I Married Adventure: Tales From a Reckless Traveler

By Peter Yoshio Bullock

Think Rick Steves crossed with The Hitchikers Guide to the Universe!

These are the tales of a reckless traveler including: deportaions, attack dogs, police actions, hotel fires, sleeping rough, and gettting kidnapped. Yes I've slept in brothels (twice), dealt with rebel forces and smugglers.  Viewed an empty Machu Picchu protected by 200 Pervian soliders, had my train attacked by rebels, and crossed the Beagle Channel smiuggling cigarettes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arthounds
• Release date: Nov 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215624975

Peter Yoshio Bullock

Archaelogist, artist, antique dealer, traveler, Peter Bullock lives a life full of adventure.  Authored first ancient DNA study done in the US. Had first art exhibit at The National Atomic Museum. Discovered lost artworks by Jean Cocteau and Picasso. Kidnapped, arrested, and threatened by rebel groups, his life is a series of adventures. This is but one.

Book preview

People tell me I tell great travel stories and have had great travel adventures. What other folks consider adventures have usually been the result of travel problems I’ve brought upon myself. The truth of the matter is that I’ve been a reckless traveler, an unprepared traveler, a careless traveler, a lazy traveler. My travel preparedness varied from intense to nonexistent. My foreign language skills are rudimentary at best. Although I have usually tried to have a map, only sometimes do I have a guidebook. I often just go and trust everything to work out.

Generally, this approach has worked for me. I have been very lucky. Unfortunately, my luck, although basically good, has usually been rather sloppy. Things ultimately work out, just not in the manner I would have preferred. And there have been times when things have really gotten scary.

Dogs were set on me in the Black Forest because I had failed to know ahead of time a particular hostel was closed. Taking a short-cut behind the train station in Konstanz, Germany meant getting questioned by the police. Every border crossing in Central America resulted in a lecture over my wrinkled passport. Hitch hiking in Scotland meant getting a ride, but only after helping load a boat with smuggled goods. I have escaped a hotel fire in Venice, I have slept rough on the London Embankment, and have gotten drunk with natives in Borneo and then kidnapped. I have gone without meals and have slept on a floor with a rug as a blanket. Some of my hotels have been brothels. I’ve gotten deathly ill from contaminated ice cubes in China. Twice I have been on trains impacted by rebel forces. I was arrested in Vienna. Peru was visited during the height of the Shining Path insurrection. My wife Nancy and I crossed the Beagle Channel with a guy smuggling cigarettes.

As a kid books by Osa Johnson and Roy Chapman Andrews made me dream of adventure. But it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I took my first personal trip abroad. That trip to Great Britain changed my life. Things didn’t always go well on that visit, and it wasn’t always pretty. I made some bad choices and a great many mistakes. But I did it. I successfully survived in a foreign land and was invigorated by the experience. I have traveled quite a bit since that first trip. I’ve picked destinations because I liked the sound of their names. Other trips were made based on mood. I traveled to South Africa during the apartheid era simply because I had been told repeatedly it was forbidden.

Luckily for me I met a woman who also enjoys travel. For the two of us, travel has changed, and I have to say, it’s changed for the better. No more staying in cheap fleabag hotels. No more youth hostels with bathrooms down the hall. No more rooming in brothels (well maybe just once). No more skipping meals. No more third world. This is not to say that things always go smoothly for us, but we cope, we persevere, we adapt, and we turn the situation around. From the news, the world can seem to be a dangerous place. But to quote Dr. Stephen Hanauer, if we don’t travel, they win.

Chapter 1

Britain (Wrong Answer) 1973-1974

B y the way, this letter came for you, mentioned the secretary handing me a beige envelope just as I was leaving the Director’s office of the Lincoln Archaeological Trust. I had just had another argument with the Acting Director over the food budget.

What is it?

I don’t know. Usually when these letters come for you we just throw them out, but since you’re here you can have this one.

From the return address, I could see it was from British Immigration. What do they want? I wondered. I soon found out. The letter was to inform me that my deportation hearing was scheduled in two weeks’ time in London. I was required to appear and explain why I had been working in Britain without a work permit.

What does this mean? I asked the secretary, showing her the letter.

Looks like they’ve found you. Perhaps that’s what the other letters were for. Funny, no one ever pays attention to Lincoln. They must have been tipped off.

Ignoring her sarcastic remarks, I knew right away who’d ratted me out, that volunteer from Beloit, Wisconsin. She and her British boyfriend had gotten fired from our project for vandalizing a house. Probably had turned informer before she’d been deported.

At this point I had been in Lincoln almost a year. During which I had gone from being just a volunteer archaeologist to Site Mapper. Officially I was now in a staff position, but it was a promotion in name only and there was no difference in my subsistence pay. Legally however it turned out to be a big hairy deal since I was now officially employed. Now immigration was now aware of my status and had apparently been sending letters of inquiry to the Lincoln Archaeological Trust for some time. These were the letters that had been tossed by the local officials who couldn’t be bothered. Consequently, by the time I had actually gotten this letter and learned there was a problem, the folks at immigration were pissed off.

The letter sent me into a panic. A deportation hearing! I had no idea what to do. I had never been in serious trouble in my life. This was my first time in another country, and I had no idea what to expect. What to do? I did not want to get deported. I took what seemed to me the most appropriate choice. I fled the country. I rushed back to our lodgings at Avenue Mount House and threw together a few belongings and a change of clothes. I left a note with the other crew members, informing the director that I had quit. Walking to Monks’ Road Station (now gone) I caught the first train to the Norfolk coast. That night I was on the ferry to the Netherlands.

How had I gotten into this mess? I really think I could blame the whole thing on Gerda Lindquist. I first met Gerda when attending an archaeological field school in Sonoma County for the summer to get archaeological field experience. The two of us were part of a field crew working at the historic Russian Fort Ross.

The historic fort itself was located on the Pacific coast, on a picturesque bluff right above a small cove. Every morning there would be a bank of ocean fog that would clear to blue skies in the afternoons, accompanied by the constant sound of the surf hitting the rocks below. The crew was housed in a number of trailers set over the coastal ridge in a grove of giant redwoods. The area was quite beautiful, the actual archaeology not that great. We didn’t find much that summer except for the contents of an historic outhouse. These included coins, antique whiskey bottles, and a rusty revolver. The most exciting part of that summer was the Fourth of July weekend when vandals, believed to be members of the local Pomo Indian Tribe, set the historic Russian Commanders House on fire, attracting TV crews from San Francisco and Sacramento.

Several years later I was working in a bookstore and wondering if I would ever be a professional archaeologist. I had kept in touch with Gerda, in England where she was working as a volunteer archaeologist. She turned me on to a British archaeology job directory they had at that time. Published every two months, it listed all the archaeology projects in the British Isles explaining their staffing requirements. The directory made it possible to find out which projects paid for experienced excavators, which ones required payment to participate, and which projects accepted volunteers.

In this way I found out that volunteer workers were needed by the City of Lincoln. Why not apply? I thought. I had nothing to lose. I contacted the Lincoln Archaeological Trust and applied for a volunteer position. To my surprise they accepted me within a week (later learning that they accepted everyone who applied). Technically I would be a volunteer, but they would pay me a subsistence wage of two pounds a day, plus subsistence. Subsistence consisted of a place to stay and a daily food allowance. This seemed like a no brainer, I could fly to Britain and get actual archaeological field experience even if it was just as a volunteer. Since I already had a passport, within a month I was on my way.

This was to be my first trip outside of the US on my own. I was too inexperienced at traveling to worry about anything. Consequently, I did absolutely nothing to prepare for the trip, no guidebook, no maps, nothing. I didn’t even have any idea how much money to take, or what amount would seem reasonable.

This was going to be my first overseas flight! I was so excited. The cheapest flight I found was an Air Canada flight from Chicago to London by way of Toronto. The flight was fine, though there was one specific Canadian quirk. Being Air Canada, they had to repeat all announcements in both English and French. We were well over the North Atlantic and could have crashed and burned by the time they had gone through the safety check and announcements in both languages. However, the flight arrived safely.

Carrying my suitcase and sleeping badly I joined the line for British Customs. When it was my turn, the questions came fast and furious.

How much money are you bringing into the country? the Agent asked.

150 dollars.

How long do you intend to stay?

Three months.

Wrong answer!

How could I afford to stay three months with only $150? Did I intend to work? Did I not know that as a tourist, working would not be allowed?

If I need more money, I’ll get it from my parents.

Oh, so your parents will send you money, the Agent said with a sneer.

It’s my money. I was working, I said defensively.

So, you were working in America, but don’t plan to work in Britain.

I was sure I was screwed. Wouldn’t they let me in the country? Flustered I told them about the volunteer position I had lined up in Lincoln and showed them my acceptance letter. Surprisingly, this seemed to do the trick and turned the whole situation around. With a sudden change in attitude, the Agent said, Okay. He stamped my passport, and I was free to enter the country.

Following the directions, I’d been given, I made my way into London. Not knowing anything about the Tube or buses, I took a cab from Victoria Station to Kings Cross Station. On the way, we passed some large buildings and a huge garish gold monument. Later I would learn the building was Buckingham Palace and the statue was the Victorian Monument. I knew almost nothing and was just giddy being there. At Kings Cross Station I caught a train north to Lincoln with a connection in Grantham. As my train arrived at Lincoln’s Monks Road Station, I thought I’ve made it!

I knew almost nothing about Lincoln when I arrived. I soon learned it was a small city located in Lincolnshire, Eastern England, an area known as the Breadbasket of Britain. The town, officially a city because it had a cathedral, was on a ridge above the River Witham surrounded by farmland.

Carrying my suitcase and sleeping bag I walked north up the high Street into town. Once I crossed over the River Fosse, I was struck dumb. Located on higher ground before me, I could see both Lincoln Castle, and Lincoln Cathedral! A castle and a cathedral, what more could one ask for?

Using the simple map, I’d been sent, I navigated my way up High Street to the large Victorian house, named Avenue Mount where the archaeology crew was living. In reality the place was more of a squat, having been condemned by the City of Lincoln to make room for a highway roundabout they then never built. The house had once been a beauty, with stained and leaded glass windows, a mahogany staircase, and art nouveau fireplaces. There was a walled overgrown front garden, and a paved and walled-in back garden.

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Avenue Mount, my home in Lincoln.

ONE ODD FEATURE OF the place was the location of the house’s one bathroom. This was located at the far end of the back garden and attached to the house by a long hallway that must have been twenty feet long length. This was the location of the original Victorian outhouse. When the area had finally gotten city sewers, the owners had simply kept the outhouse location for the bathroom and attached it to the house with this long hallway.

All archaeology in Lincoln was conducted by the Lincoln Archaeological Trust, part of the local council government. The area being excavated was a prime section of downtown real estate slated for redevelopment. Portions of Lincoln had been bombed during WWII. After the war they dealt with the bomb damage by simply blading the ruins flat and paving them over with asphalt. These areas were then used as parking lots. After almost 40 years this parking lot was going to be developed. Removing all the asphalt and bomb rubble put the project area approximately eight feet below street level.

The Trust was directed by a woman (whose name I’ve forgotten), in her late thirties who drove a beat-up old Bentley. She was first pointed out to me as the one with the ginger hair. I didn’t know what this meant. Then I saw her and figured out it meant a redhead. What terms they used. The Project Director was her boyfriend, a tall lanky guy also in his thirties with a ponytail to his waist and another forgettable name. We rarely saw either of those two, probably a good thing.

The Lincoln Archaeological Trust provided the crew with a house staff of two, a Cook and a Warden (sort of a house manager). These two were an unmarried couple in their mid-twenties. They had a small obnoxious girl, but whether she was theirs or just hers, who ever knew? They also had a dog, some sort of mixed-race dog named Rastus who was kept in the back garden. Neither of these people were archaeologists. Both proved to be fairly useless, the Warden did nothing and the Cook had no kitchen skills.

The Cook’s job was to cook using our subsistence two pounds a day per person for food. We never saw any evidence that she ever spent that much since we were usually fed dreadful heavily boiled meals primarily comprised of potatoes and Brussels sprouts she purchased in twenty kilo bags. On rare occasions she would make some sort of meat stew. The rest of us were sure she was supplementing her pay with our food allowance.

Although there was a good-sized refrigerator, the Brits never used it to store meat. Instead, meat was kept at room temperature in a meat safe, a perforated metal cabinet that hung on the wall. I seemed to be the only crew member who had an issue with this unrefrigerated meat. Ironically, I was also the only member of the crew to get food poisoning.

When I arrived at Avenue Mount House there were eight crew members living there. In time the crew would grow to about twenty. It was an odd assortment of folks, typical, as I would later learn, of most archaeological crews. In the house each person had their living area staked out with their sleeping bag and a mattress.

The other archaeologists were a cast of characters out of a period British comedy. There was a Welsh woman named Polly who swore like a sailor. Every statement out of her mouth was bloody hell fire this and bloody hell fire that. She also claimed to be part of the Free Wales Army but was unable to speak Welsh. While the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were setting off bombs across Britain at that time, Free Wales Army activities were pretty much limited to petty vandalism such as putting super glue in the locks of government buildings and dropping lit matches into postal boxes.

One morning, about my second month there, Polly didn’t arrive at the site for work. We hadn’t seen her that morning at the house, but knew she had friends in town. Perhaps she had spent the night with them. By noon she still hadn’t shown up, but the police did. In a bizarre accident while putting super glue into the locks of Lincoln’s main post office, Polly had accidentally glued herself to the door. She left the project not long after that.

Iain was a Scotsman with an extensive record collection of classical music. Later he went on to teach English as a second language in Egypt and the last I hear was working for the foreign office.

The arrival of Amy generated a lot of excitement among the young guys. Having a French surname, they assumed she was French. What a disappointment for them when she turned out to be an American.

Two people of my favorite people in the group were an English couple, Linda and her boyfriend Dick. If you gave Dick any date, he could give it a historic connection to it. Later they left the project and rented a trailer in Switzerland.

Another favorite was Trish. Knowing French, she later giving me tips before my trip to Paris.

There was a titled lord, whose name I can’t remember. Always drunk, he lived in one of the upstairs rooms. He never came to the site, and we never saw him except at meals. He was said to be difficult, though I always got along with him.

Patricia, who introduced herself as PA-Tricia, was from London. Despite her Oxbridge accent, she claimed to be a diehard socialist. After a couple drinks and little prompting, she would sing Raise the Red Flag, or the International. She also seemed to know all 160 verses of a raunchy British song called the Ballard of Eskimo Nell. She was a rabid pro-IRA supporter. Unable to sing illegal and treasonous pro-IRA songs (Give Ireland Back to the Irish by Paul McCartney and Wings having been banned in 1972), she loved to sing the old Johnny Horton song the Battle of New Orleans since it made the British look bad.

A later addition to the crew was an unpleasant guy named Kevin. He was another one with some sort of title. He tried to hide his aristocratic status by speaking in a working-class chic accent. But that only made him sound like somebody doing a comic imitation of a British sailor. The truth came out when, on his last day, he was picked up at the site by a chauffeured Rolls Royce with a fancy crest of some kind on the door.

Later a fellow named Dennis showed up who’d previously done archaeology in York. He had a stuffed albino hedgehog he took everywhere with him as some sort of personal mascot.

There were other assorted crew members, many of whom did not last long. Some of them were students looking for seasonal fieldwork. Some of them were shovel bums who moved from dig to dig looking for better pay or the most exciting project.

All these people were of a type I had never experienced before. They all seemed so sophisticated, and it wasn’t just because they were British. I suppose this should have been no surprise since they were primarily middle and upper-class. Obviously, these were educated people, but educated in a far different manner than I’d been. They all seemed to have vast quantities of knowledge I sure never learned in school. People would quote Shakespeare. There would be puns in Latin. They could recognize the composers of classical music. I had never been around such a group. Several of them remain my friends to this day.

Officially we were working on a Roman excavation or dig. Lincoln had been one of the main Roman Colonia, important status settlement areas for former Roman soldiers in Britain. It was also one of the least known. What the Project Director really wanted to study however were the deposits from the later Dark Ages, known in Britain as the Migration Period. The bad news was there were no funds for Migration Period studies, it just wasn’t sexy enough. Not like the Romans. There was a lot of funding available for sexy Roman projects such as this one in Lincoln. To solve this funding quandary, one corner of the site was dug down to the Roman deposits thus officially making it a well-funded Roman excavation. The rest of the site area was then excavated slowly through the Migration Period deposits. Unfortunately, it turned out that most of the whole project area was disturbed and had been heavily impacted by later medieval trash pits and Victorian basements.

I thought everything we were finding was exciting. So what if the artifacts were out of context and the site disturbed, it was great stuff.  I couldn’t believe we were actually finding Roman pottery! Unless it was a rare piece with a signature, none of it was worth keeping.  This allowed each of us to have our own Roman pottery type collection. Most of the Victorian material wasn’t nearly as glamourous, at least to me. I was intrigued by the vast number of broken clay pipe stems that kept turning up.  There must have been hundreds. Sometimes rusted bits of metal would turn up. X-ray, provided by a local dentist, revealed the original forms of the objects, such as harness or tool fragments, under the corrosion.  We did find one gold ring on the site.  Whether Roman, medieval, or Victorian, I have no idea.  The artifact curators read Gold Ring on the bag and thinking it was a joke threw it in the trash. It was later retrieved once they learned their mistake.

Very little material from the Roman period was intact. But then after weeks of dealing with disturbed deposits, a small remnant of a Roman mosaic floor was discovered. This was a portion of border design measuring about two feet by five feet, the only portion that had not been destroyed by a Victorian basement. This was exciting, since every Roman mosaic, even an intact fragment, was big news. Little did we know this would be the high point of the project.

As news of this discovery spread, it was announced that the great Kathleen Kenyon would be traveling near Lincoln and that it had been arranged for her to visit the site. This seemed to be a big hairy deal. Everyone was excited, except me.

Who’s Kathleen Kenyon? I asked no one in particular.

She’s famous, she dug Jericho, answered several people at the same time. Everyone knows that. Didn’t you study archaeology in college?

I sure never studied Jericho.

The day of the big visit we were all busy. The whole project area was swept clean, the tools put neatly away, and all of us dressed in clean clothes. A group of people including Kathleen Kenyon who must have been in her seventies at the time, arrived at the site. The Trust Director, city officials, and the director of the local museum were also in attendance as she toured our excavation. The tour had not yet gotten to the mosaic, but Kathleen Kenyon obviously had noticed it. After glancing over at the mosaic tiles, she suddenly announced, Excuse me, I just have to see what’s under that piece of Lino. And started walking toward it.

We just stood there wondering what she was going on about. And I’m wondering Lino, what’s Lino? She just gets to the mosaic when she apparently realized her mistake, sees what it is and stops. By now several officials including the Trust Director have reached her. The Trust Director starts to say something but is brushed off. Turning, she walked back where the rest of us were standing.

Thank you for the most enjoyable visit, but it’s really time I must be going. she said and headed to her car.

Nothing was said until her group had left. The Director then turned to us assembled crew members. No one here is to ever tell anyone that the great Kathleen Kenyon mistook a Roman mosaic for a piece of linoleum, she ordered, swearing us to secrecy, is that clear?

The British members of the crew all nodded their heads in agreement. They seemed to think this was a reasonable request, and I’m sure none of them ever mentioned it to anyone. I was stunned, both by the demand, as well as by the group’s acceptance of it. I could not believe how seriously they took this. Plus, I resented being told what to do just because an old lady was famous. Consequently, over the years I have repeatedly told this story. It doesn’t get much mileage, too few archaeologists in the United States know who Kathleen Kenyon was.

A couple of days later the acting Trust Director turned up on site.  With him was a visiting professor from either Oxford or Cambridge. The guy was doing research focused on the composition of Roman painted wall plaster and had turned up in Lincoln looking for samples.  We didn’t have any in Lincoln but painted Roman wall paster had been recorded at a Roman villa about 6 miles north of Lincoln at Scampton.

Two of us were assigned to help with this research for a day. We were to be driven to the site where we would collect painted plaster samples. I was excited, a Roman villa! How cool was that going to be!  The surprise, and it was not a good one, was that the Roman villa was located adjacent to the Royal Air Force airfield at Scampton. To make things even more interesting it was located directly under the flight line from one of the airfield’s main runways.  Jets roared seemingly just overhead as the two of us crouched on the ground with our towels digging through the back fill of the site collecting fragments of painted plaster, while the good professor sat in his car some distance away. Of course, no one had thought to provide any kind of ear protection.  The whole experience was just awful. On the plus side, we did collect some decent samples of painted Roman wall plaster in three colors, cream, light green, and red stripes on cream.  The bad news was the possible loss of hearing, hopefully temporary, we suffered for scientific research.

I had to constantly pinch myself. I was so excited just to be in Britain. I know this was the Britain of the seventies. It was a green and shabby land of weak governments, strong unions, periodic strikes, and shortages. There were security issues. The Irish Republican Army was setting off bombs in British cities, including one at the Tower of London a week after I’d visited the place. The nation’s infrastructure was worn and most of the country looked like something from a period Masterpiece Theater series. The railroads were still nationalized and train cars from the 1920s were still being used on local lines. A malaise hung over the country and most people seemed to feel Britain had passed its peak and was in complete decline. None of this touched me. For me everything was exotic and exciting.

The pound was down, the dollar was up, and things in Britain, including British Rail, were extremely cheap. Since I wasn’t spending any money on room and board, I was able to pretty much save my two pounds a day and spend it traveling around the countryside. Not that Lincoln didn’t have a lot to offer. Although at the time, the place seemed to attract very few American tourists.

Lincoln Cathedral, possibly the largest in Britain, housed one of the five copies of the Magna Carta. The cathedral also contained a chapel dedicated to the British Royal Air Force Dam Busters and the other WWII pilots who had been based at the numerous airfields in Lincolnshire. On certain WWII anniversaries the movie The Dam Busters was shown in the chapel.

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Lincoln Cathedral towering over the town’s medieval streets.

AT THAT TIME, THE CASTLE was a prison. Now apparently, it’s open to the public as a museum. One of its sights is the stuffed Lurcher (a greyhound type hunting dog) from the 1800s. After William Clarke, the dog’s owner, was executed for murder his dog continued to wait for years outside the castle for its master outside the castle When the dog finally died it was stuffed and put on display.

Besides the cathedral and castle, there were a couple of interesting museums. The classy museum in town was at that time known as The Usher Art Gallery. It contained notable paintings by William Turner, as well as the papers and maps of Lincoln’s native son, the south Pacific explorer Matthew Flinders. Donated to the town by the Usher family of jewelers, the museum would provide free jewelry evaluations as a service.

The funky Lincoln City Museum was a real trip. I made