All in Historic Travel

Facing Fear at Cave of the Cats in Western Ireland

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Life Lessons, Off-the-beaten path destination, Sacred Places

by Elyn Aviva

Even photos of the Cave of the Cats gave me the willies. I wasn’t going to enter it, not if you paid me. I was sure of that. My companions could go in if they wanted, but not me. We sloshed through the wet field to the entrance, a dark inverted triangle almost hidden by an overgrown thorn bush. A gash, a hole in Mother Earth. “No way,” I muttered, shaking my head. Jack, flashlight in hand, offered to go in first, and I watched him slither into the tight-fitting slit.

County Roscommon in western Ireland has a reputation for being boring, but it is anything but. The Rathcroghan complex has been a powerful place since the Neolithic, roughly 6000 years ago. It is an enigmatic landscape shrouded in myth, the burial place of long-forgotten heroes and the kings and queens of Connacht. It is one of the legendary “Celtic Royal Sites” of Ireland, ranking with the better-known Hill of Tara. Like Tara, Rathcroghan unites legend with history. It includes over 200 sites: ancient earthworks, tumuli, ceremonial avenues, ring forts, standing stones, the remains of a Druid school, holy wells, and caves. We’d come for the caves—one in particular, the Cave of the Cats.

Oweynagat (pronounced “Oween-ne-gat” or “UUvnaGOTCH”) or the Cave of the Cats is a spooky place, filled with powerful energies both of the earth and of the Otherworld. The Morrigan, Celtic goddess of death, destruction, and passion, is said to reside within.

Seven Years Younger: Life On Ethiopia Time

Seven Years Younger: Life On Ethiopia Time

Maureen Magee
Art and Culture, Historic Travel, Life Lessons, Off-the-beaten path destination, cultural immersion, cultural musings, exotic travel, travel essay

words + photos by Maureen Magee

Time zones, the International Date Line and jet lag all contribute to my feeling disoriented when traveling. Date lines especially – leaving home on a Tuesday and arriving on the Monday before I left definitely throws me for a loop.

But what about when the traveler leaves home in 2011 and arrives in 2004?

It happens all the time – when traveling to Ethiopia. Once you disembark in Addis Ababa, you will be at least 7 years younger.

My first trip to this time-estranged nation was in September, 1999.  The airport was festively decked out with banners proclaiming some kind of celebration, followed by “1993!” I couldn’t speak or read Amharic, so the actual celebration was a mystery – but I figured it must have been a heck of an important party, if Ethiopians left the banners up for 7 years.

My guide greeted me with a standard “Hello”, followed by a joyous  “Happy New Year!” After 24 hours in transit, I was too tired to question this and thought, who knows – maybe in Ethiopia, everyone is welcomed with a New Years greeting – even if it is 9 months later.  One never knows in other cultures…

The secret of Taos blue corn

Editors
Art and Culture, Culinary Travel, Historic Travel

by Eric Lucas

 

Hardly anything seems secret about a kernel of blue corn. It’s the size and shape of a baby’s tooth, the indigo color of ocean dusk, not rock-hard but sturdy, like old pine.

Such a seed would be a secret, were it a product of American industrial agriculture—patented, engineered at a molecular level, sold under some trade name like Blue 7X-RR. You would pay a large Midwestern company to have some; you’d use huge machines like science fiction robots to lay it in the ground; pour on it chemicals with carbon-chain formulas as long as Finnish words; autoclave it into foods as artificial as plastic. And you’d get your pants sued off if you attempted to replicate it or reproduce it in any way.

Photo by Manya Kaczkowski, 2010But the handful of blue corn seeds I’m holding represent a gift from, first of all, Robert Mirabal, a Taos Pueblo resident; also a gift from two millennia and the ground on which a billion people live. Corn is the bedrock of civilization in the Western Hemisphere. It built a dozen empires in Mexico and South America; helped create two dozen thriving cities in the desert Southwest about which Spanish explorers marveled so much that their colonizer, Don Juan de Oñate, declared his conquest a “kingdom.” Nuevo Mexico; it’s called New Mexico now, but still part of the kingdom of corn. And the seeds Mirabal has given me are no secret, just gifts from that kingdom’s treasure.

 

The Egyptian Revolution: What Does It Mean for the Jews?

Carolyn Handler Miller
Current Events, Family Travel, Historic Travel, Personal essay, cultural musings

words + photos by Carolyn Handler Miller

 

Jews and Egypt. Two words that rarely meet in the same sentence. Unless you happen to be talking Bible talk and are retelling the story of Exodus, as we Jews do every spring during Passover. Or unless you are talking politics, and are discussing Egypt’s relationship with Israel.  Or unless you possess a torn old photo like the one I have, plus a burning curiosity and the chance to travel to Egypt.

You see, the relationship between Jews and Egypt is a highly personal one for me, and one that the revolution in Egypt brought into sharp focus.           

A large branch of my family once lived and thrived in Egypt until the 1950’s, when another Egyptian revolution, one barely remembered today, ultimately pushed Egyptian Jews into exile. In 1952, during that earlier revolution, King Farouk was forced to abdicate and soon after, Gamal Nasser took over the reins of government. Unlike the laid-back playboy king, Nasser was unfriendly to Jews. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, he declared them enemies of the state and Jews were no longer welcome in the country.

So the entire Egyptian branch of family fled to Paris. At that point, we, the American branch of the family, lost track of them. As far as we all knew, the story ended there.

And we might have forgotten all about them, except for this old black and white photo set in a broken wooden frame. It had been passed down from family member to family member and had finally fallen into my hands when none of my cousins showed any interest in it. Though they mocked the old-fashioned looking group, I found them fascinating. I longed to know more about them and their exotic life in Egypt.

The photo captures my Great Grandmother at a family reunion in Alexandria.

Montana on my mind

Montana on my mind

Jules Older
Active Travel, Historic Travel, Insider's Guide, Off-the-beaten path destination, adventure travel, travel writing

by Jules Older

When I teach skiing, I suggest to my students that, to establish and hold a rhythm, they find their ski song.

Truth is, my ski songs find me. My usual one is Sweet Georgia Brown. When I skied West Virginia, it morphed into Miner’s Lifeguard. When I crossed from Switzerland’s French side to the German, my song suddenly switched to Springtime for Hitler and Germany.

See? My song finds me.

Becoming A Fan

Becoming A Fan

Dorty Nowak
Historic Travel, Insider's Guide, Travel Tips

by Dorty Nowak

Hot and frustrated, I stared at the pieces of the supposedly easy-to-assemble electric fan that came with nine parts instead of the required ten. My apartment, like most buildings in Paris, has no air conditioning and, after several days of unremitting heat, I was desperate. I picked up the instruction sheet, ignoring the number for the help center that was probably located in China, and folded it into a fan. My makeshift fan worked surprisingly well, reminding me of a museum that I had been meaning to visit ever since I read several years ago that it might have to close.

Trying To Make Sense of ‘The Great War’

Tom Adkinson
Historic Travel

words + photos by Tom Adkinson

As a kid growing up in the early baby boom years, I could understand World War II because it was familiar to me. The stories were all around me.

A friend’s father down the street had a Japanese carbine.Guadalcanal Diary was an exciting read, as was Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Movies such as “The Sands of Iwo Jima” and “The Longest Day” (which seemed to star every major actor in Hollywood, including John Wayne, Richard Burton and Sean Connery) filled the movie screens.

It was World War I, the one known as “The Great War,” that didn’t make much sense. It was long ago and complicated, a jumble of combatants that were difficult to sort out. It seemed to lack the drama of Midway or Normandy or the Flying Tigers. 

That ended with a single museum visit in an unlikely place – Kansas City, Missouri – where I began to make sense of it all.

Kansas City is the home of the National World War I Museum, and the enormity and pathos of that horrible time hit me as soon as I entered.

Once inside, I stood on a glass bridge that leads to the major exhibit areas. Beneath my feet and through the glass was a field of poppies, 9,000 of them. It was an attractive and appealing art installation until I read that each of the red poppies represented 100,000 lives. More precisely, each poppy represented 100,000 deaths. That beautiful field of poppies was a statement about the nine million combat deaths of World War I.

Downtown Kansas City is a pleasant place with big office buildings, hotels, sports facilities, restaurants and the like, and the National World War I Museum is one of its landmarks. 

Searching for Vikings in Norway

Judith Fein
Art and Culture, Historic Travel, travel essay

by Judith Fein

I wish I could climb into a time machine and be catapulted back to the Viking period between 793 and 1066 A.D. I don’t care for the raiding and pillaging but I have been to L’Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland twice (the only authenticated Viking site in North America), I have held my breath as I read the Iceland sagas, and I know these hunting and planting people were resilient, artistic and resourceful; the women had power and prestige, and their governance was of the democratic variety. They wrote on rune stones, were brilliant ship builders and goldsmiths. They drank mead from horns, braved the cold and produced mighty sorcerers.

Photo Slide Show by Paul Ross

Last month, I went to Norway on the trail of the Vikings; actually, I felt as though I were in Viking school.  At the archeological museum in Stavanger, I learned that the Vikings probably practiced a form of yoga and that diverse elements in nature like swimming birds and halibut were thought to help the sun on its daily journey. They believed in night ships that went into the water and the dark earth at night, and day ships that came up again in daytime.

The Lost Maya City

John Lamkin
Art and Culture, Historic Travel

words + photos by John Lamkin

Cora Amalia, the president of the municipality, affirmed the stories I’d heard for a while. There was a “lost” Maya city in the nearby jungle that rivals Tikal in Guatemala and has a pyramid larger than the one at Palenque in the state of Campeche.

“When can I go there?" I asked the government tourism officials. “Only when you get permission from INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia),” was the answer, “And you can’t go now because the jungle roads are too muddy. You must wait for the dry season.”

Well, the dry season came. We applied for and got the INAH permit and set off on the adventure – seven of us in Luis’ Suburban.

Our crew consisted of Luis Tellez, professional guide and photographer and his wife Leti, myself and my significant other Susy, two expats that lived locally and had done some research on the city, and don Millon a 90-year-old farmer who had worked in the area as a chiclero, one of the men that harvested the chicle for making chewing gum, and who had visited the ruins in his youth.

We located the turn-off from the paved road that led to a small Maya community of a few traditional thatched huts. We presented our permit to a Maya woman who was the designated caretaker. She read the permit and then herded her family out to be photographed by us.

The Alignments in Carnac, Brittany, France

The Alignments in Carnac, Brittany, France

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Religion, exotic travel

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

We drove around a corner and encountered an astounding sight: row after row of standing stones, stretching to the horizon. “Pull over!” I demanded. Barely waiting for Gary, my husband, to stop the car, I opened the door, jumped out, and ran over to the green metal fence that separated the stones from me. I shook my head in disbelief, in awe. So many stones, lined up and going—where? Why? They fit no category I knew: they were an enormous puzzle of countless granite megaliths pointing to the sky, rooted in the earth. Hundreds, thousands of stones lined up in slightly wavering rows that went on for kilometers, as if the stones were frozen in the act of marching—somewhere. What was the point? What did they mean? What were they for? The stones made no response.

Nowhere in the world has as many megalithic sites as Brittany, and Carnac is in the center of them. The amazing profusion of ancient remains includes isolated standing stones, rows of alignments, earth-covered tumuli, quadrilateral and oval enclosures, and table-like dolmens, each with its own energy and story.

The dolmens with their elaborately engraved interior walls are intriguing, but the 6000-year-old alignments fascinate me. Many of the original stones have been hauled off for re-use in nearby farmhouses and fences, but nearly 3000 menhirs (Breton for standing stones) remain. They are lined up in three sets of slightly undulating rows facing approximately northeast/southwest and extending for kilometers. Starting in the northeast are the Kerlescan alignments, followed by the Kermario alignments, and ending in the southwest with the Le Ménec alignments. The different sets contain from eleven to thirteen rows, and include from approximately 600 to nearly 1200 standing stones. Each set ends in the southwest with an ovoid or quadrilateral stone enclosure (or what remains of one). The cumulative effect of so many stones, so many alignments, extending for such a distance, is awesome.

Cambodia Off the Beaten Track

Cambodia Off the Beaten Track

Don Mankin
Historic Travel, adventure travel, cultural musings, exotic travel

words + photos by Don Mankin

Our narrow wooden boat churns upstream powered by what looks like a motor from a small lawnmower. The wide, almost empty river is straight out of “Apocalypse Now.” I feel vaguely like Martin Sheen looking for Colonel Kurtz as I scan the sparsely populated river banks. The small boat has barely enough room for the four of us -- my wife Katherine, our guide, the operator and me.

We are heading to a small, isolated village buried in the jungle about 45 minutes up a tributary of the Mekong River, deep in the heart of Ratanakiri province, a mountainous region in the far northeastern corner of Cambodia. This is as far away from our home in Los Angeles as you can get in this world -- geographically, culturally, and in pretty much any other way you can imagine.

Healing at Saint Onenn’s Holy Well, Brittany

Healing at Saint Onenn’s Holy Well, Brittany

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Religion, travel essay

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

It was a place you couldn’t find unless you’d already been there—or unless you found someone to take you there, someone with permission to cross from here to there….

While my husband, Gary, and I spent the day in Paimpont, our traveling companions visited a holy well in the nearby village of Tréhorenteuc. By chance, they had met someone in a bookstore who told them about it and led them to it. They had dangled their feet in the water and meditated, one by one. It was a lovely place.

Horseback Riding Off The Grid

Carolyn Handler Miller
Historic Travel, cultural immersion, travel writing

by Carolyn Handler Miller


Because of a silver-colored horse named Concho and a notorious outlaw named Billy the Kid, my tether to the digital world got snapped. And, as it turned out, I was grateful. I’ll explain.

It all started about a year ago, when I heard about an intriguing trail riding vacation called the Tunstall Ride. It had a Billy the Kid theme and was based in southern New Mexico, major Kid territory. According to Beth MacQuigg, the ride manager, there would be three days of trail riding and we’d be traveling over some of the same rangeland that the Kid would have ridden over.

Riders would be housed in guest rooms on a private ranch adjacent to the property where the Kid once worked as a ranch hand. Known as the Tunstall Ranch, it was owned by his boss, Englishman John Henry Tunstall. Billy was riding with him one day when Tunstall was gunned down, was the first person to be murdered during the infamous Lincoln County War. 

That bloody conflict aside, the land we’d be riding over was reputed to be some of the Kid’s favorite country. Beth told me that most people would be bringing their own horses, but for those of us who were horseless, like me, rental horses could be provided. As someone who loves horses, trail riding, and Western lore, the Tunstall Ride sounded immensely appealing, and I signed up. I signed my husband up, too. Though Terry doesn’t ride, he could hang out at the ranch and join us for meals and explore the historic sites with us that we’d be visiting without the horses.

The Spirit and Spirits of Portugal

Judith Fein
Art and Culture, Historic Travel, Insider's Guide, Religion, Spotlight On Destination, travel essay

by Judith Fein

[more from our SPOTLIGHT ON PORTUGAL series this week... ]

photo by erin-thérèse via flickr (common license)Do you believe in miracles? How else can you account for what happened in a field in central Portugal on May 13, 1917, when three shepherd children saw a vision of the Virgin Mary? Purportedly, she told the awe-struck kids that she would appear at the same spot on the l3th of the five following consecutive months. According to believers, up to 70,000 witnesses beheld a miraculous apparition on the 13th day of the last month. Go to Fatima yourself to see if you are uplifted, transported, or merely interested. It’s about one and a half hours from Lisbon by train. The three children are buried in the sanctuary, and in one outdoor area the faithful light long beeswax candles that intertwine as they melt and carry prayers to heaven. Be sure to visit the museum, where Marians from around the world—including Pope John Paul—have left objects that are precious and significant to them.  The latter even donated the bullet that was used by the man who tried to assassinate him. He believed that the Virgin of Fatima saved him.

Perhaps, while you’re in Portugal, you’ll want to find out about the secret Jews in the mountains of central Portugal who were forcibly converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition.  After half a millennium of hiding their identity, they finally came out. In Belmonte, where a museum tells the story and shows the artifacts, you’ll be swept into a world where people clung to their religion in the face of great danger and, in the end, faith triumphed over oppression. There is also a synagogue, and you may be fortunate enough to meet some of the Belmonte Jews. When they decided to publicly claim their heritage and faith—about twenty years ago-- the story captivated people round the world, and now Belmonte is one of the top stops in the region for visitors of all religions.

A Journey Through Hallowed Ground

Judith Fein
Historic Travel, U.S. History, road trip, travel essay

by Judith Fein

Photos and slideshow by Paul Ross


When I was a kid, studying American history was about as appealing as a trip to the dentist. In school, we had to memorize names and dates and to this day, I still have PTSD (post teacher stress disorder) when I rattle off monikers like Black Jack Pershing, Old Hickory, The Rail Splitter, The Rough Rider and Old Buck.

A few weeks ago, I went on the newly-established Journey Through Hallowed Ground-- that spans Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, and extends roughly from Gettysburg to Monticello--and I learned more in 11 days and 180 miles than I did in all my schooling. Best of all, I have –for the first time in my life--retained what I learned. Ask me a question about Thomas Jefferson. Or James Madison. Or George C. Marshall. Go ahead. Ask me. (Disclosure: This is pretentious, authorial braggadocio.)

 

Photo Slide Show by Paul Ross

If you had told me that I, a pacifist, would be fascinated at Manassas (in the North, it’s known as Bull Run), where the first major battle of the Civil War took place, I would have keeled over in disbelief. But I was both horrified and fascinated.  It was everything that textbook learning wasn’t: alive, vital and real.  I learned that it took 6 horses to schlepp one canon onto the battlefield, and that the poor schleppers made inviting targets. Even more inviting were the soldiers themselves, who --in classic Napoleonic fashion-- lined up abreast in successive rows to advance, face-on, into close quarter cannon fire. Apparently, the guns weren’t very accurate, but still—marching towards the unforgiving maws of heavy artillery? There was a whole vocabulary around the weaponry—like “worm” (used for cleaning the bore and packing charges), “going into battery”(placing guns into firing position) and “sponge bucket” (which held water for wetting the sponge-rammer). 

Echoes of Our Ancestors in Cape Coast Castle

Kathleen Koprowski
Historic Travel, cultural musings, travel essay

by Kathleen Koprowski

Photo by bdinphoenix via Flickr (Creative Commons)I stepped out of the flat, gray day and into the black depths of the tunnel that led to the Female Dungeon beneath the Cape Coast Castle. Sensing my way along the stone floor, I followed the footsteps of other visitors ahead as my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. Cool air in the tunnel provided no lasting respite from the thick humidity outside; any sense of relief was overshadowed by the heavy weight of souls in this place. We fell silent, immediately sensing the terrible truths housed within.

The castle guide led us down, down underground to the dungeon used to hold female slaves before they were taken from Africa’s Gold Coast (now Ghana) to be sold in the Americas at the height of the slave trade in the 1800’s.  He ushered our small group into a stone chamber and closed the heavy door behind us.  A single bare light bulb illuminated the room for just a moment before he flipped the switch, pitching us into blackness.  No one spoke.  

The Camino de Santiago: An Inner and Outer Journey

The Camino de Santiago: An Inner and Outer Journey

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Life Lessons, Personal essay, Religion, Spirituality

by Elyn Aviva

I first heard about the Camino de Santiago in 1981 from my friend Michael, when I was looking for a topic for my Ph.D. in cultural anthropology. Michael idly mentioned there had been an important medieval pilgrimage road in Spain and suggested I look for it—I might find its art and architecture of some interest.

In the summer of 1981 I arrived in Spain, still looking for a topic for anthropological fieldwork. I ended up in Sahagún, a small town in the north-central province of León, where I stayed at the Benedictine nuns’ guesthouse.

OZ On The Water

Andrea Gross
Historic Travel, adventure travel

 

When I was invited to spend a week sailing off the coast of Maine, I expected to make witty conversation as I toasted nattily-clad fellow passengers with a glass of vintage champagne. You know, like Walter Cronkite, or one of the Kennedys.

The Schooner American EagleAfter all, what did I know about sailing? I grew up in Kansas and Nebraska, two states that are about as removed from the ocean as the Sahara is from the North Pole. 

So you can imagine my surprise when I boarded the American Eagle, an authentic Maine windjammer. Seventy-five years ago she was hauling fish from one port to another; today she carries passengers on cruises around Penobscot Bay.

Despite the loving restoration done by Captain John Foss, nothing can change the fact that I was going to be sleeping in a cabin carved out of the old cargo area, the same place that was once filled with dead fish.

Like Dorothy, I wished I were back in Kansas.

The first night I cracked my head when I sat up in bed. No headroom.

The second day I strained my back when I helped hoist the sails. No know how.

There were only a few canvas chairs on deck, so I found a place on the floor. Whoops — on the deck.

"Wicked nice, isn't it?" asked one of the passengers, a born-and-bred New Englander who'd been sailing all his life. Wicked? That's when I learned that "wicked" means "very" in New England-speak and “cool” in hip-talk. But I’m neither a grizzled Yankee nor a young chick, and where I come from, the word "wicked" is used to describe the Witch of the West and serial murderers.

But by the third day I was sea steady if not exactly sea savvy. When the wind blew hard, the boat seemed to fly, skimming over the water with deck tilted and passengers cheering and laughing. But mostly it moved slowly, giving a sensation of drifting—and dreaming.

Load More