Introduction

Bruce Chatwin’s iconic 1977 book In Patagonia tells the story of his childhood fascination with a piece of hairy, leathery skin in his grandmother’s china cabinet.  The relic was a scrap of skin from a mylodon, or giant sloth, found on a glacier in South America and brought from South America by her cousin, a merchant ship captain.  Years later, Chatwin had retraced the voyage of his grandmother’s cousin to Ultima Espiranza Sound, or Last Hope Sound, an eerily-named inlet deep in the Chilean fiords, and had visited what was known as the Mylodon Cave, where the creatures were believed to have lived.  The photo from his book remained etched in my mind (left) and when I was finally able to take my own photo, one snowy day in May 1986 at the deserted, tourist-free cave, (below) it was a satisfying closure to a long-held desire.

Chatwin’s journey to the cave formed the heart of his book and its evocative descriptions of his travels in Patagonia.  I saw something of my own feelings in Chatwin’s imagination and inherent longing to visit places of remoteness and history, before both are lost.  However, I lacked the time to explore to the depth he had done a decade before I began my own wanderings in South America.  Nevertheless, I had my own wanderlust, and ultimately satisfied myself that the Mylodon Cave was a suitable holy grail for such an adventure. 

Long, long ago, growing up as a child in New Zealand in the late fifties and early sixties, I was entranced by two things which probably appeared inconsequential at the time.  The first was a series of postcards on the mantlepiece at the home of my aunt and uncle, sent to them by my cousins who were travelling in Europe.  My cousins had journeyed there by boat, and the postcards and letters that arrived via snail mail told stories of far-off adventures.  In those days, in sending a letter around the world, you labelled the envelope “Air Mail”, stuck an air mail sticker on the corner opposite the stamp, used lightweight paper and paid a premium for the service.

The other set of images that were sucked into my young and obviously impressionable mind were the photos on a set of table mats, showing the sights of London – St Pauls, Tower Bridge, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Buckingham Palace, and so on.  I can see those placemats clearly to this day.  Staring at these while waiting for the Sunday dinner to be served evidently had a greater impact by osmosis than might have been expected, and it stirred some reclusive travel gene deep inside.  This was old school stuff – the absorption of the love of travel, the desire to explore exotic places, to venture to the dark corners of the world – sucked in through books, innocuous pictures and tails from older cousins who had made the slow trek to Europe on an ocean liner, calling in at exciting places that were made more so by imagined embellishments in my mind.

I have concluded that the need to travel is etched in my psyche, spurred by the great deeds of the wilderness explorers on the high Central Asian plateau, at the time of the Great Game in the dying days of the British Empire.  Some small portion of my blood appears to be infected by that of the the great explorers of the Victorian Age.  Lost pyramids in the Sudan, the great palaces of Uzbekistan, forgotten cities of the Taklamakan Desert and ancient tombs in the trackless sands of Saudi Arabia have all captured my imagination and I have managed to experience most of them - though not all before the Enlightened Google Age.  Now, at least, I can watch the last of the present day explorers on television, as they go forth with their 4x4’s, their drones, film crews and GPS, and I can vicariously recollect at least some of the hardships of jungle, mountain and desert, and for that I am forever grateful. 

This narrative is not intended as an adventurous search for some childhood Shangi-La.  Rather, the intention is to provide a personal record of some of my travels in the world, specifically as it was in the last quarter of the twentieth century, before the advent of the internet, email, and mobile phones.  While basic mobile phones were around in the late nineties, the huge array of apps and the vast signal coverage that come with smart phones did not exist before the current millennium.  Other than a long-distance landline telephone call (impossible outside of towns or large population centres), quick communication with friends and family was at the time limited to snail mail.  The absence of the internet meant global news was often obtained by travellers through weeks-old Time and Newsweek purchased in a fancy hotel that had English-speaking facilities.  GPS had not been invented.  Finding where you were located was done from old-fashioned fold-out maps.  Google Translate was decades off, and a small pocket Berlitz dictionary had to suffice, along with good old sign language. 

Looking back from this age of instant information, travellers of that generation marvel at how we coped ‘back in the day’.  Unfortunately, this has coloured some such travellers’ opinions of Google Generations (cartoon above).

We see so many instances of colourful landscapes and exciting events with a foreground of raised mobile phones snapping the scene, and their owners’ eyes watching through the small screen.  Back in 20^th century our ‘essential gadgets’ – outside of a 35mm camera that required manual loading and carrying of film – were guide books, a Swiss Army knife, and the best first aid kit we could manage.

The narratives that follow took place in the days before the year 2000, when problems had to be solved without recourse to Google, and without the worry as to where next to charge your phone, whether there would be free wi-fi, and whether you had the right adapter/plug.

Somehow, I made it through, though in that more immediate and perhaps dangerous world, many likely did not.  A little good fortune never goes amiss.

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