To cross the borders in Africa could be a challenging proposition. The officials were all corrupt and the governments sometimes went to extreme methods to try to control them. Some countries like Nigeria put extremely high penalties which could be up to death for smuggling and corruption. It did not stop the corruption. A Cadeau as it was usually called was always expected by the officials or police whenever you were forced to deal with them like at a border crossing. The size of the bribe depended on how much they thought you were worth and what you needed to get your paperwork correct. If you are in a hurry the price goes up, if you dress in expensive clothes and jewelry, the price goes up and so forth. My solution to all of this bogus hassle was to walk up to the border station and sit down. Then I would pull out my book, War and Peace the complete unedited version and sit there reading until the official asked me what I wanted. I acted totally unconcerned about time and all the irritating paperwork these petty officials tried to bog people down with. I just smiled and said, just a minute I will be right with you I just want to read a little more of my book first. It worked like a charm most times. Other times when I did have to pay a bribe to get through, I always argued and bargained my way through as slowly as I could so that they would be missing out on other people that they could be getting their cadeaus from. Sometimes it took hours to cross a single border. Entering Nigeria from Dahomey we had to go through about thirty different check points. Each one would shake you down and a smuggler could bring a load through all the stations but he would have to pay each one their share. It was kind of insane.
I crossed the border into Togo from Ghana. I met a young black American at the border crossing and we became friends almost right away. He was traveling through Africa to reestablish his roots he told me. He wasn't having much luck. He was traveling just like I was--on the cheap. The locals treated him like dirt. He was very discouraged by the way he was being treated. After much discussion with him and the Africans that were treating him badly I figured out that the Africans were angry at him because he had the opportunity to live and work in the United States and he was blowing his opportunity. He was not rich or famous. They worshiped Muhammad Ali and James Brown or black people that made it big time. The Africans dreamed of going to America and working hard to make a big name for themselves and getting really filthy rich then bringing their entire family over with them. They did not want to hear or see someone like this man that wasted the opportunity and shattered theirs dreams of America.
I traveled with him for a couple of weeks. We toured the slave history of West Africa together. We went to the palace made totally out of human bones and flesh. It was made by the King who was a big slave trader with the early Portuguese slavers. He had thousands of wives and children and ruled the entire area with a blood thirsty rule. They would go and round up slaves from the surrounding areas and kill ruthlessly and take the women and children as slaves or wives. It went on for centuries. Lots of people mistakenly think the early white slave traders went to Africa and rounded up slaves on their own but the reality was that slavery already existed when they arrived and they merely exploited it for their own benefit. Slave trading still goes on in West Africa today on a fairly large scale. Wikipedia has a lot of good articles on the history and current state of slavery in Africa.
We spent time in Lome the capital sitting in the French style cafes and going to museums and things during the day. We talked endlessly about Africa. I learned a lot from my friend who had recently graduated from New York City College. He had a good book knowledge of Africa but he lacked the on the street experience that I had by now. We both benefited from each other's experience. I eventually had had enough of the big city and wanted to head north through Togo. We split up and I hitched North out of Lome.
I easily caught rides on the well paved roads. I rode past all the cute round houses with the pointed thatched roofs in every size possible. There were large fields of multiple crops from sugar cane to grains and corn. Tapioca was growing all over West Africa and was a major starch for the people. There were a lot of cattle being tended by farmers. The fences were often just branches woven together in a small circle with a gate. The fences surrounded the little multi sized buildings forming family compounds. There was a little jungle here and there but as we went North it turned quickly into grasslands.
I met a married American couple at a market in central Togo. They were here working in the Peace Corps helping to get good clean potable water available to all the people. They were very nice people and took me into their little house. I stayed with them for a few weeks and we traveled around the country when they had time off. We cooked for each other just so we had a bit of variety. We played some chess and other board and card games to pass the time. I was starting to see a common thread in all the Peace Corps people I was running into. They were all lonely and feeling isolated from the people they worked with. Even as a couple these workers were lonely. They loved having me visit. I learned a lot from them about the local customs.
One day way up in the Northern part of the country we visited a village where the young men were having a wrestling match. They took turns fighting each other in a brutal almost no rules style of wrestling. I was a wrestler in high school and was very interested in their style. It ended up with me wrestling them one after the other for hours until I was just so tired I started to vomit and shake. I taught them some new moves that they had never seen before and I explained how the rules work in American high school wrestling. They were totally absorbed in learning and relentlessly asked me questions and tried to keep me out in the dusty ring where they were fighting. The fact that I could beat their best fighters even though I was a lot smaller impressed them and they all wanted to learn how I did it. I gave lessons for a couple of days before we had to leave. I really enjoyed those days wrestling with all the boys.
We went to a small National Park and saw a few animals but nothing that impressed me. We never got close to any of them. The animals were smart enough to run away from humans. That is a wise strategy for any animals in Africa if they want to survive.
As we traveled around we saw women and girls carrying large quantities of water long distances on their heads. We always stopped and the Peace Corps workers talked to them about how far and how often they carried water like this. They took careful notes for future work. These two were some of the only Peace Corps workers I found that felt like they were actually doing something to help the people. Lots of the other volunteers I met up with around Africa felt like they were wasting their time and not accomplishing anything helpful. I tried to cheer them up when ever I could.
I left my friends after a few of weeks of great times to head back down to Lome and then head East to Dahomey. I rested up in Lome before I headed East.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Kumasi Ghana
We kept driving South into Ghana. We started to find real road not long after we entered the country after leaving the game park in the Northern corner of the country. Ghana was different than Upper Volta, Mali and Senegal were. The people seemed to be more happy in their daily lives and they all seemed to have a purpose or a job to do all the time. They were very busy all the time. The housing also changed into more of a Western style of building except made out of adobe with thatched roofs and more and more tin roofs were starting to show up also. We found plenty of fuel stations and food stops along the way. We spent the night sleeping under the stars along the side of the road when it got dark. I loved watching all the people carrying things on their heads. There were frequently women and girls walking along the road with large urns of water on their heads or large stacks of firewood and things. The clothing was also much more colorful here with lots of bold prints. Once we left the far north everyone was fully dressed all the time. The population quickly increased as we went South and the rainfall increased. Large fields of crops appeared and once in a while we saw a modern tractor in a field or on the road.
We finally arrived at Kumasi, a large densely populated city with good infrastructure. We headed straight to the University and my driver visited his fellow professors there. We had a great meal and sat around drinking until late in the night before we were put up in a nice modern apartment right on campus.
I was talking to the professors all night about the philosophy of education and what the goals of a country's education should be. Should it supply theoretically trained workers or people ready to step right into a specific job category? We discussed the merits of both styles. Ghana was in the middle of an internal revolt over this topic. The early English school masters had been telling the students to come to school to get a good education so that they did not have to struggle on subsistence farms for their entire lives. Families had worked hard to put their kids through school instead of teaching them how to survive on a subsistence farm. The dream of getting a well paying job at the end of the struggle is what drove them to sacrifice so much to get the education. The problem now was that thousands of students were graduating from the educational system and expecting to walk into the high paying careers that they had gone to school so long for but there was one big flaw in the dream--There were no high paying jobs available to the vast majority of these students. They had been taught that farming was a low esteem living so they did not want to go back and work on the family farm. They ended up in the overcrowded cities with nothing to do but turn to crime for a living. So now large gangs of men in their twenties were roaming the streets with guns and sometimes rioting for jobs. It was a very sad situation. The professors asked me to teach at the University. I had practical experience as an electronic technician and they wanted me to teach a course at the University using a hands on approach instead of the purely theoretical approach they currently used. They offered me a very good deal with cash deposited directly into a foreign bank account and a full room and board with a living allowance for my time in Ghana. I thought long and hard but did not take the job. I did spend a few days talking to large groups of students during assembly at the University. I spoke about the same things I had spoken about in all the other schools, music, Western culture, Western politics, racism and all the violence going on in the U.S. at the time over the Viet Nam war and race. I enjoyed the sessions. They went for most of the day for a few days in a row. I ended up staying at the University for a couple of weeks working during the day and drinking at night with the students and professors. It was very satisfying.
I had to take the job or leave and I left. I hitch hiked South to Accra the capital. There was a lot of violence going on in the streets and I did not like the vibe so I got out of there quickly. Accra was a large city trying to become Westernized but having lots of troubles doing it. While I was there young men with machine guns went on a rampage because they had no jobs or means of support. There was talk of a civil war brewing. I did not want to be caught up in a civil war.
I met some travelers and we hitched West along the coast and found a large abandoned Portuguese fort right on the beach. We explored it and found shackles about a foot of the ground and also about five or six feet of the ground on the walls of lots of small dark dank rooms. This was an old slaving center and slaves and prisoners were shackled up to these. It was an strange feeling seeing them abandoned like this and imagining when this was an active fort a few hundred years earlier. We ended up moving into the fort and living in it for quite a long time.
The fort was right on the beach. We set up a camp inside where I put up my tent and lived in it. There were almost twenty of us living there at one point. We swam during the day and hung out on the beach. We played cards. We had little orgies in the prison cells. We watched the fishermen coming and going working on the beach. They sold us fresh fish everyday that we cooked over an open fire. We supplemented that with lots of fresh fruit like papayas, mangoes, bananas and pineapple. There were lots of other fruits that I did not even know the names of. We had a good life going. At night we had a fire and some of the guys played guitar and sang. We had some weed to smoke here and there but mostly we just drank a lot of beer. I was having a great time. Then it all fell apart.
An English guy caught Malaria and decided that the drugs for Malaria were a corporate fraud and that he could beat the disease just like all the local people here had for centuries with no drugs. Well his speech sounded good but it was based on flawed assumptions on his part. First of all the local people did suffer and die by the millions without drugs. Sure some survived but that was due to a genetic modification called sickle cell anemia. The reality was that people died every day because of Malaria here in Ghana and around the world in the Malaria belt. This guy went on a pineapple diet to beat the Malaria. He quickly developed a very high fever and got delusional from the fever, shivers, diarrhea and dehydration from his stupid attempt to beat the system. He ended up dying. We tried to take him in for medical help but he refused to go and then he died quickly during the night. His death created a stir in the community. We got word that the police were going to round us up and arrest us for contributing to his death. I took the rumor seriously and I split right away. I quickly hitched a ride to the Ivory Coast just a few miles West.
I only stayed in Ivory Coast for a few days. I did not like it much. There was too much crime around me and the people were even closer to a revolution than the people in Ghana. I turned around and started to head East. I did stop off near the fort on the way past it and I found out that the police had indeed raided our encampment and retaken the fort themselves. I never found out what happened to my friends and I was afraid to ask for fear that I would go to jail. I never mentioned that I had anything to do with it and instead I just kept right on going East through Accra and on to the next country, Togo.
We finally arrived at Kumasi, a large densely populated city with good infrastructure. We headed straight to the University and my driver visited his fellow professors there. We had a great meal and sat around drinking until late in the night before we were put up in a nice modern apartment right on campus.
I was talking to the professors all night about the philosophy of education and what the goals of a country's education should be. Should it supply theoretically trained workers or people ready to step right into a specific job category? We discussed the merits of both styles. Ghana was in the middle of an internal revolt over this topic. The early English school masters had been telling the students to come to school to get a good education so that they did not have to struggle on subsistence farms for their entire lives. Families had worked hard to put their kids through school instead of teaching them how to survive on a subsistence farm. The dream of getting a well paying job at the end of the struggle is what drove them to sacrifice so much to get the education. The problem now was that thousands of students were graduating from the educational system and expecting to walk into the high paying careers that they had gone to school so long for but there was one big flaw in the dream--There were no high paying jobs available to the vast majority of these students. They had been taught that farming was a low esteem living so they did not want to go back and work on the family farm. They ended up in the overcrowded cities with nothing to do but turn to crime for a living. So now large gangs of men in their twenties were roaming the streets with guns and sometimes rioting for jobs. It was a very sad situation. The professors asked me to teach at the University. I had practical experience as an electronic technician and they wanted me to teach a course at the University using a hands on approach instead of the purely theoretical approach they currently used. They offered me a very good deal with cash deposited directly into a foreign bank account and a full room and board with a living allowance for my time in Ghana. I thought long and hard but did not take the job. I did spend a few days talking to large groups of students during assembly at the University. I spoke about the same things I had spoken about in all the other schools, music, Western culture, Western politics, racism and all the violence going on in the U.S. at the time over the Viet Nam war and race. I enjoyed the sessions. They went for most of the day for a few days in a row. I ended up staying at the University for a couple of weeks working during the day and drinking at night with the students and professors. It was very satisfying.
I had to take the job or leave and I left. I hitch hiked South to Accra the capital. There was a lot of violence going on in the streets and I did not like the vibe so I got out of there quickly. Accra was a large city trying to become Westernized but having lots of troubles doing it. While I was there young men with machine guns went on a rampage because they had no jobs or means of support. There was talk of a civil war brewing. I did not want to be caught up in a civil war.
I met some travelers and we hitched West along the coast and found a large abandoned Portuguese fort right on the beach. We explored it and found shackles about a foot of the ground and also about five or six feet of the ground on the walls of lots of small dark dank rooms. This was an old slaving center and slaves and prisoners were shackled up to these. It was an strange feeling seeing them abandoned like this and imagining when this was an active fort a few hundred years earlier. We ended up moving into the fort and living in it for quite a long time.
The fort was right on the beach. We set up a camp inside where I put up my tent and lived in it. There were almost twenty of us living there at one point. We swam during the day and hung out on the beach. We played cards. We had little orgies in the prison cells. We watched the fishermen coming and going working on the beach. They sold us fresh fish everyday that we cooked over an open fire. We supplemented that with lots of fresh fruit like papayas, mangoes, bananas and pineapple. There were lots of other fruits that I did not even know the names of. We had a good life going. At night we had a fire and some of the guys played guitar and sang. We had some weed to smoke here and there but mostly we just drank a lot of beer. I was having a great time. Then it all fell apart.
An English guy caught Malaria and decided that the drugs for Malaria were a corporate fraud and that he could beat the disease just like all the local people here had for centuries with no drugs. Well his speech sounded good but it was based on flawed assumptions on his part. First of all the local people did suffer and die by the millions without drugs. Sure some survived but that was due to a genetic modification called sickle cell anemia. The reality was that people died every day because of Malaria here in Ghana and around the world in the Malaria belt. This guy went on a pineapple diet to beat the Malaria. He quickly developed a very high fever and got delusional from the fever, shivers, diarrhea and dehydration from his stupid attempt to beat the system. He ended up dying. We tried to take him in for medical help but he refused to go and then he died quickly during the night. His death created a stir in the community. We got word that the police were going to round us up and arrest us for contributing to his death. I took the rumor seriously and I split right away. I quickly hitched a ride to the Ivory Coast just a few miles West.
I only stayed in Ivory Coast for a few days. I did not like it much. There was too much crime around me and the people were even closer to a revolution than the people in Ghana. I turned around and started to head East. I did stop off near the fort on the way past it and I found out that the police had indeed raided our encampment and retaken the fort themselves. I never found out what happened to my friends and I was afraid to ask for fear that I would go to jail. I never mentioned that I had anything to do with it and instead I just kept right on going East through Accra and on to the next country, Togo.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Mopti Mali to Upper Volta (Now called Burkina Faso)
We Broke our camp at first light and hit the trail. My friend driving was in a hurry for some reason. I always get suspicious when I meet people that act like this man. He could be fleeing from the police or military, fleeing from drug dealers or smugglers, could be any of the above or could just be insane. I needed the ride so I just accepted his eccentricities. We traveled all day. I dumped the fuel into the tank from his cans as needed and he did all the driving. He was a crazy driver. Seems to be the most common type of driver I encounter. The little box he wanted me to be careful with was costing me bruises as I bounced around from his wild driving. He kept telling me how valuable the contents of the little box were and how fragile it was but he didn't seem it was important enough to slow down and drive a bit smoother. We came to paved road finally and then entered Bamako.
My driver knew where he was going and headed straight there. We stopped for some beer and food but nothing else. He arrived at a compound and we were allowed to enter the gate by an armed guard. He asked me to wait in the vehicle and I did. He went off for a few minutes with some men that met us as he parked. A few minutes later there was another package in the back of the vehicle and we were off again. We were almost overloaded by this point. He never mentioned what he picked up and I thought it was better not to know. He was looking and acting more and more suspicious by the minute. He was a red headed stocky man with a full beard and wore a dirty safari outfit and a goofy hat. He sweated profusely. We had fun together but he was on the silent gruff side of normal. If he had smoked a pipe he would have been a total stereotyped professor out of a Walt Disney movie.
We drove for a couple of days sleeping by the vehicle at night and driving all day. We stopped at a few places that sold coffee and tea with food. We always filled all of our jerry cans with fuel every opportunity we came across. When we found one with beer we stocked up on that too. We drank beer all day and all night. This would be my water of life for at least the next year. The water was not safe to drink without treatment but the beer was tasty and cheap as well as safe to drink. Even though we drank copious amounts of it we never seemed to get drunk unless we added booze to the mix. Every night we did just that after we set up camp.
At one point he suddenly veered off the trail and drove overland in a giant semicircle and then rejoined the trail again. I finally couldn't take it and had to ask him why he did that. He told me that he had just driven around the border crossing. I was surprised and asked him about our passport stamps we would need if any police stopped us and also to get out of the country again. He told me not to worry about it he would take care of everything if we got stopped and that I should say not say anything to anybody. I quickly shut up and rode along.
We drove into Ouagadougou in the late afternoon. We parked and were immediately mobbed by people dancing, singing and shouting. I thought we saw a big celebration before. This time there were hundreds of people. Bonfires again lit up the sky and drums again pounded a beat into the night and hundreds of people chanted, sang and danced all around us. We sat in our chairs and my friend mocked the people relentlessly as they went about their party. I had to laugh at a lot of his crude humor but he was extremely racist and evil with his comments. If I didn't need the ride I may have confronted him about it. I didn't confront him, instead I just laughed along with him. We watched until we got tired and drunk from the beer and booze then again we had to drive out of town in order to get some sleep. This evening was a real memorable African experience for me. I thought about it a lot over the rest of my life. This type of spontaneous party happened often as I continued through Africa and every time it did I remembered this night as the most spectacular of all.
We drove on passing very interesting houses on stilts with pointed thatched roofs that were scattered among all the termite mounds sticking up out of the ground. Most of them were round but they came in all shapes and sizes. There were some small family farms here and there as the countryside got less arid. The families would stop and watch us as we flew by them. When he did another large off road semicircle I did not ask him about it. I was sure now that he was smuggling his artifacts out of the country without any permits and was he afraid to go through customs and immigration in case he could not bribe his way through. I just hoped I didn't end up in prison with him.
I assumed the we were in Ghana now since we had gone around two borders already. The scenery was getting somewhat greener and greener as we drove South. There were even a few trees now. We drove through a game park in Northern Ghana that was full of grasslands and we saw a couple of animals at a distance. I never saw them close enough to identify them and my driver did not want to stop or even slow down. He told me he had a ship sailing that he had to get his items on and he was behind schedule. We pushed South harder than I wanted to travel. I liked the slow paced city by city approach. As soon as I came to a good place that I wanted to see more of I planned on jumping this ship.
My driver knew where he was going and headed straight there. We stopped for some beer and food but nothing else. He arrived at a compound and we were allowed to enter the gate by an armed guard. He asked me to wait in the vehicle and I did. He went off for a few minutes with some men that met us as he parked. A few minutes later there was another package in the back of the vehicle and we were off again. We were almost overloaded by this point. He never mentioned what he picked up and I thought it was better not to know. He was looking and acting more and more suspicious by the minute. He was a red headed stocky man with a full beard and wore a dirty safari outfit and a goofy hat. He sweated profusely. We had fun together but he was on the silent gruff side of normal. If he had smoked a pipe he would have been a total stereotyped professor out of a Walt Disney movie.
We drove for a couple of days sleeping by the vehicle at night and driving all day. We stopped at a few places that sold coffee and tea with food. We always filled all of our jerry cans with fuel every opportunity we came across. When we found one with beer we stocked up on that too. We drank beer all day and all night. This would be my water of life for at least the next year. The water was not safe to drink without treatment but the beer was tasty and cheap as well as safe to drink. Even though we drank copious amounts of it we never seemed to get drunk unless we added booze to the mix. Every night we did just that after we set up camp.
At one point he suddenly veered off the trail and drove overland in a giant semicircle and then rejoined the trail again. I finally couldn't take it and had to ask him why he did that. He told me that he had just driven around the border crossing. I was surprised and asked him about our passport stamps we would need if any police stopped us and also to get out of the country again. He told me not to worry about it he would take care of everything if we got stopped and that I should say not say anything to anybody. I quickly shut up and rode along.
We drove into Ouagadougou in the late afternoon. We parked and were immediately mobbed by people dancing, singing and shouting. I thought we saw a big celebration before. This time there were hundreds of people. Bonfires again lit up the sky and drums again pounded a beat into the night and hundreds of people chanted, sang and danced all around us. We sat in our chairs and my friend mocked the people relentlessly as they went about their party. I had to laugh at a lot of his crude humor but he was extremely racist and evil with his comments. If I didn't need the ride I may have confronted him about it. I didn't confront him, instead I just laughed along with him. We watched until we got tired and drunk from the beer and booze then again we had to drive out of town in order to get some sleep. This evening was a real memorable African experience for me. I thought about it a lot over the rest of my life. This type of spontaneous party happened often as I continued through Africa and every time it did I remembered this night as the most spectacular of all.
We drove on passing very interesting houses on stilts with pointed thatched roofs that were scattered among all the termite mounds sticking up out of the ground. Most of them were round but they came in all shapes and sizes. There were some small family farms here and there as the countryside got less arid. The families would stop and watch us as we flew by them. When he did another large off road semicircle I did not ask him about it. I was sure now that he was smuggling his artifacts out of the country without any permits and was he afraid to go through customs and immigration in case he could not bribe his way through. I just hoped I didn't end up in prison with him.
I assumed the we were in Ghana now since we had gone around two borders already. The scenery was getting somewhat greener and greener as we drove South. There were even a few trees now. We drove through a game park in Northern Ghana that was full of grasslands and we saw a couple of animals at a distance. I never saw them close enough to identify them and my driver did not want to stop or even slow down. He told me he had a ship sailing that he had to get his items on and he was behind schedule. We pushed South harder than I wanted to travel. I liked the slow paced city by city approach. As soon as I came to a good place that I wanted to see more of I planned on jumping this ship.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Timbuktu and Baboons
I woke up from my rest and went out to explore Timbuktu and find some food. It was early evening now. There were a lot of people out on the streets now. They were not very friendly with me. They were polite but there was clearly a problem with my looks or something that I was not aware of that they did not approve of. This was Muslim territory and I was clearly not conforming in some way to their expectations. Nobody ever explained to me what the problem was and I did not feel comfortable. I ate some great fresh bread and drank some tea. Then I ate some stew that tasted like goat or mutton or maybe more camel I could not tell. It was tasty and filling. I wandered around the streets but was not enthralled with the place. I enjoyed the exotic look of the town but the vibe was not good. I went back to my cramped little hotel and slept then packed up to leave in the morning.
I took a ride going south in the direction of Bamako but not all the way there. I should have waited for a through ride. The little village I was dropped at was out in the middle of the Sahara desert and consisted of a few buildings and a small store with a cafe. I spent the night in my tent. The next morning I bought some extra beer and some water before hitting the hard to see trail heading out of town in the direction of Bamako. I started walking which was probably not a wise thing to do but I did it. I just started hiking along the trail. I walked all day except for the early afternoon when it was blistering hot. I made myself some hot tea and waited for it to cool at least a bit.
It cooled ever so slightly and I started walking again. I saw something over in the distance. There was a tall termite mound and somebody was sitting on top of the mound. It was about five hundred yard away. I squinted to see who it was and then I saw them stand up on the mound and look right at me. That was when I realized it was not a human. I wasn't sure yet what it was but whatever it was, it was running right at me at fullspeed. I watched it intently as it came closer. Then I figured out what it was. It was a large full grown male baboon and he looked hungry with me on his lunch menu. I was suddenly pumped full of adrenaline. My mind started to race. I was out in the open with no trees to climb or anything to hide in on or behind. I had no gun. I did have a knife but it was small. I pulled it out and opened it. Then my time spent working with the monkeys at the University of Wisconsin came to my rescue. I pulled out the most dominant macho attitude I had in my bag of tricks and coolly kept walking down the trail with my back to the huge baboon with the gigantic canines chasing me to eat me. My balls needed to swell to the size of watermelons to be this macho. I walked and listened. He kept getting closer and closer and my heart was racing. I thought about where I should stick the knife when it came to that. Should I sacrifice my left arm to his huge mouth full of teeth while I stab him in the face or should I go for the kill in his heart or what. He was very close now but I kept waiting. Then when he was about fifty yards way, I turned around and looked at him and yawned my widest toothiest yawn I could and then I turned around and kept walking slowly with my back toward his charging jaws. When he was so close I couldn't take it any longer, I suddenly spun around and held my pack over my head and let out the loudest, most guttural scream I could muster from deep inside my primordial soul. To my relief and surprise the charging baboon slammed on the brakes and immediately spun around and took off running back in the direction he came from. I turned my back to him and walked on. I wanted to turn back and check to see what he was doing but to be truly dominant I had to show that I had absolutely no fear of him and his flashing canines by keeping my back turned to him. If I so much as glanced back it would have been a show of weakness that might have cost me my life. Even a single bite from a vicious animal like he was and I would likely die from blood loss and there was no help for a very long ways away.
He left me alone and I kept walking. I wanted to get a long way away from him before I set up my camp for the night. A couple of hours later I heard a vehicle coming. I got set to hitch hike and in about ten minutes a white Land Rover came bouncing down the road. There was a single white male driving it and nobody else in the vehicle. He stopped and looked at me like I was insane. I started to speak French to him but then I noticed that he was an American and we started to speak English.
He was a professor at an American University here to collect artifacts for his school. His Landrover was full of items packed into wooden boxes, wrapped in cloths or just in woven bags. He had a small item in his lap. He asked me to carry the small box and to be very careful with it. I took care of it as we headed down the hard to see trail. We made camp not too much later because it was going to get dark. Close to the equator like this the sun sets very rapidly and it goes from light to dark in just a few minutes with only the stars to illuminate the night until the moon rises.
We slept under the stars and I told him about my travels so far. He was peppering me with questions. Some of them were very personal but I answered them all. He pulled out some booze and we got hammered before we fell asleep. The next day we made it to Mopti. What a city that was, large, vibrant, friendly and loud. We found some food and a large group of people gathered and started to dance and play music around us. We just sat in our chairs next to our vehicle and watched it all going on around us. We finally decided that if we were going to get any sleep we were better off to drive out of town and sleep somewhere with no people. That is what we ended up doing.
I took a ride going south in the direction of Bamako but not all the way there. I should have waited for a through ride. The little village I was dropped at was out in the middle of the Sahara desert and consisted of a few buildings and a small store with a cafe. I spent the night in my tent. The next morning I bought some extra beer and some water before hitting the hard to see trail heading out of town in the direction of Bamako. I started walking which was probably not a wise thing to do but I did it. I just started hiking along the trail. I walked all day except for the early afternoon when it was blistering hot. I made myself some hot tea and waited for it to cool at least a bit.
It cooled ever so slightly and I started walking again. I saw something over in the distance. There was a tall termite mound and somebody was sitting on top of the mound. It was about five hundred yard away. I squinted to see who it was and then I saw them stand up on the mound and look right at me. That was when I realized it was not a human. I wasn't sure yet what it was but whatever it was, it was running right at me at fullspeed. I watched it intently as it came closer. Then I figured out what it was. It was a large full grown male baboon and he looked hungry with me on his lunch menu. I was suddenly pumped full of adrenaline. My mind started to race. I was out in the open with no trees to climb or anything to hide in on or behind. I had no gun. I did have a knife but it was small. I pulled it out and opened it. Then my time spent working with the monkeys at the University of Wisconsin came to my rescue. I pulled out the most dominant macho attitude I had in my bag of tricks and coolly kept walking down the trail with my back to the huge baboon with the gigantic canines chasing me to eat me. My balls needed to swell to the size of watermelons to be this macho. I walked and listened. He kept getting closer and closer and my heart was racing. I thought about where I should stick the knife when it came to that. Should I sacrifice my left arm to his huge mouth full of teeth while I stab him in the face or should I go for the kill in his heart or what. He was very close now but I kept waiting. Then when he was about fifty yards way, I turned around and looked at him and yawned my widest toothiest yawn I could and then I turned around and kept walking slowly with my back toward his charging jaws. When he was so close I couldn't take it any longer, I suddenly spun around and held my pack over my head and let out the loudest, most guttural scream I could muster from deep inside my primordial soul. To my relief and surprise the charging baboon slammed on the brakes and immediately spun around and took off running back in the direction he came from. I turned my back to him and walked on. I wanted to turn back and check to see what he was doing but to be truly dominant I had to show that I had absolutely no fear of him and his flashing canines by keeping my back turned to him. If I so much as glanced back it would have been a show of weakness that might have cost me my life. Even a single bite from a vicious animal like he was and I would likely die from blood loss and there was no help for a very long ways away.
He left me alone and I kept walking. I wanted to get a long way away from him before I set up my camp for the night. A couple of hours later I heard a vehicle coming. I got set to hitch hike and in about ten minutes a white Land Rover came bouncing down the road. There was a single white male driving it and nobody else in the vehicle. He stopped and looked at me like I was insane. I started to speak French to him but then I noticed that he was an American and we started to speak English.
He was a professor at an American University here to collect artifacts for his school. His Landrover was full of items packed into wooden boxes, wrapped in cloths or just in woven bags. He had a small item in his lap. He asked me to carry the small box and to be very careful with it. I took care of it as we headed down the hard to see trail. We made camp not too much later because it was going to get dark. Close to the equator like this the sun sets very rapidly and it goes from light to dark in just a few minutes with only the stars to illuminate the night until the moon rises.
We slept under the stars and I told him about my travels so far. He was peppering me with questions. Some of them were very personal but I answered them all. He pulled out some booze and we got hammered before we fell asleep. The next day we made it to Mopti. What a city that was, large, vibrant, friendly and loud. We found some food and a large group of people gathered and started to dance and play music around us. We just sat in our chairs next to our vehicle and watched it all going on around us. We finally decided that if we were going to get any sleep we were better off to drive out of town and sleep somewhere with no people. That is what we ended up doing.
Mali
I had my tent set up on a sandy area that seemed to be isolated and quiet. It was dark when I set up my camp and the moon was not out yet so I went by star light. I got a good night's sleep. The sun came up and I was just sitting there getting ready to get up and pee outside. I was staring out the door of my tent when all of a sudden there was a naked girl in front of my tent looking in at me sitting there naked. I was caught off guard by this. I quickly grabbed my shorts and put them on before going outside my tent to see what was going on with naked girls running around. I stood up as I came out of my tent and the girl had not moved yet. She was frozen in place staring at me. Then she turned and ran off over a sandy rise. I started to take my piss and as I was standing there peeing a mixed group of about fifteen or twenty youths came bounding over the rise and stood there staring at me. They were all naked and ranged in age from maybe six to fifteen years old about half boys and half girls. They had already caught me pissing and I just went ahead and finished. They were all staring at me in silence. I told them hello and they did not respond so I switched over to French and they all started to giggle and laugh then they started to run around jumping and dancing. They started to run off over the rise one by one and I followed as the last few disappeared. As I came over the low crest of the sand dune I saw a beautiful scene. There was a river curving across the center and about fifty women were washing clothes and bathing in the river. Most of them had infants on their backs and toddlers right by their sides. Almost the entire group was naked or near naked. They heard the kids squealing and they all looked up in my direction as I came over the crest. They all stopped moving and just stood there staring at me. I waved and said hi in French. They all acted like they didn't hear me or something. They still just stood there staring. I turned my attention to the kids. A few of them were creeping up closer to me. I went "Boo!" and when they acted scared I started to laugh and then they all laughed along with me. The first girl came up to about two feet in front of me. She was a very beautiful dark black skinned girl with an almost fully mature body. Her hair was almost shaved and she had on some jewelry on her wrist and neck but nothing else on. She was not shy. She clearly led the group of children and would soon be joining the adults. She spoke to me but it was in an unknown language for me. I just smiled and spoke in English and then some French but she spoke neither. So we just smiled at each other. The other kids started to gather closer to me and the adults started to walk in my direction too. I started to play games with the kids. I held my left big toe in my right hand and then I hopped through the circle that my arm and leg made then hopped back through the other way and pointed at the kids indicating it was their turn to try doing it. They all started to try to hop through the circle and they were all falling down. I did it a few more times to show them how easy it was but none of them could do it. We were all laughing together. The adults crowded around me just like the kids. A few of them even tried jumping through the loop but fell down as well. Then they were all laughing. Finally one little boy about six managed to do it and he kept repeating his feat over and over again. We all laughed with him. Then the adults walked back over and went back to work convinced that I wasn't a danger to them of their children.
I had to take a dump. These people around me would not have been phased at all if I had just squatted and took a dump right there with them all watching. That is how they did it. But I just wasn't comfortable doing that with a hundred people staring at me. I walked down and swam in the river and took my dump under water. I made sure I was down river from the adults. Then I went back to my tent and packed up my stuff. I came back over the hill and walked across the river and sat down. I just watched the whole scene. National Geographic magazine pictures kep rolling around in my mind. All those naked natives that I had perved at as a kid were standing right in front of me. I wanted to take a picture for the magazine of this scene. I enjoyed sitting there admiring the beauty of it all.
In a short while the women had finished their work washing clothes and bathing them selves and their kids. They bundled up the clothes which had already dried in the hot dry air and after filling some urns with water they started walking as a group back to the town. I followed them. Playing with the kids.
We were in the town after a short walk. The buildings were all built out of adobe plastered smooth and white washed. There were no trees or anything green other than a small well tended garden here and there. I walked into the heart of the town with about thirty to fifty people following me. I found a stall selling fruit and I bought a few mangos and bananas. I ate them as I walked on. Then I found a little cafe stall and bought some coffee and bread. It tasted good to me. I wandered around the town for a couple of hours. I was able to talk to a few of the people in my broken French. I asked them how to get to Timbuktu. They all directed me to the church in the middle of town. I found out why when I arrived at the church school. The missionaries all spoke English. They invited me in for lunch.
I ate my nice lunch and drank a few beers with the missionaries. We had an after lunch cocktail also. The missionaries told me a lot of the history of the area and what to be careful about as far as dangers. They also told me how to get to Timbuktu. We talked for a couple of hours and then they invited me to speak at the school in the morning. I was caught off guard by that invitation. I didn't know what they wanted me to talk about. My French was lousy. They told me they would use a translator for one class but that they had an English class that they wanted me to speak English with. I reluctantly agreed to do it. So they fed me and put me up in a nice clean room for a couple of nights. We drank a lot of beer and cocktails from their fully stocked bar.
My talks at the school were interesting for me. It worked out into a question and answer format. I fielded lots of tough questions from them. They asked me to explain the racial animosity in the United States which was all in the news with riots and huge demonstrations going on regularly and they were aware of it all. I tried to explain the problems as misunderstandings between two groups of people and that the color was not the issue but rather the distinguishing traits identifying and separating the groups but the color was not important. I pointed out other groups with similar problems that were different colors and then I pointed out that even in a group all the same color the same issues came up and I pointed out the city nearby that they didn't like the people in. They understood that. We also talked about music and western culture. I explained what a daily routine for a typical kid their age in the United States entailed. It went smoothly and I actually enjoyed the talking.
I ended up speaking in many schools just like this all over Africa. The questions were all very similar and I refined my answers to the difficult race questions which always popped up. The missionaries treated me well everywhere I went. they always had good food and good booze to share with me too. Sometimes they gave me directions to the next closest missionary school to go there also. It worked out well for me and I hope the students benefited also.
A few days later I was packed up and the missionary gave me a ride to what he referred to as the station. It was just and empty lot with a few cars in it. There were a few people around and the drivers of the vehicles were hawking their destinations. They left whenever they were full and not before. I told them I wanted to go to Timbuktu and they pointed me to a car. I went over and hung out until we had a full load and then we left. The car just headed out into the sea of sand. There was no road and no landmarks just rolling arid land with mostly sand and a few rocks. I have no idea how they knew were they were going. They drove fast and looked like they knew exactly where they were going despite the lack of roadmarks to my eyes anyway.
We rolled into Timbuktu in the late afternoon. The town was all closed up and looked to be vacant to me. There were no people anywhere in sight. I good out of my vehicle all sweaty and dusty with sand in every crack and crevice or orifice of my body. I was in serious need of a shower. I went looking for a place to stay. I walked around the town amazed at the cliff side buildings and all the other unusual architecture of the place. I am not sure it was worth the hassle to get here though. There certainly wasn't much excitement going on in town. I finally found a place to stay. It was a tiny little room with a narrow little cot in it but I rested in peace for a few hours.
I had to take a dump. These people around me would not have been phased at all if I had just squatted and took a dump right there with them all watching. That is how they did it. But I just wasn't comfortable doing that with a hundred people staring at me. I walked down and swam in the river and took my dump under water. I made sure I was down river from the adults. Then I went back to my tent and packed up my stuff. I came back over the hill and walked across the river and sat down. I just watched the whole scene. National Geographic magazine pictures kep rolling around in my mind. All those naked natives that I had perved at as a kid were standing right in front of me. I wanted to take a picture for the magazine of this scene. I enjoyed sitting there admiring the beauty of it all.
In a short while the women had finished their work washing clothes and bathing them selves and their kids. They bundled up the clothes which had already dried in the hot dry air and after filling some urns with water they started walking as a group back to the town. I followed them. Playing with the kids.
We were in the town after a short walk. The buildings were all built out of adobe plastered smooth and white washed. There were no trees or anything green other than a small well tended garden here and there. I walked into the heart of the town with about thirty to fifty people following me. I found a stall selling fruit and I bought a few mangos and bananas. I ate them as I walked on. Then I found a little cafe stall and bought some coffee and bread. It tasted good to me. I wandered around the town for a couple of hours. I was able to talk to a few of the people in my broken French. I asked them how to get to Timbuktu. They all directed me to the church in the middle of town. I found out why when I arrived at the church school. The missionaries all spoke English. They invited me in for lunch.
I ate my nice lunch and drank a few beers with the missionaries. We had an after lunch cocktail also. The missionaries told me a lot of the history of the area and what to be careful about as far as dangers. They also told me how to get to Timbuktu. We talked for a couple of hours and then they invited me to speak at the school in the morning. I was caught off guard by that invitation. I didn't know what they wanted me to talk about. My French was lousy. They told me they would use a translator for one class but that they had an English class that they wanted me to speak English with. I reluctantly agreed to do it. So they fed me and put me up in a nice clean room for a couple of nights. We drank a lot of beer and cocktails from their fully stocked bar.
My talks at the school were interesting for me. It worked out into a question and answer format. I fielded lots of tough questions from them. They asked me to explain the racial animosity in the United States which was all in the news with riots and huge demonstrations going on regularly and they were aware of it all. I tried to explain the problems as misunderstandings between two groups of people and that the color was not the issue but rather the distinguishing traits identifying and separating the groups but the color was not important. I pointed out other groups with similar problems that were different colors and then I pointed out that even in a group all the same color the same issues came up and I pointed out the city nearby that they didn't like the people in. They understood that. We also talked about music and western culture. I explained what a daily routine for a typical kid their age in the United States entailed. It went smoothly and I actually enjoyed the talking.
I ended up speaking in many schools just like this all over Africa. The questions were all very similar and I refined my answers to the difficult race questions which always popped up. The missionaries treated me well everywhere I went. they always had good food and good booze to share with me too. Sometimes they gave me directions to the next closest missionary school to go there also. It worked out well for me and I hope the students benefited also.
A few days later I was packed up and the missionary gave me a ride to what he referred to as the station. It was just and empty lot with a few cars in it. There were a few people around and the drivers of the vehicles were hawking their destinations. They left whenever they were full and not before. I told them I wanted to go to Timbuktu and they pointed me to a car. I went over and hung out until we had a full load and then we left. The car just headed out into the sea of sand. There was no road and no landmarks just rolling arid land with mostly sand and a few rocks. I have no idea how they knew were they were going. They drove fast and looked like they knew exactly where they were going despite the lack of roadmarks to my eyes anyway.
We rolled into Timbuktu in the late afternoon. The town was all closed up and looked to be vacant to me. There were no people anywhere in sight. I good out of my vehicle all sweaty and dusty with sand in every crack and crevice or orifice of my body. I was in serious need of a shower. I went looking for a place to stay. I walked around the town amazed at the cliff side buildings and all the other unusual architecture of the place. I am not sure it was worth the hassle to get here though. There certainly wasn't much excitement going on in town. I finally found a place to stay. It was a tiny little room with a narrow little cot in it but I rested in peace for a few hours.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Senegal at last
I had a major fear as I walked down the gangplank of the cruise ship and stepped into Africa. As a kid I was severely eaten alive by mosquitoes when I was camping in the Everglades. My whole face, neck and mouth swelled up so much that I could not breathe and my parents had to take me to the emergency room. I had been thinking about this all the way here and now the acid test was coming up for me.
I told my friend about my fears and he got very serious with me. He walked me off the pier and over to the sandy beach area. We stood there for a couple of hours while he told me his ideas about the mind and body connection and how I could overcome my mosquito phobia and allergy by just thinking the problem away. He was very convincing of the power to control your body with your mind and he gave me many examples of historical mind body experiences from the world at large and from his own experiences. He convinced me. I spent about an hour meditating on not reacting to mosquito bites. Previously any bite I got swelled way up, was very itchy and lasted for days if not longer making my life miserable. When I was ready we walked away from the beach until the wind died down enough for a mosquito to land on my arm. We sat and watched it bite me and fill up with blood then just as it got ready to fly away he told me to kill it. I killed it with a quick swat. Then we watched the bite area and he talked me through meditation to first acknowledge the sensory signals from the bite and then to reject them with my mind. I followed his instructions and to my surprise I was able to ignore the bite. I did get a small red dot from it but it did not swell up into a goose egg and it stopped itching almost right away. It worked! I had overcome mosquitoes at last. This gave me great comfort as I headed into thick mosquito country all over Africa. We put up our tent on the beach after we ate some food and we slept until dawn.
In the morning we headed into town for some food and to look around. We found lots of small coffee shops and coffee stands all over town. There was also the smell of freshly baked french bread permeating the air. We picked out a small shop with a cute young girl running it and had our coffee and bread with jam. It was very good. After breakfast we split up because my friend was heading off on some private mission that I didn't even want to hear about since he was just released from prison for drug dealing. I wanted no part of anything that might put me in a local prison.
I walked around town. There was a lot of poverty evident by the hand built shacks with flattened cans as roofing material. The people were all very nice and friendly but I attracted a lot of attention as I walked around town. Not many white tourists walked around the slums of Dakar I guess so I was a bit of an aberration walking casually around their neighborhoods. I always liked getting off the beaten track and this was definitely off the beaten track. The downtown area was very sprawling. It spread out seemingly forever as I walked around. For the next few days I just wandered around eating here and there when I got hungry and saw or smelled something good. I enjoyed myself.
Then I saw a travel agent window with posters of African animals and birds offering a river tour of Gambia. I was interested and a lazy riverboat tour sounded good to me so I went in to talk to the agent. He sold me the tickets and made all the arrangements for somebody to come by my hotel to pick me up in the morning.
I was picked up on time and taken to a boat in the harbor. We sailed out of the crowded harbor and went South. A short time later we went through customs again and then we were transferred to a different boat, a riverboat. I was shown my "room" which was a hammock in a corner and given a tour of the small boat. It made me think "African Queen" all the way. I was surprised that it wasn't named that. There were only about fifteen passengers total. Most of them were French or English. I was the only American. We chatted and got to know each other a bit as the boat headed up river. It anchored for the night just before the sun went down. It was pleasant talking to the other passengers. We drank a lot and then crashed for the night. The boat was moving again before the sun came up. For three days we went up and down the river and only saw a few birds. We stopped at a few villages along the way that sold junk for tourists and served us some of our meals. The tourist junk never interests me. The food was good though. It was mostly meat stews with starches on the side and lots of French bread. I gobbled it and enjoyed relaxing. It was disappointing not to see any animals like in the posters for this trip but I found out in the next year or so how Africans kill anything that moves and eat it or sell it. There was no sense of conservation at all until I got to Uganda a year later.
My tour came to an end and I was transported right back to my hotel in Dakar. My trip to Gambia was a nice introduction to Africa for me. Low key and relaxing but not much else.
I was wandering around Dakar a few nights later when I came across an area of town that was clearly the red light district so to speak. There were girls working the streets and men getting drunk and raising hell. Lots of tiny little hotels dotted the area and small bars were serving beer and spirits. I walked around watching and then stopped for a beer or two. Nobody paid much attention to me. I got up later and continued my walk. I saw one girl that caught me eye. She looked really good compared to a lot of these tired looking women. This girl had a hot young body and was dressed nicely and she was not acting so much like a street walker. She saw me looking at her and she marched right over to me. I continued walking as she tried to hustle me to take her to a hotel. I insisted I was not interested but she kept after me. She finally grabbed me and kissed me and tried to stroke my crotch. I copped a small feel at first but then I backed away and asked her to leave me alone. She kept following me and started to yell at me for abusing her. I finally lost her and went back to my hotel. A couple of hours later there was a knock on my hotel room door. I answered the door and there were about ten police officers outside my door and the same girl was standing behind them. She accused me of raping her. The police were very nice and polite to me. The told me they had to respond to her charges but wanted my side of the story. I told them she just confronted me on the street against my wishes and that if anybody was assaulted it was me not her. They kind of laughed at that. Then I said alright if she says I raped her she must have seen me naked and ask her what my tattoo looks like. they asked her and she looked caught off guard. She described a tattoo just because she felt she had to. Then I showed the police that I do not have any tattoos so it must have been some other guy. They agreed. However, they decided to fine me for kissing her which I had admitted I did when she kissed me. They charged me a couple of bucks for a fine and they left. The girl was furious. The police made sure she left but as soon as they were gone I left the hotel and moved to a different one because I did not want her coming back again now that she knew where I was. Not that the only white kid in town would be hard to find mind you. The police obviously found me quickly. I left town the next morning because the whole incident left a bad taste in my mouth.
I hitch hiked out of town and headed East. My plan was to go to Mali and see Timbuktu. There was almost no traffic and I found getting a ride was slow. So I started to walk down the road. The road was quickly just an overgrown trail. Once the City of Dakar came to an end there was not much out there. I just walked on. I saw more birds and lizards then I had seen on my Gambia riverboat trip as I walked along the road. At night I would put up my tent and read or just sit and look out at the sky full of stars. I finally caught a ride with an American woman driving along the road.
She was a Peace Corps worker. She took me to her place out in the middle of nowhere and told me that she was losing it mentally from being so lonely. She had made a request to the office to be relieved of her commitment so that she could go home. I did my best to cheer her up. We had a good time for a few days. It turned out she would be my last sexual contact for quite a few months. I saw lots of evidence of sexually transmitted diseases everywhere I looked so far in Africa. I did not want to catch anything so I ended up just abstaining for the most part. She asked me to leave because she was afraid that if she enjoyed her time with me she would be even worse when I left like she knew I would. I was up front about my goals. I did see one weird antelope while I was at her place. It would be the only one I saw for a long time. My vision of an Africa full of animals was quickly fading to black. I left on foot from her place after a nice full breakfast.
I walked for days. No vehicles at all came down the road in either direction. The countryside quickly turned from lush green tropical jungles to arid brown dry hot grasslands with almost no trees. Then it turned into mostly desert. I was worried about water but I kept going. Eventually I came to the border and went across to the Mali side and put up my tent to get a good night's sleep. I enjoyed walking like this and ended up walking for thousands of miles over the next couple of years. I read a book and fell sound asleep.
I told my friend about my fears and he got very serious with me. He walked me off the pier and over to the sandy beach area. We stood there for a couple of hours while he told me his ideas about the mind and body connection and how I could overcome my mosquito phobia and allergy by just thinking the problem away. He was very convincing of the power to control your body with your mind and he gave me many examples of historical mind body experiences from the world at large and from his own experiences. He convinced me. I spent about an hour meditating on not reacting to mosquito bites. Previously any bite I got swelled way up, was very itchy and lasted for days if not longer making my life miserable. When I was ready we walked away from the beach until the wind died down enough for a mosquito to land on my arm. We sat and watched it bite me and fill up with blood then just as it got ready to fly away he told me to kill it. I killed it with a quick swat. Then we watched the bite area and he talked me through meditation to first acknowledge the sensory signals from the bite and then to reject them with my mind. I followed his instructions and to my surprise I was able to ignore the bite. I did get a small red dot from it but it did not swell up into a goose egg and it stopped itching almost right away. It worked! I had overcome mosquitoes at last. This gave me great comfort as I headed into thick mosquito country all over Africa. We put up our tent on the beach after we ate some food and we slept until dawn.
In the morning we headed into town for some food and to look around. We found lots of small coffee shops and coffee stands all over town. There was also the smell of freshly baked french bread permeating the air. We picked out a small shop with a cute young girl running it and had our coffee and bread with jam. It was very good. After breakfast we split up because my friend was heading off on some private mission that I didn't even want to hear about since he was just released from prison for drug dealing. I wanted no part of anything that might put me in a local prison.
I walked around town. There was a lot of poverty evident by the hand built shacks with flattened cans as roofing material. The people were all very nice and friendly but I attracted a lot of attention as I walked around town. Not many white tourists walked around the slums of Dakar I guess so I was a bit of an aberration walking casually around their neighborhoods. I always liked getting off the beaten track and this was definitely off the beaten track. The downtown area was very sprawling. It spread out seemingly forever as I walked around. For the next few days I just wandered around eating here and there when I got hungry and saw or smelled something good. I enjoyed myself.
Then I saw a travel agent window with posters of African animals and birds offering a river tour of Gambia. I was interested and a lazy riverboat tour sounded good to me so I went in to talk to the agent. He sold me the tickets and made all the arrangements for somebody to come by my hotel to pick me up in the morning.
I was picked up on time and taken to a boat in the harbor. We sailed out of the crowded harbor and went South. A short time later we went through customs again and then we were transferred to a different boat, a riverboat. I was shown my "room" which was a hammock in a corner and given a tour of the small boat. It made me think "African Queen" all the way. I was surprised that it wasn't named that. There were only about fifteen passengers total. Most of them were French or English. I was the only American. We chatted and got to know each other a bit as the boat headed up river. It anchored for the night just before the sun went down. It was pleasant talking to the other passengers. We drank a lot and then crashed for the night. The boat was moving again before the sun came up. For three days we went up and down the river and only saw a few birds. We stopped at a few villages along the way that sold junk for tourists and served us some of our meals. The tourist junk never interests me. The food was good though. It was mostly meat stews with starches on the side and lots of French bread. I gobbled it and enjoyed relaxing. It was disappointing not to see any animals like in the posters for this trip but I found out in the next year or so how Africans kill anything that moves and eat it or sell it. There was no sense of conservation at all until I got to Uganda a year later.
My tour came to an end and I was transported right back to my hotel in Dakar. My trip to Gambia was a nice introduction to Africa for me. Low key and relaxing but not much else.
I was wandering around Dakar a few nights later when I came across an area of town that was clearly the red light district so to speak. There were girls working the streets and men getting drunk and raising hell. Lots of tiny little hotels dotted the area and small bars were serving beer and spirits. I walked around watching and then stopped for a beer or two. Nobody paid much attention to me. I got up later and continued my walk. I saw one girl that caught me eye. She looked really good compared to a lot of these tired looking women. This girl had a hot young body and was dressed nicely and she was not acting so much like a street walker. She saw me looking at her and she marched right over to me. I continued walking as she tried to hustle me to take her to a hotel. I insisted I was not interested but she kept after me. She finally grabbed me and kissed me and tried to stroke my crotch. I copped a small feel at first but then I backed away and asked her to leave me alone. She kept following me and started to yell at me for abusing her. I finally lost her and went back to my hotel. A couple of hours later there was a knock on my hotel room door. I answered the door and there were about ten police officers outside my door and the same girl was standing behind them. She accused me of raping her. The police were very nice and polite to me. The told me they had to respond to her charges but wanted my side of the story. I told them she just confronted me on the street against my wishes and that if anybody was assaulted it was me not her. They kind of laughed at that. Then I said alright if she says I raped her she must have seen me naked and ask her what my tattoo looks like. they asked her and she looked caught off guard. She described a tattoo just because she felt she had to. Then I showed the police that I do not have any tattoos so it must have been some other guy. They agreed. However, they decided to fine me for kissing her which I had admitted I did when she kissed me. They charged me a couple of bucks for a fine and they left. The girl was furious. The police made sure she left but as soon as they were gone I left the hotel and moved to a different one because I did not want her coming back again now that she knew where I was. Not that the only white kid in town would be hard to find mind you. The police obviously found me quickly. I left town the next morning because the whole incident left a bad taste in my mouth.
I hitch hiked out of town and headed East. My plan was to go to Mali and see Timbuktu. There was almost no traffic and I found getting a ride was slow. So I started to walk down the road. The road was quickly just an overgrown trail. Once the City of Dakar came to an end there was not much out there. I just walked on. I saw more birds and lizards then I had seen on my Gambia riverboat trip as I walked along the road. At night I would put up my tent and read or just sit and look out at the sky full of stars. I finally caught a ride with an American woman driving along the road.
She was a Peace Corps worker. She took me to her place out in the middle of nowhere and told me that she was losing it mentally from being so lonely. She had made a request to the office to be relieved of her commitment so that she could go home. I did my best to cheer her up. We had a good time for a few days. It turned out she would be my last sexual contact for quite a few months. I saw lots of evidence of sexually transmitted diseases everywhere I looked so far in Africa. I did not want to catch anything so I ended up just abstaining for the most part. She asked me to leave because she was afraid that if she enjoyed her time with me she would be even worse when I left like she knew I would. I was up front about my goals. I did see one weird antelope while I was at her place. It would be the only one I saw for a long time. My vision of an Africa full of animals was quickly fading to black. I left on foot from her place after a nice full breakfast.
I walked for days. No vehicles at all came down the road in either direction. The countryside quickly turned from lush green tropical jungles to arid brown dry hot grasslands with almost no trees. Then it turned into mostly desert. I was worried about water but I kept going. Eventually I came to the border and went across to the Mali side and put up my tent to get a good night's sleep. I enjoyed walking like this and ended up walking for thousands of miles over the next couple of years. I read a book and fell sound asleep.
Morocco to Europe
I was kind of pissed about being turned away at the Senegal border and about having to find a new route to get into Africa. I made the best of my situation. I met a couple of Swedish girls. They were crazy. They were also drop dead gorgeous. They both had killer bodies and one had brilliant blue eyes and the other dark brown eyes. Together they made a great team.
They came back to my hotel with me and we started to party. They asked me to help them use the bucket shower so we all jumped into the shower together. It wasn't help with the shower they wanted. We played around in the little shower room throwing water on each other to cool down once in a while. Then we went back to my room. All the hotel staff was kidding me about doing the two girls at once. They were probably all listening to or maybe watching our entire time we played in the shower. They love to gossip and talk about the tourists and each other in Morocco. The men always try to offer half their shop for any girl you are walking around. I figured now they would have to offer me the whole shop.
The three of us traveled around together for a couple of weeks. They liked smoking hash so we all did some of that. I tried to not smoke but some times I just had to join in with them. We had threesomes every chance we got. Sometimes I got a bit of one on one but usually we all played together. Every single place we went they attracted an enormous amount of attention. They knew it and loved it. So did I.
We had a great time in the city of Fez. The market there was huge and very interesting. We were always hungry because we were burning up so many calories all the time. We ate constantly. Traveling we had no trouble getting rides and the girls would not allow themselves to be crowded into a vehicle. It was easy for them to be picky they had so many choices available to them. So we traveled mostly in nice cars with rich people. That gave me a different insight into life in Morocco if you had some money. The rich had a great easy life I must admit. They always offered me half of it for the girls. I must be stupid for not trading them to some of the rich guys for half of their wealth. I coulda been a contender. No. I would never think like that. I don't think the guys ever meant it but they always said it to me.
When the girls vacation time ran out we all traveled to gether up to Spain. They wanted to take some hash back home with them. I told them Spain was a mandatory six years and a day for any possession charge but they insisted to smuggle some into Spain. Their plan was quite simple. It took advantage of their hot looks and the weakness of the Spanish men for Swedish blond girls. They dressed up in very revealing see through cotton clothes that showed lots of tit and ass. Then they stuffed their mouths with balls of hash wrapped in plastic wrap. I did the talking for them. All they had to do was smile and look hot so that the Spanish guys all turned to jelly and let us through. I was kind of nervous but I must have turned to jelly weeks ago around these two. I always did whatever they asked of me. So I guess I was no different than the Spanish men were.
We took the ferry over from Ceuta and went through customs. Their plan worked like a charm. We breezed right through the customs and immigration. I was pretty horny by the time we got through because I had to look at these two all day without getting to touch them. We checked into a hotel and took care of that.
The girls arranged a ride To Sweden with a couple that we met that night. The next morning they took off and I was alone again. I caught up on my rest for a couple of days by hanging out at the beach by myself for a change. I found a ride going around to Italy while I was hanging out on the beach so I headed there.
The ride was with an American couple from New York. We had a good time traveling together. We shared a hotel at night and got a little frisky together but it was pretty tame compared to what I had been up to for the last couple of weeks. I almost declined their offer to play so that I could rest up. We drove North and then East around Barcelona and into Southern France. They had guide books and we stopped at lots of places the guide book talked about. I enjoyed traveling with them.
When we got to Nice we went to a bar one night. I met a crazy Frenchman in the bar. I told him about my experience getting turned back at the Senegal border and he laughed his ass off then told me he was heading down to Dakar in a few days. He offered to let me travel together with him and he would make sure I got into Senegal this time. He had just been released from serving a seven year sentence in prison for selling drugs. He was kind of hardcore but we got along. So I said goodbye to my other friends and took off with him the next morning.
We went through Monaco and Italy then took a ferry to Sicily where we jumped on a ferry to Tunisia. We rode by car across to Morocco and got on a French Passenger ship to take us to Senegal. We had traveled really fast with no tourist activities the whole way. It was hard work. We bought 5th class tickets on the liner because they were dirt cheap. My friend gave me some ear plugs as we boarded the ship. I quickly found out why. We were in a steamy hot stinky room right next to the engines. It was horrible. I felt like I was in a Turkish prison.
I got lucky. As soon as we were underway a steward came through our quarters looking for a bridge player. I told him I would play and he escorted me up to the first class area and I spent the entire trip in First class luxury playing bridge with a bunch of rich old French people. I loved it. The food was over the top gourmet. My fellow bridge players were quizzing me relentlessly about my travels and they loved all by stories about my sex life on the road. I was being very forthright with them and they could not get enough. It kept me out of that hellhole I started in so I loved it. Go ahead, ask me anything but keep me up here in first class.
We finally arrived in Dakar. I was excited as hell. This was my first foray into black Africa, Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I had to go back down to the bowels of the ship to get my things and find my friend and then we got off the ship and through customs without any problems. I was finally on the dock and walking into Africa to fulfill a life long dream of seeing and experiencing the mysterious continent first hand.
They came back to my hotel with me and we started to party. They asked me to help them use the bucket shower so we all jumped into the shower together. It wasn't help with the shower they wanted. We played around in the little shower room throwing water on each other to cool down once in a while. Then we went back to my room. All the hotel staff was kidding me about doing the two girls at once. They were probably all listening to or maybe watching our entire time we played in the shower. They love to gossip and talk about the tourists and each other in Morocco. The men always try to offer half their shop for any girl you are walking around. I figured now they would have to offer me the whole shop.
The three of us traveled around together for a couple of weeks. They liked smoking hash so we all did some of that. I tried to not smoke but some times I just had to join in with them. We had threesomes every chance we got. Sometimes I got a bit of one on one but usually we all played together. Every single place we went they attracted an enormous amount of attention. They knew it and loved it. So did I.
We had a great time in the city of Fez. The market there was huge and very interesting. We were always hungry because we were burning up so many calories all the time. We ate constantly. Traveling we had no trouble getting rides and the girls would not allow themselves to be crowded into a vehicle. It was easy for them to be picky they had so many choices available to them. So we traveled mostly in nice cars with rich people. That gave me a different insight into life in Morocco if you had some money. The rich had a great easy life I must admit. They always offered me half of it for the girls. I must be stupid for not trading them to some of the rich guys for half of their wealth. I coulda been a contender. No. I would never think like that. I don't think the guys ever meant it but they always said it to me.
When the girls vacation time ran out we all traveled to gether up to Spain. They wanted to take some hash back home with them. I told them Spain was a mandatory six years and a day for any possession charge but they insisted to smuggle some into Spain. Their plan was quite simple. It took advantage of their hot looks and the weakness of the Spanish men for Swedish blond girls. They dressed up in very revealing see through cotton clothes that showed lots of tit and ass. Then they stuffed their mouths with balls of hash wrapped in plastic wrap. I did the talking for them. All they had to do was smile and look hot so that the Spanish guys all turned to jelly and let us through. I was kind of nervous but I must have turned to jelly weeks ago around these two. I always did whatever they asked of me. So I guess I was no different than the Spanish men were.
We took the ferry over from Ceuta and went through customs. Their plan worked like a charm. We breezed right through the customs and immigration. I was pretty horny by the time we got through because I had to look at these two all day without getting to touch them. We checked into a hotel and took care of that.
The girls arranged a ride To Sweden with a couple that we met that night. The next morning they took off and I was alone again. I caught up on my rest for a couple of days by hanging out at the beach by myself for a change. I found a ride going around to Italy while I was hanging out on the beach so I headed there.
The ride was with an American couple from New York. We had a good time traveling together. We shared a hotel at night and got a little frisky together but it was pretty tame compared to what I had been up to for the last couple of weeks. I almost declined their offer to play so that I could rest up. We drove North and then East around Barcelona and into Southern France. They had guide books and we stopped at lots of places the guide book talked about. I enjoyed traveling with them.
When we got to Nice we went to a bar one night. I met a crazy Frenchman in the bar. I told him about my experience getting turned back at the Senegal border and he laughed his ass off then told me he was heading down to Dakar in a few days. He offered to let me travel together with him and he would make sure I got into Senegal this time. He had just been released from serving a seven year sentence in prison for selling drugs. He was kind of hardcore but we got along. So I said goodbye to my other friends and took off with him the next morning.
We went through Monaco and Italy then took a ferry to Sicily where we jumped on a ferry to Tunisia. We rode by car across to Morocco and got on a French Passenger ship to take us to Senegal. We had traveled really fast with no tourist activities the whole way. It was hard work. We bought 5th class tickets on the liner because they were dirt cheap. My friend gave me some ear plugs as we boarded the ship. I quickly found out why. We were in a steamy hot stinky room right next to the engines. It was horrible. I felt like I was in a Turkish prison.
I got lucky. As soon as we were underway a steward came through our quarters looking for a bridge player. I told him I would play and he escorted me up to the first class area and I spent the entire trip in First class luxury playing bridge with a bunch of rich old French people. I loved it. The food was over the top gourmet. My fellow bridge players were quizzing me relentlessly about my travels and they loved all by stories about my sex life on the road. I was being very forthright with them and they could not get enough. It kept me out of that hellhole I started in so I loved it. Go ahead, ask me anything but keep me up here in first class.
We finally arrived in Dakar. I was excited as hell. This was my first foray into black Africa, Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I had to go back down to the bowels of the ship to get my things and find my friend and then we got off the ship and through customs without any problems. I was finally on the dock and walking into Africa to fulfill a life long dream of seeing and experiencing the mysterious continent first hand.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
South to Senegal
After my friends headed North to go to Morocco I climbed on a truck and headed South across the Sahara desert. Sometimes the truck was able to drive fairly fast across the sandy or gravely desert terrain. We wound South through sand dunes and rolling foot hills with very little vegetation or anything but rocks and stones. There were some nice views when we hit higher spots and could look out at the multicolored layers of rock when they were there. Otherwise there was not much to look at.
Sometimes when we were going through just sand, especially if there was any grade, we would start to get stuck in the loose sand. Then the helpers jumped off the truck and placed aluminum tracks in front of the wheels and the truck would drive forward the length of the track and the workers would move the track in front again. Sometime we had do do this slow crawl for several miles at a time. We still made steady progress South. Once in a while we drove along the beach or close to the shore but most of the time we drove a few miles inland. The ground was more solid there and that allowed us to drive faster.
We did not have a single mechanical problem with the truck. We were in a caravan of three vehicles. Nobody crosses alone because if you have a problem it can quickly be a deadly problem unless there is somebody to rescue you. We stopped here and there and they made a fire to heat up some mint tea and some food. The food was tasty Moroccan dishes with bread to soak it up. We had a lot of fun. I tried to do the track job but I was way to slow for their tastes and they quickly took back their spots while I rode in the cab.
Every once in a while we would drive past people just standing out in the middle of nowhere. We stopped if they asked us to. They would give us mail or packages to deliver. We delivered some packages and mail also. What's your address? Oh about 140 kilometers south of the big rock and ten kilometers east at the dry wash. How these people survived out here I do not know. It was totally desolate from what I could see. Even my driver was surprised where we ran into some of the people. We just kept going South.
We finally came to a little short road. Up to this point we were just driving across open space. Just down the little road there was a border crossing. Out in the middle of nowhere a guy was sitting in a little open covered hut. He had a little swinging gate across the road. Remember now, for hundreds of miles on either side of him there was nothing to stop someone from just continuing around this crossing. We stopped and he asked us some questions, looked at my passport and waved us through as he lifted the "barrier". We were now in Mauritania. There was no difference between Western Sahara and Mauritania as far as I could see. We just kept heading south.
When it got too dark to drive we stopped and circled the trucks. Then we built a big fire and had dinner. My friends pulled out their pipes and started smoking some hash right after dinner. We talked and horsed around then we all crawled under the trucks and went to sleep for the night. I stared at the amazing stars almost all night while the others slept. I had the fire going when they got up in the morning and we cooked breakfast and hit the sand since there was no road to hit. We were able to drive faster here because there was less loose sand. After driving most of the day we again came to a little border station on a little tiny road with two little barriers this time. There was one for Mauritania and one for Senegal.
I thought it was going to go just like the last crossing but it did not. The Mauritania guy just waved me through after a glance at my passport but the Senegal side looked at my passport, searched through all my things and broke my balls over every little thing. Then they refuse me entrance. I asked my buddies what to to. They suggested a small bribe. So I offered him the amount of money my buddies suggested to me. He refused. I doubled it and he refused and ordered me to leave and go back to Mauritania. My buddies tried to talk him into changing his mind but he was adamant now that I was not coming into the country. He did not say why. He kept saying he did not like my look. I think it was my long hair that he didn't like but he never said it. In the end I had to go back. My truck driver friends told me that I would get a ride going back to Morocco right away and they would be back in the morning in any case. We said good bye and they took off for Dakar.
I was sitting out in the middle of the Sahara desert with almost no water, no food and it was about a hundred degrees in the sun with no shade in sight. I was hitch hiking on a road about 60 feet long with open desert on either side of it. There was nothing in sight. I felt a bit bleak for a second there. I talked to the border guard on the Mauritania side. He was young and friendly. He only spoke French so we could not communicate very well. He also did everything slow like a chameleon. I guess if you have to sit out in the broiling sun all day everyday with nothing to do except stamp papers a couple of times a day you don't want to have a bubbly energetic personality or you would go crazy. He seemed content just sitting there staring out at the desert. I wondered if this guy had to commute to work.
It only took me about an hour to catch another truck going North. The drivers were looking for me because my other buddies told them about me. We took off heading to Marrakesh. Going North these guys were a bit more reckless with their truck and driving. They drove much faster than we did coming South. We hit some bumps that sent me sailing up bouncing off the roof quite a few times. I was afraid they would get a flat tire the way they hit so many holes and rocks. We also did not stop to eat or anything unless one of them had to use the rest room. I mean the desert. I had to learn to hold it in while bouncing up and down in a vibrating truck. These guys had some big strong bladders is all I can say.
I had to get used to doing my private functions out in public. There were no rest rooms anywhere. Every time I had to go it seemed like thirty onlookers appeared out of nowhere. I pissed standing up and all the Arabs pissed squatting down. They told me I piss like a girl. I didn't know what they meant until I saw a woman pissing one day while standing up. Just like I did. At first I thought maybe she was a transsexual but she clearly wasn't. The women just put their hand down there and spread it and let fly. I always carried my own toilet paper with me. They also laughed at me for using toilet paper. They just rinse it off with a little bit of water. They thought I was nuts doing it my way and I thought they were nuts doing it their way so it balanced out nicely. At least when I had to take a dump I usually had a good quick clean bowel movement. I ate fairly healthy food and unlike other travelers I almost never had problems with my bowel movements. Nothing worse than having thirty or more people staring at you as you drop a load while you are having constipation making you grunt and groan to give them something to laugh about. Sometimes I faked it and just put on a show just to make them laugh.
We got to the border with Morocco really quickly. We crossed the border and a road started almost right away. That was a relief I thought. Then I saw how fast this idiot was driving on the road and I wished for the open desert again. He scared the crap out of me. The road was barely wide enough for one truck and when we passed other trucks coming at us he never slowed down at all. I thought sure we were going to catch a wheel on the side of the road surface and be flipped over or spin out or something like that. Some how or other he managed to safely pass everything. We pulled into Marrakesh and I said my goodbyes and checked into a hotel to rest up.
I still knew Marrakesh pretty well from my last visit. I did stay in a different hotel this time and I did not start smoking drugs this time. I had learned my lesson last time when I ran out of money here in Marrakesh. My plan was to head North and go around to Egypt and go South into Africa from there.
Sometimes when we were going through just sand, especially if there was any grade, we would start to get stuck in the loose sand. Then the helpers jumped off the truck and placed aluminum tracks in front of the wheels and the truck would drive forward the length of the track and the workers would move the track in front again. Sometime we had do do this slow crawl for several miles at a time. We still made steady progress South. Once in a while we drove along the beach or close to the shore but most of the time we drove a few miles inland. The ground was more solid there and that allowed us to drive faster.
We did not have a single mechanical problem with the truck. We were in a caravan of three vehicles. Nobody crosses alone because if you have a problem it can quickly be a deadly problem unless there is somebody to rescue you. We stopped here and there and they made a fire to heat up some mint tea and some food. The food was tasty Moroccan dishes with bread to soak it up. We had a lot of fun. I tried to do the track job but I was way to slow for their tastes and they quickly took back their spots while I rode in the cab.
Every once in a while we would drive past people just standing out in the middle of nowhere. We stopped if they asked us to. They would give us mail or packages to deliver. We delivered some packages and mail also. What's your address? Oh about 140 kilometers south of the big rock and ten kilometers east at the dry wash. How these people survived out here I do not know. It was totally desolate from what I could see. Even my driver was surprised where we ran into some of the people. We just kept going South.
We finally came to a little short road. Up to this point we were just driving across open space. Just down the little road there was a border crossing. Out in the middle of nowhere a guy was sitting in a little open covered hut. He had a little swinging gate across the road. Remember now, for hundreds of miles on either side of him there was nothing to stop someone from just continuing around this crossing. We stopped and he asked us some questions, looked at my passport and waved us through as he lifted the "barrier". We were now in Mauritania. There was no difference between Western Sahara and Mauritania as far as I could see. We just kept heading south.
When it got too dark to drive we stopped and circled the trucks. Then we built a big fire and had dinner. My friends pulled out their pipes and started smoking some hash right after dinner. We talked and horsed around then we all crawled under the trucks and went to sleep for the night. I stared at the amazing stars almost all night while the others slept. I had the fire going when they got up in the morning and we cooked breakfast and hit the sand since there was no road to hit. We were able to drive faster here because there was less loose sand. After driving most of the day we again came to a little border station on a little tiny road with two little barriers this time. There was one for Mauritania and one for Senegal.
I thought it was going to go just like the last crossing but it did not. The Mauritania guy just waved me through after a glance at my passport but the Senegal side looked at my passport, searched through all my things and broke my balls over every little thing. Then they refuse me entrance. I asked my buddies what to to. They suggested a small bribe. So I offered him the amount of money my buddies suggested to me. He refused. I doubled it and he refused and ordered me to leave and go back to Mauritania. My buddies tried to talk him into changing his mind but he was adamant now that I was not coming into the country. He did not say why. He kept saying he did not like my look. I think it was my long hair that he didn't like but he never said it. In the end I had to go back. My truck driver friends told me that I would get a ride going back to Morocco right away and they would be back in the morning in any case. We said good bye and they took off for Dakar.
I was sitting out in the middle of the Sahara desert with almost no water, no food and it was about a hundred degrees in the sun with no shade in sight. I was hitch hiking on a road about 60 feet long with open desert on either side of it. There was nothing in sight. I felt a bit bleak for a second there. I talked to the border guard on the Mauritania side. He was young and friendly. He only spoke French so we could not communicate very well. He also did everything slow like a chameleon. I guess if you have to sit out in the broiling sun all day everyday with nothing to do except stamp papers a couple of times a day you don't want to have a bubbly energetic personality or you would go crazy. He seemed content just sitting there staring out at the desert. I wondered if this guy had to commute to work.
It only took me about an hour to catch another truck going North. The drivers were looking for me because my other buddies told them about me. We took off heading to Marrakesh. Going North these guys were a bit more reckless with their truck and driving. They drove much faster than we did coming South. We hit some bumps that sent me sailing up bouncing off the roof quite a few times. I was afraid they would get a flat tire the way they hit so many holes and rocks. We also did not stop to eat or anything unless one of them had to use the rest room. I mean the desert. I had to learn to hold it in while bouncing up and down in a vibrating truck. These guys had some big strong bladders is all I can say.
I had to get used to doing my private functions out in public. There were no rest rooms anywhere. Every time I had to go it seemed like thirty onlookers appeared out of nowhere. I pissed standing up and all the Arabs pissed squatting down. They told me I piss like a girl. I didn't know what they meant until I saw a woman pissing one day while standing up. Just like I did. At first I thought maybe she was a transsexual but she clearly wasn't. The women just put their hand down there and spread it and let fly. I always carried my own toilet paper with me. They also laughed at me for using toilet paper. They just rinse it off with a little bit of water. They thought I was nuts doing it my way and I thought they were nuts doing it their way so it balanced out nicely. At least when I had to take a dump I usually had a good quick clean bowel movement. I ate fairly healthy food and unlike other travelers I almost never had problems with my bowel movements. Nothing worse than having thirty or more people staring at you as you drop a load while you are having constipation making you grunt and groan to give them something to laugh about. Sometimes I faked it and just put on a show just to make them laugh.
We got to the border with Morocco really quickly. We crossed the border and a road started almost right away. That was a relief I thought. Then I saw how fast this idiot was driving on the road and I wished for the open desert again. He scared the crap out of me. The road was barely wide enough for one truck and when we passed other trucks coming at us he never slowed down at all. I thought sure we were going to catch a wheel on the side of the road surface and be flipped over or spin out or something like that. Some how or other he managed to safely pass everything. We pulled into Marrakesh and I said my goodbyes and checked into a hotel to rest up.
I still knew Marrakesh pretty well from my last visit. I did stay in a different hotel this time and I did not start smoking drugs this time. I had learned my lesson last time when I ran out of money here in Marrakesh. My plan was to head North and go around to Egypt and go South into Africa from there.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Caught in a hurricane
We heard that our ferry was going to be kind of rough going over to Spanish Sahara from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. I had already forgotten about how bad of an idea it is to get drunk and then go out on the ocean. I should have learned my lesson on the English Channel. I must be a slow learner. We figured that the ferry ride would be six to eight hours and that we could stay drunk enough that we would make it to shore before we had a hangover so we hit the bars and pounded down the cheap Spanish rum and wine and beer for a few hours before we left. We all got really sloppy drunk. Then we boarded the wooden ship that looked like it was left over from one of the voyages of Christopher Columbus.
We were still in party mode as we pulled out of the harbor just after sundown. We watched the lights of Las Palmas recede and we headed out to the open ocean. It was already blowing pretty hard. The waves were building as we headed south west to the coast of Africa. Within a couple of hours we were in thirty foot seas and building. The old wooden boat was creaking like it was four hundred years old and had arthritis or something like that. We were getting thrown and tossed all over the boat. We all started getting very seasick. Even the crew was hanging over the rails puking. Then it got even windier and the crew decided that it was too dangerous for us to be on deck so they locked us in the main cabin. There was only a single marine head in the room and there were thirty sick puking drunks getting seasick all over the floors and everywhere. The putrid odors of all the puke and seawater swirling around on the floors just made us all that much sicker and it was a vicious circle getting worse by the minute. Our only salvation was that we would land in a couple of hours.
Then the first bad news hit. We could not land because the waves were too big at around forty plus feet for the small wooden craft to unload us when we got to the other side. We anchored offshore and waited out the hurricane. The anchor could not hold us in position and the crew had to work round the clock trying to keep us from rolling over and getting crushed by one of the mountains of water around us.
The first day we were sick and hungover. None of us could eat or drink much of anything without it coming right back up. We were bruised, battered and most of us were bleeding from the thrashing we were taking from the huge waves tossing the little boat around. When we looked out the portholes all we saw were mountains of water towering over the top of the boat. We were scared shitless by now. We thought for sure we were going to go down in the storm. A lot of us wanted to go down in the storm to end our misery. I can not possibly describe how bad it got. Then on the second day out there getting pounded the crew told us they were out of food and water so we had nothing to eat or drink and no idea how long it might be before we could land. The storm did not seem to be letting up at all.
On the third morning with us locked in the cabin with no food or water we got together and decided to complain to the captain of the ship and demand that we get some water at the least. The captain came into the room and everybody started yelling at him. We had to yell to be heard over the howling wind and creaking boat noises but we also wanted to yell at him and demanded some relief or at least some water to drink. The captain started to get nervous with us rebelling and all of a sudden he arrested me and had a couple of crew members handcuff me and took me to his quarters. There he told me I was under arrest for mutiny on the high seas which is a capital case and he tried to scare me into backing down.
I got angry at that point. If I wasn't cuffed to the chair I would have attacked him for sure. I told him that I was happy to be arrested because my father was an international maritime attorney and the boat was in violation of our human rights. The captain didn't like hearing that. The fact that it was pure bullshit went right past him. At that point we started to negotiate a solution to the problem. The wind was slowly just starting to ease down a bit but the waves were still way too large for us to land and we did not have enough fuel to go back to the Canary Islands with such a strong headwind. The Captain and crew were in just as much trouble as us passengers were. This was a real life and death situation and we shouldn't be sitting here bantering about trivialities like mutiny and international human rights. I just wanted to survive this experience. I asked him if he had sent out a mayday and he told us he had not. I suggested that he do it immediately before this wooden box turned into our shared coffin. He calmed down and agreed to release me and send out a distress signal. He also agreed to give us some limited water but the food really was gone. I was led back to the cabin and we all talked about our dire situation as we decided how to ration our water.
To our surprise the captain came into the cabin a short time later and told us that the Spanish navy had responded to the distress signal but that it would take them over 24 hours to get to us. We rejoiced to finally hear some good news. Some of us were sick now from dehydration. We all had severe headaches from too much alcohol combined with not enough water and no food at all. A few could no longer stand up and we were all still vomiting up what little was in our bellies. The smell was so bad and the slushy slurry of human wastes and vomit was still swirling around our feet splash all over us. We banded together and tried to help each other out as much as we could. We kind of split up into those needing comfort and those offering comfort. We also tried to clean up some of the mess and tried to organize a way to prevent more mess in the future.
The next afternoon we were released from the cabin for the first fresh air in three days. The wind was still strong and the waves were down to around 25 feet now. A fleet of ships was approaching us and we cheered them on. Two Amphibious ducks approached our boat to rescue us while the larger navy ships stayed back. The crew threw a cargo net over the side of the ship and we had to crawl over the rail and hang off the cargo net while we timed a jump to land in the ducks. If you timed it wrong the fall was going to break legs and things like that. We each took turns throwing our possessions into the ducks and then climbing over and jumping onto the hard steel floor of the ducks. We all made it without any broken bones. We just got even more bruises on our already deeply bruised bodies. We had a few bloody lips and noses but we were lucky nothing worse happened. The navy passed some provisions over to the crew so that they could survive as they waited out the storm. Then we headed toward the sandy shore of Africa.
The ducks surfed us into the beach with waves crashing over the back of the boats soaking us but also washing off some of the stink from our cramped boat experience. I though of the landings at Normandy and D day as we came into the beach. The ducks rolled right up to the beach and as the big waves pushed us the tracks caught a hold and we drove up on the beach. The front of the duck opened up and we all got out and kissed the sandy beach and profusely thanked the Spanish Navy for rescuing us. Then we were all taken to jail.
We were put into a holding cell and given water and then later some food. The Military had to process us one by one by checking our passports and all that good stuff. It took them all day to process our small group of about 25 people. We did not mind. Most of us took naps while we waited our turns.
When we were all finished with the officials we needed to find a way to get up to Morocco or in my case down to Senegal but first we needed to eat and sleep. Some Moroccans killed a camel and made us some camel stew for dinner. They taught us how to eat in the desert by chewing without bringing your teeth all the way together. If you just crunched down to chew the sand in the food would quickly bust your teeth up and that would be it for your teeth. We were famished and ate the tasty meal with gusto. I am not sure I chewed at all, I think I just inhaled it. Then to our surprise they pulled out pipes and we smoked some hash and Kif.
I had a surfboard with me and I was tired of lugging it around so after eating I broke off the skaggs and surfed down the dunes until the bottom of the board was totally shredded. We had a blast playing around. We were a bit over exuberant with our celebrations because we were just happy to be alive again.
The Moroccans built a big bonfire as the sun was going down and we all gathered around it and smoked and drank. Yes we were drinking alcohol again already. Humans have such short memories don't we. We slept under the stars and one of our group gave us a tour of where all the constellations were. Out in the dry air of the desert the stars are so numerous and bright we had no problems seeing. It was a great night. We cuddled up for warmth as it gets cold at night out in the desert because there is no moisture in the air to hold the heat in.
In the morning our Moroccans had more food ready for us and coffee too. We were sitting around eating and waking when somebody pointed up toward the sky and said what the hell is that. We all looked up and there was a huge cloud coming in our direction. It was flashing pink and then black, pink, black...What the hell. We were pretty stoned since we were wake and baking with the Moroccans again. It finally came close enough for us to identify it. It was a huge flock of flamingos migrating. They were flapping their wings in unison and it made the flock blink pink and black. We tripped on it as it passed over us and they did a circle over our heads checking us out as close as we were checking them out.
The Moroccans were truck drivers and they offered our group a ride up to Marrakesh and the group took them up on it. I found a truck heading South in the direction of Senegal and I took that choice. We all said good bye and left in separate directions.
We were still in party mode as we pulled out of the harbor just after sundown. We watched the lights of Las Palmas recede and we headed out to the open ocean. It was already blowing pretty hard. The waves were building as we headed south west to the coast of Africa. Within a couple of hours we were in thirty foot seas and building. The old wooden boat was creaking like it was four hundred years old and had arthritis or something like that. We were getting thrown and tossed all over the boat. We all started getting very seasick. Even the crew was hanging over the rails puking. Then it got even windier and the crew decided that it was too dangerous for us to be on deck so they locked us in the main cabin. There was only a single marine head in the room and there were thirty sick puking drunks getting seasick all over the floors and everywhere. The putrid odors of all the puke and seawater swirling around on the floors just made us all that much sicker and it was a vicious circle getting worse by the minute. Our only salvation was that we would land in a couple of hours.
Then the first bad news hit. We could not land because the waves were too big at around forty plus feet for the small wooden craft to unload us when we got to the other side. We anchored offshore and waited out the hurricane. The anchor could not hold us in position and the crew had to work round the clock trying to keep us from rolling over and getting crushed by one of the mountains of water around us.
The first day we were sick and hungover. None of us could eat or drink much of anything without it coming right back up. We were bruised, battered and most of us were bleeding from the thrashing we were taking from the huge waves tossing the little boat around. When we looked out the portholes all we saw were mountains of water towering over the top of the boat. We were scared shitless by now. We thought for sure we were going to go down in the storm. A lot of us wanted to go down in the storm to end our misery. I can not possibly describe how bad it got. Then on the second day out there getting pounded the crew told us they were out of food and water so we had nothing to eat or drink and no idea how long it might be before we could land. The storm did not seem to be letting up at all.
On the third morning with us locked in the cabin with no food or water we got together and decided to complain to the captain of the ship and demand that we get some water at the least. The captain came into the room and everybody started yelling at him. We had to yell to be heard over the howling wind and creaking boat noises but we also wanted to yell at him and demanded some relief or at least some water to drink. The captain started to get nervous with us rebelling and all of a sudden he arrested me and had a couple of crew members handcuff me and took me to his quarters. There he told me I was under arrest for mutiny on the high seas which is a capital case and he tried to scare me into backing down.
I got angry at that point. If I wasn't cuffed to the chair I would have attacked him for sure. I told him that I was happy to be arrested because my father was an international maritime attorney and the boat was in violation of our human rights. The captain didn't like hearing that. The fact that it was pure bullshit went right past him. At that point we started to negotiate a solution to the problem. The wind was slowly just starting to ease down a bit but the waves were still way too large for us to land and we did not have enough fuel to go back to the Canary Islands with such a strong headwind. The Captain and crew were in just as much trouble as us passengers were. This was a real life and death situation and we shouldn't be sitting here bantering about trivialities like mutiny and international human rights. I just wanted to survive this experience. I asked him if he had sent out a mayday and he told us he had not. I suggested that he do it immediately before this wooden box turned into our shared coffin. He calmed down and agreed to release me and send out a distress signal. He also agreed to give us some limited water but the food really was gone. I was led back to the cabin and we all talked about our dire situation as we decided how to ration our water.
To our surprise the captain came into the cabin a short time later and told us that the Spanish navy had responded to the distress signal but that it would take them over 24 hours to get to us. We rejoiced to finally hear some good news. Some of us were sick now from dehydration. We all had severe headaches from too much alcohol combined with not enough water and no food at all. A few could no longer stand up and we were all still vomiting up what little was in our bellies. The smell was so bad and the slushy slurry of human wastes and vomit was still swirling around our feet splash all over us. We banded together and tried to help each other out as much as we could. We kind of split up into those needing comfort and those offering comfort. We also tried to clean up some of the mess and tried to organize a way to prevent more mess in the future.
The next afternoon we were released from the cabin for the first fresh air in three days. The wind was still strong and the waves were down to around 25 feet now. A fleet of ships was approaching us and we cheered them on. Two Amphibious ducks approached our boat to rescue us while the larger navy ships stayed back. The crew threw a cargo net over the side of the ship and we had to crawl over the rail and hang off the cargo net while we timed a jump to land in the ducks. If you timed it wrong the fall was going to break legs and things like that. We each took turns throwing our possessions into the ducks and then climbing over and jumping onto the hard steel floor of the ducks. We all made it without any broken bones. We just got even more bruises on our already deeply bruised bodies. We had a few bloody lips and noses but we were lucky nothing worse happened. The navy passed some provisions over to the crew so that they could survive as they waited out the storm. Then we headed toward the sandy shore of Africa.
The ducks surfed us into the beach with waves crashing over the back of the boats soaking us but also washing off some of the stink from our cramped boat experience. I though of the landings at Normandy and D day as we came into the beach. The ducks rolled right up to the beach and as the big waves pushed us the tracks caught a hold and we drove up on the beach. The front of the duck opened up and we all got out and kissed the sandy beach and profusely thanked the Spanish Navy for rescuing us. Then we were all taken to jail.
We were put into a holding cell and given water and then later some food. The Military had to process us one by one by checking our passports and all that good stuff. It took them all day to process our small group of about 25 people. We did not mind. Most of us took naps while we waited our turns.
When we were all finished with the officials we needed to find a way to get up to Morocco or in my case down to Senegal but first we needed to eat and sleep. Some Moroccans killed a camel and made us some camel stew for dinner. They taught us how to eat in the desert by chewing without bringing your teeth all the way together. If you just crunched down to chew the sand in the food would quickly bust your teeth up and that would be it for your teeth. We were famished and ate the tasty meal with gusto. I am not sure I chewed at all, I think I just inhaled it. Then to our surprise they pulled out pipes and we smoked some hash and Kif.
I had a surfboard with me and I was tired of lugging it around so after eating I broke off the skaggs and surfed down the dunes until the bottom of the board was totally shredded. We had a blast playing around. We were a bit over exuberant with our celebrations because we were just happy to be alive again.
The Moroccans built a big bonfire as the sun was going down and we all gathered around it and smoked and drank. Yes we were drinking alcohol again already. Humans have such short memories don't we. We slept under the stars and one of our group gave us a tour of where all the constellations were. Out in the dry air of the desert the stars are so numerous and bright we had no problems seeing. It was a great night. We cuddled up for warmth as it gets cold at night out in the desert because there is no moisture in the air to hold the heat in.
In the morning our Moroccans had more food ready for us and coffee too. We were sitting around eating and waking when somebody pointed up toward the sky and said what the hell is that. We all looked up and there was a huge cloud coming in our direction. It was flashing pink and then black, pink, black...What the hell. We were pretty stoned since we were wake and baking with the Moroccans again. It finally came close enough for us to identify it. It was a huge flock of flamingos migrating. They were flapping their wings in unison and it made the flock blink pink and black. We tripped on it as it passed over us and they did a circle over our heads checking us out as close as we were checking them out.
The Moroccans were truck drivers and they offered our group a ride up to Marrakesh and the group took them up on it. I found a truck heading South in the direction of Senegal and I took that choice. We all said good bye and left in separate directions.
Recharging for another assault, Canary Islands
I got back to the states and resolved to just save as much money as I could as quickly as I could and then get back out on the road. I went back to work on the farm because I could work long hours seven days a week to really amass some bank. The work was fun for me. I always liked doing farm work. I drove the tractor and then when the tomatoes were being picked I drove the forklift and loaded them into the cooler and into the semi trailers. I also built a new building for the workers to live in so that they did not have to live outside in the weather. I did not do much else. I had lost interest in things like watching tv and going out to the bars to party and get drunk. I have never really been a big drinker or a stoner either. I do drink and sometimes did a bit of pot or a rare hit of other things but basically I liked to be in control of my facilities.
It took me about four months to amass enough cash to feel like I could return to Europe again. I wanted to go down into Africa also this time. I had saved over fifteen grand in this short time by just working hard and saving my money while living frugally. I did have some fun but I didn't make it a daily goal. I wanted to have my fun overseas again. I found I preferred the attitudes of Europeans toward sex and life over the typical prudish puritanical American attitude of the day. I found some fun in the states here and there. I went to the Love-ins at Golden Gate park in San Francisco and got wild getting naked in public and having anonymous group sex in the park. Then there was the orgy in Cambridge that I enjoyed so much. Americans weren't totally prudes but these events were the exception not the rule. Europeans were just more natural and relaxed and I like that attitude better.
I flew back to Europe and headed south right away. I went straight back to Ibiza to see a Spanish girlfriend I had made there. I found out that going back to places where you really enjoyed yourself can be very disappointing. She was now married and pregnant and did not want to see me anymore. The house where I had lived the last time was also shut down and the guys I lived with were in jail for dealing acid I heard. That did not surprise me. So I quickly left and headed to the Canary Islands which were Spanish islands off the coast of Morocco.
I loved the Canary Islands. I lived in a small town on the north coast called Sardinia. It was just a few houses and one hotel that catered to tourists. I met some other travelers on the small beach there and we partied hardy. They ended up asking me to work at the hotel in exchange for a free room and board. I jumped at the chance. We were just a bunch of crazy hippies. We had to make lunch for a tour bus that stopped at the hotel for lunch almost everyday. My job was to make Paella Valencia. I loved that job. The resident chef taught me how to make huge pans of it and it turned out perfect every time. It was quick and easy to make and so delicious...uuuummmmmm my favorite food. We were also supposed to be rebuilding the beach for the hotel. A big winter storm had dropped lots of rocks and some pretty good sized boulders on the sandy beach and the hotel wanted us to remove them so that the tourists would have just a nice sandy beach. We "worked" on it every day. The dozen or so of us in the group moved about a dozen stones a day in the three or four hours we spent at the beach every day. The rest of the time we were just enjoying ourselves.
There was a deep cave on the island that we visited one day. It was billed as the deepest place on earth. We decided it would be a perfect place to take some acid and spend the day hiking down to the very bottom and back up again. We took our hits and started the tour. Our guide was a cute young Spanish woman that looked like she wanted to join our party. She maintained her professionalism however and explained to us how the cave formed and how deep it was and so on. The cave was a volcanic tube coming up from the cauldron below the island. It had been hundreds or thousands of years since any lave flowed up through it. It was a long way down. In our condition it was not easy. Some of the parts were almost vertical ladders that we had to climb down. We somehow managed to make it all the way to the bottom. We were really tripping by now. Our guide stopped us at a low rock wall and told us to stay back from the edge because if we fell in it was hundreds of feet to the bottom and they have no way to recover the body it you fell. We listened and respected the danger. She gave a stone to one of our girls and told all to count one thousand one one thousand two and so forth until we heard the rock hit the bottom then we could calculate the depth of the cave. Our guide edged us up to the wall and had us all looking over the edge down into the deep hole. It looked really amazing and we could not see the bottom it just faded to black way down deep. Well our friend wound up and threw the rock over the edge and right before our eyes the entire hole just disappeared from sight. We were tripping and it shocked us. we were also splashed by water when the rock was thrown down the abyss. It turned out to not be a hole at all but a reflection of the ceiling going up in a still pool of water. Not one of us was coherent enough to have noticed that small fact. We spent a really long time dropping more pebbles into the reflecting pool and tripping on the image disappearing and then slowly reappearing as the water calmed back down. Our guide was laughing her ass off at us play like little kids. She finally had to drag us away because it was still a long hike back up to the top of the cave and by now she realized that we were pretty messed up.
We went to a bar after the fun in the cave. We were almost down off of our acid trip when we entered the bar. We sat down with all the locals and ordered drinks all around. As we sat there relaxing one of the older Spaniards sitting on a bar stool by the door at the end of the bar just keeled over all of a sudden and landed on the floor of the bar stone cold dead. We shouldn't have had blondie sit so close to him I guess. All the patrons in the bar immediately got up and started running for the door. They all had to step over the guy to get out. We hesitated. We wanted to see if maybe he was still alive and we could help him but the owner of the bar ordered us to get out as quickly as we could and to run away from the bar so that we didn't get arrested as witnesses to the event. Reluctantly we stepped over his still body and fled the scene. His death ended any buzz we had going and we retired back to the hotel and went to the beach. It had been a weird day so far.
Every afternoon at sunset we went to a bar where shoots of booze were free from the second the sun touched the horizon until it disappeared under the horizon. The bartender would start lining up the shot glasses full of rum just before the sunset started and we would start shooting them down one after another until the time was up. It took two minutes and forty-two seconds for the sun to set. You can drink an awful lot of shots in that much time and we did. Then we would kick back and drink some cold beers while we waited for the shots to kick in. One day we were out on the balcony drinking our beers after a nice sunset and one of our buddies tipped his beer up to drink and he rolled right off the balcony wall he was sitting on. He fell from the second story down to the ground and landed right between two cactus plants that were surrounding the building. We raced down the stairs as well as we could in our already inebriated condition to help him. He was just sitting there on the dirt with a stupid look on his face. He was uninjured and in fact he did not even remember falling over the side. He was toasted.
I hooked up with a Lebanese girl. When I first saw her it was lust at first sight. She was really very straight laced compared to the usual sexually liberated girls I had been hanging out with recently but she just flat out drove me crazy and I don't know why she did. She had beautiful olive colored skin that was super smooth and lush. Her dark brown eyes and long flowing pitch black hair with a firm fit body and a quick warm smile coupled well with her soft friendly demeanor. It took me a couple of weeks to convince her that she should even notice me but we slowly grew closer and closer. We did not have a lot of sex together. When we did, it was long slow sessions with lots of hugging and kissing not the athletic wild hardcore interactions I was used to having. She would never spend the entire night with me either. She always had to go back to her room before it got light. Sometimes after she went back to her room I went out on the town again with some of my other friends. The entire group of us working and staying at the hotel were playing around with each other. Sometimes we would just couple up and other times we would have group gropes after drinking some of the locally made rum or a few bottles of the local wine.
The "leaders" of the group were a couple from Vancouver. He was a tall husky red haired viking kind of guy with a full red beard and very strong. He looked totally insane. If we had found out later that he was a serial killer or something nobody would have been surprised. His girlfriend was a short blond haired incredibly fit and strong girl with bright blue eyes and a deep dark tan who was just stunning to look at. She absolutely drove all the Spanish men totally crazy. Her powers worked on me too. She loved to use and abuse her powers over the Spanish men. The Spaniards were famous for trying to fondle and grab ass or tits of the tourist girls and pity the poor Spaniard that thought that he could cop a quick feel of her finely chiseled body. It they so much as touched her she dropped them to the ground with a quick kick or knee or punch. I saw her knock out more people than anybody else in my entire life. In fact she knocked out more people than all the other knockouts I have seen other people do combined. She got quite the reputation.
One day we were feeling bored and we decided to try to steal a bunch of bananas from a banana farm. The reason we wanted to steal them was not because we couldn't afford to buy them but because the farm had high walls around it with broken glass shards on the wall and armed guard towers along the wall to protect their bananas. We just wanted to steal the bananas for the challenge. We spent days planning our caper. All of our ideas seemed to involve our fearless blond Canadian girl being either a distraction or a weapon to knock out the guards while we stole the bunch of bananas. In the end we chose to do the distraction method. She put on a very revealing little bikini with a loose see through cotton shirt over it. We made sure you could see the tiny red bikini through the shirt. She looked smoking hot. I wanted to hit her right there myself but I waited until after the caper was over. She walked down the road next to the wall and at a tree that we had carefully picked out and she stopped to pee. The guard could not help himself he had to stare at her. She pretended not to notice him up in his tower. She took her time and carefully removed the see through shirt and hung it on a branch. Then she slowly undid the bright red bikini bottom and hung that on the branch before she squatted down to pee making sure she pointed her dynamite ass right at the guard. He was probably coming in his pants already. The rest of us meanwhile threw a ladder up against the wall and got ready to go over. The real key to our success came next. One of our guys was a total short fat dork that we chose for his part because he resembled the guard. We had him walk along the path and accidentally catch our girl naked. Then the two of them started to fondle each other. He made a point out of putting his face right between her perfect pendulous breasts and rubbing them all over his face. She reached for his pants and stroked him. The guard had his eyes glued on the action and his hand in his own pants. We went over the wall in plain sight of his station. He could only see one thing at the time. We cut down the first bunch of bananas we came to and struggled to lift it over the wall and down the other side. A bunch of bananas weighs more that you might think. The guard could have just glanced over and caught us red handed but there was no chance in hell that he was going to take his eyes off of our girl and maybe miss any of the action. We bet our lives on it. As soon as we had our prize the strip show ended and we went back to celebrate our victory. We paraded the bunch of bananas all over town and everybody knew we had stolen them. There was nothing they could do about it. Even if they had tried to accuse us, that afternoon we had our blond distract the lone police officer with a bit of warm attention and a bottle of rum so that there was no way he could ever do anything to her or to us.
Blondie had more tricks up her sleeves. She was stronger than most males were and we used that to get free drinks from the Spanish men in the bars. We had a few different methods to extract the free drinks. One method involved arm wrestling. She would arm wrestle her gigantic boyfriend and they would make a big show of it being a close match. Then she would win. At that point we could make bets with the Spanish men against either her or her boyfriend. A lot of the men chose to arm wrestle him after she beat him to show that they were stronger that the giant Canadian bear was. He would kick their asses one after another. Then the other group would want to arm wrestle her. That was a risky proposition for the macho men. If she beat them they would never live it down but she looked so easy to beat that they just could not resist the urge to wrestle her. I think they were also blinded because they wanted to wrestle with her naked in bed and that is what they were thinking about during the matches which they inevitably lost. Either way we got free drinks. She also did leg wrestling, thumb wrestling and she could bend a six inch spike in half with just one hand. We never even found a single man that could bend one of the spikes even using both hands. She was very strong. We were not taking advantage of these guys. It was all in fun. We always turned around and bought them drinks in return.
While living at the hotel some of the group got hooked on speed. In Spain at the time they sold speed in pharmacies right over the counter. A couple of the English guys loved them and bought bottles by the gross. They had cereal bowls full of speed tablets all over their hotel room and some of us ate them like candy at Grandma's house. All the speed tended to make some of our nightly parties a bit out of control and lasting more like three days than a few hours. I took some once in a while but some of the others were gobbling way too many of them and were just never getting any sleep at all.
The speed ended up being the downfall of our idyllic scene. After a great two day party where we had a live jam session with some amazing guitar players and singers with lots of dancing and general good fun one of the English guys was found dead in his room from an overdose of speed and dehydration. The entire scene collapsed in on itself the next morning. Most of the group left on the first bus out of town the next morning. Nobody wanted to be arrested and charged with being involved in his death. I stayed behind with my girlfriend and made the Paella for about a week longer until the hotel could make arrangements for someone else to take over the job. I trained the new workers. The day after my Lebanese girlfriend left I left too. I really missed her. I took a ferry to the coast of Africa with a group of about twenty of us.
My plan was to get to the coast and head south down to Senegal and Gambia. The rest of the group was going to go up to Morocco. We almost did not survive the ferry boat ride. We got really drunk the night before we left. Then the shit hit the fan pushed by a hurricane force winds.
It took me about four months to amass enough cash to feel like I could return to Europe again. I wanted to go down into Africa also this time. I had saved over fifteen grand in this short time by just working hard and saving my money while living frugally. I did have some fun but I didn't make it a daily goal. I wanted to have my fun overseas again. I found I preferred the attitudes of Europeans toward sex and life over the typical prudish puritanical American attitude of the day. I found some fun in the states here and there. I went to the Love-ins at Golden Gate park in San Francisco and got wild getting naked in public and having anonymous group sex in the park. Then there was the orgy in Cambridge that I enjoyed so much. Americans weren't totally prudes but these events were the exception not the rule. Europeans were just more natural and relaxed and I like that attitude better.
I flew back to Europe and headed south right away. I went straight back to Ibiza to see a Spanish girlfriend I had made there. I found out that going back to places where you really enjoyed yourself can be very disappointing. She was now married and pregnant and did not want to see me anymore. The house where I had lived the last time was also shut down and the guys I lived with were in jail for dealing acid I heard. That did not surprise me. So I quickly left and headed to the Canary Islands which were Spanish islands off the coast of Morocco.
I loved the Canary Islands. I lived in a small town on the north coast called Sardinia. It was just a few houses and one hotel that catered to tourists. I met some other travelers on the small beach there and we partied hardy. They ended up asking me to work at the hotel in exchange for a free room and board. I jumped at the chance. We were just a bunch of crazy hippies. We had to make lunch for a tour bus that stopped at the hotel for lunch almost everyday. My job was to make Paella Valencia. I loved that job. The resident chef taught me how to make huge pans of it and it turned out perfect every time. It was quick and easy to make and so delicious...uuuummmmmm my favorite food. We were also supposed to be rebuilding the beach for the hotel. A big winter storm had dropped lots of rocks and some pretty good sized boulders on the sandy beach and the hotel wanted us to remove them so that the tourists would have just a nice sandy beach. We "worked" on it every day. The dozen or so of us in the group moved about a dozen stones a day in the three or four hours we spent at the beach every day. The rest of the time we were just enjoying ourselves.
There was a deep cave on the island that we visited one day. It was billed as the deepest place on earth. We decided it would be a perfect place to take some acid and spend the day hiking down to the very bottom and back up again. We took our hits and started the tour. Our guide was a cute young Spanish woman that looked like she wanted to join our party. She maintained her professionalism however and explained to us how the cave formed and how deep it was and so on. The cave was a volcanic tube coming up from the cauldron below the island. It had been hundreds or thousands of years since any lave flowed up through it. It was a long way down. In our condition it was not easy. Some of the parts were almost vertical ladders that we had to climb down. We somehow managed to make it all the way to the bottom. We were really tripping by now. Our guide stopped us at a low rock wall and told us to stay back from the edge because if we fell in it was hundreds of feet to the bottom and they have no way to recover the body it you fell. We listened and respected the danger. She gave a stone to one of our girls and told all to count one thousand one one thousand two and so forth until we heard the rock hit the bottom then we could calculate the depth of the cave. Our guide edged us up to the wall and had us all looking over the edge down into the deep hole. It looked really amazing and we could not see the bottom it just faded to black way down deep. Well our friend wound up and threw the rock over the edge and right before our eyes the entire hole just disappeared from sight. We were tripping and it shocked us. we were also splashed by water when the rock was thrown down the abyss. It turned out to not be a hole at all but a reflection of the ceiling going up in a still pool of water. Not one of us was coherent enough to have noticed that small fact. We spent a really long time dropping more pebbles into the reflecting pool and tripping on the image disappearing and then slowly reappearing as the water calmed back down. Our guide was laughing her ass off at us play like little kids. She finally had to drag us away because it was still a long hike back up to the top of the cave and by now she realized that we were pretty messed up.
We went to a bar after the fun in the cave. We were almost down off of our acid trip when we entered the bar. We sat down with all the locals and ordered drinks all around. As we sat there relaxing one of the older Spaniards sitting on a bar stool by the door at the end of the bar just keeled over all of a sudden and landed on the floor of the bar stone cold dead. We shouldn't have had blondie sit so close to him I guess. All the patrons in the bar immediately got up and started running for the door. They all had to step over the guy to get out. We hesitated. We wanted to see if maybe he was still alive and we could help him but the owner of the bar ordered us to get out as quickly as we could and to run away from the bar so that we didn't get arrested as witnesses to the event. Reluctantly we stepped over his still body and fled the scene. His death ended any buzz we had going and we retired back to the hotel and went to the beach. It had been a weird day so far.
Every afternoon at sunset we went to a bar where shoots of booze were free from the second the sun touched the horizon until it disappeared under the horizon. The bartender would start lining up the shot glasses full of rum just before the sunset started and we would start shooting them down one after another until the time was up. It took two minutes and forty-two seconds for the sun to set. You can drink an awful lot of shots in that much time and we did. Then we would kick back and drink some cold beers while we waited for the shots to kick in. One day we were out on the balcony drinking our beers after a nice sunset and one of our buddies tipped his beer up to drink and he rolled right off the balcony wall he was sitting on. He fell from the second story down to the ground and landed right between two cactus plants that were surrounding the building. We raced down the stairs as well as we could in our already inebriated condition to help him. He was just sitting there on the dirt with a stupid look on his face. He was uninjured and in fact he did not even remember falling over the side. He was toasted.
I hooked up with a Lebanese girl. When I first saw her it was lust at first sight. She was really very straight laced compared to the usual sexually liberated girls I had been hanging out with recently but she just flat out drove me crazy and I don't know why she did. She had beautiful olive colored skin that was super smooth and lush. Her dark brown eyes and long flowing pitch black hair with a firm fit body and a quick warm smile coupled well with her soft friendly demeanor. It took me a couple of weeks to convince her that she should even notice me but we slowly grew closer and closer. We did not have a lot of sex together. When we did, it was long slow sessions with lots of hugging and kissing not the athletic wild hardcore interactions I was used to having. She would never spend the entire night with me either. She always had to go back to her room before it got light. Sometimes after she went back to her room I went out on the town again with some of my other friends. The entire group of us working and staying at the hotel were playing around with each other. Sometimes we would just couple up and other times we would have group gropes after drinking some of the locally made rum or a few bottles of the local wine.
The "leaders" of the group were a couple from Vancouver. He was a tall husky red haired viking kind of guy with a full red beard and very strong. He looked totally insane. If we had found out later that he was a serial killer or something nobody would have been surprised. His girlfriend was a short blond haired incredibly fit and strong girl with bright blue eyes and a deep dark tan who was just stunning to look at. She absolutely drove all the Spanish men totally crazy. Her powers worked on me too. She loved to use and abuse her powers over the Spanish men. The Spaniards were famous for trying to fondle and grab ass or tits of the tourist girls and pity the poor Spaniard that thought that he could cop a quick feel of her finely chiseled body. It they so much as touched her she dropped them to the ground with a quick kick or knee or punch. I saw her knock out more people than anybody else in my entire life. In fact she knocked out more people than all the other knockouts I have seen other people do combined. She got quite the reputation.
One day we were feeling bored and we decided to try to steal a bunch of bananas from a banana farm. The reason we wanted to steal them was not because we couldn't afford to buy them but because the farm had high walls around it with broken glass shards on the wall and armed guard towers along the wall to protect their bananas. We just wanted to steal the bananas for the challenge. We spent days planning our caper. All of our ideas seemed to involve our fearless blond Canadian girl being either a distraction or a weapon to knock out the guards while we stole the bunch of bananas. In the end we chose to do the distraction method. She put on a very revealing little bikini with a loose see through cotton shirt over it. We made sure you could see the tiny red bikini through the shirt. She looked smoking hot. I wanted to hit her right there myself but I waited until after the caper was over. She walked down the road next to the wall and at a tree that we had carefully picked out and she stopped to pee. The guard could not help himself he had to stare at her. She pretended not to notice him up in his tower. She took her time and carefully removed the see through shirt and hung it on a branch. Then she slowly undid the bright red bikini bottom and hung that on the branch before she squatted down to pee making sure she pointed her dynamite ass right at the guard. He was probably coming in his pants already. The rest of us meanwhile threw a ladder up against the wall and got ready to go over. The real key to our success came next. One of our guys was a total short fat dork that we chose for his part because he resembled the guard. We had him walk along the path and accidentally catch our girl naked. Then the two of them started to fondle each other. He made a point out of putting his face right between her perfect pendulous breasts and rubbing them all over his face. She reached for his pants and stroked him. The guard had his eyes glued on the action and his hand in his own pants. We went over the wall in plain sight of his station. He could only see one thing at the time. We cut down the first bunch of bananas we came to and struggled to lift it over the wall and down the other side. A bunch of bananas weighs more that you might think. The guard could have just glanced over and caught us red handed but there was no chance in hell that he was going to take his eyes off of our girl and maybe miss any of the action. We bet our lives on it. As soon as we had our prize the strip show ended and we went back to celebrate our victory. We paraded the bunch of bananas all over town and everybody knew we had stolen them. There was nothing they could do about it. Even if they had tried to accuse us, that afternoon we had our blond distract the lone police officer with a bit of warm attention and a bottle of rum so that there was no way he could ever do anything to her or to us.
Blondie had more tricks up her sleeves. She was stronger than most males were and we used that to get free drinks from the Spanish men in the bars. We had a few different methods to extract the free drinks. One method involved arm wrestling. She would arm wrestle her gigantic boyfriend and they would make a big show of it being a close match. Then she would win. At that point we could make bets with the Spanish men against either her or her boyfriend. A lot of the men chose to arm wrestle him after she beat him to show that they were stronger that the giant Canadian bear was. He would kick their asses one after another. Then the other group would want to arm wrestle her. That was a risky proposition for the macho men. If she beat them they would never live it down but she looked so easy to beat that they just could not resist the urge to wrestle her. I think they were also blinded because they wanted to wrestle with her naked in bed and that is what they were thinking about during the matches which they inevitably lost. Either way we got free drinks. She also did leg wrestling, thumb wrestling and she could bend a six inch spike in half with just one hand. We never even found a single man that could bend one of the spikes even using both hands. She was very strong. We were not taking advantage of these guys. It was all in fun. We always turned around and bought them drinks in return.
While living at the hotel some of the group got hooked on speed. In Spain at the time they sold speed in pharmacies right over the counter. A couple of the English guys loved them and bought bottles by the gross. They had cereal bowls full of speed tablets all over their hotel room and some of us ate them like candy at Grandma's house. All the speed tended to make some of our nightly parties a bit out of control and lasting more like three days than a few hours. I took some once in a while but some of the others were gobbling way too many of them and were just never getting any sleep at all.
The speed ended up being the downfall of our idyllic scene. After a great two day party where we had a live jam session with some amazing guitar players and singers with lots of dancing and general good fun one of the English guys was found dead in his room from an overdose of speed and dehydration. The entire scene collapsed in on itself the next morning. Most of the group left on the first bus out of town the next morning. Nobody wanted to be arrested and charged with being involved in his death. I stayed behind with my girlfriend and made the Paella for about a week longer until the hotel could make arrangements for someone else to take over the job. I trained the new workers. The day after my Lebanese girlfriend left I left too. I really missed her. I took a ferry to the coast of Africa with a group of about twenty of us.
My plan was to get to the coast and head south down to Senegal and Gambia. The rest of the group was going to go up to Morocco. We almost did not survive the ferry boat ride. We got really drunk the night before we left. Then the shit hit the fan pushed by a hurricane force winds.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
From Ibiza to Morocco and back again
My life of Riley ended in Ibiza when my girlfriend had to go back home to the states. I didn't like staying there after she left. I didn't really like doing acid and the people around me were doing it almost everyday so I went back to Spain. From Valencia after eating as much Paella Valencia that I could stuff in me, I worked my way South and then took a ferry over to Morocco.
I loved Morocco from the minute I stepped off the ferry. The country had everything. It was exotic. It was sunny every day. The food was great and plentiful. There were a wide variety of people around. There was always something to see or do. Hash was easy to find and high quality. Life was easy and cheap.
I slowly went South until I got to Casablanca and then Marrakesh. I stayed in cheap clean hotels and hung out at the beaches and hit all the tourist sights. I met lots of other travelers and we hung out enjoying life, eating good food, drinking, smoking, getting stoned, having one nighters, wandering around the markets looking at all the weird stuff. One day we saw a little old lady selling the most pathetic looking flowers ever. They were already dead. Some of them were even all dried out. We took pity on her and bought her flowers. Turns out they were opium poppies. We took them back to our hotel room and made some mint tea with it. There were over a dozen of us that drank it when it was ready. We had no idea how much it took to get high on it and we just drank some then got so stoned we couldn't stand up. We all vomited and pissed in our pants we were so loaded. The weird thing is we all liked the way we felt. It lasted for hours before we got it back together again enough to get ourselves cleaned up. The high was entertaining but it wasn't worth the getting sick and incontinence that when along with it so we never did it again.
We smoked a lot of pot and hash. We bought the hash in big balls the size of a large softball. We would just drop the ball on the tiled floor and pick up a piece the size of the pipe we used to smoke it. We did this daily. It ended when we ordered some food from the hotel and when they delivered it we had no money to pay for it. I had run completely out of money without realizing it. That is what's wrong with being a stoner. You lose track of some of the more important things about living. We got kicked out of the hotel in less than an hour and I was on the streets of Marrakesh without a dime to my name.
I lucked out that afternoon. I met a couple of newcomers from Canada that asked me about hash. I sold them some at a small profit and then they wanted to play some poker. We played a cash game with fairly high stakes and I won a few hundred bucks. I told them I was going out for some food and I left with the cash and headed straight back to London. I still had a plane ticket from London to Boston if I could just get there.
I hitch hiked up through Morocco as fast as I could, crossed over to Spain and caught a ride with a couple from the states that was driving to Switzerland. I jumped in the back seat and the wife joined me after a few minutes telling her husband that she needed to nap. She started playing with me as soon as she got in the back seat. She was fondling me then sucking me and then just didn't stop. We were doing the wild thing in the back seat with her husband driving. We did it all the way to Switzerland. When we got to their house the wife invited me to stay for a while. I did. She was a real horn dog and her husband had to know what was going on but he just let us do our thing.
One day she said she wanted to do it out in the snow. I figured sure why not as long as she got the bottom. She drove out to a small forest outside of town and we found a little clearing. We got out of the car and she stripped and flopped down in the snow. She was so hot the snow started melting all around her. I jumped right in on top of course and we were going to town. She was making a lot of noise but I figured we were out in the middle of nowhere so it didn't make any difference. She was really getting into it. Then all of a sudden I heard a sound like a car screeching its brakes and she started to laugh. I stopped mid stoke for a second and asked her what was up. She pointed up in the sky and laughed. I turned my head around and looked up. There was a gondola hanging off of a cable and about 75 people were looking out the windows pointing and laughing at us. I turned around and went back to work. I thought she was excited before but she got really excited now with the crowd cheering her on and she exploded and so did I. I collapsed on top of her and we started to laugh like the crazy people we were.
A couple of days later we went for a ride again only this time we took her husband and a couple of other travelers she met. She drove us up to near the top of a mountain and we got out and hiked the rest of the way to the top. We sat up there and smoked some weed and then took some LSD. We ate our picnic lunch before the acid kicked in. We started to trip about the cartoons where a snowball rolls down a hill getting bigger and bigger. So we decided to try it out and see if it was true how the snowballs grew as they rolled down the hill. We were really stupid and irresponsible because we made snow balls and rolled them down the side of the mountain and just like in the cartoons they grow bigger and bigger. Then when they get really huge and going about a hundred miles an hour they tend to do damage to things like trees that they hit. We were laughing our asses off without thinking about what we were doing. The next day we read about mysterious avalanches that occurred in an unusual location and the damages they caused. OOOOOOpps...
I headed out of town the day after. My friend gave me a ride to the Swiss border with Germany and she dropped me off to hitch hike the rest of the way up to Holland.
I was waiting for a ride just across the border when a girl jumped out of a car and walked over to me. She spoke French to me. I didn't speak French very much at all but my body spoke her language. We stood there for a minute laughing and trying to communicate with language while our bodies were communicating clearly with each other. She dragged me down off the road behind some bushes and did me right there. I was kind of shocked but pleased. Then we went up and got a ride almost instantly with a truck going all the way to downtown Amsterdam. On the way we stopped and I was sent in to buy some drinks and when I came back they both looked kind of tired for some reason. We had our beverages and drove the rest of the way to Amsterdam.
It was just getting dark when he dropped us off right near the train station. We checked into a hotel and went up to our room. For the next three days we never left the room. I didn't think it was physically possible to carry on like we did for that entire time with almost no sleep whatsoever. Every time I rolled over and went to sleep I found myself waking up with her doing me in one of the dozens of ways she did me. She never gave up. I don't know how she kept getting me up for her games but she did. I must have been covered with callouses by the time she tired of it all. For not being able to talk to each other we communicated perfectly together. I loved it don't get me wrong but I was happy when we finally quit and left the room to get some food. The only food we had over the previous three days was some room service sandwiches here and there with water. When we stepped from the room into the lobby we received a standing ovation from the hotel staff. I was a bit embarrassed but what the hell I accepted the handshakes and pats on the back with a silly grin.
We went out and ate like pigs at the first cafe we came to and then she just gave me a peck on the cheek and walked away never to be seen again...unless you count the visits that over the next few years happened occasionally at night when I didn't have a date.
I took a bus to the ferry and headed off to London that day since I didn't have any money left after paying for the hotel and the food. When I got to the immigration control on the English side they told me I could not enter the country because I did not have enough money with me to support myself. I had to think fast and immediately told them I had been robbed but that I had money waiting for me in a bank in London. I also showed them my ticket to Boston. We fought about it for a couple of hours before they gave me the stamp to enter. I went straight to a friend's house that I knew from my last visit and sponged off of him until I could get on a plane back to Boston. I slept almost all the way back to the states. I was diverted from Boston and we landed at JFK in New York instead. No difference to me I just jumped out and hitch hiked back to California to earn some more cash to go back again for more adventure. I was hooked on traveling by now. I couldn't have stopped and settled down now even if I wanted to. Such is life.
I loved Morocco from the minute I stepped off the ferry. The country had everything. It was exotic. It was sunny every day. The food was great and plentiful. There were a wide variety of people around. There was always something to see or do. Hash was easy to find and high quality. Life was easy and cheap.
I slowly went South until I got to Casablanca and then Marrakesh. I stayed in cheap clean hotels and hung out at the beaches and hit all the tourist sights. I met lots of other travelers and we hung out enjoying life, eating good food, drinking, smoking, getting stoned, having one nighters, wandering around the markets looking at all the weird stuff. One day we saw a little old lady selling the most pathetic looking flowers ever. They were already dead. Some of them were even all dried out. We took pity on her and bought her flowers. Turns out they were opium poppies. We took them back to our hotel room and made some mint tea with it. There were over a dozen of us that drank it when it was ready. We had no idea how much it took to get high on it and we just drank some then got so stoned we couldn't stand up. We all vomited and pissed in our pants we were so loaded. The weird thing is we all liked the way we felt. It lasted for hours before we got it back together again enough to get ourselves cleaned up. The high was entertaining but it wasn't worth the getting sick and incontinence that when along with it so we never did it again.
We smoked a lot of pot and hash. We bought the hash in big balls the size of a large softball. We would just drop the ball on the tiled floor and pick up a piece the size of the pipe we used to smoke it. We did this daily. It ended when we ordered some food from the hotel and when they delivered it we had no money to pay for it. I had run completely out of money without realizing it. That is what's wrong with being a stoner. You lose track of some of the more important things about living. We got kicked out of the hotel in less than an hour and I was on the streets of Marrakesh without a dime to my name.
I lucked out that afternoon. I met a couple of newcomers from Canada that asked me about hash. I sold them some at a small profit and then they wanted to play some poker. We played a cash game with fairly high stakes and I won a few hundred bucks. I told them I was going out for some food and I left with the cash and headed straight back to London. I still had a plane ticket from London to Boston if I could just get there.
I hitch hiked up through Morocco as fast as I could, crossed over to Spain and caught a ride with a couple from the states that was driving to Switzerland. I jumped in the back seat and the wife joined me after a few minutes telling her husband that she needed to nap. She started playing with me as soon as she got in the back seat. She was fondling me then sucking me and then just didn't stop. We were doing the wild thing in the back seat with her husband driving. We did it all the way to Switzerland. When we got to their house the wife invited me to stay for a while. I did. She was a real horn dog and her husband had to know what was going on but he just let us do our thing.
One day she said she wanted to do it out in the snow. I figured sure why not as long as she got the bottom. She drove out to a small forest outside of town and we found a little clearing. We got out of the car and she stripped and flopped down in the snow. She was so hot the snow started melting all around her. I jumped right in on top of course and we were going to town. She was making a lot of noise but I figured we were out in the middle of nowhere so it didn't make any difference. She was really getting into it. Then all of a sudden I heard a sound like a car screeching its brakes and she started to laugh. I stopped mid stoke for a second and asked her what was up. She pointed up in the sky and laughed. I turned my head around and looked up. There was a gondola hanging off of a cable and about 75 people were looking out the windows pointing and laughing at us. I turned around and went back to work. I thought she was excited before but she got really excited now with the crowd cheering her on and she exploded and so did I. I collapsed on top of her and we started to laugh like the crazy people we were.
A couple of days later we went for a ride again only this time we took her husband and a couple of other travelers she met. She drove us up to near the top of a mountain and we got out and hiked the rest of the way to the top. We sat up there and smoked some weed and then took some LSD. We ate our picnic lunch before the acid kicked in. We started to trip about the cartoons where a snowball rolls down a hill getting bigger and bigger. So we decided to try it out and see if it was true how the snowballs grew as they rolled down the hill. We were really stupid and irresponsible because we made snow balls and rolled them down the side of the mountain and just like in the cartoons they grow bigger and bigger. Then when they get really huge and going about a hundred miles an hour they tend to do damage to things like trees that they hit. We were laughing our asses off without thinking about what we were doing. The next day we read about mysterious avalanches that occurred in an unusual location and the damages they caused. OOOOOOpps...
I headed out of town the day after. My friend gave me a ride to the Swiss border with Germany and she dropped me off to hitch hike the rest of the way up to Holland.
I was waiting for a ride just across the border when a girl jumped out of a car and walked over to me. She spoke French to me. I didn't speak French very much at all but my body spoke her language. We stood there for a minute laughing and trying to communicate with language while our bodies were communicating clearly with each other. She dragged me down off the road behind some bushes and did me right there. I was kind of shocked but pleased. Then we went up and got a ride almost instantly with a truck going all the way to downtown Amsterdam. On the way we stopped and I was sent in to buy some drinks and when I came back they both looked kind of tired for some reason. We had our beverages and drove the rest of the way to Amsterdam.
It was just getting dark when he dropped us off right near the train station. We checked into a hotel and went up to our room. For the next three days we never left the room. I didn't think it was physically possible to carry on like we did for that entire time with almost no sleep whatsoever. Every time I rolled over and went to sleep I found myself waking up with her doing me in one of the dozens of ways she did me. She never gave up. I don't know how she kept getting me up for her games but she did. I must have been covered with callouses by the time she tired of it all. For not being able to talk to each other we communicated perfectly together. I loved it don't get me wrong but I was happy when we finally quit and left the room to get some food. The only food we had over the previous three days was some room service sandwiches here and there with water. When we stepped from the room into the lobby we received a standing ovation from the hotel staff. I was a bit embarrassed but what the hell I accepted the handshakes and pats on the back with a silly grin.
We went out and ate like pigs at the first cafe we came to and then she just gave me a peck on the cheek and walked away never to be seen again...unless you count the visits that over the next few years happened occasionally at night when I didn't have a date.
I took a bus to the ferry and headed off to London that day since I didn't have any money left after paying for the hotel and the food. When I got to the immigration control on the English side they told me I could not enter the country because I did not have enough money with me to support myself. I had to think fast and immediately told them I had been robbed but that I had money waiting for me in a bank in London. I also showed them my ticket to Boston. We fought about it for a couple of hours before they gave me the stamp to enter. I went straight to a friend's house that I knew from my last visit and sponged off of him until I could get on a plane back to Boston. I slept almost all the way back to the states. I was diverted from Boston and we landed at JFK in New York instead. No difference to me I just jumped out and hitch hiked back to California to earn some more cash to go back again for more adventure. I was hooked on traveling by now. I couldn't have stopped and settled down now even if I wanted to. Such is life.
First time to Europe
My first flight to Europe was a blast. It was kind of like that old song
"Coming in from London
From over the pole
Flying in a big airliner
Chickens flying everywhere around the plane
Could we ever feel much finer?"
The only difference is we were flying the other direction, to the UK not from it. We were passing joints around right in the cabin of the plane. We landed in Scotland because we were diverted from London due to bad weather. I went through customs without a problem and started walking through the airport to go to town and find a place to stay. Two young boys about ten years old ran up to me and said, "Cuuud ee ep ya wid ya udgag..."
I looked at them in bewilderment. I could not understand a thing coming out of their mouths. I told them I spoke English and asked them what they spoke. They laughed and said very slowly "English also" Ah ha. I understood something they said. I came to a cafe in the airport and sat down with these two young boys. I slowly developed an ear for their thick Scottish accent and was able to understand more and more of their speech. We talked for about two hours. They were my first real experience with a foreign language and that language was English. They taught me a lot of local slang and told me they would help me find a place to stay. After our coffee and cokes they took me to their aunt's house and introduced me to her. I ended up staying with her at her house for a while. I was really shocked at how difficult it was for me to understand the people speaking English to me. I got better and better at communicating with people as time went on.
I traveled around Scotland for a short while but I could not take the cold wet weather and overcooked mushy food so I started to head south. I took a couple of weeks going through the United Kingdom before I ended up in London. I was getting the hang of traveling and conversing with the people and seeing the lush green scenery with the stone walls, sheep, cows, food and all of the UK.
In London I stayed at a youth hostel. I met up with some other travelers and made my travel plans after talking with them. I was heading south to Spain and then maybe into Africa. It was nice and sunny and warm in the south and the gray weather in the UK was no fun. I toured around London with my new friends and saw all the usual hot spots for tourists. We spent a lot of time drinking beer in the pubs at night. I was spending a lot of time with a nice Swiss girl I had met at the hostel. We had a blast together and slept together at the hostel. I was still enjoying this sexual revolution. We saw most of the highlights in London and then decided as a group to head south. So we headed to the ferry to cross the English Channel over to Holland and Amsterdam.
The weather was still bad and we were told the crossing on the ferry would be rough. Our solution was to just get drunk so the rough crossing wouldn't bother us. We drank waiting for the ferry to load. We drank on the ferry waiting for it to leave. We got hammered and stoned. Big mistake! The ferry pulled out of the harbor and as soon as we hit the channel it started to rock and roll big time. At first we were laughing and falling down from the tossing and turning we were going through. It did not take long though until we were all sicker than shit and hanging over the rail puking and holding on for dear life. It was nasty. We survived the trip and arrived in Holland but it sure wasn't the fun trip we had talked so much about. We went and found the youth hostel and checked in to sleep off our hangovers.
We were young and recovered quickly. We spent the first day in Amsterdam sitting in cafes trying to get some fluids other than alcohol in our bodies. We smoked pot out in the open all day though. That night we all went to the infamous red light district and watched the girls and women putting on their shows in the windows. We partied in the clubs and just had a blast. After a couple of days of this wandering around during the days and getting hammered every night three of my friends and I bought a small car for $75 bucks that we planned to drive to Spain in. We left the next morning.
The drive though Germany, France and the tiny country of Andora went quickly. We spent a couple of days checking out Paris and the tower then sat at cafes near Notre Dame. One night we drove through the park near the Arch of Triumph to see all the hookers working. That was a crazy night. We all ended up in bed together that night for a little orgy.
We made it to Spain but going over the mountains was a bitch. The snow must have been around thirty feet deep along the side of the roads. It was like driving through a long tunnel. There was no snow falling and the road was mostly dry so we did not have any trouble it was just freaky to drive through such deep snow. We were afraid the high walls of snow might fall on us and bury us alive. It did not take long before we were out of the snow. We were winding down the twisty mountain roads almost at the bottom before disaster hit us. The right rear wheel fell off the car on the winding road while I was driving about sixty miles an hour. Holy shit! The car veered to the right as it dropped down and skidded along on the brake drum instead of the wheel. I managed to stop the car safely but not before the tire that had come off and bounced really high up in the air came down right in the center of the roof of the car and crushed it down on our heads. Glass went flying all over us as it shattered a couple of the windows. When the car stopped moving we all got out of the vehicle happy to be alive and just stood there watching the wheel from our car roll on down the mountain and bouncing up in the air every once in a while. What to do? We decided to walk down the mountain and bring the wheel back then take one nut off of each of the remaining three wheels and drive on after pushing the top of the car back up. That was what we did. It took us a couple of hours to find the wheel and haul it back up to where the car was. On the way back up to the car we were walking with our shirts off because we were sweating profusely due to the effort required to lug the wheel uphill when a policeman stopped and threatened to take us to jail for indecent exposure. What? Two guys can't have their shirts off while working hard? We complied and apologized for our error in judgment and the officer drove off with out offering us any assistance like maybe a ride back up to our car. We put the wheel back on and drove the rest of the way to Madrid without a problem.
I love Spanish food. I love the exotic look of the Spanish light brown skin and dark eyes, but I love the long black hair the most. I was always horny in Spain. Our little group split up in Madrid and I headed over to Valencia alone after a few days in Madrid and the surrounding area. I had heard about an island off the coast called Ibiza that I wanted to go to. I jumped on a ferry boat and headed to the Balearic island of Ibiza that I had heard was a fun spot. I landed on the island and started walking around the small fishing village perched on a steep hillside with a small harbor on the sea. It was a gorgeous view with the whitewashed buildings set off by the dark blue sky and sea surrounding it. There were fishing boats tied up in the harbor and fishermen were repairing their nets on the beach. Looking around town it felt to me like the average age of the town's inhabitants must have been around 85 or 90 years old. I felt a bit out of place and like I must be at the wrong place because this did not look like the fun wild island I had heard about. I found a little bar restaurant overlooking the harbor and I went in for some food and a cold drink. There were about fifteen wrinkled up old men sitting in the bar drinking quietly. They all stared at me when I walked in and struggled to order my meal in my poor broken Spanish. I just sat quietly wondering what me plans were going to be. My food came and it was so delicious. I was in heaven just eating.
Then a girl walked into the place. My heart jumped just like it did in every other male in the bar. She was tall, long flowing blond hair, blue eyes, tanned with a deep dark tan, smiling, dressed in a loose light weight white almost transparent cotton top and little tiny cotton shorts, with a voluptuous body and she was looking and walking right at me. She sat down next to me. All eyes in the place were on her. I offered her some of my calamares fritos and she accepted. We talked for a while and finished off some food. Drinks kept appearing in front of her compliments of all the men in the bar. She told me a bit about the island and offered to let me crash at her place that night. I thought about it long and hard before I jumped at the opportunity so spend a night anywhere near this hottie.
We walked through the village and up the hillside together chatting as we walked. Her place was quite a long haul from the restaurant but we had plenty of time and I would have walked around the world three times following her. We walked out of town and down the little gravel road until we came to a large house that looked totally out of place amid all the Spanish architecture so far. It was a cape cod style house with a fence around it and a guard standing out in front of it. We walked past the guard with a nod and entered the house. She led me up some stairs to a balcony with a view of the setting sun and she went off to get us some wine. I stood there looking out at the countryside. This house must be the highest point on the island. She came back with our wine and we sat down on a mattress covered with pillows that was out on the balcony. In about a half a second we were doing the wild thing.
We got drunk on the wine and then took some acid she had. We were naked and playing around on the mattress when we heard someone else enter the house. There were two guys coming up to the balcony to watch the sun set. She introduced me to them without any attempt to cover up or anything and they pretty much ignored us being naked. I didn't mind. I was drunk, stoned and satisfied. They were the owners of the house. I don't know for sure what the attraction was, but I ended up staying here with her for months. We almost never wore clothing at the house and did the wild thing relentlessly as well as every other conceivable thing naked people could ever think of to do to each other.
We spent the next few months going to the naked beach on the island, going into town to eat drink and party, having orgies at the house with other travelers we met, getting stoned, doing acid and just basically living a life of debauchery. I was having a great time. Without going into the details I was an active warrior in the sexual revolution and I was recruiting fellow soldiers for the battle on a daily basis. This was the Ibiza that I had heard about way back in London. I wanted it to go on forever.
"Coming in from London
From over the pole
Flying in a big airliner
Chickens flying everywhere around the plane
Could we ever feel much finer?"
The only difference is we were flying the other direction, to the UK not from it. We were passing joints around right in the cabin of the plane. We landed in Scotland because we were diverted from London due to bad weather. I went through customs without a problem and started walking through the airport to go to town and find a place to stay. Two young boys about ten years old ran up to me and said, "Cuuud ee ep ya wid ya udgag..."
I looked at them in bewilderment. I could not understand a thing coming out of their mouths. I told them I spoke English and asked them what they spoke. They laughed and said very slowly "English also" Ah ha. I understood something they said. I came to a cafe in the airport and sat down with these two young boys. I slowly developed an ear for their thick Scottish accent and was able to understand more and more of their speech. We talked for about two hours. They were my first real experience with a foreign language and that language was English. They taught me a lot of local slang and told me they would help me find a place to stay. After our coffee and cokes they took me to their aunt's house and introduced me to her. I ended up staying with her at her house for a while. I was really shocked at how difficult it was for me to understand the people speaking English to me. I got better and better at communicating with people as time went on.
I traveled around Scotland for a short while but I could not take the cold wet weather and overcooked mushy food so I started to head south. I took a couple of weeks going through the United Kingdom before I ended up in London. I was getting the hang of traveling and conversing with the people and seeing the lush green scenery with the stone walls, sheep, cows, food and all of the UK.
In London I stayed at a youth hostel. I met up with some other travelers and made my travel plans after talking with them. I was heading south to Spain and then maybe into Africa. It was nice and sunny and warm in the south and the gray weather in the UK was no fun. I toured around London with my new friends and saw all the usual hot spots for tourists. We spent a lot of time drinking beer in the pubs at night. I was spending a lot of time with a nice Swiss girl I had met at the hostel. We had a blast together and slept together at the hostel. I was still enjoying this sexual revolution. We saw most of the highlights in London and then decided as a group to head south. So we headed to the ferry to cross the English Channel over to Holland and Amsterdam.
The weather was still bad and we were told the crossing on the ferry would be rough. Our solution was to just get drunk so the rough crossing wouldn't bother us. We drank waiting for the ferry to load. We drank on the ferry waiting for it to leave. We got hammered and stoned. Big mistake! The ferry pulled out of the harbor and as soon as we hit the channel it started to rock and roll big time. At first we were laughing and falling down from the tossing and turning we were going through. It did not take long though until we were all sicker than shit and hanging over the rail puking and holding on for dear life. It was nasty. We survived the trip and arrived in Holland but it sure wasn't the fun trip we had talked so much about. We went and found the youth hostel and checked in to sleep off our hangovers.
We were young and recovered quickly. We spent the first day in Amsterdam sitting in cafes trying to get some fluids other than alcohol in our bodies. We smoked pot out in the open all day though. That night we all went to the infamous red light district and watched the girls and women putting on their shows in the windows. We partied in the clubs and just had a blast. After a couple of days of this wandering around during the days and getting hammered every night three of my friends and I bought a small car for $75 bucks that we planned to drive to Spain in. We left the next morning.
The drive though Germany, France and the tiny country of Andora went quickly. We spent a couple of days checking out Paris and the tower then sat at cafes near Notre Dame. One night we drove through the park near the Arch of Triumph to see all the hookers working. That was a crazy night. We all ended up in bed together that night for a little orgy.
We made it to Spain but going over the mountains was a bitch. The snow must have been around thirty feet deep along the side of the roads. It was like driving through a long tunnel. There was no snow falling and the road was mostly dry so we did not have any trouble it was just freaky to drive through such deep snow. We were afraid the high walls of snow might fall on us and bury us alive. It did not take long before we were out of the snow. We were winding down the twisty mountain roads almost at the bottom before disaster hit us. The right rear wheel fell off the car on the winding road while I was driving about sixty miles an hour. Holy shit! The car veered to the right as it dropped down and skidded along on the brake drum instead of the wheel. I managed to stop the car safely but not before the tire that had come off and bounced really high up in the air came down right in the center of the roof of the car and crushed it down on our heads. Glass went flying all over us as it shattered a couple of the windows. When the car stopped moving we all got out of the vehicle happy to be alive and just stood there watching the wheel from our car roll on down the mountain and bouncing up in the air every once in a while. What to do? We decided to walk down the mountain and bring the wheel back then take one nut off of each of the remaining three wheels and drive on after pushing the top of the car back up. That was what we did. It took us a couple of hours to find the wheel and haul it back up to where the car was. On the way back up to the car we were walking with our shirts off because we were sweating profusely due to the effort required to lug the wheel uphill when a policeman stopped and threatened to take us to jail for indecent exposure. What? Two guys can't have their shirts off while working hard? We complied and apologized for our error in judgment and the officer drove off with out offering us any assistance like maybe a ride back up to our car. We put the wheel back on and drove the rest of the way to Madrid without a problem.
I love Spanish food. I love the exotic look of the Spanish light brown skin and dark eyes, but I love the long black hair the most. I was always horny in Spain. Our little group split up in Madrid and I headed over to Valencia alone after a few days in Madrid and the surrounding area. I had heard about an island off the coast called Ibiza that I wanted to go to. I jumped on a ferry boat and headed to the Balearic island of Ibiza that I had heard was a fun spot. I landed on the island and started walking around the small fishing village perched on a steep hillside with a small harbor on the sea. It was a gorgeous view with the whitewashed buildings set off by the dark blue sky and sea surrounding it. There were fishing boats tied up in the harbor and fishermen were repairing their nets on the beach. Looking around town it felt to me like the average age of the town's inhabitants must have been around 85 or 90 years old. I felt a bit out of place and like I must be at the wrong place because this did not look like the fun wild island I had heard about. I found a little bar restaurant overlooking the harbor and I went in for some food and a cold drink. There were about fifteen wrinkled up old men sitting in the bar drinking quietly. They all stared at me when I walked in and struggled to order my meal in my poor broken Spanish. I just sat quietly wondering what me plans were going to be. My food came and it was so delicious. I was in heaven just eating.
Then a girl walked into the place. My heart jumped just like it did in every other male in the bar. She was tall, long flowing blond hair, blue eyes, tanned with a deep dark tan, smiling, dressed in a loose light weight white almost transparent cotton top and little tiny cotton shorts, with a voluptuous body and she was looking and walking right at me. She sat down next to me. All eyes in the place were on her. I offered her some of my calamares fritos and she accepted. We talked for a while and finished off some food. Drinks kept appearing in front of her compliments of all the men in the bar. She told me a bit about the island and offered to let me crash at her place that night. I thought about it long and hard before I jumped at the opportunity so spend a night anywhere near this hottie.
We walked through the village and up the hillside together chatting as we walked. Her place was quite a long haul from the restaurant but we had plenty of time and I would have walked around the world three times following her. We walked out of town and down the little gravel road until we came to a large house that looked totally out of place amid all the Spanish architecture so far. It was a cape cod style house with a fence around it and a guard standing out in front of it. We walked past the guard with a nod and entered the house. She led me up some stairs to a balcony with a view of the setting sun and she went off to get us some wine. I stood there looking out at the countryside. This house must be the highest point on the island. She came back with our wine and we sat down on a mattress covered with pillows that was out on the balcony. In about a half a second we were doing the wild thing.
We got drunk on the wine and then took some acid she had. We were naked and playing around on the mattress when we heard someone else enter the house. There were two guys coming up to the balcony to watch the sun set. She introduced me to them without any attempt to cover up or anything and they pretty much ignored us being naked. I didn't mind. I was drunk, stoned and satisfied. They were the owners of the house. I don't know for sure what the attraction was, but I ended up staying here with her for months. We almost never wore clothing at the house and did the wild thing relentlessly as well as every other conceivable thing naked people could ever think of to do to each other.
We spent the next few months going to the naked beach on the island, going into town to eat drink and party, having orgies at the house with other travelers we met, getting stoned, doing acid and just basically living a life of debauchery. I was having a great time. Without going into the details I was an active warrior in the sexual revolution and I was recruiting fellow soldiers for the battle on a daily basis. This was the Ibiza that I had heard about way back in London. I wanted it to go on forever.
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