Travel/Adventure Archives - Page 4 of 7

The Drunken Forest

by Gerald Durrell

Note: there\’s a spoiler in my third paragraph.

I\’m pitching into my newer acquisitions of Gerald Durrell, and this one does not disappoint. It\’s from early in his career as a wild animal collector. This book describes a trip in 1954, to Argentina and Paraguay. It was not, in the eyes of Durrell and his wife, a great success in terms of bringing animals home- but the description of their travels, the local people they met and of course the native wildlife are still fascinating reading. Durrell is a great storyteller, and he made me laugh out loud a good number of times in this book. I have to say, Durrell is one of the few writers I would put on par with James Herriot, when it comes to describing animals and their care.

Quite a few of the species mentioned in here were unfamiliar to me- the viscacha- a rodent with a striped face, which they were unable to catch. The douracouli, a nocturnal monkey which looks a lot like a lemur with its owlish face. A crab-eating raccoon, which could work open any kind of latch or lock the Durrells secured its cage with- that cracked me up. A beautifully marked tiger bittern- their description of doctoring its broken wing was very lively. Other things of note: I didn\’t know that armadillos eat carrion. Durrell got hold of a young bird that it turns out would only eat freshly masticated spinach leaves- and he convinced his wife to do the chewing. They told about catching a large number of brown guira cuckoos, which they thought were rather dumb birds. Years later they visited a zoo where a number of these cuckoos now lived, and were surprised that the birds obviously recognized them. It made them think again their initial assessment of any animals\’ intelligence, especially under duress in captive situations. The author also debunks some common misconceptions about wild animals. For example, he tells how he caught a large anaconda- a funny account, especially as he compared his experience to the lurid tales spouted in popular literature of the time (jungle thrillers).

He also refutes the frequent criticism he received at shutting up wild animals in cages. True, many of the animals initially try to escape. But there was a very touching chapter in this book, where at the end of gathering their collection and meticulously caring for them, they were forced to suddenly leave the country due to civil war. Normally the animals would have been transported home by ship- but since they had to go in a small plane, could now only take a few of the rare species, and those too young to survive if released. All the others were let go. The reptiles and some of the birds took off immediately. But most of the birds and small mammals hung around the camp for days, expecting to be fed again. Some even tried to get back into the cages. It was obvious they appreciated the free meals (and maybe the comfort and attention) they had become used to receiving. The Durrells had to harden their hearts against the animals\’ begging, and chase some of them off to force them to go back into the wild. They worried that the animals were now accustomed enough to people they would be friendly to strangers and get themselves killed (lots of the natives seemed to have misconceptions about the wildlife. Their housekeeper in particular was terrified by any animal).

I find it kind of amusing that the cover of the book depicts Durrell as an older man with a paunch and a white beard, whereas the lively pen illustrations inside (by Ralph Tompson) clearly show him as a young man. I guess the paperback was published later in his career and they wanted someone people could identify with his TV persona on the front. All the mass market paperbacks I have of his seem to play up the humor of his writing, in the cover illustrations.

Rating: 4/5 203 pages, 1956

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

Paddle to the Amazon

by Don Starkell

In 1980, Don Starkell and his two sons undertook an amazing canoe journey- at the time, it was a world-record accomplishment. They paddled a 21-foot canoe from Winnipeg, Canada to the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. 12,000 miles in two years. I\’ve written about this book before, but that time was from memory, I hadn\’t actually read it in over a decade. Now having obtained my own copy through a book swap, I enjoyed reading it again.

Their canoe journey took the Starkells down the Red River and the Mississippi, along the Gulf of Mexico\’s coastline, past the Panama Canal (they were denied entry- which would have been just for fun), traversing the coasts of Colombia and Venezuela, down the Orinoco River and up the Amazon through Brazil. They suffered many hardships- some of which I remembered vividly- salt sores, hunger, exhaustion. A lot of the trip was in ocean waters which sounded incredibly difficult and dangerous. One of the sons dropped out not long into the journey. The other, Dana, struggled with asthma for much of the trip, then found the South American climate agreed with him and he was able to quit using his medication. They travelled through thirteen countries- in some areas were met with great generosity and hospitality, in other places strong suspicion and thievery. They undertook quite a few grueling portages, a few times across an isthmus where they insisted on hauling the boat on a trailer by hand, refusing assistance offered with vehicles because they wanted to make the entire journey via manpower. A lot of people thought they\’d never make it to the end, and sometimes they thought that, themselves. Don says he\’d never do it again- but years later he made another canoe journey from Canada to the Arctic, which I\’d like to read someday.

My memory had exaggerated some things and dismissed others. In my mind, the incidents involving snakes and crocodiles had stood out for years, but upon re-reading, those things were really minor. They had one close encounter with an anaconda (approaching it to take a photo) but all the crocs they saw were at a distance, none threatened. This time around I noticed the writing about the scenery, and descriptions about how various native people eked out a living on the coast. Don sometimes mused on how travelling by canoe equated his experience with that of early explorers- in some cases he used their writings to know what to expect on little-travelled stretches of river. My favorite part of the book was the last thirty pages, which describes their journey on the actual Amazon River- lots of wildlife sightings.

Rating: 4/5 316 pages, 1987

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Re-reads, Travel/Adventure

Lady with a Spear

by Eugenie Clark

Memoir about her younger years, when Eugenie Clark as a budding marine biologist travelled the world\’s oceans to collect fishes for science. It starts with how her interest in fish was sparked by long days spent at a public aquarium while her mother was working, and she pursued this into university studies. She describes first learning to dive, to use different netting techniques, and most of all, to track down individual fish and capture them with a spear. Her travels for study took her to the South Sea Islands where native fishermen would help her find rare fish. Even when language was a barrier, her requests were usually met with enthusiasm. Many of the natives she met had never seen a white woman before, much less one who was a scientist and went fishing. I liked reading the descriptions of strange, unusual fish and other marine life. The constant killing for collections, not so much. Even though I understand her reasoning why it was important to get all the specimens out of particular chosen tidepool, it is still a bit distressing to read of how the entire population of the pool would be knocked woozy with poison dropped in the water, and then promptly dropped into preserving fluid…. which happened to impress the locals very much. She made careful inquiries of the locals at each island which fishes were good eating (and often sampled them, including raw) and which they assumed were poisonous, and sent samples off to a lab which tested them for poison. It was a survey to find out which fish naturally carried venom, which were only poisonous in certain locales or at certain times of year due to what they ate, and which were not poisonous at all, even though the locals assumed so. At different times she was stationed in marine laboratories, and describes several extended stays in Hawaii, Guam, and on the Red Sea. She explains some experiments done on captive fishes in the lab- to study for the first time the reproductive behavior of guppies, and to learn more about visual memory using marine gobies. Those were pretty interesting. Sharks also come into the book, at the very end when she also talks briefly about meeting her future husband Ilias.

I am not sure which book I like best- this one is certainly less formal, being just as much a travel diary as it is a description of fishing and diving for scientific inquiry. Mostly, it is an intriguing look at marine fishes through the eyes of one who studied them with a lifelong passion.

Rating: 4/5 243 pages, 1951

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Nature, Travel/Adventure

The Ra Expeditions

by Thor Heyerdahl

This book was a re-read for me. Seven years ago I was kind of floored when I read about Heyerdahl\’s trips across the Atlantic in handmade boats, to test his theories about how ancient peoples might have travelled the oceans, in particular going from Egypt to the American continent. For some reason I had this book on my TBR shelf next to The Tigris Expedition and decided to read one before the other (chronologically). I was only a few chapters in before incidents and descriptions began to feel familiar, and I realized I\’d read it before. It was still pretty darn interesting, and is sticking around in my collection (this time properly shelved).

In Kon-Tiki Heyerdahl crossed the ocean on a balsa wood raft, in this case he built papyrus reed boats. He travelled the world to find men who still built reed boats on various lakes, and with their expertise handling the materials, followed the design of reed boats depicted in Egyptian tombs- he was convinced by their shape they must have been seaworthy. However he didn\’t know the purpose of certain parts of the design, so although they copied the images faithfully, once at sea they made some mistakes which caused the boat to start falling apart. They made it most of the way across- just a few hundred miles short of their goal before being rescued by a ship. The bulk of the book details the research, how the boat was constructed and the first trip- how the men settled their differences on board (being from seven different nations), how they learned to steer the reed boat, sightings of whales, porpoises, sharks, jellyfish and other oceanic life, difficulties with the weather and all things you\’d expect to read about an ocean voyage. Mostly it\’s about how the structure of the boat held up (or didn\’t) to the rigors of wave and wind, and how their provisions held out- they took only foods that ancient Egyptians might have had, and packed them the same way- clay jars and baskets. It all worked out surprisingly well.

Thor Heyerdahl launched a second trip not long after, to prove they could make it all the way with the boat built and loaded properly. This time they didn\’t have nearly as many difficulties, and the second trip is told in a mere one chapter. It wasn\’t as exciting because not so much went wrong- the boat still took on water and they broke steering oars, but it didn\’t fall apart like the first one.

While I liked reading this again, I did notice it got really repetitive telling about all the historical similarities between ancient cultures Heyerdahl was trying to prove. There\’s an entire chapter or two in the middle of the book where he just reiterates all the arguments he brought up at the beginning of the book, fleshed out from some reading the crew did while on board to while away calm moments. Then he rehashes it all again at the end. I didn\’t really want to read a bunch of history, I wanted to read about the adventure- I could have done with all that just told once and summarized again…

Rating: 3/5 341 pages, 1971

My earlier review is here.

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Nonfiction (general), Re-reads, Travel/Adventure

Three Singles to Adventure

by Gerald Durrell

The book starts abruptly, without much introduction or explanation. It was the early 1950\’s, when Durrell (looks to be in his twenties, from a photo in the book) and a few companions set off for Guiana, on a trip to collect wild animals for zoos. (He seems already experienced at this venture- I wonder as I read more of his books, if I\’d find one that describes his initial attempts. I bet that\’s hilarious). The title comes from a phrase referencing the tickets bought, with end destination a small village called Adventure. Through scenery strikingly reminiscent of the last book I read (but much briefer!) they travel into South America and visit a number of small villages and settlements, seeking a variety of specimens to take home. Sometimes he made short forays into the forest with his companions, but more often than not they simply asked the locals to show them animals- purchasing those the natives kept as pets or animals that hunters caught for them. He mentions quite a few curious creatures. Snakes, monkeys, lizards and caiman were common. More interesting to me was reading about the capybara, agouti, tree porcupine and an anteater they tried to catch by chasing it down on horseback and lassoing it! I was surprised at the final count: he had more than five hundred animals (of a variety of species) collected when it was time to board ship and home. Then describes the difficulties in keeping the animals clean and fed, and the inevitable losses (but doesn\’t say how many- I wonder how high the toll really was). The author\’s admiration for wildlife really shines through the pages, in spite of the fact that he was pulling them out of their native habitat to cart home for display and scientific study. It really seems he did the best he could by them. As well as delight in reading about the animals, there are lots of different characters here in the people met on their travels. One in particular that kept me laughing was a man eager to guide them, who continually had to impress and \”one-up\” with a better story, every time something happened. There are also lots of amusingly awkward incidents when animals nearly get away, and misunderstandings when communication was difficult.

It was sometimes a puzzle to read and try to picture the wildlife- they did not have the same common names I know, as Durrell often referred to them by local names- \”pimpla hog\” was a tree porcupine, \”pipa toad\” the surinam toad (I myself only first heard of this animal a year ago!), \”sakiwinki\” were the squirrel monkeys, and so on. The \”crab dog\” a type of raccoon- it amused me that this was such a strange animal to Durrell, until I remembered he was from England (raccoons are so familiar to me, but then they\’re native to the Americas. In his time perhaps he had never seen one before). I kept forgetting that \”uwarie\” was a possum- despised by the locals because it was a scavenging pest- they were astonished and delighted that Durrell\’s team eagerly bought these animals- I imagine it would be like someone coming here asking around to buy rats or cockroaches for their curiosity.

Rating: 3/5 191 pages, 1954

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

The Sea and the Jungle

by H.M. Tomlinson

I didn\’t know what this book was about at first, but I found the cover intriguing- it looks like woodcut panels. (They follow the timeline of the journey in the book, but the two on the back cover are first, chronologically). The first line definitely caught me: Everyone knows that the purpose of a travel book is to make the reader miserably envious of the author. It\’s a travel book unlike any other I\’ve read. It describes the route of a cargo ship, a steamer that in 1909 carried a load of Welsh coal from Swansea to Pará, Brazil and then up the Amazon river and a small tributary to a site near the San Antonio Falls where it sat \”in port\” for a month while inspections were made and cargo unloaded. The return trip went via Barbados, past Jamaica and landed at Tampa, FL from where our narrator caught a train to New York and made his final way home.

I haven\’t spoken of him. He\’s actually not much of a figure in the story itself- mostly an observer. It begins rather abruptly when Tomlinson is on his way to work, feeling bitterly oppressed by the daily grind, and stops to have conversation with a sailor on the street. This man invites him to take passage on the cargo steamer (it being short a few hands) and our narrator pretty much ditches his job, family and responsibilities in an instant to go along. (If you read the forward it becomes apparent the sailor was his brother, but still it seems very impulsive!) From there the book is all about the journey. I liked reading it, but the descriptions can be so dense it\’s hard to keep track of what you\’re reading about sometimes. The author has interesting insights and musing to share about everything he witnesses. The few momentous events seem to occur to other people, and there are a number of tall tales and travel stories told by other people met along the way. Tomlinson went aboard the ship in role of purser, which I understand means his job was to keep track of accounts, so he doesn\’t seem to do much but sit around chatting with people and watching everyone else work. It really does give you a vivid sense of place, the pitch and roll of the ocean, smothering heat inside the belly of the ship, characters of the deckhands (most did not speak English), the changes of weather, the sudden wall of greenery of South American jungle, glimpses of native people, birds and astonishingly gorgeous butterflies (never any wildlife larger than a peccary or anaconda), fears of mosquitoes and disease, and a crazy story about this railroad being built deep in the rain forest headed who knows where.

Certain aspects of the book reminded me vividly of The Lord of the Flies, Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary and State of Wonder but it\’s hard to put my finger on exactly why.

Rating: 3/5 302 pages, 1912

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

Gipsy Moth Circles the World

by Sir Francis Chichester

Another tale of a singlehander\’s voyage that I had on my shelf. It has some similarities, and many differences, to the previous one. In this case, the adventurer was a very experience sailor. He had a yacht custom-built for his trip, where he planned to circumnavigate the world stopping at only one port (Sydney, Australia) which had never been done before, and to do it faster than anyone ever had in a small vessel. Alone. He pointed out how different sailing is with an able crew, than one person solo. I was astonished that he even put to sea knowing all the things that were wrong beforehand- the boat wasn\’t balanced right, the sail yardage seemed wrong for its size, the keel wasn\’t big enough, it didn\’t steer well etc etc. I don\’t know what all the sailing terms mean, but even so I thought: I would never attempt to cross the oceans in that boat! Plus he had a serious leg injury right before leaving, and refused to see a doctor. Undaunted, he put to sea. And found many more problems along the way- issues with how the boat handled, leaks all over the place, moldy food and so on.

The book is based on his meticulous logs; some of it is about navigation and weather observations, most of it is a retelling of all the things that went awry and how he solved them. Ingenious fix-it-ups when things broke or malfunctioned. I was impressed that he baked his own bread during the voyage, grew cress, bean sprouts, mustard seed and wheatgerm for greens, and even drank seawater (small amounts) when he felt he lacked salt. Also impressed at how arduous it must be to sail alone- constant work to readjust sails and alter the steering whenever the wind and waves changed. Not to mention all the other work! Never any rest. Must be exhausting. I admit I could never face some of the things he did: re-baking moldy bread to eat it anyway, doing dental work on himself when he broke a tooth, going days on end of hard work with fragmented sleep.

And he did all this when he was sixty-five. Breaking several records for fastest-travelling sailing yacht of its size, longest passage without stopping at port, furthest distance travelled by a singlehander, and several others. His trip was followed avidly by newspapers at home, and he was met by adulating crowds and knighted by the Queen when he finally made it back to London (approx 8 months later).

I liked reading about his sightings- he was very interested in the seabirds, mentioned seeing whales or dolphins occasionally, not many fish. In one regard very marked difference with d\’Aboville\’s account of crossing the Pacific in 1991, who remarked upon constantly running into floating plastic trash. Just twenty-five years earlier, Chichester made no mention of finding such pollution. Were the seas so much cleaner then, or perhaps he was too busy to notice it.

Overall, the book gets kind of tedious. It\’s fascinating to see what the experience was like, but I get lost easy in all the terminology. When he mentions doing this and that adjustment to such-and-such a sail to the boat\’s response in this way to that kind of wind, I just imagine things being tugged and swung around, but really have no idea. Probably this book is best appreciated by a sailor. It did give me a few great-sounding titles of other famed seafaring ventures, and cleared up some confusion I had when reading Rockbound. (In that book, the characters constantly groused about a seabird colony on the lighthouse island. They called them \”the careys\” and despised their burrowing habits which ruined the land for crops, and their stink. I couldn\’t figure out what these birds were. Chichester mentions seeing \”Mother Carey\’s chickens\” which he tells me are storm petrels. Ah! That puzzlement cleared up nicely.)

Rating: 3/5 269 pages, 1967

more opinions:
Loud Latin Laughing

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Nonfiction (general), Travel/Adventure

Alone

The Man Who Braved the Vast Pacific- and Won
by Gerard d\’Aboville

In 1991, this Frenchman d\’Aboville rowed across the Pacific Ocean solo. From Japan to the American coast (his original goal was San Francisco but he landed in the small town of Ilwaco, Washington). It\’s quite an adventure story. Not the most gripping reading- although he describes his preparations, difficulties, encounters with sea life (few and far between), the overpowering emptiness of the ocean, its mood and weather, what it felt like to be so small tossed on the waves- it still did not compare to the fantastic storytelling that was Kon-Tiki, for example. The biggest question when I read this book was- why? why undertake such an arduous, dangerous exploit? D\’Aboville states that a decade earlier, he rowed across the Atlantic- he often compared the two journeys- the Atlantic was calmer, warmer, much more populated with fish and sea traffic, and yet two other men who were attempting to row across at the same time he did, failed to make it. It turns out he just felt compelled to push himself to his limits, to prove he could do it. It definitely sounded like an ordeal. The cold, the wet, the tedious diet (mostly dehydrated meals), the loneliness (even for this is a man who prefers his own company more often than not). He kept accurate notes on his experience, took myriad photographs to document it- even in the midst of a storm or the turmoil that occured when his boat capsized. Which it did many times. It was a twenty-six foot rowboat with storage space fore and cramped sleeping compartment aft under the decks. It was specially designed just for this trip, had an ingenious water-pumping device to allow d\’Aboville to right the boat when it capsized (with him trapped inside), solar panels for limited electricity to power his telex, and a radio among other things. The journey across the ocean took him 134 days. Several times he was passed by ships which invited him on board, and he refused- always determined to finish the crossing by himself.

When I first picked up this book on a whim, I thought from the cover image it was about a man who accidentally was adrift to survive the ocean- shipwrecked or something. Not at all- a deliberately planned venture of bravery and stamina. It\’s funny that one of the amazon listings for this book has a misleading subtitle: The True Story of the Man Who Fought the Sharks, Waves, and Weather of the Pacific and Won. There were no sharks!

It would be nice to read about his first venture crossing the Atlantic, but I couldn\’t find any evidence that he\’d written a book about that.

Rating: 3/5 167 pages, 1992

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Nonfiction (general), Travel/Adventure

Within Reach

My Everest Story
by Mark Pfetzer and Jack Galvin

This guy starting climbing some serious mountains when he was only thirteen years old. He was the youngest to summit Mount Pisco and Huascaran in Peru at fourteen, summited Aconcagua in Argentina when he was fifteen then went on to climb Everest, summit Mount Rainier and Ama Dablam in Nepal the same year and returned to Everest and tackled Kilimanjaro in Africa when he was sixteen. And those aren\’t the only climbs he did. It\’s a pretty amazing thing.

And a very engaging book to read. It reads like it\’s pulled straight out of his journal. Snippets of this and that, first impressions, little stories about other people he\’s met, glimpses of his family and most of all the climbing. Why he does it. His motivation, his meticulous preparations, his focus on safety and physical conditioning, the necessity of finding sponsors and how he got people to back him. All the time and effort that go into preparing for each climb. Once again I was reminded of the sheer mass of everything – distance travelled, heaps of gear, collection of people supporting or coaching or carrying stuff for others, the back and forth up the mountainside to acclimate, the huge force of it all for one last push to get just a few people to the top. And the many who don\’t make it. Very sobering. I can understand the thrill and drive that makes people climb mountains like Mark did, but I would never ever do it myself.

He made it very clear that it was his desire to climb mountains, that his parents only let him go because he prepared so strictly, that he studied a lot on the road and in camps to keeping up with his schooling. That it was his will and hard work that got him there. I found quite interesting his ideas on what advantages young climbers might have over older climbers who carried more experience, and also the different view of things when near the end of the book Mark was acting as a guide and support to a wealthy family who paid someone to get them up a mountain, instead of working hard to prepare themselves. In the book Mark often mentions his dreams to become a medical doctor, but it seems he is now an inspirational speaker.

It\’s an interesting, vivid and quick read. Got me thinking of all the other mountain-climbing books I\’ve heard about and would like to read sooner rather than later.

Rating: 3/5 224 pages, 1998

more opinions:
Everest Book Report

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure, Young Adult

Getting Stoned with Savages

by J. Maarten Troost

This one caught my eye because the author\’s prior book has been lingering on my TBR list. It\’s a kind of travel memoir, about the time the author and his wife spent in the South Pacific, visiting many islands but living mainly on Vanuatu and Fiji. Mostly humorous stories about often baffling circumstances, with a lot of asides into the history of the islands and their curious culture. Medley of cultures, really. Colonialism still a thing in some areas. How they became accepted by the locals, partaking of narcotic drinks made from potent roots (the author at least; his wife didn\’t like the stuff and I seriously doubt I would either!) but still occasionally (in spite of previous experience living on the islands) making an unforgivable faux-paus. Lack of amenities, large insects, frightful diseases all duly noted. Quite a number of sought-out adventures: visits to a live volcano, searching for someone who remembers experiencing cannibalism first hand (to answer pressing questions). They survived cyclones and mudslides, but still remained to have their first child on a remote island. In the end decided to return to America.

I found most interesting the slight but significant differences between all the islands in what was permissible or frowned upon. In some places women were allowed to join in certain ceremonies with the men, in other places they never could. In one village, women didn\’t even share housing with their men- the village had a side for each gender, strictly divided. Some descriptions of island life reminded me acutely of Fatu-Hiva. The largest impression I came away with was how life in the tropics had just as many difficulties and hardships as beauty and blissful moments. It was also sad to read about how in many villages the people would perform their traditional dances or display their lack of attire for tourist money. The parts about the history and political issues, especially the frequent coups, got a bit dull, but could also be amusing. As when he quoted Cook\’s disparaging description of natives he encountered on Malekula in 1774, followed by the author\’s own idea of how a native might have described Cook and his crew in turn- not at all flattering (and made me laugh out loud).

I enjoyed this read, but it\’s not one that\’s going to stay on my shelf. However, his references to The Sex Lives of Cannibals plus a few reviews of it, make me think I\’ll like the other book even more. Must look for it at the library sometime.

Rating: 3/5 239 pages, 2006

a few more opinions:
Biblioglobal
If It Has Words
I Read, I Knit, I Am
The Estella Collective

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

Tag: Travel/Adventure

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