Would You Get Naked?

Photo by Rob and Stephanie Levy via Creative Commons

Well, would you? If you have the balls (pardon the pun), you can march into Wicked Campers in Australia wearing nothing but your backpack, and receive a free day's van rental. Check it out: Backpackers Offered Nude Discount

For a backpacker, every penny saved adds up to additional days on the road, so this begs the question: how far would YOU go to get something for free?  And where do you draw the line?

I honed my penny-pinching skills in New Zealand and Australia, and perfected this art by pitching my tent in the backyard of many hostels, taking people up on their offers of free lodging, and hitchhiking (something I would never even consider doing in my own country).

In Adelaide, poor Ian was drunk at a bar with his buddy, Geoff, and the two of them struck up an innocent conversation with the backpackers. Ian happened to mention that he had room in his home for two of us to stay; the next morning, still hung over, Ian answered the door to find two grinning Americans reminding him of his invitation. He agreed to the deal, and the next day, my travel companion and I turned up with our backpacks and settled into his daughter's bedroom.
For a week.
And then another week.
He definitely got more than he bargained for because we were working on closing another spectacular deal, a free ride from Adelaide to Perth.

Adelaide to Perth is a three-day road trip across the Nullarboor, the vast, empty plain that runs across South Australia, save for a few emus and wombats. Some dude named Wayne, whose name I found on a hostel bulletin board, was helping to broker our safe passage across the Nullarboor with a truck driver who hated to drive alone. When the ride finally came through, there was nary a moment to spare; this ride was leaving in a hour. We scrambled out the door, and I'm sure Ian was relieved to see us go.

Enter Hippie. He was an enthusiastic, scrawny guy with shoulder-length hair, skin tight jeans (can that really be comfortable?), and a great attitude, and he was thrilled to have company. He defied all truck-driver stereotypes the moment I laid eyes on both him and the stuffed animal dangling from his rear-view mirror. He tossed our backpacks into one of the new cars that he was hauling on his three-trailer semi, and seated the two of us in the cab of the truck.

In the cab with Hippie

Hippie talked and talked and talked. When he stopped talking long enough to go to sleep (he had a little bed in the cab), I stretched out in the back of a brand new station wagon tethered to his trailer. I showered at the truck stop, learned a little bit about how to drive a semi and observed life on the road. And after three days, he made true on his promise and delivered us to Perth. For free.

The free ride with Hippie was trumped a few weeks later as two of us hitched up the west coast of Australia on a route that coincided with the tour of a Beach-Boys-esque band called the Delltones. Picked up by two roadies for the Delltones near Carnarvon, where we were too early for the banana harvest, the guys tried to convince us to join the tour. We begged off and spent a lovely few days in Coral Bay snorkeling on the Ningaloo Reef, and then carried on hitching our way north.

Nearly a week later, a taxicab driver in Broome mentioned that the Delltones were in town for a gig that night. My friend and I looked at each other and knew what needed to be done. We ran around Broome until we found the band, and ended up on the road with the Delltones from Broome to Darwin. We saw a few shows, slept on hotel room floors, and gambled with the guys at the casino when we reached Darwin. Here are the guys we trusted to drive us up the coast hard at work:

Peter & John making it work.

To come full circle, I will loudly proclaim that there was NO nudity involved in any of this wheeling and dealing. I found Australia to be full of friendly, hospitable people with no ulterior motives, and came to understand that traveling without an agenda allowed wonderful experiences to unfold. And as for lining up nude for a free day's car rental? Not my style.

Travel (and lack thereof)

I did most of my adventure travel in my 20s. During that time, I studied in England for a semester, saw a bit of Europe and the USSR during my spring break, and parlayed the end of my semester into a month in Paris in my friend's free-of-charge closet-sized apartment in the 7th arrondissement. Never mind that two of us invited ourselves to come stay, and that it was way too small for one, let alone three of us, but we made it work, albeit with little room to maneuver. I worked in Japan for a year, backpacked and worked my way through Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, took separate trips to Vietnam and Malaysian Borneo, and a trip to Europe for good measure. (note to self for future blog post re: cheap cheap cheap travel to Europe and Vietnam summer 1996 - you too can do this, people!).

The Paris apartment

I was married at 30, and my late 20s/early to mid-30s were all about a honeymoon in Costa Rica and traveling to other people's weddings. Thanks to becoming DINKs (double income no kids), this time period included multiple trips across the country to weddings in places like Virginia, Cape Cod, Carmel, upstate New York, Washington DC, Texas, Atlanta and San Francisco. Thankfully, it also included a small dose of international travel to a wedding in the Middle East, in Jordan, that involved a lot of swords.

Photo by Mariea Rummel Photography

While this may all sound quite glamorous, here is the truth. In England, I was a student, and there is nothing glamorous about having no money. The month in Paris was much the same, and meals of lettuce, baguettes and cheese were the norm. And jumping the Metro gates. And accessing the refrigerator while seated on the toilet. That big trip, to Southeast Asia and the South Pacific? Much of that time I was living out of a tent, scrimping and saving in order to continue traveling as long as possible. And working jobs like grape picking to make extra money. Costa Rica? Honeymooning in a nature preserve for part of our stay, we shacked up in a cabin outfitted with bunk beds and window screens - and 100 degree heat. We each lay prone on our bunks and insisted that it was too hot to go near each other. And then there was the punishing diarrhea in Jordan. I'll spare you the gory details, but it started at the High Place of Sacrifice and ended with an ambulance ride out of Petra (note to self for future blog post).

My life as an international traveler came to a screeching halt upon the arrival of Boy #1 in 2002. And Boy #1 arrived very sick, which made it hard to even think about leaving my home town, let alone the country. And then came Boy #2 in 2005. Romantic 10th anniversary trip to Paris in 2009? Fat chance. Trip to Europe in 2011 to visit many friends now living overseas with THEIR kids? Nada.

Oh, I know it can be done. But the logistics? And the cost? We've had a handful of adventurous trips together right here in the USA, but overseas? It's just not in the budget right now.

The locals certainly made it look easy. The women of Southeast Asia were practiced at attaching babies to their bodies with sarongs and going about their business, carrying baskets of water on their heads or working in the fields. I saw children riding effortlessly on varying modes of transportation, including the tuk-tuk, scooter, bejak, train, ferry, minibus, and tour bus. The children that I encountered were sweet, polite and curious. 

Photo by Dewan Irawan

Boy #1 and Boy #2 are now old enough to help take care of themselves, and when we finally muster up the courage (and money) to take them abroad, it will surely be easier than I imagine. I haven't given up hope. Our day will come. Will the first overseas family adventure be a new adventure for all of us? Or will I take them to one of my old haunts and show them a place that is undoubtedly not how I remember it at all?

They're not mine! Really.

Sheep on Board

Unquestionably, hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere leaves you vulnerable. You must be a good, and quick, judge of character. You have a few tiny moments to size up the driver and determine whether or not to climb into the car. The times that I felt the most hesitant resulted in the friendliest drivers, leaving me feeling somewhat guilty.

One beautiful day, hitching from the Coromandel peninsula towards Auckland, New Zealand, a young man, seemingly friendly, in a clean enough car, offered an hour's ride in the right direction. Without hesitation, my travel companion and I accepted the ride. Casual conversation with the flannel-clad man revealed that he was returning from a hunting trip, and his rifle was in the way back of the station wagon. Also back there? His kill. A dead sheep. Covered in plastic sheeting. I peeked over the seat, and came nose to nose with the dead sheep. It didn't smell. It didn't talk. It was a fine traveling companion for an hour. I might not have even noticed it was there without the tip off.

During deer hunting season in Missouri, it is not uncommon to see a dead deer splayed out in the bed of a pickup truck. It is certainly a time to select your hiking trails carefully. It might be considerate for hunters to find a way to advertise their cargo.

I might have selected a different ride.

Information Age

Backpack in tow, I hit the ground running in New Zealand in the fall of 1992. The plane ticket was one-way, the itinerary was rough, practically non-existent. The plan was to travel until the money ran out, and seek opportunities to work along the way to replenish funds. Travel. Work. Repeat.

Provisions were scant: tent, sleeping bag, Therma-rest, hiking boots, Birkenstocks, a week's worth of underwear, 4 pairs of shorts, 4 t-shirts, one long-sleeved shirt, one pair of pants, 4 pairs of socks, one jacket, one swimming suit, hat, toiletries and a towel that quickly became musty. Sony Walkman and some cassette tapes. Journal. Toilet paper. Water. Travelers checks. Credit card for emergencies only. And a few books.

If you can wind your brain back to 1992, you will recall it was a seemingly ancient, pre-internet and cell phone era. My trip was not documented by blog, facebook post or tweet, but in letters and on rolls of film. If I found the right kind of telephone, I called home to check in with my parents every few weeks. I developed rolls of film along the way, wrote details on the back of each photo, and mailed the photos home, a manual blog, if you will. I incessantly wrote letters to family and friends, and kept track of recipient and date mailed so no one felt left out. It was mostly a one-way exchange of information.

And then there was my friend, Poste Restante. Poste Restante is a service where the post office holds your mail until you claim it. A well worn joke? "Who is this guy, Poste Restante, that you keep telling me to send letters to?" 

With a rough itinerary in mind, I included contact information like this in every letter: "I will be in Darwin, Australia in July, so send mail to Emily Follman, c/o Poste Restante, GPO, 48 Cavenagh St, Darwin NT 0800." Every time I arrived in a scheduled, known destination, the first order of business was to run to the GPO and check Poste Restante for mail. More often than not, I left disappointed, my old friend Poste failing me time and again. During a six-week stint working on a grape farm in Robinvale, Australia, the workers at the Robinvale post office just laughed when they saw me coming again to check on my mail. It was few and far between. And it was depressing.


Fast forward to today, when this caught my eye: China reaches 1 billion mobile subscribers. The travel experience is forever changed by the connectedness of this era. Even if you are far from home, you are never far from being in touch. I wonder how this connectedness might have changed my travel experience. But would it have changed it for the better or for the worse? At least some of the communication might have been two-way.  

I know now that while I was on the road having new adventures every day, most of my friends and family were home, living their lives, and let's face it, most of our lives don't include riding in the milk truck, tubing through caves, or climbing active volcanoes. Maybe they didn't write because they felt like they didn't have much to say. Maybe they were busy. Or maybe I just had too much time on my hands. And maybe my poor old friend Poste is nearing extinction.