Deep Trouble [X Marks the Spot]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in Amateur Hour, Close Calls, Off The Map, Survival, X Marks The Spot | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
16February2011

You can't hug a photograph...

In 1961 two friends and I decided to explore the limestone caves of West Virginia. I had a map that caving friends had given me and so we headed south from Pittsburgh. Sure enough we found an entry hole just where the map said it would be. We had carbide lamps, rope and provisions for a few days.  Early Saturday morning, we rappelled down the hole and set out through the slimy cave mud. The cave kept branching into amazing rooms filled with stalactites and other formations. But there were many tiny passageways that we could just slither through. Although we marked our way carefully, somehow we got terribly lost. The fuel for our lamps was the limiting factor. We only lit one lamp, since otherwise it was absolute darkness. Luckily we had left a note on the windshield of our car indicating we were in the cave and expected to be out by Monday. When we finally found the entrance it was late Monday night and we emerged to see a line of torches being carried to the entrance by a rescue party. Hugs all around! —Sam Geffner of San Francisco, CA was a top-ten finalist in the 2010 World’s Unluckiest Traveler Contest, from TravelGuard Insurance, beating out some 800 other tales of woe.

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American Confidence [Hotel Hell]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in "Study" Abroad, Breaking and Entering, Close Calls, European Delights, Hotel Hell | Tagged , , | Leave a comment
11February2011

Electric cars, my ass. America is built Hummer Tough!

Travel, when undertaken with the correct élan, can be as much about reinforcing national stereotypes as breaking them down. One of the great and unique advantages of being in a place where no one knows you is that you can choose to be whatever or whoever you would like.  When I was younger, and more idealistic, I was mildly obsessed with proving to people in foreign countries that I was the opposite of what they supposed me to be: a brash, gun-slingling hooligan who drove a Hummer, voted for Bush and was generally hell bent on annexing everything in his whisky- and tobacco-soaked path… Continue reading

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Where the Wadi Meets the Road [Water Water Everywhere]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in Adding Insult to Injury, Amateur Hour, Close Calls, Mountain Madness, Off The Map, Survival, Uncategorized, Water Water Everywhere | Tagged , | Leave a comment
9February2011

Let's take a refreshing swim while we wait for the tow truck, shall we?

Finding English speakers can be a little hit and miss in Oman. While some locals speak perfectly, others struggle to even understand our very basic attempts at pronouncing place names in ‘gringo’ Arabic  – but it’s not for want of trying.

Our taxi driver Hilal was somewhere in the middle. His English was basic, but that didn’t stop him chattering away the entire way as we changed hotels once the Games finished. With Bob Marley on the stereo he’d take his hands off the wheel to gesture wildly while he pointed out places he deemed of interest, such as the local bowling alley (he’s been twice, but isn’t very good) and the Sultan’s new Opera house, still under construction. Continue reading

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The Shipwreck Drowned My Homework [Semester-at-Scream]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in "Study" Abroad, Close Calls, European Delights, Human Sacrifice, Semester-at-Scream, Survival, Uncategorized, Water Water Everywhere | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
2February2011

Class dismissed!

In 1963, my wife and I set out on a round the world cruise with over 500 undergraduates in an old tub converted to a floating university. We approached Alexandria, Egypt in a storm so nasty that all the other ships were sitting out at anchor waiting for the waves to abate. But we were under great pressure to get into port to meet a scheduled tour of Egypt. The captain called for a pilot who came out in a small boat. But the seas were so high, the pilot could not board and so he abandoned us.

Shortly after we watched the pilot boat retreat, we heard a horrible crunch and felt a lurch. Our captain had attempted to enter without a pilot—and ran the entire ship aground on a sandbar. He throttled the ship violently forward and backward to get us off, tearing a huge hole in the hull. The ship jerked free, but suddenly began to take on water. Suddenly it was an emergency. All the men formed a human chain to rescue the luggage in the hold. We actually docked just as the ship was sinking.—Dan Feldman of San Diego, Califoria was a top-ten finalist in the 2010 World’s Unluckiest Traveler Contest, from TravelGuard Insurance, beating out some 800 other tales of woe.


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How to Survive a 1,000-Foot Fall [X Marks the Splat]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in Amateur Hour, Bad Asses, Close Calls, European Delights, Mountain Madness, Off The Map, Survival, X Marks the Splat | Leave a comment
31January2011

Suck it, gravity.

What did you do last weekend? Oh, really? Well, British climber Adam Potter can top that. He survived a 1,000 feet fall down the side of a huge mountain in the Scottish Highlands.

Here’s the insane story from Gawker.com, via the Guardian; image via Getty:

A helicopter crew found him half an hour later, standing on his feet reading a map. How did he survive?

Potter was climbing a mountain called Sgurr Choinnich Mor with his girlfriend, two friends, and his dog when he slipped on the snow and rolled down a “rough scree slope,” over three hundred-foot-high cliffs, and finally onto a boulder, which he thinks may have knocked him out.

Royal Navy rescue helicopters found Potter on his boulder, looking at his map. Actually, at first, they assumed he was a different hiker altogether, but were able to piece it together thanks to the trail of mountaineering crap he’d left behind:

“It seemed impossible. So we retraced our path back up the mountain and, sure enough, there were bits of his kit in a vertical line all the way up where he had obviously lost them during the fall. It was quite incredible. He must have literally glanced off the outcrops as he fell, almost flying,” [said Lieutenant Tim Barker.]

Potter, who apparently didn’t learn his lesson, is heading off to climb Everest in two months.


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Grand Illusion [The Unfriendly Skies]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in Close Calls, Flying the Unfriendly Skies, Off The Map, Vegas | Tagged , , | Leave a comment
28January2011

See the canyon in safety — and style!

My wife and I went to Vegas for our March break and decided to tour the Grand Canyon by helicopter. We took off from Boulder City and things were going great. The pilot was giving us the history of the area and showing us the sights. Beautiful!  As the helicopter came over the ridge of the canyon, the view was breath-taking as the ground seemed to disappear.

Suddennly alarm bells started going off and the pilot got really, really serious. The alarm stopped and everything went back to normal….then they started again. The pilot then told us to brace ourselves — we were going down! Our pilot crash-landed the helicopter on a small patch of grass between the Colorado river and the wall of the canyon. The pilot told us it was a complete engine failure, but all 6 passengers + pilot walked away without a scratch. We were stranded on the floor of the canyon, taking pictures and waiting to be rescued by…another helicopter. We were then brought back to Boulder City in another helicopter…it was the scariest ride in all my life. I don’t fly anymore because of the events of that day. —Robert Woodburn, Galloway, New Brunswick was one of the top ten finalists in the 2010 World’s Unluckiest Traveler Contest, from TravelGuard Insurance, beating out some 800 other tales of woe.

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Ambulance, South America-Style [The "Doctor" Will See You Now]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in Amateur Hour, Close Calls, Drive Like Hell, Road Warriors, Survival, The "Doctor" Will See You Now | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
27January2011

Buckle your seat belts!

While on a family vacation in Porto Viejo, Ecuador, my 3 yr old daughter got sick. On the third day of our trip, in the middle of the night she started going to the bathroom out of both ends, if you know what I mean. After several hours of this, I was worried about her deteriorating condition. Porto Viejo is a small town where every one knows each other so my parents made arrangements for us to go to the pediatrician’s home at 5 am where he confirmed our fear that she was dehydrated. He ordered an IV for her, and instructed us to go to the local clinic, which did not have bed space for non-life threatening conditions. The attending physician inserted an IV and gave us instructions for monitoring, and removing the IV once the dose was complete. To our horror, they sent us home. We took the baby in our arms and the IV hanging out of the window of a taxi! Fortunately she recovered enough for us to take the next flight out, back to the U.S. and the traditional health care to which we are accustomed. —Adriana Aviles, Miami, Florida was a top-ten finalist of the 2010 World’s Unluckiest Traveler Contest, from TravelGuard Insurance, beating out some 800 other tales of woe.

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Prescription: Pain [The Call of Nature]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in Adding Insult to Injury, Close Calls, Human Sacrifice, Mountain Madness, Off The Map, Survival, The Call of Nature | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
20January2011

Bah, just a flesh wound. Get a load of this trophy!

I am a geneticist who was invited on a medical mission to Saigon. On day three of my month-long trip, I stopped on a remote mountain road to photograph a beautiful valley below. Taking advantage of the solitude, I stepped to the cliff’s edge to relieve myself. Suddenly the seemingly-solid edge disintegrated, and I fell straight down, screaming in terror. If not for a ledge that caught me at 30 feet, shattering my leg, I would have hurtled to my death 400 feet down. (Many have asked – I had not yet unzipped my fly.) It took 10 men and lots of morphine to rescue me. A 14-hour excruciatingly painful ambulance ride to Hanoi and an airlift got me to Bangkok. Ten screws and a metal plate fixed the multitude of leg fractures, but I was annoyed to find my ankle was still not reattached straight.

Unfortunately, the second operation led to a life-threatening infection, which subsided only after massive antibiotics and a three-week hospitalization. I arrived home practically on my original return date, never seeing a single patient except myself. Medical missions usually take a lot out of me, but this one put a lot of metal into me. —Dr. Gary Feldman, of Ventura, California, recently bagged $10,000 as winner of the 2010 World’s Unluckiest Traveler Contest, from TravelGuard Insurance, beating out some 800 other tales of woe (and landing him some ink in USA Today). We’d say he deserves it.

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Pee Tree Dish [Water Water Everywhere]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in Close Calls, Drive Like Hell, Hotel Hell, Human Sacrifice, Mountain Madness, Off The Map, Road Warriors, Survival, The Call of Nature, Water Water Everywhere, When Animals Attack | Tagged , , | 6 Comments
12January2011

Le powder room is right upstairs, Madame!

It all started with a drive. A drive consisting of 20 people packed into a fairly impressive 16-seater van. I found myself sandwiched between a frail granny buried under a load of groceries and a teenage boy whose cool demeanor was significantly reduced by the presence of a low-slung fanny pack. We all leaned heavily on each other as the van careened down the windy, mountain road. The driver used his horn generously as he swung in and out of our lane expecting oncoming traffic to clear the way. For the equivalent of $1.25 I was traveling across the Caribbean island of Dominica and I wasn’t dead. Yet. Continue reading

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Wave Goodbye [Amateur Hour]

Posted by Christian DeBenedetti in Amateur Hour, Human Sacrifice | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
11January2011

Let's go surfin' now, everybody's learnin' how

Within a week of my arrival to Playa Gigante—a small fishing village of 500 people on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, where I moved to teach English—I already have a friend. Jamie, a wiry, energetic Nicaraguan, offers to teach me how to surf if I teach him how to speak English.

A deal is made. We head to the beach.

“Ready!?” yells Jamie as he runs to the water and back-flips into an incoming wave.

I rope the leash around my ankle and strut to the water, long hair blowing in the breeze, bikini firmly in place. God, I already feel like a surfer. I throw the board down, shimmy aboard, and paddle gracefully towards the white water. One two three four: my long arms propel me forward, droplets of water sparkling and splashing about in the morning sun.

Distracted by my surfing prowess, I don’t notice the first wave until it crashes on top of me. I’m pummeled into salt water. I surface, gasping, wet hair slapped across my face, over my eyes. I hug the board: a castaway draped over driftwood. With a great heave-ho, I swing my right leg back aboard, dig my knee in, hoist the left one up, and look up to see another wave, cresting and frothing, looming overhead. Continue reading

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