The Marshall Plan » Blog

Tastes Like Human: Papua New Guinea

Travis Marshall — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:50:52 +0000

West New Britain Island

Sepik River Basin

Western Highlands

Photo Gallery: Rio Camuy Caving Excurison, Puerto Rico Press Trip

Travis Marshall — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:25:15 +0000

The scenery makes an impressive about-face a little over an hour after I hop into the van at my hotel in the heart of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Rather than sipping minty mojitos at the Marriott’s beach bar in the city’s chic, waterfront Condado neighborhood, I find myself clad in a helmet, harness and lifejacket, kicking through a tangle of grasses and ferns that crowns the top of a rural hill. And instead of navigating colonial-era streets overhung with iron-railed balconies, gazing out at the 400-year-old walls of El Morro, I sidestep a farmer’s wonky gate, turn a corner and catch a wide view of the sheer limestone cliff on the other side of the valley.

That’s the great thing about San Juan, an often-overlooked city that many Caribbean travelers know best as a layover en route to farther-flung islands: It’s a day-trippers paradise. By night, world-renowned restaurants serve seafood al fresco against a cosmopolitan backdrop. And by day, a diversity of adventures impossible to find together on smaller islands beckons from all directions while promising to have you back in time for cocktails. And since getting there only takes about two hours of direct flying time from Miami, San Juan makes an ideal weekend getaway.

From my hilltop lookout, I see a flood of foliage rising up the sides of the basin between these geographical high points like water approaching the lip of a bathtub, and to my left a narrow rut cuts a path through the emerald sea of trees, marking the beginning of a modest down-hike to the valley floor. Stepping confidently ahead of me, Karel Hilversum—a local caving and canyoneering guide—pauses occasionally to point out tiny orchids clinging to trees or the stems of tropical tubers sprouting from the ground. But after about a mile, he stops abruptly. His partner emerges from the underbrush and beckons us to follow. Moving gingerly off the trail, we come to the edge of a cliff plunging into the narrow river canyon, and Hilversum explains that we’ll rappel the rest of the way. I clip onto the climbing rope, lean back and ease myself down 45 feet of rock with a handful of soft backwards hops, dropping in the cool water. Once in the gently moving river, the going gets really easy. “Just kick up your feet and go with the flow,” Hilversum explains. This short stint of what he calls body rafting deposits us at a sharp bend in the river upon which the Rio Camuy spills from the snaggle-toothed mouth of a vine-draped cave.

One of the island’s largest rivers, the Rio Camuy regularly slips below the ground and resurfaces again like a sand worm as it snakes its way through the island jungle. And this particular section is the last of its subterranean runs, downstream from the popular and impressive Rio Camuy Cave Park. In honor of the river’s final return to the surface world, this passage carries the redemptive name Resurgence Cave.

Wading waist-deep into the darkened tunnel, I move carefully over the irregular bottom, testing each rock with my foot before putting my full weight on it. We fire up our headlamps, and Hilversum throws his beam onto the cave walls, illuminating prehistoric fossils embedded in the limestone, walking and talking as he gives us a geology lesson on Puerto Rico’s karst region. Soon we come to a side passage that sits above the waterline, and we move away from the river, at times crawling to squeeze under the cave’s low ceiling, and eventually emerging into a large chamber where we stop for water, pictures and to catch our breath in the damp air.

From here, we double back along another side passage, and the sound of moving water grows louder as we make our way back to the river. “Time for more body rafting,” Hilversum says as I slide down the embankment on my heels and hands, thoroughly covered in soft mud. In the interest of staying together, we all line up single-file, facing downstream. Each person holds the lifejacket of the one ahead, and in unison we kick out from the shore and lean back into the armchair position as the river sweeps our motley, muddy train down current. When the mouth of the cave comes into view, we stand up, the mud washed clean from our bodies and clothes, and I can’t help but feel that Resurgence Cave has lived up to its name. Even after a short time inside, the warmth and light of the sun filtering through the jungle canopy feels redemptive. The van is just a short hike away, and as promised, I make it to the beach bar by sundown—just it time for that mojito.

The San Juan Marriott’s activities desk arranges hiking, caving and rappelling tours of Resurgence Cave for $164 per person, which includes transportation to and from the trailhead, professional guides and all equipment.

Puerto Rico 10/25/09-10/28/09:

Rio Camuy Caving Expedition, San Juan Marriott Press Trip

The Slumdogs and the Millionaires

Travis Marshall — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:14:49 +0000

That those of us wealthy enough to travel for fun find some form of self-enlightenment from exploring the poorest parts of the world is hardly a new phenomenon. Innumerable college backpackers find revelations in their wanderings through developing nations. And for years South Africa’s Soweto Township and the urchin-filled streets of Rio have drawn tourists looking for a glimpse of third-world destitution on it’s grandest scale. What is the draw? Tactile confirmation that the images on TV are based in reality? Perhaps it provides some selfish form of guilt reduction to say to the world, “I’ve been there; I looked upon extreme poverty with my own eyes and I didn’t turn away–that must count for something.” Well, a recent story in the Times (UK) reports that one of the hottest rising slum tourism locations, due in no small part to the movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” is Dharavi, reportedly Asia’s biggest slum, in Bombay. And the oft talked about tour company leading travelers into this sprawling swath of less fortunate humanity is Reality Tours and Travel. Of course there are arguments for both sides of this situation. It’s the exploitation vs. exposure debate that crops up in so many controversial forms of tourism (shark diving, for instance).

On the one hand, there’s obviously something wrong with groups of tourists peering through the tinted windows of a bus as it makes its way through the grotty streets, but from what I can find, the growing “poorism” trend is not about passive voyerism. It seems that the demand itself is for the tangible experience of wading through the trash, interacting with the people and getting out of the comfort zone at least a little. One could argue that exploring a city on one’s own would prove the most rewarding leap out of the comfort zone. Nix the tour guide altogether. But anyone who has been abroad knows this is an insurmountable hurdle for the vast majority of travelers. So, maybe this is the next best thing.

Photo used under Creative Commons, taken from Flickr.

Pseuo-Celeb-Journo Tomfoolery at its Finest

Travis Marshall — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:17:26 +0000

It takes mere seconds of web surfing to realize I’m far from the only one to take offense at the rebranding of “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher as some sort of war correspondent, currently making his way through the Holy Land with the sort of ignorance that would fit perfectly into the classic wit of The Innocents Abroad if it wasn’t so genuine.

In his made-for-the-web coverage at Pajamas TV, Wurzelbacher repeatedly insists that he is not a journalist, proclaiming that his superiority over predatory media folks stems from his simple mission: To hunt down the facts and present them to viewers so that they can make their own judgments. Last time I checked, that IS journalism. But his self-described hunger for truth doesn’t really jibe well with his statements in the video above, essentially that it is “asinine” to allow journalists access to operations and atrocities of war because “you report where our troops are at, you report what’s happening day-to-day, you make a big deal out of it.”

Excuse me?

Of all the things to make a big deal of in this world, war seems like one of the most vital. Wurzelbacher wishes we could go back to the way it was during the first and second world wars, but he seems ignorant of the parabolic downturn to the numbers of American deaths in major U.S. conflicts as they relate to the amount of access given to the media. The Vietnam War is when the horrors of war really became visually accessible to the public via television and photographers and print journalists reporting from the field. Is it any wonder that there was such a public outcry over the violence? Jump forward to today and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Public opinion has far less tolerance for American deaths, abuses of power and years of unnecessary bloodshed when it’s in our face, visible 24/7 via the media.

While I’m at it, I’d like to point out another nitpicky bit of hypocrisy in Wurzelbacher’s coverage. As I remember it, Joe the Plumber’s entrance onto the public stage centered on his wariness over Obama’s “socialist tendencies.” He was the “Average Joe” who didn’t want to risk sharing his potential wealth. But as part of his ass-hole’s tour of Israel, in which he blindly professes the strength and wonder of the “Israel people” without providing any evidence that he has even a basic understanding of the history and struggle that brought the country into existence and created the on-going conflict, Wurzelbacher heads north to the Golan Heights to hang out on a Kibbutz.

Kibbutz: A collective farm or settlement owned by its members in modern Israel; children are reared collectively
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

That’s right Wurzelbacher. A Kibbutz is an Israeli commune, chock full of socialists working collectively and sharing the wealth. But that didn’t stop him from lauding the Kibbutz model as exemplary in the region, a place where men and women; Muslims, Christians and Jews alike could come together for the common good and live together in peace. “That doesn’t happen in Iran,” he explains, but technically, his political leanings as spouted during the McCain campaign put him firmly in the unsharing, divisive (Iran?) camp on that one.

New Motivation, But Where to Focus It?

Travis Marshall — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:40:53 +0000

One pleasant by-product of my past few weeks of unemployment has been a resurgence of motivation to write…gasp!…for pleasure. Not to mention an increase in general creativity, whether it be in the kitchen, on the page or in the sketchbook.

Now, I realize there’s not much unique about this “epiphany.” It stands to reason that someone–i.e. me–who had grown used to cranking out service content on cue, forced to quit cold-turkey, will feel not only relief from the day-by-day, hour-by-hour flow of words but also pangs of withdrawal at the loss of a dedicated audience. And these simultaneous reactions complement each other, coming together to inspire new creation, and the discovery of a new audience.

Of course, that new audience, at least when it comes to my online ramblings, is limited to the very few people who either look at this, or my other blog, or those who happen to stumble upon them. But rest assured, within my own mind, I am writing for millions who will never see, and if they did, never like, my writing. But whatever. Hidden from view means liberated from judgment. And that the words come this easily–much more easily than the ones I’m supposedly being paid to write at this very moment–is likely a testament to their unpreparedness for the public eye.

An Economic Reality

Travis Marshall — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:59:47 +0000

I had taken the day off, but when the email came through on my phone alerting me to an “important meeting” the following day, I knew the dread I felt was shared by my coworkers back at the office. We had all watched the media landscape over the past couple months and seen magazines bigger than our own fall under the immense weight of their debts, their inabilities to attract sufficient advertising dollars. And we all knew we were no better. Our bottom line had been bleeding since long before the current economic disasters. Tell-tale signs had arisen over the months: Subscriptions were cut from 12 months to six, our circulation base was cut by at least a third and control of our website had slowly slipped from our fingers.

So, the following day, it was with a mixture of surprise and, well, non-surprise that I listened to the company president’s voice over the conference phone say, “We are selling Scuba Diving magazine to World Publications (the publisher of our number-one competitor, Sport Diver), and the office will close on Friday, two days from now.” All just a week before Christmas.

I was one of the lucky (I suppose) few offered a “opportunity” to go with the magazine and the new owners. The offer, in short, was that I would keep my current salary and title, and within a reasonable time, I would have to move to Orlando and help with whatever it is they plan to do with the magazine. Considering that no one could give me more than an ethereal explanation of what that plan would be, and even less about my actual responsibilities with the new incarnation, I was not terribly inclined to accept.

My ultimate decision and counter offer is one I have contemplated often over the holiday vacation still in progress. I indicated that I would be willing to “help with the transition” as a contract writer. My win-win reasoning being that the new owners could avoid hiring a new employee for a publication they have yet to establish a long-term plan for, and I could avoid opening myself up to an unlimited workload and an uncertain level of responsibility in a city with a higher cost of living, all for no change in my salary. Simply put, if the middle ground is accepted, I get to maintain some control over my workload, while commanding a reasonable rate of pay for myself. If this best-case scenario actually works out, I suppose I could come out just as well, if not better off, than I was as a full-time editor. I could devote a finite amount of time to Scuba Diving, and pursue new freelance work as well. But that remains speculation until all the cards are on the table. More to come…

Cross-Platform Productivity

Travis Marshall — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:59:07 +0000

I’m not much for unbridled product endorsement, but a recent addition to my productivity suite has provided me such pleasure that I feel inclined to make mention of it. Evernote goes beyond simple list making, though it performs that task quite well, offering easy note taking via text, email, voice record and camera phone. It also allows for quick, easy archiving of webpages, or sections of webpages, including their embedded links, with a simple click. All of the above pieces of remeberance, once imported to Evernote, can be quickly organized into various folders and further catalogued by Gmail-style tags. And the whole heaving mass of personally useful information can be keyword searched, and any notes that incorporate images, whether downloaded from the web, a digital camera or shot with a camera phone, mesh with Evernote’s text recognition capabilities so text within the photos is subject to the search function as well. And the kicker, the function that makes Evernote the best of its kind in my mind, is it’s ability to work and sync across all my platforms, i.e. iPhone, home and work desktops and the web-based application. Did I mention that it’s free? Check it out: evernote.com

Welcome!

Travis Marshall — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:54:44 +0000

Well, many long days of deciphering code later and I’ve created my online magazine-format portfolio site. And if I do say so myself, it looks pretty good. Please take a look around, post comments or send me an email, and definitely check back because the content will change often.