The Unsavvy Traveler: Women's Comic Tales of Catastrophe Edited by Rosemary Caperton, Anne Mathews, and Lucie Ocenas

  I'm listening to Carols From King's, Choir of Kings College.

 

 

I  found this book in an out of the way diner in a small town in Louisiana, somewhere off I-10, just before New Orleans. Don't ask me the name, I don't know it, but it was serendipity that my husband and I found it.

Not only was the down home cooking good, it also had, on the other side of the cash register, some tables laid out with used books for sale. I got this book for two dollars. The stories that were good certainly were worth the two dollars.

I love road trips and traveling all over the world and I have my own horror stories about certain places I traveled to, so I appreciated the nightmares these women went through.

A girl teaching in China finds a waitress at a restaurant has stolen her jacket. She chases her down, tackles her and then runs back to the school compound where she works with a mob of angry Chinese on her heels.

A woman decides to see the Gorillas in the Mist, in Central Africa. Her idea of a "romantic encounter" with the Silver Backed Greys turned out not remotely as she planned. But I'm sure she's ready for Survivor.

Another young lady learns that the Japanese are too polite to blame you when your toilet breaks and floods the apartment below.

Others went on cruises that went horribly wrong. Two women find that they're not on a cruise at all but have been duped by the one woman's brother in working on his sloop. Shanghaied by your own brother. Sad. At least they abandoned ship on one of the Caribbean Islands and somehow made it back to the States and home.

I think my favorite was of the woman who decided to join with another woman and man to cross the densely forested mountain range from one side of Papua New Guinea to the other only to find she was not ready for such strenuous hiking and is soon abandoned by her hiking partners and must find her way alone to civilization. All I can say is that she is very, very lucky to have survived to write about it.

I won't lie. Some of the stories stink. I really REALLY hate writers who shape their stories into propaganda for their political ideologies. (Cubans are starving to death because of American Republicans. If it were written today they'd blame Trump. He's such a useful scapegoat. I guess America/Trump is also forcing the Cuban government to imprison thousands of their own people for being stupid enough to believe that a country lacking individual freedom, including free enterprise is why they are starving. I guess that's why so many are trying to come to the U.S.)

That gripe aside, many of these stories are excellently written and provide a wonderful vicarious experience traveling all over the world. I'd recommend it. 

 

Meet Maurice, my art critic.  He thinks there's too much blue.  What do you say?