A blog about my travels around the world, in search of wild parrots, great paddling opportunities and incredibly eclectic travel experiences, I try to make a difference by connecting people with nature, people with other cultures, and people with themselves by sharing my stories.
Everyone likes to take home reminders, mementos of their travels abroad. For years, souvenirs have
been part of the travel experience. Aside from photos, they provide the best physical reminders of journeys.
Like everything else in life, this has its good points and bad points.
The best mementos often consist of something you cannot get at home, something produced by a local craftsman, something unique and special that calls back a specific memory of a trip.
The worst consist of the kitschy plastic mass-produced commercial souvenirs purchased often in airport gift shops, often before boarding a plane to leave and return home.
In no way is this meant to criticize anyone who purchases the latter on a trip. Hell, I have more than a few souvenir ball caps and beer mugs myself, from many of the places I've visited.
But I also have plenty of authentic pieces of art, crafts, and other reminders of my journeys. And while I enjoy sporting a cap that proclaims, "I've gone kayaking in the Cayman Islands," most of my favourite souvenirs are these hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind pieces of work.
Of course, those do the most good for local people, particularly in Third World Countries, and that's the best reason for spending at least a good portion of your souvenir budget on those types of souvenirs.
Lately, I've been favouring experiences over objects, trying to keep the clutter in my house down. However, I still will purchase special gifts from time to time when I travel abroad.
Here are some of my favourite items from past trips, in no particular order (I'm limiting each destination to just one souvenir - otherwise I could take up the entire list with objects from Africa.)
1. Wooden drum from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. It's pictured above with a table from Malawi and a wine goblet from Tanzania. This was a really tough call, we traded for/purchased so many cool items in Africa, all created by individual artisans. They're scattered throughout our living room. As I mentioned in a post last month, half the fun - and all the memories! - of these souvenirs resulted from the bartering process.
Nothing like a good sacrifice to spruce up the kitchen!
2. Mayan wall carving. Obtained this one at a market in the city of San Ignacio, Belize, located right next to the Guatemalan border. I think it was actually someone from Guatemala selling it, but it looked really cool, and always serves as a reminder of my very first international trip, and a week spent in the Maya Mountains.
3. Woven bag. This one was purchased partly out of necessity.
It's colourful and handy - I picked it up in a market in Ollantaytambo, Peru. And thanks to the work of my guide Liliana Bayona,
who rapidly talked the seller down in Spanish during some rapid
bargaining, I paid much less for it than they wanted me to, initially.
(Sadly, there's no picture of this - the mice got to it during an infestation a few years ago.)
Iban hornbill bowl.
4. Hornbill bowl. I picked up this carving at an Iban village in Malaysian Borneo. Because in a blog entitled "Parrots, Paddling and Ponderings," you have to expect I would include at least one bird item in my list, don't you? I was lucky to get the only one, as some of the rest of my group also liked it.
5. Huaorani blowgun. This is an actual blowgun used by this tribe in the Amazon rain forests of Ecuador (which offers much more than just the Galapagos, I might add).
We paddled with some of them in kayaks down the Rio Shiripuno for five days, spending one day in their village. Great experience.
The Huaorani blowgun: don't leave the village without it.
What are some of your favourite travel souvenirs?
While you're pondering that, you can listen to "Souvenirs" by John Prine.
During our travels there, the main highway through the
country was a dirt road; the only paved roads we encountered during our entire
journey from one end of the country to the other was in the larger cities. We
spent many of our nights bush-camping, either on the side of a rural road or in
a schoolyard (with permission).
Roadside or schoolyard, it made no difference.
The minute we pulled up and began setting up camp for the night, local people
would appear, almost as if they’d been invisible and decided at that point to
show themselves to us.
Most of the time, the people would just would watch and
smile. Occasionally they would whisper to each other, laughing quietly from
time to time. I can only imagine what they were thinking about these strange
visitors from another place who obviously were very well off – but who chose to
cook on open fires and sleep on the ground in pup tents.
Every now and then, one or two would reach out to us – or
sometimes we’d reach out to them – and a connection would be made.
In most of these attempts at connection, we often found
their English to be limited - but it was still usually better than our
“phrasebook Swahili.” If I wanted to say anything other than a hello, ask for
beer or thank someone, I had to look it up.
As it turned out, I found out how to say something in
Swahili I never expected to learn – but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
We always had plenty of interaction whenever we stopped to
look at souvenirs produced by local craftsmen, and it was always lively,
interesting, and entertaining - especially when clothes like hats, sneakers,
and colorful T-shirts entered into the mix and became more valuable than
currency, which they often did.
It is the nature of merchants to be gregarious, particularly
in the bartering culture we encountered so many times during our travels through
Africa. They truly enjoyed the interaction, the give-and-take, as much as
making an actual sale. It was a social event. And I’m sure they often felt they
got the better deal – just like we did.
On one particular day, we were driving along the road after
leaving the Crater and saw several road-side stands that offered African
carvings, shields and spears, drums, masks – everything that said “Africa.” The
lorry we travelled in pulled over and out we poured, 20 of us from North
America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, ready to do business in the
African bush.
The craftsmen had some wonderful merchandise, and the
biggest difficulty was not finding something we liked, but rather limiting
ourselves to a reasonable amount of goods. After all, we did have to transport
this back to North America at the end of our trip. We already had accumulated
quite a collection during our travels through Central Africa and Tanzania, so
we had to try to exercise a bit of restraint.
No restraint? you end up with lots of Africa art in your home.
Right…
Myself, and my long-time travelling companion the Divine Ms. K, I found ourselves caught up in several
negotiations for several different pieces. She is just as good a negotiator as
I am, and once she set her eyes on a pair of Masai figures carved out of ebony
wood, she was not leaving until she had them
But she had no intention of overpaying, either.
Once the man she was negotiating with realized this, once he
figured out this might take a while, he motioned to someone, and a short,
hand-carved wooden stool appeared by Ann’s side. He set it down, smiled broadly
and said to her, “Here, this is for you – please, sit,” as he patted the
well-worn top of the stool.
Sit she did, and then the bartering got really serious.
It was at that point that Russell, our tour leader, came
over and said, “Some of the others want to go back down the road a couple of
miles to another group of souvenir stands we passed. But it looks like you’re
going to be a while.”
I looked at the negotiation, grinned and said, “Looks that
way.”
“Do you feel comfortable being left here on your own for a
while so we can backtrack down the road to the other stands? We won’t be more
than 30 minutes, then we’ll pick you up on the way back to continue on our way to
Tarangire.”
To be honest, I didn’t feel that comfortable. We were pretty
much in the middle of nowhere, although there looked to be a few buildings
across and down the road a bit, within walking distance. But Ann was having a
great time and I didn’t want to be a spoilsport; however, I couldn’t keep the
group there, either.
So I nodded, and said “Sure. See you in a bit.”
I had to fight down a bit of nervousness as I watched the
lorry pull away, leaving the two of us alone at a roadside craft stand in the
middle of the bush in Tanzania.
I overcame some of my nervousness by turning to watch the
negotiations for the figures. It had continued unabated during my chat with
Russell, and it had drawn quite a crowd by this point. Everyone was enjoying
this entertaining new spectator sport: “Memsahib Ann” vs. “Trader Kwanza” in a
five-round, no-holds barred, bartering spectacular.
(My occupation was showing. Again, more on that in a bit.)
“Someone should sell tickets for this,” I thought to myself.
Eventually they reached an agreement, both smiling, both
figuring they had got the best of the other – but not by too much. Helpers
moved to wrap and package the figures she’d purchased along with the items I’d
already acquired in the “preliminary bartering bout.” They thanked us, as other
merchants tried to persuade us to look at their wares. However, at this point,
we were done. Besides, we only had so many arms to carry all this stuff.
This South Africa market is a bit more upscale than the ones we found in Tanzania.
Now – where was that lorry?
Two or three young men of high school age had been watching
the proceedings and enjoying the show. They saw that we looked a bit lost at
this point, a bit uncertain about what to do next, since there weren’t any bus
stops or roadside pullouts where we could sit and wait for the group’s return.
“We would very much like to buy you a Coke,” one of them
said in Swahili-accented English. “We can go into that place over there,” he
pointed across the road to one of the buildings. “You can sit and wait for your
friends and have something cold to drink.”
Of course, ever the paranoiac, my internal alarm bells went
off immediately. I was hesitant, a bit leery of accepting the invitation. Could
this be one of those cases where we became a news story about two overly
trusting white tourists being mugged in Africa?
I tried to hedge my bet, saying, “Well, I don’t know if we
have time, the lorry might be back any minute…I don’t want them to drive by
without stopping, they might forget about us if we’re not there by the road…”
Ann, of course, had no such qualms.
“We’ll be fine, they won’t leave without us,” she chimed in,
still flush and elated from her trading frenzy. “We can probably see the road
from the confectionary and run out if it looks like they’re passing us by.”
“Well, I don’t know…”
But as the conversation continued, we continued to drift
down the road and then across it, with our new companions. I didn’t want to
insult them if they were genuine, but I didn’t want to put us at risk, either –
or tip my hand that I thought they were up to something, if they were.
“C’mon, I’m thirsty, I could use a Coke,” she said.
So off we went. Myself, a bit reluctantly.
“Well, at least I don’t have all my camera gear with me,” I
thought. “That makes me a less desirable target.”
It turned out my fears were completely unfounded. Like the
vast majority of people we met in small communities along the way all through
Tanzania and Malawi, they just wanted to be friendly, to share their culture,
and learn about us and ours.
They insisted on paying for the Cokes, refused to take
anything from us.
It did come with a price, though.
Companionship.
They peppered us with questions.
“Where are you from, the United States?”
“No, we’re from Canada, it’s above the U.S. if you look on a
map or globe of the world.”
“Where do you live in Canada?”
“We’re from British Columbia.”
“Is that near Colorado?”
And on the conversations went as we sipped our drinks.
Suddenly, it wasn’t so important for the lorry to return so quickly.
The most curious and talkative one of the group, the one who
offered to buy us drinks originally, asked me what I did for a living. At the
time I was a sports writer, and I explained to him what it was that my job
involved.
“Would you like to know how to say that in Swahili?” he
said.
Of course I did.
He said it, once, then twice, as I tried to repeat it. We
all laughed at that. He then wrote it out for me: “Michezo mwandishi.”
Better check that phrase book, again...
I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t find that in any phrase book.
We chatted a bit more, then before we knew it, the lorry had
come back and was slowing down just past the souvenir stands where they’d left
us to look for bargains elsewhere.
It turned out, we got the best bargain of all, and it wasn’t
something you could wrap up in paper and ship home.
We said good-bye to our new friends and climbed aboard to
head off down the road to more adventures.
Aside from learning how to say my occupation in Swahili, I
took much away from that encounter.
All throughout our
journey, we met people who had a hunger for knowledge – knowledge about the
world outside of their own, a thirst for learning about other people, a craving
to connect. That was never more evident than that particular meeting, where a
young man - whose family probably made less in a year than I did in a month -
insisted he treat me, a visitor, to a cold drink in the local confectionary.
And despite having so little material wealth, they all
seemed to be so happy and so friendly and so eager to connect.
That human connection is so vital to our well-being -
whether it’s connecting with someone in Africa, or just making a connection
with your neighbor down the street.
It also taught me that the secret to happiness is not how
much you have or how much you can buy or barter for, but how you relate to
others, the richness that comes from sharing…sharing a Coke, sharing a joke,
sharing language, sharing experiences.
At times throughout the years since, I’ve struggled to
remember that, to maintain it. Sometimes I succeed, other times I fail. But
when I’m in one of those downer funks, sometimes it helps me to think back to
those young men in Africa, and how happy they were just to buy a treat for a
visitor that they knew they would probably never see again.
Sometimes that helps lift me out of it. And I think how no
price could ever really be put on that invaluable Coke I sipped in rural Africa
so many years ago.
You don't have to be careful of cattle in Malawi - just ants.
These days, everyone seems to have a travel bucket list of places they want to go/experiences they want to enjoy.
But not every experience you have while travelling is an enjoyable one. In fact, if you travel enough, you're probably going to be able to easily put together an...
UNBUCKET LIST
These are my top 12 "do not repeat if possible" travel mishaps. Maybe you've experienced some of them - or maybe some of yours are even worse.
Anyway, without further ado, in no particular order are my "Infamous Top 10."
1.ANTS, PART 1. Sleeping with ants in a schoolyard in Malawi, Africa. This was during a 40-day overland trip through Africa, where we bush-camped most of the way. We'd crossed the border from Tanzania into Malawi, but weren't going to make it to the campground at Lake Malawi by nightfall so we got permission to pitch our tents in the schoolyard of a small town. Bad move. There were ants were so tiny, they could slip into the tent no matter how tightly the zipper was closed. They didn't bite - but crawled all over, inside our ears, and you could hear them communicating, a constant tinny humming noise enough to drive anyone mad. It was like a horror movie where a villain tortures you using ants. The school doors were unlocked, so many of us in the group moved inside to sleep in a classroom, it was that bad.
2. ANTS, PART 2. Pitching a tent right next to an army ant nest without being aware of it. This was funny - but only because it wasn't me standing in the next. We'd pitched our tent in a compound near the border of Tanzania and Malawi and my ever-present travelling companion, the Divine Ms. K discovered we had to move the tent - and was attempting to do so. However, they were crawling up inside her long pants and biting her - and they sting like hell! - so there she is in broad daylight shucking her pants and swatting ants with the help of one of the other women on the trip. A few locals walking by the compound found it quite hilarious to see this white woman doing the "fire-ant two-step." (Good thing she was wearing underwear...)
The Andes are gorgeous - but beware of altitude sickness.
3. PERUVIAN MOUNTAIN HIGH. Not advisable to get THIS kind of "high" - altitude sickness in the Andes at the start of a four-day horseback ride through the mountains from lodge-to-lodge. Headaches, diarrhea, a few other symptoms, all unpleasant. Not unusual for many at high altitude/thin air, but not to be trifled with. I actually had to be taken back down to Ollantaytambo, a small village, to recover for a few days. And drink tea made from coca leaves (yeah, the same plant that cocaine comes from). Tasted yucky. I eventually caught up with the trip at the fourth lodge. Mountain Lodges of Peru did a great job looking after me, though.
4. DRINKING FROM THE ZAMBEZI. Back to Africa again. If you go whitewater rafting on the Zambezi and fall out (not unusual in 25 km and 20 rapids), be sure to keep your mouth closed. DO NOT swallow any water if you can help it. I did - and about 36 hours later, I was sicker than I'd ever been in my life, it was coming out both ends for a few days, then I had to recover from dehydration. Missed a scheduled canoe trip along a calmer portion of the river. Guess I'll just have to go back to Africa some day...
5. DID YOU GET THE FOOTWEAR MEMO? If you're told to wear sturdy footwear for a three to four hour hike along a coastal path in Wales, wear it. I did - but someone else in our group did not. One couple had proper hiking boots, apparently - but didn't want to get them wet. Doh! Why bring them, then? Instead, their feet got wet and beat up, wearing what were essentially loafers up and down a trail full of switchbacks and small footbridges with plenty of muddy patches. Then they whined about it. Double doh!
6. DON'T GO IN THE OCEAN WITHOUT A WETSUIT. If you're going to practise wet entries into a kayak - or even if you're just horsing around - in the Pacific Ocean, even close to shore off the coast of Alaska wear the wetsuit. I didn't, I got hypothermia and had to cancel the week-long kayak trip slated to start the next day. On the positive side, I got to see my first wild grizzly bear and several black bears up close. As well, and probably more importantly, some odd readings at the Wrangell hospital prompted me to get some tests done in Vancouver and I found out I had a bicuspid valve disorder in my aortic valve. I was born with it and didn't know. It meant that eight years later I was prepared for the open-heart surgery I had to undergo to fix it.
7. IF THE FISH SAMOSAS TASTE "FISHY" THROW IT BACK. I didn't eat the bad samosas at a market in Lilongwe - but someone very close to me did. And got as sick as I did from drinking Zambezi River water. Not fun. Especially when you're bush-camping and using "long-drops" for bathroom facilities. (At least when I was sick in the campground in Victoria Falls, I had access to real toilets.) I ate some samosas from the same market - but not fish. I was fine.
8. STAY OFF THE WHEEL! If you have bad knees like I do, try to avoid getting stuck on top of the wheel seat when you have to trade in a flight in a plane for a three-hour van ride down dusty, bumpy dirt roads in Ecuador. Not fun, pure agony, I didn't think I'd ever feel good again. It took a few hours for the aches in my knees to go away after unloading. Next time I'll get aggressive and grab any seat away from the wheel. If I ever have to ride a bus in Ecuador again, that is.
Heath River is a great place to see parrots - but it's not Manu.
9. HAVING A TOUR COMPANY PULL THE PLUG MID-TRIP. This happened in Peru. I spent a week in the Andes, horseback riding and visiting Machu Picchu, and I was supposed to spend the second week at Manu National Park and visit one of the world's best parrot licks. However, when I got back to the hotel in Cuzco, G Adventures, the company I'd made a down-payment to told me I was unable to get there due to complications with the airline that they'd contracted to fly us in there. Or some such rot. Now I'd arranged to pay 50 per cent of the trip cost and work the other 50 per cent off via a contra deal (I was giving travel writing and photography workshops at their Vancouver store for $150 a class at the time), but I suspect the person who approved that had since been told they'd goofed, and that the deal had been nixed at the head office. (I found this out after.) At the time, it left me stuck either getting a refund for the trip and hanging around a hotel in the Andes for a week or taking a less expensive, less promising but similar trip to Heath River. I chose the latter, expecting a partial refund on my return but when I got back I was told I had no money coming back. My 50 per cent deposit for one trip had become full payment for a lesser trip. Given all the circumstances, and the way my contact was acting (and she left the company shortly after that), it sounded fishy to me. I've never been a big fan of that company ever since.
10. LEAVING YOUR CAMERA AT HOME (DOH!) I once took a great four-day canoe trip on Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park, in Alberta, which is home to Spirit Island - one of the most photographed spots in Canada. I can't remember if I realized that was part of the trip, or not, but I chose NOT to take a camera because at the time I was working as sports editor for the Alaska Highway News in Fort St. John, B.C. and I wanted a complete getaway from anything resembling work. That meant I wouldn't be taking any photos, since I did that pretty much seven days a week at my job. It also meant I had no photos of one of the most special places in Canada. And a few years later when I started freelance writing, I really wished I'd taken some photos of the trip. Maybe someday I'll return via a cruise on a tour - but it won't be same as doing it by canoe. And I certainly won't get any of the unique shots I could get from sitting in a canoe, paddling around the island.
A mother orangutan with baby, at Semenggoh, Borneo.
The eerie sound of a howler monkey reverberated through the
South American forest as our guide shook my tent gently to awaken me - unnecessary in this
instance. Although it was only 6 a.m., I'd been awake for at least 30 minutes, soaking
up the sounds - the monkeys, the birds, the insects - that reminded me I was on a paddling trip in
the Amazon.
That was the first time I'd ever heard a howler monkey, and once you hear it, it's a sound you never forget.
It was not the first time I'd been around primates in the wild, mind you. That came probably 10 years before, in Africa.
This weekend, in many places around Asian cities and towns, and also many places closer to home in Vancouver, the sounds heard will not be those of monkeys calling out, but rather the sounds of "Gung hay fat choy!" (and all its various spellings).
The Chinese New Year is upon us, and with it, we enter into the Year of the Monkey. I myself was born in the Year of the Monkey, and so I'm hoping that means it will be an auspicious year for me.
To mark the event, I thought it would be interesting to look back at all the times I'd experienced and encountered wild monkeys in my travels. However, I won't just restrict it to monkeys - I'll also include other primates. I've been lucky enough to see three of the four great apes in the wild: gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons. I have not seen chimpanzees in the wild, however. (Note to self: go back to Africa some day, see some chimps as well as some African grey parrots.)
AFRICA
I first encountered wild monkeys in Tanzania. We were on a six-week trip through Africa and as we drove down onto the plains of East Africa from the Central African highlands of Burundi, we could see groups of animals moving through the bush Savannah, alongside the road. They were troops of baboons, a fairly common sight along the plains of Africa, as we were to learn in the ensuing weeks. (A huge pain in the behind, too, around areas where people congregate. They have no fear of man, can be aggressive, and pack a nasty bite. Vehicles always have to be closed and locked tight in parking lots where they frequent, lest you come back to an interior decimated by their hunting for food or other objects that might catch their eyes.)
Maheshe climbs down.
While baboons are fairly common, a week earlier in that trip, I'd encountered something much more rare, one of those experiences that usually only comes once in a lifetime - if you're lucky. On the other side of Burundi sat Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and it was in that country's Kahuzi Biega National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, that I got up close and almost personal with a family of eastern lowland gorillas, an extremely endangered species.
After trekking through the jungle for four hours, we finally spotted the silverback (or he first spotted us, more likely) sitting on a log, checking us out. We passed muster, he wandered back to the rest of the gorillas. We watched a mother nursing a baby on the forest floor, were pelted by fruit flung by some bratty juveniles, then were treated to the sight of Maheshe climbing down from the tree in which they'd been feeding and saunter off into the jungle with his charges.
We were to encounter more monkeys in Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, as well as baboons off and on throughout our African odyssey. Our route did not take us near any wild chimps, though.
BORNEO
Just as endangered as the gorillas of Africa are the orangutans of Asia. They exist in the wild on only two islands, Sumatra and Borneo. I've been fortunate in that I've seen them in two different rehabilitation sanctuaries in Malaysia - Semenggoh and Sepilok - where they live in the forest, but are undergoing gradual re-acclimatization to the wild. They do come to the reserves' feeding stations twice a day, where they can acquire papayas, bananas, cabbages, and other food, then melt back into the forest to pursue the solitary lives they tend to lead.
A young proboscis monkey shows signs of a big nose.
I was even luckier that on two different evenings while participating in wildlife viewing cruises along the Kinabatangan River, I saw two solitary orangutans climbing trees, preparing "night nests" to sleep in.
Many of the creatures at the sanctuaries arrive there after becoming victims of the pet trade. But a much greater threat is posed from habitat loss as a result of the massive deforestation going on so companies can reap the rewards from the palm oil industry.
Obviously, the orangutans are not the only species of animal threatened, although they are arguably the closest to extinction in the wild. But some other iconic primates are also threatened by industrial development.
One of those is the proboscis monkey, a primate that can actually say "size matters" when it comes to the mating game. The size of the males' noses, that is. The males with the biggest, most bulbous, most prominent schnoz tends to get the pick of the ladies. We saw plenty of those monkeys along the Kinabatangan, as well as in Bako National Park, located near the Malaysian city of Kuching.
A gibbon hangs out in the trees of the rain forest.
In addition to the proboscis and other monkeys that live along the Kinabatangan, we also found several gibbons. Like the howler monkeys of the New World, these apes have a very distinctive call that echoes throughout the jungle. However, they are apes, not monkeys - even though they appear to be monkeys, the way they move through the trees - and are more closely related to orangutans and gorillas than their long-tailed cousins.
Like orangutans, gibbons also face dangers from the pet trade and deforestation.
These species are some of our closest relatives in the animal world, many of them having DNA estimated to be 97 per cent similarity to humans.
I feel very privileged to have been able to see many of them in the wild. I would be very sad if that opportunity is lost to the next generation. So in this Year of the Monkey, maybe give some thought about helping out our primate cousins and helping out in any way you can - whether it's through volunteering your time, donating money, being aware of your shopping choices, or even just passing along information about this situation on social media channels.
Here are some websites to help you get started (many of them also have social media pages on Facebook and other platforms):
Note that I haven't vetted any of these sites; they're just to help you get started.
Although the thought of losing a species of ape or monkey to extinction is extremely sad, there is still hope. And where there is hope, there can be reason to celebrate efforts to halt the path to extinction. On that note, I'll close out with a silly song featuring monkeys and an orangutan and a place I have not been to yet, India. Enjoy! And since the words are included, feel free to sing along - or even dance!)
Ecuador's Rio Shiripuno: one of many magical rivers I've journeyed upon.
In the book Wind in the Willows, author Kenneth Grahame wrote, "There’s nothing… absolutely nothing… half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats."
As someone who has been paddling for more than 50 years now, I can't disagree with that. People often ask me if I prefer river trips to canoe circuits involving a chain of lakes and ponds. They are quite different types of trips, although they both involve water. The former involves starting at one point and finishing at another; the latter, travelling in a circle and returning to your original starting point. They both have their good points, but the one thing that differentiates a river trip is the fact that it's an exciting journey that potentially sees you never return to where you begin from. That's not always the case, because you may end up shuttling back to your original starting point - but then again, you may not. On circuit trips you can often go either direction, clockwise or counterclockwise. Paddling in either direction can be l-i-t-t-l-e bit harder on a river unless you're on a really slow moving river. Paddling upstream - unless you're a salmon looking to spawn - is a lot of work and not the most pleasant kind of activity to engage in.
Time to get wet again, on the Zambezi River! (Photo by Zambezi Video Productions.)
Because of that, there is a magic to rivers, something you feel even if you don't paddle on one. When I was in high school, I used to walk past a river - the Holland River coming out of Fairy Lake in Newmarket - and there was always something about walking past that spot, especially during the spring runoff, that set my imagination to working. There is a timelessness to rivers, which is why they have the power to transport us across space and time. Often when you're paddling down a river in a canoe or kayak, you're paddling through history, because thousands of others have probably paddled there, most likely for several centuries. Many times when I canoe - and this is one of the aspects of all canoeing that really appeals to me - I like to imagine I'm a voyageur of old, heading into the wilderness for the Northwest Company, engaged in the fur trade of the late 18th and early 19th centuries across the wilds of Canada. My first canoe trips as a youth took me through areas in Ontario that were probably used by the voyageurs, although most of the paddling I did then was on lakes, ponds and very slow rivers.
Rollin' down the river - the Chao Phraya River in Thailand, that is
Since then I've gone on to paddle or travel on many rivers:
I've canoed on the Athabasca, Red Deer, Bow, and Freeman Rivers in Alberta;
kayaked the Harrison River in B.C., and whitewater rafted on the Kicking Horse, Thompson and Fraser Rivers in that province;
Because I have always loved being out in nature, on rivers and streams - and for that matter ponds and lakes - I developed an interest in conservation at a very early age. When I was 12, I decided to study forestry in university, to help conserve our natural resources. I started down that path but got sidetracked by a strong interest in journalism and broadcasting.
One of the locals paddles a dugout canoe on Borneo's Kinabatangan River.
However, my concern about the importance of conservation of our rivers is just as strong - if not stronger - than it was all those years ago. We ALL should be concerned. Water from rivers gives us life. Without it, life can be extremely difficult. It not only supplies water to drink but habitat for the fish we eat, as well as other animals that depend on the water and fish that live there to survive. That's why it's important to recognize and perhaps even attend a local event or two during World Rivers Day, which this year falls on Sunday, Sept. 27. There are several events going on at different venues in British Columbia to celebrate B.C. Rivers Day. For example, the city of Burnaby will host an event at the Burnaby Village Museum; the Fraser River Discovery Centre will host its annual Riverfest event, starting Thursday, Sept. 24 and running through until Saturday the 26th. There are many other events all over the province, the country and the world, too numerous to list all of them here. But a quick search online should provide you with details about local events. Many involve music, conservation and nature displays, some paddle-oriented activities, and plenty of other stuff for families to enjoy - and learn about how we call can help keep our rivers healthy. I started off with a quote, and I'll finish with one, by environmentalist and author David Brower. "We must begin thinking like a river if we are to leave a legacy of beauty and life for future generations."
