From Namibia to Norway
By Wayne Roe
My wife, Debbie, and I have been dragging our kids on global trips and adventures since our youngest daughter was 5 (she is now 21). We concentrated on the U.S. and Europe for a decade or so until we discovered the United Airlines around-the-world desk that lets us stop in multiple countries for one fixed price. This was a staple of our summers for many years. Our three children—Alex, Katie and Jennifer—enjoyed our family sojourns but, as they got older, they expressed a desire to visit remote destinations that exposed them to people, wildlife and environments off the beaten path for most U.S. tourists.
In 2005, we celebrated the graduations of Katie (college) and Jenny (high school) by taking a three-week “vertical journey,” from the Namibian desert in southern Africa to the Arctic Circle in northern Norway. Our friends thought we were crazy, but this trip opened our eyes to the magic of the most remote corners of Africa, while also allowing me to show my wife and kids a bit about life in the Arctic. The trip also marked an important jumping off point in both of our daughters’ lives: Upon our return, Jenny moved to Connecticut and Katie to San Francisco.
Namibia is a small country that sits in southwestern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean (to the west) and Botswana and South Africa (to the east). A 36-hour trip from Bethesda, Namibia is a sparsely populated country with wonderful people, vast deserts, mountains and a “Skeleton Coast” littered with shipwrecks, whalebones and sand dunes.
Few people I know can tell you anything about Namibia, but virtually everyone has seen a movie or advertisement featuring the haunting red sand dunes that are the signature of the Namib Desert. They were a magnet for us. We had previously walked across Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, relished our time on safari in Botswana and witnessed the great migration of wildebeests and zebra in the Masai Mara in Kenya. So the prospect of climbing 1,000 feet up a pristine, blood-red sand dune was alluring.
If you want to navigate Namibia in a reasonable amount of time (days vs. weeks) you must fly in small planes. The roads are few and the going rough. By Piper, you can take in the vastness of the desert, the details of the coast and unexpected sights, such as millions of flamingos flying in formation over the wetlands. I admit that I don’t relish three hours in a small plane. But when Debbie, Katie, Jenny and I flew over spectacular dune number 42, the national symbol of Namibia, to a desert landing at sunset in the Sossusvlei region, I knew that we had picked a great place to start the journey.
We spent the night in a remote ecolodge an hour’s drive from our destination the next morning: a sea of majestic dunes formed by a perfect combination of powdery sand, desert dryness and prevailing ocean winds. The air was so clear and the sky so compelling that we moved en masse to the roof of our cabana and slept under the stars. Before dawn, we were on our way by Land Rover to climb Big Daddy, possibly the world’s tallest dune at more than 1,100 feet. At sunrise, in the middle of nowhere and with no other living thing in sight, our driver, John, dropped us off at the foot of the dune. He told us to start climbing and that he would meet us on the other side in an hour or two.
We were game for the challenge, but immediately learned that scaling such a massive sand pile is much like bushwhacking up a Rocky Mountain bowl covered by a foot of fresh powder. Taking one step forward and sliding a half step back in the soft sand, we climbed silently along one of the dune’s ridges, drinking constantly and resting often. Halfway up, the ridge got very steep on both sides, and we felt like we were going to fall off. The vertigo was unnerving, especially for Jenny, who was terrified but still climbed. There was no going back, so we joked and chatted to calm our nerves and soon found ourselves at the top! We had climbed the dune in 45 minutes.
From the top, we viewed a sea of large and small dunes (some more than 30 miles away) and a vast desert plain filled with 1,000-year-old, 30-foot-tall ironwood tree trunks sticking out of the sand like petrified match sticks (the desert was once an ocean bottom). Turns out they filmed JLo’s movie, The Cell, at the bottom of Big Daddy among the ironwood tree trunks. Peeking over the ridge, we saw John sprinting up the dune from the other side. John told us that local Namibian boys routinely compete for the fastest time bottom to top, and that he was the record holder—an amazing 16 minutes. The best part came next. We all jumped off the ridgeline and bounded down Big Daddy, out of control, but cushioned by the finest sand imaginable. In about two minutes, we were at the foot of the dune—filthy and thirsty. We told Jenny that climbing Big Daddy was like transitioning from high school to college—daunting, frightening and exhilarating.
We spent 10 more days crisscrossing Namibia by plane, vehicle and foot. We saw some of the world’s largest crocodiles (in excess of 20 feet) on a river along the Namibia and Angola border. We tracked Namibia’s national animal, the oryx (a beautiful antelope with long horns), across miles of desert. And we spent several hours in a small village of the nomadic Himba people, learning about their culture and customs. The women paint themselves with red ocher and butter for beauty and to keep the flies off. They are almost Stone Age folks with virtually no signs among them of the modern world.
A Shipboard Safari
To get to the Norwegian arctic, we flew from Namibia to Switzerland to Oslo, and then 1,200 miles north to Longyearben. Our total travel time was about 36 hours. Longyearbyen, a coal mining center inside the Arctic Circle, is located on Spitsbergen, the main island of the Svalbard archipelago. We were there to cruise the pack ice in a small National Geographic ship, visit glaciers, hike the tundra and observe arctic wildlife up close. The adjustment from the spectacular African landscapes of Namibia to 24-hour arctic sunlight in a world of perpetual ice didn’t take long, mostly because the snow and cold—and the anticipation of a shipboard safari—were so electri-fying.
The vessel, with 80 passengers and National Geographic naturalists and photographers, was on a 24/7 wildlife watch. We cruised the ice-packed fjords knowing that a polar bear or two, or more, might be behind the next floe. Katie, always fascinated by the animal kingdom, spent countless hours on deck searching for wildlife. Early in the voyage, she encountered Sven, another star-struck adventurer, and the two were inseparable, marking another jumping off point on the journey.
(Sven, who is half Danish and half English, went home to England after the trip, quit his job and flew to the U.S. to be with Katie. The two of them traveled around the world for four months—across the U.S., then to Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and Kenya—and now live together in San Francisco.)
The second “night” in Norway, we were woken at 2 a.m. The ship had pulled within 60 or 70 feet of a pack of eight massive polar bears feasting on a beluga whale that had been pulled onto the ice. The bears’ white fur was blood red, and they were clearly interested in adding the ship’s passengers to the menu, as several of the animals walked up to the vessel, sniffed the air and put their bloody paws on the hull. Over the course of a week, we saw many more bears, but none so spectacular.
The ship continued traveling north until the sea ice was too thick to break through. We got within a couple hundred miles of the North Pole. From the ship, we visited old whaling villages, hiked miles through the arctic tundra (with armed escorts of course), and motored close to glaciers and ice floes, once getting caught in a white-out during a sudden snow squall. At one point, the captain sighted a large walrus colony swimming across a fjord. We launched the ships’ Zodiacs (inflatable boats) and found ourselves within feet of massive walrus tusks. These arctic walruses can be nearly 12 feet long and weigh a ton and a half. Back on board, we learned that when they are molting—which they were at the time—the walruses are very aggressive and have been known to attack small inflatables. Debbie and Jenny were glad they didn’t know that before we set out.
Our trip ended all too soon. We reckoned that traveling vertically had been a good idea because things tend to be remote and more exotic nearer the top and bottom of the world. We vowed to start our next such journey even farther south in Antarctica. Sven said he was game. The only undecided issue is where would we go from there? Stay tuned.
Wayne Roe lives in Bethesda.
Long and Winding Road
By Cindy Peña
Luis at Tres Amigos, a car rental company in Creel, Mexico, handed my husband, Harry, the keys and assured us the little pickup truck would get us down to Batopilas and back…safely. Luis wasn’t worried about the truck. But he did voice some concern about our planned drive on the treacherous, winding road to the tiny, old mining town at the bottom of Batopilas Canyon. Our excursion to Batopilas was a spontaneous side trip during our tour of Mexico’s Sierra Madres. We started our one-week vacation in the city of Chihuahua, where we picked up the well-known Chihuahua al Pacifico train, fondly known as “El Chepe,” for a scenic ride through Copper Canyon. Our son Harrison, who was 11, and our twins, Cristina and Sofia, then 9, were surprised how much they liked the ride as it passed gorges, canyons and villages. We got off the train in Posada Barrancas for a few days of sightseeing. We relished hiking and the breathtaking views of the orange and red sunsets, hearing our echoes in the deep, vast canyons, watching the Tarahumara Indians make baskets and even learning the hard way that when you fall off a horse, you really do have to get back on.
On our way back to Chihuahua, we got off the train in Creel to take the highly recommended trip to Batopilas. As an excursion, it’s not nearly as well-known as the ruins near Cancun, but our friend, Sharon Parina of Chevy Chase, visited Batopilas years ago and insisted we take the trip as well. A tight schedule gave us only 24 hours to make this detour, but we decided to go for it.
Quickly, we learned that the drive into Batopilas Canyon is where the adventure begins. The canyon is a mile deep but the road to Batopilas is about 80 miles and, halfway down, it becomes a narrow dirt path, hugging the sides of steep canyon walls. The road snakes, and hairpin turns make it impossible to see what’s around the next curve. In places, it’s impossible to pass oncoming cars, unless one of the two vehicles backs up to a spot where the road is wide enough. 
Early on, we stopped to take pictures of a boulder painted with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the revered patron of Latin America. The painting was stunning, and we blissfully thought the image was a welcome or blessing to those traveling by. Then we came across a second and a third depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe drawn on the canyon wall. Like the flowered memorials placed on American roads and highways, we learned these paintings are memorials to those who hadn’t survived the trip to or from Batopilas. We stopped counting the memorials and taking pictures, still facing hours of painfully slow, white-knuckle driving.
Though you can’t see oncoming vehicles around the blind curves, you can beep your horn in warning. Still, I was a wreck. Harry, however, was unfazed, the girls in the back seat were equally unconcerned, and I’m not sure Harrison ever took his eyes off his Game Boy.
We started our trip late in the afternoon, so we spent several hours driving in darkness. Finally, eight hours later, a bridge took us over the Batopilas River and into town just before midnight. Back in Creel, Luis had alerted the innkeeper at Real de Minas that we would arrive eventually, and she was waiting for us.
Batopilas was established in the early 1700s after Spaniards uncovered one of the canyon’s secrets: silver. The town soon became home to wealthy mine owners and their workers. Because of its economic importance, Batopilas was the second place in Mexico, after Mexico City, to be wired for electricity.
As I was brushing my teeth that night, it dawned on me that everything nearby—the mirror, the working toilet, shower curtain and hotel soap—had arrived via the same unpaved, uneven, one-lane road we had just negotiated. I thought it awesome that a town so difficult and dangerous to reach could exist and thrive.
Morning was magical. Beautiful bougainvilleas adorned the courtyard of our yellow and blue adobe inn. From the second floor balcony, we could see the Batopilas River glistening in the sun, and the tops of tin roof houses scattered among papaya, mango and palm trees.
We stepped outside the hotel and took in Batopilas, a place that doesn’t seem to care about catching up with time. There’s a town plaza and whitewashed adobe buildings that stand out against the clear blue sky. Small houses brightly trimmed in reds, orange, yellow and blue adorn the narrow, cobblestone street.
The silver mines have long been depleted, but some 800 people still call Batopilas home—and they welcome tourists.
Breakfast was at Carolina’s, a restaurant inside Carolina’s home. There were eggs from homegrown chickens, homemade tortillas, fresh fruit salad and Coca-Cola in bottles.
After breakfast we traveled 4 miles along the Batopilas River to the The Lost Cathedral de Satevo, an old Jesuit mission. It’s believed the mission was used when the canyon was filled with silver mines and workers. Any papers regarding who built it and when have been lost. Today, the old adobe church that’s large enough to seat a few hundred people is more of a destination for tourists than a place for worship. On the way back, no fewer than a dozen Tarahumara hitchhikers gratefully jumped into the back of the pickup for a ride into town. Tourists provide their only source of motorized transportation.
In town, we met an American woman who lives there and runs a small jewelry store. Like the Spaniards hundreds of years before her, she also discovered the secrets of Batopilas. For her, they were the peace and beauty of the quiet canyon.
Fewer than 12 hours after we arrived, just as we were appreciating the scenery, the architecture and the people—still amazed that the town even existed—we had to begin our trip up the canyon rim to Creel. Leaving Batopilas behind, we had no choice but to catch up with time, take the train to Chihuahua and get back home.
Cindy Peña, a former TV news reporter, lives in Chevy Chase and is now director of public relations at a brand-building agency in Georgetown.
Road Trips
By Glenn Orlin
My friend Bob Simpson and I are on quests. Bob’s is to drive every U.S. route, not including interstates, from beginning to end (192 routes encompassing about 155,000 miles) and to explore all 391 national parks. Mine is to watch baseball in every major and minor league ballpark in the U.S. and Canada. Nearly every summer for two decades, he and I have fashioned road trips to reach our goals.
We’ve made a lot of progress. To date, Bob, who lives in Rockville, has visited 35 percent of the parks and driven 48 percent of the U.S. routes from start to finish. A Bethesdan, I have attended games in 96 percent of the ballparks.
Bob’s interest in driving the length of every U.S. route started in 1976, after he graduated from the University of Virginia and began his first job in Dothan, Ala. Whether it was the influence of books such as Travels With Charley and Blue Highways, TV shows like Charles Kuralt’s, On the Road, or just the fact that there were no interstates in Dothan, he started taking trips along the older U.S. routes. On his first such summer trip, he followed U.S. 431 from Dothan to Owensboro, Ky.
My baseball quest started in 1985, when friends and I drove to see the Philadelphia Phillies at Veterans Stadium, my first major league game since high school. I resolved on the spot to see a game in every major league park. After attending a Hagerstown Suns game, I decided to see a game in every minor league park as well. By September 2004, I had met my goal, attending games in 253 parks. So I set a new goal: to go back to all those towns with new venues since my first visit to see games and to go to towns with new minor league teams. To date, I’ve seen games in over 300 parks and have only 14 to go.
Our quests are governed by many rules. Along every U.S. route, for example, Bob must photograph the start and end points, each crossing of a state line, historical markers and roadside attractions (e.g., the “World’s Largest Pecan” in Seguin, Texas,) and every place of interest noted by the AAA TourBook. He must take the time to explore fully what each park has to offer, with a minimum 90-minute stay at even the smallest parks.
At ballparks, I have to buy a home team cap, sample the fare, collect souvenir cups, buy a program and keep score until the bitter end—including sticking it out during extra innings and rain delays. We also try to avoid chain restaurants, eating instead at locally-owned establishments.
We usually plan the trips based on the ballparks I want to see. Bob then looks for a U.S. route that we can travel, and for other attractions. We spend most of our days driving. At night, we usually go to games.
In May, Bob and I took our 17th trip, an 11-day, 5,000-plus mile journey to Albuquerque, N.M., and back. Bob drove the length of U.S. 412 from Columbia, Tenn., through northern Arkansas and the Oklahoma panhandle to Stringer, N.M. We took a more circuitous route back, seeing games in seven ballparks and visiting four national parks. Bob and I have had many highlights on our trips, and more than a few lowlights. Here are some examples of both:
CLEARWATER, FLA., May 7, 1993. It’s “Melons Replica Hat Night” at Jack Russell Stadium. Melons is a local knockoff of Hooters (its motto: “The Best Melons in Town”) and the ball girls normally stationed down the baselines are replaced this night with two bikini-clad Melon Girls. The mostly male, Friday night crowd is clustered near first base and third base, the best positions from which to appreciate the sight of a Melon Girl retrieving a foul ball.
Soon after the start of the game between the Vero Beach Dodgers and the Clearwater Phillies, security appears in the form of a sculpted Clearwater cop. The first base Melon Girl begins a flirtatious conversation that distracts the cop from his duties and the Melon Girl from hers.
Disaster strikes in the bottom of the third inning, when the first base Melon Girl turns away from the cop long enough to see a ball rolling toward her. She picks it up and tosses it to an umpire. The ball, of course, is in play, and all hell breaks loose. Order is restored after five minutes, and the umpire crew chief ejects both Melon Girls from the field. They leave to a chorus of boos—not directed at the Melon Girls, but at the ump for banishing them.
GREAT FALLS, MONT., Aug. 15, 1993. We’re en route from Billings to Great Falls, a leisurely daylong drive, and are planning to attend a game that night. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon and we’re in a remote antiques shop. I can overhear a radio broadcast of a Dodgers game in process, and I’m thinking how remarkable it is that the Los Angeles Dodgers radio network would have an affiliate in central Montana. Then it strikes me—it’s the Great Falls Dodgers who are playing! What happened to the night game?
This is a disaster because my quest requires me to attend a game in every ballpark—just going to the park is not nearly enough—and when will I ever get back to Montana? We run to the car and start barreling down the mountain toward Great Falls, which is a good 2½ hours away. We keep track of the game on the radio and, miraculously, it’s tied after nine innings. We arrive in the 12th.
The problem now is how to get the play-by-play for my scorecard (another quest requirement). We sit next to an elderly gentleman who is keeping score. I explain my plight, asking if I can transcribe his scribbling onto my card, but he simply hands me his score card and says I can have it. He keeps score to take his mind off his wife’s death that past winter. In fact, he bought two season tickets again, just as he did over the decades of his marriage. Her seat is vacant.
FORT CAROLINE NATIONAL MEMORIAL, FLA., Aug. 14, 1994. Located in Jacksonville on the site of what is now a nature preserve, Fort Caroline was a short-lived French settlement in the 16th century. We quickly learned why it was short-lived. As we walk along a trail toward a bluff overlooking the St. Johns River, we find ourselves in a subtropical jungle infested with flies and mosquitoes. No amount of bug spray is going to repel them. We try to brave the swarm, but find we’re not brave enough and get out of there fast.
BELOIT, WIS., May 29, 1995. There’s a small group (not enough to be a crowd) on hand to watch the Beloit Snappers challenge the Cedar Rapids Kernels. Beloit offers a full array of between-inning entertainment, but on this night the staff has to solicit participants. A young staffer (in the minors, they’re all barely out of their teens) asks me if I’ll perform the Dizzy Bat event, and I agree.
The Dizzy Bat race is a minor league staple. Usually, it’s two guys placing their noggins on the knob of a bat, circling it quickly 10 times and then stumbling off toward the team mascot several yards away. Invariably, one or both contestants fall down before reaching the finish line. The crowd roars with laughter, but at least the winner can claim a bit of dignity. To my surprise, and eventual dismay, the game is different in Beloit. Here, the participant twirls around the bat 10 times, then rolls a bowling ball in an effort to knock down a few pins. If successful, everyone in the crowd (er, group) wins a coupon for free pizza.
I place my head on the knob, start running in circles and realize quickly that there’s no way this will end happily. After six revolutions, I collapse to the turf. The staffer hands me the bowling ball anyway and says I should try to knock down the pins. You can imagine how well that goes. I think I actually hit first base, but not the pins. The fans boo me for depriving them of free pizza, then I have to sit among them for the balance of the game.
MEMPHIS, TENN., June 3, 1996. We’re on hand for the evening duck march at the Peabody Memphis Hotel. At precisely 5 p.m., to the tune of the “King Cotton March,” the duck master leads a drake and four hens from the lobby’s Italian travertine marble fountain, across a red carpet and into an elevator, which whisks them to the “Duck Palace” on the roof. At 11 the next morning they return to the fountain the same way. It’s a daily routine that has gone on for nearly seven decades.
TUSCUMBIA, ALA., June 20, 1998. It pays to stay flexible on the road. This is demonstrated during our trip to see a ballgame in Tupelo, Miss. When we call the team office to verify that the game is still scheduled for that night, we learn that the ballclub went out of business the day before. A slight change of plans takes us to Tuscumbia, where we enjoy a performance of The Miracle Worker on the front lawn of Ivy Green, Helen Keller’s childhood home.
CASPER, WYO., Sept. 3, 2004. On a drizzly night, I am bestowed with the honor of throwing out the first pitch for a game between the Casper Rockies (now sensibly called the Casper Ghosts) and the Provo Angels. Remembering my last on-field presence in Beloit nine years earlier, I vow to do better this time, and I throw several phantom pitches on the sideline. Finally, after the national anthem, I stride to the pitchers mound and acknowledge my introduction with a nod and a tip of my newly purchased C-Rockies cap. The catcher squats behind the plate.
Suddenly, the reason for cleats becomes painfully evident. I’m wearing 10-year-old, tread-worn sneakers. My windup is fine, but when my front foot comes down, it slides 2 feet to the left, enough to send the pitch about 20 feet up the first base line, and me directly onto my butt.
Glenn Orlin, deputy staff director for the Montgomery County Council, lives in Bethesda.
