​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 61 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series. 

​              Forty years after Sherrill and I impetuously married at the Cupid Drive-In Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas on the way to Mexico City, we found ourselves traveling in a remote corner of Eastern Turkey.  Eight of us were exploring with our friend Hala a part of the Middle East that saw few tourists, but over which military planes flew frequently and noisily.  Driving through a dry, sparsely populated area near the Iranian border, we chanced into an experience that seemed almost symbolic.
              We noticed what looked like a party in progress next to a faded blue house set back from the road.  A group of men and women were dancing in a wide circle to recorded folk music on an open area between the house and road.  We stopped and Hala and our driver walked over to find out what was happening.  It turned out to be an engagement party for a young Kurdish couple—and we were invited. 

​              Several children ran down to greet us as we walked up the dirt driveway.  The adults welcomed us with smiles and gestures and the energetic dancing continued. The joy on the faces of the dancers, especially the younger ones, made us grin, too.  Legs and feet pranced and stomped and kicked as arms stretched over the shoulders of other dancers.  Some of the women wore long skirts, loose jackets, and kerchiefs, but the younger women left their hair uncovered wore less bulky clothes.  Sometimes, the men and women moved in one large circle, other times they separated into two circles moving in opposite directions.
              "Where are you from?" one asked.  When we said the United States they were surprised, but pleased.  They offered us fruit juice and sweets, then pulled us into the dancing circles.  Laughing, we all did our best to copy the steps. 

​              Jet planes suddenly roared overhead, slicing trails like chalk scratches on the blue sky.
              "What was that?" I asked.
              "A U.S. airbase is near here," someone explained.  "The border is just over there."
              Sherrill and I dropped out of the circle, but a young man came up and, with his few words of English, invited us to follow him into the house.  The engaged couple was inside, sitting with family members in a low-ceilinged room carpeted with overlapping rugs.  Very young, the boy and girl gazed up at us, the bride in a long white gown with high collar and full sleeves, the thin young groom, with hollow cheeks, dark eyes, and big ears, in an ill-fitting black suit.  Were they as terrified of the future as they appeared?
              "Please," I asked the man who took us in, "tell them that we wish them happiness and good fortune."  Then, hand over my heart, I bent toward them and backed away.  

​              When Sherrill and I arrived in Istanbul at the beginning of the trip, we realized once again that it was one of the most beautiful, exciting cities in the world.  With Hala and others in our group and alone we visited new places in the city, as well as familiar, including the restored Aya Sophia and the Topkapi Palace, but two days later we were up at 4:30 a.m. for an early Turkish Airlines flight across most of the country to Trabzon on the Black Sea, where we began our exploration of Eastern Turkey. 
              From Trabzon, we drove east along a narrow coastal strip between green mountains and the sea, then turned inland until we drove along a fast-running river at the bottom of a deep gorge, tall cliffs on each side.  Our goal was the Sumela Manastriri, an ancient monastery famous for its frescoes.  Eventually, we parked and began a climb on foot up a steep trail of dirt, broken rock, and boulders until we reached a stone staircase of 90 steps and then saw the monastery complex rising like an organic part of the massive cliff face.  Then, we descended and walked across the various levels of the ancient buildings, studying early frescoes depicting the life of Mary and various saints.  Although damaged, the paintings powerfully dramatized the beliefs of the artists.  

​              After lunch at a restaurant above the river, where we ate trout fresh from the running water, we drove steadily inland, ascending until we reached a high area of forested mountains and small farms with traditional wooden houses like chalets. Stopping for a while, we walked out a gravel road to the side of a long blue lake and a cluster of old houses.  In a corn field, two women bundled in colorful layers and head scarves were cutting corn stocks with curved hand scythes.  On the way back, we saw women carrying huge bundles of dried corn stalks on their backs.  We noticed a few men and boys in the fields, too, but more often saw them smoking and drinking tea.  Then we drove back to the coast and our hotel. 

​              The next morning, Sherrill pranced barefoot across the boulders and rocks below our room to dip her feet into the cold water of the Black Sea, then after breakfast of olives, tomatoes, feta, bread and honey, and hard-boiled eggs we continued following the coast, passing tea plantations on one side and cormorants dive-bombing into the blue water on the other.  Eventually, we reached the mountain town of Artvin, where we spent the night.  Then we continued our exploration of the area, seeking out the surviving ninth and tenth century Georgian churches and monasteries that a thousand and more years ago—along with mostly gone fortresses and castles—dotted the trade route to the Black Sea.  

​              After a long drive along a narrow road clinging to the side of a canyon, we left the pavement and began climbing a steep, winding, even narrower, road until we reached a small village and an abandoned but beautifully decorated ninth century church.  A little girl ran to get the key to the closed church.  Several other children soon appeared.  One of the smaller boys wore a faded Pokemon tee shirt, but since there were no televisions in the village he probably had no idea who the Japanese cartoon characters on his chest were. 

​              As the days went by, we left the historic Georgian part of Turkey, driving south into a high plateau region once called the land of Aramea by the Mesopotamians and Syrians, so the people who settled there became "Armenians."  At the border city of Ardahan, we passed a huge military complex keeping watch over Turkish/Georgian (formerly USSR) border. 
              Sherrill and I celebrated the day of our wedding exactly forty years before with a party our good friend Hala gave us with our group in the lounge of our hotel in the historic border town of Kars.  We even were treated to a stirring performance of young costumed, sword-flourishing, Armenian dancers: a memorable celebration with good friends in an exciting place.  

​              Continuing south, we passed small herds of horses—this was a famous horse-breeding area—and villages of sod-roofed houses surrounded by tall cone-shaped haystacks and piles of dried dung to burn in winter.  Eventually, we were confronted by the huge double wall and gate of the ancient city of Ani, which stretched to a steep gorge.  Visiting this vast archeological site shared by Turkey and Armenia—including the huge remains of both a cathedral and a mosque—required special permits.  In fact, we had to report at a military tower, one of a series on both sides of any section of border where there had been violence.  Even a farmer had to get permission to retrieve an animal that had wandered across the border. 

​              The hills grew steeper and more rugged, striped with red.  Then the snow-capped peak of Mt. Ararat appeared ahead, capping an area where Turkey, Persia, and Armenia came together.  We stopped in a dusty, beige-hued village to take photographs of the 17,000 foot peak.  In the evening we, sat on a second floor balcony at our hotel nearby, drinking Turkish vodka mixed with cherry juice and watching the sun set over it.  The next morning, Sherrill went with a group up the mountain to look for the remains of Noah's ark, while I stayed behind writing and listening to booming sounds from the direction of Iran's border.  We never learned what was behind those sounds and Sherrill told me that the "Noah's ark" they saw was just a strange rock formation.
              The next morning, a small two-deck boat took us to the island of Akdamar in Lake Van. The captain's son, a boy of about eight, never stopped working, coiling and uncoiling ropes, moving ladders, serving drinks, passing out napkins, carrying sugar for tea, moving fearlessly up and down the steep outside stairs as the boat churned through the lake waters.  

​              If you've never seen a whale, you might assume that it was a big fish with stubby little legs and a piggy head.  At least, that was how the 10th century sculptor who decorated the Armenian church built on the rocky island around 915 A.D. portrayed the Biblical whale that swallowed Jonah.  A belt of deeply carved reliefs of people and animals illustrating Biblical stories, including Jonah, Abraham and Isaac, and David and Goliath, wrapped around the outside of the stone church.  A procession of other whimsical animals circled above, just below the 18-sided cone of the dome.  The carvings weren't sophisticated, but were great fun. 
              So much of Eastern Turkey is mountainous and rocky, we had to wonder why people fought over it  for so many centuries.  The university town of Bitlis, named after one of Alexander the Great's commanders, was another vertical city, streets and neighborhoods climbing treacherously steep cliffs.  Here, as all over Eastern Turkey, 90 percent of the people on the street were men, the few women trudging along the dusty streets under their heavy bundles, completely covered.  The cafes, Sherrill noted, were filled with men sitting on low stools, smoking, talking, and sipping small glasses of tea.  

​              We saw soldiers, armored cars, and tanks along here, as well.  Of course, we were close to the Iraqi border.  When we stopped at the town of Batvan to examine a gracefully arched Ottoman bridge from 1165, several dusty little boys ran over, pointing toy guns guns at us and shouting "Money!  Money!"  The children of Kurdish refugees, possibly from Iraq, they weren't allowed to go to school, we were told, because they spoke little or no Turkish.  Apparently, little effort had been made to help them fit into the local society.  

​              Further along, we came to the ancient city of Diyarbakir with its fourth century Byzantine city wall, older than the great walls of Istanbul.  Built of black stone, with 82 massive round towers, it is largest city wall on earth and the longest wall anywhere, except for the Great Wall of China.  We saw no other foreigners and the local people did tend to stare at us.  However, in the evening, at an internet cafe, I saw teenagers listening to loud music with their earphones and playing computer games—even  in that remote corner of eastern Turkey.  The next day, though, we discovered a large military presence.  Even the police had a tank, painted blue and white.  While we were in the mosque's courtyard, we saw fighter jets roaring overhead.  Later, as we crossed the Tigris River on an 11th century bridge, we saw more—U.S. planes on their way to Iraq.    

​              More mountains followed, more vertical cities, more fascinating and often beautiful historic sites—and, unfortunately, more displays of military might.  Several times, as we strolled through markets, people asked, "Deutsch?"  Once, a man asked, "Canada?"  Nobody asked "American," but when I identified myself as American people simply looked surprised or even responded, "Welcome." 
              The Biblical Abraham was said to have lived in the ancient village of Harran around 2000 B.C.   Large mounds called tels were scattered around the village and as far away as Syria, all of them the remains of prehistoric settlements.  We climbed the huge Harran Mound, or tel, many layers of history dating back at least to the third millennium B.C. beneath our feet.  We almost could feel the layers of history underfoot, stories waiting to be told: tales of the Iron Age, Pagan, Jewish, and Moslem stories, perhaps Christian stories, as well.  Harran and environs is said to be the first place in the world to build with adobe mud brick.  About 1,000 of the traditional mud brick beehive houses survived.  We visited one, four connecting beehive-roofed rooms, cool inside, despite the heat outside.  

​              Passing the huge Attaturk Dam, second largest in the world at the time, after Egypt's Aswan Dam, we to Mt. Nemrut, where, around 50 B.C., King Mithradates built his great monument to himself.  Gradually, the road began to climb, spectacular peaks around us.  Eventually, we entered the Mt. Nemrut National Park, driving through a village of stone houses with flat roofs of mud, straw, and dung.  Some of the rooftops were bright yellow with corn drying on them.  
              Finally, we reached a small parking lot below the summit, from which we could walk up.  A few people elected to ride donkeys.  Later, Sherrill told me that her donkey driver spoke enough English to tell her that he supported a wife and five children with his job.  Half way up to the summit, she heard an odd ringing sound.  His cell phone.  Although the donkey stopped while he took the call, when Hala and I reached the summit on foot there was Sherrill, sitting on the stone steps leading to the altar on the Eastern Terrance, staring at the great stone heads that had been placed in front of the monumental statues from which they'd fallen—the king and the gods, including Hercules and Apollo.  

​              At the park guest house that evening, Sherrill and I met a red-haired woman from Texas who was traveling through Turkey for three weeks with her guide.  She indicated a mustached Turk standing behind her. 
              "She is under my protection," he said—a very Moslem/Middle Eastern way of expressing the situation, I thought.
              The plane from Gaziantep in the east to Istanbul was crowded, but the flight was smooth and from the air we could see how empty and rugged much of Turkey still was.  The next morning, we were up early for our flight to Ankara, the capital of the country and much closer to Cappadocia, our next destination.  First, we visited the State Archeology Museum in a large Ottoman-era building.  Ranging from prehistoric to Neolithic to Hittite and more, the collection gave a breath-taking picture of early Turkish history, even pieces from the 8th century B.C. burial treasure of King Midas--and his skull.

​              The drive to Cappadocia turned a bit hair-raising after dark.  Buses and trucks seemed to be trying to squeeze our van off the road.  Once, we nearly ran into an unlighted farm wagon and horse plodding along at the edge of the pavement.  At times, we suddenly came upon unlighted road construction and a surprising number of trucks and cars didn't bother with headlights.  Finally, we passed the remains of a Silk Road caravansary and drove up a narrow cobblestone-paved alley until we reached massive white cliffs, the lower part of which was pocked with windows, doors, staircases, and terraces, part of it our cave hotel.

​              After climbing up steep staircases and crossing several terraces dug from the cliffs, we reached our rooms.  Sherrill and I were surprised by the size of the room that had been carved from the tufa rock and the modern bathroom and comfortable furniture.  Then we hiked back across the main courtyard to the restaurant, where we ate classic Turkish dishes and drank Cappadocian red wine, which was very good.  After breakfast the next day, our guide took the six of us to explore the natural wonders and history of the area, ranging from chimney-like formations that sometimes resembled giant mushrooms to an abandoned town of cave houses to an underground city in which early Christians hid from persecutors.  We also found the remains of cave churches dug into the cliffs.  

​              After our two day exploration of Cappadocia, we drove to the airport at Kayseri, a modern city on a site dating back to Hittite times.  (Any trip to the Middle East automatically redefines the word "old.")  The little airport reminded Sherrill and me of provincial airports we'd encountered in many third world countries: small, crowded, chaotic.  A group of elderly men and women sprawled in the waiting room chairs or paced the grubby floor.  The women were short and stout, in long skirts, long sleeves, and high necklines, white scarves covering their heads and shoulders.  The men wore loose trousers, baggy shirts and jackets, and on their heads knitted caps with little knobs on top.  They were going on a pilgrimage. 
              By the time we landed in Istanbul, the city glowed with electric lights.  After a few days on our own in the city, Sherrill and I flew back to San Francisco, but we promised ourselves that we'd return.  Three visits simply weren't enough.  That didn't happen, but we always remembered Turkey and Istanbul as among our favorite places.  

​              If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
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​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 60 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series. 

​              All roads lead to Rome, somebody once said.  Sherrill and I had been there at least twice before and would return several more times, but it's one of those cities you never exhaust.  We stayed in a favorite little hotel near the huge train station—so we wouldn't have to make an early morning journey across the city when we took a train north later.  First, we explored some areas we'd missed on those earlier trips. 

​              Sherrill was eager to see the mosaic floors at ancient Rome's port of Ostia Antica.  We were lucky to catch a team of specialists at work restoring an elaborate mosaic of the signs of the zodiac that covered the floor of what had been a large building.  Down the road, we watched a group of children in Roman costumes getting ready to perform in the ancient theater.  Another day, we rode Rome's Metro to the Borghese Gardens and Museum.  On the crowded subway afterwards, two well-dressed men pushed between us.  Later, I discovered that a few small Euro bills had vanished from my front pants pocket.  All of our other cash and passports were safely under my clothes.  I'm still impressed by the skill of whoever got those bills.  I hope he was disappointed to get such a small stash. 

              At the Vatican, we recognized a movie star stopped by one of the guards at the entrance to St. Peter's Cathedral because her arms and shoulders were bare. The man with her let her wear his jacket.  It was too large, but made her respectable.  We had no trouble getting in the great church, but were disappointed later when we discovered that Michelangelo's frescos in the Sistine Chapel were off limits because the cardinals were in there electing a new Pope. 
                                                                *           *           *  

​              We traveled with only carry-on luggage, so it was easy the next morning to walk the block and a half to the station.  Two hours after leaving Rome, Orvieto's gothic cathedral appeared on its rock throne above the Umbrian plain.  One reason Italy's hill towns are so spectacular is the way they're perched atop their hills.  Unfortunately, the train stations are far below.  Great views, but how do you get there?  A few, at least, have funiculars or trams to take people up.
           Once again, we were traveling with a list of places to stay but no reservations.  Every day was an adventure.  We were lucky this time.  After riding in Orvieto's funicular to the top of the cliff, we walked to a hotel across the central piazza and were given a room with a view of the cathedral's ornate front with its stained glass, sculptures, and mosaics—although half of that elaborate facade was covered with scaffolding.  Inside, we discovered three enormous frescoes overflowing with naked bodies: Luca Signorelli's paintings of The Damned, The Resurrection, and Paradise.  
           "I think the subject was an excuse for him to show off," Sherrill commented. 

​              A local guide took the two of us through caves and passages dug long ago through the volcanic tufa stone beneath Orvieto: up and down carved stairs, through dark chambers and rooms lit only through holes in the tufa walls and around a well dug for a Pope in hiding.  After the day visitors had gone, we strolled along the cobblestone streets and found a trattoria for a quiet dinner and a local vino rosso classico.  
                                                          *           *           * 

​              We were surprised to discover an escalator from the train station up the hill to the town of Perugia sprawled like the five fingers of a hand on its rugged heights.  An easy walk past the fortress-like city hall and a many-sided pink and white 13th century fountain, brought us to our first choice hotel in a  building in which Goethe stayed during his Italian tour—and they had a room for us.  Nearby, several dozen old cars from all over Europe were parked in the Piazza della Repubblica for an antique automobile rally.   
              We ate well in Italy's hill towns, sometimes hunting up a restaurant that had been recommended to us, but usually just stopping at one that looked good.  The dishes were interesting, the ingredients fresh, and the wine usually local and excellent—and it was fun eating with local people.   As we strolled through Perugia's medieval streets, through stone arches and narrow passageways decorated with carved coats of arms, along a Roman aqueduct for a while, passing the old buildings of the University, and stopping to visit the National Gallery to study masterpieces by Perugino, Piero della Francesco, and Pinturicchio, we discovered some enticing neighborhood restaurants and weren't disappointed. Often, in these little places the chef himself (back then, they usually were male) came out to talk about the menu with us, urging us to try a dish with the local truffles or their special way of preparing lamb with olives—and, of course, there always was a local wine that we couldn't miss.  In fact, the only times in all of our travels through Italy that we were disappointed by a restaurant were when we stumbled into places targeting tourists, which did happen a couple of times in Venice and Naples.  

        Rosy-cheeked, the just-ordained young priest stood next to the long table accepting congratulations from family and friends and a couple of older priests.  We were at La Fornace di Mastro Giorgio, a traditional Umbrian restaurant on a steep hillside street in the ancient town of Gubbio.  Sherrill and I, watching from our table against the thick stone wall under the restaurant's low arched roof, considered walking over to offer him a hand, too, but decided not to intrude on his big day.  When we traveled, we often ate our main meal in the early afternoon.  This time, we also had a front-row seat to the celebration for this handsome, much-loved new priest.  
          Gubbio rose on one side of a valley, its cobblestone streets a series of horizontal steps climbing up the mountain like a ladder, pocked occasionally by piazzas, churches, a few Roman ruins, and several medieval public buildings—the crenellated Palazzo dei Consoli (city hall), the ducal palace—and our favorite, the Palazzo del Bargello for the Society of Crossbowmen.  Every December, the biggest Christmas tree in the world was created here with 12 kilometers of electric lights that stretched from the bottom of the city to the top of the mountain.  We were there in May, but at sunset the ancient stones and tile roofs of Gubbio blazed as if washed with liquid gold. 

​              Soon after we left the restaurant, we came to a piazza in front of a small church, a few cars parked to one side, and a couple of men in suits smoking near the church steps.  While we stood there, a woman in an elegant dress and high heels came out of the church with a boy about three or four, gave him to one of the men, and went back into the church. 
              "A wedding," Sherrill told me, "and papa has to take his turn with the kid."
             Sure enough, before long the big wood doors opened wide, spilling a crowd of well-dressed people, a priest, members of a youthful chorus, and finally the wedding party, bride and groom last of all: a petite, lovely girl in white and a husky dark-haired young man who looked uncomfortable in his suit.  Several more restless children scurried around the adults and darted into the piazza. 
              "Our lucky day," Sherrill said, and I agreed. 
              Traveling can be a disorienting experience, simultaneously being here and there, in the present and the past, as if we've been in submerged in a great stew, bits and pieces of time bubbling around us.  Later, that stew only partially congeals, tricking our memories: the Roman theatre, the gothic church, the Victorian farm house, the Romanesque cathedral, the bride lifting her skirt as she maneuvers over cobblestones, the hotel room with sagging floor: which was where and when? 
*          *          *
              We were sweating already and had just started hiking up the winding road from the Assisi train station to the town center someplace on the mountainside in front of us.  Since Assisi hotels booked up far in advance, we had a reservation at a small hotel near the central piazza, supposedly walking distance to everything—except the train station, we now realized.  Our two suitcases were carryon, but heavier than we'd thought.  Stoically, we trudged forward. 

​               Suddenly, a dust-covered miniature car jerked to a stop next to us. 
             The driver's door opened with a flourish and a tiny nun emerged.  She walked around the hood until she was face to face with us. 
              "Where are you going?" she demanded, in accented but understandable English. 
              "Piazza del Comune," I answered.  "Hotel Umbra."
              The nun, older than I'd realized at first, swung open the passenger door.
              "Get in," she commanded, reaching for our suitcases.  Before we could react, she'd opened a miniscule trunk, somehow got the two bags into it, and slammed it shut.  "In!" she repeated.
              We obeyed.
              The nun forced the little vehicle into motion, whipping around every bend in the road, detouring violently around any object—car, human, animal, or structure—that rose up in front of us.  Crammed into the car next to the nun, no seatbelts, hoping the door wouldn't fly open and we wouldn't crash through the windshield, somehow we survived our first experience of Assisi, emerging at last in a large piazza, where our nun slammed to an abrupt stop.
              "Hotel?" she barked.
              "Hotel Umbra."
             We didn't see anything that looked like a hotel.
              She tumbled out of the car and trotted over to a uniformed poliziotto parked a few yards away.  A moment later, they walked back to us, talking and gesturing.  Struggling out of the car, Sherrill and I looked hopefully at the young cop. 
      "Hotel?" the nun asked again.
           "Hotel Umbra."
          "Ahh!" said the poliziotto after a minute, then pointed down what looked like a cross between a tunnel and an alley.
            "Bravo!" cried the nun, triumphantly, hurling our bags onto the cobblestones. "Buona fortuna!"
            "Grazia!" I cried, as she slid back into the car, gunned it, and drove off.
            "What just happened?" Sherrill asked. 
            "Our fairy godmother was an Italian nun." 

           We picked up our bags and hiked into the shadowy tunnel, found a door with the words "Hotel Umbra" above it, and discovered a beautiful little place that was everything we'd hoped, including a view of the Umbrian plains, a spacious room, and a fine restaurant.  And a bathroom where we washed off the sweat and grime of our journey.  That evening, we celebrated our survival with a dinner we couldn't afford and toasted our fairy godmother with glasses of the local Montefalco wine.
            The next days spun into a kaleidoscope of wonders, from the Roman Temple of Minerva practically next door on the Piazza del Comune to the monumental multi-level complex honoring St. Francis of Assisi astride the hill above.  Both the upper and lower churches had been restored since the 1997 earthquake and the great frescoes by Cimabue and Giotto and his followers restored as much as possible.  From the lower church we descended to the crypt to pay our respects at the tomb of the saint.  Despite the hills, we enjoyed exploring the medieval city: the narrow streets lined with stone houses, the arches joining buildings over the streets, the reddish roof tiles, decorated cornices, even the occasional bricked up door and window, sometimes still blackened from a long ago sacking.  From time to time, the medieval austerity of the neighborhoods was lightened by window boxes and baskets of geraniums. Climbing farther afield, we came to a delightfully odd neighborhood of medieval houses built within the circular framework of what had been a Roman theatre. 

          The Ducal Palace in Urbino was even larger and grander than we expected, but—despite some fine art works here and there—was as impersonal and cold as it was spectacular.  However, Sherrill and I enjoyed the city, itself.  With its hills and university and busy streets crowded with young people, it reminded us of Berkeley.  One of the students that Sherrill struck up a conversation with suggested a restaurant upstairs on a side street.  Following his directions, we hiked up the street, climbed the stairs, and entered a large room with a beamed ceiling and big fireplace.  A young waitress, probably a student, told us what was on offer that day.  

              The chef himself, a tall middle-aged fellow with a great belly under his food-splotched white apron, brought out the food, himself.  As he set it in front of us he announced in English that his son had a magnificent voice.
              "He sing alla radio tonight.  You must hear him.  Magnifico!" 
              We didn't hear the chef's son sing, but the food was pretty magnificent—and so was the bottle of ruby red Rosso Piceno Superiore.  Somehow, after that feast, we made it back to our hotel—although I seem to recall that one or two university students helped us get there.
                                                        *          *          * 

             We were greeted at the Spoleto train station by a monumental black Alexander Calder sculpture.  Unfortunately, we still were three kilometers below the upper town.  Eventually, a bus got us to the top of the hill and we found a room.  The jumble of twisting, narrow streets weaving through the medieval town was a challenge, but at every bend we discovered a wonderful sight: handsome piazzas, medieval churches, a Roman theatre, a spectacular 14th century aqueduct, and—down a broad flight of steps—the elegant facade of the Duomo, part Romanesque, part Renaissance.  By the time we'd admired the Filippo Lippi frescoes of the life of the Virgin inside, we were starving.  

            We'd read about several good-sounding restaurants, but we discovered the Osteria del Matto (Inn of the Crazy), ourselves—down an alley from the Piazza del Mercato.  The main dining room turned out to be full, but the owner-host took us to a big table in the wine cellar that we shared with some other diners.  Everyone was served the same set menu, beginning with appetizer and white wine, then moving on to a main course served with a Montefalco rosso, and for dessert a chocolate torte—a memorable meal.  Of course, we went back the next day. 
              A couple of days later, we checked out of our hotel and went to catch the local bus to the train and bus station.  When it didn't show up, we returned to the hotel and learned that it didn't operate on Sunday.  A brisk walk with our bags got us to the station just in time for the bus to San Marino, proudly the world's oldest republic and Europe's third smallest independent state—although completely surrounded by Italy.  

​              Small though San Marino was, its rocky cliffs and hills were spectacular, fortresses and palaces rising like organic outcroppings among gardens and trees.  Every other building on the capital city's main street seemed to be a museum, especially about San Marino's glorious history, one with some strange waxwork figures.  Then Sherrill and I were astounded to see a parade of young men peddling bicycles up the steep, switch-back road to the city center.  We learned that it was the Giro d'Italia bike race held in late May or early June each year.  The cyclists looked determined, but in pain.  

​              Rimini on Italy's Adriatic coast, famous as a beach resort and as the birthplace and childhood home of film director Federico Fellini and the setting of several of his movies, was a short bus trip from San Marino.  Sherrill and I knew Fellini's movies almost frame by frame, so we had to make the pilgrimage.  Walking out on the long beach with its little changing cabins and wooden beach chairs facing the water we almost felt as if we'd wandered into one of Fellini's movies, maybe 8 1/2, in which the boy Guido (inspired by Fellini's own memories) dances on the beach with a hefty prostitute, and we wandered into the Grand Hotel, where Fellini stayed when he came back to Rimini and where elegant couples danced on the terrace in both Amarcord and I Vitelloni.  Too bad we couldn't afford to stay there. 

           From Rimini, we took a train to Rome for our final days in Italy, and then flew back to California, our brains and stomachs full of memories.
 
          If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
           Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
​

​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 59 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.

​              The acrylic Coke bottles brazenly alternated with inverted Havana Club Rum bottles.  It was only one of the paintings, drawings, and other works at the art fair near our hotel.  Some of them were angry, some flirted with kitsch, some were skillful, but Sherrill and I were fascinated by all of it.  A breeze drifting up from the river brought complicated musical threads from a band nearby.   
              Havana, 2003: an old city, a hot and humid city in which bare skin was in fashion, a city rich with art and music.  We were there in a small group of eight with our friend Hala, who had arranged for us to visit in a special cultural program—an exception to the ban then on U.S. citizens going to Cuba.  At the airport in Miami we'd been warned not to lose our letter of permission from the U.S. government or we'd each have to pay an eight thousand dollar fine.  After an hour flight, we stepped down a rolling staircase to the Havana runway.  As soon as we walked out of the airport we came face to face with a 1948 Studebaker, the model with the pointed jet airplane grill in front. 

​              Sherrill and I strolled from the art fair to the Ambos Mundo hotel and its roof bar where Ernest Hemingway once hung out—navigating streams of people of all shapes and colors, most  of them part of a couple, family group, or cluster of friends, fingers clasped, arms entwined, hands on shoulders, waists, hips.  Crossing the Cathedral Plaza, we found ourselves absorbed into a crowd swaying and clapping hands to the beat of an Afro-Cuban band.  A buxom black woman in a white ruffled, multi-layered costume danced with heavy-footed fervor, cigar wedged between gold teeth, dark hands pummeling the air, white-turbaned head moving in hypnotic patterns.  Later, we learned that she was an incarnation of a Santeria priestess, a Cuban adaptation of a Yoruba West African ritual.  

​              At the roof bar, we joined half-a-dozen Cubans at the end of a long table.  Behind them, the white-shirted bartender had set up a row of tall glasses with sugar, mint, and lime juice waiting for the ice, soda water, and rum to make Mojitos.  As we sipped our drinks, splintered bits of Havana's skyline vibrated around us in the fading light.  We remembered the afternoon we walked past the crumbling mansions along the Malecon by the bay.  Waves battered and splashed over the seawall with a sound like music.  With a groan, a rusty wrought iron balcony separated from a house, falling to the pavement in front of us.
              The next day, a drive to Revolutionary Square gave us views of a monument to the national hero Jose Marti and a giant portrait of Che Guevara on the side of a large building.  Nearby, we saw a yellow sign with large black letters on a wall: "La Verdad sobre el BLOQUEO debe ser conocida."  Somebody translated it for us: "The truth about the blockade must be known."
              "Blockade?" I asked.
              "It's what Cubans call the U.S. Embargo."
              "And what is the truth?"
              "It's also called 'genocide' here."
              In a cafe where we stopped for lunch, an old man with a guitar appeared in the doorway as we ate a blockade "salad" of canned corn and canned peas.  He was followed by a skinny youth shaking a pair of castanets, both of them singing.  Their complicated salsa rhythms filled the air.
              "Music," we were told, "is one way to survive."

             Art, it seemed, was another way.  We drove across town to a narrow two block-long street where the facades had been transformed with wild splashes of color, stylized faces like African masks, giant fighting cocks, abstract patterns.  The alley was crowded with constructions made from scrap metal and pieces of decaying colonial buildings. 
           "Callejon de Hammel, a street of art, a celebration of Afro-Cuban culture.  Most of it relates to Santeria."
              "The cult?"
            "More than that.  A religion, a way of life.  Mix primitive Christian beliefs with West African gods worshiped by sugar plantation slaves, add rum and cigar smoke.  Result: Santeria.  Drums and rhythmic movement send you into a trance so you can communicate with your ancestors and their gods." 
              In a gallery, we discovered images and figures representing Yoruba/Santeria gods.
             "There is Oshun, the river goddess, Chango's favorite wife.  Chango evolved from the Yoruba god of thunder.  Oshun was the blood that created human life—also Our Lady of Charity. Two gods for the price of one, just as Chango also is St. Barbara, because they're both fond of hatchets.  The Santeria gods have both African and Catholic identities.  Gender is irrelevant." 
              All of this came together for us in a weathered colonial building in an old Havana neighborhood.  In the once grand house, we sat on folding chairs to watch brightly costumed dancers.  Chango led the way, followed by Eleggua, the teasing god, performed by a boyish young woman in motley costume, who pranced and leaped, sat on audience members' laps, snatched scarves or hats, then returned them to the wrong people, tossing back her head with silent laughter.  Then female dancers in green, white, and red dresses pranced and whirled, seducing bare-chested men who arched over them with erotic abandon.

​              A startling range of emotions burst from the dancers: between men and women, between men and men, and between men and their masters.  In one dance, both men and women wore clog-like sandals, dancing faster and faster.  Then one group of barefoot men leaped forward, rebelling, swinging machete blades.  The female dancers flapped their full skirts and stomped on the wood floor.  The men tossed aside their blades, replacing them with flaming torches that they waved in all directions.
              Leaving at the end of the show, Sherrill pointed up to an open window where a caramel-skinned girl not more than nine or ten in a white dress with a red bow in her black hair was swaying to the music pouring into the street.  Then, looking across the street, we saw painted on a wall beneath an old apartment building the red letters: "VIVA FIDEL."  

​              One memorable day, we drove from Havana to the Sierra del Rosario de la Biosfera, a protected ecological area, passing mango orchards and coffee and sugarcane plantations.   The sugar economy transformed the little town of Remedios, which at one time boasted 72 sugar mills, into a showplace of colonial architecture, but when the sugar mills closed, the town was forgotten, caught in the spider web of the past.  For three centuries, vast plantations produced sugar for external export.  Although Cuba could have fed itself, most of its land was used for sugar.  The United States was one guaranteed market.  

​              Money flowed in and out of Cuba, eventually much of it through the Mafia, so very little of the money reached the people.  After the dictator Batista was overthrown in 1959, an effort was made to end dependency on sugarcane, but the U.S. embargo drove Cuba to rely on exports to the Soviet Union and Eastern Block until they collapsed in 1989.  Although smaller than it once was, when we were there the sugarcane industry still employed more than 300,000 people.  On another day, we visited the remains of a once great sugar plantation, but Cuba, we were told, now was trying diversify its crops so it would be able to feed itself.  

​              A visit to a village school gave us an idea of how the Cuban educational system worked.  Education to age seventeen was free and compulsory through ninth grade.  Advanced education also was available for free through graduate-level studies, as were vocational schools.  The day was rounded out by visiting several artists' studios.  We were especially impressed by the work of Lester Campa, whose brilliant paintings explored in subtle and evocative ways issues of ecology and the environment. 
              The infamous Hotel Nacional, built in 1930, became popular with Americans during the last years of Prohibition and during the gangster era after.  Before long, it was the Havana headquarters of the Mafia. We were there one evening for a reunion concert of Cuban jazz greats, primarily from the "Buena Vista Social Club."  The hotel walls were covered with photographs of celebrities who had stayed there, including movie stars like Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra, politicians, and gangsters—including Mafia king Meyer Lansky.  Most of the band members were in their twenties and thirties, but the old timers were in their seventies and eighties.  As soon as they heard the applause as they came out, though, they seemed to swell up with new energy.  Sherrill, who used to play the clarinet and saxophone in bands, was impressed with their skill and energy at their ages.  

​              Sherrill and I took a taxi out to the suburbs on the other side of Havana one day to visit Ernest Hemingway's house, Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm).  The cab driver waited while we explored the one-story 1887 house and grounds.  Hemingway and his wife Martha Gelhorn bought the house in 1940.  His widow Mary Welsh donated it to Cuba.  In 1994, it was opened as a museum after restoration.  We couldn't go inside, since it was full of Hemingway's own possessions, but we could see the rooms very well through open doors and windows.  They were crowded with books, animal heads, and other memorabilia.  From the top of a tower that Mary had built for Hemingway, we could look over the grounds. 

​              That evening, in the dining room of our little hotel in the colonial town of Trinidad, a tall, lean man came over to our table.
              "Are you Canadian?" he asked me.  "I heard you speaking English."
              Sherrill gave me her "you've been talking too loudly again" look, but he was just curious about where we were from and was astounded when I admitted that all eight of us were from the U.S.   He and his wife, he said, were from Czechoslovakia.  He was even more amazed when I told him that Sherrill and I had visited his country in 1988. 
              "But you're Americans!" he gasped.  And the whole world knows, he implied, that Americans don't care about anyplace outside of their own little sphere.
              Standing there, we talked for a while about travel and America and making friends in different countries.  Before we left the dining room, he again vigorously pumped my hand. 

​              Driving around the back roads of Cuba, we saw many people with horse-drawn carts and wagons and using oxen for plowing.  With the U.S. embargo  and the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent fuel shortage, much of the rural area had returned to animal power.  Sometimes, in provincial towns, we saw three-wheeled bicycle taxis—not for tourists, but for local people.  

​              Sherrill's gift for making friends impressed everyone at the school for teachers of the arts in the town of Bayamo in southeastern Cuba.  A junior college level boarding school, it prepared young people to teach dance, music, theater, and the plastic arts.  The graduates were sent to where they were needed, so they could pay back the country for their free education.  We visited several classes, then went into a performance room where we were treated to musical presentations.  

​              During the show, Sherrill slipped out because she felt hot and claustrophobic.  When I looked for her later, I found only a cluster of students around a bench—then realized that she was sitting on it.  One of the art students, whose drawing she'd admired, had recognized her and given her the drawing.  Then other students had joined them until thirty or forty surrounded her, a few able to speak English.  A sixteen year-old theater arts student wanted to know if plays in America were more for message or entertainment, adding that theirs focused on message. 
              "Your wife is a very nice lady," one of the young people told me. 

​              Santiago de Cuba—a beautiful elegant, run-down, hilly city on a bay at the eastern end of the island, Cuba's second city—reminded Sherrill and me of San Francisco.  From the top level of the ancient El Morro fortress, we could see where the Spanish fleet was trapped during the Spanish-American War.  We continued to the Rum Museum downtown and to the Bacardi Museum of History and Art, built by one of the founders of Bacardi Rum, although after the 1959 revolution the whole Bacardi clan fled.  After dinner, I went for a walk along the hillside streets, among the once elegant old houses.  

​              Ready for a drink after my walk, I went to the terrace bar of our Santiago hotel, ordered a Mojito and sat at a small table by the railing looking over the busy plaza—the same plaza where Che announced that Batista had fled.  A pair of self-consciously hip Germans about thirty-five sat at the next table with two young Cuban women.   After a while, I flagged the waitress and asked how much for the Mojito.  She told me, but didn't take the money.  When I turned back around, I saw that one of the German men had gone off, apparently, to the restroom and his girl was looking at me.  I swiveled again trying to find the waitress.  This time, when I turned back, the girl was sitting at my table, smiling hopefully at me.  Maybe she thought I'd have more money than the younger German guy. 
              "Buenas Noches," I told her, picked up my money, and went to the bar to pay for my drink. 

​              Affordable medical care is an issue in much of world, but some countries have taken steps toward solving the problem.  Despite other issues, Cuba, we discovered, had gone a long way in that direction.  In a Santiago neighborhood of crowded Soviet-style apartment blocks, we visited the Polyclinic San Marti, clinic that provided services for more than 56,000 citizens, ranging from emergency care to routine and long-term care.  Most of the doctors here and across Cuba were women.  The Polyclinic was part of Cuba's tiered approach to medical care, which started with family doctors within the communities and continued with polyclinics and then bigger hospitals, if necessary. 
              The U.S. embargo, however, had affected Cuba's ability to get and maintain medical equipment. Cuba's clinics and hospitals could buy equipment from Japan, Sweden, Australia, and other countries, but couldn't get replacement parts from the U.S.  If a U.S. company bought a company in another country or even had a relationship with a company trading with Cuba, the Cuban medical facilities no longer could get machines or parts from them.  As a result, Cuba focused on keeping the population healthy through prevention programs.  

​              As we traveled across Cuba, we discovered that places important in the struggle to overthrow Batista's regime had been turned into pilgrimage sites.  In Santiago, we visited the Moncada Barracks, site of a major battle during  the revolution.  Its walls still displayed holes from Batista's machine guns.  The victory of Che Guevara's forces over Batista's army in the little city of Santa Clara had made it famous.  A monument and tomb for Che and his companions drew people from all over the world.  

​              Driving over the mountains to Baracoa in the northeast of the island, near where Columbus landed in 1492, we were delayed by a procession marching in honor of the National Day of Mourning.  Many of the several hundred people carried flowers, but in a cemetery around a bend in the road, more people waited with flowers for those who didn't have any.  Musicians in a bandstand were playing to welcome them.  This day of memories seemed to be a day of profound emotion.  

​              Toward the end of the trip, when Sherrill and I were back in Havana, we encountered dramatic, sometimes startling, examples of the emotions felt by Cubans and other third world peoples when they looked at their collective histories—at the huge 2003 Bienal art show held in the historic El Morro fort across the bay from old Havana, with installations from all over Latin America and the third world.  

​              Most of the installations were meant to be disturbing and, by and large, succeeded.  One chamber, installed by Nicaragua, was filled with hundreds of dummies piled as if they were corpses.  In another room, continuously playing television sets showed videos of wartime violence and another displayed photographs of mutilated bodies along with piles of prosthetic body parts.  In one large room, another parade of television sets played segments of Spanish language soap operas as examples of the subjection of women in Latin America.  Up near the ramparts, a shiny red Chevrolet from the 1950s was supported by at least forty black ankles and feet instead of wheels—a powerful political and economic statement.  And, in one of the smaller buildings, we found an exhibition about Che Guevara, probably the most interesting exhibit in the fort, although not part of the Bienal.   

​              On our flight from Havana to Miami I read an article in the Continental Airlines magazine on "profitable," "desirable" customers and "non-profitable," "undesirable" customers, and how to attract the former and ditch the latter—a jarring concept after everything we'd heard, seen, and experienced in Cuba.  In Miami, as we rode in our cab to our hotel, we were startled by the commercial billboards everywhere—selling products, not ideas.
To be continued.... 
 

If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
​

​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 58 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.

​           "Morocco," Sherrill declared, "is the most sexist country I've ever seen." 
        This was saying something, since by this time she'd seen a good chunk of the world.  I couldn't contradict her, though, because we had run into some outrageously sexist behavior there.  However, despite that and because of the efforts of our good friend Hala, Morocco turned out to be one the most exciting and memorable of our travels. 
           By day eight of the trip, our little group was on its third national guide.  The first two had resented working for a woman and had assumed that their job was to take us to pricy shops where they'd get kickbacks.  Marwan, our third guide, was different.  His English was a little shaky, but for the rest of the trip, in his full-length djellaba and pointed yellow babouches (slippers), he helped us through cities and over mountain paths, actually happy to show us his country. 

​        Casablanca was larger and more varied than Sherrill and I had expected, with funky markets and high rises, grand squares and shabby shopping areas.  The big surprise was the enormous new Hassan Mosque, third largest religious structure in the world.  Most of Europe's cathedrals could have been swallowed by this mosaic-skinned monster that held 25,000 worshippers at one time.  A young woman guided us through it, citing statistics to impress us.  Galleries for female worshippers looked down on the enormous room where many thousands of men could worship at the same time.
         "Why isn't there space down here for women?" Sherrill asked her.
         "Oh," replied the guide, "women are free to worship the same as men—up there." 
     Later, we learned that the 38 year-old new king, Mohammed VI, had recently married a commoner who was a computer engineer.  And, we were told, the new parliament about to open had thirty-five women members.  The crowds of young people and swarms of children that we saw verified that 71 percent of the Moroccan population was under 25 years old.  Maybe there was hope for the future. 

           We headed north along the coast to Rabat, capital of Morocco since independence in 1956.  The city, once French-influenced, seemed to have become a mishmash of architectural styles and neighborhoods, but still possessed a raffish charm, especially the cliff-side kasbah and walled medina, where we wandered along crowded cobblestone lanes, some so narrow that we could touch the buildings on both sides with outstretched arms as we peered into souks and shops.   

​    When we walked inside the crenellated walls of the Rabat kasbah, we might've wandered into an old Hollywood epic of Crusader knights vs. Arab warriors, but outside those kasbah walls feral cats lurked among Roman ruins.  Olive orchards and cork forests sprawling below the town reminded us of southern Spain and the sunlight and bold colors that invaded Matisse's dreams when he was in Morocco and forever influenced his art, dazzled us, too, but fear seemed to be keeping visitors away.  We saw few other Americans in this Moslem country.
         A drive through more olive groves on another day took us to Volubilis, the Roman empire's most remote outpost.  From here, lions and Barbary bears were sent to Rome to battle gladiators and wheat and olive oil were shipped to feed the restless masses.  Less than half of the site had been excavated, but what we saw was impressive—especially the huge, richly detailed mosaics.  Bulky stork nests balanced precariously atop some of the limestone columns, waiting for their tenants to return from the north.  

         We'd been looking forward to Fes, oldest of  Morocco's imperial cities, and the largest existing medieval city in the world.  The unmapped lanes and alleys of Fes's medina meandered invitingly behind stark brown walls for us to explore.  Our introduction to this maze of leaning, crumbling buildings was with a local guide, dodging crowds of people, flattening ourselves against dusty walls, and leaping into doorways to avoid heavily laden donkeys.  And, of course, beggars and hustlers pursued us.  There were no neighborhoods of rich or poor.  Everybody lived jumbled together behind the rosy-brown walls.  If you opened one of those ancient wooden doors you might find a palace or a slum or something in between.  Private lives were private—very private.

          The ancient buildings and covered bazaars were crumbling, yet bursting with humanity.  A stop at one of the leather dying shops reminded us of how hard it can be just to survive.  After climbing a series of staircases to the building roof, we looked down on young men wearing loincloths wading in vats of dye, legs and lower bodies stained by the dyes.  The stench of the manure-treated leather reached us even on the roof. 
           Outside the medina, we could see a dozen minarets of different sizes and shapes rising out of a sea of brown buildings.  Five times a day, we heard the competing calls to prayer.  One afternoon, I walked through the nearest gate into the medina.  Young men and boys rushed up to guide me.  I refused them, but they followed me down the steep, narrow streets, haranguing me in broken English.  I could see that I'd get lost among the abrupt turns and dividing and re-dividing lanes, so I found my own way out.  

         Climbing into the Middle Atlas mountain range after we left Fes, we drove higher and higher through cedar forests until we reached the 6,000 foot-high plateau where Bedouin shepherds made their seasonal migration each year.  Along the way, we saw a Bedouin camp on one of the rocky hills.  Hala and our driver hiked up to talk with them.  A little later, she returned to tell us that they'd invited us to visit their camp.  This Bedouin family of three generations had made a semi-permanent home on that rocky hillside, with their main goatskin tent, a cooking tent, an oven, and pens and corrals for livestock.  The women were friendly and the children curious.  All of the men except one and a 16 year-old boy were out with the goat herds.  

           The women were modestly dressed in patterned trousers covered with flowery dresses and skirts, sweaters and scarves, but not shy.  The matriarch of the family took a hot loaf of round flattish bread from the oven for us to sample: crisp on the outside, soft inside, delicious.  With Hala and the driver translating, we were able to talk with them.  Everyone had a job and responsibilities—although life on the rocky plateau was difficult, it wasn't intolerable. The boy showed us four day-old lambs nursing in a pen and a "rocking horse" for the small children made out of a stuffed wild cat mounted on a pair of rockers, a bit grungy but loved. 
      Continuing past volcanic cinder cones, we entered a rugged country of bizarre rock formations, mines, and fossils.  After a while, we stopped in a small Berber settlement for lunch.  While the rest of the group was having tea, I crossed the road to a shed in which a Berber man had set up a rock shop that included geodes, nautiloid fossils, trilobites, and other fossils.  I bought a perfect trilobite bigger than my fist, still within its rocky covering.  Later, Don, a geologist in our group, assured me that it was the real thing.  

      We met our third national guide in his flowing djellaba, yellow babouche slippers, and pale blue turban at our hotel in Erfoud at four a. m. the next morning when we gathered for a Land Rover trek into the desert.  Although fluent in French, Marwan was self-conscious about his English, but he didn't seem to be afflicted with the macho egotism rampant in Morocco. 
        We had traveled 450 km over the mountains in one day, partly along the winding Ziz river gorge, the result of centuries of erosion, then following ancient caravan routes into the desert.  Often the road was bordered by coppery red strata that had been upended and twisted by ancient cataclysms.  When we passed through small towns we noticed that people in the south dressed more conservatively than in the north, the women in black chadors with face veils—although they seemed to be doing most of the work while the men lounged in cafes, drinking coffee or mint tea.   

        It was still dark, masses of stars above us, when we reached our hotel, but almost immediately we set off in three Land Rovers toward the remote outpost of Merzouga to watch the sunrise.  At first, the desert was hard-packed with scrub jutting through its broken surface, then we alternately careened up and down over sand dunes and more of the hard-packed sand.  Finally, we stopped, tumbled out of the Land Rovers, and followed Marwan and Hala to the massive dunes of Erq Chebbi, Morocco's only genuine Sahara erg—a huge, drifting expanse of dunes that loomed in front of us like black mountains.  

         "We're not climbing those!" Sherrill exclaimed.  But we were.  A few dunes later, Sherrill and two other women stopped.  "We'll have the same view from here!" they said almost in unison.
       A party of Germans, we discovered, had ridden out on camels even earlier and already were silhouetted on the highest dune against the sky as it slowly turned pink.  The blue robes of their camel drivers stood out sharply against the rosy color of the dunes. 

​      Eventually, we hiked back to the Land Rovers and bounced to the oasis of Merzouga for breakfast at a mud brick, palm-roofed inn that had been built for trekkers.  Then we continued to Rissani, once the final stop on the caravan route south, where we found the ruins of a great caravansary.  Date palms still bristled around the oasis and straggled into the desert.  A brown-robed youth led a loaded camel past.  It was hard believe that for centuries these disintegrating mud-brick walls had been the site of a busy commercial center where East and West and South all had met.   
          The next morning, we set out across hard-packed desert, continuing deep into a gorge where red and orange desert cliffs soared to 2,000 feet, only a narrow strip of blue sky between them.  That night, we stayed at a mud brick hotel modeled after the kasbahs of old, then in the morning drove into another canyon of high cliffs, following the road of "A Thousand Kasbahs," until we reached the hilly city of Ouarzazate and its ancient kasbah that was being restored with help from UNESCO.  

            Ouarzazate has been called the Hollywood of North Africa.  Why make movies in Morocco?  It has more sun than you'll ever need, mountains and desert, historic towns, ruined fortresses, picturesque villages, and cheap labor.  Epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator and exotic pictures like Sheltering Sky and Jewel of the Nile were shot there.  Ancient as it is, Ouarzazte has a few modern hotels up the hill from the old city, used by tourists—especially it seemed from France—when they're not full of movie crews. 
         A classic car club from France touring Morocco had reached Ouarzazate just before we arrived, their cars corralled in the hotel parking lot, ranging from a fifties Impala to a couple of antique Citroens to old MGs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and BMWs.  Most of the drivers were in the hotel when we arrived, but a few still wandered among the cars, dusting them and stroking their shiny skins as if they were race horses cooling down after a run.  
          A day later, we began the trip south on the old caravan route across the rugged Anti-Atlas range, passing villages populated by Berbers and desert Arabs.  When we reached Zagora, the last oasis before the Sahara, we saw the town long before we entered, standing on the edge of the desert like a mirage.  Although there had been an oasis there for centuries, much of it had been rebuilt.  In the late afternoon, we drove a short distance to the base of the Jebel Zagora mountain, where trekkers were getting Land Rovers ready for desert exploration.  We, however, were going to climb the mountain so we could watch the sun set from its summit.  Four of the women, including Sherrill, elected to ride camels, rather than climb. 
           Marwan led the rest of us up a trail, zigzagging among rocky outcroppings.  Several times, as the sun sank lower in the sky, we stopped to catch our breath and look at the view.  By the time we reached the summit, we looked out at an impressionist painting of red, maroon, dark green, black, and brown running together.  Marwan called on his cell phone to order a couple of Land Rovers to take us back down.  However, when I saw how narrow, twisty, and steep the rocky road was—and how far the drop over the edge was—I decided to walk down.  One other person said she'd walk down with me, rather than wait for the Land Rovers.  

​          I didn't see Sherrill or the camels at the top, but eventually found her and the other women looking just fine near some shops a short distance from the mountain base.  They'd ridden the camels around the oasis, explored several stores, and had refreshments.  Once we were all together, we drove into the desert to a Bedouin camp where we'd spend the night.  The narrow road disappeared in the darkness and, finally, we stopped and walked further into the desert—almost like Marlene Dietrich hiking into the sand after Gary Cooper in the old movie Morocco.
      A multihued wall of tent material hung from poles, beyond it a circle of tents illuminated by strings of small electric lights.  Beyond the camp, we saw only blackness.  As we stepped through an opening in the fabric wall into the first of two large circles, Bedouin men greeted us and took us to the tents where we'd spend the night.  Around midnight, we were told, the electric lights would be turned off to save the generators, but lanterns would be set out.
            We cleaned up as well as we could, then sat at two round tables where a feast of Moroccan dishes appeared.  After all that exercise, we were starving.  It had been quite a day and evening.  When we woke up in the morning, we saw that we were surrounded by rolling waves of sand.  A gold and brown scorpion crawled onto the red carpet, barbed tail aloft.
             "It won't bother you," Sherrill told me, "if you don't bother it." 
             Just the same, I wasn't happy until I'd crushed it and got rid of the remains.
           After breakfast, we drove back along the route we'd come, returning to Ouarzazate, past rugged rock formations and several kasbahs, some crumbling, others still standing on the cliffs.  

​          A day later, we drove again through stony desert, this time toward Marrakesh, romantic city of legend.  On the way, we passed an Egyptian ruin with gigantic statues of pharaohs and gods—a movie set created for the remake of The Mummy, now abandoned to hot desert winds.  Before long, we came to the rosy-hued kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou, one of the best preserved kasbahs of the region, featured in at least twenty films, including Lawrence of Arabia, Jesus of Nazareth, and Jewel of the Nile.   

          Hiking across a dry riverbed and up narrow steps cut into the reddish clay between mud-brick houses, we made our way into the remains of the town.  Only a few of the houses were lived in, now, but an old woman drew us into hers to show us her weaving.  First, however, with a toothless grin, she pointed to her autographed photograph of Harrison Ford, given to her when he was there making one of the "Indiana Jones" movies.  She may never have seen the movie, or any other movie, but was proud of that photograph.  
         Returning to the other side of the river, we found a little outdoor restaurant with a view of the kasbah.  The food was good, but the place was swarming with flies.  We had to spread paper napkins to protect our plates. 
         "One of reasons that Jimmy Carter was given the Nobel Peace Prize," Sherrill told us, "was his work to eliminate the flies in Africa that get in people's eyes and cause blindness."
       "Thank you for sharing that," replied one of the group, waving flies away from his face.
           "Does North Africa count?" asked somebody else.  
          Then we began our climb into the High Atlas mountains, through a lunar landscape of red, orange, and brown cliffs and canyons.  It was hard to imagine camel caravans making their way along that route, but they did for hundreds of years.  Finally, we descended into the valley and reached thousand year-old, pink-hued Marrakesh, for centuries an important caravan stop, then a French city, now a major arts center and the base for our final week in Morocco.

​            The old city and the ville nouvelle were close to each other, making it easy to explore both.  We started with the sixteenth century al-Badi Palace, an elaborate ruin where the Marrakesh film festival was held every year.  We also saw that the storks had returned to Morocco, comfortably settled on their nests atop mud-brick walls and towers.
            One morning, we explored the notorious Marjorelle Gardens, owned then by Yves Saint-Laurent, but created between 1922 and 1962 by French painter Jacques Marjorelle.  Sherrill was amused by the stylized garden, the palm trees, cactus beds, fountains, and ponds.  Vivid blue pavilions, urns, low border walls, and a blue and rose-brown house helped set off the plants.  Morocco seemed to be a land of dramatic contradictions, of economically desperate people doing whatever they needed to survive and ferociously stylish decadence.  

​            That evening, we experienced a little of the human comedy and drama of the huge Djemaa El-Fna Square (Square of the Dead).  Musicians, storytellers, acrobats, jugglers, men with monkeys and snakes, wandered among scores of food vendors, competing for tips.  Some  tourists had found their way to the square and the surrounding roof-top cafes, but the locals far out-numbered them.  For a while, we sipped drinks in a roof-top cafe, gazing down on the square as waves of semi-organized chaos ebbed and flowed across it. 
          A side trip through harsh but oddly beautiful country took us to the coastal town of Essaouira, where Orson Welles filmed part of his low-budget Othello in 1948, shooting part of it in a steam bath with his cast draped in sheets because he couldn't afford costumes.  Small blue boats rested on the stone embankment below an 18th century Portuguese fort.  Several of us of walked out to a small seafood restaurant.  Sherrill ordered sardines and was astonished when she got a platter so large that we shared it with three other people. 

          Hala had arranged a farewell dinner for us deep in the Marrakesh medina, where we were served a series of dishes unlike anything we'd had before, starting with mezze with a Moroccan twist, then continuing with main courses that included a pastille (a Moroccan specialty of pastry filled with ground pigeon, lemon-flavored eggs, almonds, cinnamon, saffron, and sugar encased in layer after layer of the thinnest pastry), then moving on to chicken with lemon and olive, and finally juicy spit-roasted lamb carved at the table, followed by an array of sweets.  We all ate too much, but it was too wonderful to regret a single decadent bite. 
To be continued....  
​

​If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
 

​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 57 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.   

​              Fewer people were traveling immediately after 9/11, but lines were longer because they didn't understand yet the new security procedures.  While Sherrill and I sat in the departure lounge at SFO to board our flight, the captain of another American Airlines plane came out to talk to waiting passengers. 
              "Thank you for your courage flying so soon after the events of September 11," he said.  "New procedures are now required on the plane.  No wandering or milling about.  You'll have to stay in your seats and ask the flight attendants to go to the lavatory." 
              After we'd boarded, our captain repeated what the first had said, adding: "For the first twenty minutes of the flight no one can get up, not even to go to the lavatory."
              Later in the flight, I noticed that before one of the pilots came out of the cockpit, a flight attendant blocked the aisle with a food cart until the pilot was locked again behind the cockpit door.  When we flew into Kennedy, where we changed planes for Paris, we saw the Manhattan skyline minus the twin towers.  The Empire State Building again dominated the view.  

       We were traveling independently again, and without reservations.  We landed in Paris early in the morning, took a train into the city, crossed it by Metro to Gare St. Lazare, got a train to the little town of Vernon, where we found a hotel, left our bags, and took a taxi to Monet's home across the river in Giverny.  We felt quite pleased that it all worked the way we'd hoped.    
       "They look just like the paintings," Sherrill said, as I followed her among Monet's gardens and ponds.
     As a gardener, Sherrill loved exploring the paths and alcoves of the gardens, studying the range of colors, the textures and patterns, the way the light drifted across the flowers, trees, and water.  Years before, in Japan and after, we'd learned a little about Japanese prints and admired those that Monet had collected, hung in his house, loved, and been inspired by.  After a glorious half day in Monet's flowery wonderland, however, we discovered that there was no bus back to Vernon.
           "Okay," I said, "I guess we'll walk."
           "Don't worry."  She patted my back.  "It'll be fine."  
           So we did, three miles back to the Hotel d'Evreux, in a restored medieval building, where we cleaned up under the sloping ceiling of our room before descending to the cave-like dining room and a Michelin two-star dinner that we savored despite the glassy-eyed stares of an antlered deer and a bristly boar on the wall above our table. 

​              The next morning, we passed through Paris again on our way to Chartres, still with our luggage—fortunately, carry-on only, since we had to change trains.  After passing dry corn fields and yellow-green pastures in which white cows stoically munched, we saw the huge gray bulk of Chartres cathedral on the horizon, still dominating everything around it after a thousand years.  From the station it was an easy walk, even carrying our suitcases.  Because of bomb scares, no railroad station in France allowed luggage to be left in lockers, but nobody said a word when we carried it into the cathedral.  Our timing was perfect to join a lecture/tour with British author and Chartres authority Malcolm Miller.  For more than an hour, we followed his tall, white-haired figure, absorbing his wisdom and trying to keep our suitcases out of sight.  

            A train from Chartres took us to Rennes, as close as we'd get that evening to Mont St. Michel.  Happy to get a room near the station, we discovered in the old town a tiny, quite good, vegetarian restaurant run by a pair of skinny young men.  The next morning, a short train trip got us to Pontorson on the coast, but we missed the bus to Mont St. Michel.  The island, a man-made mountain of stone against the sky, taunted us at the end of its causeway, but a ten minute taxi ride got us and our suitcases to the island.  The narrow streets inside the walls were crowded with day trippers ricocheting from one touristy shop to another. 
         "You wouldn't have a room for us, would you?" I asked the receptionist at a small hotel wedged into a sharp bend on the steep main street. 
  "Of course, monsieur," she smiled.  "A nice one with a view toward the bay."  
          "Virtue rewarded," Sherrill whispered in my ear.
          That evening, after exploring the island and abbey, we relaxed with drinks in a cocktail lounge looking over the bay, while young French people played bagpipes and danced on the dry mudflats below.  Later, after dinner, we walked out onto the causeway to look back at the island and abbey.  With the day trippers gone, it was easy to imagine this still was the medieval town.  Before we left a day later, the hotel receptionist called ahead to Tours, our gateway to the Loire valley, to reserve a room for us. 
      "Come stay with us again, madam," she told Sherrill.  "We enjoyed having you." 

           We hoped to get every place we wanted without renting a car.  At first, it looked iffy for the Loire, but we found a day tour that did the job for us, beginning with Chateau du Clos Luce, the little palace that King Francis I of France gave to Leonardo da Vinci, where he spent his last three years, working as engineer, architect, and producer of shows for the court, as well as refining the painting that he carried with him everywhere, the Mona Lisa.  Although we visited several other, grander, palaces, this one remained our favorite.  Chenonceau, the famous palace that straddled a river over a parade of arches and flaunted several very large, very formal gardens designed in precise geometric shapes, irritated Sherrill.
            "Anybody with a ruler can do that," she muttered, "but it's not what I call a garden." 

​          The other palaces of the Loire had their charms, but two especially stand out in memory.  The chateau of Chambord was ridiculously huge, but we were amused by the twisting double staircase designed by Leonardo so that Francis I's queen and mistress could pass without confronting each other.  The palace of Cheveny was the model for the chateau shown in the Tintin illustrated adventure stories that our son-in-law and grandson had enjoyed.  In fact, a museum on the grounds was devoted to the character of Tintin, his comrades, and their adventures—too bad that Paul and Leo weren't with us. 

​              "Our wedding turned out to be much smaller than we planned," a pair of newlyweds on the day tour told Sherrill and me.  "No one could get there," the bride mourned, "because of the restrictions on air traffic right after the disasters in New York."  
              It was becoming clear that the world was never going to be the same—and probably in ways that we couldn't imagine, yet.

​              We'd thought of Nimes as a jumping off point for the great Roman aqueduct of the Pont du Gard, but discovered that it had been a major Roman city.  Our first job, as usual, was a place to stay, then we explored the town, from the huge Roman Arena, still used for events 2,000 years after it was built, to a perfectly preserved little temple, a Roman tower, and more from the ancient city.  Along the way, we located the bus station, where an agent patiently explained the route to the Pont du Gare, including where we'd have to transfer to a second bus.  Tourists complain about how the French can be terse and grumpy, but we found them helpful and kind.  Usually. 
              Suddenly, there it was, the huge aqueduct, stretching across a steep gorge above a river bed, as impressive as ever after two millennia.  We walked across it, gazing back from different vantage points.  People were sunbathing on the gravel beach below, swimming in the river, and hiking around it, as if it were a natural phenomenon, something they might find in Yosemite or Yellowstone.  

​              However, our favorite memory of Nimes turned out to be a small restaurant that caught our eye.  The very fat chef/manager came out, explained his menu to us, then took our orders for when we returned later.  Restaurant l'Ancien Theatre gave us one of the best meals of our lives, concluding with a remarkable black olive pie for dessert.  Often in our travels, it seemed, we stumbled onto these wonderful experiences—and never forgot them. 
              "Remember that black olive pie?" Sherrill or I would ask the other years later, and we'd nod and smile and reminisce.  
              For a while, we were afraid that we'd have to sleep in a doorway of the monumental Pope's Palace in Avignon, but finally we found a modest room and spent the rest of the day being awed by the magnificence of the Pope's court and wandering the twisting medieval streets until we reached the river and the "Pont d'Avignon," where Sherrill sang the old song to me.  Everything, we congratulated each other, worked out for us.  Then it was on to Milan, by way of a couple of days in Nice, staying in a seedy little hotel run by a talkative old lady with hennaed hair and scarlet toenails, right out of a Tennessee Williams play—French version.  

​           Mussolini's huge 1930 train station was an intimidating introduction to Milan, but Sherrill and I found a hotel opposite, did a little sight-seeing, and got ready for our train trip the next day to Venice, where we'd meet our friends Lee and Karen.  At last, we'd stay in one place for a week, sharing a house with our old pals from Oregon.    
          The train hurtled across the top of Italy, through Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, and Padova—all places we'd return to on later trips—reaching Venice in the late afternoon.  By the time we bought our week passes for the vaporetto and made the trip on the #1 the full winding length of the Grand Canal to the Arsenale stop, it was five o'clock.  We discovered our friends sitting under an awning at a cafe facing the waterfront, eating gelato and sipping coffee.  It was hard to believe that it had been several years since we'd seen each other.  We joined them for coffee until the "Capitano," the colorful fellow who was renting us the apartment, arrived to turn over the keys—which he finally did with a flourish and many explanations, pronouncements, and good wishes. 

​              The apartment was narrow, but tall, which made sense in a city with a shortage of land: kitchen and living room on the ground floor, two bedrooms and a bath above that, a spare bed on a landing higher up, and another bathroom on the top, as well as a small deck.  That evening—our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary—the four of us had dinner together in a local restaurant.  What better way to celebrate our anniversary than with friends in Venice? 

​              The next day, we discovered Frida Kahlo paintings at St. Mark's Square, met another couple that Sherrill and I knew from Southeast Asia and who happened to be in Venice at the same time, staying near the leaning campanile of Santo Stephano.  As the days spooled out, we visited the Peggy Guggenheim Museum of modern art, the Accademia galleries, rediscovered a restaurant on a little side canal that we'd enjoyed in 1978, and bought fruit and vegetables in markets along the Rue Garibaldi near the Arsenale. 

​              Sherrill always loved traveling on water, so I knew she'd enjoy our trip with Lee and Karen up the Brenta Canal, visiting palazzos of the Veneto, including several designed by Palladio.  The countryside was lush and green, the villas were elegant, and the energetic young guide seemed to know everyone along the canal, greeting and joking with them as we chugged along.  

​              Sherrill and I were up early the next morning to take a train to Trieste, since Lee and Karen were feeling a bit under the weather.  As we walked along Trieste's waterfront, we saw a large yacht that had been docked near our Arsenale vaporetto stop.
              "They beat us here!" Sherrill gestured at the fancy boat.  "They could've given us a ride."
              Visitors to Trieste can get a James Joyce walking tour map now and will pass a statue of Joyce as they walk up from the train station and harbor, but none of that existed then.  Still, we knew that Joyce and his Nora left that same station when they arrived in 1904 and he parked her on a bench across the street while he found a place to stay—and got drunk.  As we walked those streets, passing the marina and turning toward the hills, we couldn't help but think of Joyce—after all, he lived there 15 years.  At the top, we looked out at the red tile roofs in front of the blue-green Adriatic, visited the remains of a Roman forum, and then strolled down to the old town for the two-hour train journey back to Venice.  

​              The rest of the week, the four of us alternated exploring Venice and sitting around with glasses of wine.  We took in a retrospective of the strange, brilliant paintings of Balthus, visited the old Jewish Quarter, spent some time at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco to see the huge Tintoretto masterpieces again, and had lunch with some of  Lee and Karen's friends from Oregon.  Then we said goodbye to Karen and Lee.  They were heading north to Lake Como, while we were going south to Ravenna.  

              The last capital of the Western Empire, the little city of Ravenna was crowded with glories from the past.  Since Sherrill had done mosaic work, herself, she especially wanted to see the Byzantine mosaics.  We bought combination tickets to see the six major sites in Ravenna, starting with the 1,500 year old Basilica of San Vitale, unadorned brick outside, jaw-droppingly beautiful inside, filled with brilliant mosaics, including stylized portraits of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora and their retinues.  By evening, we were foot-sore but happy and the Piazza del Popolo, which seemed to be the center of town, was jumping with activity.  Earlier, we'd noticed little kids watching a Punch and Judy show there, but now musicians were playing, bigger kids were dancing, and the evening was just starting.  We collapsed with wine and food and let the music and the memories of the day wash over us.  
              Over the years, Italy had become our favorite destination: we knew that we'd never discover all of its treasures, but it was fun to try.  From Ravenna, we rode the train to Verona, another city in which the ancient world and succeeding centuries were jumbled together.  The bathroom in our hotel room was so small that we had to put our feet in the shower to use the toilet, but nearby stood the Romanesque Basilica of San Zeno, Sherrill's second favorite church in Europe (after Vezalay in France).   
              The trains in Italy were frequent and usually on time.  From Verona we sped up to Lake Como, where we bought a ferryboat pass so we could explore the towns around the lake.  Then it was back to Milan.  Early one morning, we waited outside Milan's Tourist Information Office until it opened so we could buy timed tickets for the day's three-hour city tour that included a guaranteed visit to Leonardo's restored "Last Supper" mural, now protected by a modern security system and bullet-proof glass.  We'd seen it 20 years before, but not since this restoration.  The colors and lines of the painting were truer, now, making it easier to feel the human drama of the scene.  
              A few more days in Milan, where we ran into our friends Lee and Karen again, and it was back to California, but this wouldn't be our last trip to France and Italy. 
To be continued....  
​

 
If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
​

​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 56 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.   
​

​"I hope we see the volcano erupt," Sherrill told me, as we flew into San Jose, Costa Rica.
         "Which volcano?"
         "Any volcano—the big one."
        Since Costa Rica was crowded with volcanoes, around 100 of them, at least seven active in 2001, there was a chance that she'd get her wish. 
       Sherrill had always been fascinated by volcanoes.  Years before, on one of our trips to visit her mother in Hawaii, we'd stayed at the lodge on top of Kilauea, next to the huge caldera and had watched grenades of steam shoot from the red-rimmed, half-hardened lava as it cracked, bubbled, and shook, but no eruption broke through the shell around the crater. 
            "I'm never here at the right time," she'd mourned.  

          I remember now how she enjoyed gazing down into the mile-wide steaming caldera of Costa Rica's Poas Volcano, but we saw no lava flow from that crater either, although the bubbling noises and stink of sulphurous vapors were impressive.  As I write this, Kilauea in Hawaii is pushing red hot molten rivers through forests and farms.  Volcanoes are uncontrollable and often destructive, but eventually they leave the dark rich soil that, with the help of rain and tropical sunshine, makes possible rainforests, plantations, and farms in places such as Hawaii and Costa Rica—soil that we learned was ideal for growing Costa Rican coffee. 
          Several days before gazing into the volcano, we flew into San Jose, the country's capitol and largest city.  Trapped in a valley encircled by volcanic mountains, the city presented a colorful, sometimes bizarre, jumble of old and new: from colonial-era homes to faceless office buildings and high-rise hotels, from eighteenth century neoclassic buildings to recently constructed factories and shops, from quite nice public parks to gaudy neon lights and intrusive billboards.  

​        Sherrill and I often made new friends while traveling, but from time to time we traveled with old friends, usually on short trips to places such as Yosemite or Oregon.  However, this time, we joined four people we'd known for many years to explore Costa Rica and Panama.  We'd already traveled to Alaska with Cathy and Larry and had shared many good times with sisters Alice and Marion, as well.  This trip was more structured than many we'd taken, but we enjoyed it because the area was beautiful and unique  and we were sharing it with such good friends.  The six of us together, I think, probably had a richer experience than any one of us might have had alone.  

             We didn't know whether to applaud or to giggle when a local guide took us through the thousand seat Teatro Nacional in San Jose.  Its over-the-top fresco-covered ceilings, lavish gold trim, velvet draperies, ornate sculptures, stupendous chandeliers, and grand staircases might have been a parody of what people often think of as Victorian decor, but the city obviously was proud of this monster theater.  After all, it had been paid for by nineteenth century coffee barons.  Just as dazzling in its own way was the Gold Museum, especially the exhibits of pre-Columbian artifacts. The craftsmanship of the miniature jaguars, eagles, crocodiles, and other pieces impressed us as much as the gold from which they were made.
            A trip to a mountainside coffee plantation and mill gave us an idea of how those coffee barons ade their fortunes.  We followed the process from the  planting of the seedlings to growing the coffee plants, then harvesting, sorting, peeling, fermenting, and drying the "coffee cherries" to produce the beans.  It didn't take long before we felt high just from the rich coffee aromas—and, of course, our hosts were hoping we'd buy and take home quantities of their product. 

        This all was very entertaining, but we also were eager to see the flora and fauna for which Costa Rica was famous.  More than a quarter of the country's land was dedicated to national parks.  The next day, we plunged into the tropical rain forest of Braulio Carrillo National Park, gliding at varying heights in the open gondolas of an aerial tram, sometimes skimming along just above the river, other times just under the variegated shade of the tree canopy.  
     "Those are houseplants!" Sherrill exclaimed, pointing to giant philodendrons with leaves as big as a small car.  "Don't they know that?"
        Monster elephant ears and gigantic ferns growing below and around us dwarfed the ones that she grew in our Berkeley garden and the lush quantities of orchids and bromeliads put to shame her own formidable collection.  Moss and lichen coated tree trunks and branches with a scabrous greenish skin and the shameless blossoms of unfamiliar flowers played hide-and-seek through the shadowy green foliage.  Above our heads, low clouds flirted with the whispering tree tops.  Mist briefly turned into a drizzle, but we soon left it behind.  

           From time to time, we glimpsed a living creature, sometimes debating what it was that we actually saw.  Was that a tapir?  That noisy one definitely was a howler monkey, but wasn't that a sloth lounging in the tree over there?  The huge-billed toucan was hard to miss and somebody thought that another bird fit the description of a quetzal, but we couldn't be sure.  Sherrill was excited to see an unusual variety of hummingbird, just for a second, of course.  We were overgrown kids playing a wonderful game with no winners or losers—and this was only the first of several national parks that we'd be visiting.  

​              The next afternoon, we boarded the 138 passenger Yorktown Clipper at Puerto Caldera on the Pacific coast and sailed south, during the night arriving in Curu, gateway to the Curu Wildlife Refuge.  After breakfast, we shuttled on Zodiac landing craft to the shore, where we had the day to explore the refuge's beaches, mangrove swamps, and forests.  Sherrill's love of birding had grown during recent years, so she was determined to find at least a few of the more than one hundred species said to live in the refuge—most of them birds unknown to me.
              "Don't worry," she told me.  "You don't need to stay with me.  I know you'd be bored."
              She was right.  I didn't have the patience to stare through binoculars into trembling leaves, trying to focus on a bit of color that might turn out to be certain type of woodpecker or hawk, so instead I hiked along jungle trails and actually glimpsed an armadillo, a white-faced capuchin monkey, and a raccoon.  The fact that I had been annoyed many times by raccoons in my own backyard didn't spoil the fun of catching sight of one in the wild.  At least, this one wasn't going to tip over my garbage can.  Meanwhile, Sherrill added several exotic birds to her ever-growing list, but when she told me their names I was no wiser than before. 

        One of the best things about being on a tour is that it keeps you moving.  It's harder to say to yourself, "I don't feel like doing anything, now.  I'll just have a leisurely lunch and sit here in the sun."  When there's a lot happening and other people are doing it, you don't want to be left out and miss some wonderful experience.  The Marenco Biological Station on Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula the next day promised us more than 500 kinds of trees, 140 types of mammals, and—drum roll, please—400 bird species. 
            "Marenco has been so well protected," the ship's naturalist told us, "that it's home to many species that are rare or have totally vanished anywhere else in Central America.  It was a battle, but the scientists and conservationists managed to defeat the lumbermen who wanted to destroy our rainforest.  And don't forget that it's visitors like you who help pay for these parks and preserves."  
            A very effective sales pitch, we agreed. 

​              Once on shore, we went our separate directions, whether hunting for emerald green parrots and other rare birds, moseying along the beach, or hiking into the forest with a local guide, hoping to meet an anteater or python—an exciting, sometimes physically challenging day, but rewarding.  After the hike through the forest, where I saw plenty of interesting sights, but no anteater or python, I walked down to the beach, where an astonishing vision appeared in the water off shore: a large white yacht with multiple white sails rising in several snowy tiers.
              What, I wondered, would it be like to cruise around in a boat like that?  Then I noticed a woman in an expensive-looking beach outfit a few yards away, also looking out to sea.

          "A beautiful ship," I said.
    "I'm on it," she replied.  "A passenger."  She stepped closer.  "Believe me, you don't want to be on it.  You never met such boring people."  I must've looked surprised, because she added, "They don't give a damn about any of this."  She gestured broadly at the beach and the rainforest behind us.  "Too busy trying to impress each other with how important they are.  They came on the cruise just because it was expensive."  She turned sharply toward me.  "Are you on that little boat I saw earlier?"  I admitted that I was.  "I'd rather be on that.  I'm sure you're seeing more than we are.  And are with nicer people."  Then she started to walk away, but glanced back briefly.  "I don't want to miss cocktail hour—the highlight of our day." 
           The next day, when we were at sea on the way to Panama, gave us an opportunity to hear lectures from the guest speakers on board, including a very informative one about Panama's Darien Jungle, where we'd soon arrive, and to enjoy the sea breezes on deck while looking out for seabirds and whales—maybe even a school of dolphins, if we were lucky.  Who needed all those fancy sails?

           Some of us had mixed feelings about our visit to the Choco indigenous tribe in the Darien jungle.  We were told that the Choco were living as they always had in their open-sided thatch-roofed huts built on stilts, still decorated their skin with the black juice of a certain native plant, and still got around in a kind of canoe called a cayuco, traditionally carved from a tree trunk.  To start with, the "cayucos" in which they took us up river to their village were much larger than the traditional ones, were not made from a tree trunk, and were motorized.

​              The ride up the Samu River did give us a chance for a closer view of the rainforest and to hear various bird species along the way, maybe even a wild animal or two, but despite their native dress the Choco seemed quite sophisticated as they displayed and sold us their baskets and carvings.  For that matter, their "authentic" village had a bit of a Disneyland feel to it.  At the same time, they managed to be rather charming during these exchanges, even if they were adept at marketing their wares and making change. 

        That evening, the Yorktown Clipper began its journey toward the Panama Canal, for many passengers the much anticipated highlight of the trip.  Following dinner, we watched the NOVA documentary, A Man, a  Plan, a Canal—Panama.  Early the next morning, we took on board an official pilot, passed Panama City and then under the Bridge of the Americas, soaring 384 feet above us, and left the Pacific Ocean to begin our journey through the great canal.  The achievement of actually designing and building this canal that took us across the Isthmus of Panama and through three sets of locks that raised the ship 85 feet at the Continental Divide and then lowered her again to sea level before reaching the Caribbean, was almost beyond our comprehension.  The grinding sounds and thumpthumpthump of engines and machinery rose with us we began our ascent on the stair-step Miraflores Locks that lifted us to Miraflores Lake.  

         Eventually, after more locks and slowly moving through the Gaillard Cut—eight-miles tortuously carved through rock and shale—we reached man-made Gatun Lake, where we sailed around several islands and peninsulas.  Our ship felt very small and vulnerable as we passed between the mountains towering on both sides.  For a while, we stopped in the lake while several passengers descended down the side of the ship for a swim, so they could say that they'd swum in the Panama Canal.  

              One of the most dangerous, high crime cities in the world: that was what we'd heard about Colon, where the cruise ended, but we didn't have a chance to discover this for ourselves.  We were whisked to the airport, where we were hustled onto a plane to Panama City for our flights back home—protected whether we wanted to be, or not.  Sherrill and I would have to come back if we wanted the adventure of being mugged in the tropics. 
To be continued.... 
             

If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
​

​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 55 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.   

​              Snapshots from Burma, 18 years ago:
          Sherrill gazing up at an oversized Buddha wedged into a pagoda, representing an imprisoned Burmese king.
              A child monk with shaved head and innocent eyes at the door of a teak monastery.
              A 1950 bus built from teak in a jungle village.
              A forest of ancient Buddhist stupas. 

​              Two thousand stupas in one place was almost beyond imagining, but when we stopped briefly at the little town of Kakku there they were: 2,478 Buddhist stupas, to be precise, the remains of an ancient hillside display once twice as large.  Some of them were 30 or 40 feet tall, others no more than 15 or 20 feet.  Sherrill and I had learned in a class we took years before on Indian philosophies and religions that the shape of the stupa represented male fertility.  Was this collection an example, I wondered, of over-compensation?  

             Bouncing along country roads in northeastern Burma with our local guide, her orange and black outfit incongruously suggesting Halloween, we reached the high altitude city of Taunggyi—once a British hill town—and our hotel.  As soon as Sherrill and I were in our room, a power failure put us in the dark.  When the electricity came back on, I had to get a bellboy to replace several burned out light bulbs and bring more toilet paper.  The rolls he eventually brought turned out to be a third the size of a standard roll. 
             Sherrill shook her head.  "Some poor employee is probably in a back room rerolling toilet paper to make these mini-rolls," 

             We were in Taunggyi for the Hot Air Balloon Festival.  Each year, thousands of Burmese gathered to send prayers aloft on scores of huge, richly decorated paper balloons powered by little burners producing hot air.  Each balloon was studded with tiny lit candles, creating spectacular effects as the balloons surged above the excited crowds.  
               The next afternoon, before the evening balloon rising, Sherrill and I walked down the hill from our hotel, past guest houses and old homes that had been around since the days when the colonial British came to escape summer heat, to the main street, now lined on both sides of the pavement with temporary booths.  Most of them were selling food and drink, but some were hawking posters and photos of Burmese musical stars, souvenirs of the festival, and toys—especially plastic guns, some of them very realistic.

​                 A dinner in the hotel before we headed to the festival, conversation mostly was about the 2000 U. S. election that had just taken place.  A woman from a table across the room came over and asked if we were Americans, then pleaded for news about the election results, but we knew no more than she did because of Burma's communications blackout.
              Then, in our warmest clothes, flashlights in hand, we followed our friend Hala downhill to the festival as music throbbed through the trees, joining local people going the same direction, including groups of monks, some as young seven or six years old.
              "Look!" Sherrill told me, gesturing to a very small Buddhist monk with shaved head and red robe, eyes wide with excitement, his hands clutching a teddy bear purse.  

            Slowly, we moved into a vast area crowded with people, trying to stay upright on the sloping ground—not so easy when being nudged and pushed by people jockeying for the best view of ascending balloons.  In the center of this turbulent ocean of bodies, a huge paper balloon was being readied under portable lights to soar into the night.  Different groups from the city and surrounding areas competed to make the most beautiful balloon, the one that flew the highest, and the one that released the most spectacular fireworks display.  

            From our vantage point on a small rise, we watched the undulating sea of human silhouettes, the candles of vendors flickering among them.

​              The paper skin of the balloon began to swell, until its full shape emerged, wider than an automobile and several times as tall, quivering in the breeze, its slightly puckered skin decorated with tiny lanterns forming outlines of Buddha and other religious symbols.  Then it was fired up, flames brilliant under its mouth.  It sucked in the heat, shook, and rose steadily, pulling with it the contraption on which the timed fireworks were fastened.  Now, the balloon climbed straight up and began shooting out its fireworks.
          
            As that balloon continued its ascent, another group began readying their balloon and a third brought in theirs on a decorated truck and trailer, led by men and boys playing drums, chanting, and dancing.  Seventeen balloons went up that night and more than 400 ascended during the week-long festival.  

​              A 35 minute flight on a Yangon Airways propeller plane took us to Mandalay's new international airport.  With the longest runways in Southeast Asia, it was built by the Burmese government so that jumbo jets could land in the north of the country, but so far only one Thai and one Japanese jet had landed.  Our Mandalay hotel stood opposite the restored moat and walled grounds of the old Burmese palace. 
              We could enter the temples, now, only through arcades selling religious souvenirs and offerings for Buddha.  Shoes weren't allowed in the arcades, any more than in the temples, which forced us to maneuver our naked feet among bird droppings and red globs of betel nut juice spit. 
              After a barefoot hike through the arcade at the Maha Muni Temple, we came to a crowd of men shuffling toward a platform where we could see only the top half of a serenely smiling bronze Buddha.  As we got closer, we discovered that his lower half had been transformed into a lumpy gold mass—the result of countless small offerings of thin gold leaf pressed onto him.  Women weren't allowed into the shrine surrounding the statue because they would've had to pass in front of praying monks, which would have been—we were told—disrespectful. 
              "That," Sherrill declared, "is ridiculous.  And sexist."
              The other women in our group agreed, but they all had to wait below. 

             For a couple of days, I'd had a temperature of around 102, even as we visited marble-cutting and marionette workshops, so our hotel called a doctor for me while the others explored more of Mandalay.  A slim man about forty, wearing a blue longhi and white shirt and carrying a black medical bag, he studied me from behind small oval eyeglasses while I explained about my fever and chills, then asked me questions, took my temperature and blood pressure, thumped my chest, listened to my heart, and decided that I had an upper respiratory tract viral infection and gave me antibiotics to prevent a secondary bacterial infection.  For his examination and the medicine, he charged me $40. 
              The next day, I still didn't feel well enough to go on the scheduled expedition, so I wrote, drank water, took my temperature, wrapped myself up, and sweat.  And sweat.  Later, as long as I was hanging out in the hotel, I went down to reception and asked if I could send an email.  The clerk told me that I could use word processing to write my email onto a disk.  They would send it for me.  Well, I decided, it was better than nothing.  I had no doubt that it would be scrutinized before it was sent, but my daughter back in California did get the email and it even seemed to be what I'd written.  

             As intriguing as present-day Burma (or Myanmar) was, its long history also fascinated us.  Early one morning, we drove across Mandalay to a subsidiary of the Irrawaddy river and boarded a primitive wooden ferry that took us to the opposite shore, where we climbed into battered horse-drawn carts.  We were on our way to explore the ruins of Ava, Burma's capital from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, until an earthquake in 1838 destroyed it.  Passing through an opening in the remains of once massive city walls, we spent several hours in a strange world of gigantic, often beautiful, ruins, viper-filled countryside, and ramshackle villages in what had been a great city.  

​              Another flight on a two-propeller Yangon Airways plane took us to the greatest example of Burma's glorious past: the magnificent temple city of Pagan (or Bagan, according to the new style).  Silhouetted against a dimming blue-gray horizon, the elaborate shapes of stupas and temples seemed to grow organically from the open plain.  As shades of pink and blue sky faded and darkened behind small stupas and large temples, we might have been moving among strangely shaped monsters hunkered down for the night.   

           Our new hotel, in the heart of the archeological zone, was a Burmese version of rambling hacienda.  Dinner was at long tables on a lawn near the river, a full moon glowing through the trees.  At breakfast the next morning, we could see more clearly the river and the centuries old brick temples around us.  We began our exploring with one of the largest, the gold-sheathed Shwezigon Pagoda, built in 1113 to hold a sacred replica of Buddha's tooth,  one of more than 4,000 pagodas originally built there, although only about 2,000 survived.  According to his astrology, the king was to build a pagoda where an elephant rested, so he had an elephant followed until it stopped, and this was the place.    

             Everywhere we looked across the dry plain, stupas and temples baked in the sun, some small, others large, some crumbling.  We tried to picture what this area must have looked like when the great city of Pagan was at its glory, with the population necessary to construct and support 4,000 temples. For 200 years, it was one of the great cities of the world, whether anybody in Europe knew about it, or not.
          Some of the temples were decorated inside with delicately drawn frescos, some rose to astonishing heights, manmade mountains of ornate stone, many were covered with otherworldly shapes.  One temple built in 1218 rose in two levels to a hundred and fifty feet.  A twelfth century temple rose in wedding cake tiers to 200 feet.  Several of us climbed the huge Mingalazedi Temple to watch the changing hues of the sky wash over the temples and pagodas as the sun set.  Climbing down the precipitous, uneven steps in the dark was less fun. 

​              Our group met in the hotel lobby before dinner to toast our friend Hala on her birthday, then went out to the tables on the lawn for dinner.  Before we ate, our guide brought out a surprise birthday cake with lit candles.  Over the years, Hala had surprised many of us with birthday cakes, so we were glad that this time she was surprised.
​
              Back home, reading a history of the Pagan area, I discovered that it nearly became the site of a major World War II battle between retreating Japanese forces and the allies.  Fortunately, one man, G.H. Luce, a scholar who had devoted his life to studying Burmese history and culture, went to the allied headquarters to stop the pursuit through the archaeological zone.  For this, whether people know his name or not, G.H. Luce will always be one of the heroes of world civilization. 

​        On our Silk Air flight from Rangoon to Singapore, I sat next to a German who admitted that he was a journalist, although on his visa application he'd said that he was a tourist, because Burma wouldn't admit foreign journalists.  He said that all the time he was there he felt as if Big Brother was watching him. 
           "People are afraid of informers," he told me.  "Only when we were trekking in the wilderness would they open up to me." 
​
         When they did talk freely, he said, they expressed anger about corruption in the government.  Despite profits from agriculture, oil production, ruby mining, lumber harvesting, and other resources, the people grew poorer.  The money all was channeled, he told me, to the military dictators.  The people were angry, but afraid.  He'd been surprised to see that the young Burmese were sincere and devout Buddhists, but felt that the religion made them too docile.  

              He added that he had no doubt that the opium poppies grown in the so-called Golden Triangle in northeast Burma and sold for heroin were originally planted by the CIA to pay for the Vietnam war.  I had no way of knowing how much of what the German said was true.  The human problem, no matter how it is shaped, never goes away.  Now, the world is shocked by the ongoing assault of Myanmar's generals on the Rohingya minority.  When we were there 18 years ago, none of this had surfaced, but today we know that thousands of Rohingya suffer in refugee camps.  
To be continued....  
​

If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
​

Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 54 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.  
​

​              Bare feet only was the rule in the shrines and pagodas of Burma: so there we were, our second day in Rangoon, skipping across fiery marble floors among the gilded buildings that surrounded the golden Shwedagon Pagoda atop its hill in the center of the city, our toes seeking out any shade they could find.  The stupa, itself, rose like a monster gold-covered Hershey's kiss to a spire topped with lacy filigree and a huge diamond.  A relic from the Buddha supposedly was encased in it.  We'd climbed barefoot up a monumental series of covered stairs, past gigantic gold and white lion-griffin statues, then abruptly emerged, our eyes dazzled by the sun reflecting from the golden surfaces. 
              It was like, Sherrill said, Dorothy opening the door of her gray Kansas house to find herself in a very hot Technicolor Oz.  Some of us, when we adjusted to the glare and heat, joined the line of the faithful buying tiny pieces of gold leaf to have affixed to the stupa's spire.  

​              Just two and a half days before, while we waited with our friend Hala and the others in our little group at the Siem Reap airport for the plane that would bring us from Cambodia to Burma, we had our last chance for more than two weeks to check email or send messages.  In the year 2000, the entire country of Burma was still internet free.  That was one way the generals ruling the country kept control.  All the news filtered through their system.  The three television channels we saw were all patriotic songs, speeches, and exercise classes.
              "I can't decide which channel is the most boring," I told Sherrill.
              "Definitely the speeches," she said.  "At least, we can't understand them."
             We arrived so late that we couldn't see much as we drove into Rangoon—or Yangon, as it was officially called, just as the generals preferred the name Myanmar to Burma.  The country had been closed to the rest of the world for more than thirty years.  "David," the guide who met us at the airport acknowledged this, but added that slowly it was starting to open up—and we were among the first to be welcomed under this new policy.  Soft-spoken and gentle, he wore the traditional Burmese outfit: a short jacket and an ankle-length sarong known as the longhi tied at his narrow waist, with sandals.  Often, he seemed to have a wistful tone when he spoke.  

​              Our first impressions of the country were that it was hot, green, and poor.  We soon realized, though, that the Burmese had been taught to be content with their fate, whatever it was.  Although Burma was still officially socialist under the generals, our little hotel in a restored colonial building was independent, managed by a young German couple.  Two percent of businesses now were private enterprise/joint ventures.  As we explored Rangoon and Burma, we saw that the influence of 124 years under British rule lingered. 
              "The Burmese are not good at living systematically," David explained.  And, of course, the British were great organizers.  Apparently, the Burmese generals ruling the country were pretty good at controlling the population, as well.
              We were there during the 2000 election in the United States.  The weather in Burma that autumn was okay for traveling, but the political climate we'd left behind at home was uncertain.  We had mailed our absentee ballots before leaving, but were kept in suspense about what was happening in the U.S. because of Burma's communication blackout.  

​           Buddhist monks of all ages in their red robes swarmed throughout Rangoon.  We saw, as we visited some of the many temples and pagodas, that religion was an important part of people's lives.  Thousands of temples, large and small, dotted Burma, many of them ancient, some crumbling, some turned into historic sites, but most places of daily worship.  The precepts of Buddha seemed to be integrated into everyday life, creating an atmosphere of unusual serenity—and, it seemed to us, of docility.  We began to wonder if these gentle people were as accepting of their situation as they appeared.  Despite the information blackout, had the outside world begun to influence their thinking?  Gradually, we began to understand that in Burma the interplay of religion, life, and politics was complicated. 
              "The goal of Buddhism is freedom from attachments," David explained.  

           Detachment, the absence of desire, brought peace.  At the same time, the Burmese followed other ancient traditions, as well.  Often, when we asked David to explain various attributes in the temples and pagodas, he simply said, "It's part of our astrology." 

           Also, people worked to collect "merit" so they could enjoy a better next life.  They believed in reincarnation and karma—what you do returns to you.  In one temple, just below a massive Buddha, several women were weaving gold cloth to drape on the statue.  They were earning "merit," but also competing for a prize to be awarded to the woman who wove the most cloth.  

​              We weren't sure, sometimes, what was connected to religious belief and what wasn't.
              "What's the significance of that?" Sherrill asked, indicating the pale tan designs and marks on the faces of many women and children. 
              "Sandalwood paste," David explained.  "For beauty and sun protection."
              And what about the black and red smiles on many people's faces?
            That was from the betel nuts that they liked to chew because it gave them a mild "high."  It also explained the red puddles we saw spattered across the pavement.  
             Down on the waterfront, lean, sinewy men in longhis were bent almost double as they unloaded heavy rice bags from boats and carried them up steep ramps to waiting trucks.  Back and forth they marched, in a machine-like parade.  Behind them, British-era ferry boats crossed the river, sometimes continuing to other delta ports.  Hiking along the narrow streets, dodging pedestrians and carts, past weathered colonial buildings and open markets, we passed unfamiliar vegetables and fruits, hunks of raw meat, and fish of unusual shapes and colors, patient, fatalistic vendors behind the stands.  
              Heading off on my own to look for bookstalls, I took a cab to a different part of town, riding with a middle-aged cabbie who spoke English.  He wanted to talk about the presidential election in the United States.  The generals may have imposed a news blackout in Burma, but the people knew about Al Gore and George Bush and had opinions.  However, when I mentioned the 1990 election held in Burma, when Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of General Aung San, assassinated founder of the democratic state, won, but wasn't allowed to take office, the cabbie became silent, then started pointing out places of interest that we were passing.  

​            What, I wondered, might be seething under this silence?  On another day, in a distant part of the city, we hiked down a dirt lane that led to a jungle village hidden within Rangoon, where we found a primitive glass factory under the swaying shadows of twisted tree branches and vines.  The rustic path was lined on both sides with heaps of broken glass.  Barefoot craftsmen in longhi were working with red-hot molten glass in a flaming furnace that had been patched together out of old sheets of corrugated metal leaning against each other like a make-shift teepee.  Nearby, we saw bamboo huts half-hidden among the trees—the homes of these glassblowers and workers.  Had these men, who worked so hard with no protections from injury and probably no insurance, voted for "the lady?"  Did they accept their fate with Buddhist-like stoicism? 
             "This country needs more lawyers," Sherrill commented.  "Or, at least, OSHA."
           We both knew, however, the generals weren't likely to start up an Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Burmese, taught to endure what life handed them, weren't likely to demand it. 

​              That afternoon, we boarded a two-propeller plane at the old Rangoon airport terminal to fly to Heho and Inle Lake.  As I started to climb a rolling staircase onto the plane, two short Burmese women with bulging shopping bags crowded in front of me.  The stouter of the two, plants bursting from her bags, charged up the aisle and flopped on one of the seats.  Two minutes later, a well-dressed young Burmese woman with her boarding card claimed the seat.  The stewardess patiently took the peasant woman to a different seat several rows away.
              When we arrived at the Heho airport, a trio of military VIPs seated at the front of the plane began to follow a tall bodyguard in a longhi to the door at the rear when the stout peasant woman blocked their way with her shopping bags and large plaid-covered backside.  With surprising patience, the VIPs gestured to their bodyguard not to worry and waited while the woman pulled herself together.  

​              Burmese cowboys, cattle, horse carts, and local people carrying bundles slowed our drive across the mountains to the small boats that took us to where we'd stay on the lake.  Soon we were smelling unfamiliar flowers, trees, and spices, the distinctive aromas of this ancient land.  Yellow blossoms on tree-like shrubs rippled like curtains along the narrow road.

​              We were in the Shan state, now, an ancient part of Southeast Asia that still craved independence, but the military government was too strong for them to break away.  By the time we started across the lake, the sun was setting.  The pointed prows of our boats lifted out of the dark water, as if directing our eyes to the stars and half moon above our heads.  Wind and spray beat against us for an hour until we reached a group of bamboo buildings that seemed to float over the lake.  Sherrill and I had one of the cabins standing on wood stilts between the water and the sky. 

​            The next morning, we climbed into one of several waiting long boats, joining a small procession that maneuvered along maze-like channels through continents of water weeds, sometimes passing houses on stilts and floating farms, until we reached a village at which people from different tribes sold fruits and vegetables they'd grown and things they'd made, often directly from their boats.  Sherrill and I worked our way among the vendors and shoppers, sometimes on the shore, sometimes on wooden walkways.
            "Buy me that, daddy," Sherrill teased, pointing to a copper-colored betel nut cutter on one of the tables.  She seemed almost surprised, when I did.  

​              Putt-putting along the twisting waterways of the lake, we slithered among giant lily pads with purple and pink blossoms, water buffalo soaking in the shallows with birds balancing like skinny-legged dancers on their backs, and floating gardens in which the Intha people raised vegetables.  White herons stalked through the reeds, then suddenly rose into the sky, and fat ducks bobbed in the wake of our boats.  For a while, we watched bare-legged men, their longhis twisted up and tucked at the waist like oversized diapers, as they constructed one of the floating gardens, laying what looked like sod over a bamboo framework covered with muck.  Occasionally, we passed fishermen rowing with one hand at the top of their single long oar and a leg around the lower part, freeing the other hand to catch fish.  

​              We stopped at a village known for its weaving where the women, busy spinning yarn and working their looms, ignored us.  Most of the silk and cotton fabric they were weaving would be used for longhis.  In the afternoon, we passed boat-loads of children in regulation white and green outfits paddling home from school, pointed bamboo hats protecting their

​              We stopped at a village known for its weaving where the women, busy spinning yarn and working their looms, ignored us.  Most of the silk and cotton fabric they were weaving would be used for longhis.  In the afternoon, we passed boat-loads of children in regulation white and green outfits paddling home from school, pointed bamboo hats protecting their

​              Gradually, David told us, visitors were becoming accepted, but some Burmese were afraid that this would spoil the country, especially the more remote areas.  Early one morning, we took the long boats back across the lake to get a bus to drive to a village just opened to visitors.  Two months before, this would have been dangerous because of violent rivalry between local tribal groups.  More than a dozen ethnic groups have been fighting the military for decades, and still are.

​              When we pushed off in the boats, the morning mist had evaporated, letting the sunlight shimmer across the rippling green water.  We docked at a little port town, where a small bus waited.  The round-faced local guide who greeted us wore the dark clothes traditional in her tribe, an orange towel wrapped in an elaborate headdress over her hair.  We were late, she said, herding us onto the bus.  Fifteen or twenty minutes later, we stopped at a teak monastery raised on teak logs above a grassy field, several tiers of red corrugated tin roof bright against the blue sky.  Young red-robed monks stared at us from open windows.  
              On a large stucco gate to a side road we saw a sign in both Burmese and English announcing a combination golf course, resort, and amusement park.
              "Who will go to that?" I asked. 
              "Chinese Shan," the local guide told us, "rich from the opium trade."
             We were in the Golden Triangle that grew opium poppies for the Thais and Chinese.  Ultimately, heroin was made from the opium and shipped to other countries, including the United States, so we weren't too surprised when we saw armed soldiers and warning signs in both Burmese and English. 
              "And they let us get this close?" asked Sherrill.   
              I shrugged.  "Just don't try any funny business."  
To be continued....  

If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels. 
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​              A small, middle-aged women with broad, handsome, Khymer features and a brisk, serious manner met us at Phnom Penh.  She started talking on the way from the airport to our hotel and, it seemed, hardly ever stopped. 
              "The city has a population now of about one million," she told us, "but under the Khymer Rouge it was empty.  Everyone was sent to the country to work—unless they ran away or were murdered.  Intellectuals, professionals, most educated people, were killed or driven out of the country and young, ignorant people from the country were recruited and brainwashed." 
              Phalla seemed determined to make sure that we understood the horror her country had endured.  Despite the elegant Cambodian silk scarf around her shoulders, Sherrill told me later, Phalla reminded her of a nun teacher she'd had in grammar school.
              "She always looked like she was badly disappointed with us.  She liked swatting kids with her ruler—but never me."
              From 1979 through 1989, the population of Cambodia dropped from seven million to four million.  When Sherrill and I were there in 2000, it was about 11 million, half under fifteen.  

​              Driving into the city, we were impressed by all the construction.  Many new hotels and businesses were joint ventures with businesses in Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, and other countries.  Now, there were at least a hundred garment factories in Phnom Penh.  The money came from abroad, while Cambodia provided the land and workers.
              "I was from a province near Siem Reap," Phalla said, balancing at the front of the bus as it careened over the uneven roads, "but my mother sent me to Phnom Phen because of war danger.  Later, I returned and married, but when the Khymer Rouge took over the country, my husband and I were sent to a village far in the north.  My son died because there were no medicines and two of my brothers were killed by the Khymer Rouge.  Those were bad times." 
              "Look at that!" Sherrill pointed out the window.
              In the center of a traffic roundabout we were circling, a giant revolver balanced on its hilt, barrel pointed skyward—twisted into a knot.  It symbolized peace, but peace came too late for these people.  All across Phnom Phen, we saw maimed and mutilated men and women and sometimes children, most of them war victims, often maimed by land mines.  When we were on foot, they pursued us, displaying their wounds and stumps. 

​              When the Khymer Rouge finally was overthrown, Phalla told us, she returned to Phnom Penh.  "My husband had disappeared and I'd lost many years, but I refused to let myself drown in the dark waters of the past.  When your life has been hell, you think only of the future.  And revenge." 
              Later, we stopped at the park from which Phnom Phen Hill rises, a stupa and temple at the top, and climbed the stairway up, past giant statues of seven-headed nagas, sacred guardian snakes, to shrines not only to Buddha but also to Vishnu and other holy figures. 
              "People here," I said, "seem to be open to all possibilities."
              "Or are hedging their bets," Sherrill countered.  "And the way they drive around here, they need to!"

​              We were amazed by how wild and erratic the traffic was: bicycles, motor scooters, small cars and trucks, cyclo pedicabs, wove in and out of lanes, darted around each other, several people, even whole families, often balanced on one scooter.  Small children nonchalantly straddled the scooters behind their parents—usually none of them wore a helmet, but if anyone did it was the man.  If the scooters, bikes and pedicabs weren't carrying families, they were hauling mountains of food, kitchen wares, baskets, or bulging bags of rice.  The king's benign and saccharine features hovered like the Wizard of Oz all over the city. 
              During the Khymer Rouge period, we learned, the National Museum lost many important pieces, but we did see a few surviving sculptures that gave us an idea of Cambodia's artistic history.  Later, we stopped at some workshops in which new Buddha statues were being made.  Apparently, so many religious images were destroyed when Pol Pot ruled that now there was a boom in producing new ones—although most of the new statues we saw were crudely made.  When they were finished, they were tarted up with scarlet lips and fingernails. 

​              That evening, our friend Hala arranged for us to set out on cyclo pedicabs, one of us per cyclo, for a circuit of Phnom Penh, our drivers perched behind us.  They propelled us first along waterfront boulevards, then turned into busy downtown areas.  Then, to everyone's surprise, it began to rain, lightly at first, then harder—and harder.
              The cyclo drivers stopped to tug worn awnings over us, but they gave little protection from the wind-driven rain.  We cycled along historic streets and new parts of the city, some people on bikes and scooters around us now holding umbrellas, but most were stoically becoming drenched.  Finally, our little procession stopped in front of the Hotel de Royale, an old colonial place recently refurbished by the Raffles Group.  Abandoning our cyclos, we squished up the driveway and into the luxurious hotel.
              Dripping through the elegant lobby, we maneuvered around expensive wicker furniture, to a central courtyard.  Hala told us that when she came to Phnom Penh nine years before she tried to stay at the hotel but it was so run down, with rats running through the halls, that she moved after one night.  Now, it was the finest hotel in the city.  The rain refused to stop, so we returned to our cyclos.  Around us, traffic struggled in what turned out to be the last monsoon storm of the season.  Peering from under my shredded awning, I saw a sad little elephant being led through the gray, slanting rain.  

​              The next morning, we were up early to drive to the airport.  At least, the day was clear.  Our flight to Siem Reap, gateway to the recently reopened Angkor monuments, carried us over the vast Tonle Sap lake and its flooded marshlands and farms.  Back then, before the crowds of later years began to come, Siem Reap was still small and old fashioned, with just a few guest houses and little hotels—except one new French-built hotel on the edge of town. 
              Phem Lorm, our temporary guide there, a portly middle-aged fellow dressed in the loose brown shirt and pants of the Cambodian professional, spoke surprisingly formal English.  As we bounced over massive potholes in the road, someone commented that it was like a battle zone.  He turned to her with a fierce expression.   
              "Madam, this was a battle zone."  Just as in Phnom Penh, he explained, the local population was sent out of Siem Reap—to the mountains.  "Many of my relatives and friends died. Some were shot, others from diseases.  But I survived, ladies and gentlemen.  I was lucky.  I didn't speak English for four years—afraid they would think I worked for the CIA." 

​              In 1979, Hanoi sent Vietnamese troops to fight the Khymer Rouge, beginning a ten year civil war.  A million landmines were set throughout the country, especially around Siem Reap and Angkor.  Some landmines responded only to heavy weight, others to a human step.  Sometimes, they were planted together, a stick under the smaller mine leading to the bigger one.  A perfect example of "over kill." 
              "These villages look poor to you," Phem Lorm said, "but now people have food.  Under Pol Pot, even animals died of starvation.  At least, now, individual citizens can own land, animals, private property.  It is okay to be educated.  But much of the area still needs to be cleaned of land mines." 
              It was hard to believe that this countryside of sun-dappled fish ponds, palm trees, rice fields, and bamboo houses standing like storks on stilt-like legs had been the site of fierce fighting.   We bumped and jolted to the Rolous group of temples.  Climbing past guardian lions, we reached the first ninth century stone temple.  Deeply cut bas reliefs caught the morning sun, creating bold patterns of light and dark.  The foliage sprouting on the temple's tapering crown suggested fuzzy green hair. 

​              After lunch, we headed to Angkor Wat, joined now by Kwon, our principle guide for the region.  Twenty-eight years old, he was a small boy during the Pol Pot years.  His name, he said, meant "survivor."  Later, we learned what he meant. 
              Although recently the stone mountain of Angkor Wat was smothered by rain forest, now it was open to the sky again, with a huge moat representing the ocean.  Kwon told us about the fighting here during the civil war.  The Khymer Rouge soldiers were illiterate peasants who thought nothing of stealing sculptures from the temples to sell to the highest bidders. 
              "People died here," Kwon told us, "defending the temple."
              Bullet holes, we saw, as we hiked across the causeway to the temple, still pockmarked the paving stones.  The bullets hit at an angle, leaving troughs in the sandstone, as if mineral-eating worms had infested the causeway.  We gazed up at the towers, impressed by their strange beauty and what they'd endured over the years.  
              "Our empire," Kwon told us, his features taut with pride, "stretched from China to central Vietnam and the South China Sea."

​              Streaked by time and nature, the broad galleries and exuberant sandstone towers rose like a fleet of ocean liners from waves of terraces and steps.  The afternoon sun etched creamy pink shapes across the stone, especially on the carved faces peering from among the shadows.  The saffron robes of Buddhist monks flitted through the galleries, abstract yellow shapes among the red-brown stones.  As evening smudged the terraces, we returned across the causeway, past young boys jumping into the moat's murky water, shouting and splashing as if at a swimming hole, streams of water rolling off shining heads and down sleek brown backs.  

​               The next day, on our way to the Angkor Thom temples, we passed people on their way to work, most on bicycles, some walking, a few on motor scooters or in the backs of trucks.  The outlying villages, Kwon told us, still had no electricity.  The ancient fortified city of Angkor Thom surprised us by its size.  Unlike Angkor Wat, which was a ceremonial site, this was a city in which people lived, perhaps as many as a million.  Although the wooden structures in which people had lived were gone, what remained impressed us.  The causeways were flanked by rows of stone gods and demons, broken and worn, but indomitable.  Enormous faces glared at each other across terraces.  Others surveyed the forest and distant mountains, as if watching for enemies. 
              "They look like Kwon," Sherrill whispered to me. 
              She was right: the same broad cheekbones, wide mouth, and high forehead above shadowed eyes—the same proud dignity.  

​              "I was three when my father disappeared," he told us, one day.  "We were force-marched night after night, sleeping under village houses.  Any light, even the smallest, was forbidden because of American bombers, but if we strayed off the forest track we were beaten.  Once, my mother had a good life, but now she had to pretend to be a peasant by building her own bamboo hut.  My uncle crept over at night to build it for her or she would have been killed.  She left me to go irrigate rice, but came back when she could to feed me leaves and roots and fruit and rice that she stole."   

​              The temples of Ta Prohm, the next group we visited, still were held in the powerful embrace of gigantic ficus trees, banyan roots, and strangler figs, stones even being pried apart by the muscular roots.  Lizards crawled along the walls and parrots darted among the leaves overhead.    

​              After a long drive the next morning, we came to Banteay Srei, a temple only just opened to tourists because it had been heavily land-mined.  We were warned not to wander away from the cleaned area, but these were the most graceful carvings we'd seen, complex, but startlingly sharp and vivid.  Leafy, coiling vines flowed around human and non-human forms, slender-waisted dancers, and hideous demons.  Walking back to the road, Sherrill and I were attracted by the sounds of a makeshift percussion and string band, with several children singing and dancing and asking for contributions. 
              As we hiked across the dark dirt, we saw that all of them were missing body parts.  Feet, hands, legs had been replaced by stumps and scars.  Looking up at us hopefully, they played their makeshift instruments with increased vigor.  What could we do, but tuck tattered riels and dollar bills into their belts and pockets and drop coins into the tin cans waiting on the hard earth?  

​The next day, some of us visited a school in which people disabled by the war could learn handicrafts such as woodworking.  However, since the government still had limited resources to help these victims of the civil war, most of them had to find their own methods of survival.  

To be continued....​

If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels. 
                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
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​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 52 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.   

          After 32 hours on four planes, our eyes felt as if we'd abused them with sandpaper and our feet and ankles were swollen, but we'd reached Vientiane, capitol of Laos, the first of three countries of Southeast Asia that we'd explore with our friend Hala.  The challenge ahead wasn't only that these countries were still building an infrastructure for visitors, but also that they were—in varying ways—ruled by repressive governments.  Plus, there was the weather: rain had been beating down, with lightning and thunder, but now it had stopped, although both the temperature and humidity were stuck at ninety. 
        "We paid money for this," Sherrill whispered, wiping sweat from my face.

​              On the tiny plane from Bangkok we were surrounded by young Asian businessmen, very jolly with each other, briefcases on their laps.  Our Lao guide, a slim brown-skinned young man with sharp cheekbones and a big smile, met us at Arrivals.  He'd been a Buddhist monk for twelve years, beginning at the age of eight.  Maybe that was why he was so patient, whatever problem he encountered. 
              Vientiane, we saw driving from the airport, was still a city free of high-rises and heavy traffic.  Buildings from the French colonial era, most of them with wide eaves like sleepy eyebrows over weathered faces, broad verandahs, and shuttered windows, peaked out from among newer two and three story buildings.  Circling around a massive Victory Arch built in the 1960s to celebrate independence from "foreign control," we drove to our hotel, where we passed out until the next day. 

​              Several of us walked to a Morning Market, on the way meeting stragglers from an early morning "Friendship Marathon" that began in Thailand at 5 a.m. and ended at the Arch.  Colorful three-wheeled motorbike taxis, tuk-tuks, and their eager drivers were ready to carry us anyplace we wanted, but we had other plans, starting with changing money.  In a ditch beside  the street, Sherrill and I saw a woman and three small children collecting dandelions into plastic bags.

​              Laos was proving to be a country of trees, flowers, motorbikes, slender women moving with small, graceful steps in longhi wrap-around skirts, and young men in the robes of Buddhist monks.  Passing monastery after monastery in Vientiane, we could believe that nearly every Lao male spent several years as a Buddhist monk.  Recently washed saffron robes were hung out to dry and boyish monks peered at us from open windows and from behind teak shutters. 

​              Strolling along the Mekong as the sun set, we passed tea shops and cafes and vegetable gardens belonging to individual families on a broad dyke that ran along the river's edge. 
              "Look at the kids with those blades," I told Sherrill, as we passed boys cutting down clusters of bananas with machetes big enough to remove a leg.
              "Don't fret.  They've probably been doing it since they were babies." 

​              We drove across town to a restored colonial mansion in which an American, Carol Cassidy, ran her weaving company.  Twelve years before, she began helping local women relearn the old Lao craft and art of weaving traditional Lao designs.  She also adapted the designs to create her own fabrics.  Some of the mansion's high-ceilinged rooms also had been turned into showrooms for the beautiful wares created in her workshops.  

​              Later, we drove to the outskirts of Vientiane to see other handicraft shops where women also wove fabric from silk and cotton, coloring it with natural plant dyes.  Barefoot women worked with precariously balanced pots of boiling dye and small children wandered among the looms, sewing machines, and steaming kettles. We pictured women and children being maimed and killed, but were told that these were the best jobs these women could get and they were glad to have them. 

​              We flew to Luang Prabang from Vientiane because, we were told, the road wasn't safe for tourists.  Our guide nearly had been killed when traveling in a car with members of his agency.  Bandits murdered the others, but he survived by pretending to be dead.  Our double engine propeller plane had two rows of two seats that folded like camp chairs.  Luang Prabang sprawled beside the Mekong surrounded by low green mountains lush with blossoming trees and ripening fruit.  Despite a few tiny creatures with many legs, our room facing a garden patio was pleasant, but when I told the receptionist that our tub leaked he smiled.
              "Oh!  You're in room seventeen!  Didn't anyone tell you not to use the tub?"

​              The town of Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was famous for its wats (monastery-temples), most of them low buildings with wide eaves sloping from a peaked roof and simple, graceful ornamentation.  Often we encountered people burning incense, kneeling at prayers, and arranging offerings in front of statues of Buddha.  Traditionally, most ordinary homes were two stories, the lower level open for storage and animals. 
              At six the next morning, we walked out to where monks in their saffron-orange robes shuffled barefoot with their begging bowls past local people with bowls of sticky rice or other food.  As each monk hesitated, each person dropped a wad of rice into the bowl, gaining "merit" toward the next phase of earthly existence. 
              "When a boy goes into a monastery," we were told, "it's one less mouth for his family to feed."  

​              A boat up the heavily silted Mekong past forests, farms, and fishermen took us to the Pak Ou Buddhist caves.  Naked children at the edge splashed in shallow water the same color as their skin.  On the way, we stopped at a primitive port where we scrambled up a steep, muddy bank to a village where we found rows of large clay jars in which, we learned, rice whiskey was made.  A couple of us bought small bottles of it, despite the warnings of the rest of the group.  Later, at our hotel, we blended it with fresh juice.  None of us died.

​              Walking through the village, we reached a central area where a festival was celebrating the gifts of a water pump and shrine by a local man who had emigrated to Tennessee—and now had returned with his family for the gala day.  Music drifted through the trees, people ate and laughed and were happy.  A small stand selling religious objects and marigold-decorated offerings had used an eight-foot bomb shell standing on its white-finned tail to support one corner, a reminder that Laos is the most bombed country in history.
              During the Vietnam War, American planes flew over Laos to Vietnam, but had to return with empty bomb bays.  If they still carried bombs in their guts when flying back, they dropped them onto Laos, which had the misfortune to be on the route to home base. 

​              From the whiskey village, we chugged up the Mekong until the Pak Ou Buddhist caves rose ahead of us like great inkblots on the sides of steep variegated cliffs.  Eventually, we began to see a chaos of Buddhas, tiny statues around larger ones, in their dark openings.  Climbing many levels of steep stairs, we maneuvered through the caves, among thousands of Buddhas, some hundreds of years old.  Shining our lights up, we discovered hundreds of small bats clinging upside down to the uneven ceiling.  

​              As the days went by, we visited many villages in which people still lived in traditional thatch-roofed houses on stilts, looms often set up underneath, naked children and animals playing in the dust.  In one village, little boys clomped beside the road on coconut shell halves turned upside like horse's hooves.  In a narrow lane, a man was hollowing a log, making a canoe.  Deeper in a forest, we found several tin-roofed houses where people were making paper the old way, by hand, using a bush similar to the mulberry.  Young men and women smoothed the pulpy substance in water-filled flats, then set the flats out to dry.  

​              Exploring a higher, more remote area, we visited a Hmong village where thickly thatched houses were built directly on the ground.  Our guide persuaded a Hmong woman to let us look inside her house, one room divided into sections.  An open fire on the hard-packed dirt floor sent its smoke up through holes in the thatch.  The original religion there, now coexisting with Buddhism, was a type of animism or nature worship.  Driving further over one-lane bridges and narrow roads past rice fields and dense forests, we came to a still more remote Kanu village with houses elevated on stilts again.  The few women that we saw turned away or darted back into their houses.  The men must have been off working in the fields.  The place seemed populated primarily by small children.  

​              One humid evening, several of us climbed a steep hill above the Royal Palace in Luang Prabang to visit some Buddhist shrines, including one in which Buddha's oversized footprint reputedly had left its mark in a large rock.  In other shrines, bronze Buddhas meditated behind offerings of flowers, incense, fruit, and small dishes of food.  Then we drove to a restaurant with a dining room open to small gardens on three sides, geckos darting silently above our heads.  After a meal of spicy meat dishes, vegetables, and stuffed eggs, the lights dimmed and, to our surprise, a birthday cake, lighted candles glowing, was brought out and set in front of Sherrill, alarming the geckos, which scurried away or dropped to the floor. 
              "Happy birthday!" everyone sang.
              "Where did that come from?" Sherrill asked. 
              Our friend Hala had ordered the cake by long-distance, even giving the recipe and decorating instructions.  

              Our visit to Laos ended back in Vientiane with dinner on an old river boat that had been reconditioned by a French entrepreneur living there.  We maneuvered over a plank bridge onto the boat, a woven rattan roof stretched over our heads, the sides open to breezes from the Mekong.  The owner introduced us to a French doctor who had been coming to Laos since 1990 as one of the "Doctors Without Frontiers."  A tall, handsome, middle-aged man, the doctor told us that he had seen many changes during the past decade. 
              "There were no cars in Vientiane," he said.  "No modern amenities of any kind until recently, and the only medical treatment available was 'traditional.'"
              Because of the relentless bombing of the country during the Vietnam War, he added, the need for humanitarian and medical aid still was enormous.  Each year, he returned to Paris, but then came back to Laos to do what he could to help.  The boat put-putted toward the center of the river, then as it slowly moved through the muddy water we talked and ate, the sun set, and lights started to glow on the two sides of the river, in Laos and Thailand.  
To be continued.... 
​

​If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.
                         Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
You also might enjoy reading the new bargain-priced e-book of my first novel, The Night Action.  The book is available at Amazon and other online retailers.  Click on the title or Here for the link.