Category Archives: Adventure

An Exciting Announcement!

An Exciting Announcement!

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My Visitor from The Seychelles

My Visitor from The Seychelles

I wrote about my Flag Counter over a year ago when I started this blog, and it is thrilling for me to see the countries that have found their way here  since then. Today I noticed that someone from the Seychelles had visited documama, and I got all excited because I have been to the Seychelles, and it is one of my favorite places on this earth!  It was the end of six months traveling overland through Africa from Morocco down to Botswana, and I had heard of the stunning beauty of the Seychelles, so a couple of friends and I decided to check it out before heading home.  We were three backpackers, looking pretty scruffy,with little money to our names, but we jumped on a boat from Kenya, and made our way to Mahe, the main island.

On our boat ride over

We decided to stay on one of the smaller islands of the archipelago called La Digue. . There was only one (pricey) hotel on the island but we were unfazed, and unrolled our sleeping bags out on the beach to camp out.  We found what we thought would be a nice safe cove tucked away on an empty beach, (here I need to interject that all of the beaches were empty and the epitome of paradise with white powder sand and warm aquamarine water.) In the middle of the night we woke up to waves lapping at our feet, soaking our sleeping bags as we realized we could have easily been washed away!  When we awoke again in the morning, after adjusting our spot, a local young man, eager to practice his English, had sweetly brought us coffee, and breakfast after observing us setting up camp the day before in a what he may have recognized as not such a great spot. He showed us a better place where we slept safe and dry the next night.

Waking up on the beach

There were no cars on the island, only carts pulled by oxen, so we rented bikes and rode our way to the one hotel to lounge by the pool, and have some drinks at the pool bar. (Clearly we had our priorities!) Everyone assumed we belonged to one of the yachts docked offshore, because apparently they did not get too many back-packers in the area.  Despite our protests they would not believe that we were sleeping on the beach.  One day we took a day trip to Praslin island which was thought to be the original Garden of Eden by explorer Charles Gordon in the late 1800’s. With its exquisite and verdant tropical forest it certainly could have been. The day we went out on a fishing boat our friend Glen caught a huge Marlin within 10 minutes! It was crazy!

Island transportation

We enjoyed eating grilled fish on the beach with our toes in the sand, idyllic days on the beach or at the hotel pool. The Seychelles seemed to us to be paradise found.  So I want to say thank you to my visitor who stopped by documama today, for the hospitality of your people all those years ago, and for bringing those treasured memories back to me this evening.  My father in law travels the world and blogs at http://www.bulentatalay.com , and also has the Flag Counter on his site; whenever we travel we look up each other’s sites to give each other another flag.  This week I may see new flags from Qatar and Dubai from him, but I’m pretty sure he’s not in the Seychelles right now.

The Flag of The Republic of Seychelles

My Flag Counter now

My Flag Counter then

With the catch of the day!

Chaval Heated Ski Gloves

Chaval Heated Ski Gloves

The Chaval heated ski gloves came just in time.  We were days away from our ski weekend in Stowe,Vermont where temperatures had been hovering below zero each time we checked all week.  We were getting anxious because in the past few years my husband has developed Raynaud’s in his fingers.  Raynaud’s is a painful cold induced condition that looks a lot like frostbite, where his fingertips turn white, and it alternately causes pain or numbness.  It is tough to avoid in New England winter conditions, and can really put a damper on a family ski trip for him. He has been searching for heated ski gloves for the past few years since developing Raynaud’s, but heated ski gloves are pricey, and he had researched many pairs with poor to mixed reviews that did not seem worth the investment.  This year a new product on the market, with a new technology, caught his eye. Read the rest of this entry

Blizzard of 2013 #Nemo

Blizzard of 2013 #Nemo

The Blizzard of 2013 swept through New England last night and has swaddled us in a thick blanket of snow. I love a good snowstorm when my family is warm and cozy together at home, a fire in the fireplace, and hot chocolate stocked in the pantry.

20″

We accumulated around 20 inches of snow in our area, so “Nemo”, the Blizzard of 2013 was not quite the “storm of the century” predicted by some, though still formidable.  Absolute heaven for a New England girl like me.   The kids were up at sunrise getting bundled up in their snow gear excited to go out and play.  Snowy walks and snowmen are on our schedule for the weekend. How about you?

A Happy New England Girl : Photo by Rebecca Stearns

Photo by Rebecca Stearns

 

 

 

 

The Moment of My Mortality

The Moment of My Mortality

Once upon a time I may have been an adventuress, but that was a very long time ago.

The Okavango Delta

It was a time when I was young, carefree,and as far as I ever thought of it, immortal.   As a mother now, the stakes are extremely high.  My teenage desire for risk taking has been satiated, and now comes the payback.  I have to guide my own children through that sense of indestructibility.  Although they are still a ways off….we are creeping closer.  My husband and I call the teenage and young adult years The Gauntlet.  We realize all parents need to get through the gauntlet, to reach the holy grail of happy, healthy adult children.  I remember the moment that switch flipped for me as a young adult, and hope that realization comes to my own children in a much less dramatic way.

Homemade brew at a local market.

The moment of my mortality struck as I sat alone atop a boulder in Central African Republic.  I was lost in the jungle, and sunset was fast approaching.  We were two months into our overland trip across the continent.  There were fourteen of us, from five different countries, in an old English Bedford army truck.  We slept in tents or out under the stars, shopped for our food at local markets, and cooked over the open flame fire we would build each night.  That afternoon as we set up our camp, my friend and fellow traveler, Ross, had fallen over a waterfall, into the raging river below, and disappeared.

Our truck stuck in the muddy main road through the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The group immediately dispersed down the riverbank, and fanned out to search, hoping he would be caught in a fishing net, at best.   I started off with two others, but wading through the river’s edge was slow going, so we agreed to split up.  They would go up into the jungle, to cut back down to the river further ahead.  The current was fierce, and as the bank grew steep I had to grasp from vine to vine to wade forward, up to my thighs, then waist.  The current had seemed to pick up in one spot, and nearly dragged me under; I caught onto a branch and had to fight to pull myself out.  Soaked, I realized that I would be swept up and drowned if I preceded along the river’s edge any further.  I thought of the local legend we had heard, about the spirits in the river who would catch you by the feet, and drag you under if they could.

A different, calmer, river edge on the trip

Now I too had to cut up into the jungle to try to make some ground.  Time was of essence.   I broke my path in the underbrush by barreling through, head down, arms out front, climbing the steep bank.  Finally I reached a plateau, where the forest met a field of grass that rose above my head.  Now I could neither see the river, nor get my bearings, I knew I had to find some height to see where I was.  In the distance was a large boulder protruding from the high grass of the plain.  Aware that I was in central Africa, with snakes, and wild animals, and lord knows what else hiding in the tall grass, I bee-lined to that rock. I climbed atop, and when I looked about I saw that the river had now snaked far from where I had somehow ended up.

I saw nothing but a vast African plain yawning to the far off river that slithered away from me.   It was then that I realized the sun was lowering in the sky, and Ross was most likely gone, and I would be too if left here in the night.  I wanted to just curl up to cry, and tears began streaming down my face.

Photo by Elizabeth Atalay

When I was thirteen, my father died, and ever since, I have childishly believed that he watches over me.  So in this moment of desperation I prayed to my father, and begged him to save Ross, and help me find my way back to camp.  It struck me that there was no 911 here at our beck and call, we were in the middle of Africa.  The signs we had all laughed about on our way to where we would set up camp, that read, “Danger du Mort” were real warnings, and no one was going to come and rescue me now.  Certainly not my dead father.  I scolded myself, I did not have time to sit and cry, the sun was setting, and I had now gotten myself into a situation that I had to figure my way out of.  Back in sixth grade I had gone on a field trip with school to a New England mountain range. I remember being taught if we were lost and separated from the group to listen for the river. If you could find the river, you could find your way back to camp.  You never think you will ever have to use those little survival tips they teach you on team building school field trips, but then again, I guess you never know when they could come in handy.  So I stood atop that rock, mortal for the first time in my 24 years, and looked for a way to the river.  I could see its serpentine path far off in the distance, and then I noticed two African figures along the bank.  I was sure they were fisherman, who may have found Ross, and could help me find my way back to camp.  I scrambled off that rock and went in what I thought may be a straight path through the tall grass until I met the jungle that sloped down to the banks.   Keeping the figures in sight as best I could, I now crashed through the underbrush again, heading down with all my body force, calling out to them the whole time.  I waded through a waterway, and back over a small island to reach the fishermen.  Pushing through another wall of tangled vines and scrub, I came crashing out of the bushes.  Branches stuck now in my mane of curly blonde hair, dripping water from the waist down, my bare arms and legs were scraped and bleeding.

Washing clothes with the locals, by the a different river, at another time during the trip

I burst upon the flat riverbank where the African’s I had seen stood.  Two young boys, maybe eight and ten, stood agog at the apparition that had just burst out hollering before them.  They jumped back.  Hoping they knew French, I tried to ask for help in some of the only French I knew (based on how to ask for where the bathroom was located). The older looking boy was practically naked and had been bathing in the river…. I pleaded to him ”ou et le homme comme un poissan”?!, “ Vu et le homme comme un poissan”?!  Which I think roughly translates to “Where is the man like a fish?! Have you seen a man like a fish?!”  When the boy shook his head no, eyes wide, I realized what I must have looked like, and then truly seemed mad as I laughed at the absurdity of what these poor children must have been seeing.  In these small boys I instantly rested all my hopes of being rescued, and finding Ross.   When I could tell they had not seen Ross in the River, I formulated my next question, using an old rock song.   I tried to break down the lyrics (“voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir”), and asked “voulez-vous avec moi a le grand truck rouge ce soir”? Cryptically asking something like “do you want with me to the big red truck?”  The older boy motioned for me to wait.  They bathed in the river as they had come to do, my urgency clearly not theirs.  Then the older brother sent his young protesting brother home, and hiked with me back to where we had camped with our big orange truck, at the top of the waterfall.  I was bitten by tsetse flies the whole way back,  and the boy pointed to his long pants, and nodded, in the hot setting sun.

It was dark when we got back to camp, not everyone had returned from the search for Ross, but no one had found him yet.  I thanked the young boy who had escorted me, and gave him some money for the two-hour walk, that he would now have to take back in the dark to his home.   When I looked up into that African night sky, as Ross and I had done many nights with our star charts, it blazed with stars blurred by my tears.  You cannot imagine how many stars can be seen without all our light pollution.   I thought I could feel that Ross was gone then.  He died on the Fourth of July.

A Village Market. Photo by Elizabeth Atalay

As one of the few Americans in our group he had helped to negotiate the purchase of a pig to be delivered by a village farmer, and roasted that night in celebration.  Days later some fishermen did find Ross’s body; waterlogged and bloated it had popped to the surface. The men on our trip fished him out of the river, and we all dug a grave in the village graveyard where we buried him with a hand made wooden cross.

We were in the middle of Central African Republic; five days drive from the nearest town.   At the first missionary station we came to, we radioed the American Embassy to let them know.  And then we went on.  I think that was the hardest thing to do, to drive away from that village without him and just keep going. We just lost one along the way, simple as that.  I spent another four months, as a mortal, as I have been ever since, traveling through Africa.  After C.A.R. we went through Congo, and what was then Zaire, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana.  To this day I drink a silent toast to Ross every Fourth of July.  That day was the day that I became aware that not all places in this world have the bumpers and safety nets around its citizens as we do here.  I became highly aware of the fragility of life, and that I am fragile too.  As a mother now, I can only imagine the torturous worries I put my own mother through with all of my adventure travel.  She never once asked me not to go.   She never tried to reason that my money would be better spent like most other responsible young adults, paying rent or buying a car, or saving for my future.  I am so grateful to her for letting me be a dreamer, as a mother I don’t know how I will ever let my children go.

Do you remember that moment that you realized your mortality?