The Marriage 
 
New Zealand one week after our due sailing date. Generator problems. 3.45p.m., wearing our smartest clothes, my friends and I held on to our paper streamers - the norm for 1975.
A voice behind us said, “You’ll be holding on to them for a long time.”
“No,” we replied. “We’re sailing at 4.”
“If you’re right, I owe you drink, if not, you owe me one.”
He was right - inside information.
 
A week to honour the bet.
Four weeks - getting serious!
Five months - a wedding on the other side of the world.
Forty-three years - still sailing.

BEACH DAZE, 1954 

Misquamicut Beach, RI: We’d ride a wonderful old carousal. Up and down, up and down, the painted horses lulled us around and around to the honky-tonk music of a calliope. Half of that time, we viewed the Atlantic gently lapping the shoreline.
 
Matunuck Beach, RI: We awoke being swallowed whole by a massive turbulent, hurricane-whipped tidal wave tearing us loose from our reality. Clinging to our cottage, now ark, we were viciously tossed, saturated, half-submerged, spinning around and around, no refuge in sight. Frantic and exhausted, we cheated death for interminable hours. No shoreline. Mayhem. And then…

FOUR, PLEASE

Moving in to my hotel in Saint Malo (FR), I’d barely crammed my suitcase, backpack and swaddled self into the antiquated, one-person elevator, and was selecting my floor when a shorter woman, swathed in a huge cape that swallowed her whole, stealthily insinuated herself in, too, her oozing cape filling any gaps. Compressed. Intimate. Awkward. Jerking, we haltingly ascended. Gears loudly cranking its load upwards, she looked up apologetically, “C’est petit.”
I brightly replied, “Oui, mais automatic!”
Then we both smiled at our clever rhyme as we jolted to a stop, ultimately untangled and went our separate ways.
​

Jet-lag Doesn’t Exist 

Our organization forbad it.

We worked, then on to Schiphol. We returned, from where barely mentioned.

“Your task! Audit the EU initiative to reintroduce nutritious grains.”

“Eastern Europe?”

“Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Quinoa, amaranth.”

“That’s it?”

“Millet in India and Nepal.”

“How long?”

“Twenty days. Then a report To FAO in Rome.”

“Right!”

No direct flights link India with Latin America. I chose Toronto as my hub.

Done!

Twenty-one separate flights; 4,200 Ks of trucking to villages. Looking, listening, asking, reading. Analysing, calculating, writing, confirming and rewriting.

Sleeping? Barely! But alert. The evaluator is always alert.
Jet-lag does not exist.
​

It is a pleasure to feature the first highlight this year from Mark Boyter. Mark was the 2018 Travel Stories Competition winner with his entry A Koh Samui Shirt. 

A South American Conversation 
 
The dreadlocked young American in the Quito guesthouse leaned into her chair, cradling a mate de coca. “How many times you been robbed?”

I looked at her.

“Everyone I ask says they have,” she said, “so I stopped asking ‘If’.” She took a sip.
“So, how many times?”

“Three,” I said. “Bolivia twice, Ecuador once. My camera at the bus station in La Paz. My wallet in the market in Potosi. My watch on the bus to Guayaquil. Sitting in my seat, arm in the open window. Thief had to jump three feet.”

She smiled and took another sip. “Everyone.”
​

Mark Boyter

Mark is a traveller and writer and a marathon runner. He loves wine with a good mouth-feel, films that make him laugh, and a good rack of BBQ ribs (which begs the question; is there such a thing as a bad rack of BBQ ribs?). His first book, the travel memoir Crescent Moon Over Laos, was published in 2014. His other writing includes smaller travel pieces and of the commonalities and influences that shape and inform our individual and collective lives. A college instructor by training, Mark has lived and taught in both Nagoya and Kyoto, Japan, the Emirate of Sharjah in the UAE, and both Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. At 59, he finally took the plunge and married his long-term partner. He lives, with increasing contentedness, in Richmond, British Columbia, with his new wife and their two cats, and when he isn't running or writing or drinking wine, tends the grape vines in their garden and marvels at what sun and water and time can create.

My father’s memoir Exclusive Pedigree: My life in and out of the Brethren has recently been released as an audiobook. It is superbly narrated by Tony Cookson, an experienced Radio Presenter and Interviewer.

There are a limited number of free copies of this audiobook available to blog readers. To get your copy, simply e-mail me at fd81@assl.co.uk and let me know if you would like a US or UK copy.

I look forward to hearing from you.
​

Lithuanian Sauna 
 
The heat is enveloping. With each thrash of doused birch on scorched rock
a new wave of fire wrought steam catches in the throat, as pores are wrenched open and as filth and sweat glisten and pool.
 
I cannot stand it anymore.
 
Bursting out onto the manicured lawn I leap into the murky pond. One final suspension in the dying light of a sparkling Baltic Spring, the privet hedges and thick forest, the vegetable patch and chain link fence, the distant barking dog.   
 
Then the fall. 
​

Syd Blackwell's second entry in our Travel Highlights competition is a succinct piece of poetry that I am sure you will appreciate as much as I have.​

ON A STREET IN BOGOTÁ 
 
Potato chips someone has dropped
now broken on a grimy walk
the ragged man bends low to ground
and sweeps the bits into a mound
his blackened fingers lift the crumbs
to bearded mouth with hunger numb
but passersby do not see this
his desperation they all miss
 
Bogotá, Colombia
03/07/12
​

Syd Blackwell

I was born in a little ski town that used to be a gold mining town in the mountains of southeastern British Columbia.  I also lived on the coast, on Vancouver Island, in the north, and even in northern Alberta for a decade.   I visited every province and territory in Canada, and more than 40 other countries.  I was an educator, an innkeeper, and an assisted living facilitator.  My life was rich with experiences before I left Canada less than two months before my 61st birthday.
​
Uruguay, has been our home for more than a decade.  My wife and I share our home with our five dogs. And quite a few visitors.   We have found time in our retirement to do things we never seemed to find time to do before.   I have found time to be a writer and an artist.  Both give me great pleasure.  We have continued to travel, particularly in South America.
​

A warm welcome back to Ronald Mackay with his third entry in this year's Travel Highlights Competition. ​

Border Smiles ​

“Our Passports.”

Viviana tucks them into the truck papers. I concentrate, overtake long-distance transports returning to Bolivia and Brazil from Chile through Argentina.

“Check them?” We’re into corkscrew bends; a tunnel; customs; immigration.

“The date’s wrong! The permission’s dated last year.”

“Damn! Back! All that way!”

“They won’t notice!”

“Officers are paid to notice.”

“Not in Argentina!”

……….

“Truck papers?” Uniformed scowls.

Viviana smiles. I squirm. Officers scrutinize, move lips.

“Such a beautiful place!” Viviana interrupts. Smiles. Gestures to snow, peaks.

Officers raise puzzled eyes. Nod. Stamp. Gesture. “Bienvenidos a Argentina!”

I ease out breath and clutch.

Viviana smiles. “See?”

Bio

Ronald and his Peruvian wife Viviana worked in both Argentina and Chile for 10 years and crossed the high passes in the Andes over a hundred times in a truck with Chilean plates that belonged to Viviana’s cousin. The border crossing at El Paso Internacional de los Libertadores never ceased to impress with its beauty nor to provide many, many surprises.
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