Sightseeing

Road signs

Travelling is a conflict in our household. John is an adventure traveler. He wants to go the places that are unexplored—for instance, he’d love to discover another Inca Village in the Andes. This obsession started when his parents took him to Afghanistan when he was 10-years old. So recently he endearingly took his mother on a “vacation” to Iraq. She indeed thought of it as a vacation, and is so brave you wouldn’t believe it. They rode around on a tour bus with some nervous Americans, and when someone would yell “hit the deck” upon hitting a pothole, everyone did. The hotels were encircled with 15-foot cement walls, and it seemed that few Iraqis had figured out, with Saddam Hussein gone, they could sell alcohol and make a bundle. It was nearly impossible to get a cocktail. John was there for the caves (I was thinking Bin Laden), and the locals and the bullet holes. The locals welcomed him like a king, and thanked him personally for outing Saddam Hussein. John took photos of them and they loved him for it. He takes incredible photos. Everything in Iraq was horribly dusty and the landscape not attractive, but he made it look interesting.

Truth be known, I am more of a reluctant traveler. Sure I backpacked by myself around Europe after college, before starting my green-eye-shaded career job, where my enslavers at Arthur Andersen had me crunching numbers 24/7. But I was not crazy about driving into Bosnia—John had us lingering to photograph bullet holes until our guide ditched us—nor did I enjoy encountering seven sharks on my first scuba dive. Off-piste skiing is not enough for John—he wants the helicopter, ice camping (!), bears popping their heads in our tents so he can use the elephant air horn, and outhouses. I prefer flush toilets when I can get them, which in the world of adventure travel has the stigma of an epidural when you could be experiencing natural childbirth. Danger seems to follow us. Or is it that we (he) attracts it?