We can laugh about it now but… moments of peril around the world

In truth we managed to traverse the globe without ever really being or feeling like we were in serious mortal danger. That said, there were certainly moments that were either purely funny or could have quickly developed into something more perilous. We will probably look back on these moments just as often as the plenty of fantastic experiences we’ve had on this journey.

When Rafe fell… into alligator-infested waters

The lady manning the air boat pontoon in the Everglades came running out apace on hearing the enormous splash. She assumed the 10ft male alligator (incongruously named Daisy) had jumped up onto the jetty to try to reach us for dinner. She wasn’t especially relieved to find that the exact opposite had occurred – Rafe had somehow fallen into this everglades waterway, offering himself up to Daisy. The seriousness of the situation was quickly upon us and at least six pairs of hands rapidly reached down to grab various bits of him and hauled him out, damp and only slowly starting to realise why this could easily have turned into a much bigger disaster than merely a set of wet clothes.

On the upside, the air boat attendant was absolutely fantastic, and gifted Rafe a handmade wooden tomahawk from the adjoining craft stall to help him recover.

When Rafe fell… in the pool in Bali

This incident is unusual amongst the other incidents in this post as it was hilarious at the time, and there was no danger. Extensive research and a large helping of luck meant that we scored a relatively affordable little Balinese villa in a small complex, complete with a little pool in the yard – sweet! After a flight and a long drive north from Denpasar airport these comparative luxuries were very welcome, but we were all somewhat groggy. At least that was Rafe’s excuse as he wandered without a care and stepped straight into the pool in his pyjamas. Time stood still like Wile E. Coyote when he falls off a cliff. The splash and associated yelping had us lift our heads from our books, and then quickly break into laughter and mirth which lasted at least a day. The event was all the more memorable as his damp adventure coincided with the room service breakfast being delivered, and the two porters struggling but ultimately failing to contain their belly laughs too.

When Rafe fell… out of his bunk in Calama

Calama, a mining town in northern Chile, was interesting in many different ways. We only stayed one night and that was sufficient. The room had a double bed with a bunk arranged crossways over it at the head end. That way, if the loftier occupant were to fall out they would land not on the floor but on the sleepers and mattress below. At least that’s what should have happened. But Rafe, in his sleep at 3am, managed to fall out of the foot end, down the ladder and into a heap on the floor, his head narrowly missing a side table equipped as always these days with a largely redundant house phone. Quite how he managed to travel the length of the bunk lengthways we still don’t know, and neither does he, as he maintains he remembers nothing. In retrospect, he was quite lucky, although frankly the alternative prospect of him falling onto to us out the side as designed wasn’t exactly appealing.

On a cliff edge in Atacama, struggling to find reverse gear

This was one moment that could have got a lot worse extremely quickly. Local onlookers seemed to agree, judging by their frantic shouts and wild arm waving.

As ever in these stories, it begins with the best and purest of intentions. An early evening jaunt out of San Pedro de Atacame in Chile, and up the mountain road to Mirador Likan-Antay, a renowned lookout just a little down the road from the even more renowned, but guarded and ticketed hence pricey, Mirador de Kari – Piedra del Coyote. Being less set up for tourists, our Mirador of choice had a little layby / car park spot with the drop off the cliffside protected by boulders. By the time we got there this area was full leaving us to pull off a little further up where the road veered a few metres away inland from the precipitous drop towards the Valle de la Luna below.

Now, it is worth stating up front that I was driving a hired, ideal for the conditions, but nevertheless unfamiliar Toyota Hiliux 4×4 pickup. Of its many great features, the surprisingly long wheelbase and an under-explored gearbox would shortly come together into a genuinely life-threatening cocktail. Pulling off the mountain road I decided to nose into one of the few remaining gaps between other cars. This is where the lengthy wheelbase comes into the equation, as it turned out plenty of the rear of the truck was still in the road and path of passing traffic. Hot and increasingly flustered we now had the rear of the truck causing a lengthening traffic jam of locals and tourists. Worse, our view through the windscreen consisted entirely of distant valleys but of no road – the front of the truck was overhanging the cliff edge.

It was now time for the unfamiliar gearbox to join the party. I couldn’t find reverse, crunching through the gears and on at least one occasion realising just in time that I was in fact in first. It was about now that Dessa piped up, muttering the immortal phrase “not today death, not today”; at once hitting the nail firmly on the head and also reinforcing that she had been watching too much youtube recently. Cue the aforementioned animated protestations from nearby locals, waving and shouting wildly. It is possible they were shouting useful guidance on how to find reverse in a HiLux gearbox but the uproar certainly didn’t help at the time. Suffice to say, I did find reverse, and we went on to have a glorious evening looking out over the Valle de Luna and vistas for many miles.

An earthquake in a treehouse

Not a major earthquake, but still a significant 5.6 aftershock. A decent shake that’s for sure. It came in the middle of the night as we were sleeping in an already rickety treehouse, up a tree (obviously), by the sea, midway up the east coast of Espiritu Santo, an island in Vanuatu. None of us had experienced an earthquake before and this wasn’t really the best location to start. The earth shaking is definitely an unnerving experience in itself, but then the mind also quickly made the connection between earthquakes, tsunami and our idyllic waterside location. Fortunately for us only a few ripples accompanied the swaying on this occasion.

When Dessa ‘did a Trainspotting’ and fell down the toilet in Naples

Beware: there is no way to adequately describe this episode without going into plenty of toilet-based detail.

We were unprepared for drama when we visited a nondescript pizza place in a Naples backstreet near our AirBnb. We were more focussed on the really quite good pizzas, and chatting about a great trip to Vesuvius and Herculaneum. Finding herself in need of ‘taking ones ease’, Odessa took Jim with her into the shop to use the rudimentary facilities at the back there. Finding the bowl without a seat, her petite backside was too small to sit on the large bowl. So she decided to perch on her hands on the sides of the exposed porcelain bowl. Both hands promptly slipped on the damp (we shan’t speculate as to why it was damp) bowl, and Dessa dropped in ‘rear first’ with a squeal and a sloppy splash, bent into a ‘pike’ position with her legs in the air. Much hullaballoo ensued as Jim fished her out and she was sluiced down by him and several of the restaurant staff.

Chasing our passports in Bolivia

Passports and credit cards are the two vitals of international travel. With these in hand all is well and anything is possible. Without them, completely scuppered. We had just sat down in the small terminal of Uyuni Airport (the Bolivian town closest to the salt flats, after having travelled across the Cordillera Domeyko range of mountains in the northern Andes from Chile’s atacama desert) and Jim’s small rucksack was not there with us. This realisation dawned on us quickly and hard, because the aforementioned passports were all in that rucksack. Momentarily our stomachs descended into our shoes, visions of spending the night desolate on the dusty local streets bartering the kids in exchange for food passed before our eyes. And then just as quickly adrenalin transformed Jim into a world class 800m runner. The speed with which he exited the terminal and went after the taxi all the more surprising given the altitude and his simultaneous manic arm waving. If that taxi made it across the airport car park, through the airport checkpoint and out onto the main road to town all would be lost – there would be no way of tracking down that car. Fortunately for us, the taxi was of a certain vintage and Jim was wearing his still relatively new trainers. Unfortunately, the vintage of the taxi also meant it had no functioning rear view mirrors and a sonorous engine, so the driver was unaware of Jim’s pursuit (either that, or the driver simply thought it was funny to let Jim run). So it was only when Jim got close enough to hammer on the bootlid that he stopped, looked round quizzically, realised through some internationally recognised hand gestures what had happened, and popped the boot. All was well again, but it very nearly wasn’t.

At the end of the road in the Omani desert

Often there are stories of people that have blindly followed Google Maps directions only to be led off the end of a pier or over a non-existent bridge. Oh how we laugh, but in the same breath dismiss it as it could never happen to experienced adventurers like ourselves.

After the cool, refreshing fresh waters of Wadi Bani Khalid our plan was to head south/south west down the coast to see if we could camp amidst the majesty of the sugar dunes. The challenge with this plan was that there was no obvious road that followed that part of the coastline south. The only sensible thing would be to make a trip of several hours in the opposite direction north to then pick up the main #32 artery down the centre of the country. So we accepted our fate of a lengthy detour and plugged our destination into Google Maps. But what was this? – an opportunity to cut due east to Highway 32 and save ourselves a good few hours. Outstanding, and we were off.

Turning off the main highway we were pleased to find an admittedly small single track road but with a firm surface, so we careered onward kicking up sand in our wake as we passed several groups of resting camels. The reverie of our time-saving pace, singing along to Bon Jovi as went, meant we failed to notice the gradual deterioration in the road. An hour or so since we turned off the main highway we turned onto the arrow-straight road that Google had tempted us with to carry us across the featureless desert. Arrow straight it certainly was, but describing it as a ‘road’ would be a stretch. It almost certainly had been a road in the recent past, a road we surmised built by an oil or gas company to reach new deposits. But the desert had rapidly reclaimed its territory so now our path was more ‘dune’ than tarmac.

Nevertheless, being hardened adventurous types determined to be undeterred by such obstacles and replete with a hired 4×4, we pressed on for several more miles. As we meandered on between the small dunes which were now overrunning the old oil road further into the empty desert the sand got deeper and the wind also got up.

The reality of our plight was starting to dawn on us, and this finally crystalised with the realisation that we might not have sufficient fuel nor drinking water to make it over to the main highway. One of those moments when you can feel your stomach sinking into your boots. We took the sensible, if boring and unadventurous, option – we had to bail out and attempt to retrace our route back to the main road. Easier said than done as the newfound breeze had been helpfully covering over our tracks with fresh sand.

Since we are writing this now we obviously made it out of the desert, but at the time it felt like we were not too far away from some proper trouble. We hadn’t seen a soul for quite some time since waving happily as we passed a couple of camel-herding locals. Mobile phone signal was but a distant memory and there was nothing to be seen in any direction.

The vastness of the sugar dunes were definitely worth the trip, even taking into account the narrowly avoided potential for a slow death under the relentless desert sun.

For us the magnificence of Arabia would give way to many more adventures in the far east, Australia and the South Pacific. There are plenty more stories yet to tell, so stay tuned for shipwrecks on volcanic islands, falling overboard and out to see with a kayak, lost swimming around the wrong side of an island, the AirBnB on fire and plenty more!