I don’t have a Facebook account. I’d be hard pressed to distinguish Mark Zuckerberg from a stalk of asparagus; I relate more to The Social Dilemma than The Social Network. But I do enjoy it when my wife shares pictures with me that pop up from the Memories feature on her FB account.
She recently showed me a photo of our kids standing on the running board of an enormous truck that she had posted seven years ago when we visited Iceland. Not only did the picture remind me how little and cute my kids used to be, but it also reminded me why we travel in the first place. While most of the travel writing I’ve done has been the highlight reel stuff - the beaches, the food, the museums - that might inspire others to get off their duffs and go explore the world, it’s often the mundane, day-to-day happenings in these foreign places that we remember most. The incidents and interactions that teach us that people around the world have the same emotions, problems, hopes, and needs as the people whom we consider to be our friends and family.
We didn’t go to Reykjavik, Iceland expecting to see a big truck parked next to our mid-size rental car. We just got lucky.
Yes, the Colosseum is impressive, but you can bet that the middle-aged French man stamping his feet in anger at the car rental counter also made us turn our heads. Trying to navigate a steamy Bahamian market while a three-year old Coconut wailed to raise the dead was a lot easier when a passerby took pity on us and handed our girl an ice cream sandwich to cool her off. And even though I finally realized a childhood dream at age 45 to visit the Mayan archeological sites I had seen in a book I got for my seventh birthday, the memory I cherish most about our visit to Palenque is seeing my kids browsing the souvenir stand in the pouring rain to find the perfect jaguar whistle.
So, with the thought that the sights and sounds that you expect will be the lasting impressions of a place don’t always turn out to be the ones you remember most, here are a couple of other ho-hum experiences we’ve had while traveling that have become part of family lore.
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE ICELAND
After I got married and had kids, I had always taken the family to my parents’ in New Jersey for Thanksgiving. When my Mom passed away in December 2012, this became more difficult. We tried to uphold the tradition the following Thanksgiving but neither of my sisters had a spare bedroom to put up a family of four that tended to vomit clothes from their suitcases all over couches, chairs, and floors.
The rooms at the house I grew up in that my Mom used to make up so comfortably for us had become overrun with my Dad’s collection of newspapers, cardboard, and empty glass jars that were better suited for the recycle bin than piled on the dressers and desks of my adolescent years. Plus, my Dad had acquired a cat that was the most evil thing this side of Satan. My kids, wife, and I were all scared of it. It made leaving the bedroom to walk down the hall to the bathroom as daring as a museum heist. You dared not be heard or seen or the hem of your pajama bottoms would be shredded.
As Thanksgiving 2014 approached, I bemoaned the six to seven hours it would take us to drive 200 miles in traffic to New Jersey, the expense of tolls and gas, and the indignity of paying for a hotel room in the town where I grew up. Rebecca and I crunched the numbers and decided that when you can’t go home again, go to Iceland. The flight would take about as long as the drive north on I-95 and the cost of airline tickets was just slightly more than a weekend at the Red Carpet Inn.
We landed in Reykjavik at eight in the morning and it was as dark, cold, and windy as any night I could remember. Iceland gets about four to five hours of daylight in November - sun comes up around ten and sets around three. Nevertheless, we got our rental car and set out into the night - er, day. Our overall plan was to traverse the Golden Circle, which consists of the country’s three most popular tourist attractions: Gullfoss Waterfall, Geysir Geothermal Area, and Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park. While most tours covered the approximately 250 kilometers (155 miles) loop in one day and ended back in the capital city, we had booked an AirBnb in the countryside. We would follow a credo Rebecca and I had established when traveling in India 15 years before - do only one thing a day. In India this mantra was compelled by the extreme heat and the lethargy that it distilled. In Iceland, it had more to do with the attention span of Coconut and J.
The AirBnb was a cozy two bedroom place set on a ridge with a hot tub on the deck. The view was across an expanse of green lawn where several dozen sheep grazed peacefully and a couple of miniature ponies held court for Coconut and J. Come evening, Coconut chose not to use the same room as her brother and claimed an attic bedroom as her own even though it was only furnished with a mattress on the floor.
The cozy two-bedroom cabin where we stayed in Iceland. The week after we were there Jay-Z and Beyonce were scheduled to stay nearby, as close to their presence as we may ever get.
We dined that night at the AirBnb host’s restaurant where he gave us the jawbone of the lamb we ate for dinner as a souvenir and shared the information that a big storm was moving in. We left the restaurant and walked through a slight forest and across some grassy knolls looking to the sky for the Northern Lights, played a game or two of cards at the house, and went to bed.
The storm moved in during the night; the wind whipping through the trees and at the windows and sounding as if it wanted to tear off the roof and grab a hold of us as well. Before long, Maya was at our bedroom door asking if she could sleep downstairs. She was afraid the house would be lifted up like in the Wizard of Oz and carried away. It was the type of situation that you dream about as a parent. An opportunity to comfort your child, assure her that everything would be fine, and then hope that it would be. We gathered all the blankets and pillows in the house and had a slumber party in the living room, listening to the wind howl until sleep finally came a calling.
The sun rose bright and steady at ten in the morning and the proprietor came around to make sure we had survived. He told us that the news had reported it was the highest velocity winds that had ever been recorded in Iceland. We had survived; and the roof was still nailed to the rafters and the house was still firm to the foundation, but the pasture where all the sheep and horses had been pleasantly grazing the day before was noticeably empty.
FISH, IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER
There was a long pier that jutted into the Marina Grande just outside our AirBnb in Sorrento, Italy. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful waterfront. It wasn’t decorated with flower pots overflowing with orange blossoms and didn’t have restaurants and cafes lining the malecon wafting pleasant aromas into the street. No men in brightly colored suits played accordions with dancing monkeys at their feet. It had the look and feel of a working harbor; with fishing boats anchored in the shallow water, shops selling canned food and toilet paper rather than souvenirs, and a bunch of Ernest Hemingway types - you know, tough-looking guys in their fifties - standing around smoking cigarettes.
The small, ground floor apartment we had rented that overlooked the scene was cheap enough, though. And it was only a 15-minute walk up a hundred steps carved into the cliff side to the touristy town center. But that pier called to us.
The fishing pier at the Marina Grande in Sorrento, Italy wasn’t pretty. But the view was.
J and I had already tried our hand at fishing. We had found a bait and tackle store nearby and purchased some line, a few hooks and weights, and some dough-like substance which we pinched off and rolled into a ball between our fingers to use as bait. The proprietor assured us it was what the fish in this part of the Tyrrhenian Sea loved to eat, but we had spent an hour casting over and over into the gentle swells that broke against the end of the pier with nary a bite.
As we made our way back to the mainland, a group of four or five Hemingways stood grouped at the entrance to the pier talking purposefully and pointing into the water. As J and I passed, we casually glanced over. We could see clear to the bottom, but all there was to see were rocks and a few stems of wavy vegetation. Nothing appeared to warrant such an animated discussion. Yet the men kept up the chatter as we continued on to our building.
After two or three cigarettes had been smoked to the filter, a captain and skiff appeared (I call it a skiff because that’s the best word I can come up with to describe something that was narrower than a rowboat but not a canoe) and one of the men from the group peeled off and got into the boat. The captain piloted the vessel several feet from the shore to the general area where the men had been pointing while his new first mate took a wooden oar from the bottom of the boat and after some discussion with the captain and the men on the shore, stood up and held the oar so that the skinny end was pressed against the ocean floor.
Nothing happened for a few moments, leaving exactly what was going on still clouded in mystery. The captain, his skills not required to navigate the boat, was left to peer quietly over the gunwale. Suddenly he began to speak excitedly as the mate pulled the oar into the boat. Quickly the boat was brought back to shore and the oar tossed onto the land.
A small octopus began to unravel itself from the shaft of the oar. He tried to run, fearing no doubt, that he would never again enjoy the wonders of the sea surrounding the Sorrentine Peninsula. Pity him, for if he had feasted on our dough-bait we would have thrown him into a story and then back to sea, whereas the men threw him into a bucket, and I suspect, planned to turn him into calamari.
THE TEXAS BULLFROG STRANGLER
We had been on the road for about two weeks on our way from Virginia to the Mexican border for a year-long tour of Mexico and Central America. A lot of our friends and family were concerned for our safety. R’s reply, “Yeah, we’re most worried about all the guns in Texas.”
And now we were in Texas, camped at Pat Mayse State Park along the edge of an enormous lake. We were the only campers. Two other sites were occupied by RVs, but there were weeds growing around the tires and the awning of one had leaves and sticks an inch thick piled on top. They had both clearly been parked for a long time. I couldn’t help thinking that six months before, a band of Texas rowdies had come riding through camp shooting things up and the bloated corpses of the RV owners were still inside, rotting where they had died on the toilet. I could barely gather the nerve to sneak up and take a few sticks of firewood from the pile stacked between them.
R and me swimming at Pat Mayse State Park in Spookyville, Texas.
We had had a long day driving from Tulsa, south along the beautiful yet depressing Indian Nation Turnpike, and to the campground. We rewarded ourselves with a swim in the lake, then made dinner, and sat around the campfire until the dark came down. And it was real dark, too. The lampposts scattered around the campground remained unlit, there were no boats on the lake and no houses built around it to send ripples of porch light shimmering across the water. The moon was new. There was nothing to disturb the blackness. R turned on the interior lights of the van while she fixed the beds and as the kids and I walked back to our camp from the bathroom, it was as if it were the only character on a Broadway stage. A clear target for anyone wanting to throw rotten tomatoes.
Texas in August is pretty hot, even way up north where we were, so we slept with the hatch and slider door open. Sometime after midnight I woke up - a wind had picked up and whipped through the van. I lay there for a while, not sure why I had woken since I didn't have to pee, and listened to the wind and the very deep, resonating call of a throaty bullfrog. As often happens when I am awake by myself late at night, my mind began to turn somersaults. We were on the precipice of this great adventure and I was both excited and nervous. Were we doing the right thing by taking off for the year? Why do bullfrogs croak? How would things be in Mexico? Would the kids benefit from this trip? What would my Mom think? Why wasn’t anyone else camped here? Where would we be tomorrow? Who is Pat Mayse?
After a while I decided I did need to pee so I stepped out of the van. Just as I began to water the lawn, the bullfrog that had been trilling insistently made a tortured gurgling sound, like it was being strangled, and went silent. I quickly finished up and got back into the van. The wind was still blowing and I checked the top bunk to make sure Coconut and R were covered before tucking back into the lower bunk with J. From where I lay, I could look out the slider door and across the campground to the abandoned RVs. The stars had come up and dusted everything with their pale light but I knew all that really meant was that anything could be lurking in the shadows.