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Rick Steves: Blog Gone Europe

I'm on the road in Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Montenegro and Bosnia — weaving my travel experiences into my business, and sharing what's on my mind. If you think it's inappropriate for a travel writer to stir up discussion on his blog with political observations and insights gained from traveling abroad, you may not want to read any further. — Rick

We each observe our world from a different mindset. They are different because each of our outlooks is shaped by a unique grab bag of influences. If you had an inspirational history teacher, lost a child to a drunk driver, saw a UFO, fell in love with a Gypsy, was saved at a Billy Graham revival, really enjoyed a gamelan orchestra high on mushrooms, befriended a cat that gave you ringworm, or grew up in a company town, each of those episodes in your life helped shape your outlook, and helps explain who you are today.

Books can have a huge impact on our outlook. I wish I were more well-read. But I’ve enjoyed some powerfully influential reading since I “finished school,” and I’ve collected what I think are the most important books in my life below. If you’ve enjoyed (or been perturbed by) this blog in the last few years, you can thank (or blame) these authors. When I visit someone’s home, I feel I can learn lots about them by seeing what books fill their shelves.

For your interest, here are my top ten MVBs (listed in chronological order):

Bread for the World (Arthur Simon)
Food First (Frances Moore Lappe)
The Origins of Totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt)
Future in our Hands (Erik Dammann)
Manufacturing Consent (Noam Chomsky)
War Against the Poor: Low-Intensity Conflict and Christian Faith (Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer)
Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (Robert McAfee Brown)
The United States of Europe (T.R. Reid)
The European Dream (Jeremy Rifkin)
The End of Poverty (Jeffrey Sachs)

While many of these were best consumed ages ago, they still have their place and most of the authors have gone on to do great things. You can Google any of these and see what I mean.

For travelers, I believe it’s important to read books that explain the economic and political basis of issues you stumble onto in your travels. A basic understanding of the economics of poverty, the politics of empire, and the power of corporations are life skills that give you a foundation to better understand what you experience in your travels. Information that mainstream media considers “subversive” won’t come to you. You need to reach out for it.

What are your most influential books...and why?

Late note: I'll add Anthem by Ayn Rand ("pro-American" and a favorite among Right-wingers for its message of individual freedom versus a Communist hell) and the movie "Koyanaskatsi" to my list and a reminder that I'm not saying these were enjoyable reads. This is about what shapes one's thinking, prepping them to get more out of their travels.

Posted by Rick Steves on January 26, 2009
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Countless celebrants went to sleep last night in Washington DC not clear on just how challenging it would be to get a firsthand look at the Obama inauguration — or how early to start their trek. By 6 a.m., the subway was already so full the doors weren’t even opening after the suburban stops. Major streets were closed off and turned into charter bus lots. We left the hotel at 7:30 and hiked for 75 minutes, crossing under the Mall through the Third Avenue tunnel. Generally thundering with cars, the freeway was a river of dark-clad people all marching in the same direction.

We had “blue tickets” and followed the sign, shuffling for two and a half hours in a solid mass of people to the “blue gate.” Given the occasion, everyone was extremely polite. It seemed potentially dangerous...but people — cozy and even finding warmth with complete strangers — sang “Lean on Me” and shuffled slow and steady under the gaze of sharpshooters on federal building rooftops. Two hours into the line, I looked behind and saw no end to the crowd. We began to wonder if we’d even make it for the swearing-in. Some of those around us arrived two hours before we did. No one knew how to best play this thing.

Finally through security — and just in time — we stormed the Capitol building’s front yard. But, it seemed, everyone stopped first at the long battery of blue port-a-potties (urine on ice in a plastic box...without paper). Hearing Yo-Yo Ma stringing his cello while in line waiting my turn was exasperating.

The Capitol building was decorated with dignitaries and festooned in red, white, and blue as the chilly masses, warmed by their enthusiasm for the new President, stretched as far as the eye could see. Helpful strangers boosted me, Anne, and our daughter Jackie over a stone fence as if into a life raft, and we spilled into a fine space directly in front of the proceedings. Early birds had shoveled together little mounds of wood chips to create their own mini-viewing stands. With the announced arrival of each VIP, my world was filled with the muted sound of mittens clapping. Fwap fwap fwap. Then, with the arrival of the President-elect, the grounds erupted. Yes we can!

It was good to hear perfect silence among the million-plus gathered as Rick Warren (the controversial-to-liberals conservative evangelist) kicked things off with a beautiful prayer. I feared a couple of angry people (disappointed by Obama’s efforts to reach out to the right) could mar his prayer with catcalls. But, marking (I hope) this new political era, Warren’s words were inclusive, reminding all that God loves everybody — implying gays and straights — the same. It seemed nearly everyone said, “Amen,” and together he and Obama moved us not left or right but one step forward.

Obama’s speech was, as expected, a hit. In fact, it was such a hit that everything after that was anti-climactic. It seemed no one around me even listened to the poetry reading or the benediction.

The crowd, which had entered as if a precious drink funneled drop by drop into a big decanter, dispersed like a liquid spilled — coursing into the empty streets of a cold and happy city. Pausing at the JumboTron on our way out (with Seattle P-I political cartoonist David Horsey and his family, whom we just bumped into out of the huge crowd), we watched former President Bush and his wife escorted down the Capitol steps and into their helicopter. Then, instinctively, we all set our eyes away from the huge TV screen and onto our nation’s Capitol building. It stood gloriously in the sun, capped by a saint-like statue of Lady Liberty — smiling at another peaceful transfer of power (and also, I imagine, ready for change).

Then the chopper rose over Washington to the happy if impolite cheer of the shivering masses. As if swept away by an electoral broom, it careened with a former President into the distance. Then, startling many, the chopper came back for one last swing around the Capitol, engulfed in the crowd of people. While I wondered what former President Bush was thinking as he looked down on us...I knew what the crowd was thinking: This country is moving ahead.

Posted by Rick Steves on January 20, 2009
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On this last day before our nation kicks off the age of Obama, Anne and I fumble our way onto the D.C. Metro and get off on Capitol Hill, where we find a city primed for euphoria. Already the Mall is busy with people milling about. We'll make the same trek tomorrow, when we'll be competing with hundreds of thousands to witness the swearing in. Each of the congressional office buildings is besieged with visitors in long security lines — mostly queuing to pick up their inauguration tickets. We're finding, however, that waiting in line is a joy right now, because everyone's talking excitedly about tomorrow.

Congressmen and -women were hosting open houses in their offices. We hung out chatting with other Washingtonians at our Congressman Jay Inslee's office before heading down to visit with another Washington State congressman, Rick Larsen. He explained how he and his family will camp out in his office overnight tonight, in order to be where the action is from the get-go tomorrow. It's like that all over town. Our daughter is a student at Georgetown, where dormies are allowed two guests. That means in a tiny dorm double there could be six Obama fans crashing tonight.

It's clear there is big work to do. Tempering my glee, Inslee reminded me that Obama is "just human." I suggested that, in facing the challenges ahead, there should be no sacred cows — not social security, not Medicaid, and not the military. Jobs and national security should be decision drivers. Can some of the $400+ billion we spend on the Department of Defense morph into a war on energy dependency? Yes, Inslee told me — as long as the money stays nominally in the DOD. Imagine what that would do to national security (and jobs) if we provided all our own energy (shhhh: with our military budget)... My congressman is a leader in finding creative solutions to our multiple-yet-interrelated challenges.

We spent the rest of the day chilling (literally) in a city filled with people who've come early for the festivities. Jumbotrons on the Mall played clips of yesterday's concert, featuring pop stars (James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Bono, and others) who had actively supported Gore, then Kerry, and then got behind Obama, and, finally — third time's a charm — won!

People pose with the flag-strewn Capitol dome behind them. Today, when posing for pictures around here, you don't say cheese...you say "Obama!" T-shirts go for $10; buttons are 3 for $10. Many read, "Yes we did." I'd say it's still "Yes we can." The hard work lies ahead. Without a ticket for any of tonight's balls, we hike home past streets lined with empty bleachers and red, white, and blue bunting. As the sun sets on the last day of the Bush presidency, we hike past cops on every corner and under helicopters scouring the city with powerful searchlights. Chilled to the bone, yet happy to be part of history, we get warm and rested...ready to rise early tomorrow to cheer on our new president and celebrate the American dream.

Posted by Rick Steves on January 19, 2009
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Leaving Sea-Tac today, four extra police eyeball those of us boarding the plane. The cabin is filled with Obama pins, and lots of people reading Dreams from My Father. Flight attendants remark that the overhead lockers are filled not with bags but with the heavy coats of people expecting to spend most of Tuesday standing out in the cold. Following the Potomac River, chunky with ice, passing the hulking Pentagon, we touch down at National Airport. As soon as the wheels hit the tarmac everyone on the plane yells "Obama!" and chants "Yes We Can!" We take the Metro into our nation's capitol, where absolutely everyone seems to be family, and feels ready to welcome a new president...and a new era. (tapped hurriedly on my iPhone)

Posted by Rick Steves on January 18, 2009
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Leaving home this morning I did something I've never done before: I actually tried to unlock our front door with my remote car-key button. It occurred to me that I've got too much on my mind. A new blog entry is just one extra thing. Here's a hasty run-down of my schedule for the next two days:

Today I have five hours of radio interviews — we'll be generating raw interview recordings for our radio producer, Tim, who'll make new shows with them. (Listen live to these raw recordings here.)

Tomorrow I'll be busy hosting our annual tour-alumni reunion, where those who've traveled with us in the past can reconnect with each other and with the guides who're in town. As a thousand travelers converge in our little town to celebrate their past and (we hope) future travels, I'll give a series of promotional talks at our theater (to be filmed, and then shared on our website) and host get--togethers of alumni from our various tours.

I just reviewed my schedule for tomorrow, to be sure I know where to go and when and have my "ducks in a row":

Then I go home and pack - the next morning I'm flying to Washington, D.C. for the inauguration. I just learned to tie my tie, I have a new suit, and I'm excited to pack into the National Mall with several million people to welcome our new president.

Posted by Rick Steves on January 16, 2009
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And Andy makes it look easy

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I spend much of the morning stretching in anticipation of my 11:00 surfing lesson. As I pay my $65 fee, the salespeople at the hotel say it’s great for everybody. Then, at breakfast, a man who surfed all his childhood tells me he tried but couldn’t get up and was “humbled.” A ramshackle minibus meets us at the gate of our hotel. As Andy and I climb in, the beach boy greets us. It sounds like he says, “Are you ready to go suffering?” We pick up a few other gringo tourists and head for the beach. Someone predicts, “This’ll be good exercise.” I worry out loud, “Uh-huh, in humiliation.”

At the beach, we all put on tight stretch surfing shirts to protect our chests and bellies from chafing...all the ups and downs of learning to catch a wave. Then — looking like the Gilligan’s Island crew — we get in a line on the beach to “loosen up.” Our coach, Alberto, has us running, shuffling in a line to the right, running backwards, and shuffling to the left...perhaps just to entertain the locals hanging out at the beach.

Alberto then draws a line in the sand and says, “Lay on this.” He demonstrates the one critical motion for surfing: arch back — like a yoga-style mermaid stretch...hands below nipples...right leg stays back...quickly snap to your feet, bringing the left leg to the front as you stand. Repeat.

After a too-hasty intro on the beach, we're issued our surfboards — not light, soft top, easy for my toes to grip, well-worn like something that’s weathered lots of turbulence. With runaway straps lashed to our ankles, we walk into the sea like a holiday chain gang.

The waves are just right for beginners. Several beach boys join Alberto and steady our boards facing the beach until just the right moment. Anticipating the cresting wave, they give us a shove (we are pre-paddlers relying on our coaches for propulsion) and yell, “Ready...go...up!” The kids in our group get up first time. They ride like daredevils on the ski slope. The older surfers in our gang struggle for the strength and overthink things.

Catching a wave, I get only “up” on my knees. Still, I sense the thrill of surfing. Even on my knees, I lean forward to go faster, lean back to slow down. As Alberto promised, the board — like a bike — is more stable when it’s moving. Perhaps the hard plastic fins are working.

The lunge muscle in my left leg is just not there, and my arms aren’t strong enough to throw my body up. Alberto says to not stop at the knees. Don’t think face-down. Pretend your head is going up first. Your head rockets up in one motion, springing the body off the board. Forget the right leg...it stays behind. I need to thrust up and plant my left foot directly under my body at a snowboarding angle for balance.

I fail and fail. Come close and tumble. The board spins disobediently away from me, dragging me like a small boy deserving a spanking toward the shore. I tame the board, face the waves, and fight through the surf back out. Hold the nose of the board high, cut it into the waves. You catch a wave going in. Catch a wave wrong struggling back out, and your board can smash you in the face.

My teacher says some old, out-of-shape guys just give up. He likes my determination. I flop onto the board like a rock cod that just jumped into a dinghy. My belly button lines up with the board’s mid-line. I’m facing the white Styrofoam surface, water sloshing and slapping, key left leg resting (knowing victory hinges on its ability to get me up), hands not gripping the edge (because then you lose altitude) but in the center, ribs pressing on my thumbs, coiled, poised, waiting for the gentle push by my teacher and the “Ready…go…up!” command. My nose is one inch from the board. My entire periphery is filled with the battered white of the board and warm Costa Rica sea slopping and sloshing before my eyes. People are gone. My soundtrack is just water.

Alberto promises to catch me a good wave. Suddenly the water is smooth and quiet. It’s the calm before the wave. My coach says this is it, and gives me a strong push. I pull my head back, see the entire front of the board as I arch up, then, in one motion, I push everything up. My left leg lands just right immediately under my body, and — like a weightlifter struggling for a personal best — it straightens up.

Suddenly I’m rushing before a foamy cauldron as the wave charges toward the shore...and I lead the way. I’m standing high above the noisy rush of the water, playing with my control, traversing as if to extend the ride. Then I crouch as if racing before an engulfing tunnel of a giant wave… even though I am on the baby slope in a harmless little three-footer. The ride seems longer than it is. And that 15 seconds of surfer exhilaration is worth all the surfering.

Jumping from my board as the wave runs out of steam, I pick up the board. Alberto back out at sea is giving a big two-thumbs-up. No more chain gang, I head back to catch another wave.

Posted by Rick Steves on January 12, 2009
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Photography is lots of fun in a place like Costa Rica. Here are a few photos that bring home some of the experiences and fun we had. (I’m still debating in my mind whether or not to share with you my surfing — which in Costa Rican dialect sounds a lot like “suffering” — experience…complete with photos.)

Costa Rica has notoriously bad roads. It’s your choice: Four hours of potholes the size of your land rover and fording swollen rivers, or a 30-minute charter plane ride.
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Beaches come with boogie board-friendly surf, fruit smoothies and rum at your beck and call, and a lazy mix of sun and shade. My favorite drink: fresh pineapple, a few mint leaves, and a squirt of coconut syrup in a blender with some ice (rum optional).
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Getting away from the beach resorts (with the help of a local guide, horse, and brave machete-wielding dad) brings vivid cultural insights.
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In a land where most traffic seems to be off-road and on foot, suspension bridges are a bouncy godsend.
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Long hikes are rewarded by idyllic waterfalls and swimming holes.
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Posted by Rick Steves on January 09, 2009
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Spacey Tracy hands out head lamps and brings light to the creepy crawly dark.
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Tracy the Bug Lady meets her nightly bug tour group in the open living room of our lodge deep in the rain forest of Costa Rica. A moth is slamming spastically at the lamp shade. Spacey Tracy, as if in a trance, gets eye contact with the six of us, silently pulls out her keychain, and shakes it like a tambourine. The moth dives to the floor and freezes. Tracy says, "I didn’t know if this kind of moth had ears. It does. When it heard the ultrasound from my keys, it thought I was a bat honing in on it...and dove for cover."

Looking at our no-longer-reluctant kids, and realizing we were in for an unusual experience, we embarked on a two-hour tour. Donning our headlamps, we followed Tracy through the ferns into the dark. She stopped, shone her light 20 meters down the trail, turned to us saying, “Check this spider out,” and walked over to a fallen leaf. She turned it over to reveal a spider. I asked how she knew it was there from such a distance. She said, “Eye shine...crushed-emerald eye shine.” The bugs and frogs that surround us all have mirrors at the backs of their eyes, so that when you shine a light on them, they shine back. Moths are gold. Frogs are orange. Spiders shine emerald-green. Looking around again, I saw crushed emeralds sprinkled through the jungle.

This spider was a tarantula. Picking him up, she said, “Not the tarantula of your imagination, just a small burrowing guy...mildly venomous. Who wants to hold him?" After a stunned pause from the group, I offered, and she placed him — half the size of my thumb — on my palm.

Farther down the trail, Tracy stopped at a moss-covered bank of red clay. She played with a tuft of moss with her pointer, and whispered, “If you count yourself as a spider enthusiast, we have here perhaps one of the five best in the world — the trap door spider. Right now he’s holding his hatch down with his fangs...14 ounces pull-down strength.” Later she got the hatch open, revealing a slick, round passage (about half an inch in diameter) and a sneaky spider waiting for his dinner.

Next we looked closely at a nearby spider web as Tracy said, “In nature, it’s the very rare insect that dies of old age.” What looked like a stick fallen on the web was a carefully gathered line of body parts — bits of critters the spider caught but chose not to eat. Tracy hit the fake stick and revealed part of it was the actual spider — patiently waiting to make his stick of victim debris a little longer.

On another web, a spider looked like a dew drop. As Tracy began pulling out an almost microscopic line of silk, she said, “I’m harvesting spider silk from a dew drop spider’s butt. This stuff is stronger than Teflon. The US military is the biggest researcher of this stuff. From it, they could make the ultimate light-and-comfortable bulletproof vests...perhaps even superlight airplanes.”

A bug landed on Tracy and crawled into her safari shirt. She pulled it out and revealed a tiny ladybug with a black-and-white Lego-man face on its back. Getting closer to her little Lego man, she pointed out how the wings came together to make a straight line. That means it’s a beetle, not a roach. If you lined up all the species of animals on earth, every fifth one would be a beetle. There are over 500,000 types. Rove beetles were used in China 2,000 years ago to remove unwanted tattoos. She looked at me and said, "Got a loved one with tattoos? Remember the Rove beetle."

I walked back to our lodge with a new appreciation of the generally unseen side of life in the tropics...through a treacherous wonderland of crushed emeralds.

Posted by Rick Steves on January 06, 2009
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Jackie is clipped on and ready to fly 400 meters through the jungle, 50 meters above the ravine, and a leather cable grip to slow her landing at the next platform.
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Keeping older kids happy on vacation is pretty easy in zippy Costa Rica. Here Andy enjoys a blitz tour of a plush jungle canopy.
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Walking through the tropical rainforest, I was mesmerized by vertical ropes thick and thin. It was a fecund free-for-all, with a humid scribble of plants and trees all reaching both high for the sun and low for the nutrients.

I couldn’t stop thinking of the whole thing powered by leafy solar panels as the tip-top of just about everything living jockeyed for a place in the sun. While the canopy is a commotion of God’s solar panels, the ground level is a greedy scramble for nutrients, with lots of clever ways for plants and trees to catch and funnel detritus into their roots.

The strangler fig — an impressively patient killer — winds like some Boy Scout decoration in a perfect spiral up a huge tree. Someday the host tree will be gone and the dainty, innocuous-looking fig vine will be a fat tree itself — with a hollow interior. Here in the jungle, eventually everything eats everything.

I asked my friend Kurt Kutay, who runs Wildland Adventures (www.wildland.com), to set up the best possible eight days in Costa Rica for a variety of experiences. This was a rare chance for our entire family to be together, and this jungle experience seemed the perfect way for all of us to recreate.

We split our time between two fine hotels: Arenas del Mar in Manuel Antonio had a great restaurant, golf carts to zip guests to and from the beach, and low-key elegance at the gateway to the Manuel Antonio National Park. La Paloma lodge on Drake Bay was extremely remote — a Robinson-Crusoe-wins-the-lottery kind of place — on the Osa Peninsula near the Corcovado National Park. We spent two days with nature guides in the two different parks (and liked Manual Antonio best — more first growth and animal variety). Between all the boogie-boarding in the surf and fruit smoothies, we had lots of exercise. In fact, the week reminded me how fun it is to be physical.

We got to our remote La Paloma lodge on a land rover — fording rivers and jolloping through miles of mammoth potholes past pigs striking piggy poses in mud puddles and humble tin-roof farms. At the end of the road, a boat was waiting to motor us to our lodge. For three days of coming and going, we had a new term: "wet landing" or "dry landing" (almost always wet — hop off the boat and walk through the surf to wherever we were bound).

Half of Costa Rica lives less muggy in its central plain. But we were where it’s maximum muggy. Here on the west coast, things don’t even dry when hung in the sun. The temperature is the same all year. Buildings are constructed with no windows. La Paloma lodge was off the grid, powered by its own generator — no air-con, just fans. Kayaking up the lazy lagoon that creeps mysterious inland from Drake Bay, daydreaming through a plush garden of sticky pistil flowers, learning the art of hammock, munching fresh-baked cookies, openly enjoying a little PDA with tiny lizards, and refining an appreciation of pico de gallo salsa, even a workaholic could be thoroughly on vacation here.

Our kids hiked, flashlights in hand, over the suspension bridge and into the village to celebrate New Year’s Eve with the local gang, while Anne and I hung out in the polished-wood-and-rattan public area of our lodge with the other parents. One by one, each couple turned in. Then, well before midnight, we too succumbed to jungle time as a roar of tiny creatures in the darkness all seemed to sing it’s time for bed. At 2:30, Jackie gently guided Andy home, encouraging him to follow the little circle the flashlight made and digging his shoe out of the mud when stuck.

The adrenaline experience of the trip was doing the Zip Line Canopy Tour — a Costa Rican tourism favorite. A family with a huge plot of jungle strung up platforms high in trees laced together by 13 cables, each 100 to 400 meters apart, as high as 60 meters above the ravines. They now earn a good living giving modern-day Tarzans the thrill of their dreams. With guides clipping us from one cable to the next, we couldn’t have fallen to our deaths if we tried. There were no lessons in nature here...just the smell of burning leather as we’d pull down on the cable with our hand guard to slow each landing. Coursing through the trees, this was thunderclaps of fun.

My favorite day was the “Campesinos Reserve Day” — an all-day hike crossing a Man Who Would Be King-style fantasy suspension bridge (the longest in CR), swimming in pools at the base of tropical waterfalls, accompanied by a farmer on a horse who let me walk and whack with his machete. We dropped in on his extremely remote farmhouse, where his wife ground up sugarcane for a refreshing drink as our kids got to see a family living in perfect tropical mountain simplicity.

Hopping a fast boat, we sped with the flying fish (stopping only for a little whale watching) to the distant Cano Island — a bushy green button in the middle of the Pacific famous for its fine snorkeling. Poking into a swirling school of big-eye fish, analyzing the churning patterns of sunlit bubbles as the surf crashed over the rocks, and marveling at the ability of huge stingrays to disappear into a muddy bottom, we enjoyed another world. During lunch at the island’s ranger station, we spied a crocodile perched still as a rock on a rock, waiting to knock a pelican silly, while six or eight children frolicked nearby in the surf.

The last morning finally arrived. I spent the hour before our departure time mostly face-down on a La Paloma massage table. With the soothing roar of the distant surf rather than New Age music setting the mood, I reviewed a wonderful week in my mind.

Then, wistfully, I strapped my wristwatch back on, and we headed for the airstrip. I mentioned there was no rush, as this was the first time in our lives the plane would wait for us. Jackie said she wanted to take flying lessons. Andy marveled at how he hadn’t held a cell phone in his hand for a week. Anne tidied up her list of 30 or so different birds spotted. And all of us began the day-long return: Drake’s Bay to San José to Houston to Seattle, where I’ll redirect my mind to a land where the flora and fauna is more...European.

Coming up: Our evening with spacey Tracy the bug lady and my attempt at surfing.

Posted by Rick Steves on January 03, 2009
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