Ya, mon! In Jamaica even the soup is smiling

"Git me a...a...a...vodka hamburger!" Overheard about 11 am at Sunset Beach Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica. This was our first all-inclusive. We've crossed that threshhold -- teenagerhood -- that gives the kids some say in where we go on family vacations. They wanted other kids, discos, water sports, unlimited soda and snacks, video games, billiards, basketball, license to stay out late, and as few "mom's road trips" as possible. They got all that. And Mike and I had a blast.

My travel journals usually run over 50 pages. I record everything. (If you travel with me, watch what you say, because I'm writing it down. It can and may well be used against you in a forum more public than a court of law...say a blog post, a book, a magazine article. I know on which day of which trip one of my family members tried to put a Cheez-It up his or her nose, and I know exactly what he or she said during the attempt...)

That my Jamaica journal contains only four and a half pages of brief, choppy entries -- most of them snippets of dialogue or staff activity narration heard around the fun-filled, family-friendly compound -- attests to the fact that I was either having too much fun or was too affected by the combination of hot sun and endless free alcohol to either want or be able to write much.

Some entries: "The lady Felicia is in the house!" "The man Glenroy is in the house!" "Give it up one time for the lady Janet Jones!" "Show some love!" "Hello, lady. Hello, girl. Hello, mister." "Six square meals a day. What more could you ask for?" "What did we do in Negril? Went to Burger King and had bammy and fries." "Give it up nice and lovely for the man Rohan!" "We always winter somewhere warm, usually Thailand or India." "I just heard at the front desk that all the flights are cancelled. You're takin' a canoe home." "Fine with us, as long as it's a booze cruise..."

We went off campus a few times (but only for a few hours. Didn't want to miss out on too much of the all-included fun back at the ranch). Dana spent a morning in horse heaven at Chukka Blue's Horseback and Swim Tour. She prizes the souvenir 8x10 of her riding through the surf in a bathing suit. We rented a car and took the mountain road up to Anchovy, passing a thin, brown, totally buck naked man walking along the highway. Sent Dana into shock in the backseat. We had a flat tire outside Sharon's bar in Shettlewood. Mike fixed the flat while Adam, Dana and I sipped Pepsis with Sharon, bright pink curlers in her hair. I pointed to the bursting orange groves across the road. "Time to pick?" "No, not time. Still bare." Dana sat on the stoop and chatted with Sharon's rooster. Pet-deprived Dana asked me, wistfully, "Can we get a chicken?" (This is Dana talking. She meant a chicken to have and to hold, not to eat.) Tire fixed. "You coming back?" asked Sharon. "We love Jamaica. We might just be back." We waved to Sharon as we passed her place on our return trip down to the coast. She was sweeping away the brown water that seeps from the broken pipe under her driveway. "Government pipe. I call them every day, and they say they will come, but they don't come."

I went off campus for my daily run. The resort guards would open the gate, and I'd pass the knot of cab drivers waiting outside the property for fares. One cabbie timed me every day. "Slow today!" he'd say, pointing at his watch. "Too many Red Stripes last night!" I'd shout.

Vodka hamburger in paradise. Come to Jamaica and feel alright.

Visit www.LoriHein.com

Travel treasures in your own backyard

Sometimes we travelers get so caught up in the thrill of seeing faraway places that we overlook special places close to home. Case in point: I lived for 10 years in Dedham, Massachusetts, site of the Fairbanks House, built in 1636 and the oldest surviving timber frame house in North America. I passed it nearly every day for those 10 years. I never went inside. I've done better in my new town, chock-full of imposing buildings designed by 19th-century architect Henry Hobson Richardson. I've visited all of them, save the one that's privately owned.

My wake-up call regarding the travel treasures in my own backyard came when I read an article in a major Boston newspaper about -- my town. Damn! I should have written that story! The writer described places and sites a half-mile from my house! But, I couldn't have written that story -- because I'd never visited the places. A freelance writer from somewhere else was smart enough to recognize the destination value of my neighborhood. I was scooped. I missed it. I was too busy looking for travel fulfillment thousands of miles away and had overlooked the treasures down the street.

I now look at nearby places with a traveler's eye, seeking out that which makes them unique or interesting or important, and I write about them, hoping to inspire a traveler with perhaps just an afternoon to spend to go and visit.

I have a cottage on a small New Hampshire lake. In "The Last Paddle," reprinted below, I share a late autumn kayak ride on a lake I've lived on for 20 years, but have only recently taken the time to get to know. "The Last Paddle" was originally published in the November 2004 issue of The Occasional Moose: A Journal of Life in the Monadnock Region:

Foliage is long past peak, many trees already barren. The graying leaves that hang on shake with age and inevitability. I push my kayak into the water and paddle over and around the stumps revealed each October when Highland Lake is peeled back to show things unseen in summer.

Fishermen and weekenders have gone. Time to pull the stopper, inspect the dam and make needed repairs. By Halloween, the lake in its shallowest parts is a ripe mud pool, in its deepest, a glistening meander alongside hushed woods.

It's the season's last paddle. The low water can no longer host powerboats, and even the most committed bass men in their silvery shallow-hulled craft have abandoned Highland until spring. When the lake is down, my kayak shows me things no one else is looking for in places no one else can reach.

I wear sunglasses. Fall's burnished light embraces me and glints off the ripples I ride through. I tilt my face toward the sun, remembering how it felt in summer, trying to soak up and store it.

There's so much to take in, things hidden in high season and high water. A rock jetty, hand-placed long ago, running 15 feet off Mallard Island's tip. The line along the shore where the fecund forest soil ends and New Hampshire's granite underpinnings begin. Decaying logs and slender water grasses, home to creatures, some who show themselves and some who rarely do. I peer into their murky homes and apartment complexes. Hello, turtle. Let me sit and examine the patterns on your shell. The deep, cloying smell of exposed algae fills my head.

Like spotlights, the stillness and bare branches let me see or sense any moving thing. A few year-rounders putter about their properties, canoes on shore, lawn furniture still arranged. Two fishermen are closing their place, pulling up docks and securing windows. Their dog explodes from the woods when he sees me, a burst of movement and color in this muted, going-to-sleep world, and he barks and bounds along the shore next to me until dense trees stop him.

I eavesdrop on a couple in a birch bark canoe. They're a quarter-mile away, but I hear their conversation -- speculation about which yard a moose had called home for awhile -- as clearly as if I were sitting between them. Were I to confirm, in my normal voice, that they'd indeed found Lily Moose's lily bed, they would have heard me, crystal.

Dennis the dentist, who's been spending less time on teeth and more time on the lake of late, poles around on a homemade raft, collecting the slimy, untethered logs that poke from the mud near his dock. A fit, grippingly handsome man with Ralph Lauren hair sharing raft space with dripping brown butt ends of rotted trees.

When the water is down, the docks left standing in the muck become long-legged flamingos, skinny legs and knees exposed. Can-can girls. Frisky ladies pulling up their skirts. The docks that have been pulled out and tied upright show their blue plastic barrel bellies.

Anything that can blow away has been stored away. Gone are wind chimes and floats, umbrellas and beach chairs. Lonely picnic tables, too heavy to move, dot beaches and yards. They've begun their slow, cold wait for people to come back out and sit again.

At the marina, the docks and boat berths have been pulled out. The gas pump is gone. White shrink-wrapped motorboats sit parked like so many Sydney Opera Houses. In the extreme silence, my ears track a car as it moves through miles of woods up on Shedd Hill Road.

On this last paddle, I do things I don't do when the water is high and boats are about. I cross the lake at its widest point, slowly. No worry about powerboats catching me before I reach the other shore. The lake is mine. I cross and recross. I stop paddling, float, and lift my head to the sun, closing my eyes. No need to rush, nothing to watch out for.

The loon that lives with his mate in a reedy shallow across from the marina plays with my kayak, diving on one side and emerging, finally, twenty yards off the other side.

The waterfall whose hums and trills are muted in season by the competing sounds of summer activity now has top billing. I rock in my kayak and note every nuance of its performance.

As I head home, autumn's last rays kissing the earth, I look down the long lake and think of what's ahead. Winter will soon bring its wonders. Like the long skate. If you catch it just right, after the lake freezes but before snow has buried it, you can skate on Highland Lake glass for seven miles.

Read excerpts from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America at www.LoriHein.com

"May Peace Prevail on Earth"

I don't know what group or organization plants these pillars around the globe, but I've seen them at many tourist sites. This Thanksgiving, my family gathered, and my dad led the prayer before we sat to dinner. He thanked God for what we had and then asked for peace. His prayer was simple, like the prayer on this pillar, which stands atop Mt. Nebo in Jordan. Of all the places I've seen this pillar, nowhere have I been more affected by its simple plea than when I stood on this spot where Moses first looked upon the Promised Land. God would not let him enter, and he died on Mt. Nebo.

I looked down from Mt. Nebo at a landscape that has been and continues to be the source of a mighty amount of the world's strife. Peace prevailing on earth is contingent upon it prevailing in the Middle East, where this pillar stands, at a Christian site in aMuslim land, overlooking the West Bank, its towns sprinkled below in the haze, and Jerusalem and the Dead Sea shimmering in Israel. All the weight of centuries of conflict over religion, politics and oil gripped me in a powerful chokehold as I stood atop this holy mountain and looked down on perhaps the most contested stretch of soil and sand on the planet.

A Jordanian guard at the mosaic-filled Byzantine church that crowns the mountaintop asked me where I was from. When I said the US, he said, "Ah! Brothers!." I told him Jordan was a beautiful country, and he said, "It is your country. You are welcome." I stood next to a small group of visitors, and we contemplated, silently, the places spread below us. It was late afternoon, and the Dead Sea was like a brilliant silvery-yellow mirror stretching to the horizon. Jerusalem's towers were just visible in the haze. A map pointed to and identified the towns and settlements peppered below: Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jericho, Ramallah, Nazareth. The tip of Lake Tiberias -- the Sea of Galilee -- was lit by the muted rays of the waning sun.

I stood here before there was a security wall running through parts of this landscape. Perhaps a reader will tell me whether you see the wall when you stand atop Mt. Nebo today. To see it would, in my mind, add a powerful layer of sadness to what is already one of the most simultaneously moving and troubling views I've ever contemplated in my travels. A vista that encompasses the best and the worst of what human beings have wrought through the ages.

Rose-red rays lit the prayer pillar. In four languages, it asked that peace prevail on earth. That can happen, but only if the language of peace becomes our lingua franca.

South America travel tips

My friend, Ed, sent me an email asking for tips on travel to Brazil. He's going there in August with his wife and kids. They're lucky enough to know people there and will be staying with friends in Sao Paolo and in the central part of the country. They'll be there 2-3 weeks and, wrote Ed, "We'll finish up with an Amazon trip -- still looking at providers. Any recommendations if you've been down that way..."

South America is a wonderful destination and, to quote a tour guide at Iguacu Falls, Brazil, "Brazilians like Americans and think they're friendly people. Tell your friends that Brazil is a good place to travel to!" I've found the same feeling of welcome in the other five South American countries I've visited (Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Chile. True, as the world watches the situation in Iraq devolve further into a moral and military morass, there will be protests, as there were recently in Santiago. Even last summer, when I was in Santiago, buildings around the city hosted graffiti that read, "Bush es el terrorista"). Don't let our government's agenda deter you from exploring your planet. Be a good ambassador. And trust your intuition. If something doesn't feel right, get out of the way.

So, some recommendations for Ed and anyone else considering travel to fabulous South America. Ed's staying with friends, so he doesn't need a package tour. For those who do, I highly recommend SmarTours, based in New York City. My family took their Brazil, Chile and Argentina tour, and it was outstanding. The value for the money spent is simply unbeatable. There were some 30 people on our tour, experienced globetrotters all, and many of them were on their fourth or fifth SmarTour. I'll travel with them again and am currently scoping out their Vietnam/Cambodia trip.

If you prefer to travel independently, it's easy to arrange sightseeing once you arrive in South America. I traveled independently to both Ecuador and Bolivia and booked guides, drivers and rail trips from the official tourist offices located in Quito and La Paz. You do not need to have everything arranged before you leave the States. Get yourself a plane ticket and book accomodation for the first few nights, then book your sightseeing locally, saving a lot of money. Your hotel can point you to the tourist office or to reputable local travel agencies.

For Ed's trip, he'll likely fly between Brazilian destinations. The country is staggeringly large, and air is really the only way to go unless you have months to spend. A good place to gather basic information is Embratur, the Brazilian Tourism Ministry. With apologies to Ed's friends who live there, Sao Paolo is not where you want to hang out. With a population in excess of 18 million, it's bigger than many countries. When you fly into or out of Sao Paolo, you fly for quite a while before the city and its sprawling reach of suburbs finally disappear beneath you. Sao Paolo is, however, an excellent air hub for flights around Brazil. You'll use the city's domestic airport for intra-Brazil flights. Two destinations I highly recommend flying to are Rio de Janeiro and Iguacu Falls, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world's national wonders (photo below).

From Sao Paolo, you'll fly into the city of Foz do Iguacu. (You won't land if there's fog in Foz. We got all the way to the falls and had to turn back and try again in the morning. That thwarted night flight over the deep, black Brazilian jungle was one of the five most terrifying flights of my life -- funky fodder for another post...).

At Iguacu (Iguassu, Iguazu), stay at the stunningly-sited Hotel Tropical das Cataratas. (Google searching for this hotel yields a handful of aliases -- Tropical Iguacu Falls Hotel; Tropical das Cataratas; Das Cataratas Hotel --I never actually found an official hotel website. Make sure the hotel you book is the one located at Br 469, Km 28, Foz Do Iguacu. The phone is 455 231 108, and it's the hotel in this picture. ) Why splurge and stay here? Simple: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. The falls are outside the door. An experience you will never forget.

Ed wants to finish up his South American odyssey with a trip to the Amazon. You can have an Amazon experience in either Peru or Brazil. I spent several nights at the Amazon Safari Camp, upriver from Iquitos, Peru. You can fly to Iquitos, a former rubber boomtown with a frontier, Fitzcarraldo-like feel to it, and book a stay at a river camp. Or, if you want to stay in Brazil, fly to Manaus, the heart of Brazilian Amazonia, and book a river stay from there.

Ed mentioned in his email that he was "looking at providers" to travel with. The Internet makes it both easy and difficult to find reputable travel and tour companies. Easy, because of the proliferation of websites. Difficult, because of the proliferation of websites. You can find a ton of stuff, but you're not sure exactly what it is you've found.

A few tips. First, consider not booking over the Web. As I suggested above, get yourself to a jumping-off-point destination and then book tours locally from the tourist bureau or a reputable travel agency. If you're standing in a brick and mortar tour office talking to a live human, you can get a pretty good sense of things. If you do want to book ahead, do what I did when I booked a do-it-yourself Kenyan safari over the Web with a company (Star Tours) in Nairobi. First, I looked for tour operators approved by the major Kenyan tour operators' association (KATO). Then, I emailed several that seemed interesting. I evaluated the companies based on how I felt about our "email relationship." I asked lots of questions. Did they respond? How quickly? How thoroughly? Were they polite? Bottom line -- how did they "feel" to me? I got a "good feeling" from Star Tours, and my family was rewarded with a fabulous, private Kenyan safari at a fraction of the cost of booking through a US operator.

Finally, read this article about shopping the Web for tour operators. Written by a Peruvian operator, the advice makes sense. And, visit one of my favorite travel sites, www.TripAdvisor.com. Real travelers offer nearly a million unbiased and highly informative opinions on hotels, resorts, attractions and tours. The site's a bit unwieldy,chock- full as it is with information, but once you perfect your search method, you'll uncover a bonanza of useful reviews.

Well, Ed, this post's for you. Hope it's helpful. Thanks for asking.

For the travelers on your holiday gift list

Are there travelers or armchair travelers on your holiday gift list? Give them a few enjoyable hours with Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America.

"You write a good sentence." -- William Least Heat-Moon, author of the American travel classics, Blue Highways, Prairy Erth and River-Horse.

"A wonderfully-textured and beautifully written book about not only America as we really should know it, but a discovery of yourself...One of the things I took from this book is the sense of hope...It's really a testament not only to this country, but also to family." -- Jordan Rich, WBZ NewsRadio 1030AM, Boston

"It is much more than a travelogue...Ribbons of Highway is a captivating story of a family's bonding...though this well written, informative and inspiring journal may feed the reader's wanderlust, it will also remind us that our nation will continue to be strong and thriving, no matter what...I highly recommend sharing Ribbons of Highway with those you love." -- Lynda Lukow, reviewer, MyShelf.com

From now through January 1, 2005, I'm donating $1 per copy sold to Boston's Pine Street Inn, a shelter and skills training facility that serves 1,200 people daily. A dollar may not sound like much, but it's 50% of my royalties. When you buy Ribbons from Amazon, I earn $2.

For information about ordering a signed copy, please visit www.LoriHein.com

Enjoy the journey, and thank you.

Varanasi, India: Cleansing and Cremation

Untouchables work Varanasi, India's burning ghats, adding wood to the funeral pyres that blaze each dawn. They stack the thin corpses, wrapped in white shrouds. Hindus cremated along the Ganges in Varanasi (Banaras, Benares, Kashi, Kasi) are released from the endlessness of reincarnation. When a body has been reduced to a small pile of burnt black bone, the untouchables lift another corpse onto the pyre, add more wood, and stoke the flames, which flash and shimmer along the Ganges' bank. When the morning's burning is done, the ashes, along with bits of unburnt bone and flesh, are scattered into the river, Mother Ganga. The flames purify the dead, making them clean enough to be accepted by Mother Ganga's thick, brown waters. Only babies and holy men are pure enough not to need ritual cremation cleansing.

As the sun begins to rise, throwing golden shafts of light on Varanasi's sandstone buildings, the city becomes a kaleidoscope of purples and pinks, ochres and oranges. The city's other ghats start to hum with activity. Bathers, many fully-dressed, immerse themselves in the fetid water, palms together in prayer. Men, women and children wash clothes in the river and spread them to dry along the steps of the bathing ghats. Saddhus dispensing blessings and wisdom sit under umbrellas, waiting for customers. Contortionists in linen loincloths face into the rising sun, exercising, stretching, preening. Child peddlers paddle boats filled with votive candles in lotus blossom leaves. They approach you with hands outstretched. You buy a candle and send your offering floating down the Ganges.

Our boatman rows us back to shore. We pass another boat. It holds a family making its slow, sad way to the middle of the river. The father holds a tiny body wrapped in white. An infant, to be received by Mother Ganga.

Crossing Crete: Shepherds and squid

From our base in Hania on Crete's north coast, we drove through and over the island’s towering White Mountains to visit Frangokastello, a 14th-century Venetian castle that sits on the Libyan Sea on Crete’s southwest coast.

As we wound along the high mountain road, passing dusty villages with ornately tiled and painted Orthodox churches, we’d pull over to allow the occasional shepherd and his flock to pass. Sheep walk slowly, so we’d get out of the car, admire the view, soak up the sun, and nod and smile to the shepherds. As one shepherd rounded a bend toward us, his woolly charges looking like a huge, dirty cotton ball spread across the road, Mike decided to get verbal. “Calamari,” he said to the shepherd. The old man grinned.

“Squid,” I said.

“What?”

“Squid. You just said ‘squid’ to the shepherd.”

“I did not. I said hello.”

“Hello is ‘kalimera.’ You said ‘calamari.’ Squid.”

“Well, he smiled, so he knew what I was trying to say...”

We got back in the car and drove on to Samaria Gorge, where we hiked a few hundred yards down the trail and bid “kalimera” to the mostly-European trekkers who were walking the 16-kilometer route through the gorge to Agia Roumeli on the Libyan Sea. After Mike or I proferred a “kalimera,” one or both of the kids would grin at the hikers and say, “squid.”

We came down out of the mountains onto the arid coastal plain that hosts Frangokastello, said to be haunted by the ghosts of 600 Cretan soldiers and their leader, Dalianis, killed in an 1828 battle against the Ottoman Turks. We splashed and floated in the warm, shallow waters below the crumbling ramparts, then headed back into the mountains to recross Crete and make it back to Hania before nightfall. Like the trip south, the return would be slow, speed tempered by cliff-hugging twists and turns, sheer drop-offs and intermittent sheep.

visit www.LoriHein.com

Frangokastello on the Libyan Sea

The ghosts of 600 Cretan soldiers are said to haunt the beach and castle at Crete's Frangokastello

Villages churches dot Crete's White Mountains

A village church in Crete's White Mountains

Hania, Crete: Sun, sea and history

Hania, on Crete's Akrotiri Peninsula

Thanksgiving Dinner

Let's say you were spending Thanksgiving in Latacunga, Ecuador. The market in Latacunga's main square bursts with potatoes and peppers and other veggies to serve with your Thanksgiving...guinea pig. Roasted guinea pig. One of the many odd foods I've sampled around the globe. Thanksgiving in Tibet? Yakburgers. China? Snake. Peru's Amazon jungle? Monkey. Pass the gravy, please.

Beijing: A walk down Wonder Alley

I have a piece in this month's issue of Go World Travel Magazine. Click here to take a stroll down Beijing's Wonder Alley.

Click here to read the issue's Contributors page.

Enjoy.

Polperro Fishermen's Choir: Songs of Praise

The weather here in New England has turned. No longer on the summer-fall cusp, we teeter now between fall and winter. ‘Tis the season to argue with one’s teenagers about wearing coats. ‘Tis also the season for harvests and holidays, music and gatherings, peace and comfort found in a circle of family and friends. This time of year, my taste in music turns from secular to sacred, and I spend more of my piano-playing time with hymns of praise, hopeful carols, and rich, liturgical choral works like Franck’s Panus Angelicus.

When I was a student in Paris, negotiating the city with little money in my pocket, living with a family who hosted me only because they earned a stipend, trying to communicate in a place with little patience for the imperfect, I found solace in churches and cathedrals, and I’d often duck off the street, sit in a dark pew, and let the notes of a practicing choir or organist soothe and renew me. Ever since, I’ve savored the depth and dimension that music brings to the travel experience.

Music helped knit our family into the life of Polperro, an ancient Cornish fishing village with a harbor tucked snug behind high, green headlands. We’d rented a flat at Brent House, high on Talland Hill above the harbor and the English Channel. The Polperro Fishermen’s Choir was due to sing at the Polperro Methodist Church at 6 p.m. one evening. I pried the family from other pursuits, and we made our way down the steep hill into the village. A young man in black clothes and carrying a briefcase ran past us. He greeted us with a smile, then continued his headlong rush. “Think he’s the minister?” I asked Mike. “He looks like he’s late for church...”

He wasn’t the minister, but he was a member of the choir, and he greeted us again in the church’s small forecourt where he stood with the 22 other choir members, all with portfolios or briefcases containing their sheet music. “Go right in!” said a charming lady at the gate. “Hear the fishermen sing (although they’re not all fishermen),” she admitted winkingly. You could tell which ones were by their sun-reddened faces and their sturdy, muscular bodies. They were a fit, handsome group. Most had hair whitened by wisdom, sea and salt, but some were younger, with, God willing, decades left to fish and sing.

We sat upstairs, near the choir. The service was a centerpiece of Polperro’s Harvest of the Sea, and the choir had come to sing supplications to God to protect those who made their living from the sea and risked death to harvest its bounty. The church was clad in nautical attire. Fishnets full of paper fish cut-outs hung from the balconies. Fat sea ropes festooned the preacher’s pulpit, above which towered a fishing boat’s main mast. Seashells lined the altar, and lifejackets, buoys and a gleaming sextant in a hand-crafted box sat as offerings.

The Polperro Fishermen sang eight glorious hymns, most a cappella. Dressed in black roll-necked shirts reminiscent of the roll-necked jerseys that wives and daughters knit for their men who go to sea, the 23 voices filled the church with powerful songs of praise and faith. Their music at once transported and tethered you. Transported you to a spiritual place where ties bind men to God and to each other. Tethered you to the often harsh realities of Cornish fishing village life. They sang of God as anchor. Of rest, respite, rescue and safe harbors. Their stances and voices were strong and steady, like a good boat’s course. Some sang with eyes closed and arms locked over chests. Their straightforward reverence filled the church in forceful, deeply moving swells.

We put some American dollars in the offertory pouch that one of the choir members had circulated around the upstairs pews. When the last hymn was sung, and the benediction delivered, we made our way downstairs to file out with the rest of the congregation. A lady we’d chatted with earlier had gathered a few friends, and they waited for us at the bottom of the stairs. “These people came all the way from Boston!” she told them. The ladies grasped our hands and told us they were thrilled to see us. Then a voice called out, “Now! To the quay!” The church emptied, and we made our way to the harbor, where the Harvest of the Sea celebration would continue.

Polperro Fishermen's Choir

The Polperro Fishermen's Choir sings from the loft of Polperro's Methodist church

Brugge, Belgium: Bike this beautiful canal town

Beautiful Brugge. We used Brussels, Belgium, as a stopover point on our flights to and from Kenya. On our return trip, we drove an hour and a half from Brussels to Brugge, letting Flanders' green, manicured farmland embrace us. The Leie River shimmered silver in the sun. A house-barge floated in the river's middle, and a towpath ran along its side. Arrow-straight lines of pencil-thin trees lined its banks.

Brugge is perfect medieval beauty. Canals and cobbles, bridges and gables, bicycles and 365 steps to the top of the belfry in Marktplatz for a panoramic view of the city and surrounding Flemish countryside. We stayed at the small, canalside Adornes Hotel, an intimate, economical inn that greets you in the morning with a sumptuous breakfast spread and offers free bikes so you can explore Brugge's wonders.

Albuquerque sprawl threatens petroglyphs

The November 2004 issue of National Geographic contains a short item about the Albuquerque, New Mexico city council’s plans to run two four-lane roads through Petroglyph National Monument. Albuquerque’s sprawl has reached such a level that new roads are needed to relieve traffic pressure.

On our journey across America in 2002 (Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America), my kids and I spent a searingly hot afternoon wandering the ancient lava field that is Petroglyph National Monument, looking for the etchings – some possibly thousands of years old but most carved between the 14th and 17th centuries – created by ancestors of the Pueblo and other native peoples. We stopped at Petroglyph on our way to Acoma Sky City, where we would be hosted by Dale Sanchez, an Acoma tribal matriarch. She’d lead us up to and through her people’s sacred pueblo, and we’d feel something of the deep ties New Mexico’s native peoples have to their land, their ancestors and their sacred places.

When you stand on the spine of Petroglyph National Monument’s dormant volcanic hillsides and outcroppings, the tentacles of Albuquerque sprawl nearly seize you. Indeed, as you drive up Paradise Boulevard to reach the monument entrance, you see nothing but endless housing developments on your right. Joggers pant up the wide, white-hot sidewalks of newly-minted neighborhoods. Can there be a sacred, pristine, protected place here? It doesn’t seem likely. And then the high rocks of the monument appear, and you enter an oasis, a small relief from the super-sized, adobe-colored estates and cul-de-sacs that stretch as far as the eye can see.

I remember feeling thankful the monument was there. It was a barrier to the sprawl, I thought. Developers couldn’t build any more than they’d already built. There was nowhere to go, unless they cut into the monument itself. And they couldn’t do that, right? That’s what a national monument is all about, right? In 1990, Congress designated Petroglyph a national monument specifically to protect the rock etchings. So they're protected, right?

Adam, Dana and I walked the trails at Boca Negra Canyon, being careful not to tear our shoes on the sometimes sharp pieces of black basalt and ancient lava exploded from the earth 130,000 years ago. We saw a quail mother lead her babies into the brush. A cottontail bounced across the path, and we compared our foot sizes to the many millipedes that sat in the sun in the dirt. A ranger had advised us to leave the millipedes where they lay as they were an important food source for local birds. (The ranger must have had a sixth sense about the travelers in our trio. I don’t think most carloads of tourists need be advised not to pick up long, squirmy, slimy creatures. Not touching them comes naturally. But Dana would pick them up. She would love them and pet them and talk to them. Somehow the ranger knew that. A sure telepathy exists between animal people. As we crossed the country, I’d see it at work often between Dana and others.)

When we introduced ourselves to the ranger, he’d said, “Thanks for thinking of us.” Many people bypass Petroglyph on their way to somewhere else, and he thought it wonderful that three travelers from Massachusetts would take back tales of this sacred place. His love of the monument was evident, as was his respect for the people who created the etchings. As we walked through Boca Negra Canyon, we felt the magic, too. We delighted in finding an etching – perhaps a bird, a face, a mouse, a leaf, a human figure – then searching for another.

Now, two four-lane roads may slice this sacred place in half. In 1998, Congress gave its support to the Albuquerque city council’s road-building plan. Should this not sadden and indeed, alarm us? Just eight years earlier, Congress had protected the place. What gives? What’s next? And where?

The National Geographic article quotes Laurie Weahkee, a Pueblo activist: “’Indians regard this land as a holy place. Why should its desecration be any different from that of a church?’” Some people’s justification for cutting into Petroglyph National Monument may be related to a chronic, seemingly communicable disease our society suffers from. I found it sadly ironic that, six pages after the Petroglyph article, National Geographic ran a two-page car company ad spread. The product touted was a mammoth SUV (its name means an entire fleet of ships). The behemoth car was pulling an even bigger boat out of a suburban driveway. The ad’s tagline: “My dad’s towing capacity is bigger than your dad’s towing capacity.” The ad copy seduced with the words, “It’s fair to say your kids will have plenty to brag about.” What is next?

Explore many of America's sacred, quiet places in "Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America"

Four travel favorites: Bridges

Bridges complete a place. They link, connect, bring people, places and ideas together. They make you wonder what’s on the other side and invite you to cross and find out. A beautiful bridge is a work of art, something to contemplate, experience, absorb. Here, four of my favorites:

• Brooklyn Bridge, New York City – I was born in Brooklyn and have a genetic attachment to New York City, the capital of the world. On every trip back, I take the subway to City Hall and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. After Central Park, there is no finer place to let the waves of this magnificent, pulsing city wash over you. Peek between the spaces in the pedestrian boardwalk to the traffic lanes below you, cars, trucks and cabs rushing between Manhattan and Brooklyn. The East River winds its way north toward the Bronx and south toward New York harbor and the Statue of Liberty, just visible. You’ll share the boardwalk with runners, cyclists, tourists, students, businesspeople. Revel in the superlative view of Manhattan’s skyline, pausing at the hole in the sky where the World Trade Center used to be.
• Rialto Bridge, Venice, Italy – It arcs like a stone confection over the Grand Canal. Unless you arrive on one of the great cruise ships that arrive in Venice on the Lido side of the city or travel up the wide Guidecca Canal, you’ll likely leave your car or tour bus in industrial Mestre, or you’ll take the train to Venice. You’ll board a vaparetto that quickly delivers you into a sun-dappled, watery wonderland that is unique in the world. The Rialto Bridge greets you early in your journey down the Grand Canal. You take a deep breath and smile. You know this bridge, recognize it. You’re in Venice. The dream is real.
• Charles Bridge, Prague, Czech Republic – This 600-year-old Gothic bridge spans the Vltava River (aka the Moldau – Smetana’s The Moldau takes you on a sublime symphonic journey down the great river) and links Prague’s Old Town with Lesser Town, or Mala Strana. (Lesser Town is old, too.) Gothic towers with tops that look like pointy black hats sit at each end of the 16-arch stone bridge. Thirty baroque statues and reproductions line the bridge’s sides, some statues rubbed to gleaming by people seeking good luck. You won’t be alone on the Charles Bridge, Karlov most in Czech. The bridge, commissioned in 1357 by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, was built wide enough to carry four horse carriages abreast. The carriages are gone, but the wide expanse is filled with pedestrians, tourists, street vendors, musicians and performers. Karlov most is more than a bridge; it's a boulevard.
• Forth Railway Bridge, Edinburgh, Scotland – From our hotel room in South Queensferry, Adam, Dana and I could stand at our window and see the two great bridges that span the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh. To our left, the road bridge carried car and truck traffic over the Forth. We’d cross the road bridge many times on sightseeing missions from Edinburgh to other Scottish parts. But it was the Forth Railway Bridge that captivated. Opened in 1890, the bridge’s three red-painted double cantilevers sail like butterflies above the Forth. Spectacular at sunset, the crimson marvel is engineering perfection and poetry in steel.
  

Click here to read excerpts from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America

Walk the Brooklyn Bridge boardwalk

The Brooklyn Bridge, looking toward Manhattan. It looks quiet in this photo, but the boardwalk is usually alive with walkers, joggers, cyclists, tourists and commuters.

The Rialto Bridge: Poetry in stone

Venice's Rialto Bridge greets you as you start your journey down the Grand Canal.

The Charles Bridge: A Prague gem

Prague's Charles Bridge is a vibrant public space and an outdoor sculpture gallery.

The Forth Railway Bridge: An Edinburgh landmark

Edinburgh's Forth Railway Bridge carries trains over the Firth of Forth.

Global destinations: What's on your travel wish list?

Tell me where you'd like to go next! With an inventory of 10,000 slides and hundreds of stories from 60 countries, chances are good I can take you there. It's easiest to contact me through email at LHein10257@aol.com. I've played around with this blog's comment function, and I don't love it (but this software, called Blogger, is free -- from Google. Writing doesn't pay much, so free is my favorite price...), so I've decided to hide it, at least for now. I could change my mind tomorrow. For now, send me an email. Where do you want to go next? LHein10257@aol.com

You can also link to Lori through My Profile on this blog or through www.LoriHein.com

Border run: Zhangmu, Tibet to Kodari, Nepal

Why is Clarence from Calais, Maine smiling? Because 86-year-old Clarence, right, was the first person in our group to make it down the rocky, precipitous two-mile border crossing between Zhangmu, Tibet and Kodari, Nepal. Mike and I (that's Mike in the middle) came in a close second. We waited 4 1/2 hours for everyone in the group to negotiate the killer crossing. And how did 86-year-old Clarence beat us? He was carried by two Nepalese porters, who switched off. They hoisted Clarence onto their backs, piggyback style, and took off running down the cliffside. There was more than one switch-off that made me look away and pray. The porters hoisted Clarence onto their backs with so much power that I honestly thought he'd go flying over their heads and be hurtled into space. Clarence occasionally looked concerned, but generally had a ball. Just what you'd expect from a near-nonagenarian who vacations in Tibet... That's one of Clarence's porters on the left enjoying a well-deserved post-workout cigarette.

Albufeira, Portugal: Next stop, Jose Feliciano

Albufeira, Portugal, a resort-cum-fishing village on the Algarve

You're Jose Feliciano?!

We were in the Lisbon airport waiting to board our plane home from a Christmas-week family trip to Albufeira, a seafront resort-cum-fishing town in the Algarve. The gate area was packed, and all seats were taken. Dana was two, Adam five, both seasoned travel vets.

A group of tall men milled around, looking for a seat for a smaller, blind companion. Mike offered his chair, and the blind man sat down next to me. We'd overheard the men, musicians, talking about the bad flights and bad hotels they'd endured on their current tour. I leaned over and asked, "What kind of music do you play?" All the men looked a littled rumpled and disheveled, a bit worn and scruffy. I figured they played low to middle-tier clubs and bars. The Zildjian cymbals they kept at closer than arm's length were the only outward signs of possible success. "All kinds," said the small, gentle man. "Maybe you've heard me on the radio at this time of year singing a song I wrote..."

"You're Jose Feliciano?!!"

I launched into "Feliz Navidad" and called Adam over between notes. "Adam! This man wrote the song that mommy sings all the time!" I sang some more. Adam joined in on the "prospero ano y felizidad" and let loose on the "I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas." Jose was pleased.

We talked with Jose for a half hour. His big, serious, very nice manager hovered protectively. The band was on its way home from a sold out New Year's Eve concert in Estoril, and Jose was eager to get home to Connecticut to his pregnant wife and two young children. A loving, involved dad, he talked about his kids. "I try not to spoil them," he said.

Although he couldn't see them, Jose was keenly aware of Adam and Dana. He sensed their movements. He used their names when he spoke to them. He told Adam to "enjoy being a kid, because it goes by so fast." He told Adam jokes: "Adam, why did the turtle cross the road? He wanted to get to a Shell station." And "Why did the chicken cross the road, Adam? To get away from Colonel Sanders."

Dana was cranky, and Jose gave me parenting tips. "Change her diaper before you get on the plane, and give her a lot to drink so her ears won't hurt from the change in cabin pressure."

We boarded. Jose crossed the Atlantic in first class, and we sat in steerage, narrowly escaping the flood of red wine that burst from the overhead bin when a Portuguese woman's jug of homemade vinho de mesa popped its cork.

A seven and a half-hour flight. Adam and Dana were awesome. They played with Legos, colored, ate stuff, and scanned the headset stations. Henry the Navigator would have been proud of their in-transit endurance.

When we landed in Newark, I noticed Jose sitting alone on a windowsill in a corner, waiting for his men to pull the luggage from the carousel. I told Adam he could go over and say good-bye.

Thousands of miles, one ocean, eight hours, two movies and two meals had passed since we'd shared polite conversation with Jose Feliciano back in Lisbon, which seemed a lifetime away. As Adam walked toward the tired man, I realized Jose might not remember Adam. And Adam didn't know Jose was blind. We hadn't mentioned it, and Jose wasn't wearing dark glasses. Jose wouldn't see Adam coming, wouldn't see Adam at all, might not be able to put a name to this little person he'd never seen, only heard. Adam was a voice from another time zone, another continent, another reality. Would Adam's five-year-old feelings be hurt? Should I have left well enough alone? I stood nearby and listened.

"Bye, Jose," whispered Adam.

Jose looked up and smiled. "Take care, Adam."

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Four travel favorites: Lakes

It came to me while I was running...how to share glimpses of lots of great places in the the short space of a blog post: a list. With FOUR TRAVEL FAVORITES, I’ll share four of my favorite fill in the blank (exotic places, museums, bridges, mountains, islands, man-made wonders, natural wonders, scenic drives, seaside towns, buildings, ruins, castles, rivers, cities of various sizes...tell me what you want to see LHein10257@aol.com).

Let’s start with lakes:

• Moraine Lake, Alberta, Canada – Alberta’s glacial lakes sit like aquamarine jewels cradled in magnificent Rocky Mountain settings. Base yourself in Banff or Jasper and drive the Icefields Parkway between them, detouring to take in the necklace of stunningly-colored lakes. Moraine is close to Lake Louise, another mountain-ringed eyepopper. Just off the Parkway, take in the arresting beauty of Peyto Lake. It’s a color you’ve never seen before.
• Lake Titicaca, Bolivia – Earth’s highest navigable lake sits between Peru and Bolivia, and you can access the lake from either. From the lakefront Inca Utama Hotel in Huatajata, Bolivia, take a hydrofoil trip on the 12,500-foot lake to the Island of the Sun, peppered with agricultural terraces built by the Incas, many still under cultivation. Stand on the island’s pebble beach and face the towering massif of the Andes’ Cordillera Real, which towers above Titicaca’s eastern shore.
• Lake Como, Italy – La dolce vita doesn’t get any sweeter than this. Go in summer, pick a lakeside town like Cadenabbia, Bellagio, Tremezzo, Varenna or Menaggio to base yourself in, and enjoy the sweetness of doing nothing—dolce far niente. Nothing but soaking up sun, drinking brilliant local wines, eating food so fresh it bursts in your mouth, and watching sunlight and moonlight play on water, green mountains and rainbow-colored buildings.
• Lake Lucerne, Switzerland – Called Vierwaldstatter See, Lake of the Four Forest Cantons in German, Lake Lucerne is a high-altitude beauty ringed by Alps, plied by inter-canton ferries and lined with pristine Swiss towns. Base yourself in Lucerne, and take in the medieval walls, watchtowers and painted covered bridge that juts out into the lake. Mounts Pilatus and Rigi kiss the clouds above you. (Yes, there’s a pattern here. I like my lakes served with a side order of mountain grandeur.)
  
  Travel to stunning American places in Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America
  
  
  
  

Moraine Lake: Rocky Mountain jewel

Moraine and other glacial lakes grace Alberta's Rocky Mountain landscape

Vote: It's all about freedom

A post before voting. I always get a little choked up when I vote because it lets me feel my freedom so directly. I've been to places where there is no freedom. Like Sofia, Bulgaria before the fall of communism. A woman on our tour went into the ZUM department store with her husband, confined by multiple sclerosis to a wheelchair. She started photographing the empty shelves in the store's grocery and produce sections. Armed guards rushed her and took her away for hours of interrogation, leaving her helpless husband alone in ZUM's basement. He spoke no Bulgarian, couldn't read or write in the Cyrillic alphabet, and was likely the only black man the passing shoppers had ever seen. He sat for hours right where he'd been left, until his wife returned. She'd been questioned, intimidated and accused of spying. Her film was confiscated. When she pushed her husband's wheelchair out into the street, a van pulled up alongside and a man jumped out, trying to grab her camera. Seems the police realized they hadn't finished the job. If she still had the camera, she could buy more film...

Horse racing in Malta

We watched the Breeder's Cup on TV this weekend. For Dana, my 12-year-old, the horse races ranked up there with Halloween trick or treating as the highlight of her weekend. As we watched, I thought of the sun-splashed Sunday on the island of Malta when I brought her to the national race track in Marsa. Sulky racing is big in Malta, and the track is the place to be on Sunday after church.

We paid the four dollar entrance fee and joined the crowd cheering the silk-clad drivers and their equine partners. Between races, the men in the crowd would disappear into the cool tunnel behind the grandstand where a line of betting windows had been cut into a wall. They laid down wagers on trotters like D'Artagnan, Pay Night and other local favorites. Everyone was laughing and enjoying the Sunday afternoon scene -- the spectators, the bettors, the men booking the bets. They joked and talked and smiled. Comfortable amounts of money were on the line. Amounts that could be shrugged off if lost.

Outside the racecourse, grooms and sulky drivers led shiny-coated trotters, some harnessed to their carts, through Marsa's dusty, narrow streets. The sun turned the silk on the drivers' uniforms into electric blues and reds and yellows and bathed the pastel stucco of Marsa's old buildings in brilliant, ochre light. I watched the people. Dana watched the horses. It wasn't the Breeder's Cup. It was better. A day at the races, Maltese style.


Travel America with excerpts from Lori's Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America

Sulky racing in Malta

...Place your bets, boys. May the best trotter win.

A day at the (Maltese) races

...Smiling spectators wager short money on local favorites

The streets of Marsa, Malta on race day

...Silk-clad drivers and shiny-coated trotters clog the streets on race day.

Marsa, Malta

...Marsa's sun-splashed-walls.