The Wonder Trail Read online

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Steve Hely

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  DUTTON—EST. 1852 (Stylized) and DUTTON are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Hely, Steve.

  Title: The wonder trail : true stories from Los Angeles to the end of the

  world / Steve Hely.

  Description: New York, New York : Dutton, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015038442| ISBN 9780525955016 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698404236 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Hely, Steve—Travel—Central America. | Hely,

  Steve—Travel—South America. | Central America—Description and travel. |

  South America—Description and travel. | Central America—Social life and

  customs. | South America—Social life and customs. | Curiosities and

  wonders—Central America. | Curiosities and wonders—South America. |

  BISAC: TRAVEL / South America / General. | TRAVEL / Essays & Travelogues.

  | HUMOR / Form / Essays.

  Classification: LCC F1433.2 .H45 2016 | DDC 917.2804—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038442

  All photos and maps courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.

  Drawing on page 90 by Frederick Catherwood.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  All names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

  Version_1

  To tell the tale of the journey is to go on it a second time.

  —PONCE DE LEÓN

  Oh, there’s the whole universe.

  When I closed my eyes, I could see it. Just beyond the parades of dancing animals and dinosaurs.

  The whole everything of the cosmos. Expanding out in every direction. Beyond the stars, through the galaxies, to the bright edge of everything, and infinity. In, too, inside my brain and my body, down to my very molecules, until they became galaxies of particles, infinities of their own.

  I did know where I was, don’t get me wrong. Like if you’d asked me, I could’ve told you I was lying on my back on the wood floor of the shaman’s house, under a mosquito net, about an hour’s walk from that village, San something, on the Rio Amazonas. Two hours’ boat ride or so, plus an hour walk, from Iquitos, Peru. So if there was an emergency, I could . . . I dunno, walk two or three miles, until I got service, and text . . .

  Eh, forget emergencies. I felt better and safer than I had in a long time. Geography, where I was, that all seemed like a meaningless detail right now, when, if I could just keep my eyes closed, the whole meaning of everything would be revealed. Any question I ever had could be answered. Cosmic harmony would wash over me and swallow me like an ocean.

  If I could just remember: What was I looking for, again?

  What Kind of Book Is This?

  This is the story of a trip, from Los Angeles to Patagonia. True tales and stories and adventures collected by a traveler. As long as there’ve been books, this has been a kind of book.

  Who Should Read This Book?

  Anyone taking a trip

  People who would like to take a trip but can’t, because they’re stuck, like at work or in a waiting room someplace or at home with their kids, but wish they could take a trip

  Anyone who can happily remember taking a trip

  Or anyone who hates taking trips. They can read it, laugh at the discomfort of the traveler, and experience the best parts of a trip without ever even getting up.

  So: People taking trips, people who aren’t taking trips, people who like trips, and people who don’t like trips should all enjoy this book.

  Plus:

  On this trip, I went through Mexico, Central America, and the western half of South America. So this book should also appeal to:

  People who don’t know much about the places south of the United States but are curious

  People who know a lot about that part of the world should also read this book, so they can scoff at my many naive impressions and misunderstandings.

  So: People who do and do not know a lot about Latin America should also read this book.

  Plus, just general fans of books.

  Or people who are new to books—why not start with this one?

  Also: Young Adults

  Young adults read lots of books, I’m told. Teens and preteens. This could be a good one for them. I write at a level suitable for a clever ten-year-old.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  What Kind of Book Is This?

  Who Should Read This Book?

  The Beginning / Los Angeles

  1 A Travel Book

  2 How I Came to Write This Book

  3 Los Angeles, I’m Yours

  4 Don’t Wake Up LA!

  5 Where I Was From

  6 So Why Was I Restless?

  7 The Wonder Trail

  8 Possible Alternate Title for This Book

  9 So:

  Mexico

  10 Spanish Level: De Gravedad

  11 The Bad North of Mexico

  12 If You Have One Hour in Mexico City:

  13 The First White People in Mexico / The First Europeans in Mexico

  14 Cortés the Killer

  15 Montezuma of the Mexicans

  16 The Fall of Tenochtitlán

  17 Lost on La Condesa’s Racetrack

  18 Recommended Walk

  19 Under the Oaxacan Sun

  20 Up in the Hills of Chiapas (with Marco of Croozy Scooters)

  21 Gringolandia

  22 Karst

  23 Idiots and Heroes

  24 Night Ride

  25 Waterfalls to Palenque

  26 Ancient Writing of Central America

  27 Guatemala Pam in the Lacandon Jungle

  28 The Murals at Bonampak

  Central America—Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama

  29 Catherwood & Stephens

  30 Disasters of Guatemala

  31 Wonders of Guatemala

  32 Over El Salvador

  33 Surf Pioneers

  34 The Excellence of Surfing

  35 Me and Kelly Slater on the Gulf of Fonseca

  36 Pupusas

  37 To the Sunny Isle of Meanguera

  38 Bizarre Mural at the Hotel Gran Francia

  39 Walker, Nicaraguan Range
r

  40 The Perfect Cup of Coffee

  41 Wait a Second

  42 A Nicaraguan Canal

  43 Costa Rica: These Guys Are Awesome

  44 Panama: Cut That Thing!

  45 Kidnapping

  46 How Did They Dig the Panama Canal?

  47 The World’s Biggest Bathtub

  48 Fish the Panama Canal

  49 Thought That Just Occurred to Me

  50 The Ruins of Old Panama

  51 Wallet Stolen in Casco Viejo

  Around the Darién Gap and Colombia

  52 On the Beach in Guna Yala

  53 The Darién Gap

  54 Pirates of the Caribbean

  55 Australians Abroad

  56 The Dread Ship Jacqueline

  57 Islands in the Stream and the Drug Canoe

  58 The A-Team

  59 Port of Call: Cartagena

  60 One Last Word About the A-Team

  61 Sick Times in Medellín

  62 Cocaine

  63 Center of Innovation (and Partying)

  64 A Story of a Kidnapping

  65 Good Friday in Popayán

  66 Saturday Night at El Sotareño

  67 Easter in Popayán

  The Amazon and Peru

  68 Amazonia

  69 Downriver

  70 Banisteriopsis caapi and Her Amazing Friends

  71 The Shaman’s House

  72 Three Commandments of a Brand-New Religion

  73 Best Qualities of My Good Friend Alan Tang:

  74 Oh! One More Quality

  75 In the Inca Capital

  76 The Rise and Fall of the Inca in Four Pages

  77 Saqsaywaman with San Pedro and Alan Tang

  78 How to Get to Machu Picchu

  79 What Is Machu Picchu?

  80 What to Do at Machu Picchu

  The Galápagos and Bolivia

  81 Away Team Mission to the Galápagos

  82 Memory of a Nerdy Childhood

  83 Good Company

  84 Second-Best Thing: Snorkeling

  85 Witness to a Heroic Deed

  86 “Going to Town”

  87 Oompa-Loompa Hunting

  88 How to Survive Prison in or Become President of Bolivia

  89 Lake Titicaca

  90 A Hippie Theory

  91 Simón Bolívar

  Chile and Patagonia

  92 Chile: The Longest, Skinniest Country

  93 Austenland (2013, PG-13)

  94 ATVs, Hot Dogs, and Relationships in the Atacama

  95 Aliens of the Atacama

  96 Che Guevara

  97 The Museum of Memory

  98 The Funniest Guy in Chile

  99 Sandwiches of Chile

  100 In Patagonia

  101 Bruce Chatwin

  102 The Bottom

  Photos

  (Free Offer for a Bonus E-Book)

  Appendix: Female Travel Writers

  Guides (Human)

  About the Author

  The Beginning / Los Angeles

  A Travel Book

  There were stories like this way before there were books.

  I’ll bet you the cave paintings they find in France, all those bison and horses running around, those were illustrations for tales of trips. Maybe they also served as base camp for kinds of mental or spiritual trips, shamanic trips, practice trips.

  What we call humans climbed out of the trees, two million years ago let’s say, in eastern Africa. We started walking and we haven’t stopped. We filled up the Earth, every crevice and corner. Now we’re poking about looking for new Earths.

  Campfire stories aren’t always about trips, it’s true—sometimes they’re about Hook-Hand Man, for instance—but then again you’re already camping. You’re reenacting the major activity of human history: walking the Earth.

  For as long as there have been books, there have been books about trips. In the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, King Gilgamesh and his grass-eating, wild-haired buddy Enkidu are off to the Cedar Forest by tablet 4.

  In fairness, Gilgamesh and Enkidu aren’t just going on vacation—they’re going to kill the monstrous giant Humbaba because it will make them even more famous. Gilgamesh is already famous—back in tablet 1, it’s established that he’s had sex with every single hot woman in Uruk, to the point that it’s a problem. But he feels called to go on an adventure.

  Maybe the first person to take a trip just to write about it was Herodotus, who lived in Greece, or maybe western Turkey, in the fifth century BC. He went across the Mediterranean to have a look at Egypt.

  Herodotus showed the way to write this kind of book: Put in anything interesting you come across. He believed anything anybody told him, like for example that in Central Asia, there are enormous ants that dig up gold. This might sound ridiculous, but it may even be half-true. The pro-Herodotus historians will inform you that the Brogpa people of Ladakh, in far northern India, sometimes collected gold dust from burrows dug by Himalayan marmots. It doesn’t matter. Herodotus’s point was that the world was interesting, and if you had a look at it, and told people what you saw and heard, they’d be interested, too.

  He was right. The story goes that Herodotus got back to Greece with his pages and went immediately to the Olympic Games, where he read his work out loud in an arena and was celebrated by the crowd with thunderous applause.

  That’s what later Greek writer Lucian claimed, anyway. Lucian might’ve been joking, come to think of it, or making fun of Herodotus in some weird, jealous way. You can feel the professional envy dripping off Lucian: “There was no man who had not heard his name . . . he had only to appear, and fingers were pointing at him.”

  Lucian was so pissed, in fact, that he wrote True History. As best as I can tell, True History was meant to be a wicked, brutal parody of Herodotus’s travel stories. Lucian goes on and on about how when he was traveling, he saw a river of wine and a cheese island, and he visited the morning star where dog-faced men fight each other on flying acorns.

  I won’t make anything up, though. Everything I put in this book is true. I saw it or heard it or experienced it myself, or else it’s something I learned that I looked into and I believe to be true.

  There’s no need to make up experiences. Why do that extra work of imagining? If you just go out into the world far enough, you’ll find plenty that’s crazy and worth putting down.

  Ancient China was full of travel tales. In the 1600s, Xu Xiake went all over China, along the way earning extra money from Buddhist abbots who would pay him to gather and write the history of local monasteries. There’s enough odd and exaggerated stuff in Chinese travel literature to fuel a whole industry of people who believe ancient Chinese sailors were hanging out in San Francisco Bay by the 1400s.

  Then there was Rustichello da Pisa, who’d had some success writing a romance about King Arthur before he got thrown into a dungeon in Genoa around the year 1284. His cellmate was a guy named Marco Polo, who, it turned out, had traveled farther than anyone else alive, all the way to the court of Kublai Khan in what’s now Beijing.

  Or had he? Some scholars suspect he made a lot of it up. But in any case, Rustichello saw a chance to make a quick buck ghostwriting, and the result is that Europe heard about China.

  Soon the great age of exploring began. In 1492, Columbus discovered something. It was unclear what, but the desperate and adventurous went to find out. Alcoholic bastard sons of minor nobles in Spain went to South America, lucked into lopsided victories over the locals, and made themselves lords of spectacularly wealthy kingdoms. Others got lost in the jungle and went insane. Magellan set off around the world on a leaky wooden boat that he had barely any idea how to navigate. He got himself speared to death in the Philippines by natives who guessed, correctly
, that he was up to no good, but the survivors of his expedition became the first people to circumnavigate the Earth.

  From there traveling and travel writing were unstoppable. People couldn’t get enough. The English went particularly nuts with exploring, maybe because they were from a cold, dreary island where nothing fun ever happened, and meanwhile the first English captains to reach Tahiti were writing stupefied entries in their logbooks about what Tahitian women had just taught them about blow jobs.

  The American scholar Paul Fussell wrote a whole book, Abroad, about this history of English travel writing, about sensitive aristocrats and shell-shocked survivors of World War I who set out for the tropics, for the desert, for the source of the river Oxus, and for the peaks of the Himalayas. There were so many English writers taking trips that they’d run into each other. Eric Newby was trekking around Afghanistan writing A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush when he ran into the legendary explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who was living with a local tribe and who told Newby the route he was taking was for pussies.

  Travel books were a massive form of entertainment in the nineteenth century. Robert Louis Stevenson commissioned one of the world’s first sleeping bags so he could write his bestseller Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. Herman Melville got famous writing about his real-life adventures with cannibals in the Marquesas, and then went broke when he switched to fiction. The freelance reporter Henry Stanley went to Africa to find lost do-gooder doctor David Livingstone. All along the way back, he got chiefs to sign contracts they didn’t understand, which he then sold to the king of Belgium, who used them to claim the entire Congo.

  For most of human history it was a lot easier for men to chuck whatever they were doing and wander off somewhere. But the stories of women who did it are incredible. There’s an old theater near my house in Los Angeles where a packed audience heard a speech from Amelia Earhart, who soon thereafter took off on a flight around the world she never came back from.

  Lately, women have been dominating the field, perhaps because they’ve realized the emotional journey is more important than the physical one. Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed wrote massive bestsellers that are on the surface about geographical trips but are really about journeys of growth and restoration.