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Traveling to New Outer and Inner Worlds
By Carole Marks
I recently took a trip around the Mediterranean that covered 5,588 miles,
three continents and nine countries: England, Tunisia, Jordan, Montenegro,
Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Italy. All in 21 days.
This journey did something that no other trip has succeeded in doing. It
changed the way I look at myself, my goals and priorities, and rejuvenated
my inner spirit.
I must have inherited my love of travel from my parents, who took me to foreign
countries starting as a young teenager. Since then, I have traveled all over
the world many times and have had extraordinary adventures. Every year, I
look at hundreds of interesting travel brochures and put some aside for future
consideration. There was something about a brochure from Abercrombie &
Kent called,“Far from the Ordinary Way to See Europe and the Mediterranean”
that made me say I must go this on this amazing journey.
The destinations were the initial draw. I wanted most to see Petra, a caravan
city in Jordan dating back to 4,000 BC and considered by many archeologists
to be the eighth wonder of the ancient world. I had been trying to get there
for many years, but political turmoil in the region made that difficult.
The Abercrombie & Kent tour included an excursion near Petra called the
Wadi Rum, one of the world’s most romantic deserts and the center of Lawrence
of Arabia’s military operations.
I also wanted to visit Libya, which was on the itinerary and had just opened
its borders to tourists. Unfortunately, just before we left they stopped
giving Americans visas. As the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah prove,
political change happens very quickly in the Middle East.
Finally, I couldn’t resist the chance to visit Venice, my favorite city,
built on 120 muddy islands. Venice has survived numerous invasions, killer
epidemics and of course always the threat floods by the waters that surround
it. Venice is the ultimate survivor!!
Here are the highlights of my visit to three of the countries on this tour:
Italy, Jordan and Turkey.
Venice: The ultimate survivor?
While I was in Venice, I had the honor of speaking to Professor John Millerchip.
He is very involved with a British-based foundation that sponsors the
Venice in Peril Fund, which aims to preserve Venice. While Venice has been
sinking under its own weight throughout its thousand-year history, new threats
of projected rising sea levels due to global warming could actually cause
Venice to sink without a trace.
Professor Millerchip described a $3 billion government scheme, aptly called
Project Moses, designed to keep Venice above water. The project consists
of 79 huge, hinged gates to separate Venice and its lagoon from the Adriatic
Sea.
The gates will lie flat on the sea floor inside the three entrances to the
lagoon. When an especially high tidal surge occurs, the gates will swing
up to form a temporary wall against the water. The gates are designed to
protect the city from flood surges up to six feet. The project is supposed
to be finished, according to optimistic predictions, by 2009.
Besides its flooding problem, Venice faces an uncertain paradoxical future.
For one thing, while tourism has increased to record levels, the population
of the city has plummeted. In 1950 there were 184,000 residents, today there
are fewer than 60,000. Venice no longer is a city of ship builders and produces
little in the way of goods besides hand-blown glass
What saddened me the most when I looked at my beloved Venice were the large
numbers of gracious old buildings standing vacant, as their owners had moved
to more stable surroundings. Green algae grows on the porous brickwork of
many of the palaces along the Grand Canal.
Still, I am hopeful. Italy has started dredging canals, raising city pavements
and repairing damaged seawalls. Venice totally depends on meeting its needs
through water transportation. We frequently heard the screaming sirens of
ambulances, police and fire boats. Even trash is diligently picked up by
boat.
On this trip I enjoyed a unique experience that very few visitors to St.
Mark’s Basilica in Venice ever have. Because of the expense of lighting up
the interior of this enormous basilica, it’s rarely done. But the lights
were gradually turned on for our small, private group. The results were dazzling
as every inch of the ceilings and walls was revealed, sparkling with the
most beautiful and colorful gold mosaics. We didn’t know where to look first—up
or down—as the floors are covered with magnificent marble.
We were also allowed to see what lies under the screen of what looks like
a silk-covered altarpiece. Using a concealed device, the silk covering was
lowered to reveal an altarpiece with nearly 2,000 precious gems and 255 pieces
of enamel. Called the Gold Altarpiece, it is one of the most valuable works
in gold and jewels in the world.
Sicily
The first spectacular sight I saw from my hotel balcony in the medieval town
of Taormina, in the northeastern part of Sicily, was snow-covered Mount Etna,
Europe’s largest active volcano. But my senses were further dazzled when
I looked out the back window of my hotel room and saw the romantic ruins
of an ancient Greek theatre.
An important part of any good trip is that one should just have fun. The
stop that enabled me to cast off all my worldly worries and that warmed my
spirit the most was Taormina. I am a great movie buff and a big fan of The
Godfather films. So it’s impossible to describe how much fun I had driving
down the coast from Taormina and actually getting a tour of the villa that
was featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s trilogy. I even saw the spot in the
driveway where a horrified Al Pacinio saw his first wife, Apollonia, killed
in a car explosion that was meant for him.
The current owner of the villa said that when the author of The Godfather,
Mario Puzo, was scouting locations for the movie, he came upon this villa
that he had described so perfectly in his book, without ever having seen
it. I knew the fictional family in The Godfather took their name from the
real town of Corleone in Sicily.
Fast forward in real time. During my visit to Sicily, after 43 years on the
run, La Cosa Nostra’s boss of bosses in Sicily, Bernardo Provenzano, was
tracked down and arrested in his most recent hideaway. What led to his down
fall? It was a package of clean laundry sent by his wife, who lives near
Corleone. The police tracked the laundry as it went from one safe house to
another. It took so long to catch Provenzano because he counted on local
people hiding him, out of both fear and loyalty.
Provenzano’s capture made me think about Iraq and Afghanistan, where the
U.S. is trying to capture insurgents who are protected by their loyal members
of their organization and people who are afraid of them.
Petra, Jordan and its surrounding desert Wadi Rum
What makes the unique Wadi Rum desert so exceptional is its pink sand, surrounded
by uniquely shaped massive mountains. The sand in the Wadi Rum is very different
say, from the much more compact Gobi Desert sand in shades of tan.
Having driven over both deserts in four-by-four vehicles, I found the deep,
drifting pink sand of the Jordanian desert far the more hair-raising experience.
Our driver had to continuously and rapidly swerve and change gears in order
to avoid getting stuck in the voluminous sand. When I exited the vehicle,
I felt I had just emerged miraculously from a constantly heaving sea.
I also felt the romantic tides of history permeate the dunes of this particular
Arabian desert. T. E. Lawrence (also known as Lawrence of Arabia) had his
headquarters here during World War I, when he was able to unite various Bedouin
tribes together in the Arab Revolt. By the way, David Lean’s film, Lawrence
of Arabia, was actually filmed in the Wadi Rum.
I will also never forget the spectacular dinner we had under the stars that
night in the Jordanian desert. The site was 2,000 years old. Seated on the
floor in traditional Bedouin tents, we feasted on Jordanian and Bedouin delicacies,
including zarb, a whole lamb cooked beneath the sand.
The next stop was magical Petra. My most unforgettable moment came when I
first saw Petra, after a difficult journey through a very steep and narrow
dark gorge called the Siq, whose tall rock walls were sometimes only three
meters apart.
To enter this ancient gorge, you need to traverse a mile on a very steep,
uneven rock-strewn path. I decided it would be easier to take a donkey-driven
cart than walk. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The driver
madly wove the chariot in many directions, as we tore down the gorge.
But as we rounded the last bend of the gloomy black rock of the gorge, we
came upon the most magnificent, massively and intricately covered building.
As the other survivng monuments in Petra, this edifice had been carved from
rose red and blue, mauve ochre and blue sand stone. When the sun heats the
stones, it sharpens their color. My eyes could hardly believe the beauty.
By the way, if you can’t get to Petra, the first building there, called ’The
Treasury,’ was featured in the Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade.
Petra has more than 88 individual monuments scattered across 400 square miles.
No one knows how these monuments were carved by the artistic genius of its
inhabitants during its glory days in the century before Jesus’ birth.
Petra was only one of the many famous Greek, Roman and Phoenician ruins I
saw during this trip. Many of the civilizations like the one that had inhabited
Petra prospered from their strategic locations. They became rich through
trade, had good water management and exacted tolls and taxes from those they
governed or those who needed to pass through their territory.
My visit to Petra inspired me to appreciate the history that the area has
witnessed: The Israelite exodus, the arrival of the original builders of
Petra, the Roman Empire, the Crusades, and today’s modern Bedouins. Petra
also made me realize how fleeting power is. All rulers of territories since
time immemorial have thought their laws, customs and religious beliefs were
not only the only correct ones, but should be imposed on others with differing
beliefs. Whatever made many former civilizations so successful has eroded
and scattered to the winds, just like the monuments at Petra.
After talking to several guides and residents of some of the Middle Eastern
countries I visited, I began to understand why democracy, as practiced in
America, might not sit well or prove workable in other cultures. Many Mideastern
countries’ boundaries were artificially reconfigured by their conquerors
after one war or another. These nations are made up of a number of tribes
who belong to a variety of sects or branches of the Muslim religion. It’s
not too surprising, therefore,that many of the Mideastern citizens I met
said their first loyalty was to their tribe, its laws, and to their particular
Muslim sect.
One Jordanian said that if one member of his tribe offended a member of another
tribe, his whole tribe would come as a group to apologize to those who were
offended. I asked him what it took to keep order, override tribal law and
provide security for the residents of Jordan. He replied it took a strong
leader. Jordan’s king, he added, has extensive powers, troops and police
to back up his policies.
The one opinion I heard expressed over and over like a mantra was that if
democracy were imposed in counties without any knowledge or experience with
democratic institutions, tribal loyalties would create disorder, crime, and
religious bloodshed as various ethnic and religious factions fought to gain
more power.
Turkey
What also made the trip so novel were the several special Design Your DaySM
options Abercrombie & Kent had set up, such as one I chose, to ride a
hot air balloon over Cappadocia, Turkey. Our Swedish balloon pilot said it
was one of the world’s greatest ballooning sites, because you can float silently
over what looks like a lunar landscape made up of large raised boulders on
eroded pinnacles of soft volcanic rock. They are rightly called fairy chimneys.
Our balloon hovered close enough to touch these magical towers.
In Cappadocia we stayed at a cave hotel, built into porous volcanic rock.
I put my hand luggage on a ledge hollowed out of the cave wall. The heating
and bathroom facilities reflected their primitive setting. Some visitors’
heat didn’t work, though thankfully, ours did. I came away with renewed respect
for my distant cave men relatives.
This trip also made me for the first time take a look at my life and decide
I wanted to change some things about It. I have always focused on getting
projects done, having goals and not only meeting them but surpassing them.
Even during all my travels, which has been the way I believed I relaxed,
I did it with such intensity, that I was driven to learn everything about
what I was seeing. All of a sudden I realized that I couldn’t stand not to
be busy. In fact, I had to admit that my excuse to myself always was, I’ll
work really hard now and then in a couple of years I’ll slow down.
But two recent events made me stop and ask why I was always raising the bar
when it came to my accomplishments, and why I was constantly saying I know
I can improve on my accomplishments, make them bigger and better next time.
First, I learned I had breast cancer just before this trip. If I had to have
breast cancer, it was the best kind to have. Still, I would have to deal
with a lumpectomy and radiation when I returned home.
Second, my asthma acted up during the trip. I had a constant dry cough, and
I huffed and puffed going up stairs and sometimes had to curtail my sight
seeing, while others plunged ahead.
White I was moaning and groaning about missing the opportunity to take some
of the pictures up those steep hills I couldn’t climb, I suddenly realized
that I could look at the slower pace as a gift. I now could take the time
to really take those artistically framed pictures I always had wanted to
hang on my walls. Most important, while others constantly had their eyes
on their camera’s viewfinder, pushing others out of the way to get the best
angle, I could take in the whole picture of what I was looking at, not just
what my camera was seeing, and reflect on the unique sites around us.
I have always read and preached the importance of the mind and how a positive
attitude can have a positive affect on your health and well being. This trip
gave me the clearest demonstration of such mind power. When I came home,
I found out I had walking pneumonia and was treated with antibiotics. I know
I was able to see and do as much as I did on the trip only because I wanted
to do it so very much.
I now consider myself one of the many, many breast cancer survivors. Learning
from my experience, I am working to adjust my priorities and using my time
in new ways, such as educating older women about breast cancer.
My passion for travel is as strong as ever, but I have learned to take the
time to absorb and appreciate new surroundings and process new information.
Oh and yes my recent health problems have given me a new favorite
expression: It could have been a lot worse!