Chile: The Longest Country

By David Abel | Globe Staff  | 3/21/2010

GOLFO DE PENAS, Chile – Well before we boarded the old cargo ship, before it plodded past the protection of the mountainous fjords, before the skies turned stormy and the seas swelled, we were warned.

We were warned not to expect a cruise. We were warned about the smell of the cattle often herded below deck. More than anything, we were warned about the inevitable nausea.

So when the smoky, diesel engines of the 360-foot ship prodded us into the open sea and the rolling waves began sloshing us around, we expected to feel it in our stomachs. What we didn’t expect was that the pummeling would last nearly a full day – through difficult-to-digest meals, perilous showers, and a lot of restless sleep – and that Dramamine would be no cure for the persistent urge to hurl.

“It’s called the Gulf of Punishment for a reason,” said German Balboa, the ship’s second mate, who like most of the crew seemed impervious to the queasiness as he monitored our course for southern Patagonia.

The passage through the Pacific was one leg of a 15-day trip my fiancée Jessica and I took late last year from the top to the bottom of Chile, a sliver of land that extends no more than 109 miles between the Andes and the ocean and stretches 2,700 miles from the sprawling salt flats in the north to the south’s snowcapped volcanoes – longer than any other country.

Our journey began some 14,000 feet above sea level at a lonely border post in the cold, dry mountains of southwestern Bolivia, where we had spent three days on a road trip through the desert. We stood in a field of rocks for about an hour, with strong winds nearly barreling us over as we waited with heavy backpacks for a bus to take us across the border.

When we finally left, the difference between South America’s richest and poorest country was apparent immediately, a contrast that makes it easier to understand how Chile fared as well as it did after being rocked by a massive earthquake last month. In Bolivia, we had traveled for hundreds of miles without roads, but as soon we crossed into Chile, out of the barrenness of the high mountains, there appeared a modern highway – with smooth pavement and clear dividing lines, reflecting signs and guard rails, even carefully constructed turnoffs for runaway trucks.

It was clear, even in this remote corner, that we had arrived in a developed country.

As we descended, we felt the atmosphere change, literally. The altitude slowly released its grip on our heads and the frigid air turned sultry. In the distance, as we pealed off layers, we began to see patches of green, an improbable copse rising from a seemingly lifeless land.

The road took us to San Pedro de Atacama, a 1,000-year-old desert outpost of squat adobe buildings, dusty streets, and flocks of tourists who come for the arid air and nearby natural wonders, including geysers, salt flats, and flamingo-filled lagoons. After the bus dropped us off near the central plaza, we changed money, found a place to stay, and set our watches forward an hour.

With little time to explore, and the afternoon slipping into dusk, we rented bicycles and rode into a howling wind for the Valle de La Luna, or the Valley of the Moon. It was a long 10-mile trip, against a sand-strewn wind, under a hot sun, and up steep hills, but the slanting light and the spreading shadows embossed an eerie, desolate beauty on the surrounding lunar-like landscape of goopy rocks and rolling dunes. As the sun sank over the horizon, the sky ignited in a slow symphony of colors, with orange and gold strands of light burning out in wisps of pinks and purples, until darkness revealed the bright arc of the Milky Way, lighting the way back.

The next day we hopped another bus for an hour ride to the copper mining town of Calama, where we caught a flight south to Santiago. The two-hour trip offered a glimpse of the oddity of such a long country, in which the small northern cities are separated from the capital by a vast emptiness of fallow plains, rocky mountains, and dry canyons. The only green we saw arrived with an accompanying cloud of smog just a few miles before we landed in Santiago, where nearly half of the nation’s 17 million people live.

Friends picked us up and drove us into the city on a modern highway with high-speed electronic tolls. They gave us a quick tour of the downtown, including a stop at La Moneda, the 205-year-old presidential palace that was partially destroyed in 1973 when Augusto Pinochet, then the army chief, ordered it bombed during the coup d’etat he led against President Salvador Allende. I was surprised to find in a plaza beside the palace a large statue of Allende, a democratically elected socialist who allegedly committed suicide before being captured. The controversial project was unveiled in 2003 by the ruling center-left administration, 13 years after Pinochet relinquished the presidency.

Our speedy evening tour of Santiago ended in a sprint for another bus, which we caught just as it was pulling out of the station. We spent the night rolling further south in seats that reclined considerably and had ample foot rests. When we awoke about 10 hours later, just outside the city of Pucon in central Chile, it seemed like we crossed into a different biome, where lush vegetation replaced parched deserts. There was a bounty of trees, lots of birds and flowers, and Lago Villarica, one of a series of large, shimmering lakes in the region.

We walked from the bus station to the city center, a tranquil retreat of cozy restaurants, chocolate shops, and dozens of tour operators, all below the towering Volcan Villarica, an active, perfectly conical volcano that rises more than 9,000 feet above the lake. We admired the menacing mountain on the horizon, which last erupted in 1971, until it disappeared in the clouds. Then we did what most tourists do in Pucon and spent the next few days riding horses through the nearby hills, whitewater rafting on a swollen river, and soaking in hot springs, among other things.

It was the closest we came to relaxing on a trip in which speed was a priority, but after two nights beside the lake, we were on the move again. We decided to make a brief excursion to Argentina.

In a heavy downpour, we boarded another bus for a journey on a muddy road over the Andes. It twisted through cloud-shrouded mountains covered with monkey-puzzle trees, indigenous evergreens that have long trunks crowned by symmetrical branches with thick, spiky leaves. It was an all-day trip that required hours of waiting at border posts from both countries for bureaucrats to stamp the passports and search the luggage of everyone on our bus, reflecting a legacy of mistrust between the neighbors that made it feel as if we were passing through the Iron Curtain.

When we finally crossed the border, we stopped for a few hours in San Martín de los Andes, a lakeside city like Pucon that has the alpine whiff of Switzerland. The next bus took us on a curvy, dirt road past the so-called seven lakes, the last being the most majestic, Lago Nahuel Huapi. The 200-square-mile stretch of cobalt looks like a small sea beside the mountains that make up San Carlos de Bariloche, the continent's mecca for skiers, boaters, and climbers, including everyone from groups of Israeli tourists to high-ranking Nazis, some of whom lived here for decades after World War II.

We arrived at midnight, found a guest house, and after a brief sleep woke early to explore the city on foot and bicycle. We sampled chocolates and gobbled up the famed steak, even though Jessica is a vegan. We petted the puppies of St. Bernards used to lure tourists into overpriced photo shoots. And we peddled a hilly route that took us beside waterfalls and poppy-covered fields, to hidden beaches and aromatic welcoming breweries, and up 8,000 feet to the top of Cerro Catedral, one of South America's largest ski resorts, where the rushing wind purrs with a cool serenity.

After three days in Argentina, we made the long trip back over the Andes and through the slow motion of customs, until we reached another lakeside city called Puerto Varas. We arrived there just in time to join a large crowd by the Lago Llanquihue and watch an unexpectedly impressive fireworks show to celebrate New Year's Eve. Strangers shared champagne, offered up hugs, and helped us find a place for the night.

The next morning a minibus took us a half hour south to Puerto Montt, where we boarded the Navimag ferry for our three-day sail through the fjords of southern Chile. Guidebooks warned us to keep our expectations in check. We knew there could be rough seas and foul weather. But there was no preparing for the Golfo de Penas, and the way our stomachs responded.

Along with others on the old cargo ship that ferries food, livestock, and other goods between northern and southern Patagonia, we asked ourselves more than once why we chose to spend hundreds of dollars and precious time cooped up in such misery. The answer came when the clouds lifted and we passed back into the smooth waters of the protected canals: We stood on an outside deck as a breeze washed over us and the ship cruised through narrow, dolphin-filled channels with dramatic views of uninhabited islands, moss-covered mountains, and the wall of jagged ice called Pio XI, the largest glacier in South America.

The voyage ended when we arrived in Puerto Natales, a century-old port at the southern tip of Chile in a province called Última Esperanza, or Last Hope, where the sheep industry once reigned. It's now better known as the gateway for Torres del Paine, the nation's premier national park.

We piled into the back of a pickup truck owned by an older couple who persuaded us to stay at their bed and breakfast for about $20 a night. After dropping our bags there, we stocked up on food, consolidated our camping supplies, and took a two-hour bus ride to the national park.

Even though it was late in the afternoon, we were so far south that we had hours of light to hike, enough that we kept going until 10 p.m. We climbed for six hours over glacier-fed lakes up thousands of feet to the base of the three granite towers that give the park its name. We camped through a freezing night but warmed up the next morning by sweating up the steep, boulder-covered ascent to the massive spires, which rise from a bed of snow like skyscrapers and overlook an emerald lagoon in a bowl-shaped space that feels like a holy temple.

Over the next days, we kept moving. We hitchhiked to different parts of the park. We took a short cruise beside the famous Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina. We took another bus further south to Punto Arenas, the country's most southern city, and then we hopped on a flight back to Santiago.

A day later, we were on another flight headed home, where for the first time in weeks, we finally got some sleep, exhaled from the visual intensity, and yearned for a vacation from our vacation.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.

Crossing the Bolivian Desert

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By David Abel  |  Globe Staff  |  3/7/2010

SALAR DE UYUNI, Bolivia -- Seven of us squeezed into the decade-old Land Cruiser with 229,000 miles on its odometer and a roof rack loaded with a hefty gas reserve, hundreds of pounds of backpacks, and enough dulce de leche-smeared pancakes and other snacks to last three days.

The mud-splashed Toyota with half its dashboard gauges inoperative would have to make it across 600 miles of some of the planet’s most forbidding land, from a vast desert of windswept salt flats through rocky, moonlike plains splotched with arsenic-filled lakes to a geyser field in the freezing peaks that crown the Andes.

It was only an hour into the trip when, after a brief stop, our driver, Raul Quispe, ordered everyone out of the SUV. He fished through a tool kit and spent a few minutes turning the key and pumping the gas, without effect. He decided on a low-tech solution to what appeared to be a dead battery.

“Everyone needs to push,’’ he commanded us, a group of sandal-clad tourists from Europe and the States.

On a journey without roads, even unpaved ones, it was the first glimpse of the risks and occasional improvisation involved in driving across Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world, and through a surrounding desert that rises more than 15,000 feet above sea level. We would pass emerald-colored lagoons filled with flamingos, and herds of llamas and guanacos moseying through the mountains. But there were no gas stations, no cellphone signals, no help other than Quispe and other Bolivian guides, who had to be as knowledgeable about their vehicles as about the daunting landscape.

“I know every part of this car,’’ Quispe boasted, after we shoved the SUV a few feet and the muffler chuffed to life.

Our trip late last year began in La Paz, the capital, where Jessica and I had booked the three-day tour through a local travel agency for $110 per person. They advised us to keep our expectations low, particularly for accommodations, meals, and transportation.

The agency’s website was surprisingly blunt, even noting that tourists had died on previous trips. “Due to the harshness of the terrain, vehicle breakdowns are common,’’ it warned. “We would like to make it clear that things are not as reliable, comfortable, and professional as we would like. . . . If things go wrong you are faced with the reality of travel in a remote area of a developing country.’’

After a day wheezing through the high-altitude streets of La Paz, where markets crowd nearly every corner and vendors sell everything from large sacks of nuts to bottles of imitation Viagra, we boarded an overnight bus to Uyuni, a bygone railroad junction about 12 hours south.

We had been told the trip into the high desert plains known as the altiplano would be rough and sleepless, but the bus’s ample seats reclined considerably, the crew served us hot food as if we were on an airplane, and the bumpy roads weren’t a match for our fatigue. We passed out and awoke an hour before the squat buildings of the isolated town of 10,000 people appeared on the horizon.

With a hot morning sun slanting over a dusty, pockmarked street in the center of Uyuni, we stepped outside and found a young woman from the travel agency who escorted us to a small office. Before leaving, we stocked up on water and visited the local customs office to have our passports stamped, which was required because there were no consular officials where we would be exiting the country.

When the driver arrived, we heaved our bags on the roof and he wrapped them in an old tarp, securing it with a thick rope. We crowded into the SUV, drove past stray dogs traipsing through town, and rolled onto the closest approximation of a road we would encounter over the next three days.

The first stop, a few miles out of town, was the so-called train cemetery, a wasteland of rusting locomotives left to rot in the desert after the local mining industry collapsed in the 1940s. The century-old trains are slowly decomposing over the barren plains, their steel wheels burrowing into the dry earth, a testament to when foreign companies ferried minerals to the Pacific ports that Bolivia lost in a 19th-century war with Chile.

The sandy road from town quickly gave way to an evaporated sea that stretches more than 4,000 square miles, or 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. From a distance, the blinding white expanse of Salar de Uyuni looks as flat as the Kansas plains, but there are countless bumps along the salty horizon, most in the shape of crusty polygons. The cracks in the earth have formed over millennia as a briny liquid rises from the remains of the prehistoric sea below and crystallizes in geometric patterns on the surface.

Quispe took us to an area where we watched as the brine bubbled into large puddles. When those evaporate, locals shovel the heaps of salt into neat piles, which they collect to sell as table salt. Afterward, we visited an old hotel made of salt - salt brick walls, salt tables and chairs, even salt bed frames. (The government ordered the hotel closed a decade ago - because of its effect on the pristine surroundings - but it remains very much in operation.)

Later, we traveled to the Isla Incahuasi, a seemingly improbable island of towering, thousand-year-old cacti, fossilized coral, and volcanic rock that looms over the desolate land like an oasis without water. After a hike up a craggy trail to the top, we ate lunch beside wandering ostriches and other camera-toting tourists, many of whom played with the optical illusions created by the unbounded horizon to take loopy pictures.

From there, we drove for hours across the empty desert, beneath dark clouds and ribbons of lightning, until we arrived at a gate and the first buildings of a project that could transform Bolivia. The government is building a pilot project to mine lithium - Salar de Uyuni has more reserves of the increasingly important mineral than anywhere on the globe - and it eventually hopes to supply the world with the ingredients needed to power everything from cellphones to electric cars.

We spent the night in an old mining town outside the Salar. If having to push our SUV hadn’t made us understand the budget nature of our trip, the lodging did. We stayed in a drafty building made of cement blocks and slept in small rooms on lumpy beds. There were showers, but hot water was extra.

The next day we crossed from broad, volcano-ringed valleys where llamas roam to a series of mineral-rich lagoons that vary in hue from jade to lime, each home to hundreds of pink-necked flamingos. We passed the so-called “rock tree,’’ one of a series of volcanic boulders that tower over the otherwise featureless desert like petrified trees sculpted by centuries of wind-borne sand.

Quispe drove mainly uphill, and by the end of the day we arrived at the blood-colored Laguna Colorado, where the arid air had turned frigid and we felt the altitude. We stopped for the night at a hovel even more spare than the previous night’s. As we watched the sun splinter into strands of red, orange, and violet light, Quispe described how he makes the three-day trip twice a week and spends his only day at home repairing the battered Land Cruiser.

“The worst part of the job is the routine,’’ he said. “But I’ve been lucky. I’ve never had an accident.’’

After a night shivering under sleeping bags in a room our group shared, we woke up before dawn and Quispe navigated the rocky path through snow-capped mountains more than 15,000 feet above sea level. He drove at speeds as if we were on a highway. At sunrise, we saw a curtain of fog rising in the distance, and as we approached, we saw a field of bubbling geysers. There were no fences, and we walked a slippery path through clouds of steam beside hot cauldrons, where a tourist fell in and died several years ago.

Afterward, Quispe raced the other drivers down the mountains to a pool of hot springs, where we soaked our cold limbs, drank hot chocolate, and learned of the camaraderie among the drivers. Another SUV had blown a tire, and we watched as they repaired it together - inflating a tube with one vehicle’s engine compressor, using various tools to install the tube beneath the rubber, and locking it on the rim with the help of another driver, who drove over it methodically with his SUV.

“We have to help each other,’’ Quispe said. “That’s the only way to survive out here.’’

We left on a gravel path that curved through rolling hills of loose sand and jagged rock formations that Quispe said inspired the goopy landscapes of Salvador Dalí’s paintings. After seven years of making the same trip, Quispe didn’t need a map. He made his own road as we drove over dunes and below steep peaks.

The final stop of our three-day tour of the Bolivian desert seemed like the finale of a fireworks show: Laguna Verde, an arsenic-filled lake that reflects a towering volcano in its placid, emerald waters. There were no flamingos clustered on those shores.

We climbed out of the SUV and walked to the edge of a sandy bluff, where we gazed in silence as gulls rode the cool winds raking the lake. We stood there as long as we could, listening to the whistling of the wind, sucking in the dry, salty air, wishing to take a swim.

It was like the landscape of an imaginary planet - stark, poisonous, but eerily inviting, with colors that seemed too bright to be real.

And then we had to go.

We had a bus to catch out of the desert for the next leg of our journey, which would take us across the Chilean border and to the bottom of the continent.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.

My Dad, Unflinching

By David Abel  |  Globe Staff  |  June 17, 2012

I was always convinced my father had no fear.

This was a man who took me for joyrides on a small motorcycle, without helmets. When we went sailing, his smile broadened the more the boat heeled, and the more my mom looked at him like she might throw him overboard.

He was the reason I took an interest in traveling.

When I was a child, he built a farm in the rural highlands of the Dominican Republic, one of a number of businesses he started. The first time he brought us there he drove up a dirt road that disappeared into the clouds and looped beside thousand-foot drops. He never flinched when trucks passed inches from us, barreling down in the opposite direction.

I still remember the way the pine trees scented the tropical breeze and the rich soil spurred everything from flowers to eggplants to bell peppers, all of which my dad would eventually grow.

Shortly before he died of cancer last year, I asked if anything scared him. At first, he didn't seem to understand the question. Then, with a mischievous gleam in his eyes that I hope I've inherited, he said: "Mom. If she threatens me, I listen."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. 

Road trip through Africa

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By David Abel | Globe Staff | 3/22/09

HOBAS, Namibia -- Across the moonlike horizon, the only hint of life was a trail of dust kicked up by wild ostriches. The only sound was the hiss of an arid wind scouring the vast plains. And as our scrawny rental car rumbled over the craggy desert road, casting long shadows as the morning sun sent the temperature over 100 degrees, we felt an ominous thud.

Given the rock-strewn road, given the hundreds of miles that separated us from help, given where we had been and what we had already survived, it seemed better to ignore the jolt – and my girlfriend's glower.

"Not good," she said, urging me to slow down.

By that point, thousands of miles into our trip through southern Africa, we had become accustomed to bumps on the road, and other surprises that come with driving a compact car in a land better suited for military vehicles.

Our journey began in Johannesburg, where we rented a carrot-colored version of the Honda Fit. The agents at the local Avis didn't seem concerned that we were about to test its limits, or that we would be driving with just one spare, a donut. Getting permission to cross borders required little more than a 15 minute wait, a $100 fee, and a few forms for our destination in Windhoek, Namibia.

More difficult was learning to drive on the opposite side of the road. For days, every time I tried to activate the blinkers, I hit the windshield wipers. When I tried to flash the brights, I washed the windshield. And with every turn, I had to overcome an inner GPS that kept guiding me to the right – and a possible head-on collision.

Learning to look left was even more challenging with jetlag. But the real test came a few hours after we exited the well-maintained highway from Johannesburg and headed east into the winding mountains toward what our guidebook called "one of South Africa's most impressive natural features." Unfortunately, as we approached the Blyde River Canyon, it began to pour and a thick mist shrouded the snaking road. Visibility dropped to the brake lights of the car in front of us.

After a few hours circling through the clouds and seeing nothing but fog, we managed to find the way to our bed and breakfast and then to Kruger National Park, the nation's storied wildlife sanctuary that borders Mozambique and rivals the size of Israel.

Our self-guided safari began on a finely paved road that offered nearly instant glimpses of grazing zebra and watchful impala. They all seemed so sweet, almost docile, unperturbed by our presence. Then we came upon a herd of elephants.

We drove beside one chomping on a tree’s leaves. We sat about 15 feet away and admired how the massive beast seemed so limber, so light on its feet, as it stretched its wrinkled trunk into the branches, curled its tip around a clump of green, and gently dropped the breakfast into its mouth. It felt like being at a zoo, but we were the ones in the cage. Yet there was a difference: Our cage didn’t afford the same protection as steel bars.

As I snapped pictures from the passenger seat, agog at the seeming gentleness of this blubbery behemoth, the elephant started to approach us. At first, it sauntered in our direction, its floppy ears almost waving hello. Then it picked up speed. At less than 10 feet away, the elephant appeared to be in a full-on charge, and I dropped my camera in my lap.

“Drive, go – hit it!" I yelled, as Jess put the car in gear and floored the gas.

It was a good lesson – to keep a healthy distance from the wildlife – as we would pass countless other large animals – rhinos, lions, hippos, buffalo, everything from aggressive baboons with a reputation for opening car doors to monkeys that liked to steal the rubber from windshield wipers to giraffe that didn't find our curiosity endearing when we wanted to take a peek at their newborn.

After a few days, we left the low-lying savanna of broad grasslands and scattered, boulder-filled hills for a landscape that looked more like the Berkshires than how we imagined Africa. The provincial road we took south toward the great plateau of Lesotho climbed hundreds of miles along rolling, velvety green hills, through groves of pine trees, past rainbow-haloed farms. But the deeper we drove into the heart of South Africa, the more it became clear where we were.

At nearly every turn of the road, we witnessed the country’s enduring ironies: children begging beside some of the world’s most fertile land; sprawling shantytowns of zinc-roofed huts in the shadow of gleaming high rises; the tall, barbed-wired walls that enclose white subdivisions, underscoring how the official end of Apartheid has yet to yield an end to segregation.

Yet as we passed from the rocky, table-topped peaks of the Drakensberg to the seaside cliffs along the lagoon of Knysna, from the high desert scrubland where elephants feed with warthogs in Addo National Park to the lavender fields of wine country in Franschhoek, it became easier to understand why so many tribes and vying Europeans were willing to fight for this land.

And nowhere did the stark beauty stand out more than around Cape Town, a peninsula at the tiptoe of the continent, where steep mountains rise from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the rich flaunt their wealth in gaudy cars and the less prosperous offer to watch them for a few rand, and a mélange of Africans, Europeans, Indians, Malaysians, and many others mix more than anywhere else in the country.

We skipped the more touristy sights, such as the cable car ride up to the cloud-covered Table Mountain and the overbooked sail to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years imprisoned in a tiny cell. Instead, we walked the center of the city, from the opulent Mount Nelson Hotel to the 350-year-old Slave Lodge, where thousands of slaves were confined in horrific conditions before being sold. We explored the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, home to 9,000 indigenous plants and flowers; swam in the cold, turquoise waters off Boulders Beach, where thousands of penguins putter and nuzzle in the white sand; and hiked the cliffs along the Cape of Good Hope, the most southwestern point of Africa.

We could have spent weeks in Cape Town, but we were on a tight schedule. It was time to leave the ocean for the desert. For the equivalent of about $25, we filled our tank and drove about 300 miles north to Namibia, a former German colony known as much for its towering sand dunes as its diamond mines.

When we arrived at the sun-baked border in the late afternoon, the heat remained intense. Outside, the scattered quiver trees, a squat and spiny symbol of the desolate land, provided little shade. Thankfully, crossing involved little more than handing over our passports, getting our car’s papers stamped, and shaking a few hands. The English-speaking border guards echoed our guidebooks, assuring us we would be fine with our two-wheel-drive car. Their only advice: Don’t drive at night and never pass a gas station without filling up – even if we had three-quarters of a tank.

Minutes after leaving, however, it felt like we were on the moon, with a lot more gravity. The road to our campsite resembled a rollercoaster, and it was among the better roads we would experience over the next week. But as we set up our tent and slipped into the warm river below, we watched a purple dusk give way to a cool breeze and a canopy of stars, and we knew it had been worth the trek.

The next day, after canoeing on the border-dividing Orange River, we ventured further north, along an increasingly lonely road. For hours at a time, we saw no sign of human life. Our cell phone flashed “No Service” and the GPS that served us well in South Africa searched fruitlessly for civilization. When we finally made it to our next destination, a 100-mile span of gouged rock called the Fish River Canyon, we breathed deeply as we watched another crimson sunset dissolve into another glittering night. Maybe we were worrying too much, I thought.

The next morning, as the temperature quickly surged, I drove with more confidence. The car could handle it, I thought. The roads looked worse than they were, I said to myself as I watched a pair of ostriches sprinting in the distance. It was about that point when I failed to notice a sharp rock jutting from the center of the road. The car shuddered. Jess looked at me with a combination of fear and pleading for me to slow down.

As we rolled on, I began to smell something unusual for the middle of the desert, something acrid. Neither of us wanted to acknowledge it. A few minutes later, when we came across a pack of antelope-like animals, we stopped to snap pictures. Jess got out to investigate the smell.

“Oh my God,” she said, adding stronger language as she gaped in awe at the damage.

When I got out, I saw mostly melted rubber, shards hanging off the rim. The front left tire was completely destroyed.

So we dug out the donut, jacked up the car, and pulled off the remains of the old tire. Then we set the donut and lowered the car. From there, we knew it would be a long drive. One more bad rock, and we would be walking.

The closest town was about 150 miles away. So we went easy on the water, marked the mile whenever we passed a human being, and drove slowly down the rocky road, averaging about 20 mph.

The stress was enough to make us think about turning in the car. But there was so much left to see.

After we replaced the tire, an ordeal that set us back a few hours and less than $100, we drove further north into an increasingly otherworldly landscape, where we would meet orphaned cheetahs, explore a forest of quiver trees, hike through deep canyons, and climb oceans of sand that sprouted thousand-foot dunes.

The roads didn’t get any better. In fact, they seemed to get worse, almost beyond imagination. So we drove slowly, often ridiculously slowly, and we both watched the road more closely.

Turtles crawling along the road seemed to pace us, but we were enjoying the ride.

After several weeks, we finally made it to the paved roads of Windhoek, where we hand-washed the Honda, scrubbing out the dirt from every crevice.

We decided we would let someone else do the driving, and a few hours later, we left Namibia on a 22-hour bus ride to Zambia, undaunted by the long road ahead.
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.

The Thunder of Zambia

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By David Abel  |  Globe Staff  |  6/22/2009

LIVINGSTONE, Zambia -- Before our raft capsized in a muddy river teeming with crocodiles, before we found ourselves eye to eye with the jittery parents of a newborn giraffe, before a horde of monkeys raided our tea platter and swiped our sugar cubes, we boarded a rickety bus in sweltering Windhoek, Namibia, for a long journey into the night.

As the desert sun bled over the horizon in a rainbow of crimson, we left the Namibian capital for a 22-hour ride to Livingstone. But the trip nearly ended before it began. Shortly after the driver pulled onto the one-lane highway, two police cars with flashing lights forced us to stop on the bush-shrouded shoulder. The officers chatted with the driver, and then, inexplicably, we were off again, into an increasingly dark night, the bus’s headlights the only sign of humanity in the visible distance.

“They were my friends,’’ the driver told me later at a rest stop. “We know the police. They don’t worry us; what worries us is running into animals. They’re attracted to the headlights.’’

He said he had been luckier than other drivers and had slammed into only a few antelope-like animals in the years he had been making the night trip to Zambia. Yet the prospect of colliding with large, antler-bearing creatures provided too much roadkill for thought as we sped through the darkness. Then the air conditioning cut off, and my girlfriend and I squirmed as we tried to sleep, the sweat pooling in our open eyes as we questioned our wisdom.

It was the last leg of a monthlong trip earlier this year that began in Johannesburg, and we were ready to have someone else do the driving after navigating thousands of miles in a compact rental car on treacherous roads in South Africa and Namibia.

When we finally crossed the border a day later and arrived in Livingstone, the driver deposited us on a dusty road in the damp heat of this small, growing city, which has become an increasingly popular base for exploring Victoria Falls since the political and economic implosion of neighboring Zimbabwe.
Like a knight in a shiny SUV, Richard Chanter, a British expatriate and local DJ, was waiting to pick us up and take us to the nearby lodge he has owned for the past decade. He helped us get our bearings, and after much-needed showers, we set off to explore the city in the remaining light.

We walked down several small streets marked by gaping potholes and crowded with everyone from students in their bright school uniforms to the elderly hauling groceries on their heads. We found our way to the main street, where old, diesel-spewing trucks, bright blue taxis, and loud motorcycles raced around each other in an ungainly minuet. Along the side of the road, beneath decaying cement buildings, we browsed wood carvings, beaded bowls, wire sculptures, and other trinkets at the local tourist market.

The next morning, Chanter drove us through the city, to the edge of what the Scottish missionary doctor and explorer David Livingstone discovered in 1855 and called Victoria Falls, in honor of the British queen. Zambians call it Mosi-oa-Tunya, or the Smoke that Thunders, a name we would soon come to appreciate.

He dropped us off by a scrum of trinket merchants and a one-room museum, where we were directed to a gate, paid the equivalent of a $20 fee, and carefully made our way down a narrow path through a lush bower. Before we could see anything, we felt its presence. A fine drizzle began to soak us, and then we could hear the low thunder. As we made our way down an increasingly slick path, we caught a glimpse between the foliage. And there it was: the mighty wall of water and the cloud of mist rising hundreds of feet into the sky.

“Unbelievable,’’ Jess said. “Unbelievable.’’

The 360-foot-tall falls, more than twice as high as Niagara, stretches out over a mile and is among the world’s widest. Here the wide placid Zambezi River bordering Zambia and Zimbabwe is transformed. The closer we came, the more the drizzle turned into a squall. But with rainbows arcing in every direction, wild flowers leaning off moss-covered rocks, and water cascading down in a soothing symphony, we were mesmerized for hours, oblivious to the cold shower as we dawdled along the edge and looked through the fog to Zimbabwe.

We dried off later at the Royal Livingstone, a five-star hotel less than a mile from Victoria Falls, where guests pay more than $900 a night. It was a peculiar place in a land where many people live in thatch-roofed villages, and it felt uncomfortably anachronistic with black waiters in white gloves and long-tailed tuxedos serving mainly white tourists. But we couldn’t pass up the hotel’s famous afternoon tea, and its beckoning buffet of cakes, cookies, and other gooey treats.

Any concern we had about the legacy of colonialism faded as we discovered more pressing issues. While we nibbled on crumpets and slurped pudding on the riverside patio’s leather couches, we noticed a few vervet monkeys staring at us. They seemed cute and entertaining as they frolicked on the manicured greens. What we learned was that they were even more interested in us, particularly what we had on our plates.

We soon found ourselves at the center of a daily duel between the turquoise-testicled monkeys and the patio’s lone security guard, a young man armed with just a slingshot. The monkeys worked together to foil the guard, climbing on the hotel’s roof, lurking behind the couches, feinting in different directions. Whenever the guard turned his head, they took turns darting toward our table, climbing up and grabbing whatever they could, making it a less than leisurely lunch.

“They’re very smart,’’ the guard said after one monkey crept into the dining room, opened a drawer, and rifled through it for goodies before being chased away.

The next day, after more fun with the monkeys, we unwittingly decided to test the boundaries of other wildlife in the area. We had learned that a giraffe in the bush that surrounded the hotel had recently given birth and thought we might try to catch a glimpse of the calf. A driver at the Royal Livingstone offered to take us on foot to find the giraffe, which wasn’t difficult, given their size.

But it was a brief tour. As we cut through the dense foliage following our guide, we spotted a giraffe’s pointy ears. The giraffe spotted us, too, and looked at us intently as we approached. Moments later, its mate came into view, looking at us with a less curious gaze, and then it began moving toward us.

“Run,’’ our guide shouted abruptly.

So we ran, following him out of the bush in a sprint, at once afraid to look back and sad we didn’t get to see the baby.

Having had our fill of adventure on land, we decided to explore the river. The day before we left Livingstone, we set out on a rafting trip down the Zambezi, Africa’s fourth largest river and home to crocodiles, hippos, and something even more menacing: a series of Class 5 rapids, which the local rafting companies dubbed “Commercial Suicide,’’ “Gnashing Jaws of Death,’’ and “The Terminator,’’ among others.

We learned the power of the warm river within minutes, and over the course of several hours, we probably spent more time overboard than on the raft. At one point, one wave of whitewater overturned our boat, flipping it from the front to the back, dumping all nine of us, including our guide. I was launched about 10 feet and spent a few seconds underwater scrambling for air. It was good fun.

The guide assured us not to worry about the crocs or hippos, as the water was moving too fast for them to feed on us. But our interest in swimming flagged when we saw a few of the toothy reptiles sunbathing on rocks jutting out of the river.

By that point, the trip was nearly done, and we were on our way back to Livingstone - sore, exhilarated, and ready for a vacation from our vacation.

The next morning, after five days in Zambia, Chanter dropped us off at the small, local airport. We sucked in the humid air and admired the billowy clouds as we walked across the tarmac to our Johannesburg-bound plane.

As our plane took off and climbed into the hazy sky - we were happy to no longer be traveling on sketchy roads - we could see a broad expanse of central Africa for miles, varying hues of seemingly untouched green in every direction, except one.

Before our plane banked into the clouds, the pilot drew our attention to what looked like smoke rising from the ground. In the distance, we could see the deep gash in the green. It was our last glimpse of Victoria Falls.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.

Into the Moonlight on Essex Bay

By David Abel | Globe Staff | 10/25/2009

ESSEX BAY – In the golden light of dusk, we slipped into the warm water and followed the receding tide from the beach.

Overhead, the sky was a darkening canopy of blues, with wispy clouds floating on a pink horizon. A gentle breeze rippled over tall grass in the distance, brushing us with the softness of velvet. There was no late-summer humidity, no hint of the onset of fall, not a bug or concern in the air.

As our kayaks cut through the silent waters of the bay, it was a reminder of why September is New England’s most serene month.

We had come here for a moonlight tour of Essex Bay, a nook of the ocean that seeps into the marshlands between Cape Ann and Crane Beach. But day dissolved into night we discovered more than the beauty that floods in and out of this wildlife refuge an hour north of Boston.

The tour began on the rocky shores just north of the Walker Creek Marshes, and several guides led our group of a dozen kayakers through the shallow water. We paddled toward the setting sun and watched the gold light burn into an orange haze.

As we curved around Cross Island, a barrier for much of the surrounding estuaries, we came across flocks of egrets, herons, and other birds prancing through the shallows, many of which use the bay as a way station on their long journeys to teach their young how to fly.
    
We passed other small islands and old shacks moored in the bay, the legacy of a time when local authorities were less strict about development on the water. The more we paddled, the more the greens of the surrounding grass and the changing colors of the sky seemed to merge like an Impressionistic painting. The orange blurred with pinks and reds, until the sky glowed a soft purple.

As we cut through the bay and the sun sank behind us, we watched a full moon rise in front of us, casting a soft light that sparkled over the calm water. We passed a sand bank where several boats were beached in the low tide. From there, we followed our guides and glided onto the southeastern edge of Crane Beach, parked our kayaks on a steep grade of sand, and gathered around a fire pit to sip hot chocolate and devour well-deserved desserts.

Under the darkening sky, we met Richard “Ozzie” Osborn, who has been running the trips around the Essex River Basin for 15 years. With sparks illuminating his face, Osborn told us how much of the area was part of the old summer estate of Chicago industrialist Richard T. Crane, a 2,800-acre property, much of which the family has given to a nonprofit land trust over the years.

“What’s crucial about the property as it is is that we’re in the main flyways for migrating shorebirds,” he said. “Some of these birds fly tundra to tundra, from the northern most part of North America to Patagonia.”

He pointed across the beach and into the last embers of light as he explained how the trust has preserved much of the land and left it undeveloped. “It’s in its natural state, almost unscathed, which is really unique,” he said.

While regaling us with stories and facts about the area, the sky faded to black, except for the bright moon rising higher in the sky.

We followed the moonlight back to the kayaks and shoved into the dark, flat water, where we crossed fast-moving currents flooding in from Ipswich Bay. We paddled into what felt like a star-filled void, where it was difficult to distinguish the sky from the water. We were silhouettes and kept from ramming each other with neon sticks glowing from the ends of our kayaks.

The more we paddled, the more it felt like we were weightless, floating in space. The strong current of the incoming tide made the rhythmic motion of paddling feel effortless, almost intoxicating.

It was an entrancing peace, a kind that unites the brain and the body.

We cruised along the marshes, past the undeveloped islands, through the quiet of night, until we were back where we started, invigorated by the warm breeze, the warm water, and the warm feelings.

Osborn said he couldn’t recall a better night for kayaking in 15 years running the same trip.

“We got a special not to be on the water,” he said.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.

Novice at the Helm

Jamaica Pond offers many pleasures, including sailing, which Christina Close and her husband, Jay, enjoyed Wednesday. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)

By David Abel  |  Globe Staff  |  July 3, 2010

JAMAICA PLAIN, Mass. -- Over the years, I have become acquainted with the trees surrounding Jamaica Pond, although not intentionally. I have also learned the consequences of ripples spreading suddenly across the spring-fed waters and the value of such nautical terms as "Duck!'' "Brace for Impact!'' and "Please ignore that you're sitting in what seems like a bathtub.''

I pass along this hard-earned knowledge in the selfish hope that you, dear reader, might stay away from one of the little-used amenities that make Boston such a luxurious place to live in the summer.

For $15 an hour, the city offers residents with sufficient experience, or in my case sufficient ambition, the opportunity to rent sturdy, 15-foot sailboats on one of the area's more pristine bodies of water. Over the years, despite a few unintended collisions and some overindulgent heeling, sailing on Jamaica Pond has provided me a spontaneous salve on many sticky afternoons, a hint of adventure in a secure place, and more than anything, an escape from the urban confines of the city.

Indeed, if you can rig the sails, thread the lines, and release the ties to clear the dock, it takes no more than a mild gust to send you to a place that feels faraway, even if the traffic on the Jamaicaway remains visible in the distance.

Over the past six years, the city has leased its dock on Jamaica Pond to Courageous Sailing, which rents six sailboats, among a small fleet of rowboats and kayaks, nearly every day between April and November.

There are other places to rent boats in the city, including the Esplanade, Charlestown, and Dorchester. But sailing on the pond has its unique rewards - and challenges.

Annie Butts, director of the sailing program on Jamaica Pond, appreciates them, perhaps, better than anyone. She knows the pleasures of plying the warm, silky waters, where double-crested cormorants mingle with snapping turtles.

Occasionally she gets to take a dip, so long as it's in the service of others. (The city, for obscure reasons, banned swimming in 1975.) One recent Saturday, she had to take the plunge to rescue four boats that had capsized.

``It's great to sail here, because there isn't the traffic that you have on the Charles or the harbor,'' she says. ``But a lot of people underestimate what it takes to sail here, and when they don't pay attention, a puff [of wind] might make them dip the rails or turtle,'' which means taking on water or capsizing.

The available 800-pound day sailers are prone to sudden shifts, given the unpredictability of the pond's wind patterns.

Like others, I have learned this the hard way. With my mother and other loved ones aboard, I have sailed into trees. At other times, when the wind has died, I have had to jerk the tiller back and forth, effectively rowing back to the dock.

My passengers and I have had more than a few close encounters with the boom and learned how to bail out water.

Most of the time, however, I have found the breeze to be just right.

I usually go in the afternoon, when the wind tends to pick up and there's little wait for a boat. It takes a few minutes to rig the sails and a few minutes more to untie and glide off the dock, leaving all the stresses on land.

It's easy to feel as if you're one with the wind, holding it in your hands as you grip the tiller. The boats, when they hit the right pocket of air, can cross from one side to the other of the 68-acre glacier remnant in a few minutes.

The most difficult part is learning how to land. Near the dock, which juts out from a rocky shore beside the boathouse, there's little room for error.

I've seen some stall and drift to shore, others come in too fast and crash into other boats, and there are those who seem to sail in just right and then get carried away on a surge of air and sweep past the moorings.

On more than a few occasions, after basking in the accolades that come with being the captain of a safely steered vessel, I have seen such praise vanish with a muffed landing.

The more practice, however, the smoother it goes.

On a recent morning, when there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the water sparkled in the sun, I had the pond to myself. The breeze was steady and the boat sliced through the rippled water like a knife in warm butter.

I swept back and forth, oblivious to the teeming city beyond the tree line, inhaling the moist air and the peaceful lapping of the waves, until it was time to get back to land. I turned the tiller toward the boathouse and glided in on a southerly breeze, easing in to the dock without incident.

As it often is, it was hard to step off the boat.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.