The little Thai island of Koh Phayam floats just south of Burma’s last blue-grey outrider islands, seemingly in the waters of amnesia. Our speedboat skitters towards it across a windless, swell-less sea.
If most Thais have forgotten this 35-square-kilometre dot in the Andaman Sea it is because they’ve never even heard of it. Koh Phayam (pronounced ‘pie-am’) has no cars or roads, few bars, no spas and no karaoke yowls… well, not yet. But, please, never call it paradise because, as Marcel Proust gloomily put it, “The only paradise is paradise lost.”
The speedboat zips us to Phayam, some 40 minutes and 30 kilometres from the Thai port of Ranong. This morning’s passengers include half a dozen European backpackers, the last Rajneeshi (still sporting his faded red threads), a young German family and seven Thais – island residents – loaded with groceries. A fair sampling of the Koh Phayam populace.
The jungle-covered island comes into view. As our speedboat carves an arc into Aow Mae Mai bay on its east coast, I see no condo towers or shrieking paragliders snagging the skyline. A good start. “We have nothing like that yet,” one of the Thais tells me. “And I hope we don’t get.”
As a traveller, you may know the feeling: returning to an island you loved not too long ago for its tranquility, you find it now paved with ravers and internet cafes – the victim of its own beauty.
Koh Phayam is nothing like that. We land at its only town, a T-junction near the pier from which radiates a collection of stalls, eateries, small bars and dive shops. My hotel transfer turns out to be a Thai girl named Lemon, who balances me and my bag on the back of her motorbike. We’re soon wobbling west across the sandy island on a narrow concrete path that’s shaded by cashew trees. I love the place already.
And of course there is no ‘hotel’, Phayam’s accommodation consisting of only bungalow resorts. The one I’ve booked is perhaps the best known, Bamboo Bungalows, run by a mellow, 40-ish Israeli, Yuli, and his Thai wife, Nute.
“It was a Robinson Crusoe place back then,” says Yuli over a coffee in the Bamboo’s open-air, beachfront restaurant. He paints a picture of the island when he arrived in 1997. “Foreigners were as rare as hornbills. There were only five resorts, now there are 35. We had the place almost to ourselves until about six years ago.”
Their garden resort – a scattering of some twenty bungalows and cottages of four types – looks out from beneath a fringe of palms, cashew trees, pandanus and casuarinas. The Andaman Sea stares spectacularly back. Three kilometres of wide, clean sand arcs to the north and south. I spot fifteen or twenty people along it, a high season crowd on Aow Yai Beach.
My mid-range bungalow has a double bed, outdoor shower and loo, light, two chairs, table and a roof. All I need. I grab a surf kayak and paddle out into the lazy blue swell. A small closeout wave breaks there all day long – hardly classic surf, but still it’s a wave, a wake-up and fun. Bamboo’s guests periodically wander down the beach with the resort’s boogie boards or kayaks and plunge in, even if only to snap themselves awake from a siesta.
Phayam’s like that: big on naps, long walks, longer reads, a bit of exploration, a trip to town for cinnamon buns at the Multi Kulti Bakery or a few beers at Oscars Bar. A major event might be an offshore fishing or snorkeling excursion, or a daytrip down to the magical Surin Islands. Extreme mobility here is a visit to neighbouring Koh Chang or a visa run to nearby Victoria Point in Burma.
If Phayam has a history, no one recalls it much. Its name supposedly came from the Thai word phayayam (‘try again’) perhaps from the days of sail when small vessels had to attempt the crossing more than once if the wind was against them. At the lower end of Kao Kwai Bay on the west coast is a small settlement of sea gypsies, also known as Moken or chao lay (people of the sea), but the majority of the island’s 600 permanent inhabitants are recently arrived mainland Thais employed in tourism.
Before farang visitors came in any numbers, the islanders worked (and still do) at cashew nut farming, rubber cultivation and fishing. Long before that it was home mostly to monkeys, wild boar, squirrels, hawks, sea otters and the elusive Oriental Pied Hornbill. The only ones I spot are squirrels and hawks.
I hire a motorbike for 200 baht (A$7) and explore the island, all ten-by-six kilometres of it. Phayam’s ‘roads’ amount to just 2.5 kilometres of two-metre wide concrete ribbon that runs over hill and scrubby dale, one path going across the island, and the other, even shorter, running north. Branching from these, unsealed sidetracks cut through the bush to the beaches at Aow Yai (Big Bay) and its northern counterpart Aow Kao Kwai (Buffalo Bay). I overtake some Dutch travellers sweating along these sandy paths on 80-baht pushbikes. Virtuous as they may be (not to mention fitter and 120-baht-a-day richer than me), I pat my trusty little Suzuki gratefully.
I head for the isolated northern beach of Aow Kwang Peeb, navigating a precipitous track recently carved into the jungle hillside. It drops me down to a perfect emerald bay with a fingernail of sandy shoreline, where I dive straight in for a swim. (At less than ten degrees north of the equator, the water here is never cold.) This being ever-enterprising Thailand, I am not surprised that there is already a small resort and drinks bar here, and thus the newly carved road in the wilderness.
Both of Phayam’s two main west coast bays, Aow Yai and Aow Khao Kwai, have long beaches backed by low, forested hills, while the east coast is mostly tidal mangrove shore. I check some of the other accommodation, the most upmarket being the new Payam Cottage Resort (boasting 24-hour electricity) and nearby Buffalo Bay Vacation Club. The other end of the scale seems occupied by the Smile Hut, a less-than-tidy, long-stay, low-rent place where the pathway borders are formed by thousands of empty beer bottles.
I cruise home on a path fragrant with the fermenting musk of windfall cashew fruit, seeing an island whose appeal is defined by what it lacks: discos, ATMs, watch-floggers, beer bars and taxi mafia. Please, Buddha, may no one hex Phayam with the P-word. As the Eagles once cautioned, “You call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye.”
Back at Bamboo Bungalows I lap up the creature comforts including cold beer and Nute’s delicious tiger prawns and squid. (Like most places on Phayam, the power is from generator and solar sources, and runs from 10am to 2pm, and 6pm to 11pm). There is even a good internet connection. Yuli jokes, “guests complained when there was no internet, so I got it. Soon they complained it was too slow, so I installed free wireless. What’s next?”
My fellow guests are what you might call mature backpackers, mainly Europeans either with or without kids, plus travelling couples and singles. Predominantly they are German, Swedish, Australian and Dutch (in that order). Three polite young Israeli guys seem determined to be the opposite of their national backpacker stereotype. The only person I avoid is a German who sits himself at my table and lights up a rank cigar.
“The younger backpackers go to the ‘bar islands’,” says Yuli, referring to places like Phi Phi, Tao, Phangan, Phuket and Samui, islands now awash with mandatory full moon parties, tattoo shops and pizza parlours. Phayam is frequently described as “Like Koh Samui or Phuket 30 years ago” – a cliché freighted with troubling prophecy. Hopefully, ‘success’ will be as blind to Phayam as the 2004 tsunami and flow right past it.
Come late afternoon, Koh Phayam gets truly gorgeous. At around 4.30pm, the cicadas crank up the volume (as they also do at dawn), the beach is cool enough for a few games of volleyball and then the lightshow begins. Off to the north above the ghost islands of Burma, thunder clouds stack themselves thousand of metres high, grey on grey phantoms of vapour twitching with lightning. The sky behind them washes slowly from purple haze down to darkness while along the beach the first bonfire flames lick up and a conga drummer kicks in. Not paradise, but not far off.
Beyond Koh Phayam
Koh Surin Islands
Try a daytrip from Koh Phayam to this Andaman Sea archipelago, a Thai Marine National Park that offers some of the best diving and snorkelling anywhere. The waters around the two islands offer dramatic swim-throughs, superb corals, a huge variety of fish and stunning visibility. The forested islands are also home to several Moken ‘sea gypsy’ communities.
Koh Chang (Elephant Island)
About four kilometres north of Koh Phayam, this is even quieter than Phayam and far less developed. (Note that this is not the large island of the same name in the eastern Gulf of Thailand.) There are small lodges and restaurants, some 45 homes and a Buddhist monastery. No motor vehicles, just walking paths. There is no direct service from Koh Phayam to Koh Chang, but boats can be chartered from Ranong pier or via your booked lodge.
Ranong
Capital of the wettest province in Thailand, snoozy Ranong is a quite Thai-Chinese town best known among visitors for its hot springs. Jansom Ranong Hotel pipes water from the springs into its public spa. The hotel is in a state of gothic decrepitude (although being refurbished) but the spa is fine and the water so hot (around 60ºC) that it might boil the nuts off a brass monkey. Eat at Saphon’s Hideaway (Ruangrat Rd) or the Kiwi Guesthouse adjacent to Ranong bus station.
Victoria Point (Koh Song)
This Burma/Myanmar island is a fifteen-minute boat trip from Ranong pier. Before embarking on a daytrip, visitors must obtain a boarding card from the Thai Immigration Office in Pak Nam Ranong. You’ll find duty-free shopping, Burmese handicrafts and gems (caveat emptor), and the Andaman Club Island Resort casino.
A sharp crack sends a feathered missile, who is screeching obscenities about trespassers from above the treetops, hurtling from its guard. The cockatoo isn’t the only one spooked. Nothing in this bushland makes that type of noise without a helping hand. Rationalisations fire around my skull as I scramble over the last of the boulders separating me from the edge of the ridge. Was it a bursting balloon? Firecracker? Gun? This is bushranger land, after all.
In 1870 under the cover of a wild storm, troopers crept between these peppermint trees and candle bark gums on the hunt for the infamous Harry Power. Sixteen months prior, the Irish convict had escaped his road gang and taken to highway robbery to occupy his time. Power tallied more than 30 crimes while on the run, and even took an apprentice named Edward under his wing, before his trainee’s uncle dobbed him in for a £500 reward.
Warnings from Power’s trusted security squad – a noisy peacock and hounds from the homestead below – were muffled by the gale. The coppers uncovered him snoozing in his hideout, now known as Power’s Lookout, in the wee hours of the morning. They celebrated their catch with a feast from the thief’s well-stocked supplies before tossing him under lock and key. Despite being one of Australia’s most flagrant bushrangers his legacy faded, while his student rose to such fame he remains a household name almost 150 years later. Good luck finding an Aussie who hasn’t heard of Ned Kelly.
Metal clings to the side of the ridge, extending a platform over the lichen-covered rocks that once formed a riverbed 350 million years ago. It’s easy to see why Power chose this spot as a hideaway – it’s tough to reach on foot or horseback, and has sweeping views of Victoria’s upper King Valley. My guide for this Girls Trekking Adventures trip, Frith Graham, stands on the podium next to a cluster of walkers, a chilled bottle of Mumm in hand. Its exploding cork is the source of the bird-banishing bang. We may not have found an outlaw with a juicy bounty up here, but as we sip from champagne flutes the moonlight illuminates the valley and I’m feeling as smug as those coppers the night they nabbed Power.
Our three-day expedition started that morning among the giant umbrella-like tree ferns and eucalyptus on the O’Shannassy Aqueduct Trail near the Yarra Valley. We set off in a mini-van, passing farmland and the transmission towers of Bonnie Doon, immortalised as the holiday destination of the Kerrigan family in the classic Australian flick The Castle.
It doesn’t take long to figure out this isn’t a carry-your-own-tent-and-dehydrated-curry kind of hike. “I get off the plane, meet up, and don’t have to make a decision for the next few days,” says Fiona, one of my fellow hikers. I have to admit, handing over the reins of organisation is incredibly liberating. Our days are to be spent decision free, wandering through some of the most picturesque parts of King Valley and working up a thirst for the region’s most famous product, wine.
Without a single traffic light, Whitfield, our home base in the valley, is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of town. “Officially, the population is 421, but I don’t know where they all live!” says Anna-Kate Pizzini, cheesemaker, member of the Pizzini Wines family and one of our guides on this trip.
Despite its tiny population, the town boasts a cafe, an epicurean larder and our accommodation: the award-winning gastropub, Mountain View Hotel. It’s far from the type of establishment Kelly would have boozed in, I muse, as German chef Ben Bergmann greets us before our five-course degustation. Bergmann worked in Michelin-starred restaurants around the world before being drawn to the kitchen of the Pizzini-owned hotel two-and-a-half years ago.
Between courses of duck breast with rhubarb chips, twice-cooked red snapper, and black quinoa-crusted wagyu beef sourced from the next town over, I find myself plundering the contents of the little hessian sack on the table, which resembles a bushranger’s moneybag. The biodynamic sourdough within is best slathered with smoked and salted French butter and washed down with a glass of King Valley sangiovese.
Almost as soon as a dish stars on the menu Bergmann sets out to create something new, so the fleeting existence of the masterpieces we devour makes them all the more impressive.
Next morning, we stamp up a sweat and work off last night’s sweet finale – a deconstructed black forest strudel served under a veil of dry ice smoke. Anna-Kate reels off names of vineyards – Murtagh Brothers, Boggy Creek, Gracebrook and La Cantina – all visible as we stride higher into the hills, dodging burrows and block-shaped droppings.
“That’s wombat poo, because it’s got a square sphincter,” explains Frith, when I ask what type of critter could leave behind so much muck. Our days may be studded with gourmet food and bookended by hot showers and comfortable beds, but none of these women – a group of long-time friends from Toowoomba – are afraid of getting their trail shoes dirty or slogging up a mountain.
We stop to gulp down views of the hazy valley. Later, we stroll through an avenue of 80-year-old chestnut trees where we roll pods beneath our feet, freeing the glossy nuts from within. I drink up that feeling of smugness once more as Anna-Kate tells us we’re trekking through private properties normally closed to the public. These vistas are exclusive.
Back when rangers looted gold and horses, this area was bush and just a few rolling farms. “Even when Nonna and the Italians came it was called the sleepy valley,” says Anna-Kate.
Nonna Rosetta and Roberto Pizzini arrived from Italy in 1955, establishing tobacco farms before their sons switched to growing grapes. Since then King Valley has become one of Australia’s premier wine-producing regions. With its high altitude, microclimates and healthy rainfall, it’s an ideal place to cultivate a wide variety of grapes, particularly those of Mediterranean heritage.
The Pizzinis first planted riesling back in 1978 to sell to Brown Brothers, and chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and shiraz soon followed. It wasn’t long before they started experimenting with lesser-known grapes from Italy, and sangiovese and nebbiolo snuck into the soil.
“The region is really good for those varieties. They love the warmth of the day and the coolness of the night,” says Alfredo ‘Fred’ Pizzini, founder of the winery and father-in-law to Anna-Kate, while we cool off from our morning’s stint with a glass of refreshing prosecco. Tallying 6.5 grams of sugar per litre, compared to the usual 10, it’s far less sweet than any prosecco I’ve ever tasted, and might just be my new favourite drop. It sure beats the usual post-hike electrolyte drink.
Not content with their collection, Fred and his son Joel, now head winemaker, kept planting, and the vineyard boasts 16 types of grapes, as well as a little patch with three more they’re experimenting with. “It’s a bit like a pantry. You don’t just have salt and pepper, do you?” he says, explaining that each new variety gives them the chance to make a new blend or improve an existing style. It’s clear why chef Bergmann, with his ever-changing degustation menu, is such a good fit for their hotel in town.
With some reluctance we haul our bellies, loaded with fine Italian cuisine, away from the dining table sprawling outside the Pizzinis’ former tobacco-drying kilns, now converted into the cellar door. This is technically a hike, after all, and we’ve got another winery to march towards. Plus, Frith promises we’ll return tomorrow to taste plenty more vino and test our culinary skills during a cooking class with winery co-owner and Fred’s wife, Katrina Pizzini.
We trundle past rows of vines, their autumnal leaves flushed like splashes of aged riesling and pinot noir. Cappuccino-coloured horses and a family of sheep graze by the street, aptly dubbed Prosecco Road, which we follow to Dal Zotto Wines, the first vineyard in the King Valley to create the bubbly drop.
For the second time in a day we wrap our mouths around more Italian varietals. The 2015 pinot grigio offers notes of pear and I enjoy the nutty flavour of the 2014 garganega, but it’s the reds that make me wish I had the strength of a highwayman to carry home a few cases.
Erik Nap, the trattoria manager, sploshes nebbiolo into our glasses, describing how the drop is lighter than you’ll find in the motherland. “If you order it in Italy, they serve it with a knife and fork,” he chuckles.
Apparently the 2012 we’re sipping requires a few more years sealed in a cellar to smooth out the tannins, but it seems a bit cruel to keep such a tasty drop under lock and key. This is bushranger land, after all, and I’m ready to ransack the bounty.
My safety helmet has been knocked sideways over one eye. Below me – a long way below me – is a foaming pool of frigid water and tumbled boulders. To my left, a waterfall shudders, sending spray into my eyes. I scramble over the rock ledge to lie moaning in the mud. I’d never realized Tahiti could be such a challenging place. My knees are grazed and my thigh muscles ache. But I also have a big grin on my face. Who needs a mud spa? I want to crawl through lava tubes and swim with sharks. In French Polynesia, adventure awaits – provided you ignore every resort brochure ever produced.
My visit started on the island of Tahiti, which most visitors only pass through on the way to more alluring islands. Can’t imagine why. Turn away from the ocean and you see dramatic peaks and valleys. I wanted to explore, taking the unsealed roads where red flowers brush the sides of the car and bamboo creaks. Tibo of Mato Nui Excursions accompanied me. He is one of a new breed of small tour operators in Tahiti willing to give visitors more than a tiare flower behind the ear and a cocktail.
For two days, Tibo took me trekking across Tahiti Iti. We camped on an empty beach and ate raw snails. He took me abseiling down waterfalls at Vaipurau and Poutoa. I drew the line at the biggest rappel, which is only for the experienced. There was ample opportunity to recover my manhood by leaping off rocks into pools far below, pummelling my chest as I went. In the hinterland behind Hitia, I clung to another rock ledge and crawled through lava tubes. Lava tubes are tunnel-like caves formed by ancient volcanic action. At Hitia there are three, linked by a series of little valleys landscaped by waterfalls. Basic fitness and sure-footed agility will get you scrambling and wading through the first two lava tubes, tested mainly by a couple of small abseils.
The third lava tube is more challenging. It is black and labyrinthine with Gollum-deep pools, smooth rock surfaces and lit only by the drunken dancing of a potholer’s lamp. I passed the narrow opening on my belly in puddles of muddy water. Upon reaching the valley however, the scenery was glorious and the waterfalls like something from a shampoo ad. I mark lava tubing down as a great new challenge that has been successfully completed.
The following day I travelled to Huahine, a small, overlooked island between Tahiti and Bora Bora. The plane skimmed a turquoise lagoon and out over the ocean, where puffy white clouds wandered like lost sheep on a vast blue plain. Huahine revealed itself like a spectacular magic trick: a wonderland of voluptuous emerald peaks with necklaces of turquoise lagoons and palm trees.
The little plane waggled its wings in pure joy and we set down at the airport. It was little more than a hut with two doors – arrives and departs – and the heat enveloped me like a hug from a maiden aunt.
If you happen to be a postcard manufacturer, these islands are the stuff of palm-fringed fantasy. The more intrepid will discover that Huahine has great jagged rocks and is haunted by wild pigs. A cyclone a few years back wiped out most of its houses and a $70 million resort in a matter of minutes. You can see how rains crash down like Armageddon. As acts of God go, it suited me just fine. Few tourists come here, only adventurers, insane backpackers and lots of mosquitoes. Whether you stay in a tiny pension or a beach hut at Huahine’s lastremaining resort, you get absolute beachfront, wave-lulling tranquillity.
But enough tranquillity. I was soon hanging on to the wheel of my battered rental Jeep as the engine roared and protested and a precipice lurched around every corner. The wheels of my car rattled on bridges made of planking that spanned sluggish brown rivers. Even on the roads, driving has its challenges: dusty dogs refused to get out of the way and a falling coconut dented the bonnet and nearly caused me to end up in the ditch with a heart attack.
Four-wheel driving – survived! Lava tubes – done! Kayaking was next. In Huahine you can paddle out into the lagoon and not see another soul. Follow the boom of the surf to a gap in the reef however and you’ll spot the surfers. The consistently large swells of Huahine make the island second only to Tahiti for attracting those in search of waves. Locals are reportedly not taking too kindly to foreigners muscling in on their territory. At least not until you’ve met them, knocked back copious amounts of alcohol together, beaten your chest and talked the surfing talk.
A confession: I did spend a couple of days on a beach looking at the sunset and sipping cocktails. After my days of camping, kayaking and mud crawling, I figured that I had earned a stint at the Te Tiare Beach Resort, the only international standard resort on the island. To reach it, a local wearing flip-flops and a flowered shirt picked me up in a boat from a tiny pontoon, where a dog snored and fish glittered in the water. There’s no road access to Te Tiare and by the time I reached my bungalow even the TV and phone seemed like strange artefacts from another civilization.
Once my abused muscles were sufficiently recovered, I was ready for more adventure. This came courtesy of an outrigger boat piloted by a local guy named Moana, who grinned like a cat in a fish shop and played the ukulele. There was a tattoo of a turtle on his left shoulder and he had the brown belly of a happy Buddha. We travelled around the island, skipping over the pale blue waters of the lagoon. When I felt too hot I simply dropped off the boat with a mask and a hunk of baguette. A shoal of hungry butterfly fish promptly surrounded me, flaunting black and white stripes and vivid yellow tails. I could hear them chomping on the bread while Moana’s ukulele twanged above somewhere.
By afternoon I was swimming with black-fin reef sharks. Moana introduced me to Claude, a local who has developed a unique relationship with the big fish over the years.
Most afternoons at 3pm, Claude can be found aboard a floating platform in the lagoon preparing hacked-up fish heads for the sharks, who turn up like clockwork for the feast. Claude invites anyone willing to get into the water with a frenzy of up to 20 sharks. I was soon overboard and stepping, chest-deep along the seabed, anxious about getting a cut on the sharp coral lest a shark mistake me for a hunk of bleeding fish. The sleek and sinister sharks are a thrill up close, especially when you’re in the water with them.
Mesmerised by their power and grace, my heart flipped as they cruised within arm’s reach. They turned slowly in the water, perfectly balanced and propelling themselves with indolent flicks of their tails.
Back on dry land in time for another postcard sunset, I was weary from my day spent swimming with the sharks but in no doubt that French Polynesia has more to offer than beaches and breakfast buffets.
A warning glance is shot our way. Three spray can heroes are marking their territory on a wall and they don’t want us to come any nearer. They don’t look quite as I expected. The blue skivvies and nerd glasses make them appear less cutting-edge artist and more like a couple of the Wiggles cameoing on Saved By The Bell.
According to Robin, our guide, this is a semi-legal painting wall. “Well, no-one knows if it’s legal or not,” he admits. There are some walls in Berlin that are deliberately set aside for street art, but far more get appropriated without permission. If you can walk a block in the German capital without seeing tags, throw-ups, stencils or murals, then you’ve probably got your eyes closed.
Robin is something of a street art and graffiti historian. He’s keen to point out that, although both have their roots in New York, they are two distinct movements. Street art has the viewing public in mind, but graffiti is insular – it’s about impressing other graffiti crews and getting your name seen by as many people as possible.
That doesn’t mean to say that techniques don’t evolve, however. Robin encourages us to look up – the graffiti crews often pride themselves on getting their tags in the ‘heaven spot’ just below a building’s roof. It gets the name because if the person dangling you down by the legs while you spray lets go, heaven is where you’ll end up.
He seems as impressed by some of the tags made with Super Soakers or fire extinguishers as he does with the more obviously appealing street art murals. Of the latter, there are many. Berlin is arguably the world capital of street art at the moment, partly due to lack of law enforcement.
“It’s a city of six million people, but it’s 60 million dollars in debt,” says Robin. “So they employ just 35 people to tackle graffiti, when there are an estimated 3,000 people out spraying every night.”
There’s also a legacy from the Stasi, the former East German secret police. Life under the microscope made East Berliners intensely distrustful of being spied upon. Therefore CCTV cameras on buildings are incredibly rare and it’s harder to catch the artists in the act.
Also important, is the city’s lack of power to prosecute for spraying onto a private building. The owner has to take things to court and that’s generally too much hassle. It’s simply easier to paint over the offending image or – increasingly popular – commission an artist to paint something really good on the walls instead.
Evidently, there’s an accepted hierarchy in the street art world. The general unwritten rule is that you only go over something if you can do better. This, of course, is subjective, but the more impressive set pieces tend to last much longer.
Outside the Zebrano cafe in Friedrichshain, Robin points to a remnant of the Linda’s Ex campaign. One artist left pictures all over the city bearing messages of love for a mysterious ‘Linda’. They popped up in prominent positions, leading to a citywide debate about whether the spurned lover was a romantic or a psycho. It was later discovered that there never was a Linda – it was just one man’s social experiment.
Our mural-spotting continues by train. The U8 line crosses Kreuzberg, where many of the Berlin’s most impressive spraypaint masterpieces stand proud. Of these, an astronaut is the most famous. At night, the shadow from the flagpole of a nearby garage passes through the astronaut’s hand, making it look like he’s staking territorial rights on the moon.
The key thing about Berlin is that street art and alternative culture isn’t limited to hip fringes of the metropolis, and the city’s unique history plays a major part in this. When the East German authorities constructed the Berlin Wall in 1981, it was set back from the border. A ‘death strip’, guarded by soldiers with shoot-to-kill orders, created a buffer zone of rubble and abandoned or torn-down buildings.
This death strip went through the centre of the city, and when the wall came down in 1989, a lot of prime real estate was left unclaimed. Squatters and artists moved into the abandoned buildings, many of which were turned into studios and rather grimy galleries. Most have been moved on, unable to resist the tide of development for long, but there are still surprising pockets close to where the wall ran.
A fine example is C-Base, a bar hidden behind the trees on the riverbank opposite Jannowitzbrücke station. Inside, it is made up to look like a spaceship. The number of plug sockets and extension leads give away what it really is, however – a club for computer hackers. Non-members are welcome for a drink upstairs, but not into the mysterious underground lair.
At thoroughly spruced-up Hackesche Höfe, an alleyway behind the plush shopping centre contains an arthouse cinema, an independent gallery, the scruffiest of cocktail bars and virtually every form of street art available. An extraordinary picture of a man’s face by Australian artist James Cochran, AKA Jimmy C, has French impressionist leanings and seems to be created out of bubbles. Elsewhere, a frequently occurring paste-up character called Little Lucy looks mischievous. The paste-up cats she tortures can always be found nearby, hanging from a noose or otherwise abused.
Even weirder are the scrap metal monsters that bob around opposite the bar. These belong to the Monsterkabinett, one of alternative Berlin’s oddest experiences. Essentially it is a cellar full of mechanical beasts – some with bulging eyes, others with klaxons for noses – which dance to pounding techno music in increasingly claustrophobic rooms. It makes no sense at all, yet feels inherently brilliant.
It’s the starting point for a jaunt through the parts of Berlin that gentrification hasn’t had its wicked way with just yet. French filmmaker Isa leads us to a former train depot in Friedrichshain. It has become something of a focal hub for Berlin’s alternative cultures, with nightclubs, bars and galleries taking ovderelict buildings, and oddities such as circus tents popping up sporadically.
Some of the best street art is here too. Isa tells the tale of the mural on the side of the Cassiopeia club. “I kept coming back as it was being painted,” she says. “At first, I thought it was just going to be mountain scenery. Then the cowboy got added. Then, finally, the banana skins that the cowboy is slipping over. My idea of what it was kept transforming.”
She leads us through the locked-off yards to Urban Spree, a bar-gallery hybrid. The exhibitions are officially closed, but we get the nod from the barman to head up. It’s not often you get to mooch around a gallery with a beer in hand, taking everything in via lights from mobile phones, but it’s something the Uffizi and Louvre may want to think about.
Compared to the next stop, however, it feels like standard museum practice. We head out east, to the end of the S-Bahn line, and then to the end of a tramline. This is the Berlin that most Berliners don’t consider venturing into.
By muted torchlight we traipse through bushes and over damaged wire fences. Manholes are left uncovered on the path and the block of flats is totally abandoned. It’s a chilling, Blair Witch-like experience as we crunch up the stairs through broken glass. Isa calls this ‘urban exploration’ and tells us not to shine any light on the street in case we’re seen.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to see syringes at the bottom of the lift shaft or a corpse slumped in the corner next to a broken window. But what we do see are traces of a new generation. The tags and rudimentary paintings aren’t as impressive as those seen in the train depot, but that’s why they’re here. “Kids use the building for practice,” says Isa. “They can make mistakes here, and no-one will see them.”
In the bleakest of settings, experiments are creating life. It’s the sort of energetic mutation that the city feeds off. This has long been the Berlin way; when favourite haunts are developed for mass consumption, those on the fringes will always find somewhere new to express themselves.
There she stood on the side of the highway, a shivering mass of tattered clothes alongside her huge, bright pink suitcase. In her shaking hands she clutched a small but neatly written cardboard sign, her ticket out of the winter chill and, if luck were smiling upon her, all the way to DIMITROVGRAD.
I was hurtling past Nis, Serbia, at 130 kilometres per hour in my Bulgarian Citroen, when the fluoro flash of pink caught my eye. I slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road about a hundred metres past her. A honk of the horn and she had turned to make that brilliant, mad dash, the sprint all hitchers dream about during those lonely roadside hours.
“It’s my policy to pick up hitchhikers,” I’d said to my road-trip companion, Iks, about half an hour earlier, in a tone that must have reeked of faux-hippie smugness. “It builds up karma.” I was also looking forward to the element of surprise a hitchhiker invariably adds to the journey.
After hitcher, suitcase and guitar had all been bundled into the car, we began pleasantries. She was a 40-something woman from Germany, of Turkish descent, called Gamze. At least that was her birth name. Her ‘God name’ was something completely different. Warning bells rang.
The next few exchanges yielded this information: she thought she’d left Germany on Saturday 17 December (today was Friday the 18th), she couldn’t remember where she’d been since then, and she had no money. Gamze could also, she told us, predict the future. She was selling possessions from her pink bag to make some cash on the road.
Then came the doozy: God had recently come to Gamze in a vision and told her to “go to Israel to save the children”. So, true to the divine command, she’d packed up all her stuff and hit the road.
This had very quickly turned into a scene from a comedy movie. Trying to keep a straight face and avoiding Gamze’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, I politely pointed out that an overland trip to Israel would require crossing Syria, which didn’t seem like a great idea. Gamze’s bulletproof response, delivered with a beguiling half-smile that suggested she might be taking the piss, was that God had given her this mission, therefore he would protect her. You can’t argue with that.
Iks and I found ourselves in an awkward position. Gamze was clearly delusional, possibly unstable. But we had already agreed to drive her past her destination to Sofia, and we could hardly leave a vulnerable woman in the middle of nowhere. So we continued.
Despite the elephant in the back seat, conversation with Gamze proved delightfully quirky. To paraphrase one of Terry Pratchett’s most excellent analogies, she had passed through insanity and into the calm waters on the other side. During the journey we discussed life, family, travel and music, with only the occasional mad interjection, at which even Gamze began to chuckle.
We were only half an hour from Sofia when things got dark. Gamze seemed to smell something in the air, which she took as an attempt by us to poison her. She became agitated and, despite our apologies, told us that we would have to “live with the consequences” of what we’d done. That sounded ominous.
I told Gamze that if it would make her more comfortable, we could leave her at the next town, but she curtly told us she’d still like to go to Sofia. We drove on in awkward silence. When we reached the city centre, she told us to pull over and, with barely a word of farewell, disappeared into the night.
The next day I met up with two Bulgarian friends at a cafe. As I regaled them with the tale of Gamze, one of them, Liya, became increasingly concerned, pointing out that the poor woman was probably schizophrenic and in need of help. She was right. She offered to call the police to file a missing persons report and, overwhelmed with waves of guilt for not having acted sooner, I agreed.
The phone call was going OK until she mentioned Syria. Then all hell broke loose. Within 10 minutes, four security police had barged into the cafe asking for ‘the Australian’. Clearly they’d misunderstood most of the story, assuming we were reporting a potential terrorist. They barked intense questions at me in broken English, before ‘escorting’ us to the police station.
As the cop car whisked us away with Hollywood urgency, I had a sinking feeling I was about to be accused of smuggling a terrorist into Bulgaria, when in fact my only crime had been to give a lift to a shivering woman on the side of the road, then trying to ensure she was OK. Two rights make a wrong, it seems.
Now, I’m not one to complain about being apprehended by foreign police when I can sense a good story in the making, but in a few hours I was due to catch a bus to Istanbul, where my Christmas flight to Melbourne awaited me. Spending the festive season in a Bulgarian prison did not seem like an attractive alternative.
I was in full panic mode by the time we got to the station, but thankfully my calm translator, Liya, set the record straight. She explained the situation clearly enough that even a policeman could understand it – no mean feat. After several hours of slow discussion, and a few pieces of cold pizza, the report was filed and I was free to go!
The lesson here? I’ll continue to pick up hitchhikers, and hitchhike myself, because of the amazing experiences it can provide. Never again, though, will I mention Syria to police who don’t speak my language.
Switzerland is renowned for stunning vistas. Let's be honest; when you are blessed with a mountain range featuring the who’s who of alpine A-listers, including the Matterhorn, the Eiger, Jungfrau and Monte Rosa, which it shares with Italy (to name just a handful), it is safe to say hikers' jaws will drop when trekking here.
Nothing, however, quite prepares you for the scale of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Aletsch Glacier. Resembling a huge frozen snake stretching almost 23 kilometres, the Aletsch is the largest glacier in the European Alps. If that is not imposing enough, its peak depth plunges to almost one kilometre.
We’re hiking a four-hour route from Eggishorn Peak, where we first spot the glacier in all its glory. It is summer and the slate-white ice has been thrust into sharp relief with the dark rock of the surrounding snow-free mountains. Jungfrau’s pearly peak stares down at us from the distance and the glacier forms a winding driveway leading to its pure white fortress. Mark Twain once wrote, “It’s a good name, Jungfrau – Virgin. Nothing could be whiter; nothing could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect.” He’s not wrong.
We pass mountain lakes and cascading waterfalls en route. Around each gorge the scenery becomes increasingly captivating. It is only once you are up in the Alps that you can truly comprehend the magnitude of the mountains. I’d never call myself a hiker but I now understand the appeal. Time is lost taking in the views and, as we round a glass-still lake and pass the lonesome Restaurant Gletscherstube, a little wooden hut nestled between hills, we can see the glacier in the distance. We make a deal to celebrate our icy hike with a beer here on our return journey and head down to the monolith’s edge.
Staring up at a 20-metre-high slab of ice offers a daunting perspective. We tie ourselves together and our guide Henri takes the lead at the top of the rope. With a couple of slips and a combined group effort the eight of us manage to scramble to standing position. The virgin Jungfrau sits proudly to our right and to our left looms the unmistakable Matterhorn, its peak teasing us with the perfect snapshot between moving clouds.
Crystalline floe crunches below our feet as we make our way over the glacier. It is lunar in colour, and while walking on it is unsteady it is not as slippery as you might expect. There are mini waterfalls and rivers rushing through deep blue ice channels below us. Sometimes thrill seekers ride hydroboards down the channels of running water created by the summer sun. An activity for the next trip, I dare myself. Henri explains the alarming rate at which the glacier is disappearing, shrinking almost three kilometres since 1870, due to ever-increasing thaw. “I’d like to see the climate-change deniers explain that,” he says with disdain.
We find a flat, almost gravel-like plain in the middle of the glacier and sit down for lunch. The Alps tower over us on either side and an endless freeway of jagged ice leads to the Matterhorn.
“Can you feel us moving?” Henri asks. I am glad to say I can’t. The glacier flows almost 200 metres a year, he explains, and with climate change it’s moving faster. A child born today might even see the end of the Aletsch Glacier’s days.
It takes almost 10 years for a metre of snowfall to create a single centimetre of glacial ice. The fact that at one stage we were standing on ice almost a kilometre deep makes the celebratory beers at Gletscherstube somewhat bittersweet.
'Save the whales. For dinner'. The saying is a favourite in Greenland, where the locals are fed up with pesky foreigners telling them they shouldn’t munch on minke or nibble on narwhal simply because these are 'majestic creatures'.
To say Greenlandic cuisine can be controversial would be an understatement the size of the icecap that dominates this vast island. Tell a Greenlander that you feel uncomfortable dining on whale and they will be as dumbfounded as if you’ve just announced that you don’t like ice-cream. As well as whale (raw, fried, dried or stewed), local favourites include seal soup and walrus flippers. If this is not enough to offend your sensibilities, there is the most sought-after meat of all: polar bear.
Whatever your view on these foods, there’s a reason why Greenlanders keep eating them: apparently they are delicious. While embracing such unusual treats will win you local respect, there are other options. Greenland is home to many other unique foods that are less confronting for visitors. Either way, maybe leave that Greenpeace T-shirt at home.
Hungry hunters
Before Danish colonisers forced the Inuit into permanent settlements in the 1950s, their diet was based on seasonal hunting and gathering. And while Greenland’s supermarkets are now as well stocked as in mainland Denmark, locals still take great pride in catching their own dinner.
During the long days of summer, whole families take to the hills to hunt reindeer and musk oxen (shaggy bovines that look like the Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street and taste superb when barbecued). By comparison, reindeer meat reminds me of the nasty sausage rolls sold at my uni refectory. Polar bear is hunted in autumn, but no matter how tasty the locals tell you it is, remember the species is now vulnerable.
When I visit in early spring, the locals are skipping school and work to hunt little auks returning to Greenland after wintering in warmer climes. Related to puffins, these pot-bellied birds bob on the waves until alarmed, when they awkwardly take to the sky with comically small wings.
Along with three Inuit friends, I spend a chilly day on a boat looking for them in the fjords off the west-coast town of Maniitsoq. Jagged black mountains speckled with snow rise around us, their shadows making the water as black as sump oil. When the avangnaq, or north wind, whips off Davis Strait and turns my face blue, I am ordered to put on a fluoro fisherman’s costume that makes me look like a council worker. Just as I think I’m getting frostbite, we shoot three auks and head to a cosy cabin to pluck and roast them. Yes, they taste like chicken.
Seal, or puisit, are counted by the millions in Greenland, and are mainly hunted for their pelts. The cooked meat is chocolate brown, oily and delectable. People say it tastes like lamb but I reckon it’s closer to pooch – perhaps the real reason seals are sometimes called “dogs of the sea.”
Whale is a favourite Greenlandic goodie. Before you stop reading this article in disgust, remember that commercial Japanese and European whalers were responsible for the drop in whale numbers in the twentieth century, not the Inuit, who have been hunting them for hundreds of years.
With a mere 57,000 locals to feed, Greenlandic whaling is considered sustainable. Beluga, narwhal and minke are the most common varieties of whale meat sold, caught by professional hunters who must respect a strict quota. When cooked, the nutritious meat tastes like a well-done steak (they are mammals, after all). Also popular is the raw skin of the narwhal, called mattak. It has a subtle, nutty flavour, and takes an eternity to chew.
Seagull nests are raided for their speckled eggs, which are used to make hearty omelettes. One ferry I catch takes an unplanned detour to an egg-rich isle on the whim of the vessel’s hungry first mate.
With such an emphasis on hunting, restaurants aren’t common in Greenland. Easily the best is Nipisa in Nuuk (the capital), which serves modern dishes with fresh local ingredients. Try the lamb, considered among the world’s best because of its diet of Arctic herbs and berries.
Something fishy
If you prefer your fish more politically correct, there’s plenty of delicious seafood on offer aside from whale. Greenland’s economy was built on fishing, particularly for halibut, prawns and snow crabs. As most are exported, you’re better off catching them yourself. You’re far more likely to come across salmon, capelin, trout and char, which are sold at markets fresh, dried, or cured with local herbs. Cod is available fresh, but is mainly hung out to dry to create a jaw-breaking snack exported to Portugal.
Eat your greens
Despite the island’s verdant name, Greenland’s chilly climate has traditionally prevented much produce being grown. Before the Danes brought fruit and vegetables (and beer and bibles, among other things), the Inuit mainly got their vitamin C through blubber, raw fish, and reindeer liver. Other options are the small, kayak-shaped leaves of the qajaasat plant, used to make tea, and kuanni, a local relative of rhubarb that makes a yummy cordial.
For a few weeks in autumn, the tundra becomes blanketed with paarnaqutit, tart, dark berries that work a treat with ice cream. Mushroom lovers should keep their eyes peeled for slippery jacks, which often grow among Viking ruins in the island’s south. Ironically, as global warming starts to turn Greenland green, farmers in the far south are now growing broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower for the first time ever.
Tip of the iceberg
Perhaps the strangest Greenlandic delicacy is a beer that’s literally ice-cold. Greenland Brewhouse is the island’s first brewery, started in the town of Narsaq in 2006 by local fireman Salik Hard. Reversing the adage that you can’t sell ice to Greenlanders, he’s selling it to the world, melting 20,000-year-old icebergs to make what is probably the world’s purest pilsener.
Hard maintains he uses the ice because it is readily available, but there’s no doubt the cult status his beer enjoys in Denmark is mainly thanks to this unique ingredient. The malt is imported from Germany and the hops come from Canada. In addition to pilsener, Hard and his brewmaster make pale ale, brown ale and a particularly delicious dark Christmas beer.
By far the most popular non-alcoholic drink is coffee, which is consumed thin, black and in dangerous quantities. Spend more than a few days in Greenland and you are bound to be invited to a kaffemik, or “coffee party”, where you’ll be pampered by weathered Inuit grannies shuffling around the house in their favourite pair of reindeer fur ug boots. A feature of these gatherings is long periods of silence where everyone clasps their cups and simply smiles. Don’t feel awkward; the Inuit regard communal silence as perfectly sociable and a sign that everyone is at ease.
Before heading to Argentina, I had heard all about the sensuality of tango: the beautiful women, the revealing dresses, the sultry looks and the sexy music. But now, as a hot-blooded heterosexual in the midst of my first Buenos Aires tango experience, I’m slightly disconcerted to find I can’t keep my eyes off a dancer named Carlos.
He’s tall and dark with the Italian features of many of his compatriots, and has deep black eyes like the subject of a European master – the kind that seem to follow you around the room. And, although he’s stuck to the side of a stunning brunette almost bursting from her red dress, those big black eyes have me in a trance.
When I arrived in the boulevard-lined South American capital yesterday, my head was full of a very different idea of Latino machismo – one based on the gauchos of Bruce Chatwin’s classic, In Patagonia. Ever since reading it as a teenager, these South America hombres have remained in my imagination, where freedom and adventure sit side-by-side. Tough men on piebald ponies drinking mate, swathed in ponchos, with long-bladed knives jutting from the folds of their waistbands.
It all started well. Our taxi driver from the airport, Martin, introduced himself with a humble reference to the great South American liberator General San Martin and listed his three greatest loves: “I like football very much,” he said, declaring loyalty to the famous Boca Juniors. “And tango is my passion,” he added, moving his shoulders in a dance. “But women,” he continued, locking eyes with me in an intense stare: “Women I love!”
Twenty-four hours later, bathed in the soft red light of the Rojo Tango show, a five-piece band filling the room with songs of lost love, there are no ponchos and not a long-blade in sight, but it would be a brave gaucho to doubt Carlos’s machismo. The women in the room swoon with his rhythm. When the show ends, white light dissipates the fog of desire and I stumble from the tango restaurant and into a bar next door, my companions teasing me about my first, albeit short-lived, Latino man-crush.
The next day, wandering the gritty, pastel-coloured streets of La Boca, I’m told tango originated as a dance among men in the late 1800s. With thousands of male immigrants pouring into the capital, the city’s bordellos were busy places, where brawls were common. Out of the fights and pent up anger, tango was born, with men dancing together while they waited their turn. The bordello staff joined them and tango evolved into what it is today.
Three days later, despite a night at an estancia in the wild northeast region of Esteros del Ibera, and a brush with a khaki-clad safari ranger who looked like a young Harrison Ford in the jungles around Iguazu Falls, I’m yet to experience the Argentinean machismo I’d expected. But although I only have a few days left in the country, and Patagonia is 2,000 kilometres to the south, there is still hope. Sitting on a plane circling the north-west colonial city of Salta, I notice a map on which the silhouette of a horse-mounted gaucho trots across the Salta and Tucumán plains. Although the region is now famous for its wines, this is also cowboy country.
Nestled hard up against the Andean foothills, Salta has the appearance of a quaint European provincial capital, despite its population of just half-a-million. From the plane window, the landscape is a patchwork of orange-leafed vineyards. To the northwest, one of the world’s highest railways – Tren a las Nubes (Train to the Clouds) – climbs 4,220 metres into the grey mountains.
At 1,200 metres above sea level, Salta and the surrounding region is home to some of the highest vineyards on the globe, famous for producing the dry white wine torrontes that we’re chasing on a three-day trip that will take us south from Salta to Tucumán, the home of Argentinean independence.
On the way into town, our guide Noah tells us that Salteños love wine, music and a good time. “The secret is not to get the guitar player drunk or else the music is over very early,” Noah declares with a burst of laughter, as we pass llamas grazing in green paddocks and roadside empanada stalls.
Salta is famous for its empanadas, which Noah assures us are the best in the country. Nearing our hotel, he offers one last note on local culture: “If the waiter takes his time to take your order, it takes even longer for your order to arrive, and even longer to get the bill, then you know you’re in Salta.”
It’s Sunday and the sidewalks are almost empty as I stroll along narrow streets lined with terraced colonial buildings. Old men gather on street corners talking in soft Spanish. In a dusty park, hawkers cluster below tall palm trees and pigeon-soiled statues, flogging the red-and-white tops of the River Plate football team, which is in town for the weekend.
I make my way along a side street and stumble onto Plaza 9 de Julio, the city’s colonial heart. Classical French and Italian architecture lines the square. Passing the pink basilica I cross the sunny plaza to a cafe. Chairs and tables are laid out on the wide footpath, where I order a coffee and sit back to take in the afternoon. A busker plays a violin, teenagers stroll arm in arm and children slurp ice creams under mandarin trees laden with ripe fruit. My coffee never arrives. I mention it to the waiter as I leave. He shrugs as if to say: “What did you expect? You’re in Salta now gringo.”
Having experienced Salta time, I’m keen to taste the Salteños’s other great passions: music and wine. But first we decide to take in some of the town’s bricks-and-mortar attractions. Founded in 1582, the city is known colloquially as ‘Salta La Linda’ – Salta the Beautiful – and is home to some of the country’s finest colonial architecture, which hints at the former wealth of the regional capital.
Next door, the Museum of High Altitude Archeology houses three child mummies, found in 1999 on the cold slopes of a 6,700 metre volcano. It’s believed the mummies were child sacrifices made to Incan gods.
A couple of doors down is a small bakery, shelves glistening with Salteño treats: melon marmalade wrapped in dry pastry and sprinkled with icing sugar, fig paste wrapped in pastry with sliced walnuts and dulce de leche – caramelised sweetened milk, incased in a hard icing sugar shell.
Already light-headed from our sugar hit, we hit a peña. Local bars where Salteños gather to drink, eat and sing, peñas are the best place to get a real taste of the region’s culture. Noah has assured us this peña, La Casona del Molino, is as local as they come.
It’s 9pm when we arrive and the place is deserted – Salteños are famous for the late hours they keep – so we order wine and empanadas, and wait. A former mansion, La Casona is a jumble of high-ceilinged rooms cluttered with wooden tables. By the time the first musicians shuffle into the place, three empty bottles of Malbec clutter our table. By 11pm the place is full, each room with its own musicians and audience, all drinking, eating and dancing to the acoustic folkloric sounds. It’s 4am when we spill like guitar music onto the street.
The next morning the temperature has dropped and the sky is pewter. I emerge from the hotel wearing a coat and nursing a robust hangover. We’re about to drive through the heart of Argentina’s north-west wine region and the thought of another glass of the stuff gives me shivers. But, with a little machismo of my own, I decide the best defense is to tackle the dilemma head on.
We take the Route 68 south from Salta toward Valles Calchaqui and the northwest wine growing capital of Cafayate. The landscape is a windswept canvas of rugged ochre-coloured mountains and wide flats of low scrub, towering cacti and dry, rockstrewn riverbeds. We taste ruby red Malbec and delightfully dry torrontes wines before visiting the Devil’s Throat, a cylindrical incision in the red valley walls where a pan piper fills the air with haunting notes that seem to hover inside the rock formation. But still, despite the Wild West landscape, there’s not a gaucho in sight.
The following day we continue south toward the town of Tafi del Valle in Tucumán Province. Our new guide, Hugo, assures me this is real gaucho country and that our destination, the 230-year-old Estancia Las Carreras, is a working ranch and brimming with cowboys.
We leave Cafayate and traverse the traditional lands of the indigenous Diaguita people. It’s a harsh country of barren rolling hills. At the pre-Columbian Ruinas de Quilmes we explore the remains of what was once a town of 5,000. Our indigenous guide, Nicolas, explains how the people fought the Spanish with bows and arrows and slingshots, the women fighting beside their men, resisting colonisation for 130 years. When the conquistadors finally won, many Quilmes people killed themselves rather than surrender.
Route 307 takes us out of Valles Calchaqui to the 3,000 metre pass, El Infiernillo. The air is crisp and a flock of llama blocks the road as we crest the pass, a shepherd slowly walking behind. I step from the car to take a photograph. As the shutter clicks, a mob of horses thunders over a nearby ridge, in pursuit are two gauchos riding high and proud in their saddles. I stand and stare. One of the gauchos waves. I nod. Then they’re gone.
That night, huddled around an open fire sipping Malbec, our hosts at Las Carreras inform us they have something special planned: a night ride through the valley with one of their cowboys. An hour later, swathed in a red poncho, I’m riding beside Moreno listening to tales of a life spent in the saddle. We climb to the top of a ridge overlooking the estancia. The homestead lights of Las Carreras twinkle below and I ask Moreno if he knows any gaucho songs.
Moreno leans back in his saddle and begins to sing. It’s a soft, heart-broken ballad of freedom and loss, passed on by his grandfather years ago riding these same hills in search of scattered cattle. The melody rises from Moreno’s throat in puffs of fog, floating on the frigid night air. The horses’ hooves strike a beat on the rocky trail and the ballad echoes across the valley. A full moon throws our shadows forward; two gauchos riding side by side.
It’s taken a week to shake my Carlos man-crush, but finally I’ve found my macho gaucho. And wouldn’t you know it, he’s singing.
I’m cold. Really cold. And I’m standing in my underwear in a wooden shack deep in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest. This is not the scene of some erotic horror movie though. I’m about to plunge into the piping-hot waters of the swimming pool at Granite Hot Springs. It is fed by a 40ºC natural spring streaming down the snow-covered hillside. The heat has melted the surrounding snow and the 10-second shuffle across icy stairs and a slippery, humility-stealing boardwalk seems to take an eternity. By the time I reach the pool’s edge I cannot feel my extremities. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long for the hot springs to toast me and, as I float like a cooked lobster, I think about the best part of this scenario – the adventure to get here.
Earlier that morning I’d left the famous slopes of Jackson Hole for a snow experience of a different kind. What I knew about dog sledding I’d learned from the big screen, where huskies mushed their way to rescue a freezing damsel in distress. Soon after arriving at Jackson Hole Iditarod Sled Dog Tours though, I realised I actually knew nothing at all. The movies, would you believe, are fictitious. First, Alaskan racing sled dogs are nothing like the huskies in the movies. They are lean, surprisingly small and look a bit like red kelpies. They are also very excitable and their barking becomes frenzied as we arrive.
A brief orientation sets us up with basic commands and notes about where to stand on the sled. The handlers are at pains to explain the dogs are our partners and the most important members of the team. Plus, they are all related to dogs that have done the Iditarod, a 1600-kilometre race across Alaska that’s often referred to as the Last Great Race on Earth.
With the foot brake (a deep hook in the snow) kicked up we are off. This is no Disney ride. The dogs are fast and I need to control them or we’ll slide off the track. It is a balance of riding the brake to keep control, yelling mush and pedalling to help with uphill speed.
The only sounds are the patter of paws on the snow, the panting of our team, me included, and the wind, some of which smells dog generated. A distant moose stares at us, nonplussed. The dogs take gulps of fresh powder to hydrate without breaking step as we wind through pine trees and into open fields. The views of mountains framed by forest are as breathtaking as the sledding. I can only imagine the stamina of the Iditarod champions and wonder if they ever get the chance to relax in a hot spring post race.
They say you should beware the woman scorned, but not if you’re a female musician. When Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan planned to tour with Paula Cole, she was told by a promoter no one would pay to see a show featuring two women. That was 1994, and she thought the notion was ridiculous. At the same time, Lollapalooza, which had launched in 1992, was attracting huge crowds, all while featuring few female acts on its bills.
It took McLachlan three years, but in 1997 the Vancouver songwriter proved her point. Her concept was simple: invite a diverse range of musicians, book venues, sell tickets and entertain the crowd. It was the same approach used by every other music festival going around at the time, but with one major difference: every artist on the bill would be a female singer or a band fronted by a woman. Lilith Fair, named after Adam’s first wife in Jewish mythology (the one who left him when he refused to treat her as an equal), was born.
At the time, McLachlan and her management team put together a wish list. The singer contacted friends and those she already knew, and her team reached out to the rest. In the end, 90 per cent of the artists they approached said yes. “The few we didn’t get were either in the studio or had been touring for a very long time and needed a break,” McLachlan said in an interview at the time. “We gave each artist the time and freedom to join the tour for however long they wanted, so the artists themselves determined how the bill ended up.”
On 5 July 1997, Lilith Fair kicked off in George, Washington. There were three stages – the smallest of which featured acts who’d only played a few gigs to that point (among the artists who appeared on it were Beth Orton and Dido) – and about 20,000 punters at each show. Headlining all 35 dates were McLachlan and Suzanne Vega; along the way they were joined by Sheryl Crow, Tracy Chapman, Jewel, Fiona Apple, Emmylou Harris and just about every other female singer who was playing music in North America at the time. The tour racked up US$16 million in ticket sales and became the top-grossing festival of the year. As well as top tunes, each show featured a village area, where retailers and non-profits, like Planned Parenthood, could set up stalls, and a dollar from each ticket sold was donated to local charities.
Buoyed by the response from the first tour, Lilith came back in 1998 bigger than ever, adding the likes of Liz Phair, Bonnie Raitt, Queen Latifah and Missy Elliott to the bill. “This is the best tour, man, and it’s all women,” said Queen Latifah during the festival. “I wanted to do this because I was excited about playing to a different audience than I might normally play to at a hip-hop show. The vibes are right.”
McLachlan had only ever signed on for three years of the festival and, after its 1999 iteration, she decided to give it a break despite success that not only manifested itself in ticket sales – about one and a half million people went to the festival during the three years – but also by putting competition winners in front of huge crowds, giving emerging artists exposure that secured record deals and by donating $10 million to various charities.
“We’re all well into our 30s now, and we’ve decided we want to have babies,” said McLachlan at a press conference in 1999. “This will be the last year for a good, long while. It could be three years, it could be 10 years, it could be forever.”
It would be 2010 before Lilith made a comeback, but it could never replicate the same success. Dates were cancelled when ticket sales were slow, and there was some harsh criticism from bloggers then the music press who labelled it feminist flag-waving in an era when women like Kelly Clarkson, Rihanna and Ke$ha were already topping the charts. “Unfortunately, most of the media seems to just glom onto anything negative,” McLachlan told NPR when it hit the fan. “And that’s all they talk about. And they go searching for it.”
It may, however, not be the last we hear of the female-friendly festival. Just last year the sisters from Haim said they wanted to launch their own Lilith Fair-style gig. At the New Yorker Festival, Este Haim listed her dream line-up of Lorde, Florence and the Machine, Savages, Chvrches, Taylor Swift and her band’s own mentor Jenny Lewis. “I did see Melissa Etheridge in concert, I saw Sarah McLachlan in concert, I saw Paula Cole in concert, and Sheryl Crow. All these amazing ladies had such an amazing outlet and place to play music, and it was really beautiful and I feel like that’s not available any more… We talk semi-jokingly but semi-seriously about making it happen. So stay tuned. I think it would be really magical.”
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