Everyone has a bucket list - but how 'bout an "unbucket" list?

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.





Ready for a lake cruise?

Sometimes, bad situations can be good ones in disguise

Like anything else in life, paddling can impart lessons.

Kayaking in sight of the Alaskan coast.

One of the toughest lessons many of us have to learn - certainly, I've found it to be - is that what may seem like a bad situation may actually turn out to be quite good.

Or at least do some good, where you wouldn't expect it to.

I've experienced many significant  examples of this in my life. But none probably more so than when I got hypothermia in Alaska.

It quite possibly saved my life; at the very least, it resulted in a series of actions and incidents that might not otherwise have played out the way they did.

It was August, 2004. I was in Wrangell, Alaska, preparing to start a week-long kayak tour down the coast with a brand new company. The tour consisted of a guide and several other travel writers invited to go on this first-run trip to sort of test it out for the company, and help promote it by writing about it for various publications.

The day before the tour began, we went down to a quiet bay in front of the town to practise in-water re-entry to a kayak so we would be prepared in the event we capsized one in the water during our trip.

Now this can be a tricky manoeuvre if you have no previous experience attempting it. Although I had exited and entered a kayak while in the ocean before, that did not involve tipping it, first. It was also in the warm waters of the Caribbean as opposed to the fairly frigid waters in the Gulf of Alaska, a section of the North Pacific Ocean off the coast of Alaska.

Because we weren't going anywhere and we thought it would be a routine kind of operation, we didn't wear wet suits as we would be on the trip.

Bad move.

I was having a devil of a time trying to climb back into the kayak after righting it following my "capsize."

The guide came over to steady it and encourage me. That's when he realized things were starting to go south.

I think I heard him say, "Grab my boat and hang on."

I ended up back on shore, shivering uncontrollably. I couldn't get warm, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.

Back at the B'n'B we were staying at, I was having a hard time talking, moving, focusing, and I was still cold while eating lunch.

I remember the guide saying, "When I saw your eyes roll back into your head, I knew you were in trouble, I knew we had to get you out of the water."

Someone said my lips looked blue.

So off they trundled me to the local hospital.

Turns out, I was hypothermic. They ran a series of tests, said I'd be okay, but the doctor said there was no way he could let me go on a five-day kayak tour given my condition.

So my trip ended before it began.

Immature bald eagle on the Pacific coast.

However, the doctor said something else.

He said there were some odd readings with respect to my heart, something he could not definitely determine the nature of, with the equipment available at the small town facility.

He advised strongly to go to my family doctor back in Vancouver and get a better diagnosis done.

I did that, and was a bit floored by the result.

After performing all the proper scans at  St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, my doctor told me I had a bicuspid aortic valve in my heart. It was a genetic condition I'd been born with, and eventually I would need surgery to correct it, probably within 10 years. In the meantime, I had to be sure to take antibiotics for any dental procedure to prevent the very-dangerous potential infection from getting onto the valve.

Armed with that knowledge, when I started experiencing odd symptoms continually in 2012, they performed an electro-cardiogram and based on the results, told me I needed to have open-heart surgery as quickly as possible.

That happened almost eight years to the day I got the news about my heart condition.

By November, I'd had surgery. By the following June, I was well enough to have re-scheduled shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum. With some good rehab, I was back paddling by mid-August.

What brought this to mind recently was a video I saw on the Paddling.net Facebook feed, dealing with the topic of hypothermia and paddling. You can see the video below.

So - I am NOT for a second suggesting hypothermia is a good thing, it's a serious issue and one all wilderness travellers should be prepared to recognize and deal with. Do NOT take this as a suggestion to go out and get hypothermic to see what health issues you might have. (I feel I have to state this here, on the off-chance someone who's a Darwin Award candidate reads this and misinterprets the message.)

I began this post with the thought that bad things can produce good results, that from something bad, there can always spring some good. However, while we're experiencing the bad, it can often be a real challenge to keep that in mind; let's face it, it's tough to see the sunshine if you're stuck at the bottom of a deep mud-bog, trying to claw your way out.

But eventually you will, and you'll once again see the sunshine, you'll find the good from out of the bad.

So if you start to feel a sense of despair, or depression, or you're discouraged, try to find something that's happened in your life like my hypothermia, then remember how, even though it was a really crappy experience at the time, it morphed into something that brought some real good into your life.


Some tips about hypothermia.