From Belize to Tikal: Peten jungle flight

"Ummm, you know that God is your copilot, right, Javier? Not me. We’re straight on that?” Javier, our cool, calm and capable Island Air pilot looked at the airplane steering wheel I held in my sweaty hands and laughed. I was riding shotgun in a 10-seater Britten-Norman Islander, in the copilot’s seat, and the steering wheel in my lap and the windshield and instrument panel in my face made me a little nervous. I like adventure, but I hate danger.

This was one of those rare days when you get a retake – a chance to do something you missed doing well or at all on some previous day of your life. A few days prior, I’d landed on the tiny airstrip outside San Pedro on Belize’s Ambergris Cay. Our family had flown from Belize City in a plane so small I feared our mammoth family-suitcase-on-wheels might tip the craft’s delicate balance and land us all in the drink, where we’d swim with the manta rays and hope to find one or two to cling to until we were rescued (or eaten). As we disembarked at the shack that served as the San Pedro terminal, I noticed a sign offering Island Air tours to Tikal, Guatemala, arguably the most stunning of the Mayan world’s deep jungle ruins. I’d come close to Tikal once before, but never got there.

This was an unexpected gift. Years earlier, my sister and I had spent an on-the-edge week in Guatemala (landslides, volcanic eruptions, rain-soaked nighttime mountaintop evacuations – a future blog post…). God must have figured we’d had our fair share of adrenaline rushes, so he kept making it rain in Flores, Guatemala, the gateway to Tikal. Flores’ runway was dirt, so rain meant mud, and mud meant canceled flights from Guatemala City. Three days in a row. Then, time to fly back to the States. I’d been to Guatemala, but I hadn’t seen Tikal. Kept me up at night. Such a bummer. Such a void. Close, but no cigar.

Fast forward to a family beach vacation. A little outfit called Island Air tells me it will take me on a day trip from San Pedro Town, Belize to Tikal, Guatemala and back. I’m in.

I walked to the airstrip at 6:15 in the morning, and at seven o’clock, Javier guided the hummingbird-sized plane into the air, and we were off to Guatemala. There were four couples and me, so Javier and I became a couple by default. The others – two thirty-something Manhattan investment banker-ad exec twin sets, Danny and Chris from LA, and a German couple who said nothing but nodded a lot – laughed when I took the copilot seat, the only one left. The couples held hands and snuggled while I got up close and personal with an altimeter, heard every word spoken into Javier’s air traffic control headphones, and wrote my name in dust on the plane’s tiny, oh-so-screechingly-close-to-me dashboard.

As we flew over Belize City, Javier pointed to manatees swimming in the Belize River below. About a dozen beautiful, primal behemoths. I relaxed. Javier, I realized, was just like the transcontinental 747 pilot who announces, in that reassuring pilot voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out the right side of the aircraft, you’ll see Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Lake Ontario…” Javier knew his route, his country and his plane. My white knuckles regained a splash of color. I resolved to look at the flight to Tikal as a sightseeing adventure in its own right. And Javier made it so.

We flew over the Peten, one of earth’s last dense jungles. We eat them up so quickly now, that to see one from the air is to grasp its deep, green, life-giving importance. If only everyone could fly over a rainforest. As green things go, emeralds are nothing. Trees are everything.

Javier pointed again and spoke. The pack in the back were out of earshot, so I was the only one who followed his finger to the comb of an as yet unexcavated Mayan temple that poked through the Peten canopy a mile below and miles away. Such a moment. The whole of the dense Peten spread beneath us, and a lone Mayan temple reached, through the centuries, to the heavens. Something few have seen. Something I would never have seen without Javier.

We flew over the neat, lush Mennonite farms of northern Belize and over tiny Belmopan, Belize’s capital. Finally, Guatemala’s Lake Peten Itza spread blue below us, and Flores appeared, just the vision I’d imagined it would be. A remarkable sight from the air, Flores sits in the middle of the lake like a red-tiled circle of earth, crowned by a conquistador cathedral and connected to the shore by a causeway.

When day was done and we’d taken in Tikal with the help of our lame guide, Raoul – “the one with the stick,” to whom I’ll introduce you in another post – we hopped back into our Britten-Norman hummingbird. The couples took their places in the rear. Javier and I jumped up front. “Onward and upward, Javier!” He smiled and guided the plane down the runway and into the air.


Book proceeds to tsunami relief indefinitely. Details in Jan. 2 post

Winter weather update from the Scottish Highlands :)

I heard from Patrick Vickery again (see January 15 post). He enjoyed the post, and he shared a weather update from his neck of the Scottish Highlands: "Awaiting the forecast - blizzards just now, but still not arrived. Everyone looking forward to a "day off" tomorrow if we wake up to blocked roads. Last week -- Wednesday -- all the bridges in the Highlands were closed due to high winds: Skye, Kessock, Cromarty and Dornoch Bridges. Quite unusual. Many trees down and some structural damage. We are having a memorable winter so far."

I hope Patrick doesn't mind me sharing his correspondence, but in addition to its being interesting, it gives me an excuse to share another winter-in-the-Highlands photo (this is Eilean Donan Castle) and to point you to more of Patrick's wonderful "garden blethers." Again, gardener or not (I'm not. I've killed cactus, although I did grow some mean organic green beans one summer.), you'll enjoy them. Check out "The Compost Blether," "The Surreal Blether," and "The Inanimate Object Blether." Gardening is a metaphor for life, so we can all relate...

Where shall we go next?

Ribbons of Highway proceeds go to tsunami relief. Deatils in Jan. 2 post

National Martin Luther King Day

Today is National Martin Luther King Day in the US. School is out, many businesses are closed, and people across the country reflect on the life and death of the man whose dream was the fuel that ignited America's civil rights movement.

The kids and I paid our respects to Dr. King's memory one Memphis morning just after dawn. We were about 2,000 miles into our post-9/11 journey across America, and we had to tuck hundreds of miles under our tires that day, but I couldn't leave Memphis without parking in front of the Lorraine Motel and spending a few quiet moments there.

An excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, Chapter 4 - FROM MEMPHIS TO THE DELTA: Mississippi, Louisiana:

At the Rum Boogie Café on Beale Street, I held the cellphone up to the band so Mike could hear some blues. The music was wonderful, but I was more excited by my still novel ability to make a phone call from the middle of a Memphis dance floor.

We left Beale about 7:30 p.m., just as dusk dropped and seriously armed and muscled cops in groups of four began to appear. On the riverbank, people filed up the gangway for the 8 p.m. cruise on the Mississippi Queen. The night and the river were red and purple, and the soft green lights on the steel bridge that held the Arkansas state line in its middle glowed like mints.

Before we left Memphis early the next morning, we stood in front of the Lorraine Motel. A white wreath hangs on a blue metal railing, marking the second-floor room where Martin Luther King died. I’d hoped to see Jacqueline Smith, the protestor who’s camped for years across from the Lorraine and who lived in it before it became the National Civil Rights Museum. All her stuff was there on the corner. Her boxes and cardboard and signs. I half-wanted to stick around and meet her. I wanted to hear her story. I wanted to hear her tell how money spent on the museum could do more civil right by improving living conditions for Memphis’ black poor. But we had miles to cover, and Smith was still in bed somewhere, probably on a friend’s couch. We left Memphis as the sun rose, rays bouncing off a riverbank jogger puffing along in something that looked like a tin foil spacesuit.

Shortly after a quick stop at the graffiti wall outside Graceland, where I took a picture of Roop and his father from California and mentioned, perhaps unwisely, that we weren’t real Elvis fans, we entered Mississippi and rode the sterile interstate all the way to Vicksburg. We drove the powerfully haunted battlefield road and looked down sobering rows of endless gravestones in the cemetery.

“Ribbons of Highway” proceeds go to tsunami relief. Details in Jan. 2 post.

The Scottish Highlands in winter: gales and travel gods

I got an email from Easter, Ross, Scotland, from Patrick Vickery, a gardener and gardening writer. (Patrick writes “blethers,” and you’ll enjoy them, whether or not you’re a gardener. His “Scottish Blether” paints a lovely word picture of Easter Ross.) Patrick asked whether I’d ever visited the Scottish Highlands. I wrote him that I had, indeed, during a February blast of winter weather so powerful that “The Gales” were a major news item on BBC radio reports out of London. I remember listening with fascination to the report about a British Midland jet approaching Aberdeen, being buffeting like a toy in the wind, aborting its landing, and returning to London.

“My kids and I drove through a Highlands snowstorm on our way to the Isle of Skye,” I wrote to Patrick. “We crossed the bridge to Kyleakin – the bridge swaying and moaning – and were told if we wanted to make it back to the mainland, we’d better sightsee in a hurry, because they planned to shut the bridge down (which they did). While on Skye, the wind picked up my son and almost tossed him into the sea.”

Patrick wrote back, “Yes, lovely part of the world, the Highlands, though it does have erratic weather to contend with. But that’s part of its charm, of course.”

I couldn’t agree more. Weather is a thread in the fabric of a place, and it colors a traveler’s experience. I chose Scotland in February because of some irresistibly cheap off-season fares dangled by Icelandair (which helped the owner of The Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition – not to be confused with The Original Loch Ness Monster Exhibition, whose brochure had driving directions that included, “Drive Right Past the Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition...” – understand why a lady and two kids from America showed up at his establishment early on a bitter, fog-bound winter day. He agreed that a sub-$300 hop across the pond and back made off-season the right season.) I went to Scotland because I could get there cheap, but I fell in love with it partly because of its weather.

Erratic it was, but its variability seemed guided by the unseen hand of the god who watches over travelers and puts infinite enrichment opportunities in the path of the alert explorer. For a week, from our Highlands base in Inverness (30 miles south of Patrick’s Easter Ross), we were alternately challenged and rewarded by The Gales and by the god who blew them our way then blew them out of our way just long enough to reveal some bit of Scottish beauty.

A dense, gray Loch Ness murk at Drumnadrochit parted to reveal brooding Urquhart Castle, floating like a great stone serpent above the loch. As we took the A87 into the wild Highland glens that began after Invermoriston, heavy snow fell, but melted when it hit the warmer ground. The thickening slushy gruel gripped the car’s undercarriage in a chokehold, and every forward kilometer felt like an athletic achievement. Magnificent Highland peaks met the road and towered over us. The A87 from Invermoriston to Skye must be a spellbindingly beautiful ride in clear weather.

At times, we were inside snow clouds, our world a total whiteout. Then, at Loch Druich, the travel god replaced the snow clouds with a soft sheet of rain and revealed hauntingly perfect Eilean Donan Castle. Like Urquhart, a castle arguably best savored in dark, mystery-charged weather. As we got out to explore, the wind nearly ripped the car doors from their hinges.

“You do the petrol, I’ll do the prellie,” said the BP station attendant in the seaside hamlet of Balmarca. I pumped while he shielded me, with a red-striped umbrella, from what was now biting sleet. We talked about the weather. “This degree of bad weather and gales is unusual for us,” he said, then confirmed it was going to “get far worse later today.” At this point, we were so close to Skye, the day’s destination, that I could have spit and hit it, so we kept going through Kyle of Lochalsh, where all the fishing trawlers were tied up tight at anchor, captains perhaps tucked in a comfy pub enjoying a single malt. Onto the Skye Bridge, where a neon sign flashed “HIGH WINDS,” and the top of the words “BRIDGE CLOSED” were just visible, ready to rotate into position. The toll collector gave me a weather report. The kids trust me on travel matters, but they shot me a few hairy eyeballs as we crept over the groaning bridge.

Because my mother reads this blog, I must assure her and other concerned readers that while I was being adventurous, I was not being stupid. We had a full tank of gas, plenty of food, and in Kyle I’d checked to make sure there were hotels on Skye that were open. The worst case scenario had us stuck on Skye in a Kyleakin hotel, eating tinned meat and playing cards until the bridge reopened (why, I even had flashlights, which came in handy a few days later during a blackout in Fort William).

We came, we saw (quickly, through bouts of hail), we evacuated. I believe the toll collector had been waiting for us. As we cleared his booth, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw “BRIDGE CLOSED” rotate into place.

Safe and snug back in Inverness, its floodlit hilltop castle outside our hotel window, we listened to Gaelic radio stations and contemplated our next road trip. We hit the A96 coastal road along Moray Firth. Tiny B9089 took us to Findhorn, smack on the water where the firth meets the North Sea. Rain beat the windshield. At Findhorn’s pebble beach, where wind whipped the dune grass and made it lie down flat, I parked the car so we could eat cheese sandwiches and watch the downpour. I likened the wet entertainment to sitting still inside a car wash. But the travel god halted the rain, and the kids took their sandwiches to the beach and ran along Findhorn’s dunes.

After a stop at Forres to see the glass-encased Sueno’s Stone, a colossal monolith carved with battle scenes by 9th century Picts (a Pictish depiction) and left in situ at what is now a busy intersection, we headed to seafront Nairn, in season a tony and lively golf resort. A barrage of rain. We were bombarded, pelted, poured upon. No vacation rental car windshield wipers on the planet ever worked harder than ours did that week. I know the Inuit have many words for snow. The Scots must have a bunch for rain.

We entered Nairn in a Scottish version of monsoon. But ach, aye! I knew things would change, and I waited for the travel god to do his thing. I parked near Nairn’s seafront playground, golf links and tin-roofed gazebo, the elegant Royal Marine Hotel, looking vacant and lonely, on our left, and Links Place, a rectangle of stone homes to our right. The instant I turned off the ignition, the rain stopped.

The kids burst from the car and ran up and down the lush green mounds that punctuate the park and links. As soon as they bounded down the hill in the photograph at the top of this post, a rainbow appeared. A North Sea rainbow. A Scottish Highlands in winter rainbow. The travel god is a pretty cool guy.


Book proceeds go to tsunami relief. Details in Jan. 2 post.

Bangkok, Thailand: A place of color and contrast

The wats and shrines of Bangkok are peppered throughout the cityscape, and their glittering, vividly-hued roofs and towers present a visual feast when the sun sets them aglow. Bangkok is a place of contrasts, its teeming, kinetic industriousness balanced by gentle spirituality and deep-rooted Buddhist calm. Parts of Bangkok are squalid, other parts sparkle. Orange and green tiles, and golden eaves, and doors and windows framed with bits of colored, mirrored glass move the eye up and away from the brown Chao Praya, busy with boat traffic.

Uniformed kids whoop and play at recess, chasing one another round and round the lotus-positioned Buddha who sits guard in the middle of the schoolyard; a silent trio of monks in saffron- and cantaloupe-colored robes negotiates the close quarters of “Temple Supply Street” and stops to consider a display of incense burners; nearby, “Orchid Street,” Plumbing Supply Street” and “Sewing Machine Street,” choked with three-wheel taxis and pedestrians, offer wares organized for maximum shopping efficiency; two masons, squatting before a line-up of 15 gold-leafed Buddhas, go to work on one of them, cleaning the stone pedestal with chisels and brushes; the caretaker at a temple complex arrives at work with his toddler, a boy no more than two, and father and son, dipping into matching aluminum pails of freshly mixed concrete, go about the important business of repairing the temple walkways. They wear the same contented smile as they work; the king’s birthday approaches, and ceremonies will include a royal ride down the Chao Praya. Specially chosen members of the Royal Thai Navy practice rowing the colossal golden-prowed royal barges down the muddy river.

(A grandson of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej was a victim of the Asian tsunamis)

For an indefinite period, Lori is donating proceeds from her book to tsunami relief. Details in Jan. 2 post

Travel to Southeast Asia

As Chris Heidrich of the BootsnAll travel community wrote in today's Boots newsletter, the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia shows us not only "the sheer power of mother nature and its unpredictability, but also reminds us that everyone is mortal, regardless if you are a traveler, a local, rich or poor, or what country you live in." Heidrich continues, "Instead of canceling your trips to Asia next summer, now more than ever is a time you should be going to places like Thailand and Indonesia. They need your tourism dollars more than ever."

Fishing and tourism are the economic mainstays of many of the hardest hit regions. A journey to Asia in 2005 can provide hope and support for people like this Thai woman who earns her living selling fruit and coconut juice to passing river travelers. Travel has the power to educate, to entertain, to renew and refresh, and to forge relationships and understanding. It also has the power to help heal.

Book proceeds to aid tsunami relief. See Jan. 2 post

Book proceeds to aid tsunami relief efforts

May 16, 2005 update: I will continue to donate book proceeds to tsunami relief through the end of May. The final donations will go to UNICEF's tsunami disaster fund. Thanks to everyone who helped a few more dollars find their way to people who need them.

Original post, Jan. 2, 2005:

First, thanks to everyone who purchased my book, Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America, during the holiday season. Proceeds from each sale were donated to Boston's Pine Street Inn, a shelter and work skills facility that serves 1,200 people daily. Mike and I have supported Pine Street for 15 years as a way of giving thanks for Adam, born healthy despite his very premature appearance into the world. Your holiday book purchases allowed us to increase this year's contribution by 25%. The past month was also Ribbons' most successful since its publication, and I truly thank you for that.

Beginning today and continuing indefinitely, I will donate proceeds from Ribbons to four organizations involved in tsunami relief efforts. Both my book and this blog promote understanding through travel. It's an amazing world, but right now a staggeringly large piece of it needs help.

I will split donations among these organizations: American Red Cross; Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres; Save the Children; United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). One-third of Asia's tsunami survivors are children. (Jan. 6 update: Doctors Without Borders has received all the tsunami-specific funds it needs at this time. Donations will go to the other three organizations.)

I will donate either $1 or $2 per copy, depending on where you purchase your book. For books ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers, I will donate $1. I earn about $2 before marketing expenses on these sales. Because I earn slightly more on sales through my publisher, Booklocker, and on books purchased directly from me by mail or at personal appearances, I will donate $2 per copy on these sales. In addition to the paperback, Booklocker also offers Ribbons as an inexpensive, shipping-free PDF download, and I will contribute $2 from each PDF sale.

Links to purchase options, including Amazon sites in the UK, Canada, Germany, France and Japan, appear below. To read excerpts, reviews, and reader comments, please visit LoriHein.com. To order by mail (I'm happy to sign your personal or gift copies), send a check for $14.95 plus shipping (US $) to Lori Hein, 40 Williams St., N. Easton, MA 02356 USA. During this fundraiser, I will absorb some of the shipping costs, so $2 additional for shipping will get your book on its way to you. To schedule a free personal appearance/book signing for your group, church, shop, library or organization in the New England area, please email me or call 508-230-3766. I present slides from the American road, accompanied by excerpts from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America.

Use these links to order online. To keep the flow of money going out to relief organizations, I will send donations in ongoing increments of $10 or more as I'm able to confirm sales. I thank you for your help, hope you enjoy the book, and appreciate your sharing this post with others:

• Order from Lori or schedule a book signing/travel event - See Above or contact me ($2 donated)
• Order the paperback from Booklocker ($2 donated)
• Download Booklocker's PDF edition and read Ribbons on your computer ($2 donated)
• Order from Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com ($1 donated)
• Order from Amazon sites in the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Japan ($1 donated)

Another New Year's Eve, another morning after

An easy New Year's Day morning. Last night, we ate shrimp by the fireplace at our cabin in the New Hampshire woods. We were in bed by 11 and were up at 8 to greet the drywall guy who's going to make our cabin look like a real house. (The kids missed the drywall guy by three and a half hours. Adam and his friend, Thor, played Playstation until early 2005, and Regis Philbin kept Dana rapt until the Times Square ball fell.)

Many New Year mornings have found us waking in darkness in some city just tucking itself in after New Year's Eve revelry. We often take advantage of Christmas week school vacation to travel, and we usually fly home early New Year's Day morning. Locals' heads are just hitting their pillows as we wake in 4 am darkness to head to the airport.

By the time a city has turned quiet after its New Year's Eve celebrations, and our neighbors in the next room have passed out, and elevators have stopped disgorging loud, laughing groups into the hotel hallway, it's usually past two, and we catch a few teasing hours of sleep.

We try to ignore the festivities and turn in early, but we're rarely successful. There's too much temptation: technicolor fireworks pop and burst in the black sky over Wiesbaden, Germany's soaring cathedral spires; signs flashing multicolored holiday messages light the walls of our room in ancient Girona, Spain; chic, black-clad couples laugh and talk under our balcony overlooking La Rambla, Barcelona's vibrant pedestrian zone; Lisbon's well-to-do travel to their Algarve apartments where they host parties that spill into Albufeira's streets, and twentys0methings with boomboxes sit on the beach, their music and voices riding on the night air; lovers sit on Andorra La Vella's stone walls sipping champagne. They stumble home, leaving the bottle for the streetcleaner to pick up in the morning.