A Travel Junkie's Diary

by Dina Bennett

  I do sometimes wonder whether a butterfly newly burst from its fiber wrap experiences what I do when I open the car door and emerge. Just as I’m relieved to get in the car in the morning, so I’m expectant when I get out. Nothing makes me happier than downing more shots of vodka than I’d normally drink in a year while standing in the parking lot of a Kyrgyz yurt hotel, having crashed a local family’s reunion. That they then break out accordions and sing while I get to dance with the local headman, elbows linked and head thrown back as he whirls me around, is a thrill I will not be denied. That this happens before three in the afternoon is even better. When the car stops, I open the door to a whole new world from the one I left that morning, and I feel that it’s been created and is waiting just for me.

  Early in our drive through Ethiopia, when we reached the city of Harar, we decided to get out of the car for two full days. That’s how we were able to meet our sheik and I was able to accomplish two other firsts for me: chewing qat and using my very talented piano-playing fingers to feed wild hyenas. And perhaps I do the latter because of indulging a bit too much of the former.

  A little more information on qat for those who find such things amusing: Qat is to the Ethiopian worker what coca is to the Colombian highlander, a cheap, leafy stimulant that keeps him going in the absence of food and liquid. As my initial modest experience in the sheik’s presence showed me, qat chewing is about what you’d expect if you ripped a handful of leaves off your neighbor’s privet hedge and stuffed it in your mouth: bitter, green, leathery. But I was searching for a reaction so I bought more at the market and chewed it, too, which precipitated a reaction akin to mild hysteria. I felt like a fussy baby, fidgety and in need of distraction. That’s why as dusk settled to a densely black night, I was more than willing to kneel by Harar’s hyena feeder, take the match-size stick he gave me, let him drape a strip of raw mutton on it and then extend it into a cluster of five hyenas. Why he insisted I hold the stick in my left hand I can’t know for sure. I imagine he assumed I was a righty, and if a hyena chomped more than I was technically offering, at least I’d still have my good hand with which to sign off on the lawsuit.

  The hyenas of Harar are spotted hyenas, their coarse gold fur covered with ragged black splotches, a thick ruched mane standing permanently upright from head to shoulders. I’ve been up close, but never personal, with spotted hyenas, having seen them repeatedly while on horseback safaris through the bush of Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve and Botswana’s Okavango Delta. They’re fascinating animals whose bad rap is based on their scruffy coats and a lurching walk reminiscent of Igor in Frankenstein, or the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Like other misunderstood animals—the pig comes to mind—hyenas are not only essential to the bush ecosystem, they have a lot going for them. For one, their voices soar like an opera diva on warm-up, whooping, giggling, groaning, and whining. For another, they groom themselves like cats, which no dog would ever do. For a third, 95 percent of what they eat is what they kill themselves.

  All this was the logical reason why I would not forego a chance to be right in the scrum of the hyena pack. There’s little related to animals that I will pass up, and while I cannot call myself a dog or horse whisperer, I would be comfortable with the title Horse Mutterer. That is to say, while I do not put myself on a par with animal handlers of exceptional talent, I do feel I have a preternatural rapport with all animals and that they can sense it. At least that’s what I hoped when the hyenas lumbered in, looking like broad-shouldered, small-rumped dogs that had just stuck a paw in an electric socket. As they approached and circled, their eyes glowed green in the headlights of our car. They were big, well fed, standing about the height of a German Shepherd. If it weren’t for their round ears and sloping, slouching walk, I could have called them cute, though maybe that was just nerves talking. Or the qat.

  They all recognized the hyena feeder’s voice. To me, his voice sounded like a saw cutting through dry pine. For them, it was a version of their own hyena whoop, a sound as unique to each hyena as my voice is to me. The whoop is used to bring the hyena clan together, and in this case it also promised a meal without any need for hunting. When he called them by name, hoarsely shouting “Ertika!” and “Howah!” they knew dinner was on, loping in through the old town’s Fallana Gate. They circled, dipped, and ducked as the largest alpha females took up favored positions, squealing and groaning in greeting as they arrived.

  I was prepared to like hyenas, because they have a matriarchal society, which I’m all for. It was only later that I learned hyenas have the most powerful bite of any mammal. They’re also one of the world’s most accomplished predators for their size. Those are mere statistics and at the time, data was not on my mind. Quite sensibly I figured if they got the urge to hunt, damaging my hand would be the least of my problems. Still, it seemed to come naturally to me to make like a statue when the largest hyena approached within two feet of me and took that bloody bit off the tip of the stick. As I held my breath I calmed myself with the profound understanding that there must be some sort of natural selection at play here. Any hyena foolish enough to disregard proper etiquette when taking raw meat from a visitor’s hands would have been dispatched without pity long ago.

  At one point, the hyena man took a sheep shank from his bag of tricks. It was dripping with pink fat and gristle. He smiled wide, gripped it in his teeth, and stuck his face toward the hyenas. All of them wanted it, and the clan let out a chorus of shrill shrieking laughs in nervous excitement, as did I, though mine sounded like a strangled cackle while theirs sounded like the yelps of relief when Nik Wallenda stepped onto Canadian ground after crossing Niagara on a high wire. The hyenas dodged and circled closer in a dance of submission, the smaller ones making increasingly quieter groans of distress on realizing the bone would not be theirs. At last the largest female made one final feint then dodged in and grabbed it, having mentally swatted away all competition for that prize.

  Unlike other mammals, hyenas are born eyes open and teeth in place. In fact, sisters from the same litter may fight to the death while still babies. Whether it was the qat euphoria wearing off or the effects of hyena-feeding adrenaline, I started feeling distinctly exposed. Proximity to animals that will off another female just for her gender does that to me. With the loser hyenas crouching and darting about for a consolation prize, hooting to each other, their green eyes glinting, I began to wonder whether I might not look like the consolation prize. In that moment I knew precisely what Bilbo meant when he said, “It’s a dangerous business … going out of your door.” Right now the thing of import to me is finding a door and getting behind it. Spying one on our car, I scuttle that direction and when I pull it shut, leaving furry predators outside, I know I am home.

  BORDERS

  PREAMBLE

  I find borders fascinating. Because we choose the back roads for our journeys, it’s inevitable that we wind up at the most remote borders. In these isolated posts, my perception of the differences, and at times the animosity, between countries is the clearest it will ever be. Borders, more than travel itself, confirm for me what Henry Miller said: “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

  For most travelers, their first entry into a country tends to be the opposite of mine. They arrive at a modern airport, where the uniformed official in a stiff-billed cap sitting at a computer is all too blasé about foreign passports and entry visas. The land borders I’m talking about are mountains, deserts, and rivers. They are, as Paul Theroux observed, “a contrived and arbitrary dotted line, a political conceit dividing communities and people, creating difference and disharmony.” Sometimes the border post is so modest we can’t even find it. In other words, these are places that have nothing in common with airport immigration control.

  Things rarely go wrong at airport immigration, other than being asked to stop holding up the line as you fill in that immigration card you forgot to deal with before landing, or mistakenly allowing your luggage to bu
lge with such temptations that a bored customs official can’t resist opening it for a little look-see, amusing himself further by scattering your undergarments onto the countertop just because he can. Not so the land crossing, where you’ll find an official in name only, whose training is minimal, whose pay is less, and whose desire is to be anywhere but there. His days are filled with emptiness, smoking, keeping warm, keeping cool, and ticking off the weeks and months till his next home leave. Though his job is important to him because it feeds his family, the limitations on his authority are as vast and vague as the empty no-man’s-land surrounding his post. This is officialdom with all the responsibilities and none of the perks. The man in charge frets about what he should and shouldn’t do, ripe to take out his uncertainties on the next person who appears, assuming it’s not his commander on a surprise inspection.

  Despite knowing all this, my peace of mind flies out the car window when I have to hand over my passport. I exude an air of flustered agitation, while Bernard sinks into meditative calm punctuated by the occasional guffaw to show that while he may seem like the Brother from Another Planet, he’s a comradely brother. Unlike Bernard, I have never been comfortable relying on the kindness of strangers. And while a lone border guard might be happy, indeed relieved, to see a carload of his compatriots pull up, we with our American passports are as strange an apparition as a Benedictine nun at a Madonna concert. It’s not that we’re not allowed to be there. It’s just that our appearance alone raises questions. And if there’s one thing you don’t want to do when traveling, it’s create a situation where a petty official has a question he cannot answer simply by looking at your passport and visa stamp.

  This notion of being inconspicuous and going with the flow is totally against my nature. I am a person who is always keen to let others know exactly what they’re doing incorrectly, and that I for one am well aware of the proper way to do those things. This does not serve me well. It was on our drive through Peru to Bolivia in 2010 that things—not our car—nearly went south. Despite a much-transited border further north, we chose the village of Desaguadero, on Lake Titicaca’s eastern shore, as our crossing point. We were intrigued by its reputation as a black-market and smugglers town and neglected to factor in that smugglers attract police like crows to a carcass. Why I said yes to the potential for making a border crossing even more nervous-making I’ll never know.

  Wending our way through the packed streets of market day to the border gates, hoping to sight a blackmarketeer, I saw my first test awaiting: long queues of people whose potential for carrying firearms I figured was high, what with them being smugglers and all. Knowing that flitting from line to line—as I do at the supermarket when I can’t stand waiting—would only call attention to us in a negative way, I fingered my passport and heaved sighs while Bernard remained stoic. Fortunately, Peru proved amenable to letting people out of the country easily, with lines moving if not swiftly, at least smoothly, through passport, car, and police checkpoints.

  Within an hour we drove under the big WELCOME TO BOLIVIA sign. I always smirk at those signs, because what they really mean is “Good luck getting in here!” Awaiting us was our first encounter with Bolivian military police. These two men in green fatigues were puffed up with self-importance, despite—or, in retrospect, because of—the fact they were just glorified parking lot attendants, charged with pointing out where incoming vehicles should wait. As is my job as navigator, I jumped out, papers in hand, and asked them which building I should go to first. Bernard, as is his job, waited in the car for me to come back and tell him where to drive.

  Both policemen sucked in their bellies and chins, giving me a long, hot once-over. One scraped his gold teeth assiduously with a toothpick, sucking little bits from between them, which he spit on the ground. At my feet. The other had expressionless black eyes and at my question gave a dismissive wave to include every building in sight. Turning to his comrade with a snarky chuckle he said, “Esta señora no sabe que! Vamos a ver cual errores va hacer.” Then both hacked out a “heh, heh, heh.” They leaned back, arms crossed, to see what amusement I could offer in the way of flustered scurrying from one doorway to the next.

  Here’s where things took a turn for the better, because I understand Spanish. Knowing I’d just been insulted, my knee-jerk reaction was to offer a rejoinder like, “I feel sorry for men doing a job so easily done by any woman.” And I almost did. But then something about the dark patches of sweat under their armpits gave me pause. These were men in a situation that made them feel bad enough already. Any lip from me would make them kick back harder, and I had no doubt who would fare worse in that virtual martial arts fest. Thus in the time it took me to figure out how to issue my pithy comment in Spanish, I realized it would be a shame to spend my first nights in Bolivia inspecting the dank walls of a border jail cell.

  To buy myself time I walked back to the car as if I’d forgotten something, and that’s when I discovered the surefire cure for whatever ails Latin men in general and border guards in particular: candy. So it was that I avoided a grave mishap by offering two policemen free choice from a bag of sweets I’d bought in Puno. Each took a bonbon with pinky raised. They unwrapped the bright foil, chewed, and considered. I saw shoulders relax, because who can stay tough when working a caramel around in your mouth. And then they escorted me personally to the right doorway.

  Remote borders represent arbitrary precision in the most mutable of environments, by their very location a place where the human compact of law and nationality is taken purely on faith. It’s because of this that they attract people for whom bending the law may be the only form of exercise they know. Here is what I’ve learned from long experience with such borders: we have no real business showing up at such places. We’re passing through and, in such circumstances, anything could happen.

  Isolation

  PASO ROBALLOS, ARGENTINA TO CHILE, 2008

  Chickens are gabbling around my ankles. The turkeys are not far behind, making the chickens more frantic as they sense that the turkeys, on longer legs, are about to overtake them. They scrabble at my feet, huddling close, seeking refuge. A weathered wood door set deep into a lichen-spackled stone wall is all that stands between me—between us—and the border control officer.

  I must say that this low, windowless structure is different from any border facility I’ve seen. Unlike at other posts at midmorning, we are the only vehicle here at Argentina’s Paso Roballos border station. We’ve chosen it to cross from Argentina back to Chile precisely because it is known as the least-used crossing in the country. Most people we questioned about it were suspicious about whether it even existed, let alone manned full-time. But the fact that I can’t see any tire tracks on the ground is taking isolation to an extreme.

  I’m captivated by such posts. Imagine what life must be like for the officer whose presence defines a separateness between countries that otherwise would be indistinguishable. Silence all day until, suddenly, the sound of an engine coming round the bend. Then it’s, “Quick, quick, get into a uniform, slick the hair, straighten the shoulders. There’s work to do and I’m just the official, well, the only official, to do it!” Except the car carries occupants who resent having to stop and want only to get away from you, to move on with their journey, to leave you behind. No pleasantries are exchanged. You go about your work, worried faces staring at you as you concentrate on checking documents, entering information in a ledger, waving them on.

  It was before dawn when we crept out of our dingy bedroom and left Bajo Caracoles. It had been a chilly, wakeful night curled in scratchy blankets on hard mattresses, stomachs wrestling with the dinner of shredded beets and tough steak prepared for us by the gas station owner’s wife. Given the options, which were none, we’d been grateful for it all. We drive into the sunrise, following a winding dirt road upward. Sun gilds the tawny fields with gold. A rare colocolo cat emerges from the grass to glare at us, outraged that we’ve disturbed his morning hunt. The desolate lowland count
ry gives way to isolated patches of green; a gully has captured some recent rainfall and a creek now babbles downward through the amber hills. As the road climbs higher, these solitary patches segue to bigger ones, where an enterprising farmer has scratched irrigation ditches to water some fields of wheat. Only twisted, gnarled, wind-ravaged trees grow at this high altitude, their wind-ravaged forms a tormented echo of how stately, tall, and straight they would be lower down. The meadows are coarse and bumpy; fences made of crooked branches and barky split trunks separate oddly shaped pastures for grazing. Traversing one isolated estancia we pass creamy merino sheep grazing on clumps of tussock grass, kept company by pink flamingos standing in windswept ponds. Clouds scud across the sky, and when I pull my hand in from testing the air outside the window, it’s red with cold.

  There’s little green at the border post; we’re high enough now that we and it are surrounded by tundra. As we pull in I notice a modest white wood cottage, with a dog chained in front, across from what I assume is the office. The cottage sits, lonesome and drooping, amid a small, tattered bed of wilted flowers and tired vegetables. Not much is willing to take root and grow in this austere place. When Bernard cuts the engine, I see a faded curtain flicked aside and catch sight of a face peering at us from behind it. I assume the face belongs to the officer, so I heave myself out of the car to get our papers. We’ve gone in and out of Chile and Argentina seven times now. I’m an old hand at border crossings. While rummaging for my portfolio of car documents I hear the house door slam shut. But by the time I’ve found everything and turn around, the official has vanished. “I’ll go do the formalities,” I tell Bernard. “Hang out here. I’ll get you if I need you.”