The Fire Inside

Coast of Venezuela;

December 1992 

Turning and burning in the depths of a dream, the  anxiety and fear is palpable.  My heart races as sweat pours down my face. My shirt is soaked and my whole body aches but I’m shivering at the same time. I’m driving through heavy traffic on a super highway with many lanes.  Where am I going? What is happening?  How come it is so damn hot?  Then I hear horns honking; lots of horns with different incoherent sounds ricochet around inside my head. I see flames in the rear view window.  Holy shit; the truck is on fire. Panic, heavy breathing and a racing heart. I weave through four lanes of traffic dodging speeding vehicles as loud horns honk and honk. I reach the shoulder, slam the brakes and skid to a stop.  I try to get out but my seat belt is stuck.  I pull and yank and pull on the buckle as sweat streams down my face… the gas tank is going to blow.  Finally, the buckle snaps but now the door won’t open. Is it melted shut?  I lie sideways on the hot seat and kick the door with both feet. It busts open and I climbed out.  The gas tank is going to blow so I start to run up the side of the highway. Another truck swerves across the highway in flames. What the fuck?  Balls of fire fall from the sky.  Keep running. Heart pounds.  Have to get away,  Have to get away.  Can’t breathe.  Black smoke swirls all around.  Sweat gushes. Fire fire fire everywhere. Cough, gag, cough, burn. I don’t get far before… Kaboom!  I’m thrown to the ground.  Not hurt; just dazed. I stand up slowly and turn back to see.  The city behind me is under some kind of attack.  Flames shoot out of the tops of several skyscrapers while a number of buildings are tumbling into ruins.  Smoke and dust rises from the streets.  Ominous looking black helicopters blanket the sky like a flock of giant birds of prey.  Higher up, super sonic jets sizzle across the heavens lobbing fireballs down on the city.  More fireballs hit moving vehicles.  Explosions make the earth quake.  Lots of people are out of their wrecked cars now.  They are running and walking down the highway.  Where are they going?  What are they doing?  I am among them.  A refugee.  Stumbling along: coughing and gagging in the swirling smoke, sweating profusely from all my pores.  I’m trying to get away.  But where am I going?  I don’t know.  I just have to get away.  From what?  The helicopters.  The black helicopters!  They are in formation now.  They are flying towards us.  Everyone scatters chaotically into the swirling smoke.  The helicopters fire.  Live rounds; lots of them.  Machine guns rat a tat tat.  I am running in the smoke.  I have to get away.  Rat a tat tat.  Panic.  Fear.  Run. Pop.  I feel pain in my leg and I fall.  I’m hit.  Pop.  Another pain.  This time in my shoulder.  I’m hit again and again.  I’m shaking, writhing squirming along sandy desert ground.  I’m trying to get out of sight.  Hide from the helicopters.  But I can’t move.  I’m bleeding on the ground.  My body parts won’t work.  I have to move but I can’t.  They are going to kill me.  I have to fucking move!

I awoke on the sand in a pool of sweat with my heart pounding and my head aching.  It took me a moment to realize where I was.  I saw the waves washing up on shore and heard the sound of the tumultuous surf. That’s right, the beach… on the coast of Venezuela.  I was supposed to meet the young lady here. I sat up and looked around. There was no sign of anyone.  There I was, all alone on an empty beach in the middle of the night.  The moon was falling towards the western horizon.  I didn’t have a watch but it had to be late.  She must not have shown up.  I was stood up.  I sighed with relief.  Circumstances saved me from my sin.  She must have passed out drunk from the beer and not woken up on time.  Or maybe she got caught sneaking out? Or maybe she sobered up and changed her mind.  Either way, I didn’t get to do what my body wanted but my brain didn’t.  The universe and random chance saved me from my self. I was innocent after all… Thank God.

I gathered up my scattered belongings from the sand and started the long trudge back up the hill to the cabana.  While still on the beach, moonlight illuminated the scene but when I reached the pathway through jungle, I had to click on my flashlight.    My tee-shirt was soaked through and my head hurt.  Hungover, and suffering the after effects of the dream… I plodded along through the unreal darkness. It almost seemed as if I was still dreaming.  Half asleep.  Or was I?  I’d been having the dream for several months… almost since the journey into Latin America began.  But the dream intensified with corresponding bodily symptoms in Costa Rica when I had that virus.  The virus went away but the dream kept coming back.  Maybe I still had the virus.  Could the virus and the dream be related? How can I possibly cure myself from a dream? How in the world could I wake up and see reality?  Part of it was real, of course.  Or at least based on reality.  As I made my way along that path through the jungle to my cabana I tried and tried to use my mind to grab ahold of reality.  I started thinking about the true incident that was the foundation of the crazy dream.    

A year or so before, on a Friday the 13th in October of 1991, my pick-up truck caught on fire.  I was helping a girlfriend (Ms. A.) move from Upstate NY to Queens in the big city.  We had all of her belongings stacked precariously, ever so high, with her futon mattress near the top on the back of my truck as we made our way down interstate I-95.  We were in very heavy traffic closing in on the Whitestone Bridge that crosses over into Queens when Ms. A. tossed a cigarette butt out the window. A few moments later, the cars all around us started honking their horns and I saw the flames in my rear view mirror. I really did have to weave through several lanes of traffic with a flaming truck to reach a small exit ramp on the far side of the highway where I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop.  In reality, the seat buckles didn’t stick and the vehicle doors opened with no problem.  But then, when we got outside and saw the rising flames consuming all of her belongings on the back of my truck, I did something very stupid.  The only thing not covered in flames was a dresser at the very front of the pile.  In order to stop my truck from possibly exploding, I climbed up onto the cab and was able to slide down in between the cab and the not burning dresser.  Then, using the dresser as a barrier to protect me and because the fire had already burned through the ropes and bungee chords holding everything down, I was able to push the entire pile of burning junk off the back of the truck.  It’s kind of miracle I didn’t get blown to pieces by an exploding gas tank but my truck was saved except for a bed liner that was melted into an unusual shape. When the police, fire engine and ambulance arrived a few moments later they found a slightly shaken young couple, a still burning pile of junk on the side of the road and a relatively unscathed pickup truck.  They put out the embers and the EMTs gave us the once over.  But the cops didn’t even give me a ticket.  Ms. A. lost all or most of her worldly possessions but she was the one who threw the damn cigarette out the window.

That was the reality I remembered as I made my way through the jungle darkness to my cabana.  There were no bombs, no black helicopters, no machine guns, no fireballs.  Just a slightly crazy experience a year or so earlier. But now I was in Venezuela and there was a revolution going on.  I saw and heard all the military planes flying over head on my first few days in Macuto.  I saw and heard the sound of gunfire amid stampeding crowds in the big city on the local television news.  There was a state of emergency declared.  Things were crazy.  That’s why I was stranded in a beach bungalow in the middle of nowhere.  Perhaps the madness of now was combining with memories of the past and the still present virus to produce nightmares.  But the nightmares started way before the revolution.  I had them back in Costa Rica and Nicaragua too. And what about the young lady?  She was supposed to meet me on the beach?  Could she have been part of the nightmare?  What in the hell does it all mean?

Apocalyptic Eden

The Coast of Venezuela; December 1992

The game goes on…
It never ends
No rest for the weary
Play, play, play.

What came first? Chicken? Egg? Or the fox to eat the chicken and egg? For that matter; what about the black panther? I can’t remember the exact sequence of events. It was 27 years ago, I have no notes and my memory is faulty. It all happened about the same time in a jumble of activity. In reality, the separate events were not even rationally connected. But in my imagination, the events are now all twisted together into some kind of grand mythological drama that I had a part in. In other words, the universe played a trick on me and 27 years later, I’m still trying to figure out what happened…

I stirred into consciousness in the early dawn in the hammock in the garden with a slight hangover headache. I heard the sound of the outdoor shower running and it made me have to pee so I opened one eye to see. Gaya was there, lathering up her large black breasts with foamy soap as she hummed a song in the shower. Did she know I was awake and watching her from the hammock? Probably… maybe… She didn’t seem to care. She seemed to be putting on a performance for me. It was the bath dance… the shower scene… the soap and water tease. She hummed happily to herself as she cleansed her various body parts. She was a big woman. Much too big for my taste. Nevertheless, my 27 year old body responded naturally to the vision. I had a strong urge to climb from the hammock and demonstrate my manhood to the naked female. But I couldn’t do that. She was Stuart’s girl. He was asleep in just the other room. But wow. Just look at her… She knows I’m watching… She definitely wants it… And I really have to pee…

But I held it, uncomfortably, and pretended to sleep as I watched her rinse and then dry herself off. She certainly took her sweet little time. I almost wet myself. Eventually, she wrapped herself in a towel and headed towards the cabana entrance. I climbed from the hammock and followed a little behind her. As I reached the door to go inside, I saw Gaya through the door window. That’s when she surprised and shocked my poor innocent soul. Instead of turning left and going back into Stuart’s room, she turned right and went down the hall to Pierre’s room. Oh my god… Is this story a soap opera or a porno flick?

I went inside to use the bathroom and drink some water. Afterwards, I returned to the hammock in the garden and went back to sleep. When I awoke a few hours later, I was still in a brain fog and Pierre, Stuart and Gaya, were now all sitting at the picnic table in the garden eating their breakfast. Did I dream about the early morning sin? Was it all in my imagination? It seemed so vivid and real. But the apocalypse highway dreams seemed real as well. Perhaps the tropical heat was disturbing my subconscious. I was still recovering from the strange virus I picked up in Nicaragua. I was reading the bible, taking lariam, smoking weed and drinking lots of booze while trapped on the coast of Venezuela by an ongoing revolution. Of course I was having crazy dreams. The Garden of Eden intermingled with the apocalypse. A mythological history of humans was erupting inside my subconscious.

“Good morning sleepyhead,” said Gaya from the table as I slowly blinked open my eyes and sat up in the hammock. “We thought you were going to sleep all day.”

“Good morning,” I said. “My head hurts. Too much rum last night. What time is it? What’s going on?”

“It’s after ten,” said Pierre, “and morning news reports say that the socialist coup leaders have fled the country. They are now reportedly in Columbia hiding out with the FARC.”

“So the revolution is over?” I questioned. “No more state of emergency?”

Gaya stood up from the picnic table and brought me a cup of coffee in the hammock. “Not over yet.” She said as she handed me the cup. “They are still rioting in Caracas. Are you ready for some huevos?”  

“Yeah,” I said, “eggs would be great. I’ll have scrambled please, I mean revuelto.”

“Si Senor,” said Gaya sarcastically, “I will go make them.” She went inside the Cabana.

“The State of Emergency is ongoing,” said Pierre. “But with the Socialist leaders on the run, it will probably be over soon. I’m going to Macuto this morning to check on public transport options. Maybe they are allowing some buses to go soon.”

“Gaya has to go to Macuto this morning as well to fill out some paperwork with the Cabana Rental Agency,” said Stuart, “maybe you two should go together.”

“Yes, I know,” said Pierre, “she already told me. We are going to catch the 11:00 collectivo at the tienda.”

“She needs our passport numbers too,” said Stuart, “for the rental contracts. But at least we don’t have to go in person. I’d rather go to the beach. What about you Patrick? You want to go to Macuto with Pierre and Gaya or to the beach with me?”

“I would definitely prefer the beach,” I said. “We should bring a cooler full of drinks and food and plan to stay all day.”

On or about this moment, Gaya returned to the garden with my plate of scrambled eggs and toast and I made my way from the hammock to the picnic table. Before I sat down, however, Gaya repeated what Stuart said about her needing my passport number for the rental contract. So I went to my room to get my passport from it’s hiding spot and that’s when I discovered the traveler’s snafu bureaucratic clusterfuck that changed my life. Ohhhhh Shit! How the fuck did that happen?

I opened my passport and looked at the number and then passed a glance at my growing collection of entry, exit and Visa stamps. There it was. Plain as the nose on my face. My Venezuelan tourist visa. Numero de dias (number of days): 15. What? I thought I was supposed to get 60 days. How come I only got 15? I’d already been in Venezuela for a week. And I was trapped on the coast by the state of emergency. I was planning to cross the whole country by bus to the border with Brazil and the Amazon jungle. I wanted to hike and swim and socialize along the way. There were beaches, mountains and waterfalls to visit. But now I only had eight more days. And I couldn’t go anywhere yet. I would have to wait until the emergency was lifted. And then I would have to rush across the whole country to the border. Suddenly, the tiny little nook of paradise I was staying in completely transformed. The newly created ticking clock in the background of my consciousness added a heavy dose of anxiety to the otherwise idyllic little ecosystem.

When I got back to the garden, Pierre, of course, explained that it was no big deal. All I had to do was go into an immigration office somewhere and file paperwork for a tourist visa extension. They grant them all the time. But Gaya warned that the immigration office in Caracas was in a very dangerous neighborhood surrounded by lots of rioting. Pierre said that the riots would be over soon because the socialist leaders had fled the country and repeated that there were immigration offices in all the big cities throughout the country. I could get a visa extension in Merida or Maracaibo or Ciudad Bolivar. But I couldn’t get one anywhere until after the state of emergency was lifted because there was no public transportation. So for that particular day, I might as well go to the beach. And that’s what I decided to do. Pierre and Gaya left for Macuto to run their various errands while Stuart and I cleaned up breakfast and packed up a cooler for the beach. Would the beautiful young ladies from the day before be there to meet us? I was certainly hoping so.

As we walked to the beach along the pathway, I considered telling Stuart about what I witnessed in the early morning. But I wasn’t sure if I really witnessed it or only dreamed about it. The whole scene was clouded in my mind by a fog of unreality. It also wasn’t really any of my business and maybe Stuart didn’t want to know the truth.

“Thanks for not telling Gaya about the young ladies on the beach,” said Stuart as we walked along.

“What young ladies?” I said innocently. “I’m sure Gaya knows that there are some attractive young ladies on the beach. She also knows that there is some possibility that we will encounter them.”

“But she doesn’t know we have a specific plan to meet a few of them in particular today at noon. That’s different than a general possibility. We have a date with teenagers. Gaya would be jealous.”
“You are a free man Stuart,” I said. “You can do what you want.”

“I know,” he said, “but still… I don’t feel quite free. Gaya and I have a special relationship. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe she wouldn’t be jealous at all. Maybe she would laugh or make fun. But I want her to be jealous. The idea of her jealousy means we are a real couple.”

“But you just met her a week ago,” I said. “And uh, ya know. She is one those beach girls. Been around the block a few times. She’s nice and fun. I really like her. But not exactly long term relationship material.”

“That’s what your wrong about Patrick,” said Stuart. “Gaya is long term relationship material. She is perfect long term relationship material. That’s the problem. Yes, I know there have been many others before me. I’m not the first gringo that she has squeezed for cash. But that doesn’t matter at all. What counts is connection. Gaya makes me feel like a real man. She takes care of me and I take care of her. Our strengths and weaknesses counterbalance. We have symmetry.”

“Are you in love with Gaya? Really?” I questioned.

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe that’s it. But I think I’m talking about something different. Not love exactly, but sort of; it’s more about attitude and the way that birds and blokes get on. I’ve dated plenty of birds back in England but they are all so independent and demanding. Gaya is like the opposite of that. Gaya gives. She takes care of me and you too and Pierre as well. Because that is her nature. She gives, gives, gives…. She cooks for us all, she shops for us and cleans for us. She doesn’t have to do any of that. She just rented us the cabana. All that other stuff is her doing what comes naturally to her. Her way is to take care of people. And if you are talking about long term relationship material, that quality is the most important quality of all.”

“I was actually wondering about that,” I said. “Are we supposed to pay her extra for the cooking and cleaning or is that included in the rental contract?”

“You can tip her if you want,” said Stuart. “I’m sure she would appreciate it. But no, you and Pierre are not obligated to pay any extra for Gaya’s services. It’s not included in the Cabana rental contract. It is just included because Gaya happens to be living in the Cabana with me.”

“So what you are saying is… Don’t tell Gaya about the young girls on the beach or we might lose our maid and chef service.” I joked.

“No mate,” said Stuart with surprising seriousness. “You misunderstand. Gaya is not my servant. Gaya is the woman of the cabana. There is a very big difference. She is very good in her role. So good, in fact, that I am wondering if she could be the woman of my home back in England?”

“And what about the hot young ladies we are hopefully meeting today?” I asked as we arrived at the beach and set up our blankets and cooler.

“They are not woman like the incredible Gaya. But they are very sexy birds and I’m a single man on holiday. At the very least, it should make for a good story when I get back to the pub in England.”

As we sat down upon the blankets, I could see the girls in the distance. They were walking towards us along the shoreline. Sun glistening upon their young bikini clad bodies. Yes, yes, yes. This was definitely going to be a good story to tell if I ever made it home to the bar…
To be continued…

 

Misinformation, Disinformation and the Unanswered Call

Macuto, Venezuela; November 1992

What is reality? What is illusion? Believe what you see? Or see what you believe? When I was stranded in Macuto, Venezuela during the attempted coup de tat’/ revolution in November of 1992, there was no internet access and I had no cell phone. My main sources of information were local newspapers and the local television news that was always on in the lobby of my cheap hotel. Unfortunately, I couldn’t speak or understand Spanish well and the Venezuelans all spoke fast. I was okay at reading Spanish because I had dutifully translated local papers every day with my Spanish/English dictionary for the previous two months as I traveled down through Central America but my reading skills were still on a very basic level. I certainly wasn’t fluent or even close to conversational. Accordingly, most of the real time information I received came through a nebulous cloud of mistranslations. As the events unfolded around me, I was rather overwhelmed by a constant state of confusion…

I remember hanging out with four or five local guys as we watched the special coverage on the morning news. They spoke no English and my Spanish was childlike gibberish. I kept gasping and saying “oh wow, que pasa ahora?” as I watched scenes of tanks and tear gas and Molotov cocktails and soldiers and gun shots and explosions in the crowded big city. It was all going down at that very moment about 40 miles away from where we were sitting but watching it on television made it seem very far away. The guys watching with me kept using the phrase “un loco golpe,” to describe the action. I was unfamiliar with the terminology and I remember trying to figure out if a “golpe” was more like a “cout de tat”or more like a “revolution.”

I only watched for a little while before returning to my room to drop off my backpack. Then I headed to the outside world to find breakfast and more information. I went to the empanada stand near the scenic picnic table. The large older black woman squeezing out the maracuja juice recognized me from the day before and smiled. “No go Caracas mi gringo amigo,” she said, “Es un golpe today!” I took my juice and empanadas to the picnic table but stopped at the nearby newsstand to buy the local paper en route. I remember seeing the headline as I sat down at the table to eat and translate. “Un Golpe!”

How accurate was the information in that local paper? How good was my translation of the words? Did I really understand what I was reading and did the words make sense as written? Maybe I mis-interpreted propaganda and thereby accidentally understood truth…. Or maybe not? I hunched over the words with my Spanish /English dictionary and tried to figure it out. According to the paper, the “Golpe” was caused by a conflict between different factions in the military. It was an internal struggle for control of economic resources. One particular rebellious unit turned against the constitutionally recognized central command of the military and tried to takeover. It was not a general uprising of the people against the government. It was just an internal military squabble that spilled out a little into the general population. Why then, I wondered, was there so much rioting and shooting in Central Caracas? The photos in the newspaper were similar to the images I saw on the local television. Big tanks and lots of smoke plowing their way through a crowded crazy big city.

“Pardon me mate,” said a stranger’s voice with a British accent, “you speak English? Where you from?” I looked up from my spread out newspaper at the picnic table to see a smiling young man. Kind of skinny with short dark curly hair and glasses, he seemed to be in his mid-twenties. He looked backpackerish but he wasn’t carrying a backpack. He stood before me with a sack of empanadas and a juice like he was waiting for an invitation to sit down.

“I’m American,” I said, “my name’s Patrick. Here, take a seat.” I folded up my newspaper and moved it out of the way so he would have a place for his food and drink.

“My name is Stuart,” he said, “and I am from Great Britain. I am stuck here because of the crazy shit in Caracas. You too?”  

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s crazy all right. And kind of hard to believe. I only arrived two nights ago. I was on my way to the city center this morning but the guys at my hotel stopped me.

“Do you understand Spanish?” He said. “I only know about ten words. Bano and comida. I see you reading the paper so you must understand something. I came here for the beaches and the birds not for no bloody coup.

“My Spanish is bad,” I said, “but getting better. I have to translate newspapers with this,” I showed him my dictionary. “But yeah, there seems to be some kind of coup de tat going on. And there is also some rioting in the city center. I too came here for the beaches and the pretty girls. Not for any of this revolution stuff.

“This local bird I know, Gaya, told me that the military dropped bombs on downtown this morning but I’m not sure if I believe her. She’s trying to convince me to rent a cabana up the coast somewhere and wants to scare me off Caracas.”

“I didn’t see anything about bombs in the newspaper but the rioting alone is pretty scary.” I said. “You know a local girl? How long have you been in Macuto?”  

“This is my fifth day of a six week holiday in Venezuela,” he said. “My plane arrived here direct from London and I came straight to Macuto because it was late at night. I was only going to stay in this beach town a few days but I met Gaya my second day and she keeps convincing me to stay for “one more day.” Wow… Does she convince me. Totally wild bird if you know what I mean. And now, because of the chaos in the capital, she wants me to postpone my trip to Caracas and the rest of Venezuela for a whole week. She thinks we should rent a cabana on some idyllic beach about twenty miles east from here along the coast. Far away from all the scary stuff in the big city.”

“A hot local girl wants to rent a cabana on a beach with you for a week?” I said. “That sounds like a good idea even if there is no chaos in Caracas.”

“It’s not exactly true love,” he said. “She barely speaks English. The cabana is expensive and I don’t want to blow my whole holiday wad on the very first bird I meet.”

 “You would rather go to Caracas?

“No,” he said, “I would rather travel around Venezuela. But if I want to travel around Venezuela from here I have to go through Caracas. We are at the end of a dead end highway. Local roads go east and west for twenty or thirty kilometers but they dead end at mountains. Caracas is the chokepoint between here and the rest of the country.

“For how long will the chokepoint be too dangerous to travel through?” I said.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out. If I’m stuck here anyway, I might as well go rent that Cabana with Gaya. Your the one with the newspaper and dictionary. What do you think? Will Caracas be safe enough for traveling by tomorrow? Or is this chaos going to continue for weeks?”  

“I have no idea,” I said, “and no way to guess.”

“What are you going to do while you wait?” He said. “Stay right here in Macuto?” 

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe? Where else could I go? I do have the number for the US embassy in my guidebook. I wonder if they can help in any way. Maybe they know what’s going on. Maybe they have some inside information about how long the coup will last.”

“It’s worth a shot,” he said, “a Venezuela telecom call center is just a couple blocks that way,” he pointed up the street. 

“That’s good to know,” I said. “Even if I don’t call the embassy, I have to call my parents. I left a message on their answering machine two days ago saying I arrived safely in Caracas. With all this craziness, they are probably worried.”

“You think it’s on the international news?” Said David. “It’s only Venezuela. Maybe it’s only a minor scuffle. We might think it’s a big deal because we are here. But nobody back in England cares about Third World Coups’. Do they cover South American coups on the news back in the states?”

“Sometimes a little,” I said, “but you’re right. Not very much. Maybe my parents haven’t heard about it at all and by calling to inform them I will give them something more to worry about. But I think otherwise. I have a feeling that this is a big enough deal to be international. Who knows, maybe my parents can pass on some outside objective information from a reputable American news station.”

So that’s where I went next. I finished my last empanada, folded up my newspaper and promised to meet Stuart and his “Venezuelan bird” later for “happy hour” at the beach bar up the road. Then I headed to telecom.

On my way to the telecom, I thought more about whether or not I should call the US embassy as well as my parents. To call or not to call, that was the question. Isn’t that what citizens of the United States are supposed to do when they run into an emergency political situation? Call the embassy to get instructions. In retrospect, as a raggedy old world-wanderer looking back 27 years later, I shake my head in dismay at my former delusional self. What madness possessed me to think it was a good idea to call the embassy for help? In my defense, I was still a lawyer then and law school brain washing had effectively enclosed me in the American metaphorical cage. It was still theoretically my government. I believed in its inherent goodness and helpfulness. As a lawyer, sworn to uphold the constitution of our great nation, I was as indoctrinated into the ideological construct as a person could possibly be. Indeed, contacting the embassy seemed to be the logical, rational, response to my full blown traveler’s crisis no matter how much the thought of me having that thought makes my present anarchist anti-Imperialist, paranoid self laugh. Ha ha ha ha. Yes, it’s true. Me, an earlier version of me, was willing to call up the Empire on the telephone and beg for help. Ha ha ha ha ha. But first I had to call my parents

There was a central desk at the phone company where I paid a fee and was assigned a phone booth. I told them I wanted to call the US so they gave me the country code. I went to the booth and dialed the number. My younger brother was home visiting for the Thanksgiving holidays so he answered the phone. The first thing he said was, “Pat?! Is that you? Are you in a war?” So yes, the incident in Caracas was, indeed, international news. It was a good thing I called. I spent the next twenty minutes trying to convince my brother, my father and my mother that there was nothing to worry about. Everything was fine. There was just a little civil unrest in the capital. I was forty miles away from all the danger in a nice little beach town. I was also near the airport. If the situation didn’t calm down in Caracas all I had to do was hop on a flight to another country. They all said that the news back home made it look like a serious conflict. My father told me there were socialists involved and if they took over the country I should flee right away. He warned me not to get “rounded up.” My mother strongly urged me to leave immediately. Don’t stay around at all she said, get on the next plane to safety…. I had to tell my mother I was going to call the US embassy just to calm her down. Before I hung up the phone, I promised her that I would do whatever the embassy advised me to do. They were the experts after all. They would understand what to do in the event of a serious political crisis like this one.

After I ended the call with my parents, I looked up the US embassy phone number in my guidebook and dialed the number. The phone rang….. and rang…. and rang. No human picked up the phone to answer me. No answering machine picked up the phone to answer me. It just rang and rang and rang. I hung up the phone and double-checked the number. I tried again. It rang and rang and rang. I remember growing frustrated. I was a little ambivalent about calling them in the first place but when they didn’t answer, I became very annoyed and then angry. How much money did I give them every year in taxes for the sake of “national security.” Now, for the first time ever in my life that I needed them for actual help with “security” because I was stuck in a real life cout de tat and they can’t even answer the fucking telephone. Thinking maybe I had the wrong number, I left the booth and went to the information counter at the telecom center. I asked if they had the number for the US embassy and they gave me a number that was almost the same as the number in my guidebook with a different last digit. I went back to my phone booth and tried the new number. It rang and rang and rang…. No human picked up. No machine picked up. It rang and rang and rang….

Did that unanswered phone call at a moment of political crisis 27 years ago psychologically transform my relationship with the US government forever? No, probably not, but maybe a little. Although I have wandered around many parts of the world since then, I have never ever tried to call a US embassy again. I’ve been caught in several attempted coups/revolutions, a natural disaster, a couple robberies and several immigration border snafus as well over the years. But I never again called. Indeed, after the imaginary revolution two years later, I severed my relationship with the US corporate state altogether and stopped answering their calls as well. 

To be continued…

Finding a Safe Place to Land?

Macuto, Venezuela; November 1992

I was relaxed and day-dreaming of beauty queens when my flight left Panama City, Panama flew out over the Caribbean and came down to land at the Caracas international airport in late November 1992. It is somewhat strange to think about now, but when I first arrived in Caracas, I knew virtually nothing about Venezuela. It wasn’t even really part of my plan. I was only going there to avoid dangerous Columbia on my way to the Amazon jungle in Brazil. Actually, my lack of understanding of Venezuela was similar to my lack of understanding of all the countries that I visited in Central and South America in 1992-93. I was an educated lawyer and a regular reader of, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.  In that regard, I believed that I was well-informed on current events and I had a firm mental grasp of international relations. I also studied some Latin American countries during political science, economics or law courses, so I was familiar with all of the famous coups and revolutions. Cuba and Chile’ were the most thoroughly discussed but I also learned about Guatemala and Nicaragua in college and law school. El Salvador was in the news more recently and Columbia had become legendary for drug wars. But really, my knowledge of all these places was extremely superficial and very filtered through a higher education Cold War lens. I don’t think I could have even labeled all the countries on a map. Instead of knowledge, I had a perception of Latin America in general and of the individual countries specifically that was primarily based on mass media images implanted upon my brain. For Columbia; I thought about cocaine, drug wars, Pablo Escobar and revolutionaries. But for Venezuela; my brain just thought about beauty queens and baseball. Mostly the beauty queens.
I believed that Venezuela was a peaceful and stable country. It was allied with the US and it was a capitalist democracy like the US. It was also fairly wealthy because of the oil. It seemed to be a good safe place for Americans to travel. Gunther had told me about some sort of uprising in Caracas in 1989 in which some people were supposedly killed and he warned me that the whole country was a powder keg waiting to explode in revolution but I thought he was full of shit with revolution on the brain. He was bad mouthing Venezuela because he was selling tickets to Columbia. I had never heard of the uprising in 1989. It couldn’t be true. He also said there was going to be a revolution in Southern Mexico because a couple of local indigenes guys went to graduate school for economics and then went home to teach their friends and neighbors. “Mark my words,” he had said, “revolution is coming soon to Caracas and Chiapas.” But I thought he was crazy. Yeah right Gunther… revolution here, revolution there, revolution everywhere… The Cold War was over and I thought that there was no more need for revolutions. I remembered Ms. Venezuela from the the Ms. Universe contest I saw on television the year before. She was one of the sexiest women I had ever seen. She didn’t mention any Venezuelan revolution. There was the pitcher for the Dodgers, the catcher for the Mets and the shortstop for the Pirates, and they never mentioned a revolution brewing in their home countries. It was frequently commented on the gringo trail that Venezuela had the hottest women on the continent. Some people said there was a lot of petty crime there too. But no one other than Gunther ever mentioned an uprising in 1989 or any kind of revolutionary activity. Venezuela had Caribbean beaches, Angel Falls and the lost world of Mount Roraima. They had a professional baseball league. Maybe I’d go to a game or do a couple hikes when I wasn’t sitting on beaches with incredibly beautiful women. That’s right… the hottest women on the continent. And all of them just waiting to meet me… No doubt, my brain was still focused on the Amazon jungle in Brazil as my prime destination. But I was going to have myself some fun as I made my way through Venezuela to get there.When the plane arrived in Caracas International Airport it was after midnight. My brand new “Shoestring guidebook”, suggested that late night arrivals might want to take a taxi to the nearby beach town of Macuto where there was cheap accommodation instead of making the long haul to the Caracas City center. Apparently there was good public transport connecting this weekend holiday town to the major metropolis so some international travelers just used Macuto as their base while they visited Caracas. The idea of waking up near a beach appealed to me so that’s what I decided to do. But first I had to go through Immigration.

I don’t really remember the details of what happened at Immigration. But somehow or other, a very minor miscommunication transformed completely the next month of my trip. It was a routine bureaucratic encounter like hundreds of such encounters I’ve had over the years. But this was one of the early ones before I had any experience and I wasn’t paying attention well. I thought all US visitors received an automatic 60 day tourist visa upon arrival in Venezuela. When the immigration officer asked me what I intended to do in Venezuela, I told him that I planned to travel by bus across the country to the border with Brazil and visit some tourist sites along the way. When he asked me how long the journey would take? I answered a couple of weeks. Then when he asked me how many days (cuantas dias?), I didn’t realize he was asking how many days I wanted for my visa. I thought he just wanted me to guess how long I would be in Venezuela. I said 15 days (quince dias). He stamped my passport with a tourist VISA and then seemed to sign it or initial it. He closed up my passport and handed it back to me. “Bienvenidos a Venezuela” he said with a rather big smile. I said, “gracias”, and took my passport. I didn’t look closely at the stamp. I put my passport away and headed towards Customs.  

Because of the late hour, the airport was not busy so I made it through Customs and security rather quickly and found my way to the exit. The official taxi stand was easy to find and a ride to Macuto was surprisingly cheap. Everything was unfolding perfectly. It only took about 15 minutes to reach the beach town and my taxi driver recommended a nice cheap hotel that was right on the water. I clearly remember getting out of the taxi cab and smelling the ocean. An incredible sensation of relief washed over my whole soul. For five or six days, I had agonized in Panama about how I was going to get to South America and where I was going to go in South America. But now I was there. And I was by the beach. I inhaled the salty fishy air deep into my lungs and smiled. The traveling life was good.  
I lifted my backpack from the trunk and walked towards the dark hotel. I had to wake up the night watchman and I didn’t have a reservation but they had an open room and they were happy to rent it to me for a very reasonable price. It was on the second floor and it didn’t face the ocean but if I stuck my head out the window I could look to my left and see the ocean. I dropped my backpack on the floor and sat on the bed. There was an interior bathroom in the room with a working hot shower so I undressed and used it. I cleansed my body of Central America so I could start fresh and clean on the new continent. Afterwards, I opened the window to let the sea breeze waft in. Wow. I felt great. I frickin made it. I laid down on the bed and pulled the sheets up and over me. It was actually quite comfortable with a big fluffy pillow. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

It was like some kind of miracle. I slept for eleven straight hours without even waking up once. Out cold in oblivion, I didn’t even dream. Absolute bliss. The previous five nights in Panama, I was tormented by the apocalypse highway dream. I hadn’t hardly slept at all. Actually, the dream had been interfering with my sleep for weeks. And then, in Panama City it intensified. I had also been drinking a lot in Panama. The night I flew to Caracas was my first night sober since I arrived from Costa Rica. I had also been seriously stressed out about traveling through the Darien Gap into Columbia. Most likely, the stress, the alcohol and the lariam (malaria medicine) were interacting to produce the crazy dream. Gunther’s constant talk about revolution and oppression and gringo invasions didn’t help. But when I arrived in Macuto by the ocean and laid back on that comfortable bed, all of that stress and anxiety just dissipated into nothingness. It felt like the gods pulled a string and the knot around my soul released and unraveled. Sleep, sleep…. glorious sleep.

When I awoke, it seemed as if it was very late in the morning. I had no timepiece but when I looked out the window, the sun was high in the sky. I dressed and went downstairs to look for food. The clock above reception said 11:45 and the friendly man behind the desk asked me if I was checking out. The night before I had told them I was only staying for one night because I planned to move on to the big city in the morning. But now morning was already over and I was in no particular hurry to go anywhere. For the first time in a week, I felt rested and relaxed. I asked him about buses to Caracas city center and he told me there was a bus stop out in front of the hotel and the bus to city center went every hour from 5:00 am until 11:00 pm. So I still had plenty of time to get some brunch and head to Caracas in the afternoon if I wanted to. But the hotel guy wanted me to check out before noon if I was leaving so he could prepare the room for another possible guest. I decided to stay another night. No hurry, no worry.

That very first day I spent in Macuto was absolutely delightful. My spirit was buoyant as I walked up an down the small boardwalk and inhaled the salty air. It’s amazing the difference a good night sleep can make. I made it. I was there. My life long dream of traveling to South America had come true. I was on the continent… The town itself was not particularlily exciting; a hybrid cross of crowded big city and weekend getaway tourist trap. There was a crowded beach mostly occupied by families but some super hot young ladies in bikinis among them. There was a small row of restaurants and a few outdoor food stalls. I’m trying real hard to visualize the scene. Re-live that day now in my mind, 27 years later. But it’s all so vague and distant. I remember an idyllic sensation. I was comfortable. There was an outdoor picnic table near a food stand that I sat at eating empanadas and drinking maracuja juice. I could sit at that table and watch the beautiful ladies on the beach without looking like I was watching them. Wow… and the empanadas were delicious.

I remember going swimming in the ocean. My first of many dips in the oceans of South America. In the late afternoon, I left my passport and money belt in the safe at hotel reception and went with my towel and beach bag down to the beach near the shoreline. I laid down my towel and sat on it to watch the waves roll in. I hesitated to swim as I thought about possible thieves but all I really had in my bag was a book, sunscreen and sunglasses. With nothing of value to lose, I stripped off my tee-shirt, dropped my flip flops in the sand and ran forward to dive and tumble in the small waves. What fun! And nobody stole my flip flops.

In the evening, I went to an Oceanside restaurant. I sat at an outdoor table with my new guidebook and tried to plot my course through Venezuela as I ate my dinner and drank a few beers. Merida in the mountains looked awesome to a hiking guy like me. And so did the Eastern beach towns and the Orinoco Delta. Angel Falls and Canaima Lagoon were definitely on the agenda but the western beaches towards Columbia looked awesome as well. The end point of my Venezuela journey was the town of Santa Elena on the border with Brazil. But I was going to take a couple weeks getting there. I could go West towards Columbia and then cut south into the Mountains of Merida. From Merida, I could cut East across the middle of the country to Ciudad Bolivar and nearby Angel Falls before heading South again to the border at Santa Elena. Or, I could skip Merida and head straight east to the Orinoco Delta and the Eastern beaches. From there, I could just go straight south through Ciudad Bolivar to Santa Elena. Since I was going to hike up Mount Roraima near Santa Elena, did I real need to go the extra big loop through Merida for even more hiking? Probably? Maybe? I don’t know. That was the issue I was contemplating as I sipped my after dinner beer in Macuto. One way or another, I would start at the hostels in city center Caracas because I wanted to meet some backpackers with experience in the country to get some good local information. Maybe I would even meet some backpackers on their way to Merida. It would also be nice to see a little bit of the big city. So that was my plan for the following morning. 
I was back in my room before 11:00pm and I wasn’t drunk at all. I read my book for a while and went to bed. For the second night in a row, I slept very well without any crazy dreams. Maybe the ocean breezes through my window helped relax my soul. Or maybe the tension and anxiety had disappeared from my nervous system because I had decided to skip dangerous Columbia on my journey. Or maybe it was just the calm before the storm.  
I awoke fairly early to the sound of jet planes. No it wasn’t black helicopters from a crazy dream. It was real live airplanes because my hotel room was kind of near the airport. I got up and looked out the window. From the sun’s low position on the horizon, I guessed that it had to be about 8:00 am. I also saw several planes at the same time fly by overhead but I didn’t think much of it. Must be some kind of special event at the airport. I showered, brushed my teeth, dressed and packed up my backpack for travel. I could probably grab some empanadas for breakfast on way to the bus stop but first I had to check out. I picked up my pack and went down stairs to reception.

As I approached reception with my keys, I was greeted by very strange image that I will never forget. The old guy who worked there who spoke no English was standing behind the desk waving his arms in a crossing pattern towards me as if to indicate stop. “No no no no no,” he said as I approached. “No check out. No go Caracas. Hay un golpe! Hay un golpe!”  

“Un golpe?” I questioned. I probably had a very confused look on my face because I had no idea about the meaning of the word. “Un golpe?”

“Si,” he said, “un golpe!”. He then lowered his arms from their crossing pattern to hold an imaginary machine gun in his arms. He then acted out firing the imaginary machine gun all around him complete with “bang bang bang bang bang. Un golpe! Un golpe!”

“Huh?” I said, “un golpe?” I was scared by his charades but still not really sure what he was talking about. I can’t help but wonder how bewildered and confused my face looked.

“Venga,” he said, as he stepped out from behind the desk and indicated for me to follow him as he walked across the lobby. There were a few couches and some chairs on the other side of the lobby and about eight people gathered anxiously around a television set.  

As we got closer I could see the images on the screen. There was smoke and bombs and tanks on the streets of a big city. There were people running amid the smoke and there was the sound of gunfire and sirens. It looked like a war zone. “What’s going on?” I said to the group.

“Revolution’ en Caracas,” said someone.

“Holy shit ” I said. “Revolution in Caracas now?” Revolution’ was a Spanish word I understood.

“Si’,” they said, “revolution’ ahora.”  

“Well damn,” I said, “I guess I won’t be checking out today.”
To be continued…

Safe Travels?

Panama City, Panama; November 1992

How paranoid was I? My present perspective continues to confuse the past. After so many Winters of wandering, I now have lots of experience negotiating tour prices with street scoundrels. Crazy characters don’t frighten me at all. Indeed, I usually try to understand them on a cellular level because the stories behind their circumstances are always unique and interesting. In other words, I think it’s fun to banter with bullshitters. But this was 27 years ago. Before I had any such experience. How naive was I? How foolish was I? I can’t honestly remember clearly but it seems very unreal in retrospect. I was suffering from significant psychological turmoil. I couldn’t decide what to do. I was very worried about the Darien Gap and traveling in Columbia. I was having nightmares about black helicopters on an apocalyptic highway so I wasn’t sleeping. Gunther’s promise of CIA protection for the Gap seemed like bullshit and all his talk of Revolution and the gringo invasion made me nervous but the more I thought about Carlos’ sailboat tour to Cartagena, the more it seemed like a dodgy operation too. I met him on the dock and he played me like a fiddle. Seventy-five dollars a day for a boat ride was pretty expensive for those parts. I never even saw the boat and Carlos’ seemed a little on the young side to be running sailboat tours. Maybe going all the way to Columbia on a sailboat with him was a bad idea?  

After my long lunch near the harbor with Gary, the minibus/collectivo took me back across the Isthmus and dropped me off in the old colonial part of the big city. It was early evening and I was supposed to meet Gunther back at the hotel to have a look at his suggested itinerary for Darien but I walked by the Irish Bar on the way there and decided to stop in for happy hour. I got smashed… drunk…. obliterated… and talked politics long into the night with a bunch of faceless, nameless, expats who occupied the barstools around me. I don’t remember the details, of course, because it was a night like many many others. When I was a lawyer, I did this sort of thing a lot. It is the lawyer thing to do. Get drunk and argue about politics. The male lawyer specimen demonstrates his virility through the forcefulness of his argumentation… I was probably advocating for the newly elected US administration. Things were going to change in Central America. America was now going to focus on human rights and environmental protection instead profits and military aid. Blah blah blah… I don’t think I ate the shepherds’ pie again and I only drank Guiness and whiskey without any tequila. Thankfully, I didn’t throw up on the way back to the hotel. But it was after midnight when I got there so I missed my meeting with Gunther. I went straight to my room and passed out drunk.

I awoke fully dressed in a pool of sweat shaking and writhing on the bed to escape the black helicopter gunfire in the apocalypse highway dream. My head hurt and the inside of my mouth tasted like a dirty sock. I went across the hall to wretch but not puke. I drank water, popped a couple ibuprofen, undressed and tried to go back to bed. I had no idea the hour because I had no timepiece, but it was still dark outside. I was a little afraid to sleep because of the damn dream but I knew morning would come sooner if I slipped into unconsciousness for a little while. Columbia? Columbia? Did I dare to go to Columbia? Did I dare to travel the Darien Gap? Or should I take the sailboat? My head hurt and my mouth was dry. I wanted to feel better. I wanted the night to be over and morning to come. I drifted off to sleep and the nightmare came again. Explosions, smoke, black helicopters and I am running to get away. I awoke in a pool of sweat again but this time, at least, there was morning light in the sky.

I showered across the hall, then dressed and headed to breakfast on the balcony. I felt like a walking zombie in desperate need of coffee. Gunther was there at his usual table and he invited me to join him.

“Sorry I missed you last night,” I said as I sat down, “I didn’t get back from the harbor until late. So I went straight to dinner and drinks without coming back to the hotel.”

“No problem,” he said, “I was here anyway, like I always am. I have your information today if you want it. On accommodation and transport through Darien? Or maybe you had some luck yesterday finding a boat to Venezuela?”

“I did find a boat,” I said, “a sailboat, but it only goes to Cartagena not all the way to Venezuela.”

“That sounds dangerous,” he said, “prime smuggling route. What do you know about the captain? What militia does he belong to? Where did you meet him?”

“He doesn’t belong to any militia,” I said. “He’s an independent tour operator who runs round trip tours to the San Blas Islands from Cartagena. A couple of his tourists wanted to keep going north into Central America so he brought them to the mainland to catch onward transport. I met him on the docks near the harbor and he offered me one of the empty spots on his sailboat for the trip back to Cartagena.” Just as I finished my explanation, the waiter in white showed up with my coffee. I praised the universe for small favors, ordered a breakfast of scrambled eggs and took a sip of the glorious black liquid. Gunther waited until the waiter was gone before he responded to my statement.

“Independent tour operator?” He said with a sarcastic scoff. “Doesn’t belong to a militia? Yeah, right. Sounds like your boat captain tells good stories. The coastal waters between Panama and Cartagena are all controlled by paramilitaries. It’s pretty much the same as the Darien Gap. There is no way a sailboat travels that route on its own. Your captain must belong to a militia and that’s the first question you should ask him before you get on his boat. To whom do you pay your protection money? Is this trip going to be safe?

“I’m pretty sure he’s not a paramilitary,” I said. “He detours far away from coastal waters to reach Cartagena. He told me that lots of gringos were going the sailboat route to avoid the skirmishing militias in the Gap. Apparently, there has been a lot of killing in Darien lately because of an escalation in the feud between paramilitaries.”

“Sounds like your boat captain is a bullshit con-artist trying hard to sell dodgy sailboat rides, ” he said. “There’s no escalating feud between rival paramilitaries in Darien. There’s a fragile truce negotiated by da CIA. Check the local papers if you don’t believe me.” He slid his pile of newspapers across the table towards me. “No mention of murder or kidnapping in Darien lately.”

“Are you saying it’s safe to travel Darien now? That I don’t need your CIA protection plan?”
“You always need protection my friend. Everywhere you go in the world. That’s da way da game works. Sometimes you pay da Gringos, sometimes you pay da local governments, sometimes you pay militias or revolutionaries or tribal chiefs. But you always have to pay somebody or you will end up dead.”

“That seems crazy,” I said.

“No no, not crazy,” he said, “it is practical. If you are going to be world traveling it is best to understand the political situation on the ground of all the places you are going before you get there. The very first thing you always have to do is figure out who da boss is and then get permission from da boss to travel through da area.”

“I haven’t needed any permission from anybody so far and I’ve traveled all the way down from Texas through Mexico and Central America to here in Panama?”

 “You have a US passport don’t you?” He questioned.

“Well, yes, of course I do.””Da passport is da permission from da boss. Da Gringos are da biggest bosses of all in these parts. They control the most territory. Especially da main roads and popular tourists sites. All you need is US passport if you stay on main gringo route. But if you go off beaten track. To non-controlled areas. You could find yourself in big trouble.”

“In Guatemala, we were advised to leave our US passports in the hotel safe on our way to Tikal because revolutionaries would stop buses and only rob the Americans. But I was never actually stopped by revolutionaries myself.”

“Yes yes,” he said, “there are parts of Guatemala still in dispute. Gringos don’t control everything yet and they are losing control more and more there. Same with El Salvador and Nicaragua too. Even small parts of Honduras are resisting. But mostly da Gringos control everything.”

“You make it sound like these places are conquered colonies and that’s not true. They are independent nations that get economic and military aid from the US. It is safe to travel there because they follow the rule of law not because they are under gringo control.”

“Oh no, my young friend, they are colonies as you say, definitely not independent nations. Entrenched oligarchies that rule through the use of a strong military to strip their lands of value and send that value north to USA. Gringos provide da money and and da weapons and da training. Local oligarchs and generals may look like locals but believe me, they work for Gringos. Didn’t you go through military checkpoints on your way through Central America?

“Yes,” I said, “lots of them. Especially in Honduras and Guatemala. But everywhere else too. Even Costa Rica. The first couple were kind of scary. But I never had any problems. They searched buses and checked identification but then they always let us go.

“Your American passport is da golden ticket. And US dollars are da gold,” he said. “All the official government militaries down here get funding and training and weapons from the US. So you da gringo, are really da client that they are serving. In other words, all those military checkpoints aren’t a danger to you because they are done on your behalf… da checkpoints are there to protect you.”

“But I don’t need protection,” I said, “that’s the whole point. A free world. And those damn checkpoints certainly seem dangerous.

“Oh yes you need protection,” he said, “lots of locals would roll a gringo in a heartbeat if not for the presence of the military.”

“You really think so? What if I’m not a gringo like you say? What if I’m just a humble traveler. Would the locals still want to attack me? I think the young military guys with their big guns and nervous smiles are way scarier than any of my fellow passengers. Did you know I saw them take frightened teenagers and young men right off the buses on several occasions. I couldn’t tell if they were arresting them for being revolutionaries or drafting them on the spot to join the military.”

“Probably a little of both. The interrogation trick question. Do you want to “volunteer” for the military or are you a revolutionary that needs to be arrested?”

“It all just seems horrible.,” I said. “Horrible for the military and for the passengers as well. Big guns and invasive searches. That’s no way for humans to behave.”

“But they do it everywhere… many places all over the world. It is a common outcome of the political dynamic between the ruling class forces of oppression and the servant class forces of revolution. There will certainly be many such searches in Columbia.”

“But if my US passport was the golden ticket in Central America shouldn’t it be good in Columbia as well?”

“In the central corridor of the country controlled by the government, your US passport is all you need. But much of Columbia is disputed by paramilitaries and revolutionaries. In disputed territories, your gringo passport could get you killed or kidnapped. The area around the Venezuela border is disputed, the southern jungle is disputed and so is the Darien Gap. For all those regions, it is necessary to make pre-arrangements with the controlling militias before attempting to travel through.”

“So if I take a sailboat to Cartagena, I can’t just hop on a bus from there to Venezuela.” 

“You probably won’t make it to Cartagena unless your sailboat is paying protection to the right para-military group. But if you do, you better contact the ELN before getting on the bus. If you can convince them that you are just a humble traveler rather than an invading gringo, they will probably give you permission to pass through to Venezuela.

“And what about Darien? I thought you said yesterday that the gringos controlled the Gap. Why isn’t my passport good enough for there?”

“The Gap is disputed area. Not under anyone’s control. Many different paramilitaries are in on the action. But the gringos have influence. They supply most of the weapons to all the paramilitaries. That’s why they have a network of safe places to stay and reliable transport through the zone. Here, I wrote it all down for you.” He tore out a page from a notebook on the table beside him and handed it over.

I looked at the paper. There was a list of three guesthouses in Panama and four guesthouses in Columbia with addresses and phone numbers for each. There were also several transportation companies (bus, minibus and boat) listed with contact information. And finally there was a hand drawn map that labeled all the villages with the guesthouses along the route all the way to Cartagena. “This looks great. Very useful. Thanks. And… uh…. how much should I pay you for it?”

“The information is free,” he said. “If you want to try the humble traveler routine you can probably follow the route on the map all the way to Cartagena and not have any problems. But if you want to be safe as a gringo, I can book your rooms and transport for you and sell you a safe passage security card to get you through the paramilitary checkpoints for a hundred dollars.”

“And how much will the rooms and transport cost me?” I asked

“About two hundred.”

“So you can get me from here to Cartagena safely for about $300 bucks?” I said.

“That’s right,” he said, “from here to Cartagena for 300 or less. Now that’s a good price? Way cheaper than your sailboat cruise I bet.”

“A little cheaper but not a lot,” I said. “But the big question for me is which way is safer?”

“My way is definitely safer,” he said. “I promise you. If you take the gringo secure network you will definitely make it to Cartagena without any hassles.”

I didn’t accept Gunther’s offer for traveling Darien right then and there at the breakfast table. Instead, I told him I was interested but undecided. I promised to let him know within a few days. Truthfully, I was totally confused and perplexed. I couldn’t decide what to do and I didn’t want to decide anything about my next move until I at least looked at a guidebook for South America. With that in mind, I set out for the international airport after breakfast because Gunther told me they had a bookstore there that sold English language South American guidebooks.

A funny thing happened at the airport in Panama City. I found the bookshop selling guidebooks right where Gunther said I would find it. Somewhat incredibly, they had an almost new “South America on a Shoestring,” guidebook that I was able to purchase. As I stood there in front of the bookshop greedily consuming the info about Columbia and Venezuela in my new book, I noticed a travel ticket agency across the roadway. Just out of curiosity, I went to check the cost of airline tickets. I was a little disappointed to learn that it would cost almost $400 to fly to Cartagena or Bogota. But then I was shocked and overjoyed to discover that I could fly one way on the late night commuter airline to Caracas for only $189 dollars. I bought the ticket right then and there for the following night. Fuck the crazy sailboat. Fuck the goddamn gringo safety network. I’m taking the easy way.

I spent the next 36 hours avoiding Gunther so I wouldn’t have to tell him I was going to fly. I spent my time walking around the old colonial part of the city and drinking in the Irish pub. The following night, I caught the red-eye to Caracas. Somewhat ironically, the day after I arrived in the safe country of Venezuela, the entire country erupted into revolution.

To be continued…

Do I Dare?

Panama City, Panama; November 1992

Waiting for the Sun to rise… desperately. My head hurt and I was very sweaty. I didn’t want to shut my eyes anymore because I was tired of the dream. I couldn’t deal with it anymore. There seemed to be a dim light in the atmosphere. It had to be almost dawn. I wanted to get up and face the day. I wanted the shitty night to be over. I had things I needed to do. I was in Panama City. I wanted to continue South to South America. The only possible way to go overland to South America was to go through the area known as the Darien Gap into Columbia. The guide book warned that it was a dangerous route filled with drug smugglers and paramilitaries. Indeed, the tiny Isthmus which connects Columbia to Panama had become sort of legendary among the many backpackers I met traveling in Central America… Have you done the Gap? No way man, the Gap is too dangerous. Si’, the Gap Es muy peligroso. I want go Gap? You too? Do you dare to do Darien man, cuz it is danger zone….

As a practical matter it was very difficult to “do Darien” because the area was mostly a very big swamp with only a few passable dirt roads. Control of the few roads was often in dispute between various rival paramilitary factions so much traveling in the region was done by speed boats or small plane. The guidebook recommended getting on the ground, up to the minute information before trying any route through the region because the security situation there was always in flux. Part of me wanted to do it, but mostly I was afraid. With all the news stories about Pablo Escobar and violent drug wars in Columbia, I was thinking about skipping Columbia altogether. I really wanted to hurry up and get to the Amazon. Couldn’t I by-pass Columbia altogether and just quickly cut through Venezuela to Brazil?

According to my guidebook, it was possible to go directly by boat from Panama City, Panama to a harbor on the coast near Caracas, Venezuela but it was not easy to arrange passage because there was no official public ferry plying the route. There were a few private cruise ships that connected the two destinations but passage on cruise ships was expensive with several pleasure stops along the way. It was also possible to charter a boat from the Panama City harbor to the Venezuelan harbor but that too would be very expensive unless you were part of a big group defraying the costs. For shoestring travelers, my guidebook recommended asking at the private cruise lines for a job as a deckhand in exchange for free passage or going to the harbor and checking bulletin boards for notices of groups that might be looking for sign-ons. So that was my plan for the day. Head to the harbor to find out about boats to Venezuela and scope out some on the ground, up to date information on the Darien route to Columbia.

The sun was definitely up. It was light out. I climbed my hungover, sweaty self out of bed and went across the hall to the bathroom and showers. I had to brush my teeth about six times and submit to a blast of very cold splash, but I felt mostly sane by the time I dressed and headed out the door to find breakfast. This was 1992, so I was traveling without cell phone or iPad and I had no individual timepiece so I never really knew what time it was but I was guessing it was about 7:00 am. The price of the hotel room theoretically included breakfast that was served from 7:00am -10:00am in the balcony sitting area so that is where I went. A young local man dressed in waiter whites greeted me as I approached and asked if I wanted coffee or tea. I scanned the scene. Only a few tables were occupied but there was Gunther sitting at the same table as the evening before. He saw me as well and gestured for me to join him. I told the waiter I wanted coffee and went to join my new Swiss friend.

“Good morning my young gringo friend,” he said, “I trust you found some food last night and got yourself a good night sleep.”

“Sort of,” I said as I sat down. “I went to the Irish place and had the Shepard’s pie.”

“Not exactly Panamanian cuisine but delicious nonetheless.”

“Sure tasted good,” I said, “but it didn’t do well in my belly.”

“Now now,” said Gunther, “don’t blame da pie for da problem of da whiskey.”

“Very perceptive,” I said.

“Or da problem of da tequila,” he added. His wrinkled eyes twitched sporadically as he smiled like a dirty gnome in possession of incriminating secrets.

The realization hit me with a wave of nausea. “Oh my god, you were there. Did I see you? Did I talk to you? I hope I didn’t say anything offensive. I’m sorry if I did. I was really drunk. I don’t even know why. I honestly can’t remember seeing you at all. For that matter, the whole night is such a blur that I hardly remember anything. I was so wasted I think I even threw up in the plaza on the way home. Could someone have spiked my drink?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “but probably not. I was only there for a half hour around ten o’clock. We didn’t talk because you were busy doing shots of tequila with some bar friends when I saw you. I waved hello but you didn’t seem to recognize me. My educated guess is that it was the tequila that made you sick. Someone else didn’t spike your drink. You spiked it yourself by switching from good clean whiskey to dirty yellow piss water.”

At this point, the waiter in white arrived carrying my coffee. He was Panamanian but his English was very good. There were three breakfast options; pancakes, eggs or fruit salad. Gunther already had the pancakes in front of him and I chose the eggs (huevos revueltoes). After the waiter was gone, I sipped the coffee and tried to relax. But the caffeine gave me the jitters.

“So now what?” said Gunther inquisitively. “You heading towards da Gap very soon or you planning to stay around and take in some Panamanian attractions first?”

Very Bad Gringo

Panama City,  Panama;  November 1992.

The apocalypse highway dreams started many months before the real life car accident and continued for several years afterwards. So there is no logical, rational connection between the two. If time is linear, I can’t possibly say the accident caused the dreams. And the dreams certainly did not cause the accident. But if everything is connected… and time is relative… well, that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately… The dream was a frequent occurrence around the time I abandoned my promising legal career and made the great leap into the unknown so it is sensible to presume a relationship between the dream and that transformative event. Furthermore, although the car accident happened almost two years before the big radical move, my mother always claimed a hidden head injury from the accident was the real cause of my “imaginary revolution.” If two variables are thought to be the proximate cause of the same significant event, are not those two variables necessarily related to each other in a dynamic way. A(2) + B(2) therefore C(3). And then, finally, to add one more piece to the syllogistic puzzle. The crazy dream did not go away when I had my imaginary revolution. As a matter of fact, the dream continued intensely for a full year afterwards as I worked intensely on my first novel about the non-violent overthrow of the Evil Empire. The apocalypse highway nightmare only finally went away when I started doing stonework a few years later.

My long term memory is, perhaps, a little confused on the subject, but I think I first had the dream in Chiapas, Mexico in late September of 1992. Maybe I had it in Belize and Guatemala as well. I definitely remember it from the night on Ometepe in Nicaragua, and it came with surround sound at the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica. The early episodes of the dream were not very traumatic. It was kind of like watching an action movie on the big screen. I’d wake up with my heart beating fast and write down the dream to use as material for a future story I was hoping to write. I wasn’t bothered by the dream because I felt somehow removed or separated from it. The dream was not me. The dream was just a story. But then, the dream intensified. I think it first happened when I was sleeping in the shelter on Mt. Chirripo in Costa Rica. I had some kind of virus that I thought was malaria. The symptoms from the disease (fever and chills) infiltrated the dream and made the whole experience very visceral. I was no longer an observer of images. I was a participant in the action. By the time I got to Panama City, Panama in mid-November, the recurring intense nightmare was totally messing with my head. Every time I shut my eyes…the apocalypse highway would appear…. Grey smoke, loud explosions, fireballs and black helicopters…. I stopped sleeping because I was so afraid of the dream. Instead, I walked around the big city like a zombie for five days and had a number of very confusing half asleep conversations.

As I scratch now at my mind, attempting to uncover the long ago forgotten truth of those few days I spent in Panama, my memory collides with the dream. Am I making this up? Did it really happen? I don’t specifically remember the name of the hotel or the name of the Irish pub. But I do specifically remember that the places existed and I can visualize their interiors. Of course almost all Latin American cities have a colonial hotel on the plaza and an Irish pub around the corner somewhere so maybe the interiors I’m remembering are not the actual ones in Panama. Does it really matter? Can the story be true if the details are imaginary?

There were Leprechauns on the walls and about eight booths with wooden benches. There was also a long wooden bar with many barstools and a middle-aged portly Irish-looking bartender. Guinness was on tap and the background music was mostly fiddle. All the booths were taken when I arrived but there were a few empty barstools. I plopped into a stool and ordered a Guinness and a Shepherd’s pie. Several conversations swirled around me. I half listened but didn’t pay close attention. It occurred to me that I understood the words because everyone was talking in English. I was sitting at a bar smack dab in the middle of Panama City, Panama, and the language spoken by everyone was English. That seemed strange…

Stranger still… there were no Panamanians at all in the bar. Most of the characters were middle aged white dudes from the US, Canada and Western Europe. A few of the booths had younger rowdy backpacker types, but almost all of the barstools were occupied by the elderly intelligencia. After my conversation with Gunther earlier, my brain was focused on secret agents and covert invasions. No doubt nefarious plots were being hatched neath the cover of fiddle music. I was awake inside a John LeCarre’ novel. Or was I? Probably not spies but bureaucrats and businessmen… Administrators in the Canal Zone or a UN delegation. Maybe a few Spies mixed in.

I drank a Guinness and waited for my food. I was never a big fan of Guiness because of the low alcohol content and the bitter taste but everyone at the bar was enjoying theirs so much I had to join the communal experience. When in Rome do like… When in Irish bar, drink… At least the food was good. Really, it was amazing. I ate the Shepard’s pie with gusto right there at the bar. Afterwards, I refreshed my palate with a few shots of whiskey and that made the Guinness go down easier. At some point, I switched to shots of tequila. Crazy, right?, tequila in an Irish bar? I must be making it up. No it’s true. I definitely remember the tequila. Because of the tequila, everything else I remember might be suspect but I definitely remember the tequila.

Wake The F#*%#*k Up

November 1992

I didn’t sleep at all on the over night bus and when it finally arrived in the late morning I was struggling to keep my eyes open. According to my map of Panama City, Panama, it was only eight blocks from the bus terminal where I was dropped off to the cheap hotel recommended in my guidebook. I definitely needed sleep but after my long journey from Costa Rica I also wanted to stretch my legs so I decided to walk. I tied my boots, shouldered my backpack and headed down the street towards the city center. But I only walked two blocks before a car pulled over and rolled down its window. I looked inside and saw a rather attractive older local woman. “Are you crazy?” she said, “you can’t walk around here. You will get yourself killed. Get in the car.”

So I threw my backpack in the back seat and climbed into the front passenger seat. “I just wanted to walk,” I said, “I wasn’t trying to cause trouble. Is this a bad neighborhood?”

“Yes it is bad neighborhood,” she said, “Very dangerous neighborhood. Especially for Norte Americanos. Lots of people here would kill you just for that.”

“But how did you know I was American?” I asked. “I could be from anywhere.”

“No, you are from Estados Unidos. Pure blood gringo. It is obvious. You are definitely not European and you don’t have a Canadian flag on your backpack. Where you go?”

“Hotel Americano.” I said.

She laughed, “but of course, Hotel Americano, at least that is in a safe neighborhood.”

It was a fairly short drive to the center of the city. The large, ramshackle old colonial hotel was situated on the edge of a very large plaza. The nice lady dropped me off at the front door and gave me a business card that identified her as a consultant of some kind before I went in. “Please feel free to call me if you need any help while you are here.” I was kind of hoping she was flirting but her tone was motherly and protective rather than sexy and provocative. “Okay, Thanks,” I said, as I retrieved my backpack, exited the vehicle and stumbled sleepily towards the building.

Inside the lobby was like going back in time. Wood paneling, plush purple carpets and a large wooden reception desk manned by an elderly Panamanian man who was smoking a cigar. Behind him was the traditional hotel key cubby (a square stack of numbered boxes with keys and envelopes inside) and in front of him on the desk was an exceptionally large old-fashioned rotary telephone and a big thick hotel register book. He barely said a word as I checked in. He merely turned around the register book and opened it up so I could fill in the information myself. It occurred to me that I could fill in anything and thereby assume a false identity. But I used my real name and passport number and only “lied” about my profession. Instead of admitting I was a lawyer, I pretended to be a novelist. Ha ha ha, I chuckled to myself. (If only I could?). I registered into room 223 because that was the next one open on the ledger and turned the book back towards the old guy so he could read it. He handed me the key and I trudged up the stairs at the back of the lobby.

The second floor was designed like a big rectangle. The staircase led up to the front of the rectangle where there was an awesome balcony and sitting area that looked out over the plaza. This “travelers’ meeting place” was the prime feature indicated in the guidebook as a good reason to stay there. I stopped to check it out, but only briefly. Most of the tables were empty at that hour but I did notice that there were a few young backpackers drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. A few other small tables were occupied by older looking gentlemen from a variety of nations. They were drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes as well. I was too exhausted to socialize so I just peaked at the view of the busy plaza and went to find my room.

My room was at the back of the rectangle conveniently located across the hall from the communal bathrooms. It was a big room with high ceilings, a desk in the corner, a big bed and a ceiling fan that began to slowly whirl when I clicked the wall switch. The air was slightly musty but not too bad. I dropped my backpack on a chair next to the bed and opened the window on the back wall that looked out towards a busy city street. I sat down on the edge of the bed and felt with my hand that it was a bit lumpy. No matter, it would do. I took off my boots, swung my feet up and leaned back on top of the blankets fully clothed. In a matter of moments, I passed out into a deep dark sleep…

I’m standing in front of a very tall building of concrete and glass… a government building… it goes up and up and up forever. I enter and pass through metal detectors to reach the elevators. The elevator takes me up and up and up to a floor of offices. A maze of intersecting corridors leads me to “The Clinic”. A clipboard full of paperwork is handed to me. I sit in a waiting room and look at the clipboard. It makes no sense… a foreign language? no, not even that. It is symbols or hieroglyphics or diagrams with random numbers mixed in. There is a signature line at the bottom. I sign my name. A sexy blonde woman in a tight-fitting business suit emerges from a back room and calls out my name. I hand her my clipboard and follow her to a remote office somewhere within the maze of corridors. She tells me about diseases, horrific diseases with gruesome and explicit symptoms. I am going to a dangerous place, an uncivilized place. I will need biological protection; physiological security. She recommends the first protocol and gives me another paper to sign. I am then ushered into an examination room. A middle aged woman in a nurse’s uniform is waiting with a needle… several needles. She gives me shots… four I think, maybe five. Also a couple of pills to swallow right there and then. Modern medicine circulates through my bloodstream to protect me from the uncivilized world I am entering. I also get a couple prescriptions to fill. Drugs to take once a week or once a day for the whole time I am traveling in a danger zone. The pharmacy is on the bottom floor of the building. I take the elevator down, buy my drugs and go outside.

The heat hits me on the pavement… instant sweat. The sun beats down. The air is thick with moisture. I hurry to shade spots but it does no good. The heat turns up. Even in the parking garage, the heat is oppressive. I have to squeeze through hot vehicles to reach the burning hot driver’s seat of my pick up truck. The air conditioner brings instant relief. Suddenly cool. Then too cool. By the time I exit the parking garage, I am shivering with cold and I shut off the air-con. Then the heat begins again. Out on the highway, I am sweating again, burning up. I try the air conditioner again but this time it won’t work. Hotter and hotter…. sweating… steaming… The sun beats down through the windshield. My entire body is soaked in sweat. But still shivering. And a headache. The whole body aches as it sweats and thrashes and shakes. Then I hear the horns honking. Lots of horns with different incoherent sounds ricochet around the inside of my head. I see the flames in my rear view mirror. Oh shit, the bed of my truck is on fire. Panic. The heart races. Heavy breathing. Will I suffocate? I weave across three lanes of traffic as the honking blares around me. I pull to a blazing stop on a small off ramp. The flames are near the gas tank. The whole thing is going to explode. But I can’t get out. The seat belt is stuck, jammed, broken or melted shut. I struggle and writhe in agony as the sweat streams from my pores. I can’t get out of the god damn seatbelt and the whole thing is going to explode. Oh no oh shit oh no oh shit… Struggle pull, yank, wiggle, struggle, pull, SNAP…

Finally, the buckle bursts. Kick open door. Jump outside and run. Black smoke swirls all around. Cough and gag and cough. Keep running. It’s going to explode. Another truck swerves across the highway in flames. Balls of fire fall from the sky. Keep running. Heart pounds. Have to get away. Have to get away. Can’t breathe. Sweat gushes. Fire fire fire fire everywhere. Kaboom! Explosion knocks me to the ground. Not hurt… just dazed. Stand up slowly and turn around to look. The city behind me is under some kind of attack. Flames shoot out from the tops of several skyscrapers while a number of other buildings are tumbling into ruins. Smoke and dust rises from the streets. Ominous looking black helicopters blanket the sky like a flock of giant birds of prey. Higher up, super sonic jets sizzle across the heavens lobbing fireballs down on the the city. Wrecked vehicles clutter the highway but moving vehicles drive around them like it is some crazy obstacle course. More fireballs hit moving vehicles. Explosions make the earth quake. Lots of people are out of their wrecked cars now. They are running or walking down the highway. Where are they going? What are they doing? I am among them. A refugee. Stumbling along, coughing and gagging in the swirling dark smoke, sweating profusely from all my pores. I’m trying to get away. But where am I going? I don’t know. I just have to get away. From what? The helicopters. The black helicopters. They are in formation now. They are flying towards us. Everyone scatters chaotically into the swirling smoke. The helicopters fire. Live rounds. Lots of them. Machine guns rat a tat tat. I am running in the smoke. I have to get away. Rat a tat tat. Panic. Fear. Run. Pop. I feel pain in my leg and I fall. I’m hit. Pop. Another pain. This time in my shoulder. I’m hit again and again. I’m shaking writhing, squirming along sandy desert ground. I’m trying to get out of sight. Hide. But I can’t move. I’m bleeding on the ground. My body parts won’t work. I have to move but I can’t. They are going to kill me. I have to fucking move!

When I awoke in my room, my clothes were soaked with sweat and I was confused about my location. Where am I? My heart pounded so loudly inside my chest that I thought it was going to explode. Deep breath, deep breath, calm down. Look around. Where am I? Ceiling fan whirled above. Honking horns of traffic outside the window. It’s light out. Must be daytime. What is this place? High ceilings and big bed. A hotel room of some kind? Must be. There’s my backpack. Reality slowly descended upon my senses and awareness of reality slowed my heartbeat. That’s right. I’m in Panama City; at the Hotel Americano. I arrived this morning… or yesterday? There was no clock in the room and I didn’t have a watch. How long did I sleep? That was some dream… nightmare. The same one as before. The malaria dream… but I don’t have malaria. I never had malaria. It was only a virus. It should be gone by now. Why on earth does the dream keep coming back?

The End is the Beginning?

I blame it on the tryptophan in the turkey sandwich I had for lunch. But, then again, maybe it was destiny…. One way or another, it really was some kind of miracle that I survived.

The accident happened at the very end of my first big traveling adventure. In June of 1992, I finished my appointed position as an attorney for the State of New York court system. Instead of accepting one of several high paying job offers from large corporate law firms, I decided to cash in my savings account and go traveling for a year to “find myself.” I spent several months driving around the United States in my pick-up truck. I camped out and hiked in numerous national parks and visited lots of famous tourist attractions. Then, in October of 1992, I dropped my truck off at a friend’s house in Houston, Texas and headed south by public transport (bus, boat, train, hitch-hike). I made my way through all of Central America and down into South America. My plan was to go all the way to the Southern tip of Chile but my money started to run low in Bolivia so I had to fly back to the United States. I landed in Houston, picked up my truck at my friend’s house in late April 1993 and started driving north. I took my time on the drive because I wanted to visit a few more national parks (the swamps of Louisiana and the Ozark mountains were awesome). When I finally arrived in my home state of New York, it was early June of 1993, I had been on the road for over 11 months and I had covered over fifteen thousand miles.

My savings were almost completely gone by then so I figured I would go and stay with my parents in Plattsburgh, NY while I re-adjusted to normal life and applied for jobs. Over the course of my travels, I had decided that I didn’t really want to work for a corporate law firm. Instead, I wanted to practice some kind of public service law even though I was not sure exactly what kind of public service law. Unfortunately, now that I was back in the country I was also totally broke so I was thinking that I might have to do the corporate thing for a while just to get my financial house in order. Plattsburgh is in the far northern tip of upstate NY by the Canadian border but I stopped off in the state capital of Albany to have lunch with a lawyer friend (Kevin) before going the last 150 miles to my parent’s house. During lunch, I had a delicious turkey sandwich and learned from my friend that there was an opening at the corporate law firm where he worked. He was just an associate so he couldn’t offer me the position himself but he was fairly certain that with my stellar resume and a few recommendations from the Appeals Court judges we both used to work for, I could get the job without a doubt. He really wanted me to come work with him and he talked up the perks and possibilities of working as a corporate lawyer in the state capital. So that is what I was thinking about as I drove the last 150 miles of my 15,000 mile journey…

I really don’t want to be a corporate lawyer. I tried that already. I worked briefly for one of the biggest corporate law firms in New York City before accepting my two year appointment with the NY state court system. They loved me on Wall Street (or loved my legal brain) and wanted me to return but I hated it. Asshole lawyers full of bullshit working to help corporations ruin the world. The money was great but the atmosphere was poisonous to my soul. Working for a smaller corporate firm in Albany might be a little less toxic than working with those Wall Street psychopaths but probably not much… Same same but different. The whole point of taking a year off to travel was to find myself. If I go back to corporate law, what was the point of the whole journey? But what do I want to do? Public service law? Yeah, but what kind? Environmental? Civil Rights? Public defender? I don’t know. I guess I didn’t find myself because I don’t know what the hell I want to do and now I’m totally broke. I only have a few hundred dollars left in my savings account and I have student loans to pay. My parents will feed me and let me stay in my childhood bedroom if I want but that will drive me insane after a week or two. I’m gonna have to get a job fast, very fast. A corporate law firm in Albany is the logical, rational decision. I should follow up on Kevin’s lead and give his firm a call on Monday morning. Is it really my destiny to be a corporate lawyer in Albany, NY? Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right….

I was 40 minutes past Albany in between the last Saratoga exit and the first Glenn’s Falls exit on interstate 87 going north when I fell asleep at the wheel. I don’t actually remember falling asleep but I do remember waking up. The bumpy ground on the side of the highway startled me into consciousness. My eyes popped open and I found myself going about 60 miles an hour tilted sideways on the edge of a steep ditch or embankment. Without thinking, I turned the wheel to the left to get back on the highway but I must have turned the wheel too quickly. The truck flipped onto it’s side and then onto the roof and then on to the opposite side as it careened across to the other side of the highway and eventually slid to a standstill. Inside the truck, I was not wearing a seatbelt. As the vehicle began it’s 360 degree roll across the highway, I instinctively pulled my knees to my chest and tucked my head. All the windows of the vehicle shattered into a million pieces as I bounced around inside the cab like a basketball. When the truck finally slid to a stop on it’s side, I found myself on the floor of the passenger side with a pile of broken glass in the seat next to me. Somewhat incredibly, I did not seem to be seriously injured. I had a nasty raspberry on my ass and lower back from rubbing against the seat during my basketball bounce but I had no broken bones or open wounds. I managed to stand up by putting my feet on the passenger side door that was now on the ground and I climbed out through the smashed driver side window that was now the upside of the vehicle.

The Guesthouse Grapevine

Hummingbird continues…

How very strange to think about now… There was no internet at all when I went on my first ever backpacking adventure in 1992-93. My only communication with the homeland for the seven month period I traveled in Central and South America was through the many post cards I sent and occasional phone calls to my parents. I tried to stay current on international news by translating local newspapers and talking to other backpackers in guesthouses. But in many respects, the guesthouse grapevine seemed an unreliable source of information. The setting alone encouraged people to play fast and loose with the facts. Stories tended to repeat and vary and change from guesthouse to guesthouse and courtyard to courtyard. There was no official source of information to check, no Google to search it or Wikipedia to compare it to. There was only the authenticity of the speaker and the believability of the narrative. Was my young and innocent mind corrupted by the 1992 version of “fake news”? Or was my brainwashed consciousness cracked open by exposure to narratives outside the corporate news propaganda bubble?

When I first heard about the “Highway of Death,” I thought it was a bullshit story. I was in a guesthouse in Managua, Nicaragua in October of 1992. I was a naive and innocent first time traveler then who still believed in the holiness of the US constitution and the inherent goodness of “America.” I was aware of some of “America’s” crimes in Central America and was generally against US military actions overseas but tended to think the bad actions were the fault of certain bad actors or bad administrations (republicans). I certainly did not believe that the US government or the US nation as a whole was “imperialist or aggressive or militaristic.” Instead, I thought that the US was the world’s good guy; spreading democracy, freedom, development and progress to the rest of the world. But I met these two European anarchist dudes and they were not very nice. One was from Austria and the other was from France. They argued with each other about a wide range of subjects in the courtyard of the guesthouse. The only subject they agreed on was their fierce opposition to US militarism. I was the only “American” in the courtyard so they directed their anger at me. I was not really interested in defending militarism but I still felt like I had to defend “America” because “America” was a part of my “persona”. I was an “American.” They started with a rant about the US sponsored contra war right there in Nicaragua and moved on to a diatribe about Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. No it was not the “Vietnam War,” it was “The American War” against South East Asia. Then, they segwayed into Indonesia where “the Americans gave the go ahead,” for the massive slaughter of communists and socialists by mobs of coup supporters. Supposedly the CIA handed out lists of “communist names” to angry mobs and promised money for their murders. Then, in the African Congo, the CIA murdered the newly elected socialist prime minister and thereby started a long bloody civil war. Everywhere you go in the world there is a problem. And that problem is caused by the CIA or the US military… Yeah right sure guys, and the moon landings were fake and JFK was shot by Marilyn Monroe…

Somewhere during their dissertation on the crimes of America, they reached the very recent and still ongoing conflict with Iraq. According to their story, Kuwait was an asset of the United States. Oil wells in Kuwait, controlled by the US, were drilling at a slant underground to steal oil from Iraq. Iraq only invaded Kuwait to stop the US from stealing their oil. The US then used Iraq’s little invasion of Kuwait as a pretext to invade and occupy the whole region. The US military was at the beginning of a long military buildup in order to gain control of all the energy resources in the whole Middle East. They already had puppet regimes on half the peninsula and with the recent collapse of the protector state, the Soviet Union, a whole group of nominally independent states were now ripe for the picking as well. Iraq was first on the list but Lebanon, Syria, Libya and Iran were also supposedly targeted for conquest. The US military’s gruesome performance on the Highway of Death was a purposeful display of viciousness in order to scare the region into submission. The slaughter was ordered from the highest levels of the US government because the US was sending a clear and unequivocal message to the people in the Middle East… Supposedly, more than 50,000 retreating Iraqi conscripts were gunned down over a three day period as they tried to escape the war zone in Kuwait by fleeing along the highway that connected Kuwait City to Basra in Iraq. US warplanes shot up vehicles in order to cause a massive traffic jam and then started shooting the trapped and desperate men like they were fish in a barrel….

“No way,” I interrupted. “The United States military would never shoot at retreating soldiers. That’s not the way America operates. You guys are full of shit.”

“They weren’t even regular Iraqi army,” said the Austrian, “they were conscripts. Farm boys, shopkeepers, day laborers and students that Saddam force drafted into his military to fight his crazy battle. They certainly didn’t want to be there. At the first sign of battle, they dropped their weapons and fled. Some of them even raised white flags of surrender as they staggered helplessly down the Basra highway. But the US attack helicopters and jets didn’t care about any of that. They just opened fire and slaughtered. Most were shot in the back as they were running away. By all accounts, it was a merciless massacre.”

“I don’t believe a word you are saying,” I said defiantly, “slant drilling… yeah right. Farm boys with white flags shot in the back? Not a chance. That would be a war crime. It would be in all the newspapers. I read the New York Times regularly. If something like that happened it would have been on the front page. It would probably be in every newspaper in America. How come I never heard of it before? It can’t be true. You are making it up.”

“It’s true,” they insisted. “The Highway of Death story has been covered in many international publications. There is even a UN report. They want to bring war crimes charges but the US won’t acknowledge the court’s jurisdiction.”

“No way,” I shouted, “you guys are liars. America does not commit war crimes.” I pushed myself away from the table and stomped my way back to my room. I didn’t believe a word they said. How insulting. No wonder there are so many people who are anti-American when some people go around spreading bullshit stories like that….

It was about three weeks after my conversation with the anarchists in Managua that the malaria symptoms began to manifest. The vivid dreams/nightmares that tormented me for several years afterwards first began with that illness. At some point, I began to associate the dreams with the anti-malarial drug Lariam. But I don’t believe it ever occurred to me that the apocalyptic highway in my dream could be in any way related to the “highway of death” story from Iraq. Many years later, I made the connection because I was particularly fascinated by the relationship between “the highway of death”, the American imagination and the power of propaganda. I never did scholarly research on the subject but my anecdotal reality informed me that almost no Americans had ever even heard the story. I, myself, had only heard of it while traveling in Central and South America. For a couple of years after I got back I used to talk about it and ask people about it a lot. Talking about it while drunk always made me sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist. There was almost no mention of it at all in the corporate media so I sometimes wondered if maybe I dreamed the whole thing up. Every once in a while I’d see an obscure reference to “the incident” in a foreign policy story of a “radical publication” and I would confirm that the story was not a complete delusion. And when the Internet became available it was possible to confirm that it was, indeed, a true event. Or, at least, it was a story based on a true event. The anarchists in Managua may have been the first people to tell me about it. But many more travelers told me a similar story later on; including my Canadian friends in Costa Rica…