Great feature article on Bob Arno in the March/April 2009 issue of American Entertainment Magazine. Full of quotes, reads like advertising copy.
Terrible website, though. Easier to read the PDF.
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Easy-to-read PDF link added 4/9/09.
Original location is here.
Mala Mala and Kruger National Park, South Africa— Spiders were an everpresant danger to a number of our safari group, to the extent that they’d rather lose a leopard we were tracking than drive through the web of a golden silk orb weaver spider. Conversely, other members of the group designated one of our four Range Rovers “the bug car,” devoting significant time to examining insect and reptile life under rocks and logs.
The golden silk orb weaver spider spins its web between two trees or shrubs—seemingly every two trees or shrubs in the bush. So plowing through its webs was unavoidable on our off-road hunts. Our vehicles, lacking windshields, had only an antenna to break the webs—and our faces, of course.
The screams and wails of the fearful ones were a contrast to their calm excitement five feet from hungry lions, a yard from a hunting leopard. One of the arachnophobes easily handled a six-inch millipede, and tasted a fried grub. I guess for some, spiders are just directly hot-wired to the ick response, and no logic applies.
The golden orb spider is a large, striking arachnid that spins an impressive web of strong yellow silk. Its main bridge line can span 30 or more feet, and feels like fishing line. African kids wrap and roll it into yellow rope bracelets.
Twice, we came upon a bird caught in a web, flapping helplessly. Caving in to pleas from some of our group, our rangers, two different ones, freed the birds. Yes, they’d otherwise be spider dinner.
The web is so strong and sticky that fishermen use it to make nets. They bend a branch into a teardrop shape and wave it back and forth through the golden silk orb weaver’s web.
Despite those who scream eek, we drove through hundreds of webs. Only a few spiders got into the vehicle. None clamped onto anyone’s face. None climbed into anyone’s shirt. Etc.
Instead, most of the victimized spiders ran into the shrubs at one end of their bridge lines. They would then eat the silk of their ruined webs and spin new ones with recycled material within hours.
See some images of fabric made from the undyed silk of the golden silk orb weaver spider.
Coogee Beach, Australia— I spend a lot of time on our hotel balcony because the view is spectacular. The weather is glorious and the waves are loud. It’s a fine place to write, with a computer on my lap.
I can see a series of little coves just beyond our beach, and each is separated by a rocky promontory. The sea crashes into these dividers in slow motion, and white clouds of spray just hang there, punctuating each rocky spit of land like a period at the end of a sentence.
Hmmm, take that further: the coast is a paragraph, the country a book, a tome, a history since life began. Its sentences are long and the ragged right runs into the sea. Each sentence is an enigma, ending with a question mark shrouded in mist. The one closest to me ends with an ellipsis of rocks…
Coogee Beach, Australia—From our hotel, we walk around the corner to The Globe for “brekkie” every morning. We’re regulars on the stools at the open windows. We order a “tall black” and a “flat white.” Coffee. The Globe serves toasted fruit loaf, slices of a dense loaf packed with dried apricots, figs, dates, currents, and raisons. They toast it properly: dark so it’s as black as its poppy seed crust.
Earlier, I had seen a fruit loaf in a tiny market just across the street; the poster advertising it made me drool. It was called Dallas Fruit Loaf. I asked The Globe’s waitress if their fruit loaf was Dallas. She didn’t know. Anyway, it’s delicious.
One day they didn’t have the fruit loaf. I ordered the “full brekkie,” which Bob gets, and I was sorry. Next day, The Globe was still out of fruit loaf. “But I found out, it is Dallas,” the waitress said. “If I go and buy a loaf, will you toast it for me?” I asked her. “With pleasure,” she said.
So I ran across to the little market and bought a Dallas fruit loaf. The Globe’s waitress toasted three thick slices for me and served it on a plate with a crock of butter. I took the rest of the loaf back to the hotel.
But how will we toast it, Bob and I wondered. It’s soooo delicious toasted! I thought about what we had in the room. We can steam it with our clothes steamer to make it damp, then let it dry out and get hard on the outside. Then we can heat water in the coffee pot and set a cup of hot water on the toast to warm it. No. We can put a slice in the trouser press! Set the timer for 30 minutes… slow, but it might work. What if we forget the bread in the trouser press, Bob wondered. Okay, never mind.
Later, Bob went out for a take-away Thai lunch. I stayed on our balcony and ate an apple. And a slice of Dallas fruit loaf. Toasted.
Yes—I remembered what else we had in our room. An iron!
Why not? It’s teflon coated. I tried just a corner first. The iron wiped clean on a towel. Who needs butter?
What sounds more scrumptious that “bread ice cream?” Scallion pancakes, Dutch waffles, and durian come to my mind, along with a hundred other street foods.
The lines are long though, at the bread ice cream carts on the streets of Singapore. For a few cents, you get a scoop or a slab of neapolitan ice cream between two slices of soft white bread. Only—the balloon bread is green and pink.
I’d choose bread ice cream over fried grasshoppers, for sure. But it’s nothing like the wonderful Turkish ice cream. And Turkish ice cream comes with entertainment.
We spent some time observing this woman in Rome. She carried a child in a sling and walked with another woman. We thought we knew what they were up to, but we never confirmed anything. When they stopped for ice cream, Bob tried to talk to her. They spoke a bit in a garbled mix of French and German, but there was no real content. She allowed herself and the child to be photographed.
After an eventful overnight train journey we were disgorged into a very foreign Sunday morning. Not a single sign in Prague’s main train terminal was in friendly English, or any other language we could make out; not even an exit sign. The station was haunted by solitary figures standing, smoking, watching, waiting. It took us half an hour to find a dismal tourist information booth. The grouchy attendant, stingy with his every word, pushed a map at us through a slit in his glass barrier and considered himself done. Averse to bribing a public servant, we persisted with our questions, formulating the same query in endless shapes. Finally, we extracted this gem: taxi fare to our hotel ought to be two hundred koruna, about six dollars.
The taxi drivers had something else in mind.
“Meter,” they said, “more fair.”
Our bags were loaded into the trunk and we got in.
“About how much,” we asked.
“Meter,” the driver insisted. Again we pressed for an estimate, and the driver finally said seven hundred. Seven hundred! Out we got, and out with our bags. The driver said something to the other waiting taxi drivers, and we were certain we wouldn’t get a ride from any of them. So we walked.
A few blocks down the street we flagged down a passing taxi. He too, suggested the meter. We said c’mon, about how much. Three hundred, he said. Okay. We watched the meter start spinning. No way was it a legal spin. As the meter crept to four hundred, we protested, and the driver agreed to a flat three hundred.
“The taxi drivers wanted seven hundred koruna!” I exclaimed in outrage to the hotel receptionist.
“They are thieves,” was his simple reply.
But they were not the thieves we were interested in.
Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Two (part-i): Research Before You Go
To wash, but not to dream…
A full-length, fully-opening glass window in the marble shower allows me an expansive view while washing. I can see the bedroom, the tv, the husband, the balcony, palm trees, the ocean, the sailboats…and the room service man picking up our breakfast tray.
Paradise is paradise, I’m not complaining. Lunch in Naples, Florida Tuesday was a delight. You know: balmy breezes, swaying palm trees, gentle surf lapping at the soft, white-sand fringe of manicured gardens… The meal was vaguely Asian, with coconut this and pineapple that, good fresh seafood, and creative seaweed garnishes.
Two days later, some 5,000 miles away, same-same lunch in Maui was an equal pleasure. But look at my views: which is which?
Who designs paradise, anyway? And where do they get their plans? The little grass hut and tiki torches, seashell motif… I remember many years ago listening to a Finnish friend describe his fantasy. It contained the elements of these photos, exactly as generic, as soulless. Paradise packaged.
Still, I’m not complaining.
Heard at the front desk:
“Checking out, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Hope you enjoyed your stay. Your bill, sir…”
“How can I owe $670?”
“It’s only telephone charges, sir.”
“But I didn’t make that many calls. 40, 50 maybe…”
“Yes sir, that’s why your bill is $670.”
“But it’s written in the room ‘call 800 numbers free!'”
“Yes sir, 800-numbers are free—”
“They told me ‘no charge for 800 numbers!”
“Right, but—”
“I didn’t call 800! I called only 50 or 60 numbers!”