at least one tropical location.
  10. Chilean Patagonia, because Martine and I traveled through the Argentinean portions and loved them.

That’s a fairly long list, and I wonder how much of it I can get to. The biggest limiting factor, of course, is money. The type of travel I like is not cheap, even though I eschew luxury accommodations and five-star meals.

 

 

The Paradise of Apples

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Loaded Branch at Green Mountain Orchard

One of the best things about travel is discovering (or, in our case, re-discovering) some great foods. Although we like the apples from Oak Glen, where we journeyed yesterday, nothing can compare with the tanginess of apples and apple cider from Vermont and New Hampshire. There is something about the granitic soil that does something rich and strange to the flavor. And when you make cider from them—without killing the flavor by pasteurizing—the result is one of the most refreshing drinks on the planet.

The first couple of days of our vacation in September were spent in Vermont. After a brief stop at the Vermont Country Store in Rockingham, we drove to nearby Putney, where Green Mountain Orchard is located. We had heard they sold unpasteurized apple cider, and it was true. Between the two of us, we guzzled a whole quart of the stuff and then spent an hour just driving around the property and seeing their trees (such as the one above) as well as their stands of raspberry and blueberry bushes.

When we crossed over the border into Canada, we hoped to be able to find equivalent quality. We bought a bag from a farm stand just west of Fredericton, New Brunswick, but it wasn’t the same thing. The terrain had changed to fertile flatlands, which are good for most crops, but which result in so-so fruit.

I remember buying apple cider by the gallon from Tanzi’s Grocery (now long gone) in Hanover, New Hampshire, when I was a student at Dartmouth. Because at the time we had no access to refrigerators, the students would hang the gallon jugs by the eyelet from their dorm room windows. Most did this to ferment it into hard cider. I just wanted to drink good, cold cider. (Naturally, it was unpasteurized.)

Northern New England will forever go down in my memory for its apples, its Maine lobster, and a delicious preparation of young cod, haddock, or whitefish called scrod that Martine and I ate in Boston back in 2005.