Travel

We were going to take a cab to Damascus for dinner, but we couldn’t get our visas, so we headed south.  I was in Jordan, the Middle Eastern Sundance Lab had ended.  The aspiring filmmakers and their mentors were dispersing back home to Cairo, Beruit, Ramallah and Casablanca.

With time on our hands – the writer’s strike had been called 24 hours before – a fellow mentor and I headed south with our guide, Mohammad Gabaah, to the desert of the Wadi Rum (The Valley of the Mountains, in southern Jordan.)  You’ve all seen it –  yes, you have – even though you don’t realize  it.   It’s the last leg of the journey T.E. Lawrence took, when he crossed on camel to get to Aqaba, 45 miles west.  (The guns are no longer facing the wrong direction.)   And where David Lean spent nine months shooting his hagiographic biopic.

Leaving Maine in the long, dark days of Winter and heading west to Calistoga, California's mud baths is a a tempting break this time of year. Calistoga is a precious, tiny town at the top of Napa valley that hasn't changed in the least in the last 20 years that I have been going to "take the mud".  I must confess I am a spa junkie and this place is pretty wonderful – a town of spas all with different mud blends, super restaurants within driving distance, nice weather with dreamy morning fog and wineries every 100 feet. What is not to like?

We enjoy staying at Dr. Wilkinson's Hot Springs, a basic, no frills place. They always have great mid-Winter deals on room/spa specials that are irresistible. The 2-hour treatment starts by being lowered into a large tiled tub of volcanic ash and peat moss with the help of the attendant who then places ice cold cucumber slices onto your eyes and slathers old fashion, fragrant Pond's cold cream on your face. For the next twenty minutes, as my bones warm up with the weight of the hot mud, I can feel the toxins flowing out of every pore, as each part of my body relaxes bit by bit.  As the mud starts to cool near the surface you find yourself pushing you arms and legs deeper into the tub closer to the heat source. It feels so good!

Google Maps will tell you that "we could not understand" the location of Las Aradas, Honduras. Weather.com advises to check your spelling. My trip coordinator suggested looking up the "nearest town over" which was a two and half hour drive away.  Packing for a trip like this was a bit of a moving target. Las Aradas is a mountain village, six hours out of San Pedro Sula. For those of you who haven't been browsing the State Department's travel warnings lately--Honduras is not a stable country. The PeaceCorps pulled their volunteers out last year.

Was I scared? Yes. Sometimes. We joked about it a lot. Honduras is the murder capital of the world. Like, actually. Reference the state department website.  San Pedro Sula, where I flew in and out of and stayed two nights has more homicides than any other city in. the. world. However, the people that I was traveling with were INCREDIBLE. They make me want to change my life. They make me realize what is possible to do in life. 

Anyway, back to Las Aradas. Remote. Good tortillas. Minimal gun shots.  (You have to celebrate St. Patty's day or a soccer win somehow.) They have running water, but no electricity. The roosters start crowing at 3:00 a.m. That sort of thing.

I’m not a foodie.  I seldom watch the Food Channel.  The one cookbook I own came with my microwave.  I only go to Williams-Sonoma to get a gift for someone else.  So I’m surprised that some of the best memories of my bicycle trip in France last summer are of food.
 
I was the only American in our group of 14, the rest were Irish or British.  Every day we biked 20 to 35 miles through the beautiful Provençal countryside and every evening we had dinner at one of the many restaurants in the village where we stayed.  Even the smallest towns had dozens to choose from.  Sometimes we were the only ones in the place. 
   
Dinner was our evening’s entertainment.  The group would meet in the hotel lobby, then wander the narrow streets checking out menus in restaurant windows until we reached a consensus.  Usually, the only dissenter was a snooty vegan, a London financial planner studying to be a yoga instructor.  She would frown as she studied a menu. “Can’t eat that.  Won’t eat that.  Ugh, no way.”  Then she would drag her poor husband off for a salad somewhere.  Once, I offered her some of my sunscreen.  “I don’t put chemicals on my body,” she told me.  She came back at the end of the day with a spectacular sunburn.