With less than 2 weeks to go before we leave on The Big Trip, we now have our web site live, www.SimonFamily.org, and invite you to join us on our journey. We leave for San Jose, Costa Rica on Friday, November 26. Armed with a digital camera and an array of electronic accoutrements (many of which we are not quite sure of how to use), we will look forward to sharing our travels, adventures and misadventures.

Please stay in touch

Alex, Katie, Ben, Patty and Dick Simon

November 30, 1999 - Patty (Manuel Antonio National Park, Quepos, Costa Rica)

Hi Everyone,

We are just waking up at Tulamar Bungalows on the Pacific Ocean among little monkeys jumping from tree to tree. You know Katie has adapted because her song “Way up high in the apple tree, two little apples smiled at me·” is now “Way up high in the mango tree,”

Costa Rica is truly a natural paradise. The tropical vegetation is so exotic, flowers, gladiolas, fuchsia, hibiscus, calabash gourds and teakwood trees that mature in less than 5 years and the leaf shape is amazing. But to add hummingbirds, huge iguanas, a flock of toucans with their black bodies and yellow-orange long beaks who greeted us as we walked to breakfast yesterday (we knew they were a find when the local housekeepers stopped in their tracks to look up).

But lets back up a minute· I wrote the following as we were flying the very LONG flight criss-crossing from Boston to Wash DC to Mexico City to San Jose, getting in at 1AM – Ugh! And unfortunately for Dick and I the kids slept well on the plane – (which was great for their little bodies but bad the next day when we wanted to sleep so we took shifts)·

“As we take off for our Big Trip – I look out the windows to see nothing but gray fog – visibility 20 ft. It reminded me of a “clean slate” from which to start the trip. We climbed in altitude to clear blue skies with billowing white clouds (Katie told me they reminded her of ‘cotton balls and puffed up marshmallows’ – ah, the wonderful mind of a child!). I feel like we have already arrived at a foreign country· the sky! I’ve decided that since I won’t be able to swim my laps everyday to relieve all my stress, I am going to simply look at the skies at night and in the daytime. They release my tension just by gazing out to them· huge, wide expanses of infinity and space filled with clean air, light, water, and sometimes spectacular visual scenes· scenes one cannot draw and capture. The very last few days were a blur of “winding things up” – the ‘things’ being a million little details that all got done and done well but left me with a catatonic feeling of numbness – the purpose of the trip a mere mirage, even the emotionless behind saying goodbye to great friends and family and a great life. I think E-Mail has psychologically closed the gap of distance with its instant connection anywhere in the world. After we said goodbye to teachers and dear friends at Cabot after Autumnfest· Dick had to go back to the office to do a closing so the kids and I went to McDonalds (to savor one last French fry), then back to the house to eat at the picnic table because the cleaning people had come and than I had to do the final (ugh!) cleaning and packing to get it all in the suitcases. I copped out and still filled a box with stuff to sort at the Ferrills. Dick could not help be load up the suitcases and carry the rest of the remaining house stuff to the 3rd floor (ah Sam, now I really know how much energy you put in to every moment of climbing and carrying). We could not wait to get to the Ferrills with their warm relaxing hospitality· great healthy food, a feast for Thanksgiving, a wonderful blessing at dinner, stimulating conversation and just plain catching up with lives. We got up at 6:30am to go back to Boston (Alex asked, “Can we go to the Scheuerells?” I said they were on their own adventure in NYC). So we did 3 quick errands waiting for Dick to sign some final papers. Then off to 78 Hull to sneak a look to see if the new tenants arrived. We were happy to see the new grass was growing. I go back for Dick – did not even have to wait (a good omen) no more cell phone calls, no more planning, yea we are finally on our way!!! We return the rental car (since I sold my van which had served me well for the last 6 years!) I’ll get a new one when we come back – one which looks better and has a lot more fancy gadgets· I wonder if I will look better when we get back with a lot more fancy notions of the world – I certainly hope the ‘looking better’ shows itself within my soul and I come back centered! I can’t wait to soak up 9 months of cultural knowledge and people interaction and titillating visual scenes! The reasons for this trip are sitting next to Dick and I. How do they feel? (as many people have asked them time and time again!) I think they are “ready” for the big, long adventure. They don’t know what awaits them but they seem ready and willing to go. Dick and I are very excited as we did this type of trip 15 years ago but the kids have a clean slate but in a different way. We are talking about trying to capture our favorite thing in our journals each day. So time will tell – the greatest pleasure in traveling and the worst is “the unknown”. This trip will take us on paths we don’t know about that can be unsettling and make one insecure (I think this is happening to Alex) but the beauty of spontaneously experiencing the world every minute is thrilling!”

Well, we are now 4 days into Costa Rica and besides being burglarized and our car broken into and the kids backpacks stolen with all the picture books (Laura remember the pictures you helped me put together) and toys and home schooling folders (just the first week of actual work they had already done in the airport on the first day but all of Alex’s answers were in there) and worst of all Ben’s bear that Lynda Cain had given him, Timber and the 3 journals the teachers had given them. We need to ask your help to help us replace some of this but more on this later. We were very shaken by this because it happened on the first real day as we were looking on a bridge of enormous crocodiles and we were only gone for 2 minutes. They broke the glass and so it was a mess. They could have gotten so much more in terms of value· computers, cameras, money, passports but unfortunately they got our prized possessions. I told the kids, “They got nothing but everything!” I’m sure they are disappointed. We went around offering a reward of 10,000 to 20,000 Colones (no, we are not this rich!) it equals $30 to $60. but if you look around there are bars and barbed wire and gates for burglary. It must be a real problem. We are just so lucky not to have anyone hurt and it did put us on a more realistic level to work from. It just was such a bad way to start experiencing this amazing country.

But yesterday made up for it. The kids have been in the various pools with gorgeous Pacific views and rice and beans and fresh watermelon or banana juice to drink. We organized a guide named Leo who happened to bring his 6 year old son with him to go on a boat ride thru amazing mangroves to see white-faced monkeys with babies on their back which would eat bananas from Katie’s shoulder and be right in your face, crocodiles, herons, egrets, striped tail hawks, and coiled mangrove boa constrictors. Then our guide ‘invited’ us to go to a short hike to a waterfall on his friend’s property. We saw trails of leaf cutter ants carrying leaves and purple petals back and forth. We had seen leaf cutters in a museum so to see all these things in their natural habitat was amazing. Then on thru cows with floppy ears and finally to the jungle where a 3-tiered waterfall awaited us to swim and climb with our guide and his son. The kids immediately claimed this to be their favorite for the day. We passed local families where our guide would sort of sing “Hola!” to each one. This is one of those countries that everyone is outside and there is such a sense of community notwithstanding a lack of material things. I got into a major ugly argument at the hotel with people from Atlanta that immediately decided these local people were not intelligent because they did not do things our way. I went nuts and could not let it go, especially after we had just spent the most wonderful day only experiencing local people who love this land and every animal in it.

Dick is working on his Journal as I write. It will be interesting to see how his first impressions compare with mine.

From December 2nd – December 8th we will be pretty much incommunicado at Lookout Inn on the remote Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. We think that they have radio communication for emergencies, logistical arrangements, etc. but, per Dick, no telephone or fiber optic links and therefore no e-mail. (We decided against Iridium and satelite phones for weight and cost.) We will be certain to respond to any e-mails as soon as we :”return” to civilization (or at least late 20th century technology).

Until then, our thoughts are with you.

Patty and Simon Family

December 1, 1999 - Ben (Manuel Antonio National Park, Quepos, Costa Rica)

The following is a note from Ben to his class, and their fantastic response:

Dear Mrs. Cain and my class,

There were some real robbers who broke the glass in our car window while we were looking at crocodiles on a bridge.

Can you please get me a new Timber?

Other than the robbers we are having a great trip. We are seeing lots of animals, toucans, iguanas, hummingbirds, beetles, butterflies (we went into a special place for butterflies and saw them eating bananas. The butterflies live longer in there because the predators are outside. We are also swimming a lot, and I drank watermelon juice from real watermelons. And for my birthday tonight I got lobster.

Ben

We received the following response the next day from Ben’s wonderful kindergarten teacher, Lynda Cain regarding the theft of Timber

Subj: Timber
Date: 12/1/1999 11:53:30 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Lynda_Cain@newton.mec.edu (Lynda Cain)
To: SimonDick@aol.com

Dear Ben, I was so sad to hear that your car had been broken into and that Timber and your backpack were stolen. I’m sure the people who took it didn’t realize that your things were so special to you. I am sorry that happened. I know you were upset about losing Timber and your journal. I am going to send you another bear. I don’t know if it will be exactly the same as Timber, but it will be a special bear for you just the same. I will get you a new journal book, too. The kids in the class were sad that your stuff got taken too. Johnny said someone took his backpack once, too. They were hoping the police would help you to find your stuff again….but we know that might not happen.

Young says: Ben, the robbers actually broke your car for real? My big brother is a policeman.

Adi says: Have the bestest trip in the universe.

Amanda says: I miss you, Ben. When are you going to come back, Ben?

Adam says: I hope that ;you are able to get a new backpack. And i am sorry that your stuff got stole.

Johnny says: I hope you can get whatever you had in your backpack (new ones). I hope ;you have a great trip.

Cory says: I hope ;you have a great trip, Ben.

Phoebe says: I’m sorry that your car got broken into. I hope ;you can get a new backpack at Toys R us. Love Phoebe.

Bye Ben, we miss you….and we like hearing about the neat stuff you are seeing in Costa Rica

December 2, 1999 - Dick (Manuel Antonio National Park, Quepos, Costa Rica)

November 27, 1999- Escazu, San Jose, Costa Rica

Our flight arrived at 1:00AM after traveling for 13 hours and stops and plane changes in Dulles (Washington, DC) and Mexico City. (We have since learned that there are 3 1/2 hour flights on Delta from Atlanta!!) We are met at the airport and relearn lessons we already know – after paying $19/person for prearranged airport transfers rather than $15 total for a 15-minute taxi ride. With an hour and a half to get luggage, clear customs and get to our hotel, we finally go to sleep at 2:30AM. Katie, all excited, woke us up at 6:00AM to go out for breakfast and explore, and we begin our amazing and exciting adventure. We find a bank (the Costa Rican Colon is valued at 297 to the US dollar) and my Spanish of 20+ years ago starts to return.

Our hotel, the Aparthotel Maria Alexandra in Escazu, a relatively affluent suburb of San Jose, is certainly not the true Costa Rican experience we are seeking. Our driver from the airport proudly pointed out last night (or was it this morning) the plethora of available McDonald’s (which delivers), Burger Kings, KFC (with a life size statue of Colonel Sanders), Taco Bell and even Dominos. However, this is not totally surprising – we had planned Costa Rica as a safe and “tame” beginning for our trip – a relatively developed developing country. The water throughout the country is fully potable. (Our kids reacted with shock and horror last night to the thought that they would not be able to use ice for the next 9 months – a form of ‘home schooling’ in the physics of different states of matter.) The electric power and telephone outlets are the same as in the US (allowing us to temporarily leave behind our huge collection of international adaptors). I even saw a large cellular tower, which my cell phone reports getting a strong signal from (a technologically auspicious beginning), although I am unable to get a line. (There is a single cellular monopoly and long waits for being assigned a telephone number – a black market has arisen in providing lines, but we determine that we are only in the country for a month and the land-line service will have to suffice.) Costa Rica is also known for being non-militaristic, having no standing army, a democratically elected government and 21,000 US expatriates living in this country of three and a half million.

The Costa Ricans (locally called Ticos) we meet in our first few hours are universally friendly. We have also heard that Costa Rica is very “safe”, but notice many private residences have barred windows, security cameras, armed guards, guardhouses and anti-personnel razor barbed wire fencing atop ornamentally clad secure gates and fences. As we walk around, we are faced by a challenge – How to explain to children in non-disparaging manner why people litter and there is so much trash in many developing countries – they didn’t grow up in the 50s and 60s and experience the mess we had before Lady Bird Johnson’s anti-litterbug highway beautification program which was so successful in changing US habits. In fact, one hazard to be avoided is walking by open bus windows as empty Crystal beer cans come flying out, even at 9:00am.

We also witness “recycling”, developing country style, with a man pushing around his card laden with folded cardboard boxes to resell, and see slash and burn clear cutting of a field in the suburbs. The kids enjoy their first morning in Costa Rica in the hotel pool.

The frenetic blur of activity over the last few weeks will take a while to unwind from and dissipate. We worked to finish home schooling preparation, complete a major real estate transaction (which finally closed at 2:30PM on the Wednesday we left Newton), mass e-mailing and updating databases with new and corrected addresses and trying to get website fully functional. We were incredibly touched by all of our friends and family. We were treated to what will be one of my life highpoints, a fantastic good-bye party with 50 friends (which we choose to believe did not come just for the fantastic food graciously hosted by the Levitts), and many farewell dinners. (We really should make this traveling an annual event!). We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Temple, New Hampshire with our great friends Lisa, Dennis, Molly and Bridget Ferrill, which was a perfect final pre-departure goodbye for the trip.

Our Friday morning departure began for me at 3:00AM with final e-mails, to do lists, e-faxing documents to store on the computer rather than carry around as paper (saving that last 3 ounces of weight), and other pre-departure logistics and organizational challenges. There was a drive to and quick stop at my office to receive several 8AM FedEx packages of last minute technology paraphernalia for our trip, sign documents and checks, and deposit packages sorted out to be left behind or forwarded to us en route, all the while talking on both cell phones. (Our children kept protesting, “Daddy, you said you wouldn’t be so busy on the trip.” I try to get by on the technicality that we are going to the airport, but not yet “on” the trip until will leave on the plane.)

Our luggage tally is a rolling backpack/suitcase and daypack each to suffice3 for 9 months, with replenishment boxes of books, school supplies and other gear, which will be meeting us at various destinations enroute. The children’s’ books in particular are a challenge as we are fortunate that Alex and Katie are voracious readers (and Ben a good listener). Our challenge is to keep them supplied with age and interest appropriate English reading material – which has single-handedly led to a spike in the stock price of Amazon.com and many happy faces at Newtonville Books. Given a choice of encouraging the reading and carrying the weight vs. one more Gameboy Pokemon Gold cartridge, we make the weightier decision.

With all of our hours of training our children and ourselves in basic travel safety – always carry a hotel card and some money, always take the walkie talkie – I, of course, carry nothing and get lost during my first jog of the trip. Fortunately I vaguely remember the name of our hotel and, after a few false starts (everyone wants to be helpful, whether or not they have a clue of the correct answer), I return an hour later.

We rent a car and by 3:00PM are on the road (in a horrible traffic jam getting out of San Jose) heading for our first Costa Rican destination, Manuel Antonio National Park on the Pacific Coast.

As we descend from the mountains to the lowland coastal area, the guardrail protecting us from a precipitous drop of the hillside cliff is made up of fenceposts which have sprouted and grown into trees. Everyone has their own observations – Ben points out the “dead cars” by the side of the road, Katie is fascinated by the brightly colored flowers, and Alex focuses on the narrow, sharply switch backed winding roads cut into the side of cliffs.

November 27, 1999 – 5PM – The Tarcoles Bridge Incident

We said we would have adventures and misadventures; and only 16 hours after arriving in Costa Rica we experience one of the latter. At 5:00PM with only 30 minutes of daylight remaining, we cross the bridge over the Tarcoles River and see a dozen crocodiles in the water, as well as over 50 people who have stopped to watch. We also park by the side of the road, and as we try to use the automatic door locks realize that the car’s power system has somehow failed. We lock the car doors by hand, decide to deal with the electrical problem a few minutes later, and watch the sleeping reptiles warming themselves in the setting sun.

We return to find our back window smashed in and all 3 kids’ daypacks and 2 hip belts stolen. The alarm, which would have alerted us and scared off the thieves, was not functioning because of the electrical failure. We are in shock! Ben is wailing uncontrollably over the loss of Timber, his new stuffed bear given to him by his kindergarten teacher, Lynda Cain. (Timber is Jesse Bear, the class mascot’s, brother.) Katie is crying because of the loss and the fact that the mosquitoes were devouring her. (Crocodiles like stagnant water and swampy areas.) Alex is mostly dumbfounded and concerned about having to sit on the shattered glass in the backseat. Patty is trying to console the kids, clean out the back seat and loudly reminding me that it was getting dark, everyone was leaving the area, we have a car that will not start and DO SOMETHING.

I was dealing with all of this, and my own guilt and concerns over the break-in. (We are very seasoned travelers, how did we ever let this happen? Would this so increase the paranoia level as to kill the trip? Would our own self-doubts be apparent to the children, rather than the self-confidence over travel which we hoped to radiate? Had we waited too long to start the anti-malarial medicine so that there were only a few days, not a full week before the exposure we were presumably receiving as our blood was being feasted on? Was I sure that Costa Rica is “safe”, and that it is only on Guatemalan roads that one worries about bandits after dark?) Meanwhile, I had to figure out what to do about starting the car. The battery seemed clearly dead, absolutely no lights or power to the starter engine. My last automotive maintenance experience was as a Senior in high school 29 years ago, and most recently when purchasing a car I assured the salesman that I didn’t have to look at he engine, I believed him that there was one under the hood.

I resorted to my own method – begging a Tico tour guide to desert the group in his minivan and help us as we were alone and had a broken car and crying children and were totally helpless. (Absolute sincerity really helped!) He had no jumper cables but opened the hood. (I know there was a trick to this car repair stuff!) We saw that the support securing the battery to the car had broken, one of the battery cables had become disconnected from the post and the battery was only being held by the remaining cable. Under the light of our nifty mini-mini key chain lithium light, we used a mix of string from his van and duct tape from our supplies (I knew there was a reason we packed all this stuff) to rig a support “box”, cushioned in place with a bag of half a loaf of fresh bread.

We thanked him profusely and spent the next hour and a half driving through the Costa Rican countryside in the dark with a marginally functional car with glass shards in the back seat and no side window. We drove 30 minutes to Jaco, learned that the hotel we were looking for was only 2 miles from the “scene of the crime” bridge, drove back, and eventually arrived at our destination, Eco Hotel Villa Lapas. As we are checking in we see a sign for “Emergency Fire and Earthquake Instructions, 1 – Please control yourself (Calm), 2- Open your door and leave the room, 3 – Go to the front desk or an open field. Be careful with electrical cables and big trees”.

It’s time to call it a day and go to sleep.

November 28, 1999 – Hotel Villa Lapas

By the next morning much the “shock effect’ seemed to have already worn off, and we wake up to 4 toucans playing high in the canopy above us, watch iridescent blue Morpho butterflies with 4” wingspans, and observe huge lizards scurrying over the red clay roofs.

The thieves had only taken immediately accessible items in the back seat, and did not have the time to go after all of the exposed bags in the open back storage area. We learn from locals that there is an armed guard until 5:00PM to deter the thieves, which are a major problem at the bridge. (Thieves sometimes feed the predatory crocodiles to encourage tourists, their prey, to stop.)

We were missing most of the children’s toys, their journals which had been given to them and lovingly inscribed by their teachers and friends, a week of their home schooling curriculum materials, school and art supplies, the children’s camera, 3 walkie talkies and emergency safety whistles, photo albums of friends, family, home and school, Patty’s tin whistle flute, Alex’s Gameboy and Pokemon cards, Katie’s hand sewn silk purse, harmonica and list of 10 Spanish words per day she is learning, and Timber, Ben’s special bear.

On reflection there were some silver linings. Most importantly no one was hurt, there was no actual threat of physical violence (we are probably at more risk in NY subways), and we were not so shaken by the experienced as to really impact the trip, although we are temporarily deflated. (Alex did suggest that we get cars with 5″ thick windows in the future, Katie says that the thieves stole “the stuff that we took on the trip to make sure we have a good time”, and Ben wanted Mrs. Cain to buy another Timber, but not send it to him so that it would not be stolen.). Most of the kids’ books and schoolwork was not taken. The thieves certainly did not get what they were after – none of the “valuables” including the two computers (which also have hundreds of hours invested in setting them up), the Elph, Elan or digital cameras, or the passports, tickets, travelers checks and cash (all of which I keep in my hip belt and had decided at the last second to take out of the car) were stolen. We were also fortunate that the kids had only started to write in their now missing journals. With the help of good friends back home, who had offered to help us in an emergency, we will replace most of the missing items. In truth, my car was broken into in our driveway in “safe” Newton one night this past May – and we don’t have iguanas, coatis, amazing scenery, or monkeys frolicking in the trees to compensate. The rental car company even decided to waive the charge for the broken window – I would like to believe that was due to their pure good natured concern and kindness, but there may also be an element related to my comments that nothing would probably have been stolen if the battery had not come lose and disabled the alarm system. We post 10,000 colones rewards (“recompensa”) with guards, restaurateurs and two local policemen manning a speed trap. A Tico from San Jose suggests that the rewards might work. His family had a puppy stolen last year, and when a reward was offered, the dog reappeared the next day. As he explains it, everyone knows everyone, including who the thieves are, and if the reward is attractive, you will get your goods back. We post one of our rewards at the Eco Restaurante, where we see 2 drunks “recycling” the excess beer they have been drinking into the plant pots behind the bar

Perhaps the backpacks were thrown into a river and eaten by the crocodiles, converting us to indirect eco-terrorists and not appropriately ending the circle of life for Timber.

We revise some logistics and packing arrangements – copy and ship journals home weekly, pack the computers separately – and continue on our adventure. This experience will definitely help us be more vigilant for the rest of the trip, as we continue to try to create a safe and secure environment in foreign lands for our family.

November 28 – December 2, 1999 – Manuel Antonio National Park, Quepos, Costa Rica.

We trade in our damaged Four Runner for a Corolla station wagon, (a very BAD decision as we almost pull the bottom off the car many times over the next few days) and we drive to Manuel Antonio National Park and our hotel in Quepos.

Tulemar Bungalows consists of 20 hexagonal open air two bedroom cottages set on pillars and wonderfully sited cut into a hillside with fantastic views of the Pacific Ocean. The Bungalow community is growing with new roads through the hillside and down to the beach. (This rapid pace of development is very controversial as it is reducing available habitat. There is an article in The Tico Times, the English language weekly, about over development around Manuel Antonio National Park, which cites a graphic description of a spider monkey electrocuted by high tension lines.) The six San Jose investors who own the development are subdividing and selling off sites, and are planning to build their own vacation homes on the property.

My only “complaint” about our bungalow is that a troop of White Faced Capuchin monkeys frolics loudly outside of our window, so we wake up at 5:30 to a beautiful sunrise!!

A highlight to our visit to Manuel Antonio National Park, located on Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast is a flat-bottom boat ride through the mangrove swamps surrounding Isla Damas (Island of Women) with our Tico guide Leo and his 6-year-old son Leo Jr. (who was too ‘sick’ to attend kindergarten that day-so went out with his dad). We rode through the narrow channels in the tangle of the mangrove tree roots and, in an environment that was eerily remote and primordial, see Jesus Christ Lizards, (so named because it walks on water), a 7 foot boa constrictor coiled in a tree high above us in wait for prey,

We see 5′ diameter termite nests with tunnels criss- crossing the area. (The kids become very good at detecting termite trails up the trees to their nests – maybe we can use them at our house!). We are told that termites generate methane gas, which damages the ozone, but that the termites are not a big problem because predators keep them in check. (Pardon my cynicism regarding Eco PC on an Eco Tour, but last I checked decomposition of leaves and wood (or other organic material) generates methane, as does the much-studied issue of cow flatulence)

We feed White Faced Capuchin monkeys bananas from our boat (not ecologically correct, but a widespread tourist practice in the area-and very exciting.).

In the afternoon we go with the Leos to visit a magnificent waterfall and swim in its deep pools. We pass date palm orchards, and learn that the trees have a 25-year productive life, and then injected to kill them and make room for the new crop. The 1¸-hour drive takes us over many single lane metal deck bridges, converted from single-track railroad bridges originally built in 1934, and never replaced when the railroad bed was replaced with the vehicular road. The bridges have no markers of the edges, many loose planks, no guardrails of any sort, and a little chain link fence 5′ below to theoretically capture a 2000 pound car hurtling into the gully below. We learn about 20 deaths in the last 5 years on one of the more treacherous of the bridges. As Ben says, “Dad, you’re freaking me out”

Leo told us about the time when he was returning with a couple and there were already 12″ of river running over the top of the road surface on the bridge, with the current trying to push him off the side!

We pass a one-room jail which Leo explains is very conveniently located across from the community recreation hall so drunks can dry out overnight. On the local news front, we hear that the body of a murdered Tico was found the night before under a bridge, and Leo explains that the killing was probably a “mistake”.

We have an opportunity to learn about Leo and his family. He has been a guide since 1984, and now plans to sell his land in town (30 meters x 150 meters) and use the proceeds to buy a tractor and cart wagons to be outfitted for tours He has 5 brothers and 4 sisters – and there is a definite ‘brain drain’ going on – 3 have emigrated – a sister married into a wealthy family in Spain (her first airplane trip was from San Jose to Madrid, unaccompanied), a brother is now in North Carolina after 4 years in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and another brother is in Germany.. Leo has been estranged from his wife, who is a paramedic, for the last 4 months, which may help to explain Leo Jr’s presence. (Ticos, in general have a different approach to marriage – men publicly maintain one or more mistresses and their wives will sometimes, albeit more discreetly, have boyfriends.) We also learn a lot about Tico parenting by listening to Leo talk to his 6-¸ year old son. When Leo Jr. complains about something and doesn’t obey we hear “Don’t you understand Spanish!” We also see Leo Jr’s incredible machismo bravery after he steps on a spiny burr and embedded over a dozen needles in his foot. With barely a whimper, he allows his father to remove them with a sharp needle.

We pay 1,000 colones to park the car and for access to the private property. (This certainly represents capitalistic profits for the landowner relative to local living standards. Incomes in Costa Rica are very modest, only 1,500 colones ($6.00) per day for manual laborers and farm workers, and $10-15 per day for skilled tradesmen, clerical and office workers. The official minimum wage is 280 colones (approx $1.00) per hour. Office or hotel management personnel (who generally come from the more sophisticated San Jose) receive $400 – 500 per month.

We learn that this several hundred acres of good cattle land and a 100-foot double waterfall with 3 pools is available for only $180,000 (asking price) – there is no beach access, but you do have your own private waterfalls – in a lush tropical paradise.

The next morning we take a 3 hour guided walk in Manuel Antonio, which has approximately 400 people per day now visiting the park, expected to go to the maximum permitted capacity of 800 at any one time in early December through April, the high season. Those capacities aside, we find a chart in the visitor center indicating visitors per year from 1979-1998, beginning in 1979 at 20,078 visitors, peaked in 1992 at 191,493 visitors and in 1998 had 112,121 visitors. The guide explains that this is partially the result of Hurricane Joanna in 1993, doing damage to the park

We are told the names of dozens of trees in Spanish and barely discernable English. (The names don’t matter – I never remember them anyway.) The experiential learning and garnering an understanding of the interrelationships in the ecosystems is wonderful, as is the fascinating nature trivia. We learn about the Manzinillo Tree, which grows on the beach with its small leaves -highly toxic, making poison ivy seem tame. There is the 2 – 3 foot long Ctenosaur lizard, an omnivore which lives to 15 years old and is also called “chicken of the tree” (even though it mostly live on the ground) because it tastes like chicken. We see mangroves with roots like spider webs, and other roots like duck webs and dinosaur feet. We see “sleeping plants” with purple flowers whose leaves fold up to the touch (even the stems’ vascular system completely collapses to a hard touch.) We learn that the plants close up completely at night and are called sleeping plants not because they appear to go to sleep, but because their leaves are used to make a tea which functions much like Novocain for toothaches and minor surgery. (Alex had watched a video in his class about the plants, and now was seeing them in a natural environment.) We also observe the 4″ Golden Spider – The US Army has done a study which determined that the strands in the Golden Spider’s web are more bulletproof than Kevlar and they are now they are trying to find out how to reproduce it.

We see many huge vines hanging from trees, reminding us of Ben’s comments when he was trying to understand the concept of home schooling on the trip, how mommy and daddy could be the teachers and you could have school without even going to school. Finally he had an inspiration – he asked if we would be going to jungles with vines, connected that to the ropes in his school’s gymnasium, and decided that it would all work out because daddy could be Mr. Carmichael, the physical education teacher, and Ben could climb the vines.

We see two three-toed sloths as barely visible gray masses slowly moving high in the tree canopy. This leads to much binocular shuffling and frustrated children. Half an hour later we happen upon one far below the canopy – very close and very visible, and spend a while watching it ambling slowly up the tree. Our guide explains that three toed sloths approximately 15-20 pounds and 2 feet long, and are diurnal, as opposed to their nocturnal two toed relatives. Three-toed sloths are omnivores preferring the leaves of the Cecropia tree, which looks much like a fig tree, but has a hollow trunk, which fills with water. They and almost always stay in the top of the canopy because they are slow and relatively defenseless against predators on the ground. They only descend to the ground once weekly to defecate. We also learn that they descend to give birth after a 6 month pregnancy, with the mother letting gravity drop the baby 3 feet to the ground as the final “push”, and then goes down picks up the baby and returns to the canopy.

We find and play with “sticky ball” plants, with small pellet like seeds which are covered with a Velcro-like material and used as cheap earrings.

We see hundreds of monarch and other species of butterflies, and look for Bob and Venamoth who were released by Katie’s class after metamorphosing from caterpillars. (No problem with ongoing science education in the rainforest – and I learned something too – Venamoth is apparently a metamorphosed Pokemon character.)

As we watch all of the above as well as leafcutter ants, ginger plants, balsa trees, and innumerable other species of flora and fauna, we deal with our first real “children problem” of the trip – we have to do something about children whining and complaining because it is ‘hot’ in tropical jungles. We keep Ben interested by having him study and chase hermit crabs, but suffer one major melt down. (In fact, our guide points out the word “ben” in Spanish is the imperative for “come on”, a phrase we are using all too frequently on this walk.) We try to rationalize and keep perspective – it is hot and humid, they are hungry and maybe we have been pushing them too hard after the very full previous days – but having children complaining about boredom in a fascinating natural environment doesn’t fit my idealized version of this trip. Activities can work well in keeping our children’s’ attention – but we may all need a poolside break for the afternoon.

An otherwise friendly and nice Atlantan talks about the road situation and suggests that people are “stupid” in developing countries because of their apparent disregard for their own safety walking and bicycle riding on dark roads at night without reflectors or lights. (We are told that the law requires reflectors on bicycles used at night, but have yet to see one reelection of compliance.) Patty lights into him, and I wonder about our society’s self destructive habits of smoking, working too hard under too much stress, and even flying to tropical destinations and basking/baking in the sun despite overwhelming evidence of carcinogenic effects.

We visit Quepos just outside the park, which has “real Costa Rican stores” as well as an excellent fresh pasta shop but far too many pizza restaurants, bars, travel agencies, real estate offices, tour companies, and t-shirt, souvenir and other shops which are the flotsam and jetsam of tourism. There is a tremendous discontinuity in pricing between goods for Gringos and Ticos. We have a $35 pizza lunch, and then stop at a local market for 5 bananas and a fresh pineapple for less than $1.00.

I must comment here about “ECO”. Costa Rica clearly is a naturalist’s paradise, a fact that the Costa Rican government and tourism authorities capitalize on brilliantly. This has the additional benefit of providing strong economic incentive to protect the environment, which is also great (and demonstrates that free enterprise can deliver positive environmental benefits). The overuse of the term “eco” however, is almost comical. Every hotel is eco-something, and then there is the Eco-Fan Travel Agency, the sign for “Hand Painted T-Shirts – the best collection of Ecological Designs in Costa Rica”, the “Canopy Safari, the Ultimate Eco-Adventure”, “Eco-fun” from Estrella Tours, and the television crews we see covering the Eco Challenge – a race from san Jose involving mountain biking, kayaking, swimming a river and racing up a mountain. (We still haven’t found the slogan which is surely out there somewhere – Eco-Sex-do it in the Canopies with the monkey). There is an article about a lawsuit in The Tico Times by a company who is claiming ‘ecoturismo” as its trademark and trying to force Yahoo and other search engines to screen out sites which “violate” its copywrite.

The summary of the first 5 days of our trip – fantastic and intense. We have had incredible fascinating experiences in this brief time – I have been capturing my thoughts on a cassette recorder, and then transcribing and organizing (only somewhat, obviously) into this journal. I have been so busily dictating into this machine that the kids are teasing me that it is my girlfriend and I must “love it” – Alex accuses me of going on a date each time I use it. I may not be able to write well, so I will write a lot. I will leave to Patty timely (which must be a first) updates; I will try to fill in my own impressions and details.

Hasta Luego

December 8, 1999 - Dick (Osa Penisula, Costa Rica and Other Reflections)

First an explanation about this Journal and the other postings I will be doing on the website. This is being posted a month after it was first written, and I have reached the conclusion that rather than attempting to achieve literary perfection (or at least a level of clarity which makes this easily readable) I am opting for actually posting my notes with minimal editing. I apologize for the staccato and sometimes disjointed nature of what follows, but these are “real time” impressions and notes. I call this “All the news – uncut, uncensored, unedited and unorganized”

December 2, 1999 – Puerto Jimenez and Carate, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica

We met Dara, a 24-year-old American recent University of Michigan at Ann Arbor grad who is teaching English at a rural school in the area. There are a total of 46 children from Grades 1-6 in the one room school with 2 teachers. She tells us that there is no library or reading material for the children, and that when the class saw a world globe they were disappointed that Costa Rica was so small. The biggest challenge the teachers face is that the children do not view activities like reading as something recreational or pleasurable, but work to be done; Dara tells us that when they see her reading a book they ask her what she is studying. Dara further explains a problem she had with a 9 year old first grade girl we met, who like many of the children is held back several times, but faced an additional problem. Her mother, a local prostitute, is illiterate and has pulled her daughter out of school several times. (Education is ‘compulsory’, but apparently enforcement is lax.)

We visited the main elementary school in Puerto Jimenez, Escuela Central, with individual classrooms of 25-28 for each grade. There are 2 sessions to make more efficient use of the classrooms – 7:30AM – 12:00PM and 12:30PM to 5:00PM. There is even a classroom for children with special needs. Katie points out that at the school they don’t have art, gym, music or a library, like ours. Their playground, however, has leafcutter ants running across it.

Children’s reflections – Ben asks why some of the houses are made out of “strange stuff” (scraps of wood, metal, etc.). We carefully explain that it is because the people do not have money so they use what is available, but they are still proud and keep their homes very neat. (The homes and small gardens are generally well kept, and the school children are immaculately clean in their starched blue uniforms) Katie is clearly getting into the local “scene” – she is talking about repainting the maple tree in her room at home, replacing the bunny, raccoon, squirrel, turtle with and coati, iguana, and parrot and a termite nest in a mangrove or palm tree.

Tops of trees red with scarlet macaws, which burst forth with 2′ wingspans, toucans, white-faced capuchin monkeys, Alex reporting seeing a jaguar running behind our bedroom window. Iridescent neon blue birds, 2′ long iguanas, storks, egrets, cranes, hummingbirds and cows.

At Lookout Inn on the remote Osa Peninsula we are pretty much incommunicado – they have marine band radio communication for emergencies, but no telephone or cell phones for logistical arrangements general communication or e-mail. (We had decided against Iridium and satellite phones for weight and cost.) The logistical issues have to be handled by our hosts with a weekly 2-hour drive over the “Suicide Safari” road into Puerto Jimenez to access phones and e-mails. They are working with Motorola to get cellular reception by attaching a new type of Yaggi antenna to a cell phone and then, with only a 35-minute hike with cell phone and notebook computer in hand, through the rainforest to a ridge where they can set up a remote “office” (a wooden table and chair) on a nearby mountaintop. A bit more cumbersome than multiline speakerphones on your desk, but incredibly more scenic than gray fabric cube walls (if only the scarlet macaws and spider monkeys don’t get too distracting).

Elias the caretaker catches 2 fish in the surf, a 24-pound “robalo” (snook) and Jack Crevahlly. He uses no rod, merely a coil/reel of fishing line with a lure and hook, which he throws like a lariat out into the ocean. One cannot doubt the efficacy of the Tico method, but Elias does have gashes on his hand from pulling in the line against fighting fish. Thee fish are actually visible in the translucent blue waters of the cresting waves

The 26 mile drive out to Lookout Inn from Puerto Jimenez, dubbed the Simon Suicide Safari across 2-3 foot deep raging rivers and barely navigable with our large taxi truck. Just out of Puerto Jimenez we pass small red tin roofed houses built on stilts to combat the frequent flooding from the rainstorms and then we pass Lapas Rios (Parrot River), A Rainforest Eco-Lodge

The rainy season included 20 feet of rain, during which roads were completely washed out, a 15-acre patch of privately owned land fell off a cliff into the ocean. In November alone, 88.8″ of rain fell, including 10.6″ in one day. The road had actually been closed for a week, and Ticos on their donkeys would set out at 6AM to meet the collectivo (local taxi) from Puerto Jimenez at the totally impassable stream, load up on rice, beans, salt and sugar, and return home in the driving rains by nightfall.

As I take and early morning jog, a donkey pulled cart with Corocovado Lodge carved into its side is my only companion on the beach.

Corcovado Tent Camp, owned by Michael Kaye’s Costa Rican Expeditions, brilliant eco-marketing, a beautiful setting, with a very marginal institutional feeling product with twin bedded foam mattresses set on wooden tables which are slightly smaller than the mattresses, no fans or electricity, 20 feet apart. A few are nicely sited on the hillside, but most are closely packed in 2 rows along the beach. All have communal bath and showers, no fans (no electricity) and a communal dining pavilion. It is in a beautiful setting, and far better than nothing, but with the alternative of Lookout Inn available at virtually the same price, there is no reason for anyone to stay in the tent camp – it is not a “more natural” experience with dense packing of the tents- at Lookout Inn we have open screen windows, listen to animals and insects all night anyway, with extremely personalized service, gourmet meals, great information (both Tico and American), fully stocked library – books about Costa Rica flora, fauna, other tourism, alternative health and relaxing beach-reading novels.

Fully solar powered house, which generates 2-amp/hour even in heavy rains with a Trace inverter for 120-volt power. It was cut out of the jungle only 3 years ago, and now has 30′ banana trees, pineapples,

Terry, ex-Rainsoft Distributor w/ 23 employees left with concerns about lawsuits (from customers, employees), and in disgust with OJ Simpson trials, Clinton’s escapades and the media and public’s obsession with them, and finally with the famous McDonald’s $700,000 hot coffee burn verdict

Wendy went to Anchorage at 18 years old during the pipeline construction boom and spent 25 years there, then Santa Fe, and now Costa Rica, a continuation of the adventurous spirit, albeit in a very different climate.

They came to Costa Rica for a 6 week backpacking trip (which plan rapidly changed realizing that backpacking in tropical humidity and heat is neither for the faint of heart of the sane, found this location, purchased the lease on the land from the government from the former owner (the lease payment is only $100.year – all of the value is in the lessee’s position and the leasehold pricing trades like fee interest.)

The local children horseback ride to school

On the beach we find turtle tracks, turtle egg nest remain (ravaged by local dogs and Ticos) and watch monkeys peering from the trees above.

Amazingly again, and despite my concerns and worries, we are not assaulted by insects, although there are active no-see-ums at dusk and dawn, and everyone is worried about turning on lights and attracting them.

We are reminded that we are definitely in the rainforest jungle as Terry tells us of last seeing his rooster as a football sized lump swelling the stomach of a boa constrictor hanging from the rafters of his chicken coop.

Morning jogs remind me of moving to Houston 20 yrs ago-the scenery much is more spectacular, the flora and fauna fascinating, the heat more oppressive, and the body less youthfully resilient. Every small slithering sound in the grass surrounding the path I am running on has me wondering if that is one of the 17 species of venomous snakes in Costa Rica – we’re not in Kansas anymore.

One of the most amazing things about traveling is the incredible experiences you have in compressed timeframes – December is ecotourism and environment, next month Latin American Culture and history, then comparative religions (Hinduism v. Buddhism) and natural scenery, etc.

Several friends write to us, assuming we would rather be safe than sorry, about the US State Department Dept. Warning of Holiday Terrorism “The State Department announced today that it had received ”credible information” about plans for terrorist attacks against American citizens from now until the beginning of next year. The department released what it called a ”worldwide terrorism…” Apparently the threats are mostly focused on Rome and Israel -we actually have not seen much in the way of world news. Hopefully most of the places we are going are obscure enough that terrorists would be concerned they would not get the media attention they presumably are seeking, and in any case we are avoiding the really Hot Spots. (We were going to transit through Seattle to go to Bangkok, but now will be in the much safer LAX).

Dec 28th 1999 – I am using this trip a research expedition into the 8 degrees of separation theory. Yesterday at Tikal I met someone who lives in the house in West Hartford that my best friend from college grew up in – so who know what the true degree of separation really is!!

Dec 30th 1999 – Guatemalan Quetzales lost 5% of their value this week when a new right wing president was elected!! (Actually, he was a former communist leader, has admitted to killing 2 people while in exile in Mexico, and is probably most kindly described as an “opportunist”)

Jan 2nd, 2000 – We are having a FANTASTIC TIME – Christmas was in Chichicastenango, Guatemala and the Millennium a 15 course Chinese banquet (by “a Jewish guy from Philadelphia”) at Lake Atitlan (accurately dubbed by Aldous Huxley “the most beautiful lake in the world”).

We all miss our friends and family, but other than that this trip could continue for a REALLY LONG TIME and I would be perfectly happy. One of my favorite things about traveling is the constant stimulation – one day it is nature and environment, the next Mayan culture in the ruins in Tikal, and then a day with Guatemalan businessmen to learn their perspective on the current economic and political situation here, and then a day in the market -seeing beautiful arts and crafts and having a great time bargaining. Plus the family time is usually fantastic (I have less patience with misbehavior from the kids than Patty, but they have generally been great – and are wonderful travelers who seem to be getting a tremendous amount out of all of this traveling, in addition to having a great time)

On the logistics of “Staying Connected” – the following is a copy of a recent e-mail to FEDEX “I am currently in Costa Rica, will be leaving shortly for Guatemala and then throughout Asia and Africa for 9 months. I want to send magnetic dictation tapes, exposed film and computer disks (along with a range of other documents, packages, etc) via FedEx back to my office in the United States. I am concerned that magnetic or x-ray security devices you may use might damage some of the material I am sending, which is IRREPLACEABLE. Please comment on the above, do you offer a premium service where goods are only hand inspected, will lead shielding help (it will against x-rays for the film, I do not know about the magnetic exposure problem for the disks and tapes. Thank you very much for your prompt response, as I would like to send the first package as soon as possible.” I had heard horror stories of packages which are sent internationally being magnetically screened for security and tape recorder tapes and floppy disks and digital film accidentally erased or damaged. WHAT TO DO TO AVOID THIS PROBLEM. (I also wrote Airborne Express and DHL to find out if they have a service which guarantees that we will not have a problem) The solution turned out to be simple – just indicate on the International Airway Bill “Do Not Scan” and put appropriate warning labels on the packages.

I write to Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com “Is there any way to order from you by e-mail. We are traveling internationally for 9 months, want to order books, have access to e-mail but web access is frequently difficult in several of the developing countries we are visiting. We are frequent customers of yours, and have one click ordering enabled. I would be perfectly happy to order “blind” without confirming pricing.” (Only Amazon responds-but they can’t do it.)

Dick’s Unedited Costa Rica Journal

December 17, 1999 - Alex, Katie, and Ben (Costa Rica)

As we prepare to leave Costa Rica tommorow, we wanted to let you know that we are doing wonderfully and have had fantastic experiences, which we will be posting shortly.

A note of explanation as to the reason that Dec 2 was the last website entry from Patty and/or Dick (although a photo gallery should go up shortly). Dick’s reason (excuse) for the delay in new postings is that I am dictating my tomes and Fedexing the tapes back to the United States (clearly marked Do Not Scan), where they are transcribed and e-mailed back to me for editing, and finally forwarding to the Webmaster for posting. This may sound cumbersome, but it actually should work well and allow me to capture experiences, information and thoughts as they occur. (The kids tease me that the micro cassette recorder is my “girlfriend” because I “love” it so much and spend so much time talking to it.) In addition, this saves me a lot of time and which I will actually be able to spend traveling and enjoying the trip, rather than typing, and still post detailed “contemporaneous” notes to the site, if not in perfectly “real time”. As to Patty’s reason, I think that it has something to do with working on an article about our experiences on the Osa Peninsula, home schooling, traveling, picture editing and annotating, providing graphic support on the new map, etc., and she will get an update posted shortly.

The following are e-mails that Alex, Katie and Ben sent to their classmates, friends and family about their experiences in and thoughts about Costa Rica.

From Alex:

Dear Everybody,

I am having a great trip other than the theft.

Right now I am in Tortuguero which is on the Caribbean side of Costa Rice. The lodge is called Mawamba Lodge. I got there first on a bus through a Banana Plantation. It was very interesting. They put blue plastic bags around the bananas for many different reasons. Reason #1 Blue does not attract bugs Reason #2 It doubles the heat and humidity which makes the plant grow bigger and faster. This plantation was owned by Del Monte, which has a lot of different canned goods in the grocery store. It was an hour and half drive. On the road we saw a three-toed sloth. Here are a few facts that I don’t think you know. Our guide said a sloth could starve to death on a full stomach. He has no teeth just bones in his mouth to break up leaves. He barely even breaks up the leaves so when they get to his stomach, they are basically whole. The way his digestion system works is it requires solar energy to warm his stomach to make acid to digest the leaves. If it is overcast His body temperature will not produce acid and he won’t be able to digest his food and he could starve. He moves very slowly and comes out in the day. His cousin, the two-toed sloth comes out at night. When we reached the boat dock, we got a snack before we went on the two and one-half hour boat ride. The snack was fresh watermelon, coconut, pineapple and banana. There was a Parrot that was tame and sat on my sister’s shoulder. I got on the boat and saw crocodiles, immature little blue herons, caimans, turtles, and one river otter. We got to Tortuguero and had a late lunch. We went on a boat ride to the local town and went to a pastry shop and a gift shop. After that, I went back on the beach and at 6:30pm I saw a slide show about Tortuguero. The next day I went on 2 boat rides and saw spider monkeys, black howler monkeys, huge iguanas laying in the branches of trees. And great green Macaws that are said to have only twenty pairs of them in this area. I met kids that were visiting from Dallas originally living in Israel.

We are leaving Costa Rica in a few days and have really enjoyed it.

My favorite place was: Look out Inn on the Osa Peninsula because the people who owned it were very nice and great cooks and spoke English. I celebrated by birthday there. On my birthday I went panning for gold and had a giant bonfire on the beach where we roasted really cheap marshmallows. My birthday cake was homemade and was a checkerboard with spice cake and vanilla cake. And they let me pick my dinner which was really good pasta. I got some real gold.

The meal I could live on here is called Gallo Pinto, which is rice and beans. I eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I will send you an animal list in a few days. We are also putting in new web site pictures showing an overview of our trip.

Thank you for all the emails. Have a nice nine months.

Alex Simon

From Katie

Hi Everybody in my Class,

It rains too much in TORTEGUERO!

Torteguero means “the land of the turtles”. This is where the green sea turtles come and nest but not this time of year.

I got here by boat. There are no roads but there is a really good swimming pool. I found tadpoles by the side of the pool and I tried to put them into a glass of water (without chlorine in it). The hotel has a tank where bigger tadpoles are. We put the tadpoles in the tank. Only half the tadpoles survive because half of them fall into the dirt, which is right next to the side of the pool.

Yesterday we went out on a boat with a guide at 3 pm to look for animals. You know what? We found a lot of them. Their names were· Howler Monkeys, a sloth that looked green, and a lot of very big orange iguanas laying the trees. We saw a caiman, which is a little crocodile. And our guide picked up a black river turtle. I saw a grasshopper peel its skin.

The lizards are my favorite things. There are a lot of them except for when it is raining all the time. We try to pick up the lizards (and sometimes frogs because some of them are poisonous). The red-eyed tree frog jumped on Ben and scared him. I found a red-eyed tree frog that was mating.

I made clothes for my stuffed animal, “Monkey”.

I am doing my schoolwork.

There are walkways that have thatched roofs made out of palm trees. And I think you know why already· RAIN! We have been swimming in the pool in the rain. The rain is warmer than the pool.

We are leaving Costa Rica soon.

My favorite place in Costa Rica was the Look-out Inn on the Osa Peninsula. If anybody went to Costa Rica, forget about staying in the Corcovado Tent Camp. I liked it because of the fresh made food and the Scarlet Macaws flying ten feet away from me. They had the best dogs. There names are Barney Squeeze Me, Smoky and Cocoa (Cocoa smells really bad). We made a fort out of sticks and palm tree leaves on the beach. On Alex’s birthday (Dec. 5) we made a big bonfire on the beach. We went panning for gold and I found the second biggest piece.

The things I will remember about Costa Rica are the Scarlet Macaws, the monkeys, the vegetation, the coatis (a raccoon-like animal), and the Heart of Palm, the coconuts, the fresh fruit, rice and beans and “Barney Squeeze Me”.

When we were waiting for the boat two days ago, there was a parrot that sat on my shoulder. I am going to send you pix of it along with my list of animals we saw in Costa Rica.

Thank you for all the emails.

From your friend, Katie Simon

From Ben:

Dear Everybody in the Class and Mrs.Cain,

Scarlet macaw
I miss everybody in my class.
Are you having fun in school?
I typed this by myself.

I am swimming, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at Mwamba Lodge and the only way to get to it is by boat. It is on the Caribbean side where the green sea turtles come to nest but not this time of year.

I saw a volcano. In 1 in the morning, it exploded with shooting out red hot rock bouncing down the side. It looked like a volca to me. You could hear it popping and sizzling. It does not flow out like lava in Hawaii but shoots out boulders that takes two months to cool.

We saw hummingbirds that when they move there wings so fast you cannot even see them and they are stopped in mid-air to feed with long beaks on flowers. Some were purple, orange or blue.

I am sending you a long list of animals that Alex, Katie, and Mom and I have put together so we can remember everything we saw before we go to Guatemala.

My favorite thing about Costa Rica is seeing all the animals, birds and insects. Oh, and also amphibians and reptiles.

My favorite food is beans with rice, watermelon juice and plantains.

My favorite places in order were:

1. The Lookout Inn on the Osa Peninsula – you could see toucans and scarlet macaws from the dining room. I liked the whole house and the little swimming pool.

2. Mwamba Lodge in Tortugeuro on the Carribean – they have really bad bugs that sting you.

I like everything about Costa Rica!!!
Love, Your Friend, Ben

PS I hope Jesse Bear has a good school year. I have drawn him a few pictures and will be sending them to you. And I hope everybody in my class has a good school year.

Please email me back.
And please tell everybody in my class to have a good Christmas or holidays. Tell me what you did on your break from school.

December 20, 1999 - Alex, Katie, and Ben (Animals We Saw in Costa Rica)

Mammals

• Jaguar

• Black Howler Monkey

• Mantled Howler Monkey

• White-faced Capuchin Monkey

• Squirrel Monkey

• Spider Monkey

• Agouti

• Coati

• River Otter

• Three-toed Sloth

• Two-toed Sloth

Birds

• Great Kiskadee

• Scarlet Macaw

• Great Green Macaw

• Montezuma Oro Pendelum

• Cattle Egret

• Snowy Egret

• Western Sandpiper

• Chest Mandible Toucan

• Blue-grey Tanager

• Social Flycatcher

• Squirrel Cuckoo

• Bare-throated Tiger Egret

• Lineated Woodpecker

• Orange-chinned Parakeet

• Little Blue Heron

• White-fronted Parrot

• Rufuos-tailed Hummingbird

• Tri-colored Heron

• Roseate Spoonbill

• Passerini’s Tanager

• Great Blue Heron

• Brown Pelican

• Cinnamon Hummingbird

• Fiery billed Aracari

• Mangrove Swallow

• Yellow-headed Caracara

• Ruddy ground Dove

• Amazon Kingfisher

• Ringed Kingfisher

• Anhinga

• Black Vulture

• Osprey

• Roadside Hawk

• Turkey Vulture

Insects

• Leaf Cutter Ants

• Army Ants

• Bullet Ants

• Owl Butterfly

• Morpho Butterfly

• Zebra Long-winged Butterfly

• Spotted Longwing Butterfly

• Postman Longwing Butterfly

• Cappuchino Butterfly

• Malachite Butterfly

• Yellow-patch Longwing Butterfly

• Tiger Butterfly

• Monarch Butterfly

• Leaf Mimic Butterly

• See-through Butterfly

• Flies

• Beetles

• Assasin Beetl

• Scorpion

• Mosquitoes

• No-see-ums

• Walking Sticks

Fish

• Goldfish

• Little Jumping Fish

• Osa Fish

Reptiles

• Spectacled Caiman

• American Crocodile

• Jesus Christ Lizard

• Black River Turtle

• Green Iguana

• Emerald Basilisk

• Bronze-backed Common Skink

• Boa Constrictor

• Eyelash Palm Pitviper

• Tropical Night Lizard

• Ctenosaur Lizard

Amphibians

• Poison Dart Frog (Black and Lime)

• Poison Dart Frog (Red and Navy)

• Red-eyed Tree Frog

• Green see-through Frog

• Brown frogs

• Tadpoles

• Turtles

December 19-21, 1999 - Ben (Guatemala)

December 21, 1999

Dear Mrs. Cain,

I am having a good time in Guatemala. Yesterday we went to the market in this place [Antigua]. There was food, toys and Christmas stuff. The people sewed their clothes really interesting and they carry stuff on top of their head and they don’t even use their hands and they have a flat hat so that the things don’t fall off of the top of their head. I got a Tintin book and it is in Spanish and my daddy speaks Spanish so he can read it to me. I got a cell phone, and my mommy got these little things (Plaster cr˛che pieces). After the market we all had dinner in the room and we cooked it ourselves and it was great. Before that we went and got bread

This morning we can see a volcano from my room with ice and snow on the top. The lava would melt the ice when it shoots out, but my dad says that it is not working any more [inactive] so there will not be any lava.

Daddy is having a hard time on the computer and he says I can’t use Mathblaster now because it is making a problem with the computer and he is trying to fix it. I am telling him that it is not that Mathblaster is making the problem.

Ben

December 19, 1999

Dear Mrs. Cain,

This is the journal I am writing on my last night in Costa Rica. My favorite thing in Costa Rica is jaguar. I didn’t see a jaguar but my brother did at the Lookout Inn. Lookout Inn was a place you stay. The longest you would stay is for a week, or you would get tired of it. It had a swimming pool and 3 doggies, Smoky, Barney and Coco. When you didn’t know them, they bark at you. At lookout Inn I went horseback riding and I went swimming and I played with the doggies and I made a fort on the beach with my sister and my daddy. My brother and my mom were taking a walks. I saw scarlet macaws, but my daddy didn’t take a picture of a scarlet macaw. The colors were blue and red and yellow and green. We also took a hike and saw a beautiful view of the Ocean and the lagoon that had crocodiles that we didn’t see but we tried to. We did see alligators and crocodiles at another place and we saw great green macaws.

We also saw monkeys. There were squirrel monkeys, white face capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys and spider monkeys.

The most interesting thing I learned was vines grow up, not down, and you cant’ swing on vines, like I thought you could (but you can swing on the peapod vine things). I saw vines all over – they are everywhere- even in the places I stay.

The most dangerous thing was the bullet ant. It can’t kill you but it can make you throw up for 2 days and have a fever. But the most dangerous thing I ever saw was a shark in the aquarium in Boston, but that doesn’t count – that counts in my Newton journal.

My favorite place was Lookout Inn because I saw scarlet macaws and toucans and a so, so shiny bright beetle and hummingbirds and I saw a beautiful moon. It was a full moon.

My favorite person was Terry at Lookout Inn, because he called me Gus and Snort and Dan and he was a real joker, he jokes around with kids all the time.

I am having a good, good time on my big long trip

I beat Mathblaster on the computer when we were in Tortuguero, where we went on cool boat rides, but sometimes it wasn’t so interesting when it was raining, and I saw turtles for the only time, so far, on my trip.

We are going to go to Guatemala tomorrow. This is the last day in Costa Rica, and I am very sad because love Costa Rica but maybe I will love Guatemala, so it is not so bad.

Ben

December 29, 1999 - Patty (Guatemala)

The Pencil Man

GUATEMALA STORIES – DEC. 1999 – JAN 6, 2000

We saw him alone in the convent.
We saw him again in the market.c We met him walking from the shrineá and after only a few moments of conversation, I noticed little children coming up from nowhere as if they knew him. They would put their little hands out and ask (with big smiles on their faces), forá not candy or money but PENCILS! He would very nonchalantly reach into his side pocket and pull out all sorts of used but good pencils, pens or markersá writing implements that we take so for granted but necessary if any of these children wanted to enter school on January 6. No pencil – no admittance, it is that simple and because many of their parents could not afford such luxuries, Doug, our new found friend, a teacher from Austin, Texas, wanted to do something about it.
“Why?” I said. He looked like a tourist just like us and even though you see people or situations that you wish you could change or help with, you usually just keep walking. Well, the obvious reason was that ironically he teaches ‘English as a Second Language – ESL’ to Spanish speaking immigrants and middle schoolers in Austin and he understands the importance of education – even if it means just learning enough English or Math to sell in the famous market in Chichicastenango to tourists who come to buy all the beautiful handmade fabrics, masks and stonework.
But another reason we found much more interesting. As we stood and chatted, we discovered that Doug was celebrating his 13th Christmas in Chichi and he started coming here with his grandparents when he was younger. He has become very knowledgable on all the folk art and has inherited a collection of ‘Santos’ – antigue, carved and painted wooden status of various saints. Doug soon accompanied us on our buying sprees and taught us the difference between art done for the “tourist trade” and real “antique” art.
We shopped with Doug, ate Christmas Eve dinner with Doug and talked about Texas history with Doug. Since I originally came from Texas I was very interested to talk about Texas History but somehow managed to skip it in school because we kept moving every few years due to oil company reorganizations. Doug’s ancestors were one of the first 300 to settle near Galveston with Stephen F. Austin after the famous Alamo battle.
Because of our mutual Texas upbringing, Doug said he was very happy to meet us and soon became a “friend of our family”. On Christmas Eve, Doug knocked on our door and said we must follow him to see something so special to Guatemalaá a ‘Posada’. After we finally found 5 pairs of shoes sprawled all over our room, we got to the plaza and went up and down the streets with Doug looking for the procession. He told us we would hear it before we saw it since drums and flutes were involved. We almost gave up when Alex, Katie and Ben were becoming very scared of dodging the flying firecrackers in the streets. But then, we saw it. A local family with the children and grandparents carrying a wooden shrine of the Virgin Mary and Joseph decorated with silver tinsel and fake poinsettas. Everyone’s faces were dimly lit by the glowing candles in their hands. I asked Doug where they were going and he told me they were re-enacting the night that Mary and Joseph went from inn to inn looking for a place to stay and only finding a stable to give birth to Jesus on Christmas Eve. As the family stopped at the corner, we politely asked if we could take a picture of them. They smiled and immediately insisted we follow them and invited us “into” their home where we found a Christmas tree all lit up. They served us homemade tamales with a very ‘sweet’ hot fruit wassail drink that Doug had said was traditional to Guatemala. He helped us along some polite conversation, a few jokes and our question about whether or not a little red statue of Santa meant that Guatemalan children also “believe”! With Doug, we were able to enter into another level of travelá connecting as a friend and even as a part of a family! We thanked our hosts, shook hands with the men and hugged the women and went “home” to the Mayan Inn to wait for Santa Claus.
We have met many interesting fellow travelers, each having their own story of what brings them to Guatemala from all over the world. But Doug was an example of someone who connects with the culture on a familial level. He connects in many ways we were soon to discover. He stays at a local family-owned small hotel where they insisted he join them to share their evening meals with them. He has befriended 2 young men who showed a lot of artistic talent. When we met Doug he had a set of Prismacolor pencils and watercolor brushes he wanted to give them and told us that in his last visit he even showed them how to use ‘perspective’ to render the churches in the plaza for an art show he encouraged them to enter. They invited us into their “studio” and their uncle’s sandal making room and ended up giving us a pair of homemade sandals to take with us. Doug is also a good photographer and has captured the richness of the culture through the beautiful faces of the people he befriends. His photography can be seen in shows in Texas.
On our last day together, Doug had come from the Chichi cemetery, a very colorful place to go, where he was visiting a group of local orphan children who make it their home. He said that next Christmas he was going to bring them each a towelá something they had seen him use to wipe his camera lense. They had felt its softness and wished for one of their own. Doug will make that small wish come true.
On meeting Doug, the Pencil Man, we began our visit to Chichicastenango as observers and ended our stay as friends to many Guatemalansá we left not shaking hands but hugging and kissing everyone goodbye! Thanks, Doug!

January 4, 2000 - Patty (Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala)

As I have written, landing in Guatemala almost brought me to tears because I love seeing indigenous people in traditional lifestyles. We land in Guat City and see women in those beautiful woven fabrics with babies strapped to their backs and carrying ON THEIR HEADS with no hands big jugs of water or baskets of market goods. WOW!!! The kids loved it. OR, the brightly painted “old” yellow school buses that are used for local transport filled to the brim and piled on top with everything imaginable. (We saw a few over the mountain roads being pulled up with a crane. The roads are steep and as you can well imagine, the brakes are old!!!

Went to Antigua… beautiful and reminds me of Santa Fe or Cortona, Italy… very sophisticated and totally restored in the Spanish tradition. Women were bathing topless in the plaza fountains and washing on stone slabs their clothes. Immediately bought a folk art clay nativity crèche complete with Adam and Eve and local figurines selling veggies, etc. Went on to Chichicastenango for Christmas… fantastic… arrived with a million fireworks going off and major festivals but the kids were so scared of the firecrackers that we did not get to the plaza. Highlights… meeting The Pencil Man (short story to come on website), on Christmas Eve following down the streets a Posada (family with candles carrying a shrine of Mary and Joseph all decorated) and we were invited into their house for homemade tamales and hot fruit wassail. The mass would have been fascinating (a mix of Quiche Mayan and Catholic tradition) but it started at 9 pm (after long days!) and lasted 3 hours standing up as they do the high mass in Quiche and Spanish!!! This is the kind of decision that I think keeps us on a steady course (meaning by not going and “missing” it, we had a nice day the next day!) Santa did find Alex, Katie and Ben and we stayed at a beautiful “Mayan Inn” oldest hotel in Chichi with courtyard full of scarlet macaws and green parrots, beautiful grounds, an attendant that is assigned to you and does anything… fireplaces in both rooms of our suite… old antique Spanish furniture… we got a plastic tree (we could not find a real one and I believe it is because of the deforestation that you see all around you and the fact that people are still going into the forests to cut firewood for heat and cooking) and decorated it all up with lights, We set up the nativity set all around it on top of a piece of beautiful woven fabric I bought in the market.  We even had turkey and dressing and a big dinner with the Pencil Man, a couple from the Lake District in England which we hung with for days, a local guy Juan, who had an amazing story of being sent to Miami by his very poor young mother from Chichi and the family in Florida kept him as a foster child for 17 years… now he is in San Francisco, highly educated and very dedicated to his sweet mom. Another hotel we ate Char. Eve dinner in had gorgeous big fresh fruit wreaths and garlands that just wouldn’t quit. I kept staring at them all night.

The market in Chichi was really amazing and you would have died laughing at Dick who does not want to spend any money on anything. Get him in his old exporting days… a market and 100 of each item later with a great deal made. We have bought lots of old masks… fabrics and embroidered guipilies (blouses), hammock chairs, etc. We are going to have to add a wing to our house to display this or have a great sale!!!

Now, for the New Years story…

I have found that it always takes a little adjustment time to get in the groove of a place and we seem to arrive in places at night when I cannot see anything. It is very disorienting for me. Well. We had lunch with a YPO family in Antigua (more on this later… WOW!) and drove on windy tm. roads for 3 hrs and Katie pumped up on Dramamine and arrived in Santiago Atitlan on a lake surrounded by several volcanoes, which are steep. It is spectacularly beautiful… all the women washing on stones in the lake (reminded me of Varanasi, the Ganges River in India), the men in embroidered calf length woven cowboy pants, an unusual type of one person fishing boat and everyone carrying big water jugs on their heads because the city pump stopped working. The Posada Inn told us that they were full but they would give us a house (casa) next door. Sounded good to us… even when we arrived on New Years Eve… the house looked like a mansion (the kids exclaimed) but and this is a big but… the house was barely livable, not maintained, no hot water… some of the toilets don’t work… the lighting switches hiss when you turn them on so you turn them off before it explodes. There is broken glass, threadbare furniture, filthy kitchen … need I say more and it was the millennium so we were thinking of everyone and what everybody else was doing. I try to buck up. The beds were clean and the baths were clean… the inn was having a 15 course Chinese Meal cooked by a chef from Antigua and it was really delicious. There was also a live band, which was festive, and fun and I met a Japanese anthropologist who is studying this culture. There was a padlock on the back door and major theft so we kept everything locked up. We had a great meal… turned in and I played cards with the kids and we woke up at Midnight to the sound of yet another million firecracker exploding and off our little balcony the kids oohed and ahhed. We had gotten through to my parents and they were telling us they had been watching Peter Jennings and all around the world all the celebrations. We wanted to call everyone but no telephones were accessible. I have to say it was bittersweet. The house was very depressing and this place is very remote feeling… a million miles from home. But, I realized that here we all were together, having such an intimate family time, the kids were very flexible about it all and since that night we have moved to a beautiful suite in the inn and had a fabulous time. It is funny how things happen. I wanted us to have this amazing New Years and that particular day some things did not gel. But I realize there is always a silver lining and for me it was that we were on this amazing adventure and we are enjoying it so much… the culture, the food, the interaction with all sorts of people but mostly the time we have spent together.

So I am writing this in the year 2000 (I keep telling the kids that when I was little I thought the year 2000 was like Star Trek, so far away!!! and here we are!), very content and happy to be meeting all the great people on this earth and seeing some amazing sights and being with my family in a way we will never have again. I really cannot even believe we are fortunate enough to do this. I keep stopping exclaiming to Dick, Can you believe this? I need to pinch myself all the time. And, the kids seem to be really enjoying all this.

Other sights worth mentioning is a side trip to the great Mayan City of Tikal set in the jungle and really amazing to climb 150 steps up to temples that many others went to their death as human sacrifice. I am reading a great historical fiction called “Aztec” all about the Mexican ancient culture and I had the kids spellbound in the middle of the plaza telling great tales from the book. They especially loved the blood and gore.

We were invited by 2 couples that collect Latin American art to their private Casa in Antigua with inner courtyards and fountains and antiques and ate a delicious lunch. We found out that they were spending New Years Eve with our Newton neighbors, Bill and Barb Fash who run the Mayan sight, Copan in Honduras. We are meeting Bill and Barb in two days and can’t wait to learn all about the ancient Mayans.

I could go on and on but will stop as I am getting tired. Happy New Year!

January 6, 2000 - Patty (Guatemala)

Guatemala – THE PAST – January 6, 2000

When you fly into Guatemala City, you first see the “new development” of the country – all the American companies doing business and bringing modern merchandise and equipment. Then, you see the local buses and you realize that ‘once upon a time’ these buses were yellow schoolbuses from the USA – colorfully painted with a rack put on top to hold all the local peoples baskets and bundles of vegetables and handicrafts for market. You glance around at all the people dressed in “western” clothes and than magically, you notice a beautiful Mayan woman with her sculptured bronze features as if you were studying one of the Mayan stone carvings found in an ancient pyramid 1000 years ago. She is in “full garb” – woven and embroidered ‘guipiles’ blouse and wrap around skirt – all bearing a pattern indicative of her village. She is traditionally carrying a baby wrapped in a sling of woven stripes on her back and on her head in perfect balance is a basket full of goods she is either taking to market to sell or bringing back something she bought in the big city she goes to once or twice a week. She balances on her head using no hands. The PAST is everywhere in Guatemala, in the plaza where the women still traditionally wash their clothes on a stone slab or even wash themselves in the plaza pools, in the ‘mercado’ where the stalls are still brought in from the country and built of wooden branches carved to the perfect length and tied together =85in the ancient Mayan pyramids and temples where as you are walking up the very steep steps climbing 140 ft. high to the heavens – you think of the hundreds of prisoners making their own climb up those same steps to their deaths – being sacrificed to the different gods of rain or fertility. When we left Costa Rica and arrived in Guatemala, we had planned consciously this contrast and thought it would be great for our children’s experience of exotic cultures. Costa Rica is full of ‘nature’ beauty in the landscape, wildlife and birdlife. It has no indigenous culture or folk art. We left with only a T-Shirt! Guatemala is 50% Mayan and it’s mask making, weaving, carving is rich in color and meticulous in detail. But I was not prepared emotionally for the feelings that Guatemala stirred in my soul. To actually see the past in the present as a pass-by traveler opened up a bunch of questions. The past gives you a little glimpse of what we all came from a simpler life. Some people merely see it as poverty because it is not filled with a lot of material things or modern conveniences. But, in looking at the past, I always wonder, “Do we really need all the extras that we surround our lives with? Are we losing touch with what is really important that you see so quickly – family, community, fun!

January 6, 2000 - Alex, Katie, Ben (Guatemala)

Alex Simon’s Essay on Guatemala – Dec. 20, 1999 – Jan. 6, 2000

Guatemala was very interesting, from the market in Chichicastenango to the ruins of Tikal. The scariest place of all was Chichi but part of the reason was it was Christmas Eve and there were a lot of firecrackers popping next to my feet. At midnight everyone explodes thousands of firecrackers in the streets. What was really interesting was the guards outside all of the banks and stores of even the most remote places. They were holding big shotguns. There was only one place in Guatemala that had wildlife. That place was Tikal. I saw one spider monkey there. I also saw tons of coatis and some birds like Black Vultures and Collared Aracaris. Tikal was a city that Mayan people lived in a long time ago. Archaelogists think the Mayans painted the whole city red. The roads in Guatemala were better than Costa Rica. I did not like Santiago Atitlan which is a place where there is an inactive volcano. There is a lake that used to be a volcano until the volcano blew itself up and all that was left was a big crater which somehow filled with water. We were there for New Years. On New Years Eve we had a fifteen course Chinese meal made by a Jewish guy from Philadelphia who now lives in Antigua. I got to the tenth course when I decided to stop. By then it was about ten so I decided to stay up until midnight. I went back to the house we were staying at which had lizards on the walls. I went upstairs and played cards with my mom and sister and then we woke up my Dad and little brother to say Happy New Year!

Katie Simon’s Essay on Guatemala – Dec. 20, 1999 – Jan. 6, 2000

I went to Guatemala and I drove to Antigua. We stayed in Quinta des las Flores. It was really pretty. It had flowers and fountains and we had our own house with a sleeping loft. The first thing we did was take a walk to the plaza and the market. Ben got a toy cellphone. My mom wanted to get a nativity scene made out of clay and painted. We set it up in the shelf and put candles all around it. I made the dinner with Mom. We bought the food at the market. The next place we went was Chichi. We stayed at the Mayan Inn. I got carsick going there because the roads were twisty, turny, windy and we stopped two times. The Inn was really fun. There were scarlet macaws and parakeets and the food was really good. On Christmas, Alex me and Ben did a play. It was called “The Christmas Puppy”. Alex dressed up in my Dad’s red long underwear and put a pillow for his stomach to be Santa. And I dressed up in a Guipiles (embroidered woven blouse) to be an angel. Ben was a doggy. We thought Santa wouldn’t come but he did and brought a lot of stuff. I got a camera and radio and an art kit. A lot of the kids in the market would follow me around and shout, “Monkey, monkey, monkey (in English)!” because they saw me carrying my stuffed animal Monkey around and I taught one of them how to say it in English. My dad bargains a lot in the market. My mom bought a lot of Guipiles and I liked the wooden figures and the fabric. The fabric was handwoven and a lot of colors. On Christmas there were a lot of firecrackers. Then I went to Tikal. It is a reserved national park of ruins. The first day I saw a howler monkey and then we went to the ruins. I climbed the tallest one that you can climb. I also went into a tunnel and saw a face carved in stone. The face looked like a Mexican warrior with a lot of earrings. Before you went into the tunnel, you see a face where they did sacrifices and there was a pool where the blood went. Next we went to Santiago Atitlan. We rented a house for two days. It was not a very good house because it was broken down and there lizards on the walls. I found a caterpillar and kept him for a pet and fed him the leaves he liked and then I let him go. We ate a 15 course Chinese food dinner for New Years Eve. It took 3 hours to finish. It was really good. We went to all the mountain towns. In San Pedro we went horse back riding. It was the first time Alex liked it. My biggest memory of Guatemala will be climbing up the ruins in Tikal and the market in Chichicastenango.

Ben Simon’s Essay on Guatemala – Dec. 20, 1999 – Jan. 6, 2000

I cannot say what my favorite things is about Guatemala because I have a lot of favorite things. One was the masks I saw in the market. Some of them looked like people and some looked like animals. We bought the little animals that we shipped home to give to my classmates. The jaguar was my favorite one. There were a lot of firecrackers on Christmas Eve and my sister and brother and me were scared of them. I fell asleep and my Dad carried me home to bed when we followed some people holding statues of a lady and a man. I was worried about Santa. We thought he wouldn’t come. Guess what! He did. I got a car set and one hot wheel and a pirate set. Santa left a letter that told my Mom and Dad to get me a Gameboy. Another one of my favorite things was climbing up the steps in Tikal. They were big, big, big and we stayed in Jungle Lodge. Then we went to Atitlan. It is a volcano with a lake. There were people washing clothes and washing themselves. They were carrying water in jugs on their heads. It looked hard to do. So far I like the whole trip. That’s all. The End.

December 20-24, 1999 - Dick (Guatemala)

The following is my uncut, unedited and unorganized journal – but with lots of (hopefully interesting) detail about what we have been up to!

December 20, 1999
– We arrive in Guatemala City and immediately descend on the ATM. Based on our Costa Rican experience where our card, (Cirrus) was not useable in most machines and concerns that between the election on Sunday, December 26 and potential Y2K issues, cash will be king. Unfortunately, the machine restricts withdrawals to 1,000 quetzales, (approximately $130.00 based on the exchange rate of 7.6 quetzales per dollar) so I stand for 15 minutes, in a country known for armed bandits, at an ATM repeatedly making withdrawals. Also, the largest denomination note is 100 quetzales, (approximately $13) so I am walking around with pockets fully laden with what’s equal to a year plus of annual income in Guatemala.

Guatemala City is a large urban developing country capitol, highly polluted, population of 3 million (almost equaling the total population of Costa Rica) out of the country’s total 10.5 million. That said, we pass Indian women in brightly colored traditional native garb carrying large bundles of fabric on their heads without using their hands, street vendors all over the place selling everything from baskets to peanuts, which more than make up for the large Coca Cola bottling company, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’ Donuts and Chucky Cheese.

I ask about potential safety issues with regard to Guatemala’s run off election this Sunday, December 26th and I’m told that there should not be any problems, certainly not in the smaller villages which we will be visiting, and even in the capitol, there would probably only be isolated incidents.

The road to Antigua takes you from Guatemala City at approximately 1,500 meters over 2,000 meter paths leaving the city’s noise and pollution behind and again descending to 1,539 meters over sea level. Antigua is one of the oldest cities in the Americas and originally housed the first printing press, the fifth university in Latin America.

December 21, 1999
– Antigua, Guatemala – We awoke this morning to a magnificent view of Volcano Agua looking very Fiji like and encrusted in snow.

Antigua is a perfect Spanish colonial style town of 30,000 complete with markets full of local produce, live chickens, turkeys and ducks and brightly garbed Mayan Indian descendants. Certainly not untouched by tourism, there is a sign at Plaza de la Paz, Peace Place, in front of a historic church which has a prohibition in Spanish and English “No nudity either top or bottom”. I assume this excludes the Indian women breast-feeding their children in authentic, original Snuggly type baby holders.

There are wonderful restaurants and boutiques with amazing Guatemalan handicrafts, furniture, carvings, fabrics and ceramics, (and we have been told that prices here are substantially higher than elsewhere in Guatemala, even higher than Guatemala City) but there is not much to complain about – there is even an Yogen Fruz (my favorite frozen yogurt – pick your own flavor and have it blended in on the spot). There is even a “four corners” in which three of the corners have photo-fnishing stores, along with colorful markets, street vendors hawking everything from fresh charcoal grilled corn on the cob to an array of breads, vegetable, fruits and Christmas decorations and ornaments.

December 21, 1999
– We’re in the market in Antigua where there is a wide range of artisan’s handiwork and I am listening to Ben throw a fit over which type of plastic, battery operated cell phone toy he wants to buy for a $1.50. There is something drastically wrong with this picture. And then with Ben screaming, we make another stop in the market where Alex finds a great deal – only 30 quetzales (approx. $4.00) two plastic Superman action figures shrink-wrapped with a DC comic.

An hour later, everyone has calmed down, and are looking at fireworks in the market and have successfully bargained down the price of Katie’s beautiful stuffed horse (a much more legitimate Guatemalan craft from $2.00 to $1.00.

I place a call to Iomega regarding two intermittently failing Click drives. The only way to place a call to their 888 number is through MCI. I am kept on hold for 25 minutes and then after 25 minutes am talked through a diagnostic the tech support representative finally agrees with me that indeed I do have intermittently failing drives, but informs me that there is nothing he can do to help me, I have to call the company that handles Guatemala. I explain to him that there is no company that handling Guatemala and that a call to Miami will not be satisfactory, finally speak with a supervisor who, 30 minutes later has arranged a new shipment to me in Guatemala. The next challenges will be to see if anything arrives and hoping to avoid the 100% duty on imported items by calling them replacement parts.

At the libreria (stationery store), we purchase a range of school supplies – pens, crayons, paper and journal notebooks – for about $10. We then stumble upon a shop selling Pokemon cards run by a Guatemalan woman whose brother in-law ships them to her from New York. I ask her, and sure enough, the only buyers are American tourists. Guatemalan kids have neither the interest nor the incomes to support that expensive habit.

All of the very serious looking bank guards toting sawed-off shotguns peering intently at all passers by give one pause. This does not appear to be a security guard job for retirees seeking a social security supplement. Armed guards accompany even the soda bottle distributors.

December 22, 1999
– After long “conversations” of a sort that spouses of many years engage in (its not an “argument” it’s a “discussion”) Patty helps me “see the light” that I am being too hard on our children, that for nine months, they don’t have a “home” and even though nine months of traveling around the world is our dream, and the children are enjoying it and doing very well, it is a stressful experience. It does place stresses on them not having a home, friends, their own room, their own things and they have reacted quite well to the theft of their special possessions. We do constantly get comments from people who cannot believe how well they are handling the constant change. We resolve that we will set an absolute standard of no whining or fits in public places, but otherwise allow them a bit more flexibility. In truth, I recognize that Christmas is coming, we are not at home and they are reacting as children. Ben really does love his cellphone; Alex purchased the Superman and other poseable action figures.

December 23, 1999
– In the market in Chichicastenango – We are each buying Christmas presents for each other. We negotiate hard over each quetzal (approx. $0.13). Ben sees a toy gun for Alex and I explain to him that buying guns is not a very good idea in a country where they really use the guns. We have very complicated personnel assignments as each child secretly gets presents for the other and for us.

December 24, 1999
– Chichicastenango – Mayan Inn. The past 48 hours has been a fantastic blur of travel adventures and experiences. Beginning at 6:00 a.m. Wednesday, December 22nd, I get ready to set out for Guatemala City to meet Fernando Bolanos a fellow YPOer who has responded to our “seeking pen pals” for our children. The get together was originally scheduled for both families at breakfast at hotel Quinta Royal in Guatemala City. Based on our plans, the balance of the day, the children’s then current state of mind and the relative lack of appeal of having children meeting others in a fancy hotel breakfast setting, we change plans and I was going in alone. Fernando also requested that we move the meeting time up from the original 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. seeing as it was just going to be the two of us.

As Patty and I the night before, at midnight, finished our e-mailing of 38 photographs from Costa Rica for our first “photo gallery” on the website, I give serious thought to canceling and avoiding the hour drive in and out for a short, potentially stilted meeting. As it turned out, that would have been a very bad decision. As breakfast, in addition to learning that the upcoming election, on December 26th was to be a shoe-in for the new, now self-proclaimed “right wing” president (who had earlier been exiled from Guatemala during their 36 year civil war against Communist insurgence) and has admitted to two murders while exiled as a Communist in Mexico. For political opportunism he has since moved to the center and now to the right. Fernando explains that the business interest are particularly nervous in that no one took his candidacy seriously a year ago and now everyone is very concerned about what actions he may take when in office. He appears allegedly to have no real platform, promising anything requested to any audience, however, I am told that this is Guatemala’s fourth election since democracy was restored after the civil war and no problems are expected. Fernando’s primary business is banana plantation – they have 6,000 hectares, presently approximately 15,000 acres under cultivation and supply half of Del Monte’s Guatemalan production and 18% of Del Monte’s worldwide banana crop, in a business totaling approximately $100 million dollars a year. They also have side businesses and joint ventures including mango fruit processing, palm oil production and even multi-screen cinemas. He sells on 10 year fixed price contracts to Del Monte and Dole, which largely serve as middle men and shipping companies, with the following rough economics; he sells a minimum 40 lb. box for approximately $6.00 (approx. $0.15 a pound which is then sold by Dole or Del Monte for $0.25 – $0.40 a pound to the supermarkets which in turn sell an average retail of $0.49 – $0.59 a pound. As it turns out, bananas are very important to supermarket economics with gross margins of up to 50% and represent on average 3% of a store’s profit.

Fernando leads a very international life – visiting the States, usually Miami, every six weeks to see his customers and making at least an annual trip to Boston. Several of the trips were for medical visits for family members at Mass General.

As our breakfast draws to a close, Fernando (or Don Fernando as he is known to his “people”) asks me what my plans are for the balance of the day – I explain that I am going to shop at which ever department store he advises in search of Gameboys, Pokemon, Legos and other present that the kids have been requesting of Santa, rather than restricting it to Guatemalan handicrafts, which would be more “typical and authentic” – but after all Scrooge it is Christmas regardless of our own idyllic immersion in international travel. Fernando suggest Cemaco as the best department store for imported goods in Guatemala City, but also asks if I would have some time and an interest in joining him as he flies to inspect one of his fincas this morning. A quick call to Patty and she graciously agrees to watch the children at the hotel back in Antigua for the morning and enable me to go on this adventure. With incredible Latin gracious hospitality, he insists that I dismiss my driver and that his driver, after our visit, will accompany me to the store and then take me back to Antigua.

As we arrive at the airport, I’m expect to see a small Cessna – Fernando had explained that he could arrive in 35 minutes at this finca as opposed to 3 ¸ to 4 hours on curving mountain roads. We’re met instead with a Bell Jet Ranger III helicopter and he puts me in the front seat as the pilot nervously removes all the dual control apparatus not wanting me to panic at some point putting us into a steep dive or climb by grabbing the “stick”. We rise to our cruising elevation of approximately 300 feet above the ground. Immediately upon leaving the airport I am shown the remaining fuselage of the Cubana Airlines DC10 which crashed 100 feet upon take off yesterday, killing at least 28 of its 210 passengers. It was fortunate that it didn’t go another 100 feet and begin plowing into hundreds of squatters’ cottages. A 35-minute bird’s eye view takes us past colorful lakes, burning sugar cane fields (an environmental nightmare which is carried out on all sugar cane fields prior to harvest, as it increases sugar concentration and removes all the loose leaves.) In order to force a stop to the practice, the US is threatening to restrict imports into the US from burnt fields. Harvesting is still largely manual but increasingly becoming mechanized.

I digress here for one moment on the Guatemalan sugar cartel as a fascinating example of probably one of the best functioning oligopolies today, although its solidarity is beginning to fray. There are a half-dozen producers who control Guatemalan sugar. World market prices for sugar are approximately $0.06 a pound – domestic Guatemalan oligopolistic prices are $0.27 a pound. The government has taken no efforts to impede the oligopolistic activities and the only crack so far has been Pepsi, which succeeded in getting one of the smaller producers to commit to it on a long-term contract of $0.16 a pound. Guatemalan law, as provided by the government as protection to the sugar producers requires soft drink bottlers to use only can sugar and not corn syrup as is now used throughout the world. This is a country which does not generally have “repressed rage” with its psychological implications – gunfire, explosives and heavy security seem to be the prevalent method of dispute resolution. In fact, when an entrepreneur sought to break the taxi medallion cartel in Guatemala City, his office and several of his cars where torched.

Banana growing is substantially more labor and capital intensive and productive than sugar cane. It takes one worker per hectare (approx. 2.5 acres) to run a banana plantation – 20 times the number required for sugar cane. Bananas also require extensive irrigation and drainage systems and very heavy fertilization. I learn that that is 550 kilograms of nitrogen and 750 kilograms of potassium and substantial fungicides. I am told that the banana plantation requires one kilometer of irrigation piping per hectare.

We also fly over and around volcanoes, the presidential summer retreat, pineapple, mango, cut flower and other plantations.

As we land, the chopper is met by two heavily armed, shotgun-toting security guards and proceed the next two hours serving all aspects of the 750 hectare finca’s operation with the manager. The project is a joint venture with Del Monte and is only in its second year of production.

First small banana shoots are purchased from laboratories in Costa Rica and Israel, which use tissue culturing to produce the rootstalk. The stalk is then shipped temporarily potted in soil and placed under protective netting and then transplanted into the fields. One year later the first bananas can be harvested and thereafter, the main stalk is cut down (and one of the shoots or sons as they are called) is allowed to grow 9 months later producing its crop of bananas. Some plantations go 50 plus years with a great, great, great grandson’s producing. Through Don Fernando’s “direction” to his manager, I learned about the incredible attention to detail necessary. The plants must have a minimum of 40 millimeters of diameter in each banana harvested (some had been harvested early and would be rejected) the stalks enroute to the packing plant must be carefully wrapped in foam so the bananas don’t bruise each other as they are hauled along on guide wires through the fields by cargadores who will pull many stalks at one time. One small blemish in the field will result in a completely black fruit by the time it is ripened in the States, then on to the packing shed where the bananas are cut into smaller bunches, quality controlled and with only top quality going for export, second quality for domestic supermarket sale and consumption and third quality thrown on trucks for local village use (Don Fernando claims that much of this isn’t even paid for but given to the distributors of the villages in exchange for carting them away.) Otherwise, the business is similar to most others – Fernando hears of the problems of labor shortages because of Christmas, and that quality slippage is not allowed, all workers must understand and comply with the same standards, and that loss and wastage rates are far too high due to improper harvesting, temporary wrapping to the fields, and quality control for packing. One interesting operation is the wrapping of the banana stems once they have all been pollinated. They are wrapped in a white plastic to create a warmer, more humid environment that hastens ripening and improves the size of the resulting fruit. This is done by a single laborer on a small ladder who is paid piece work based on demonstrating his production by the number of flower tips cut off and counted at the end of the day, (cuts and bags approx. 200 trees per day). I am told that the plantation workers make an average of $8.00 per day, which is approximately 3 times the wages they would normally receive. The legal minimum age of 14 years old is waived with parental permission and it appears that, not withstanding compulsory education through the sixth grade, there is an ample supply of a very young labor force available.

I returned to Guatemala City fully invigorated by the helicopter ride and fascinating overviews I have seen. I was escorted to the Cemaco Department Store by one Don Fernando’s drivers/guards who assists me in purchases for children’s presents which probably far exceeds several months’ worth of his wages. An awkward situation at best, but one which is very prevalent in developing counties. He relays first hand his fighting battles in the Civil War against insurgence in the jungle, said his original group of 500 suffered fatalities resulting in only 200 survivors at the end of the three year term, how he was conscripted at age 14 and served until he was 17 and about how, of those 200, many lost limbs or otherwise were permanently maimed or disfigured and how you’d be sent back into battles after injuries which were barely beginning to recover, and how the Communists fully infiltrated the local peasantry and were that much more dangerous in setting up ambushes. He is now one of many Don Fernando’s security workers and explains of all the cautions that have to taken by the “executives” in Guatemala – the situation has dramatically improved from two years ago when kidnapping had become a major business operation. Two of Don Fernando’s cousins were among those kidnapped. One of them was the first ever kidnapped for ransom and was released after 7 days for approximately $250,000. The second, six months later, was held for 45 days which tremendously frightened the family as no one knew if they were negotiating ransom for the release of someone still alive – all earlier kidnappings had been 7 to 10 days. As the tension increased so did the ransoms, with later ransoms being in excess of a million dollars. My driver/guide/guard has had several of his friends killed in defense of the executives they were guarding.

January 18, 2000 - Dick (Bay Islands, Honduras)

I am sorry that we have been so out of touch over the last week, and have been largely unable to respond to e-mails.

Much of that time we have been on the VERY remote Cayos Cochinos (Hog Islands) in the Bay Islands off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. We decided after visiting the fantastic Mayan archeological site and museum at Copan Ruinas that we were in need of a “break” from traveling. Our plan had been to go to Oaxaca, Mexico for a fascinating 2 weeks of Mexican culture, crafts and art. We decided that a “rest” from the stimulation of traveling would help us get the most out of our experiences (and would allow us to catch up on journal writing and home schooling, which went wonderfully in Costa Rica but slipped in Guatemala with the rapid travel and activity pace, intense cultural stimulation, and holiday festivities). In addition, we were graciously invited by the Guatemalan Young Presidents’ Organization chapter to join a fantastic event which would have caused us to backtrack from Oaxaca, through Mexico City back to Guatemala City to camp and join a YPO Family hike up the volcano at Lake Atitlan with Guatemala’s national climber!! The combination of the activity and the group was too good to pass up.

We chose Plantation Beach Resort as the most remote and relaxing place to go – it is a 20 mile boat ride from La Ceiba on the Honduran coast, is owned and run by Gringos, and has only 10 rooms (we are the only guests – apparently this is not peak diving season), great snorkeling (this is really a dive resort – surrounded by what is reportedly some of the finest reefs in the world – the kids LOVE IT and we are now thinking about the Great Barrier Reef in Australia), a picture perfect setting, great food (too much-even with long swims every day!), even a VCR to watch movies in the evening – it is best described as paradise (although with voracious sand flies!).

Communications, however, were very marginal – The phone/fax service is a wire connection from the hotel to a tower on the high point on the island, then a private UHF connection to a tower on the mainland in La Ceiba, then a connection into the Honduran phone system. The phone regularly cuts you off (if you get a dial tone, and if it connects) within 1 minute — people think that the problem is related to battery power at the antenna, but no one really seems to have a clue. The e-mail runs through a modem into the phone system and then a connection into their ISP, Tropico, which is an experience in itself. E-mail cuts off with the same frequency as the phones, but with A LOT of patience you can sometimes send very brief e-mails. (although there was no service whatsoever for the 2 days that the Boston Globe reporter was trying to reach us to ‘Fact Check” for her article!)

Over the next few days we are posting several new entries to the website. Please give us any feedback, suggestions, etc., for improving the site. Thanks.

Hope all is well, and please stay in touch

Hasta Luego,
Dick and Crew

January 6-18, 2000 - Alex, Katie, Ben (Honduras)

Alejandro Simon – Honduras Journal – Jan. 6 – Jan. 18, 2000

    Honduras is a country in Central America. I did not spend as much time there because at first we were going there for four days just to see the Mayan site of Copan. Our next-door neighbors in Boston run the dig there. They made an excellent museum, which has a replica of a big temple, which is painted in very brilliant and bright colors… mostly red. It gives you as idea of what the whole city would look like when the Mayans lived there over 1000 years ago. 

  The Mayans had a game, which is a combination of basketball and soccer. The ball they used was solid rubber and weighed about 50 lbs. You could not hit it with your hands but could use your shoulders and hips. The object of the game was to get it past the opponents out-of-bounds point. The stadium was filled with steps that would have been old-fashioned bleachers. The court was a floor of clay and it was open to the sky. The ball court was part of the royal plaza. Sometimes, if they were ceremonial games, the losers would be sacrificed. It was basically a win or lose or die game.

  Since they ran the dig, we got to go in tunnels that regular visitors would not see. One of the tunnels we went into had tons of bats and one flew into my face when we opened the door to the tombs. We saw buildings that were from the first ruler. They were very, very old but some of them still had the original red or green paint. Instead of being made of carved stone that was more durable, the earlier decorations were made of built up stucco in elaborate designs.

  Instead of destroying the buildings and temples from a former ruler, the next ruler would build on top of the old previous building. So, when the Fashs dug tunnels into the pyramids, it was interesting to find all the other rulers buildings.

  There was one stairway that had hieroglyphs all over it. Because this stairway was exposed to the outside rain and heat and wind, it began to erode. So, the archaeologists made a covering like a tent to go on top of it and it started causing another problem. The stone started drying our too much and causing worse erosion. They are still working on this problem.

     After Copan, we went to Hacienda San Lucas for lunch and horseback riding. It was very fun. I also made a telephone out of the Construx building set I got for Christmas.

     After we left Copan, we went to the Bay Islands. I went snorkeling there for the first time and saw five stingrays, a bunch of parrot fish, a puffer fish, an eel, a lot of barracudas and really cool brain coral, fire coral and fan coral. They also had sea kayaks where we stayed. One day a dog jumped into the kayak and we took off with it to the other beach. Then, when got to the beach another dog jumped on the kayak and we had two dogs on our kayak. The view here is beautiful and the food is delicious.

    I really enjoyed visiting Honduras.

Hasta Luego,

Alejandro

Katie Simon – Honduras Journal – Jan. 6 – Jan 18, 2000

   Honduras is south of Guatemala. We flew from Guatemala City to San Pedro Sula and rented a car to drive to Copan.

  On the road to Copan, some little boys were playing tricks with the cars driving by. They would see a car coming and pull a little string up to block the car. We didn’t know if they were trying to stop the car to ask for money or just playing a funny trick on us. Some other little boys had shovels at a bridge that would get washed out a lot and would scoop up the extra dirt from the road and then try to collect money from the cars and trucks passing by as if they were keeping the roads “clean”.

  We went to Copan and stayed in a hotel with a swimming pool. At night, the bells would ring loudly and you heard the people singing the mass. The next day we went to Bill and Barb Fash to the ruins. They are the head archaeologists of the dig and are our next-door neighbors in Newton. We saw carved pictures, bats and tombs in the tunnels. Then we went to the museum and Barb puts in the originals and puts copies out on the site. They do that to protect the ruins from erosion. The next day we went horseback riding.

  We left Copan and decided to go to the beach on the Bay Islands. The island we picked was called Cayos Cochinos or Hog Island. We took a boat to get there. We went snorkeling for the first time in our life and I saw a stingray. It was brown and white spotted and was at the bottom of the ocean. I also saw angelfish, parrotfish and mom’s favorite fish – a black and white striped yellow and blue wrasse. I saw brain coral that looked like little mazes in a ball. The fan coral looked like purple fans with little red spots. I found sea glass which they call “mermaid’s tears”. My dad found me a beautiful conch shell.

   There are two dogs which we play with. Nike is a nice older dog but he has a fungus disease on his mouth. Puppy is younger and when I play with him he jumps on me. One day, my mom and I went on the yellow kayak to a cove across the bay. When we pushed off, Nike jumped on and decided to go with us. When we left the cove, we went by the house that Puppy stayed at. When he saw us he jumped in the water and started swimming across the bay to try to catch us. We were scared he was going to drown so we pulled him on our kayak and brought him back. We looked so silly with 2 dogs as our passengers.

     Adios from Honduras. From: Katie Simon

Ben on Honduras – Jan 17, 2000

I like Honduras because of the ruins at Copan.  If there was no ruins I wouldn’t like Honduras.  At the ruins I saw lots of bats and I went inside tunnels and saw stuff inside the tunnels and it was very exciting to see that stuff and I climbed up one of the high tower pyramids.  I saw the ruins with my next-door neighbors who work there.

There was a reporter who came with us, but at the end of the story she said the kids were bored and that was not true, because it was very interesting and we liked going there.

I see boats all the time on this island in Honduras, and I saw a stingray and a barracuda and I went snorkeling with my daddy. And I saw a beetle and a cockroach one day, but the beetle is now dead because he was in a pot and they put water in the pot and the beetle cannot live in the water so it is dead.

My daddy went on a helicopter in Guatemala and he saw bananas and had lots of fun.

Adios Amigos

Ben

February 16, 2000 - Patty (Thailand)

What is Buddhism?

We spent the first two months of our trip in Central Americaá Mayans, wild animals, Spanish Catholicism mixed with ancient Mayan beliefs, beautiful fabrics and masks and plenty of rice and beans.

I had been to Asia twice before with Dick so my thoughts were very curious and excited to see yet other cultures so different from our own!

I don’t know much about Buddhism but as our trip unfolds in Thailand, Laos and Cambodiaá between jet lag and adjustmentá in those first few days I begin putting together some of what this ancient religion means.

It begins with the orange-clad closely shaven monk walking down the street barefoot. In the early morning dawn hours of Chiang Mai, you see them with big silver bowls obtaining their days meal from all the local people (in Laos the women of the household would kneel at 5:30AM on woven mats outside their doorsteps and scoop a handful of cooked rice for each monk that passes by). What moves me the most is the instant concept of ‘helping your fellow neighbor’, of sharing your earthly possessions so freelyá of brotherly love. One does not see it so blatantly in the US. It is done much for formally and removed in the States through soup kitchens and relief agencies, etc.

The next thing you see are the shiny Wats – big, gold-domed highly decorated with green mirrors and ceramic tiles. Balustrades of dragons and snakes great you and carry you up to see a huge Golden Buddha flanked by incense and artificial flowers. You must remove your shoes to enter this monastic complex, which endears you to an instant sort of reference even if you don’t know exactly what you are revering.

One morning at our hotel, I noticed one of the women’s jobs was to adorn the small shrines that are located in the corner outside of each Buddhist’s property (even the huge modern shopping malls have huge shrines) Sometimes they are miniature replicas of each building. I was told they are called “Spirit Houses” to keep all the evil spirits housed outside of the real house. Little statues of animals, Buddhas and people with artificial flowers and garlands decorate the shrine. The women each morning put out fresh yellow mums in vases, trays of real food, which included baked chicken, rice wrapped in banana leaves, fresh fruit along with burning incense and a cup of water in case the spirit is thirsty. A prayer is said with folded hands. Little strings of jasmine and rosebuds were hung. I read they symbolize the beauty that life holds and as the flower diesá the impermanence of life going inevitably towards death (We were also reminded on two other occasions when our driver in Bangkok had a car accident with us wiping out the front of a taxi and when a host of a dinner decided the first course should be steamed ‘duck tongue’).

As I was walking with the kids, I mentioned that everything they are seeing has some sort of religious symbol – some meaning about life. As I was thinking about all that we had witnessed (there was even a shrine inside our hotel), I thought that Buddhism, because of all the shrines everywhere, keeps the religion central to life. It dwells on the beauty of nature and the peacefulness of your soul (you see this in every monk you see living so simply and quietly). As I ponder my own centeredness, I cannot help but think that Buddhism does show you the skills by which to attain this sort of centeredness. The quiet, the natural beauty, the meditativeness of living, the kindness toward your fellow man.

Because of this religion, as a traveler, I feel a sense of comfort and contentment. I was thinking about all this when several days later, Alex, our oldest, said, “Mom, I don’t know why but I feel so much better here than in Guatemala. I feel safer. I feel I can walk down the streets in the evening.” I smiled because it was not just a feeling I had about this countryá our children thought so, too!

February 25, 2000 - Alex, Katie, Ben (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand)

Alex Simon’s Essay on Cambodia – February 25, 2000

Cambodia is home to one of the wonders of the world – an ancient city called Angkor Wat. It has been in several major wars lately. There are still mines in the ground and many people have injured or no limbs. The best markets are here. They had everything I wanted. They had wooden carved boats and little brass Buddha figures. We stayed at a really cool hotel called ‘The Angkor Hotel’. It had a swimming pool which was warm. The food was really good. It was a buffet. The people who worked there were really nice. The rooms were good, too.

On the last day, we drove to a lake with a village on it and rode a boat to a school that had 54 children in each class and held 2 classes a day. They had real desks and a blackboard. My favorite place was a rest stop that was a boat that was like a zoo. It had pelicans, monkeys and a lot of catfish. There were two boa constrictors that were around little girl’s necks. The toilet off the boat was literally a crack in between 2 boards over the lake.

We also went to a ‘Jungle Temple’ that was totally overgrown with huge trees and roots crawling over the temple with monkeys. We met a little boy that was Cambodian and spoke really good English. He was very friendly so we decided to buy a few bracelets from him. He goes to school and wants to learn Japanese but the teacher only teaches older kids. He goes to school and then goes every afternoon to the temple to sell bracelets and make some money from the tourist. We also so 3 little boys climb up a coconut tree and sit on the spiky leaves and drink the fresh juice. They do it so easily like they do it every day.

Alex Simon’s Essay on Laos – February 25, 2000

In Laos, it was my sister’s birthday. We went out to dinner twice with birthday cakes. One place was a really good Indian restaurant where they made really good sweet sugary, banana paranthas (fried flat dough), which tasted like banana crepes. We also ate at ‘The Three Elephants Cafģ’ with Laotian food, which is basically the same as Thai food, but the spring rolls aren’t as good. We celebrated with the Hawkins family and their 4 children who we had been traveling with on the trek in Chiang Mai.

We went up and down the Mekong River. We saw Hmong villages which were very, very indigenous. They live in really cool little huts on stilts made of straw and wood. The chief of the village made his house out of bricks with a tin roof which is really modern for them. We also went to a really cool cave that had a lot of Buddha statues in it. We went to other villages which were more touristy. One of them was ‘the whiskey village’ where they made whiskey out of rice in pottery jugs which would ferment and make a strong tasting drink.

In Laos, we stayed in a really little guesthouse that was fine because it was perfectly clean and the toilet flushed. In the early morning, the monks would come to collect their food from the locals that would give them little chunks of sticky rice. The monks wear orange robes, shave their heads and sometimes wear no shoes. They carry big bowls around their necks.

We went down the river in the other direction and went to a waterfall where I made a little raft out of sticks. It was fun.

I had fun in the market where Hmong villages would come and sell their fancy sewn fabrics. It was fun to bargain with them.

Alex Simon’s Essay on Thailand – February 25, 2000

Bangkok –
Bangkok was a crowded city that basically has the worst traffic in the world because there is a new train built above ground but it cost 40 baht or $1. and the local bus only cost a few cents. A lot of people in Thailand do not have as much money as the US so they cannot afford the monorail so they take buses, which increases the traffic. It would take about an hour to go a normal 10-minute drive in Boston. There is a floating market where people come to sell things and they do it on small wooden type kayaks rowed by 1 person. The way the people live in the water is interesting. They build “houseboats” with stilts and there are even pigs and chickens in floating pens.

The hotel we stayed at was really cool. There were birds, parrots, monkeys, toucans and a lot more exotic birds in cages. There were aquariums everywhere with needlefish and other types of large fish.

In Thailand, our travel agent took us to dinner. We ate “roast duck tongue” where it looked actually like a tongue of a duck chopped off. For dessert, we were served lychee nuts that turned out to be a white fruit floating in ice water. That was very alarming because my dad told us not to ‘drink the water’ unless it was purified in a sealed bottle. He thought we would get very ill but we did not. We also ate ‘fried fish skin’. I survived the meal.

We nearly ripped off the front end of a taxi when our driver of a Volvo was going down the highway and a taxi pulled out into our lane too far. It was scary and we had to switch cars. There are no streetlights or lanes for traffic so everybody dares one another to go first.

Chiang Mai –
We did not spend much time in Chiang Mai. It was like Antigua in Guatemala because we used it as a base to keep our luggage in and to have a place to come back to but we did do fun stuff there. We went to the zoo where we got to feed hippos, elephants and bears carrots and green vegetables. The hippo’s mouth was scary. It was filled with so much fat and teeth as big as a 7 year old’s arm. They do not have a tongue.

We also went to a Wat – a temple where Buddhist monks go to pray. It’s not at all like a church or any Jewish temple. It has lots of colorful designs like dragons, which are used as arm rails, and there is a huge gold Buddha sitting in the middle. As part of respect to the temple, you had to take off your shoes and light some incense.

There are a lot of different vehicles in Asiaá like TUKS TUKS, which are 3-wheeled motor vehicles. They would definitely not allow these in the US because of the danger. But they were really fun to ride in. What was even funner was going by myself on a motorcycle with a local Cambodian. It was a taxi in a lot of countries because they are not as expensive as cars to buy.

The two-day trek we took was really fun. First, we drove to a little village where we bought food for the night. Then we drove to a place where we rode on elephants. It was not as scary as a horse because you trusted the elephant and they are not as jittery as a horse. There were even some baby elephants that were the size of a grown man. The guide would sit on the elephant’s neck pushing his ears from behind or he would sit on the elephant’s head with his legs on its forehead in front. Then we went to a village and ate fried rice with egg and freshly cut pineapple. After lunch, we began our trek. In the next 2 days, we walked 15 miles through mixed terrain – rice paddies, dense jungles and water buffalo herds and at halfway we got to a waterfall. We went swimming and it was really cold. There was a cave behind the falls where you could go. After that, we walked for an hour and arrived in a really cool small village of the Karen tribe people. We slept in stilted huts on woven mats with blankets. It was freezing but I didn’t mind. We went to the school in the village and the kids were out and were playing soccer with a deflated ball that actually worked. They also played another game called ‘hacky-sack’ with a woven rattan ball that you would hit with the inside of your foot, knee or elbow. I played a game but I was not very good. The village had a lot of animals like pigs, chickens and a lot of stray dogs. We had a pretty normal dinner that consisted of steamed rice, fried rice and fish balls that only my brother liked. For dessert, we had a really cool dish. It was made in a piece of green bamboo that they put rice, coconut milk and sugar in it. They cooked it over a really hot fire. If you ever ate French crepes – that is what it tasted like. Our Thai guide, Bob, did some black magic that night after dinner where he would make a penny cry real tears, make a $10 Baht bill come out of a handkerchief and coins go thru his elbow and appear on the back of his neck. He was really good. The next day we hiked back down and had more fried rice and fried noodles and than we rafted on a really cool bamboo raft. It was really fun. One of the parts our guide would not even let us go on because it was too narrow with lots of rapids. We had to get out. The trek was really fun.

The tree things I liked best about Thailand were the food, the markets and the modes of transportation. We also went to a place where they showed us how the elephants worked in the logging industry pulling and stacking logs.

Katie’s Notes about Cambodia, Laos and Thailand – February 25, 2000

Cambodia

Angkor Wat is a big temple with lots of carving.

The Jungle Temple is an overgrown temple with incense in it.

Laos

We went on the Mekong River to see the Buddha cave.

That was the place that had the really messed up dogs with the skin diseases.

Luang Probang was a charming city. I had my birthday 2 times, one time in an Indian restaurant and one time in a French and Lao restaurant.

We got up at 6am one morning to feed alms to the monks, but we did not feed them.

We went to the National Palace to see the mirror room.

We took a boat on the Mekong River to see a waterfall. Alex and me made a fairy house by the waterfall. There was a cavish thing by the waterfall. The water was really cold.

I got 2 silver boxes and a silver tea set. Alex got me a scene with 2 elephants made out of sequins on a piece of fabric.

Thailand

I went to Chiang Mai in Thailand. It was a charming city. There is a night market there. It has a canal going through it. There was a really good zoo there. I fed hippos, bears and camels. I got 2 inches away from a baby crocodile. I saw leopards and jaguars.

We met some people called the Hawkins. We went on a trek with them. We hiked to a waterfall first and through fields with water buffalo in them and we also hiked next to a river. Then we got to a little village. I saw how they made flour out of rice. They had a big piece of wood that banged the rice. Then a person puts it in a basket and shakes it. We slept in a house on stilts with the Hawkins. The beds were straw mats above the floor with 3 blankets for each person. We woke up at 5 because the roosters started crowing. The people who lived in the village were called Karen Tribe. There was a very small little puppy.

Bangkok was a big city – I did not like it. In Bangkok we went to a Palace for the king. It had an emerald Buddha which they said was giant, but it was tiny. You have to take off your shoes to go into the room with the emerald Buddha. You can put gold leaf, incense and flowers next to the place where the emerald Buddha is.

Ben’s Journal on Mexico February 21, 2000

I went to one market, which was really a store – I did nothing in Mexico – my dad got sick and then we went to Houston.

Ben’s Journal on Guatemala Volcano Hike February 21, 2000

We went on a hike up a volcano with YPO. I didn’t really climb on the rope to the top – the man helped me – but I hiked down with my dad 10 miles – really – and didn’t even complain. That is the longest hike I did in my whole life so far.

Ben’s Journal on Thailand February 21, 2000

Monks were everywhere.

We went on a trek and we saw a waterfall and then we walked back and then I did bamboo rafting – you are just sitting on bamboo in a stream we saw broken bridges and broken bamboo rafts and we saw an elephant in the water. On the trek the coolest thing was seeing the snake right next to the trail so we couldn’t go on the trail because the snake was there and our guide said it was poisonous. We slept on mats except they weren’t made out of plastic, they were made out of bamboo. The people in the village were smashing rice with a special machine from wood and it had nails. The people use blankets for wrapping around their legs instead of pants – the blankets look like dresses. The little boys and the grown up men wear pants.

And I saw elephants play soccer.

And I saw a hippo and a giraffe at the zoo in Chiang Mai in Thailand. In this zoo you can feed the animals – except you have to be careful because the hippos are very dangerous. Then we went to Bangkok by train and I had a sleeping car with my dad. In Bangkok we stayed at a hotel that had an aquarium and a bird room

Ben’s Journal on Laos February 21, 2000

The coolest thing about Laos was seeing the gold Buddha statues.

We went to the king’s palace – he had a lot of money, he had more money than Bill Gates. In the palace was lots of gold. You cant’ wear shoes in the palace- it is illegal if you do. Except the guards can wear shoes because they are special.

I went to an Indian restaurant in Laos. We had a big party for my sister’s birthday, and then we had another party the next day because that was really her birthday.

We took boat rides

We saw these people and they were named the Hawkins. They have 4 children – they were in New Zealand for a year and we liked traveling with them except when Mathew pulled my hair. The other thing is that Mathew didn’t like rice so he had no food in Asia.

We dropped so many bombs on Laos because of that trail (the Ho Chi Minn Trail).

I saw a lot of Buddhas

We took a boat to a waterfall, and we took a lot of boats on a big river (the Mekong River)

We saw the monks in the morning – monks are people who are Buddhist and they walk in the streets and nice people give them food. If you don’t know what Buddhas are, I got some so I can show you when I get home.

Ben’s Journal on Cambodia February 21, 2000

In Cambodia we saw one of the 7 wonders of the world, it is called Angkor Wat, and we saw the sunset. And I saw a Jungle Temple and it was covered in trees and tree roots. And I bought a flute there, and

Cambodia is a great place, except it doesn’t have such good Internet.

Ben’s Journal on India February 21, 2000

We are staying in a great palace in India and it has really cool places.

I buyed a wallet in a special fair by the Taj Mahal

February 25, 2000 - Patty (India)

Dear All,

As we cannot connect with AOL in India, I am writing a letter about our adventure.

It is dawn in Agra, city of the Taj Mahal, I am on our balcony and it is crispy cool. I hear the morning Moslem prayers being chanted in the distance. The birds are flying by and the people are out in the fieldsá some squatting out in the open – their morning toilet.

Our Indian experience has been, let’s say, up and down, beginning in a downward spiral and hopefully will get better.

First of all, as I have written (and it is very clear to see now that we are in another culture), Laos and Cambodia were the perfect countries for us. We wanted to stay much longer to relax but the Jaisalmir, Rajasthan, India Camel Fair was luring us oná so, we flew from Cambodia to Bangkok (had a jam packed hectic time as we had packages and postcards to send, emails to send and pick up and “the spirit house had to be shippedá but that’s another story*). We were rushed and tired but we finally get on the plane at 8:30 PM to fly to Delhi (getting in at midnight – another Ugh flight.) Getting on the plane, your mind must switch from Asian to Indian, as you are surrounded by Moslem turbans, women in saris and a ‘different attitude’ – some friendly, some aggressive and not as ‘gentle’ as we found in Asia. I wish everyone could have seen the first 24 hours in India. First, the lines to get thru immigration were incredibly long and slow moving. Now, it is 1 am and the passport control official threw the forms back at us demanding we fill our Visa info. I am now feeling the change in approach to tourists. Then, we wait and wait and wait for our bags that come out in dribs and drabs – people pushing and shoving and I notice for the first time on our trip, yelling all over the place. Dick now informs me that he checked on our flight to Jaiseamir for the next morning and it is NOT CONFIRMED. Uh oh!!! I should have known we were in big trouble but we still had to find a place to stay with 3 sleepy kids. It is now 2 am and we have nowhere to stay. Dick got tourist information to book us a night for 2 rooms at $30. each at the ‘Relax Inn” (I thought the name was ironic). So, I got a little worried and suggested we pay more for more comfort. We go to another tourist info booth for help. They say “Ashoka Palace” for $50. a room is three star. I feel safer so we book a taxi. Now, by this time, Dick is feeling very ‘ripped off’ by everyone at this point and we begin to get four men at a time trying to help us with our luggage and “blatantly ask for tips”. They don’t wait for you to give them a tip, they quickly say, “Give me Tips!”. We are so put off by this aggressiveness, Dick finally at one point just gives all of them one bill and tells them to split it anyway they like. Anyway, we get to our taxi, after paying for a bigger one and still feel crammed in. We arrive at our worst nightmare so far in the tripá Ashoka Palace was truly depressing which is how I rate the most horrible accommodations. I have written about our house on New Years Eve in Guatemala. All the kids said, “Mom, that house is looking pretty good right now!” They were such troopers. You know, Dick is not a night owl (Ha Ha!!!) He starts pacing the floor and declares he is just about to get back on another plane and leave. The bellman at the hotel were knocking on our doors at 5:30 am (only 3 hours of sleep for us) to say they were going off duty and wanted us to know hopefully to get yet another tip. The whole ordeal became comical. The rooms are filthy, the beds were hilly and I am not that fussy but I really felt this time I was going to get bed bugs. We thought there was no hot water but you just had to let the water run for 15 minutes. Of course, Dick had no patience for this and ended up taking a freezing cold shower. We pack quickly, have no breakfast and get a cab quickly back to the airport to take care of our tickets that are not confirmed. Well, without going into the hours we spent trying to get on the flight, we got bumped along with 30 other touristsá some of whom even had confirmed tickets. We were passed from window to window with no lines just hoards of people and at one time I even shouted, “Where’s the line?” That got everybody’s attention but we still got no help.

I forgot to tell you something else that was very interesting. We did not have a room at the Camel Fair and weeks ago I began getting worried. So Dick had a great idea (this is what makes him a superb traveler) to contact all the YPO in India (YPO is a business organization which is international that Dick is involved with in Boston) and ask for help. We were so impressedá we received so many replies of help. In a totally booked city, we had offers to stay in great hotels and luxury tents (complete with bathrooms) for the Camel Fair. Dick replies and confirmed but ironically we could not get there. It is a 12-hour drive and if we tried to drive there in the crazy traffic with no lanes, people honking, camels and elephants going byá we would have missed 2 out of 3 days of the fair. In contacting the YPO though, we found one of them to be the owner of a very good travel agency so we took full advantage, jumped in a taxi from the airport and went to the nearest SITA office. We spent a whole day there booking 2 weeks in India. By this time, we are very exhausted, the kids have been cooped up in an office, Dick is going cuckoo over their behavior and we go out to have lunch and beggars with no tongues holding a written explanation of how they got that way approach us for money, a man is taking a shower on the sidewalk at a ‘public convenience’ bathhouse. Another white haired man dressed all in white is dragging his bed outside to take a nap (I notice later on our trip that the “rest stops” along the road are just thatá besides the little restaurant there are rows of beds outside to take a ‘rest’. A vendor next to a restaurant is wrapping betel nut and spices with honey in leaves and selling them. There is a brand new Mercedes being washed with a bucket and rickety rickshaws being biked overloaded with 6 to 8 people on them. Ah, India!!!

You would have laughed because after our ordeal at Atoka Palace for $50 a room (some tourists we met at the airport said they paid $100. for the same type of dreary accommodation), we tell our travel agent to go “high end”á we mean palaces at 5 star ratings. Dick keeps asking the price, I keep emphasizing luxury and remind Dická we are in India!

We are now into the trip for over a weeká our luck has changed. We get a very nice quiet driver who does not try to take us places to get commissions and he loves the kids. We found out he is getting married next year on our anniversary to a girl from his small village that he has met once. He showed us her picture and she is very beautiful. We are also very grateful he is a good driver as the roads are incredibly challenging between the potholes, camel carts, dancing bears, over bulging trucks of hay, thousands of motorcycles (the inexpensive mode of vehicle for everyone), the local buses with people even riding on the top in the luggage rack, the tuk tuks overloaded along with jeeps with people standing out on the fenders, and of course the COWS. I get a real kick watching the sacred Hindu cows that just wander around knowing no one has the nerve to hit them based on their religious belief. Driving along you feel like you are watching a documentary on India. Just incredible sights. Everyone lives and works out in the open.

Highlights of our trip so faráfor better or for worse!

Agra and the Taj Mahal Sariska Palace and Game Park
We left Agra and our ‘convention-center size’ marble hotel to travel for 6 hours to the countryside and game reserve for tigers. Dick was dreading being in the car so long but driving in India is far from boring. I kept a journal as we drove and here are some tidbits of things that caught my eye!

Camel carts with car tires with white turbaned men driving them. All kinds of sacred and not-so-sacred cowsá largest humps are revered, low humps are used for work, females are used for milk, cows are taken to slaughter not for meat but for hide. Leaving or entering a city is utter chaos – so very crowded, a ‘crowded’ that is different in India. In Laos you would see 2 to 3 people in a little taxi tuk tuk, in India you would see 10. There are no lanes of traffic, our driver braves through honking all the time, swerving, stopping short, missing human beings by a hair. It is like playing a game of chicken and the kids are not in seat belts.

A clever ideaá bikers hold on to trucks and get a free ride.

Little businesses exist in square wooden boxes on cart wheels and can be locked up at night. You see barbers and the funniest was a Xerox machine (the Indian version of Kinko’s!) and rows of these little carts I told Dick were a strip mall.

Against a backdrop of dust and cow paddies and poverty you see beautiful brightly colored saris draped around barefoot women with bangle bracelets (mandatory for women).

Building and road construction being done by men and women carrying baskets of rubble and rock and bricks on their heads – the human bulldozer.

Dancing black bears on the road to entertain the tourists going by.

Wild monkeys everywhere but especially around the rooftops finding kitchens to “clean up”. Mustard fields of rich green and yellow set against thatched roof and mud brick huts.

Villagers getting their water from wells in the ground with buckets and then carrying it on their heads to home.

Arabic writing with its curlicues.

Moslem women that cover their faces and Hindu women that don’t.

We are driving along, the sun is low and casting a brilliant yellow light over the burnt sienna clay rocks and sand – the landscape reminds me of a cross between New Mexico and Utah (my favorite). All of a sudden, we leave the poverty and simplicity of the small villagers that mix into the rocky landscape and arrive at carved stucco gates of Sariska Palace of a former maharaja and enter into perfectly manicured flower gardens, lawns and fountains. We drive along to the grand circular staircase where a mustached man in a stately costume with red paisley turban smiles and greets us. Were we in heaven? Indian style? The kids are all smiles and can’t help but think back to ‘Ashoka Palace’ in Delhi and think, “Now, this is what we call a real palace!” It was so charming and comfortable and very informalá the Simon style.

Since Sariska is next to a game park and its most important inhabitant being a tiger, our rooms were decorated in black and gold – very dramatic and the baths were bordered in “Tiger Tile”. All the rooms surrounded lawns and gardens with chairs to relax in. Rocky hills, gorgeous birds and fragrant rose gardens surround you. There is a pool and a center for massage. The kids immediately pull out their legos, Cuisenaire rods for building and art supplies for drawing. They are so happy to stop in such a beautiful tranquil place and just be kids for a while. This is our first wonderful Indian experience.

Dick talks me into my first massage. I was apprehensive, as it seems like such a personal invasive yet indulgent thing to do for oneself. But I thought, what a great exotic place to do something like this so I tried it. Dick and I are shown into rooms where a Dr. came in and asked “Do you suffer from any stresses or ill health?” (in that formal way only an Indian can say). I thought it the polite thing to do to not say your country is one of the most stressful experiences I have encountered and instead said no and tried to make a joke by saying “unless you call traveling with 3 children stressful”. Well, he was so taken aback and gave me a lecture on the fact that so many women cannot have children and I should only be thankful with mine. Of course, I adore my children and think they are a blessing but I was more intrigued by the whole undertone of his manner. I felt he was representing that deep philosophy that Indians possess of believing in reincarnation and the caste system and how they must feel in dealing with those beliefs and poverty. It gave me food for thought. Anyway, a young girl comes in very professional with a brass bowl of oil and proceeds to given me whole body oil massage. I found it to be very relaxing and nice. I then took a shower and felt great. Dick, who wanted to do this, in the first place came out with a disgusting look on his face. He did not like the man who have him the massage. He did not like the oil and he did not like the ‘too hot’ steam bath after. He could not find the soap in the shower so walked out after his shower to go to dinner feeling silly and slimy. I got so tickled by this as the same experience got 2 totally different responses from us. I was grateful that Dick had encouraged me to do this and went on to enjoy that night on the oval patio overlooking more gardens and big bonfires. We listened to raspy Indian music and dancing under the starry night. So enchanting.

We awoke to a “chilly” morning of riding in a jeep into the park, never seeing a tiger but we did see a tiger track and was still so pleased to see lots of gray antelope with striped feet, herds of deer that looked just like Bambi, families of monkeys doing Tarzan impressions and peacocks galore. Our treat was spying a jackal walking down the path and scaring off all the other animals. It was clear who was the predator and who was the prey.

Dick and I took a walk that reminded me so of how the British would dress in their finery and take promenades to a picnic spot for a cup of tea in the countryside. We followed our guide who held a bag of all our china and silver for tea. We strolled by a river where monkeys and green parrots followed us to a place that was quite interesting. In the palace, there are black and white pictures of the maharaja and guests proudly displaying their dead tiger. One conjures up images of daring hunters stalking their prey for hours thru dangerous jungle. Well, our picnic spot was on top of what looked like a water tower but was really a blind where the maha would sit watching an ox that was tied to a ring in the ground. The tiger would come for his defenseless dinner and boom! The tiger would be shot by the hiding maha hiding in his cement bunker. Little different story than what you think when you look at these prize pictures.

As Dick and I had our fancy cup of tea, we pondered what it must have been like for these maharajas. To be surrounded by so little. Whole villagers were created just to serve his estate. They are so insular as walls and gates and guards and such surreal beauty surround them.

Our next visit to Samode Palace and Bagh (garden) would only reinforce these thoughts.

Samode Raja Palace and Samode Bagh
On our drive to Samode, the landscape would change to more pure countryside and more desert-like vegetationá more rocks, more sand, more camels and even an elephant or two.

We go by villages like ghost towns with just a few inhabitants peeking out from their windows and doors. We arrive at old city walls and grand gates with a hint of hand painting and can already feel the specialness. Winding up the stone drive with monkeys and cows and poopá we enter paradise. Samode Palace is a 3-tiered complex with inner courtyards and alcoves and fountains. Utterly charmingá the hand painted decoration is everywhere along with marble and tile. The kids immediately start running from room to room to hallway and come back with wonderful tales of opulence like we have never seen anywhere. Whole mirrored mosaic banquet rooms with painted hunting scenes and some rooms in pastel turquoise and white floral designs on every square inch from floor to ceiling with durrie carpets to match and chandeliers that use to be oil lamps but now wired for electricity. There is even silver furniture. It is such a sensory overload for my artistic soul. We are so happy to get a 2 bedroom ‘apartment’ right by the gate so we can see every night the pomp and circumstance for all the guest. Decorated camels and lit torches welcome you as you climb the rolled out red carpet, receive a flower marigold necklace and get the red dot on the forehead as you listen to flute and drum. The fa­ade is instantly lit by a thousand twinkling lights and followed by fireworks galore. You enter the second courtyard where costumed children in gold green and red and turbaned dance around in circles and wiggle their eyebrows at you with a big smile. There is also a puppet show where we bought fun puppets to bring home. Then you are escorted to a buffet. It is truly magical. There is the most beautiful new swimming pool built of marble and inlaid with flowers with fountains and streams of tile all along the edge where the kids had a blast. Most tourist stay one night. We called up our travel agent and cancelled the next two cities to stay 5 nights. The staff thought we were ambassadors who lived in Delhiá for what other reason would you stays so long.

We left by camel cart after a fabulous rest to go the Bagh, also owned by the maharaja and the gardens have been restored and you stay in luxury tents, the likes of which none of us had ever seen. This is ecotourism at its very bestá it gives camping a whole other name. The staff was so friendlyá the tents have floral patterns all over the walls, real beds, wall to wall carpets, lamps, even a heater and real baths that are built into the original walls of the bagh and back into the back of the tents. Every luxury down to a beautiful dinner on the patio by bonfire and at the end of the evening you receive your own hot water bottle to keep your toes warm at night!!! WOW – what a life! We wandered the gardens catching peacock feathers, played badminton and had a great family time. We could have stayed a month.

Vishnu and the Art of the Sell
I have very mixed emotions about India. At the end when I was riding on a camel, I just decided that India for Patty Simon is just too jolting for my sensitive soul. But I have to say it is so fascinating. I have read two books that have helped me understand India. “City of Joy” is probably the second best book I have every read. It so explains the caste system, how so many people from the country end up in the slums of the cities, the incredible obligatory life of a Hindu, the incredible endurance these people have to beat all odds of survival. I was truly humbled in so many ways. It is by a Frenchmen Dominique LaPierre. Once you pick it up, you cannot put it down! The other book was “Desert Places” by Robyn Davidson (the women who had before driven her own camels across the deserts of Australia) and happened to want to do it in Rajasthan, Indiaá the very place that we were in so it was quite fun to share her frustrations, etc. She is a good writer so it makes for fun reading.

But, back to Vishnu, our newfound friend. One of the very hardest and exhausting parts of India is that you are “hassled” so much to buy something, change money, etc. Everyone is connected to everyone else and there are so many ulterior motives for befriending a tourist that one becomes very skeptical. I found that by the end of a few hours you just wanted to run back to your hotel and hide. As Dick called it, as we left the gates of Samode, “Well, it is time to run the gauntlet!” I began to notice that Alex would stay at the hotel with Ben more and more and Katie would hold my hand and hide behind me. Every child asked for rupees (money), bon bons (candy) or stylo (pencil – which we later found out they would sell to the store and get the money for it (not like Guatemala where they used them for school). The storekeepers push way past any limits of salesmanship I have ever seen. Men ask you for tips after they help youá they don’t wait quietly for you to give them something and they tell you if they don’t like how much you give them. Not one person helps you but 10 so poor Dick finally let them split the one bill of money. I like to sincerely connect with people when I travelá the local people and especially the children, but I found that I couldn’t because I was so put upon. I couldn’t make eye contact with them and so it really soured the experience for me. (That is not to say we still didn’t have great experiences with a lot of the people but you have to work hard and really get out in the middle of nowhere to find it!) The funniest time that had Dick laughing was when we arrived at Samode palace after a busy tiring day and one of the few young men who had a shop and had been harassing us everyday to look in their shop said to me, “You PROMISED you would come in and buy something today!” Well, I try very hard not to turn into the ‘ugly American’ but I blewá and said as controlled as I could, “I NEVER promised you that and it makes me very angry that you would say that to me!” The seller was taken a little by surprise and gave me a break for about 5 seconds. Dick got me to the room! I have to laugh now about it but this experience so illustrates how far they try to manipulate you!

Anyway, with all that said, one day we were able to get away from all the hustlers and walk down the street and find a great little store where they make and mold beautiful bangle braceletsá hundreds of colors and rhinestones and so prettyá Katie loved them. We are having so much fun videoing the process and getting to know the mother, daughter, father and brother who all work there and we bought a lot of them. All of a sudden, a very handsome Indian man, who seemed to be very soft spoken, began chatting with us, telling us he is the principal of the local elementary school. We are always interested in visiting schools with our kids so we accepted when he than invited us for tea back to his home he shares with his parents, sister, wife and grandchildren. (At this point, I am embarrassed to say, but I become skeptical and whisper to Dick that there is a “sale” developing somehow. I am proud to say that I was correct but I would not know immediately. This guy was smooth!) Dick is touched that this man is taking such a friendly interest in us. We enjoy seeing how an upper-caste Samodian lives. We noticed a telephone in his house and he told us his brother had just been elected to Parliament. We were impressed. We make plans to meet the next day with the kids to visit the school and say goodbye but I notice that he insists on walking us all the way back to the gate of the palace (once again, so no one else can hustle us and take a sale away from him!). We enjoy the school visit and were quite impressed at how well the children read and speak English. We ask several times if there are any supplies that we could send him and once again I became skeptical as the only thing he says he needs is money. After our visit, he invites us back to his house. Now the selling is about to begin and we are trapped. He quietly tells us that all the other miniature paintings that are sold are not credible and casually tells us that his sister, who is not there at the present time, does her own painting and would we like to see them. By this time, we feel very committed and say yes. Well, the prices are 3 to 4 times the amount of the other shops! It’s like fishingá in a matter of 3 days he had caught and trapped us in this obligatory posture. We bought a few at almost asking price. He was so smooth! It was incredible. This is India!

Jaisalmerá
How do we describe our last stop, which was supposed to be our first stop for the camel fair. It was incredible. You feel you are in the middle of nowhere, very far away from anywhereá you conjure up images of the ancient trading caravans roaming thru the desert. It was desert,.. raw, hot, uncompromising (a lot like West Texas or Arizona with an exotic flair!) There is an ancient fort on the only hill around that the dawn and dusk golden light turns into gold. The fort is totally inhabited so when you wander thru the windy lanes, you feel as if you could be seeing what life was like hundreds of years ago. It was not overpopulated and not many cars so no pollution which was so refreshing. I kept telling all the locals they were so lucky to live here and not other big cities in India. You are close to Pakistan so you get a lot of army influence. I had a lot of fun with Katie sitting under an old arch of the city smelling buying perfumes and little bottles with a local vendor that also sold rat poisoning (interesting combination!) We took a 2-day/1 night camel safari with luxury tents set on a sand dune like Lawrence of Arabia. Sunset, moon, falling stars, silhouettes of the camels all made for an enchanting time. A camel is fascinating. It is tall, highly decorated with all sorts of mirrored fabrics and tassels. The sit on their knees so you can get on and then their back end goes up and then their front, which has you in a very slanting position. You hold on for dear life. Trotting is smoother then walking which is fairly jolting so 2 days is probably enough to get the experience. Ben was in the lead and looked so cute being so little on such a big animal. Katie had a lot of fun visiting and joking with her guide. I even found I could read on the trek. Dick thought that was funny but of course he was using his Dictaphone to say his journal as we went along. Alex said he liked camels more than horses as he thought they felt safer. We loved it and it was fun to go to tiny villages, meet the people, watch rock being broken by hand and carried in baskets to sell, visit Brahmin cemeteries and count how many wives died by fire with their deceased husbands. This was a great way to end India. Tomorrow, a short flight to Delhi and than on to Kathmandu!

Well, our last day in India ironically started like our first day in Indiaá our flight got cancelled in Jaisalmir. We were in trouble because the next flight is in 2 days and you know it is full and could also be cancelled. We were to meet friends in Nepal and needed to get there and also, I hate to admit this but I really wanted to leave. I needed to get away and recharge. Well, what to doá we could take a bus for 20 hours, we could wait 2 days, or we could drive 4 hours to the nearest town and take our chances on a second-class train all night to Delhi and hope we can get a flight out. We run to the travel agent and find out all the flights from Delhi are full and we cannot get a confirmed reservation for 5 whole days. Now, we are worried about getting out of India in time to make our flight to Bhutan (which we have paid a fortune for and did not want to miss). We decide the best course of action is to keep moving closer and closer to Delhi. This proved to be very smart but at the time remember we could not get any positive information so by this time I am just trying to hang on and get from place to place. We end up with the craziest driver we have had in India so I really thought our life was at risk. For those who know me, you know that I do not get that nervous. This guy was a maniac. Going 90 miles an hour with no shoulder and herds of cows, goats and sheep, not to mention children, bikes, overloaded trucks and peacocks and dogs on the road was a nightmare. As I am holding on to all my children (no seat belts, by the way!) and holding on to Dick, I am so happy to get to Jodhpur. We eat dinner in a very nice hotel. All I wanted to do was check in but Dick said to go on. We arrive at the trainá something out of Dante’s Inferno, beggars, crippled children, hoards of people, filth, people sleeping everywhere and the Simon family with too much luggage, 4 porters and a second-class ticketá there is no first class! I wish everyone could have seen my face. I am a positive person but my heart sank as I am carrying sleeping Ben (now it is midnight, we started this escapade at 9 am) to our bunk beds, no curtains, tons of people and all our luggage. Our bunks are not all together. I almost got off that trainá I kept imagining we would stay up all night, crying grumpy children, no privacyá Ugh! Well, it got betterá thank God. I managed to get all the luggage up on the top bunk. I slept with little Ben. Katie was above. Alex was around the corner and managed to befriend a bunch of Indian young men playing “Back Street Boys’ on their radio. Dick was at the other end, which was nice to get away from us, but he was by the door that banged all night. We slept better than expected, befriended a really nice German couple and got to see the countryside the next morning and the slums of Delhi. Our adventure was not at all over because we found out from our travel agent that we were in luck. The flight that night was delayed and would leave at 1:30 in the morning so people would cancel and that would be our only chance to get out of here. So, we checked into the Radisson by the airportá watched two videos, ate, took a bath and dragged the kids back to wait from 9 PM to 1:30 AM to see if we cleared the wait list. Well, with patience and a slight bribe to the ticket agent, we got on. I would not recommend doing this every with kids. Poor thingsá every time we sat down to wait for tickets, immigration, security, and boardingá they would each fall asleep which means we had to wake them up 5 times as we could not carry everyone. But, we got on that plane and were very happy and arrived into Kathmandu at 4 AM. Needless to say, we were totally exhausted. It has taken a week to recover but as I am writing this we are off to Bhutan tomorrow. Ah, the trials of traveling.

March 25, 2000 - Alex, Katie, Ben (India)

Alex’s Essay on India

We went on a really fancy plane from Bangkok to Delhi. It was Thai Airways, which is said to be the best airline in the world. My Dad said they even give massages in economy class. It was a very fun flight. We watched Tarzan. When we got into the airport in Delhi, it was not as fun as the flight. We got in at midnight and we had to go through an hour line of immigration. When we finally go through immigration, we got our bags and were told to go to the ‘Ashoka Palace’, which is supposedly a nice place. The people were nice except when they woke my Dad up at 5 in the morning to say that they were leaving and asked for a tip. The rooms were very dirty and you had to leave the water running for 20 minutes for hot water. My dad did not know this and took a freezing cold shower. The next morning we supposedly were to go to Jaisalmer to see a supposedly great camel fair but the night before we realized our flights were not confirmed so we got bumped along with 30 other people who had confirmed reservations. We went to a travel agent who helped us a lot to book the next 2 weeks in India.

After that we met our driver who was quiet but nice and he drove us to Agra – the home of the Taj Mahal. Our hotel was a new marble big convention center. There was a lot of traffic but not all cars· a lot of bicycles, people, camels, cows, horses, and motorcycles. The Taj Mahal was really amazing but there were a lot of people. Agra was not my favorite place because it was kind of like Delhi· very big and crowded. The next day we took a very long ride to Sariska National Park. The roadside was interesting with dancing sloth bears and camels would block your path. Sariska Palace was very nice and we were upset that we could not stay there longer. It had big grounds and wild turkeys would walk along the walkways. The one thing that was not good about it was that they had stuffed tigers and leopards there. The maharajahs had built a tower that they used for hunting tigers. It was not very amazing. All they would do would get an ox and tie a rope around the ox’s neck to the tower and then wait until a tiger came and than they would shoot the tiger. We went on a jeep safari the next morning and saw a jackal, a lot of monkeys, antelope, deer and peacocks. When we saw the jackal it was hunting and all the animals and there were monkeys in the trees and they would scream like crazy. My mom and Dad also went on a trek there and brought back a carcass of a deer.

After that we went to a place called Samode. It was probably the best place I went to in India. It was a very tiny town with a very fancy palace. Every night, they would have a party for a group staying in another city and the group would come in on camelback. They would walk on a red carpet and they would give necklaces that were flowers and then they would go into a really fancy dining room. At the end they would have fireworks. Every night there was a puppet show and dancing and they had really good food. A few days later we took a camel cart through the desert to Samode Bagh, which was the garden of the rajah that lived in the palace. We stayed in really fancy tents that even had a bathroom and there were bunnies that we fed. At night they would give you hot water bottles to put on your feet in bed to stay warm. The last day of the visit we went to Jaipur where a lot of the groups stayed. It was a big city like Delhi. It was way too overpopulated and it was so busy we just stayed there to have lunch. We had lunch at Rambagh Palace and they had really good shish kabobs. I liked Samode Palace more.

The next day we drove to Jaipur and got on a plane to Jaisalmer. It is a desert city next to Pakistan. There are tons of military bases there. There is a fort. We stayed at a really great hotel that had a pool that was really freezing. We went on a really fun camel trek there. My camel driver did not talk much but my camel would not stop burping. The camel was very awkward. It was about the same height as an elephant and when it got up you felt like you would fall off because his hind legs came up first. On the ride we saw all desert and some deer that were really far away. We went to some temples too that were Hindu. The temples had a lot of shapes carved into the stone. And they had mice living in them. We finally got to the place we camped and it was really good food but my sister got the liver of the chicken. The setting was amazing. There were no houses for miles· just our tents and the camels. The next day we took the camels back and we rested at the hotel and ate at a really good restaurant. My favorite food was the nan, which is pita -like bread.

The next day we went to the airport but our flight was cancelled. So we went back to a tour company’s building and they told us there was a train that would leave Jodhpur at midnight. So we drove for 4 hours with a crazy driver who went at least a hundred miles an hour. At 10 o’clock at night we arrived in Jodhpur. We went to a fancy hotel that we wished we could have checked into but we had to make the train. So we ate dinner and got on the train. It was comfortable but I could not sleep until 2 AM because these boys kept their music on all night. And we only had 3 beds for 5 people and had to share. Well, finally the next day, we got to Delhi and we went to our travel agent and they said there was a flight at midnight to Kathmandu, Nepal that we might be able to get because Kathmandu was the next place we were going. We checked into a hotel where we ate and watched 2 movies. At 9 PM, we went to the airport. For the next 4 hours, we thought we would not get a flight so we came up with all kinds of ideas of how to get to Nepal. Finally, the agent that came to the airport with us said that we got the seats. Every time we would sit down at the boarding area, we would fall asleep but we eventually got to Kathmandu at 3:30 AM. It was cold and I was tired but we got there.

My most favorite thing in India was Samode.

Katie’s Journal of India

When we got to Sariska Palace, we got our rooms and Alex, me and Ben played. I drew in the rose garden. I drew a tree with lots of monkeys on it. Then Alex and me made a fort in the back courtyard. Then we saw lots of monkeys and we went away. Then we ate dinner. After dinner we saw a bonfire and heard Indian music. Then we walked through a huge courtyard back to our room. Then we went to sleep. Then at about 6:30 in the morning, we went on a jeep safari. It was really cold. We saw lots of peacocks and lots of antelopes and deer too. We saw wild boar. At the end a jackal chased the monkeys and antelopes away. I liked the safari a lot.

I went to Samode next. We stayed at Samode Palace. Every night we saw lots of fireworks and we also saw camels and music and one night we even got a flower necklace and my mom got a red dot painted on her forehead. Our room was right over the gate. The swimming pool was white marble and when you looked down in it there were lots of flowers. The food there was good. We saw somebody make bracelets that were made out of clay and sometimes they put rhinestones on them to make them pretty. We bought a lot of them. We saw 2 people make them. There was also a place where they carved out stones. My favorite was the moonstone. It looks like the moon. I also took a camel cart ride to a different hotel called ‘Samode Bagh – it means garden and it was the garden where the rajah used to go in the summer. They had bunnies that I petted and fed wildflowers. There were fountains and a worker man would run ahead of us and turn on each fountain.

We flew from Jaipur to Jaisalmer. I got sick on the airplane. When we drove to our hotel, I saw a fort where 3000 people still live. In Jaisalmer we went on a camel trek. My camel’s name was Hilton. The camel had 2 mouths. It chews up his food in his first mouth and then he chews it up in his second mouth and then if it is still not chewed up, the food goes back to the second mouth. He was really wobbly. You get up on the camels knee and then you get on and the camel puts his back legs up first. You are very tilted and then the camel puts his front legs up. I love to trot on a camel. My guide helped me stand on the camel and ride his neck and I touched my toes sideways on the camel. My guide was very nice and funny. When we got to our destination about 6 hours later, we got off the camel and we had tea on blankets that had been on the camels. The tents had a place to wash yourself and then there was the mattress with 3 blankets, sheets and pillows. I saw the sunset. The food was really good and we saw lots of stars. There were cactus there and a purple and white flower. I got a bad sunburn on my leg There was a man in Jaisalmer that sold perfumes and rat poison under the gate of the old city. My mom and me bought lots of perfume in little bottles. We got to smell each kind he sold. They smelled rich.

I liked Samode in India the best and Jaisalmer second.

Ben’s Essay on India

Huipil was my driver in India. It has a lot of desert. It has camels. When I drove in the car, I would count camels everyday. I counted 12 one day. Sometimes I was asleep so I missed the camel train once. When we went Sariska National Park, I saw a jackal. I saw one peacock. I remember the fancy dining room in Samode Palace. I saw a big statue of a horse in Delhi. My favorite food was nan and yogurt. I would dip the bread in the yogurt. I also liked puffy bread. I was the leader on the camel safari. My camel was shorter then the other ones. The camel sitted and it was too tall to get on so we needed a ladder or an elevator. It was fun to get on the camel. I remember the perfume man. He sitted in the middle of the gate by the cows. He sold perfume and my mommy bought it from him. I saw a school in Samode. They sitted on the floor. I remember the Taj Mahal. It was all white. Bill Clinton visited the Taj Majal.

My favorite thing about India was the camel.

March 25, 2000 - Alex, Katie, Ben (Bhutan)

When we got on the plane, we were going to a great place and one that was really remote – Bhutan. One side of the plane had Everest out the window and one side did not. We flew into the most beautiful airport. It was new and had painting and woodcarving all over it in Bhutanese style. We met, Chorten, who would be our guide for 8 days. He wore a skirt and a shirt with a huge triangular pocket and knee socks to keep him warm. He welcomed us and gave each one of us a silk scarf and said “Kuzuzampola”, which means Greetings! The first thing we noticed were the prayer flags. Chorten told us they were put on bridges and high places on cypress trees. The writing on them was a mix of Tibetan and Bhutanese and there was a dragon-like dog that was printed in the middle of them. The prayers are called mantras and the flags are made out of cotton. When they blow in the wind, the threads unravel and send the prayers blowing in the wind up to the sky.

After we drove thru the small town named Paro, we ate in a really good restaurant that had really good cheese dumplings. It is a small town like Newtonville but is the second largest town of the country. After we got to our hotel, we drove to an old fort. The fort was built to keep the Tibetans out. From our hotel, we would look out at the Himalayas. It was like the National Geographic pictures that you see. The mountains are so high up that you mistake them for clouds. Then you see a lot of evergreen forests and down below, little small houses. The farmland from above looked like green waves per Katie and 3-D squares per Alex and little homes for rice per Ben.

Alex says, ” We went on a hike to the Tiger’s Nest which is a monastery that was partly destroyed by fire. It is called this because we had to climb up for 2 hours and we only got to the halfway point, which is a cafeteria for tourists to eat and a viewpoint to see a sheer rock cliff. I could not believe that they were able to build it so high. It was a great hike.”

Ben remembers, “There was a house in the middle of a waterfall.”

Per Katie “We were walking down and we saw somebody taking a ‘stone bath’. It is outside and you tie blankets around it on sticks so noone could see. The water came from a stream and a cement tub was built to catch the water. Stones were warmed up in a fire next to the tub and put in to make a nice warm bath.”

The next day we drove to Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. We saw cliffs, and boulders and a river. The river water was mainly dark blue and green. We passed the fork of two rivers called a ‘confluence’ and we saw 3 stupas – holy shrines. One was Bhutanese, one was Tibetan and one was Nepalese When we got to Thimpu we went to handicraft stores.

Per Katie “In Thimpu I bought a big monkey mask and a bamboo box that was painted on. That is what I liked the most in Thimpu.”

This is what Alex liked the most. “I liked going to a bookstore. I bought some classics there.”

The next day we went to Punakha, which is where our guide was born and saw an archery contest. Archery is the national sport of Bhutan. The target was 150 meters away but Chorten got a bull’s eye. He was very good. We also went to a very big temple there.

“I loved Punakha. That was my favorite place in Bhutan” – Alex, Katie and Ben

Katie’s Essay on Bhutan

“I saw snow for the first time this year in Bhutan. I climbed up to 12000 feet from 8000 feet. I got bad altitude sickness.

On the flight back to Kathmandu I saw Mt. Everest from our plane through the pilot’s front window. It was cool to see the cockpit. But the bad thing about that flight was we woke up at 5AM and our flight did not leave until 9. It was supposed to leave at 7.

Two days before that we got up at 2:45 am to see something amazing. There was a big 100 feet wide and 100 feet tall silk tapestry that had 10 Buddhas sewn on it. Alex and Ben went back to the car at 4AM to sleep but I stayed with my mom and dad. There was a full moon and we saw the moon set and that was the coldest part of the morning.

They had really good cheese dumplings all over Bhutan. We saw a really good archery contest and our guide won the archery contest. They have to shoot their arrows 150 meters. The bows were really modern but the targets are wood with paint on them. Our guide hit the bulls-eye and he stuck it so far in that he had to get a knife to take it out. We had ‘butter tea’ that tasted bad but all Bhutanese drink it and we had really good crackers.

Per Ben

I played with Samba [our driver] every day. Chorten ate a lot of chili peppers. We teached Samba Back Street Boys.

April 13, 2000 - Alex, Katie, Ben (Japan)

Alex’s Essay on Japan

Japan has been probably my most favorite country.

First we arrived in Narita Airport. The first fascinating thing I saw in the bathroom in the airport was they give you foamy soap that dries quicker. Then we went thru customs and immigration and went to the bus station to take a bus into Tokyo. And then we got hungry so we went up to the food court in the airport. I ate egg sushi and then McDonalds. I had not had fast food in 4 months so I was pretty excited. I got a hamburger and fries. I went to a toy store after that and saw the “first” Pokemon pack of cards.

The first stop in Tokyo was the big Pokemon store. We went to a Temple where there was a park with ponds and huge carp. We visited a SONY showroom where they had a computer using a digital camera that took your picture, downloaded it on the computer and than you can distort your face by making your nose grow or your ears pointed. They did this to me and my sister and we looked pretty weird. I imagine this is how they created all the creatures in Star Wars. The sidewalks in Tokyo are very wide because there are so many people who cross a street at once. The parking lots have mechanical double-decker spaces.

Then we went to Hakone Yumoto. We stayed in ryokan, which is a Japanese traditional inn where you cannot wear any shoes in the building. The beds are futon mattresses on the floor which are made of straw mats. The walls are made of rice paper. I took a bath in scalding hot water which came from hot springs. The next morning we took a cable car and saw Mt. Fuji. It was amazing because it was a lot bigger than the other mountains and had a lot of snow at the top.

We took the Bullet train to Kyoto. It is said to be one of the fastest trains in the world. We went to a really big castle called Nijo Castle which had ‘Nightingale Floors’. They are called that because whenever anyone steps on them they were built to creak so no intruders could sneak in and hurt the Shogun (which is the king). I saw a Geisha which is a lady dressed in a kimono which is a fancy dress and has white make-up all over her face. I also went to the Toyota factory where they have computers where you can design your own car. The factory was really cool. They used robots to do most of the jobs but people do the checking. They gave us a little toy car that you put together and it would shoot off and it was made our of recycled bumpers.

The next day we went to Hiroshima. Hiroshima was the first city that the US destroyed with an atom bomb. It killed 200,000 people. The reason they chose Hiroshima was because a military base was located there· it was not guarded heavily and Hiroshima had not been destroyed much by air raids and they wanted to test the full power of the bomb. They dropped it because they wanted to end World War II quickly and they were losing many soldiers. Three days later, the US dropped another bomb on Nagasaki because the Japanese did not surrender. I also saw the memorial to Sadako who had leukemia from the atom bomb radiation. She thought if she tried to fold 1000 paper origami cranes (which stood for longevity and happiness) that she would recover. She died after she folded 644. Children all over Japan continue to fold millions of paper crane and leave them at her memorial. My mom and sister and I each folded one and left them at the memorial. I am not sure they should have dropped the bomb but I am also not sure that if Japan had had the knowledge of the atomic bomb that Japan would have dropped one on us.

The next day we went to an island called Miyajima. We were going to stay here for 3 days but are going to stay a week. When you get off the ferry, you see a lot of deer that are used to people and they sniff in your bags for food. There are suppose to be monkeys here but we have not hiked to the top yet to see them. Last night, I found a lot of starfish that were almost dead because the tide was going out so I tried to throw them back in. I also saw a slug that was green and had horns. This morning I went to the aquarium and saw puffer fish, electric eels, beluga whales, moray eels, eagle rays, and sharks. I also saw shark eggs hanging where you could see the embryos forming. There were also otters and one of them had one of his ears almost ripped off. They would do flips in the water. They let the penguins out to walk around with the people in the building.

I have had a great time in Japan.

Katie’s Essay on Japan

I went to the Pokemon store in Tokyo – the first thing in Japan. I got four packs of cards.

Then we went to a department store. My mom and dad went to the food section and I went with my brothers to the toy section. Then I went to the food section. They gave you samples of everything. They have fake plastic food to show you what you can buy. One of the foods was called ‘sushi’. It is raw fish wrapped in rice and dried seaweed. I liked tuna, crab and cucumbers. That night I had to take my malaria medicine. I cut the pill into 3 pieces and than I put it on a Pocky Stix which is a pretzel with no salt wrapped in chocolate. I would dip it in peanut butter and stick the pill in it and eat it.

The next day we went to a place called Akihabara. It is a place where they sell a lot of high tech things like watches, small computers, cameras, cell phones, and stuff like that. Ben, Dad and Alex liked it.

Then we went to Akusaka which is a more traditional part of Tokyo. There is a temple there. The first thing we did was see people feeding pigeons so we bought a bag of birdseed and I got to feed them. One went on my head and some went on my shoulders. They were everywhere. Then we walked to a place where they sold food. Ben got something kind of like a lollipop where they put a piece of real fruit like a strawberry inside and wrapped it in clear sugary taffy and put it on a big ice cube to harden. I got a corn on the cob with salt on it. Alex and my Dad got noodles and my Mom got a salady kind of thing. It had a lot of shredded cabbage and an egg on top and a piece of ham on top of the egg and they cooked it. Then we went to a Japanese garden. There was a pond in it and there were lots of carp inside and a turtle. Carp are like big goldfish that can be black, white, gold, silver, yellow and orange. Then we went and got fortunes. You shake a can and get a stick with a Japanese number on it. You find the drawer and there is a fortune inside. Mine was ‘small fortune’ and it said that I got altitude sickness· which I already know. Ben got the best fortune. Alex got a ‘regular’ fortune and my Mom and Dad both got ‘bad’ fortunes. My Mom’s said she should not travel!

Then we went to Hakone where Mt. Fuji is. We got to stay in a ryokan which is a traditional Japanese house. We took a steam bath which was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The walls were made with rice paper in between the rooms. The floors are tatami mats which are straw which is very smooth and bordered in fabric. The beds are futons on the floor. They are really comfortable. We ate mostly sushi for dinner. My brother cooked his raw tuna and raw shrimp but I ate the raw tuna and gave the shrimp to my Dad. The next day we went on a cable car and we saw Mr. Fuji. We also saw where the hot springs for our bath came from. On the side of the hill there was steam shooting out of the ground. Mr. Fuji was mainly under clouds but we got to see most of it. I liked the cable car. It was higher than the tall pine trees. My dad was scared.

When we were changing from the cable car to the train, we found a wonderful museum. It was outside and my favorite thing was the inside children’s playground. It had a woven hanging net that had tunnels up to the top that you can climb in. Sometimes there are traps. Our whole family got up there and I got some really good pictures.

Then we went to Kyoto on the Bullet Train. We went to a place called Nijo Castle. The floors were built to squeak when you walk on them so attackers couldn’t walk in without being heard. There were carp in the moat and at night birds would catch them and eat them. We saw some half-eaten dead fish on the sidewalks. There were lots of flowers and cherry-blossoms. The next day, my Mom and me went to a temple and took a walk. We saw shrines and scooped out stones where water flowed into that people would pour out in big spoons on trees.

We went to Hiroshima and I saw a statue of Sadako who was a little girl who made 644 paper origami cranes. She wanted to make a thousand but she died before she could finish them. Today there are millions of paper cranes around the statue. Alex, me and my mom all made one and added them to the others. I learned that she died of leukemia because a big bomb was dropped on the city and many people were killed and died from the radiation that came out of the bomb.

Then we went to Miyajima Island. There are lots of deer on this island. There is also a gate called the Otori Gate which is halfway under water at high tide and at low tide, we can walk out to it and look for shells. I went to an aquarium today. At the aquarium I saw fish that looked like a rock. I also saw electric eels, puffer fish, Siamese fighting fish, beluga whales, penguins, starfish, octopus, seahorses, sharks, otters, stingrays, huge crabs, Archerfish, piranhas and guinea pigs living with turtles. My mom and me were looking at a one-ton seal when it opened its mouth and than sneezed and threw his snot all over us. I like to eat oysters here.

My favorite part of Japan was Myajima Island because it has a lot of nature.

Bye from Katie Simon

Ben’s Essay on Japan

I am in Japan and I am on another island which is off of Japan. It is called Miyajima Island. I got here from a boat. I saw a beach. It has a lot of shells. I like to pick up big oyster shells. There is a gate that I think cars could go through but they don’t. My dad says Japan is really expensive. My ice cream costs 250 yen which is $2.50. I like to eat noodles, oysters and that sushi thing called Nori (it is the paper green seaweed that you wrap around rice and raw fish. I love it by itself and eat it for breakfast.) I bought a remote control plastic dog and it really barks, and moves its feet and kicks a soccer ball.

I looked out the window from our hotel in Tokyo and saw a big boat. Every night it would put blue and white boxes on and off the boat with big cranes. I saw a Ferris wheel. At night it would turn different colors.

I and my brother really drive my Dad crazy buying Pokemon packs of cards. I made a deal with him that every time I go back into Tokyo I get to buy one pack and the last visit I get to buy two.

The bullet train is one of the fastest in the world. It looks like a bullet and it goes as fast as a bullet would go.

I went to the Aki Habra which is a really high-tech place. It has a lot of stores that sells high tech things. My favorite thing was the remote control dog I bought.

My favorite thing in SONY when we took a tour was when you get your picture taken and it goes into a computer where you can push a button and make your nose grow or your ears or your hair. When you get your picture taken, instead of saying “Cheese!”, you say “SONY!”. Also, in the lobby there is a pretend aquarium that even has little bubbles in water but behind it there was only a TV screen of a picture of an aquarium. You can also take a picture of yourself that looks like you are sitting by a bear but it really isn’t there. It was just in a computer.

One day, I got to go to the Toyota factory and watch how they make cars with robots.

The aquarium here on the island had belugas, stingrays, sharks, starfish, otters, seahorses, different kinds of jellyfish, penguins, seals, octopus and eels. There was a white and black fish called a Commerson dolphin. The lobsters here did not have any claws but were much fatter than in Boston. That is all I remember.

We are staying in places that have paper walls, you sleep on the floor. There was a hot spring bath and you go in it. You have to wear slippers into the bathroom. You cannot wear your shoes in the room. The toilet seat is heated.

At Hiroshima, they dropped an ‘atoms’ bomb which blows up and melts your skin. It is a bad idea to drop atom bombs but now a lot of countries have them. They folded a lot of origami paper cranes because a little girl got really sick from the atom bomb and she thought if she folded the paper, she would get well. She died.

My favorite thing about Japan was SONY.

May 2000 - Patty (Greece, China, Nepal)

Patty’s Essay on Greece

AH! Greece… put it at the top of your list. Why go anywhere else? And that is spoken from a crazy lady that just visited 14 countries. Our trip has been paced perfectly. We left a very short stay in China. (Read my website entry on China) and 3 months of Asia and were SO HAPPY to go to Greece and relax… perfect season, not too many tourists, perfect weather (cool and breezy and hot in midday for swimming), perfect food, Yum! – ripe tomatoes, fresh feta with a sprinkling of oregano, Greek olives, crispy cucumbers, and olive oil (and, of course, I always order French fries to top it off – I like to take a fry and scoop up the little bits of feta crumbs in olive oil!) A little glass of local wine…. maybe we won’t come home. Oh, and I forgot the view! We are hanging off a cliff in Santorini in a little darling apartment which we are eager to call ‘home’… private terrace, loft, kitchen – all white stucco with stone and bright blue trim … gazing out at that color turquoise that only the Mediterranean possesses. We are actually looking out on a caldera and cliffs of an old volcano (that the books do say could explode anytime again but no one seems to care so… neither do I!) The kids are happy. What a great place to do home schooling.

When we first arrived in Santorini, we almost didn’t stay! I had chosen this particular island because it is supposed to be one of the most dramatic islands of Greece· and it truly is! Arriving by ferry you see high straight cliffs of red and black lava rock with bright white square abodes hanging on top of the ridges with an occasional blue domed church. I like BIG dramatic landscapes and we had found it here. We were very excited to finally arrive on an “island”. For the Simon family, islands have proven to be heaven· solitude, quiet, natural beauty and lots of water. There is something about feeling like you can “possess” the entire space and know every person and place on it. It feels safer for children. We found this feeling in Cayo Cochina in Honduras, Miyajima Island in Japan and we were aching to find it again. Asia was fascinating but not a place to relax. Even though Dick and I enjoyed finding all the gorgeous, sophisticated, gourmet places, etc. we both found something was missing! Where was the traditional Greece culture that Dick and I remember so fondly 15 years ago! I have noticed that these 15-year-old memories seem to get us into a lot of trouble in a lot of countries! We were strolling down the lane and all of a sudden I said to Dick, “Look, there is a little old lady… doesn’t she look Greek!” Dick said, “There is something wrong when you are in a country and most of the people are tourists or transplants, not real local people!” Occasionally we would find those very old Greek characters with weather-beaten skin and we felt it was almost like they were hired by Disneyworld to sit in Santorini to make the “tourist” picture complete! So, we went into the travel bureaus and asked them for the ferry schedules for the tiniest island we could find called Sykinos. We laughed when all the locals asked, “Why, would you go there when you are in Santorini!” We secretly knew that was probably the destination for us.

But, today, my birthday, we are still waking up to this gorgeous view from Santorini! It has been 10 days and we just cannot leave· not yet! Each day, we decide to stay longer, finding that we need to rest, to stay in one place, to get away from any traditional culture· to just ‘be’!

Patty’s Essay on China

I just had to write about our very, very short stay in China· as I had many expectations about returning to this enormous land – one that had so captured my soul 15 years ago! I remember when Dick and I were planning this trip for our family· I had said, “We just have to go to China· after all the kids have eaten Chinese food from birth and the Great Wall – one of the wonders of the world – is there. Also, I had had a love affair with China in the month we traveled all over the place and Tibet. I will never forget the sunny clear day in Yangshuo, close to the southern city of Guilin, when Dale, Dick and I happened to follow a little boy with his straw ha down a path. He was carrying the typical bamboo pole over the shoulder balancing bamboo containers of fermenting rice wine. We were walking in that beautiful, rice-paddy lowland surrounded by small villages and the lunar outcroppings of cliff like rocks that are painted on so many Chinese scrolls. When we had followed him all the way to his small village, he didn’t want to get in trouble for bringing ‘gaijin’ (another word for ‘foreigner’ which comes from the book I am now reading – James Cleavell’s epic novel of Asia) home with him so he abruptly shooed us away. I will never forget that little adventure in the countryside.

As Dick and I continued to close in on the itinerary, he kept suggesting shortening our time there. He said, time and time again, “Patty, I know you, you are going to be very disappointed! China has really changed.” I kept saying that in a country so big, surely we would find someplace like before. Well, Dick went to a good friend’s wedding last summer and although he had a wonderful time, he came back shaking his head at me and said, “Patty, there are electronic billboards in Xian (the famous city of the buried soldiers and horses). You won’t like it.”

As it turned out, we ran out of time to commit a long period of time there. We had been to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Japan before our planning took us to China and we had already spent over 3 months in Asia so psychologically we were ready to go to Europe or Africa. We made a very big mistake and ended up in Beijing on a local holiday that lasted for the whole week we were there.

So, what happened?

We left Tokyo to fly directly into Beijing. I was very excited to see the differences that 15 years will do to a developing country and I brought my past memories with me as well as the excitement of showing this country off to my children. Dick just stayed quiet and watched!

We arrive at a brand new, 3 month old airport. Wow! Amazing architecture. You felt like you could be in any cosmopolitan city· so modern, so clean! We get in a taxi and I am blown away by the old mixed with the new· people (now all in western-styled clothes) still riding bicycles which used to be the only transportation of the locals but now there are lots and lots of cars on major freeways complete with electronic signage and billboards galore. Next, I see high-rise buildings everywhere· lots of modern! I was quite impressed. Our hotel was just like one in Los Angelos we stayed in so the kids were quite happy.

But the next morning proved to be a comedic nightmare! It started innocently enough. We walk down the 5th Avenue of the city looking for all the ‘cheap’ toys Dick had promised the kids· ‘BeastWars’ for Alex, ‘Beanie Babies’ for Katie, more ‘Plastic Army Soldiers’ for Ben. After all, isn’t everything made in China and sold for less! (This would prove to be Dick’s nightmare at the end!) We see fancy department stores and hoards of locals hanging out and shopping just like Americans who go shopping on Saturdays at all the shopping malls. The prices are not cheap and we find ourselves saying, “We could get this cheaper in Chinatown in Boston”. The kids beg to go in a bike-rickshaw so even though Dick negotiates a price feeling like he is overpaying – he says, ‘What the heck!” As we go to the Forbidden City, I am trying to entice the kid’s imaginations with images from the movie, “The Last Emperor”. We get there only to find out that at least a million Chinese think it is a good idea to also visit there on holiday – the lines to get tickets so long, we instantly shake our heads and want to leave, sad that we cannot get into such an amazing place. Another rickshaw makes us a deal for 40 Yuan to only go to Tienaman Square. We know we are overpaying this time but it has gotten hot and we are trying to salvage a day that is going downhill fast so we continue! It is truly amazing to watch these men veering through all the traffic and jams and fast cars and pedestrians. We arrive and are totally enraged by the rickshaw puller trying to charge us double the already ridiculous price. He is asking for 80 (our taxi at the end of the day for a farther distance is 12!) so Dick has a stand off and I try to get a policeman.

Dick did win but was in such an awful mood. As we are trying to walk in Tienamen Square· whispering to the kids the story of Mao and the massacre of students and why both occurred, we are put off once again!!! All day, every 10 seconds, if we ever tried to stop to look at a map or a store window, etc., we noticed that Chinese people would nicely come up and ask us if they could take pictures of our children. Now, don’t get us wrong, it was very poignant that strangers would like to take the kids pictures but on the tenth pose, they were getting a little weary and wondering what they heck was going on. We always remembered we were wearing our “Ambassador” hats so we always tried to accommodate with a smile but it got to the point if Dick stopped to change film, I would yell at him, “Don’t stop They will find us!” (and sure enough, they always did!)

I knew we were in trouble when every major tourist sight was so packed we could not get in, it was very hot and crowded in the shops and Katie turns to me and says, “Mom, if it is alright with you, I’ll just buy my souvenirs at our hotel! (We have always told the kids that the souvenir shops in the hotels are always the most expensive but our energy just would not get us to the markets!).

By the end of a very crazy, unproductive day, we knew we needed to get out of the city, so we decided on the ‘Great Wall of China’! We even chose a part of the wall that was 3 hours away and hopefully would not be as crowded! We hired a driver and set off· only to come up against another obstacle!

First of all, it felt great to see the suburbs and a little countryside outside Beijing. The smoggy haze is incredible but no different than other developing countries we have seen. It was also impressive to see all the building and enterprise going on all around us. We start driving into hilly country where one can see a lot of reforestation trying to occur. All of a sudden, I exclaimed, “Look, kids, at the ridge!” and there was our first glimpse of the wall and its guardhouses. You cannot help but be impressed! The kids get excited and as we arrive, Dick and I are so happy to have picked this particular spot because there is very little ‘tourist trap’ activity and the sight is beautiful. We get our tickets and start down the path. A woman and a young man asking us to take the path up instead of the cable car approach us. We decide to go on the cable car and say goodbye. The cable car got us halfway up the hill to get to the wall and when we got up there we noticed that those 2 people had walked up and met us. How strange? We still don’t notice the bags under their arms and continue on our way. But, they are really staying with us and making polite conversation. After our experience of the day before with everyone stopping us, I stop and very assertively (Dick said he was even impressed!) tell them that we do not want to be escorted or sold anything and we would really like to experience this wonderful place with just our family! How much more direct can you get? But, they do not stop and continue to follow us trying to make conversation or helping the kids down the steep parts. I am so mad and do not want to be rude so we try to ignore them and keep going. The wall itself was incredible and very steep. It is wide enough for 2 horses to go on side by side. The amount of hard labor it took to build the 1000’s miles of wall and to think that just 10 vertical feet of wall was enough to keeps out the Mongols and other enemies from invading this great land. The views were so beautiful and we picked a cool part of the day. We climbed for a few hours and at the end of the trek our unwanted companions start hard selling books and postcards. Even though we felt really bad, we said no thank you and they finally left after investing almost 3 hours of their time and climbing and walking all that way. Our adventure ended with the kids finding and catching (and throwing back!) hundreds of tadpoles in a stream.

We end the day by eating a Chinese food feast in our hotel and buying the souvenirs we wanted to get before we left! The kids did find Beanie Babies for $1.50. So, how did I feel to come back to China?

First, I admitted to Dick that he was right· China had changed in all the ways that are not my favorites as a traveler. But, I am very glad we went and even though I would have loved to see the traditional China of years gone by, I felt happy for all these people progressing in a world where everyone else is developing onward. It is like watching your own children grow up. Some changes you like and some you don’t, but you have to respect the fact that they are trying to become a better entity. And besides, I will always have my memories· the best part of traveling!!!

Patty’s Essay on the Nepal Family Trek

It has taken several weeks of “recovery’ to finally get restored enough in my mind to write my innermost thought about what the “Trek” meant to me because I started in with a full blown-out sinus/lung infection and as I was doing it – I literally felt I was psychologically hanging on for dear life. But, woven inside the days, were wonderful insights into myself and my family and my husband. Many of the things only felt because I had been sick and had to let myself only concentrate on each day and not be so much a mother or a wife but only a person who had a daunting task ahead that only myself could accomplish.

I say this because this trek really explains some of the differences between Dick and I. Dick really likes to compete with his physical self. I find it mostly intimidating. He likes to strain and work and sweat and work harder because than he feels like he has accomplished something. I do not. I only find the strain only gets into the way of the really enjoyable part of a hike which is simply just to be and take in what is around you at the moment. In the past, every step UP would be met with cussing and disgust· I would soon learn that the UP brought incredible self-satisfaction. I have the kids to thank for this.

In the course of raising the kids, Dick and I have always pushed the limits on what kind of outdoor activity we would embark on. We would gladly haul huge ‘condo’ tents and portable baby beds to camp with 3 children. We would hike 3 miles in Yellowstone and it would take us over 8 hours, sometimes having to stop in the middle of the path to ‘take a nap’ for 2 hours. But, even then, the “slower pace” brought us such delights. Once, as I was waiting for Katie to wake up at the age of 2, I was able, in the stillness, to spy a Mountain Bluebird making a nest in a burnt out tree. I watched for an hour each twig being put in its proper place. It was as if I was watching a National Geographic special. Every adult knows that when you slow down, you see more· so why don’t we all do it? As we hiked, our kids loved to find each unusual insect, butterfly, plant and sometimes we would just stop and sit and make stick teepees and rock houses. In the early years, I secretly decided that our children’s pace was the pace I really liked and enjoyed.

I always giggle when I think of some of our parent friends who each year would hear of our adventures and would say, “Maybe, next year when the kids get older, we will go camping!” (With all due respect, I feel the same way about down-hill skiing· the thought of taking 3 young children and fight putting on all the ski clothes and equipment, only to have your child say “Mom, I have to go to the bathroom!” sounds like a nightmare to me. But, I say all this because for us· the Nepal 10-day trek was a BIG undertaking, even for the Simon family, and was a lot especially when you consider that we had already been traveling for 4 months and had just recovered from traveling in India and Bhutan.

But, Dick and I just could not leave Nepal (a second time) without trekking. After all, isn’t that the real reason one goes to Nepal· this really hit home when we kept meeting ‘young’ 20 year old backpackers and felt very ‘old’ walking around Kathmandu as 46 year old PARENTS!

I am happy to say that in retrospect, we made some very good decisions that really helped the odds for success. Ten days is a long time to hike and camp much less adding elevation gain in the real Himalayas!

We had learned our lesson in Bhutan because in one day we had climbed from 2200 meters to 3700 meters in 5 and half hours· too high, too fast. We went from evergreen forests to snowfields at the top where we camped in tents alongside a mystical Buddhist monastery. We loved it but that night Katie got altitude sickness· nausea, headache, throwing up – she was pretty miserable. We did not want to repeat this scenario in Nepal so Dick and I decided on a few things:
1) We would choose a lower elevation gain, which was hard to do because the macho side of you wants to do the more glamorous Annapurna range! We chose the Langtang range in the Kathmandu Valley.
2) We decided to use a trekking company and have guides, cooks and Sherpa – camping instead of eating and sleeping in the lovely teahouses along the way. We did this to stay more in control of what we ate and how it was prepared – we did not want to get sick.
3) We took a five-day trek and turned it into a 10 to 12 day trek · doing approximately half the distance of a normal hiker would do in a day and also a day or so just to stop and rest!
4) We chose a trekking route that made it possible for Dick to continue into a higher elevation and have a little adventure of his own. I gladly stayed with the kids and we hiked down to our favorite campsite where we spent 2 nights and just played and relaxed. Dick made it down and met us. This was perfect for everyone.

It all paid off for we completed the trek and had some magical moments besides.

As I have written many friends, “Let’s face it, the Simon family is happiest when they are the dirtiest!” By this I mean, the kids like to play mostly with rocks, dirt, sticks and water.

We started by van from Kathmandu and were told it would take 4 to 6 hours to travel 200 km to Dunche to meet up with our trekking crew. It felt so good leaving the ‘city’ with its hazy air and too many people and going along beautiful terraced rice fields with red rhododendrons blooming and waterfalls falling. My soul really is happiest out in the rural farmland so I was happy to be on our way. Midway, we leave asphalt and our van bumps along on a road, I thought, was under construction. I remember thinking to myself, “Oh, they must be working on the road for half a mile!” But, little did I know, that the half a mile was the rest of the trip and the drive went from bad to worse· jolting along incredibly scenic but scary twisty-turny steep hairpin turns with evidence of rockslides everywhere and signs which warned, “Stop, Look for Landslides, than Go using extreme caution!!!” We had given Katie children’s Dramamine and put her in the front seat so she seemed all right. But, poor little Ben was in the very back seat with me and before I knew anything was wrong, Ben proceeds to throw up all over the backseat and himself. That was how bad it was. Well, we unpack some clean clothes, clean him up the best we could and also checked to see if our bags were still ‘securely fastened’ to the top of the van. We prayed we would get to our destination sooner than later. Let’s just say by the time we got to our first stop for camping, we were very ready to get out of the car for 10 days and willing to do as much walking as needed. It would be a pleasure!

We were greeted by our whole trekking crew· our tents were pitched – even our private toilet tent! Warm washing water with soap and towel was available to wash up with. The table was set – flowered tablecloth and all – and tea with cookies was served! We liked this already! After a delicious dinner of soup, fresh vegetables, curried potatoes and homemade spring rolls with fresh fruit and tea for dessert, we turned in early. We found ‘double-padded’ sleeping bags waiting for us – really comfortable and I made a mental note to add this to our camping supplies at home. The food was really delicious for every meal and I was amazed what the cook could make under camping ‘circumstance’. One night our dessert was a homemade apple pie and another night, we were presented with a chocolate cake – decorated with icing and all! The cook had an ingenious way of ‘baking’ on a propane stove· he took two pans and put chunks of raw potato in the bottom of the larger one and set the smaller on top of the potatoes that kept the pan suspended and only absorbing heat all around it. He was able to make a vegetable pizza for our American taste buds! The big joke at mealtime was supplying Ben with peanut butter and hot chocolate, Alex with the traditional Nepalese ‘dal baht’ – rice with lentils (which is what all the crew ate twice a day. They loved the fact that Alex preferred the local cuisine). And Katie would try to steal all the dried sausage off our plates at lunchtime.

Everyday our routine was waking and hiking for 3 to 4 hours and than having the rest of the day to play and relax and explore the new village we would arrive in. One day, the kids all decided that they felt like they were ‘going’ too much so we took the morning off and hung out and did our hiking that afternoon. (It is good to be as flexible as you can be. The change really helped us continue.) The first five days were basically hiking UP – so UP that when we went DOWN – we could not believe we went UP that steeply – especially three children, ages 6, 8 and 10. What was the secret? First, we go the kids pace of walking so they never feel like they are running to ‘keep up’ with the grown-ups. We take a lot of rest stops. What really keeps them going is getting them involved in telling stories. Ben would pair up with Dick and tell stories of James Bond or his army guys. Katie would make up very detailed stories about fantasy animals· what they wear, eat, give each other for birthdays, etc. These stories could last for hours. Alex would tell us about books he has read and particularly liked or tell us how he would design his own computer games.

This really saved me and kept me going when I was sick. It was so touching for me to know that the kids knew I did not feel good and so they helped me with their stories, each step of the way. Other fun activities were collecting special rocks, gathering wildflower bouquets, spying tadpoles in a pond, finding colorful exotic butterflies and monkeys· even a lone stray deer drinking from the river or just taking in the incredible majestic views of the snowy mountains all around us. At a river, there were huge boulder that the kids had a great time making forts, building stepping stone bridges and playing spy by jumping from rock to rock and hiding. At one site we were able to watch a local man splitting bamboo and making mat walls. Another village all came out to watch a villager saddle and break a wild horse.

But, the biggest hit on the trek for the kids turned out to be a nightly ritual of building their own campfire. It was like watching ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’· Ben made a tiny fire, Katie made a medium sized fire and Alex made a great big fire. We did give them all the parental warnings of getting burned and smoky eyes, but it was so much fun watching the delight in the eyes of creating something of their own. Every day they would look forward to creating another fire, adding embellishments like Alex’s stone smokehouse where he would bake his mudpies.

The trek proved to be the best place for our children to get to know ‘up close and personal’ the local children that lived in these little remote villages. There are not many children who are trekkers so sometimes when we would enter a village, a whole school of kids would come running out to greet us. The best way to bridge the language barrier was to share the few toys and books we had brought with us. Alex played soccer, Ben shared his little plastic army soldiers and Katie created little homes with rocks and sticks for little plastic bears she had brought. One day, Ben found himself surrounded by very excited children anxiously looking at each page of a ‘Star Wars’ book. Afterwards, we would talk to our kids about the fact that in many cultures, children have a lot of fun without too many toys of any kind. It was food for thought especially as images of ‘Toys R Us’ come to mind. One of my favorite times centered around a little two year old girl that curiously would come up to Ben and watch him make his fire. Then she turned and came up to Katie and touched her cheek and than giggle with delight. She was like a little mynah bird and very quickly learned the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” from Alex.

As we got used to our routine and knew what each day would be like, we soon relaxed and enjoyed. We met lots of young trekkers along the way and one of the most gratifying moments was when a ‘young’ hiker would compliment us on attempting this hike with our 3 children. They said it was so encouraging to see a family trek and they hoped that someday they could do the same.

We felt so good, so happy, and so proud of ourselves on Day 10 to walk into our last campsite. To celebrate, our cook bought a LIVE chicken from the locals to turn it into Chicken Curry. We handed out a deck of playing cards to each Sherpa and guide as these seemed to be the big hit. They were always borrowing our cards to play card games late into each night. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone who had made this a fantastic family memory that we will always keep with us.

August 2000 - Patty (Closing Entry)

I am sitting at this computer in France after having a few weeks to ponder the thought that this trip is coming to the end! Our good friends from home, the Levitts, just left and I feel like we have had our first taste of ‘re-entry’. (I have to say I feel like an astronaut that has been on a long space mission about to come ‘back to earth’!)

If someone were to ask me what this trip has been like· I would quickly answer, “Surreal!” I know I went through the motions. It was tremendous amount of preparation and a lot of energy to do but I still feel like I had to pinch myself all the time to remind myself that it was actually happening. I cannot believe after 22 countries that it is actually over and we did it with such success. (I keep thinking of the people back home that had bets on how long we would last· with ourselves, with our children, with the hassles of traveling or lets face it, with the ‘differences’ of culture we were always up against.) But there is the side of me that would say it was absolutely heavenly. Dick says I do a good job of ignoring the ‘junk’ and have a tendency of dwelling on the ‘romantic’ side of life. So be it, it works. I loved being with just Dick and the kids. I loved the different cultures (even the hassle times). I loved the time spent away from our normal life to just relax, take it all in, read, write and learn. What a treat! And I can’t help but wonder why we were the lucky ones to get to do this sort of thing. Viewing the world on such a broad scale makes you ponder the big picture and how one fits in. It makes you think of what is really important and what is not. It keeps you focused on your family and gives you the opportunity to really find out who your kids are and who you are. It gives you the chance to set your own pace, go your own direction and do your own thing.

I remember 15 years ago when Dick and I went with another good friend, Dale. We were all wondering how we would feel at the end of the year. Would we be ready to go home· did we get traveling out of our system? I will never forget standing in the French train station and we all said “No!” to both questions. I look back on that time and realize we were younger and in transition on so many levels and we all never really even knew where we were going to live. This time is very different. We are older and we left a great life back home with friends and family. So, in some ways the ‘re-entry’ will be much easier. But, I have a little confession to make. There is a part of me that is sad it is all over. I now know the truth about myself. I love to travel. I love to see the world· all the people, all the landscapes, all the animals, all the histories, all the folk art, all the delicious food, all the differences! And, best of all, I got to do it this time with the kids. It was great to see our they processed each country. It boggles my mind that as I will be living my suburban life in Newton, Massachusetts, there will be all these people I have met that are living right along with me in their own ways. I feel connected with the whole world and that feels comforting.

The big question for me is how will this trip affect my future life in suburban Newton, Massachusetts. The answer is “I don’t know but, I guess, that is the next great adventure!”

I wanted to take this time to thank our family and friends who have been so, so very supportive of our craziness. It was comforting to me to feel so loved. I really enjoyed all my new email relationships and hopefully I will continue when I get home with those that are out of town. Thank you to all the people we met along the way that helped make each day wonderful. We have many new friends that I hope we will stay in contact with.

And lastly,
For my own processing of the trip, here is a list of my favorites along the way!

Costa Rica – the Scarlet Macaws flying in pairs almost in silhouette but then the sun would shine and show off their brilliant color. WOW

Guatemala – first day outside Guatemala City going to Antigua and seeing my first Mayan women in traditional dress carrying a basket on her head. I almost cried.

Honduras – snorkeling for the first time with our kids and watching the wonder as they discovered what was ‘under’ the water’.

Mexico – as we only spent 6 hours there·buying folk art for my multicultural ‘Discovery Boxes’ I want to develop for children in school.

Thailand – hiking and camping overnight in a traditional village and watching how the people pound rice

Laos – waking up at dawn to watch the orange clad Buddhist monks with their brass collecting bowls go from door to door collecting food from the locals.

Cambodia – the gnarly monstrous roots growing out from Angor Wat and other temples (something I had wanted to see all my life)

India – the fairytale quality of Samode palace with its grand entrance in candlelight and drumming· hand painted mirrored rooms and silver furniture. The camels on the road and Ben (6 years old) who quickly figured out his version of how economics works in developing countries· from bicycles to taxis!

Nepal – the family trek· doing something so physically challenging, being in the Himalayan landscape and meeting the villagers along the way.

Bhutan – going to a closed culture in a Shangri-La environment and feeling like you are part of the culture· not a tourist. Thank you Chorten and Samba!

Japan – the beauty of Miyajima Island, Shinko (our hostess who cried when we left), the deer, the walk with Katie, the little song which woke you each morning!

China – the adventure we had on the Great Wall!

Greece – the visual beauty and splendor of the turquoise caldera in Santorini off-season and relaxing for so long!

Holland – the short but sweet visit from Anne Franks house, all the teapots hanging from the Dutch pancake house and the Fairy store (thanks Dee Dee!)

Namibia -absolutely for me the LANDSCAPE· it dug deep into my West Texas upbringing· the red sand dunes I will never forget.

Botswana – gliding along in ‘mokorros’ (dugout canoes) in Okavango Delta taking photos of every water lily and watching the kids take great delight in making campfires like they did on the trek in Nepal

Zimbabwe/Zambia – the wonders of Victoria Falls· the intensity of the water, flying over to actually understand what happened geologically and thinking what it must have been like for Livingstone to discover it.

Kenya – our first glimpse and understanding of the Massai people. They are the first group of indigenous people that actually have figured out how to beat the system and exist along with it. Bravo!

Tanzania – ahhhh· those animals that I connect with almost in a spiritual way. I already miss them and the landscape. And, getting to meet and learn about how the ‘hunter /gatherers’ live. I, again, almost cried. I love indigenous peoples.

France – going back to a place we loved so much and finding that we still loved it (St Leonard des Bois and St. Ceneri)· we truly relax there so it felt great.

Denmark – an added jewel· my size of country, you immediately feel good in and not overwhelmed· our dinner with Leif ‘s Mother (traditional Danish cooking which resembles and touches on my Irish roots) And of course, Legoland! The country feels like it celebrates children and I like that!

Norway – as Alex says, “the air”· so clear, clean, healthy! The sky that wanders in and out of the craggy landscape of rock and sea. (As we flew into land in Bodo, which is above the Arctic Circle, I could not help but think of the landscapes in Namibia and Tanzania, which are so different.) What a world we live in! For all the Scandinavian countries · the sense of design. I love it.