My parents loved this.
The house. Renting out the house was a cornerstone of our plan, but it was not something we could do far in advance. The rental market does not work that way. However, our plan changed over Christmas while we were in Boulder, Colorado, with Leah’s family. When we explained the trip to the extended family, my sister-in-law Noel mused, “Maybe we should shake things up for a year.” A few minutes later she said, “We could move from Boulder to Hanover for the school year and rent your house.” It was late in the evening, and we had gone through several bottles of wine, so none of us took the idea very seriously. The next morning, Noel and her husband Jeff (Leah’s brother) peppered us with serious questions: How would their kids enroll in school? What would the rent be? How hard would it be to rent out their house?
I’ll cut to the chase: Jeff and Noel decided to move to Hanover for the academic year with their three children and a dog. There were lots of good things about this development. We would have renters we trusted. We could be lazier about moving out our personal possessions. It also opened the door for a more substantial opportunity: Could Sophie stay behind with their family for a stretch and then join us in progress? By coincidence, Jeff and Noel’s oldest daughter, Claire, was also a volleyball player. If Sophie remained in Hanover for the season, the two cousins would be playing together on the same high school team. At the end of the season, sometime in early November, Sophie could meet up with us in South America. Sophie said she would be genuinely excited for the trip if she could play volleyball and then join us en route. This became the working plan, which got us to one hundred percent approval among the children.
The pets. Jeff and Noel’s family had a dog of their own; leaving them with two additional dogs was not a feasible option. (They would be able to take care of the fish.) We began asking everyone in our professional and social circles if they would be willing to look after a dog or two for nine months. Our informal networking eventually paid off. Lily, our ten-year-old semi-sedentary female Labrador retriever, went to friends who had an older Lab named Stella. The two old Labs became the “golden girls” of the neighborhood as they walked slowly around the block together.
We also had Caicos, a rambunctious three-year-old black Lab who had flunked out of a service animal training program after four months. (Frankly, we were shocked that he lasted in the program as long as he did.) A young couple on the Dartmouth faculty, Herschel and Julie, agreed to take Caicos. All evidence suggests that he was totally indulged for nine months. Herschel and Julie sent pictures periodically of Caicos lounging on the furniture surrounded by new toys.
The plan. We are now halfway through this chapter and there has been no mention of airline tickets or hotel reservations or anything related to traveling the world. That is because most of the work is in the leaving. Only after we firmed up things on the home front could we turn our attention to visiting other continents. Leah and I declared that every member of the expedition would be allowed a single pack that he or she would have to carry, plus a smaller backpack for a camera, books, a water bottle, and the like. The goal was to be totally mobile, meaning that each of us would be able to move through a crowded bus station carrying all of our stuff while having at least one hand free. This was not just about convenience; it was also to protect against getting pickpocketed or having unattended bags stolen.
I subscribed to a number of high-end travel outfitters that regularly sent us glossy brochures for trips to every continent. We could not afford these exotic voyages, but we could re-create similar itineraries more cheaply. There is no law against doing a National Geographic expedition to a cool place for one-tenth the price. I sat on our screened porch at night with a map of the world in front of me, trying to sketch out a route that made sense: minimizing long flights, arriving in places during the appropriate season, and so on. We had friends we wanted to visit in Mumbai, India, so that became a pin on the map. My brother suggested that he and his family meet us in the Galapagos for Thanksgiving. That became another pin in the map. Having a few of these firm destinations gave us some structure; otherwise the number of possible routes and destinations was infinite.
We allowed each of the children to pick one place they really wanted to experience. Sophie chose a safari in Africa. CJ selected scuba diving in Australia. Katrina demurred, opting instead to focus on ways to escape from us. She had high school classmates who would be traveling in Chile; she had another friend who would be studying in Germany and was keen to travel in Nepal and India. Katrina used her personal pick to make plans to meet up with these fellow travelers.
The route for the rest of the family evolved gradually, dictated in part by the seasons. We would begin in September in South America, where it would be spring. We would make our way south from Colombia toward the tip of Argentina and then double back to Ecuador for Thanksgiving with my brother. From there, we would cross the Pacific to New Zealand and Australia. We would head north through Southeast Asia during the winter (still very warm) and then visit our friends in India in the spring. At some point, we would detour to Africa, though the exact timing was ambiguous. Europe was not part of the original itinerary; it is an easy place for shorter vacations and we feared it would be too expensive for our budget.
For all the planning, there were only a few things that we needed to book in advance. One of them was space in the huts along the Routeburn Track in New Zealand. The bunks in the rustic cabins along this popular hiking trail are like campsites in America’s national parks. They are not expensive, but the spaces fill up within hours of becoming available. Leah made a note of how far in advance we could book. On that day, while we were watching Modern Family in our living room, Leah went online and reserved five bunks in each hut along the trek. That gave us another pin in the map.
I booked free tickets for all of us from Fort Lauderdale to Cartagena, Colombia, using miles on JetBlue. Even then, we had not made any binding commitments. We could return our shiny new backpacks. We could cancel the New Zealand trekking reservations. We could tell our employers that we would be staying on the job and inform the in-laws that they could not rent our house. We could even get the miles back from JetBlue. It was all just an ambitious plan—until I booked the tickets from Ecuador to New Zealand.
On a warm June night, I went on Kayak and found cheap tickets from Quito to Auckland. Nonrefundable tickets. As I entered the payment information, I said to Leah, “We’re going to do this, right?”
“We are,” she answered confidently. I clicked the Purchase button. At that point, we had five seats—several thousand dollars’ worth of nonrefundable tickets—on a Qantas flight across the Pacific Ocean.
The packing and the shots. Buying the backpacks was easy. The hard part was figuring out what to put in them. We all settled on some variation of the following: two pairs of long pants; one pair of shorts; two T-shirts; a long-sleeve shirt; a light sweater; a rain jacket; three or four pairs of socks and underwear; one set of sleeping clothes; a pair of hiking shoes; and a pair of flip flops. We carried a first-aid kit that had prosaic items like ibuprofen and tweezers; it also had sterile syringes in case one of us needed an injection in a place where there might not be a sterile needle. I added some personal things: my journal; backup glasses and sunglasses; a camera and telephoto lens; a Kindle; and my laptop.
The electronics were a source of debate. What did we really need? Each of us would have an iPhone or iPod that could double as a camera. Computers would be helpful for writing, schoolwork, travel planning, watching movies, and so on. Carrying more laptops would require less sharing, which would presumably minimize squabbling. On the other hand, the computers are heavy and would be an expensive loss if they were broken or stolen. We settled on two.
And then there were the books. I had a pile two feet high that I wanted to read on the trip. Yes, I have a Kindle, but I prefer reading the old-fashioned way. The challenge was that my books were as heavy as bricks and could have filled my whole backpack. With no p
lan for transporting this cargo, I left the books stacked on the floor—to be figured out later.
We made an appointment at the local travel clinic. In theory, each of us required a one-hour appointment. We persuaded the clinic to let us all come at once. This was the first trip-related activity we did as a group and it gave us a sense that the adventure was imminent. As we stepped up to the receptionist, I said loudly to CJ, “Don’t tell them that you have gonorrhea.” A woman sitting in the waiting area looked up from her magazine.
CJ exclaimed loudly, “I don’t have gonorrhea.” The receptionist looked up, as did two more people in the waiting area.
“Perfect,” I said. “That’s very convincing.”
“Because I don’t have gonorrhea!” CJ declared even louder.
“Totally believable. Just keep saying that,” I said.
“How could I have gonorrhea?” CJ yelled. Everyone in the waiting area was now looking at him.
“Dad!” Katrina hissed. “You’re acting like a nine-year-old.” CJ chortled as he caught on. He was amused by a penis-related joke and the fact that we had successfully annoyed Katrina.
“I don’t think most nine-year-olds would know what gonorrhea is,” I told Katrina.
“That’s true,” Sophie added. CJ chortled some more. Katrina stared straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact with any of us.
“Just ignore them,” Leah admonished.
“Why did you marry him?” Katrina asked accusingly, her nostrils flaring in frustration. “Seriously.”
The five of us filed into a small examination room with Rhonda, our travel nurse. The normal protocol was for Rhonda to print a sheet listing the known diseases and other travel risks for each country that we would be visiting. By the time we got to our fourth country in South America—with places like India still to go—Rhonda was overwhelmed with stacks of paper. We decided it would be best to skip the balance of the paperwork and proceed to the shots. We had traveled in the developing world before and had therefore been immunized against most of the serious threats. One would think this would make the process shorter and easier.
In fact, our recordkeeping left something to be desired. Each of us brought a “yellow book” issued by the World Health Organization for keeping track of immunizations. Many of the records in our yellow books were unclear or illegible. “I have two yellow books,” I reported to Rhonda, holding up one in each hand.
“You’re only supposed to have one,” she said.
“I had one, but I lost it,” I explained. “I got another, but then I found the original. Now I use both.”
“You’re only supposed to have one,” Rhonda repeated, as if that might make one of them disappear. She flipped through the pages in the two books. “You’ve been vaccinated three times for yellow fever,” she said.
“That’s good,” I said proudly.
“One vaccination lasts a lifetime,” she informed me.
“I guess I won’t be getting yellow fever,” I said.
Some of our immunizations needed boosters. For others, the recommended dosage or preferred drug had changed since we were first immunized. The hours rolled on as Rhonda dutifully administered shots. At one point I stepped out of the room to join a conference call. When I returned, the shots were still going on.
When the immunizations were done, Rhonda moved on to the information component of the appointment. “Here is what is most important,” she advised. “Don’t eat street food, don’t play with stray dogs, and don’t swim in fresh water.” We nodded along. Rhonda wrote us a prescription for enough malaria pills to get us through the countries where the disease is endemic. “Good luck,” she said earnestly as our family filed out.
We were now protected against illness, to the extent possible.
The in-laws arrive. I was sitting on the couch when Leah wandered into the room and said casually, “Jeff and Noel and their family will be here next week.” It was mid-July. We were not leaving on our trip until September 1.
“Next week?” I asked in shock. What could possibly explain a sixweek gap between their arrival and our departure? When my breathing returned to normal, Leah explained Jeff and Noel’s plan. “They’re not staying with us for six weeks,” she assured me. “They’re going camping and visiting friends on the East Coast. Our house is just a home base.”
Rain derailed the first camping trip. The kids refused to go on the second one. Some of the visits with friends fell through, too. Then there was a family illness that precluded getting back into the minivan. To make a long story short, the five members of their family, plus the dog, moved into our basement for six weeks. Moments after they arrived, our dog, Lily, attacked their dog, Indy, meaning that the dogs could never be in the same place at the same time. Our house is small. Katrina and I are introverts. Ten people and three animals, not including the fish, were now living under one roof. It was like an evacuation after a natural disaster, only if there had been a flood or a wildfire, FEMA would have given us a trailer for Jeff and Noel’s family to use.
[I promised Leah that I would let her read my description of this period before I submitted the manuscript to the publisher. What follows is my recollection of events, leaving it to Leah to expurgate things that might jeopardize family relations.]
If I’m being honest, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy fox. We soon learned that Esteban, Jeff and Noel’s youngest son, likes to light things on fire. He proudly showed me his stash of fireworks in the garage. “The Fourth of July is over,” I said.
“It’s a holiday you can celebrate all summer,” he said.
“I think it’s just a one-day thing,” I insisted.
Esteban nodded noncommittally. “Is that gasoline?” he asked, pointing to a red plastic container near the lawn mower.
I checked to make sure that our insurance premiums had been paid. Katrina moved all of her journals to a friend’s house. I told Leah the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.. Then, one afternoon while I was watching a golf tournament in the living room, I smelled smoke. At first, I thought I was imagining it. No, there was definitely smoke wafting in through the windows. I rushed out to the backyard, where all of the cousins had started a roaring bonfire. I put out the fire and issued stern instructions not to burn anything without permission. I told Esteban to focus on holidays other than the Fourth of July, maybe Halloween.
“It’s cool when you put the candles in the pumpkins,” he said.
“That’s not what I had in mind,” I said.
Sometime around then, Noel acquired a staph infection on her buttocks. This necessitated canceling another of the aforementioned trips. It also meant that Noel would have to treat the infection by soaking the affected area in a bathtub. The only bathtub in the house is in our bedroom. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy soaking her ass in our bathtub quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. This was not the only illness. Jeff and Noel’s oldest daughter, Claire, came down with the flu. There was a vomiting incident, followed by an aggressive cleanup with assorted bleach products.
Katrina moved out of the house to stay with a friend.
Meanwhile, the dogs would eyeball each other warily anytime one of them would go in or out of the house. This created constant tension, as we were never more than three seconds from a dogfight. Jeff and Noel’s dog spent a lot of time tethered outside on the driveway. This kept the dogs separated but caused Indy to bark and whine. The only spells of quiet came when Indy ran away, which was often. I could not enjoy that relative calm, however, because everyone in the house had to be mobilized to chase Indy around the neighborhood. I wrote in my journal: “I issued stern instructions about burning anything without permission. Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” Eventually I abandoned that plan because I couldn’t find a shovel. Also, digging a hole in the backyard to dispose of the body seemed like a lot of work.
And then my mother-in-law arrived. As our departure drew near, I reco
gnized that I was not going to be able to carry all of the books that were piled up near my pack. I engineered a solution: I mailed them to myself. I figured out three places I knew we would visit, even if our itinerary evolved: Auckland, New Zealand; Hobart, Australia (on the island of Tasmania), where some friends had offered us use of a house; and Mumbai, where we would be visiting friends. I put some books in my pack and divided the rest into three pouches and mailed them to distant points around the globe. This was a curious sensation: walking into the local Post Office and mailing packages addressed to myself in New Zealand, Australia, and India. Leah said to me, “It just looks bad when you drink scotch out of the bottle at dinner.”
For all that, Jeff and Noel were doing us a huge favor—arguably making the trip possible—by taking Sophie for two months. Leah and I went out to lunch with them on the eve of our departure to discuss parenting strategies: rules, curfew, insurance information, and, of course, the travel logistics for Sophie to meet us in Lima, Peru. We were entrusting our teenager to someone else, and they were willing to take on that responsibility.
Around the same time, I figured out a solution to my pile-of-books problem: I mailed them to myself. There were three places I knew we would visit, no matter how much our itinerary evolved: Auckland, New Zealand; Hobart, Australia (where friends had offered us a home for a week); and Mumbai, India. I divided the books into three large padded envelopes and addressed each to a distant point on the globe. I walked into the post office on Main Street in Hanover and mailed the packages to addresses thousands of miles away. In theory, we would eventually show up to claim them.
Leah’s family, part two. Sometime during the summer, we had the discussion with one of Leah’s other siblings about whether Tess could join us for a portion of the trip in a Spanish-speaking country. As noted earlier, Tess was studying in a bilingual school and was eager to try adventure travel. We agreed to have her meet us in Fort Lauderdale and travel with us for three weeks in Colombia and Peru. Tess’s parents drafted a series of legal documents so that we would be able, hopefully, to enter Colombia with a thirteen-year-old child who was not our own.
We Came, We Saw, We Left Page 5
