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While back in the states the day before Easter they were soaking eggs in pastel pink, yellow, green and blue baths, we were rolling into the small Sicilian town of Partanna to see the Crucifixion up close. We found parking on a street with the enticing name Via Circeo – that powerful witch – and walked the curving roadway past a bakery, a tobacconist, a grocery. Drifting through the green plastic strands which shielded a doorway floated the distinct presence of cheese – maybe bel paese or taleggio – pungent, clean and salty.

“I love this, Maia,” I enthused to my cousin once removed. “At home, everything comes sealed in plastic.” Here foods were properly worshipped, displayed on marble stands, their holy essences sifting through the air. Here, the cheese stood alone.

A sign read Macelleria – butcher store. Oh-oh. We were eyeball to glazed eyeball, face to muzzle with twelve furry baby goats, killed and hung in a row along the outside wall, their abdomens split open, intestines stolen away.

“I capretti,” Maia informed me. “Eaten at Easter time.”

“We don’t see this at home,” I stammered. They were hanging by their necks, for Christ’s sake. Their delicate hoofs dangled, purplish-grey, little feet of Pan. And their heads, with tiny budding horns.

“It makes the meat more tender. We eat them only once a year.” Maia kept up her steady clip along the street. “Ehh, cara mia, one way or another, animals are killed so that we can eat. It’s just that way.”

“I know, but…”

We’d turned into a crowded piazza where an outdoor stage had been erected. Loudspeakers blasted a warped recording of a Handel oratorio to get us in a melodramatic mood. Two palm fronds like green parentheses framed the Doric-columned facade at stage rear. Whitewashed walls reflected brilliant morning light. The sound grew more and more distorted each time the piece played, three, four, five times on a loop. Everyone milled around and chattered, the adults and the kids using hand gestures. I laughed aloud at a three-year-old looking up at her parents and protesting something with both her hands flying.

“The play we will see derives from secular theater originally performed in the street: the annunciation, the birth of Gesu, or in this case, the tribunal,” explained Maia.

“Mm-hmm. I’m grateful that you are such a historian.”

“Historian, boh. I have lived my whole life here, naturally I take an interest in the past.”

Eventually Il Spettacolo began. The cast of dozens, young men, mimed the action while a booming, disembodied voice narrated. Jeering Hebrews in floor-length woven robes, headdresses and sandals; glowering Roman guards wearing metal breastplates and helmets; the Jerusalemites straining to listen, brows wrinkled, then loudly protesting; the Apostles huddling to one side. Pontius Pilate delivered his speech, stabbing the stage with his spear, gold robes glistening in the sun. Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana pounded from the speakers.

Jesus appeared, manacled, dressed in a white robe, long blond hair, head lowered. They condemned him. The stage crowd showed no mercy, shrieking, hurling styrofoam rocks which bounced off his chest. Some spectators cried out, “Traitors, traitors!” Kids ran around playing tag. The guards stripped off Christ’s robe to reveal him pasty and naked except for a demure white loincloth. They tied his wrists to the wall,and two henchmen came forward to whip him. His body snapped with each lash. During one spasm the blond wig flew off, exposing the actor’s close-cropped black hair. Oh Christ. The audience guffawed. Maia shot me a bemused look. Jesus continued to recoil with each blow, enduring this new humiliation. A pre-recorded rooster crowed three times. An extra in a red costume climbed down off the stage, retrieved the wig from outstretched hands and rushed over to fit it back on him.

They pushed the Crown of Thorns onto his head, which began dripping stage blood. ECCE HOMO. He groaned, heaved the full weight of the cross on his shoulder and began to drag it, haltingly, out of the square. Mary Magdalene followed close behind, nearly horizontal with grief. The stage crowd formed a line after him. Electronic cymbals crashed.

“He carries the Cross and Life. He carries the Cross and Suffering. He carries the Cross and Humanity,” intoned the tremulous narrator.

We filed after the procession out the piazza down a long path, which truly seemed dispirited, the powdery earth having no color to it. We ended up on a broad field, littered everywhere with trash. At a distance we could see the action continuing on a hillside. Halfway up the slope two crosses had already been erected, two figures pre-crucified – not statues, but men – and between them, blond Jesus was being nailed to the cross. The hammering went on and on.

“They’re not using real spikes, are they?”

“No, we would never actually crucify anyone. What a notion!” Maia gaped at me.

“They do in the Phillippines,” I countered. “I read it somewhere.”

“Well, maybe there, but here, it is an honor to simply share in the pain, to relive the agony of the Savior,” she whispered, “in a metaphorical sense.”

For long, excruciating minutes Gesu Cristo leaned at forty-five degrees while his tormentors struggled to keep the cross from tipping over. Next to me a mother unwrapped a prosciutto sandwich and handed it to her child. He grabbed it and, never taking his eyes off the Passion, sank his teeth in. Finally they hoisted the crucifix vertically. The crowd murmured, the music swelled. Maia motioned to another part of the hill where Judas hung by his neck from a tree. Shrubs hid his feet. The loudspeaker droned on. Picnics were produced all around, salami sliced with pocket knives, olives chewed and pits spit out, the lazy hiss as Arancina bottletops were unstoppered.

Maia shifted from one foot to the other. “Would you like to stay a little longer?” She shielded her eyes from the sun.

“What happens next?”

“He doesn’t die till three. They will remain crucified on the hillside all afternoon, until a certain time tonight when the body will be taken down, and placed in a secret cave in the mountain.”

“Let’s go then, shall we?”

“Oh-kay.” She enjoyed using the popular American expression.

While returning to the square, two actors in Hebrew costumes passed us, nonchalantly carrying a huge cross back to the stage. To props? They didn’t struggle at all with its weight, for it was made of balsa wood. They passed so close that a splinter snagged a wool thread in Maia’s jacket and I carefully unhooked her while the Hebrews held still, apologizing to the signora, chatting in Sicilian. A Roman guard on a motorcycle buzzed by with his skirts flapping, spraying us with dust from the road. We returned down Circe’s street of the goats. I kept my eyes fixed on the sidewalk when we passed the butcher’s.

* * * * * * *

Two days later, Pasquetta, Little Easter, dawned delicate pink, dainty as the inside of a seashell. Our final day of itinerary had us heading west for the hills to a festivity at a monastery, San Martino delle Scale. The outskirts of Palermo fell away; stone buildings here and there dotted the road. So when I spotted way up near a rocky summit a zigzag of new buildings – chunky boxes – teetering, I pointed.

“What’s that?”

Maia shook her head. “A government housing development. No one lives there. They haven’t completed it and they won’t.”

“Why’s that?”

She hesitated. “Mafia.”

“They look strange, wrong.”

“Oh yes. They are.”

“They don’t fit.”

“No.”

“They’re out of scale. Weird.”

“Yes.”

“Why would anyone want to live in such a place? So hard to get to up there.”

“No one would.”

“But then why build it?”

She rubbed her thumb and fingers together, a muscle in her jaw pulsing. Maybe I’d get the hang of not asking upsetting questions one of these days. The twisting road dipped into a pine forest. Wisps of bluish smoke floated through the trees.

“Look. Do you see?”

“A forest fire?”

“Not at all. It’s picnickers stoking fires to roast artichokes, another of our traditions. Hours are required to prepare the coals, to heat them red hot, to let them cool to white before burying the carcioffi.”

Wow, getting up in the dark to do a choke justice, now that’s devotion. “I’ve tasted them cooked so many different ways, but never from underground.”

“Then you shall, today.”

“Primo dug a pit?”

“Primo has the day off. We’ll be eating out today.”

“Ah.”

Maia left the car next to a cream-colored stone wall which enclosed the monastery. We followed a path alongside, her walking shoes clacking against the caked earth. As if someone had suddenly turned on the volume, we rounded a bend and came upon a slew of folkdancers, singers, musicians in a clearing. Accordions bellowed, tambourines shimmied, mouth harps twanged. Someone kept spinning a painted vase high into the air and catching it, again and again.

“What does the vase signify?”

Maia gave it some thought. “Happiness,” she finally replied.

Compared to the somberness of the previous celebrations, this was all gaiety and frolic. The resurrection had occurred, the weight lifted, Lent ended, and vases flew. We heard a song about a donkey –Lu me’ Sciccareddu– each time the singer heehawed the audience went wild. I had a little donkey, very dear, and then they killed him, my poor donkey. What a beautiful voice he had, like a great tenor, donkey of my heart, how can I ever forget you?

The dancers cavorted along the road we’d followed, beckoning us onlookers toward a piazza where a brass band and blastula-like bunches of red and yellow balloons bobbed in the breeze. Antique wooden horse carts painted in every bright color – the famous carretti siciliani that my grandmother of course had a two-inch version of on her windowsill – stood in a circle. The workhorses, all gussied up in magenta and green plumes, mirrored cloth, tassels and fringes, stamped and shook their heads, ringing little bells, raring to go. We moved in closer. Scenes of fierce battles and angelic visitations, dragons and steeds, paisleys and dots and portraits of saints, crowded every inch.

“Look underneath, Natalia, at Hell.” Carved devils, monsters with dangling tongues, winged beasts clung below.

“Fantastic.” I bent down to see the detail up close. Hell had no vacancy. Creatures crowded into every possible spot.

The drivers, wearing black caps and red pompons at their throats, cracked their whips and the wheels began to creak. Children in day-glo parkas, pinned in next to their grandfathers, peered over the sides. One cart, festooned with wildflowers and shafts of rye, carried a cage of songbirds and a wooden wine cask. A man following behind turned the spigot to dispense white wine into plastic cups a little bigger than thimbles, which he offered to everyone. “Made at home,” he smiled. “Good for the stomach. Don’t refuse it.”

Maia licked her lips. “Buono, no?”

And powerful as all get out, especially at 11:30 in the morning. The cart circled around again. We each accepted another thimbleful. This one went straight to the brain. All daytime wine drinking had to stop tomorrow, I affirmed. The circle being of modest size and the cask being full, we had a few more refills.

A priest wearing black-rimmed glasses clambered onto the cart, blessed the birdcage, reached inside and grabbed a few frantic, petite birds. He released them to the sky. They chirped deliriously and fluttered above our heads. He clutched another wriggling handful, and more birds swirled up into the sunshine. The crowd let out a cheer.

“I want to show you the Benedictine Abbey,” Maia announced. I followed her lethargically, heated up from five tablespoons of super-concentrate. Mass was in progress. Maia motioned that we squeeze in along the back wall onto the dark wooden benches. The congregation, mostly women, mumbled in response to the hypnotic Latin. Then a Gregorian chant, which fell and rose like a tide, reverberated from wall to wall. I sat marinating in the Gregorian scale, trying to decide whether it was more major key with a minor overlay, or minor with major. Or neither. Could there be such a key, neither major nor minor? “Only Gregory knows for sure,” I may have mentioned to the vibrating atmosphere.

Maia nodded along, hands folded, but then suddenly turned to me. “Time to eat.”

The smell of something baked had swung out into the piazza like secular incense. Good thing we nabbed the last empty table at the trattoria.

“Cameriere,” Maia raised her hand to a waiter squeezing by with three steaming plates of pasta balanced on each forearm. “A half liter of red wine, please.”

“Right away.”

“I’ve already had enough vino, Maia. Really, I’m kind of drunkish.”

“Don’t worry about it. Drink what you wish, if you wish, when you wish.”

Pasquetta frolickers and all their relatives jammed three dozen tables which the waiter worked alone. After forty days of Lent, they were starving and clamoring for his attention. Feed us. Feed us now.

Even my stoic cousin sighed relief when he finally showed up with the carafe and wineglass stems laced upside-down between his fingers, and leaned down to be heard over the din. “We offer holiday specialties today. Capretto. Carcioffo. Pasta al Forno San Martino. “

“Baby goat for each of us, Renata and an artichoke to share?”

I shook my head, trying to prevent the sight in front of the butcher store two days ago from returning.

“It’s traditional today, ” she lobbied, “you’ll like it.”

No goat. Never goat! I nearly hollered into the din. “I’m sure it’s delicious, but an artichoke is what I’ll have. The kind roasted underground, right?”

“Certainly. My brother in law and I stayed up last night making the pit. As a matter of fact, he’s still out there overseeing the operation. No first plates to begin with for you ladies? No pastas?”

No, but Maia pleaded for some bread before he raced off. We were grateful, desperate really, when he slid a plate of rounded rolls onto the table. My cousin grabbed one, tore it open. The crust cracked defiantly, curls of steam exhaled.

“Crunchy,” I broke open a roll. Its dough, stretchy, gave way, smooth and moist, flecked with bran.

“Perhaps you didn’t know that Sicily played breadbasket to the Roman Empire.”

“That’s amazing. I did not.” Two thousand years later the basket hadn’t emptied, Sicily kept giving of herself. Two thousand years later the bread kept breathing, body and soul.

Here,” Maia urged, “have a little to wet your throat while we wait. Salute.”

“Cin-cin.” I took a sip against better judgment, then bit into the crust. Golden durum semolina grown on the broad breast of the island’s interior, flung into last summer’s air to separate out the chaff, and ground between meter-wide stones; bubbly yeast kept teeming since Roman times; sea salt in sacks hauled by painted carts from the Tyrrhenian shore; water caught in a ceramic jug from the always splashing monastery spring – I tasted these immediate ingredients. How could a dough kneaded from them not effortlessly grow? Punched down – large and little gasps of air imprisoned inside – would it not triple in volume? Beaten down again, yea vanquished, would it not rise a second, a third time? Brushed with oil of olives from sacred groves, would it not meet its mysterious destiny – raw to cooked, matter to spirit – sealed inside the fiery oven, the rock rolled into place? Snatched at the right instant from that infernal heat, would it not thrust forth, to be borne triumphant on platters by monks (who had just completed their morning prayers, thus imparting a heightened spiritual zest to the loaves) through gardens respiring with spiky rosemary under the morning sun, and be delivered unto the trattoria’s back door in wrapped in cloth? And here kept warm next to the oven, guarded near Vesta’s sacred flame. This much you could – I did – taste in one mouthful. Everything alive. If a bite could bind a person to a place – to ensure becoming a part of it – this one bound me to the island. I was here for the duration. The reverse of Persephone, committed to hell because of the six pomegranate seeds she chewed, we bit into morsels of paradise.

“My carcioffo is probably still in the ground, down the mountain, miles away,” I yawned behind my hand.

Maia, was lost in studying the noisy room around us, consummate observer, anthropologist, cultural attache` to her own paesani. Every table had ordered before we did, and seated a full clan. Generations were crammed together, parents force-feeding toddlers, teenagers wolfing down pasta by the spoon and forkful, sleeping babies cradled by grandparents, everyone gabbing, laughing, eating, swallowing. The waiter oiled around the floor, delivering plates and platters, more bottles of water and wine. More bread and beer, bowls and bills.

So if artichokes took hours to roast, the brother in law, equipped with walkie-talkie, was probably just loading the baskets with the last of the blessed thistles onto a sciccareddu’s back right now. I relaxed into my chair with more vino. Treat the donkey well, give him a handful of hay and a drink from a trough, sing him the donkey song, and take your time because, man, those tenors were tiny beasts of burden. I could wait – we had Bread and Wine. An excellent sacramental appetizer. An old favorite. A meal really. A religion. I refilled Maia’s glass and added a few centimeters to my own.

The waiter was nowhere in the dining room. I took another roll, broke through the crackly crust stratas, pulled at the elastic, steamy dough, probed and pinched the warm mass. There must be a technical name for the meeting of crust and dough, brown and white, a baking term for the realm between exterior and interior… the body and spirit… the dead to the living.

“You know, both my sisters have an allergy to wheat. Can you imagine life without bread?” I asked, my mouth full.

“Why? What happens to them?”

“Oh, they get sleepy, lethargic, yawn I lot. I’m so lucky to have escaped it.”

“I should say.” She drained the carafe.

“They even get disoriented,” I kept chewing.

The waiter stood over us with plates, trying to remember who ordered what: sacrificial kid goat and the huge vegetable, like a baked green crown, The capretto smelled sort of barbecued.

“Buon appetito, ladies.”

I loosened the first outer charred leaf off the subterranean globe – rounded like a basilica dome – and nibbled its meatiness, bittersweet and mineral. Though seared in a mini-inferno, it hadn’t given up any moist ghost. I plucked my way through complexity, spiralling in, the marinade of lemon and olive oil, mint, crushed garlic yielding up.

“Fabulous! So delicious I can’t tell you.”

“Would you care to taste the meat?”

“No, no. I’ve got this.”

We savored without conversing, the best way to manage in such a loud room. A person achieves something engaging with an artichoke, Does any other vegetable in the world have a built-in goal? Leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf, thicker to thinner, exterior to interior, then the prize of the huge heart. All those roasting hours made this apotheosis. At the end I was just sated, full of Sicily’s generous fruits. When the waiter set our bill down I grabbed it, but my cousin fixed me with a no-nonsense look and demanded the slip.

“Maia, you must stop treating me as a guest, or for sure I’ll get on your nerves very quickly.”

“We have to eat.”

“Exactly, and here’s my contribution to that effort.”

“I don’t want to hear another word about it,” she stood, brushed the crumbs off

her lap and firmly pulled the slip from my fingers. The woman was not to be messed with.

We crossed the empty piazza, strewn with plastic winecups, peanut shells, shreds of burst balloons and horse manure, and circled the cream-colored monastery walls to her Fiat. We were well on our way down to Palermo, past the Mafia-Nightmare architecture up on the crest when a herd of goats – leaping, stumbling, tripping and glorious – filled the road. The unruly carpet of fur and horns that maaa-ed insisted upon right of way. Maia turned off the motor and nodded. She knew the score.

– Natalie Galli

As I have mentioned before, I love to drive my old Subaru. Dear old companion . . . more than 197,000 miles. But I also enjoy sitting back, watching the world roll by in the comfort of alternative transit. Sacramento isn’t all that transit friendly except when thinking about trips to the Bay Area. Then Amtrak and, sometimes, Bay Link Ferry, come into the picture. What it means is fewer traffic and parking hassles and being good to the environment by having one less fossil-fuel consumer on the road. That would be me and my faithful Subaru.

Amtrak (photos © Barbara Steinberg)

This weekend I am thrilled to be heading off to San Francisco via Amtrak. I have taken this trip many times but still love the experience. I look forward to the shrill of the train whistle, rumbling away from the station and crossing the Sacramento River. The endless debate — which side has the best views? It doesn’t matter if I choose right or left. Somewhere along the way I am certain to jump to check the scenery on the other side. There are just so many things to see that can’t be seen from behind the wheel of a car. . . . Subaru or otherwise. My favorite views come once the train diverts through Suisun Marsh and on towards San Pablo Bay and past the coastline around Port Costa and Crockett.

So, on this adventure I am doing all that I can to be kind to the Earth. I walked to light rail which whisked me away to the Amtrak station in downtown Sacramento. It’s been a while since I’ve ridden light rail and was shocked (really shocked) to see that a one-way ticket has skyrocketed to $2.50. Talk about discouraging the use of public transit. I know Sacramento Regional Transit has suffered in the economy along with the rest of us, but Sacramento officials have done little to encourage alternative transit. The big investments all go to more lanes of traffic on the interstate.

Arriving at the Amtrak station, I board the Capitol Corridor train heading for San Francisco.I know the routine. . . in Emeryville we will board a connector bus that takes you across the Bay Bridge — no tolls, no lanes of traffic at the toll plaza “parking lot.” Once on the other side, you have a range of locations to disembark. On this day, I am heading to Moscone Center. This is actually my final destination, heading to a trade show that starts tomorrow. But getting off the bus, I will walk a few blocks to overnight lodging at Good Hotel. It figures into this whole good travel experience.

Good Hotel in San Francisco

Another in the long line of Joie de Vivre Hotels, Good reinvented and re-opened in 2009. It defines recycled and kind to the Earth philosophies. Many decor features are reclaimed or recycled construction materials. The registration counter is recycled newspaper. Some light fixtures are made from recycled water bottles. There’s even a box in the lobby to recycle dead batteries. Bed frames are 100% recycled wood. In-shower soap dispensers feature holistic bath products. There bikes available for guest use. Signs of water and power conservation are found throughout Good Hotel. They really are walking the “good” talk.

Good Hotel is part of the South of Market District and walking distance to many attractions and was easily accessibile from the Amtrak connector bus. I made good on my quest to travel green this weekend. And will do the same in reverse on my way home.

It really is all good! And pet friendly, too!

– Barbara L. Steinberg

Several years ago, while riding on a cross-country bus in Costa Rica, I was seated next to a stranger from the States.  We start talking, and he soon figured out I was a travel journalist.  “I imagine you’ve traveled extensively?” he said.

“Oh, yes, I suppose I’ve been around the world about four times.”

He then asked, “So what did you learn?”

That was my epiphany because until then I had never really thought about lessons learned.  I had been too occupied savoring sights, sounds, scents, and people encountered to stop and analyze the essence of the odysseys.

So, what have I learned?  Foremost, it is that people across the globe are fundamentally the same; they embody tremendous similarities and minimal differences.

Paradoxically, yet too frequently, I have learned that peace unravels between rival groups with common roots.  It is less often the boogeyman from the other side of the world that stirs disorder.  But the vast majority of people on the planet are peace-loving, inquisitive and friendly.  It is typically less than five percent of a given population that foment evil.

Most people are inherently good
Whether it is a friendly encounter with two ragamuffins in a back alley of Shanghai, a shopkeeper in a Moroccan souk, or a restaurant owner in Malaysia, almost everyone I meet extends warm welcomes and many ask me to stay and visit.  Around the globe, when I visit with everyday people on the streets and inquire about their lives, most desire better jobs, decent housing, food for their families and opportunities for their children.

In spite of the heartbreaking atrocities going on in the Sudan, the Middle East and elsewhere, the majority of the world is at peace, and the chance to see the sights and visit with the people of the world is much too tempting to let the possibilities of harm stop anyone from traveling.

Life is inherently risky
It is a fact that your chances of being injured or killed in an automobile are far greater than flying around in an airplane.  Before I took off for a journey through Eastern China sixteen years ago, I mentioned a concern for my safety to my father.  He responded with a comment that has guided me well, “Do not forget that a fear of death is actually a fear of life.”

Yes, bad things can and do happen when we leave home
A man threatened to shoot me when I was walking through a market in Rabat, Morocco; as I exited a subway in Atlanta, a hoodlum attempted to mug me, and in Toronto I foiled a pickpocket, but that’s life – and a life not worth risking isn’t worth living.  If I had arbitrarily changed a booking for a Kauai helicopter flight, I might have crashed into a volcano. But none of that has slowed me up. You see, some people have a burning desire to travel. It permeates your heart and soul. You cannot not travel if you have that burning desire.

Those with so little are often blessed with abundance
It is often the little things that make for lasting memories. For example, while spending time on the island of Nevis, a local acquaintance introduced me to his friend, a tailor from India. who lived in a remote part of the island in a dirt floor shack with crumbling cinder-block walls and a pockmarked corrugated roof. As I entered the tailor’s hut, his wife extended a Coke as a welcome drink. A can of Coke cost one dollar on Nevis at the time. It suddenly dawned on me that their libation cost the couple the equivalent of $50 dollars. Matilla, the tailor, earned about one dollar an hour and I earned about $50 an hour; yet this couple proudly and readily shared a gift they really couldn’t afford.

I have encountered endless examples of trust and good faith. While spending time on the Caribbean island of Virgin Gorda, I was in a rural general store when a tourist attempted to rent a video. The tourist paid for the video and then placed her driver’s license and credit card on the counter. “What are those for?” the clerk asked.

“Oh, for the security deposit.”

“This is not necessary”, the clerk replied.

“But what if someone were to steal the video?” the tourist countered.

“Honey, no worry. No one will steal your video!”

Moments of fear that conclude with a laugh
A friend, freelancing for the Boston Globe, was waiting with me in the Honduran customs queue. We stepped across the white line and presented our passports. The stern looking customs officer never looked up. His only communication was the thud-thud of his official stamp colliding with our passports. He mechanically slid our passports out of his cage, and we assumed that everything was fine. But then the agent stood and leaned over the counter, gave my friend the evil eye and surreptitiously asked, “Are you Santiago?”

My friend turned ashen and asked me, “What did he say?”

“I think he wants to know if you are Santiago.” We both shrugged and agreed that it was probably some sort of trick or code word and if improperly answered would land us an immediate trip to the secret side-room for further interrogation. My friend stood at attention, looked directly at the agent and confessed. “No. Sir, I am not Santiago!”

The officer gave him an incredulous gaze as he retorted, “What? I say to you, ‘Are you Sunday to Go.  Do you go home Sunday?’”

“Oh. Yes, Sunday, we go,” responded my relieved friend, and the agent pointed his index finger toward the exit door as he shook his head. To this day, my friend’s nickname remains “Santiago”.

Song and dance of life
I have learned that song and dance define many cultures and serve as integral ingredients in people’s daily lives. While visiting tiny Saona Island in the Dominican Republic, I stopped in at a thatched-roof, open air, seaside pub as salsa tunes boomed out across the sandy seaside village. Washerwomen with bundles of clothes piled atop their heads, teenagers and little kids alike strolled along gyrating and swaying to the beats belting from the grog shack. The lively, infectious tunes brought smiles throughout the ramshackle community.

Similarly, while traveling through the Canadian Maritime Provinces, I was invited to dinner at a 17th century historic restaurant in New Brunswick where everything – from the dress of the servers to the cuisine and brew – was authentic 17th century fare. While waiting in the adjacent pub for the single-seating, family-style dinner, two young women next to me stood up and started belting out a Nova Scotian folk tune in Carnegie Hall-quality two-part harmony.

After the women finished, I turned to my local historian host and commented, “That’s so cool that they employ live entertainers.” He laughed and replied, “Actually those two are just patrons like you, waiting to dine. It’s quite common for folk up here on the spur of the moment to entertain each other like this.” A second later, a white haired woman, well into her 70s, got up and belted out an Irish sea shanty to raucous applause from her fellow, mostly thirty-something diners.

What I have learned
I’ve discovered that we have so much to learn from the people around the world. People and cultures, when viewed from the outside, might have less than we do in terms of material wealth, but their lives are none-the-less blessed with abundant and priceless treasures.

– Thomas C. Wilmer

A Woman's Asia

[April Orcutt's essay "Tibetan Bargain With a Twist" was a winner in Lonely Planet's "The Kindness of Strangers" writing contest and later was published in the Travelers' Tales anthology A Woman's Asia, edited by Mary Beth Bond.]

“Please!  Please!” the Tibetan woman pleaded, her young son trailing behind her.  She approached me in the ancient market of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, holding an orange beaded necklace that hung around her neck, smiling sweetly as she implored me to buy it.

But I didn’t want orange beads.  I was on an extended solo trip through Asia and, wanting to travel as long as possible, had to be judicious with my spending.

“No, thank you,” I said.

“Please!” she said.  It must have been the only word she knew in English.

“No.  Tu-jay-chay.”  It was the only word I knew in Tibetan.  “Thank you.”

“Please!”

China had opened Tibet for independent travel only three months before so my Western face was a novelty.  Or maybe she sensed that I love unusual jewelry.

“Please!”

She was insistent yet endearing with her lovely smile and that mischievous twinkle in the eye that is unique to Tibetans.  Red and brown yarn twisted through long black hair piled onto her head, and in front a few strands threaded through four small turquoise beads.  A rough black sash with pockets hung over her pink-striped blouse and gray skirt, and a small pouch secured with string peeked out above it.  Her son, who was about nine, stood silently at her side, a threadbare brown jacket over his red shirt and an unsure look on the face peering below the brim of his gray cap.

Again I said, “No,” to beads – but I pointed to the bracelets on her wrist.

She removed one: a strip of twisted brass, twisted again with copper and silver, and shaped into a rustic cuff.

“One yuan,” I said, holding up my index finger.  It was a ridiculously small sum.  About 50 U.S. cents.

“Oh!”  She was shocked.  Or she feigned shock.  I saw that twinkle in her eye.  She held up 10 fingers, no, 10 again – 20.

“Twenty yuan?!”  I stepped back.  That was 10 bucks – a fortune in backpacker-travel-money.  “Oh, no, no!” I said.  “Two yuan,” two fingers.

She pretended to be horrified.  Then she indicated “18 yuan.”

This dance continued, each of us alternately pretending to be offended at the other’s offer and tendering a new price.  We grinned, laughed, and settled on six yuan.

That was fun, and I loved the bracelet.  I pointed to another and off came the twisted brass, copper, and silver design, smoothed into one solid piece.  We repeated our game, faster this time and with fewer dramatics and even more smiles, our eyes meeting with laughter, but we got to the same place, six yuan.

Next I bought a silver ring.  Our opening offers were not so far apart this time, and we completed our transaction quickly.

Behind us, Lhasa’s denizens, nomads, and worshipers from across Tibet ambled around the “Old Town” section of Lhasa – the Barkor, the maze of dirt alleys twisting among 700-year-old stone buildings encircling the most important Buddhist temple in Tibet, the Jokhang.  Many Tibetans twirled brass prayer wheels, small cylinders revolving on a shaft, each spin offering a prayer for compassion.  For more than 13 centuries Tibetan pilgrims have reverently circled the Jokhang Temple, always clockwise, always with the temple off their right shoulder, each half-mile circuit a prayer.

I gestured toward the procession, and my new Tibetan friend, her son, and I joined the throng.  We strolled through the alleys, smiling, laughing and surveying bells, prayer flags, saddle blankets for yaks, and hand-loomed fabric in stripes of fuchsia, ocher, indigo, and emerald.

Pilgrims stretched out full body-length on the dirt road, marked where their extended hands touched, stood up, moved their feet to where their hands were, and repeated the process as they circled the temple and the Barkor.  Some used the same grueling technique to circumambulate Mt. Kailas, the holiest mountain in Tibet – a distance of 33 miles.  We looked at each other and nodded with respect toward the pilgrims.

Her son’s eyes, wide-open, followed a man who whirled a paper cone around the inside edge of a circular metal pan, accumulating white spun sugar with each twist.  I bought cotton candy for the three of us, and the boy beamed.

I photographed my friend with her arm around her son, and I asked someone else to take a photo of the three of us in the square in front of the Jokhang.

My friend led us toward the Jokhang, past a dozen Tibetans prostrating themselves at its entrance, and into its candle-lit darkness with the pungent odor of burning yak butter, the rancid aroma that permeates Tibetan temples, blended with juniper incense.  For two hours we silently turned dozens of prayer wheels, again and again.  We were the energy source spinning golden cylinders engraved with prayers and sending those prayers to the heavens.  So many wheels, so many prayers. . . .

Rejoining the circuit, we stopped at a Tibetan merchant’s table.  The merchant spoke English.  He had left Tibet as a child many years before, and now that China had opened the border with Nepal, he returned as a businessman.

“Your friend’s name is Gele,” he said.  “She has a 16-year-old daughter, who is on a pilgrimage to Mt. Kailas.  Gele is a recent widow, and she’s trying to move from Chamdo in eastern Tibet to Kathmandu in Nepal.”  She had traversed half of her 1,000-mile voyage.  I said I was impressed.

Gele reached into her pouch and brought out a one-inch, camel-shaped brass pendant.  Its plain surface was worn smooth, and a hand-braided string looped through a hole in its center.  “She said this was made by the gods and dropped from the sky,” the shopkeeper said.  “I can tell it is very old.”

The magical story intrigued me – I bought the amulet for a few yuan, a price I thought was too low, but she wouldn’t go higher.

“She says you’ve helped her a great deal on this journey because you’ve bought so much of her jewelry, and now she has money to travel.”  I asked him to tell her how much I treasured her jewelry.

He said she wanted to meet the next day so I asked where and at what time.  He said not to worry.  “She will find you.  These people are very clever.”

She did find me.  Again we circumambulated the Barkor three or four times.

I pointed to her squared-off brass ring with a small turquoise stone in the center.  She took it off.  It was rustic with rough edges – sturdy with geometric patterns engraved around the stone.  And I wanted to help her with her trek – although the distances were shorter, her travels were more monumental than mine.  If I had to cut my trip short by a few days, I would survive.  It was she who was beginning a new life, or who would be if she could get herself and her son to Nepal.  I would offer her earlier starting price.

I held up 10, then 10-again fingers.  “Twenty yuan,” I said.

She shook her head.  No, no, no.  She held up one finger.

“What?” I asked.  I held up one finger.  “One yuan?”

She nodded.

“Oh, no, no,” I said, shaking my head.  “Twenty!  Twenty yuan!”  Ten-plus-10 fingers.

One finger.

Twenty fingers.

I held out 20 one-yuan bills.  She took one.  I gave her the others.  She pushed them away.

“No!” I said.  “You must take more!”  We laughed.  But she wouldn’t take more.  In bargaining throughout the world I’d never encountered such a thing – she was refusing my higher price.  Surely she could use the money.  But she had enough for her needs.  I was stunned – I could only look at her and smile in amazement.

We walked again, watching the pilgrims, smelling the juniper incense, hearing the prayer wheels spin.  Then Gele gave me her last bracelet. . . .

– April Orcutt

Then every March since, to celebrate my birthday, we have returned to their Blade Creek property and to see the blossoms that have sprung forth — the tall, bright yellow King Alfreds, the sweetly-scented white narcissus, the peachy-colored daffodils.

For years, there was no house on the property.  Ralph and I would sleep huddled in our down sleeping bags in the back of our pickup’s camper shell. Bob and Lorinda would sleep in their 1950s model Shamrock travel trailer.  This was no behemoth, doublewide mobile home; this was a 20 ft.-long compact model. But its cozy interior was perfect for our needs — we had a formica kitchen table and padded benches, a stovetop with two burners, and a 12″ square sink. Amazingly, there was also a wood-burning stove and we were always comfortably warm.

We relished the fact that we had a hideaway where no one could disturb us.  Even after E-mail and cell phones became commonplace, we would leave them behind for the unfettered weekend at Blade Creek. We would arrive on Saturday, bring in our food and gear, and then wander through the woodlands of oak and pine trees, ceonothus and other brush. We followed the trails worn by the shy deer we rarely saw.  If there had been recent rain, we’d check the banks of the seasonal creek for footprints. Sometimes we’d find signs of raccoons, birds, or ducks; some years we’d hear a chorus of tree frogs.

One year we saw a huge flock of wild turkeys, and often we saw acorn woodpeckers, red-shafted flickers and red-shouldered hawks. Tiny nuthatches have entertained us as they circle the trunk of a nearby oak searching for an insect or larval snack. Over time, we’ve seen everything from tarantulas to foxes to bobcats, and we shiver with delight when we hear the yips of coyotes at dusk. As night approaches we scurry back to the trailer for supper.  We’re happy when we have a new version of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale or a bottle of sparkling bubbly.

Over time things have changed at Blade Creek. One major difference is that our hosts have upgraded their home.  A simple prefab house has been installed, and we’ve had to say goodbye to the old trailer, which is now resting on flattened tires and taken over by ants and mice. The trails that we used to keep open by our arrival and departure are now overgrown.

But the Sunday morning tradition in December — the planting the daffodil bulbs – continues. We select a planting area, start tossing bulbs into the air, and then plant the bulbs where they land. Then one Sunday in March, as we have all these years, we make a morning survey — remarking on what’s sprung forth.  We aren’t methodical about marking where we plant in the fall, so it’s speculation in the spring as to what’s a new plant, and which ones are survivors from previous years. Then work or viewing completed, we pack up, say our goodbyes, and make our way back to our “real” homes.

– Susan Alcorn

That’s my kind of wandering. I prefer that everything not be predictable. I like each day when I am on the road to be a gift package. I may have some notion of the contents but not until I open the wrapping—or the day—do I know for sure. Maybe on the way to the Shanghai airport, you get stalled in traffic for two hours, miss your plane, but while you are waiting for the next plane to Beijing, you become friends with three Chinese businessmen who invite you to a special dinner at home with their families.

Of course, some adventures do go badly awry. I look back at some of the worst of my travel infelicities and ask myself if I could have avoided the experience, would I? The answer is, on the whole, No. For a variety of reasons, some that might be considered odd, I am glad that I had lived through the situation: I learned something, met someone special, encountered a unique cranny in the business of being alive.

One operative phrase here is “living through it.” This is paramount. Some situations are riskier than others. Being chloroformed and robbed of all my possessions on an overnight Italian train wasn’t a barrel of laughs. But it gave me the opportunity to meet a kind and generous Yugoslavian soccer coach, my train compartment mate, who gave me 10,000 lire, all he could afford, the wall just having gone down, and no credit card system available yet in Eastern Europe and he heading down to the World Cup soccer matches.

It was a shocking experience to find myself drugged, my purse snatched from under my head while I slept. On the other hand, because I needed time to file reports, replace credit cards, re-purchase return flight tickets, my friends on their water buffalo ranch south of Naples in Paestum insisted that I stay on for a longer visit than we had planned. One week led to a month during which time they hosted a party for 500, partly in my honor, also to celebrate a horse show they had sponsored on their farm.

Sometimes being on the road may lead to being on the run – literally. Suffering from dysentery while riding across the Moroccan Sahara on a camel at the time was a horror. All that dismounting and mounting. But in retrospect what a comedy, and how good I got at clamoring on and off an ornery camel. (Is there any other kind?)

Occasionally one ruin leads to another—but the second one is one you’ve been looking for. That New Year’s eve in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, when I returned to my room to find a drunken, chain-smoking prostitute had taken up residence there, I was not content. “Our good friend now has that room. She is willing to share it with you,” the hotel owners informed me. There was no other lodging available in town. But because I spent a lot of time down in the lobby, I met an archaeologist with whom I shared a van and much, much more as we visited excavations of Mayan temples in the jungle.

Getting jilted while away from home may lead to new directions. “I’ve met another woman. Your visit just won’t work out now.” I was standing in a sweltering phone booth in the sun, high in the granite mountains of Corsica, near the tiny village of Levie. The words pouring into my ear were from my phone machine back in San Francisco. My lover of the past year was apparently giving me the heave-ho, just as I was about to fly back to visit him where he lived in Hawaii. Needing a friend to talk to, I dialed the number of Dorothy Carrington, well known writer and chronicler of Corsica. At that time, she was in her eighties, living in a neighboring town. I had read her books and wanted to meet her. “Let’s go to dinner,” she said, upon hearing my story. Thus, began a friendship with someone who became a valuable mentor and role model.

Sometimes, I’ve had to abandon my traveling companion in the middle of a trip—and discovered a whole new world in the process.  One winter in Guatemala, I did something I rarely do: travel with someone. I hadn’t known Gloria very long nor very well. We had met through friends and both wanted to explore Guatemala. She was the director of a major travel company, had lots of information on Guatemala, and made all our basic arrangements: flights, routing, hotels. She was another single woman with wanderlust. She had time and money. She was bright and seemed pleasant enough–i.e. not overtly prone to crying jags or screaming. As it turned out, we hated each other. Like a military commander, she would make a list each morning of exactly where we would go and what we would be doing each moment of the coming hours. At meals, she ordered always the least expensive items, although she actually earned a good deal more money than I did, and not only would not split the check but insisted on dividing tax and tip proportionately to her lesser cost meal. She hated that I spoke with strangers, making new friends easily. Perhaps worst of all, she was an early to bed early to rise type. I, on the other hand, love the music of the night and can do very nicely without roosters and early bird tweets.

Like a divorcee, I left her—and our rental car—and hitchhiked away from her. I ended up in the mountains of northwest Guatemala, home to the Quiche Indians. At dusk, a local bus carried Quiche market women, pigs, chickens, and me down a windy dirt road. At first, the women made me feel tense and alone. Their skin was dark from the sun and their wrinkled mouths smiled at me half-toothless, all speaking their guttural Mayan dialect, known only to a dwindling number of people today. Their energy, the smells of their wool weavings, their animals, food, and bodies, all transported me to their world. We sat three on seats intended for two, with miscellaneous chickens and piglets. Using bits of Spanish and lots of body movement, we began to communicate, they offering to act as mediator, to hand my bus fare to the attendant, a local Quiche man. Soon we were friends, exchanging expressions, Quiche for English, using Spanish as the medium – their Spanish and mine being equally sparse. Like Mary Poppins, I would stick up a finger: “Uno one.” Everyone, including the driver would repeat: “One.” And then explode into rolls of laughter, half from embarrassment, half from pride at accomplishment.

“¿Donde Usted?”

“California.”

“What kind of a country is that?” They had never heard of California. I realized the otherness of this world to me and then gradually felt more comfortable with them than I had anywhere in a long time. These women, illiterate, appearing at first glance like creatures from another world, made me feel at home among them with our common bond of femaleness. I was carrying with me a blanket that I had bought at their mountaintop market. If I wished, there was no doubt that I could go home with one of these women, and be welcome to curl up in this blanket at their hearth.

Adversity on the road can sometimes even lead to romance. When I left Paris on that snowy morning, returning to the States after two years in France, I was miserable and felt that my life was in shambles. To add to my suffering, I was finding it impossible to herd my two-year collection of baggage up to the check in counter. “Madame, may I assist you?” On the other side of these words was a charming, elegant mustachioed Frenchman, a baron from Brittany and that chance encounter proved to be the start of a ten-year cross-Atlantic love affair.

After all, travel is life in condensed segments, mini metaphors, and finite periods. It’s a performance, a film reel, after which you get up, leave and go home. The experiences, good and bad, are intense and get your full attention. You learn from them, sometimes absorb some pain—and if you remember to do so, more often, a great deal of pleasure.

– Diane LeBow