Travel Tales: Nine Lives Travelers: True Travel Tales

By Michael Brein

Travel Tales: Nine Lives Travelers

is a collection of very scary tales of close calls and great escapes in your travels.

Nine Lives Travelers are people who could have easily lost one of their "nine lives" by not making it through a travel situation that should have claimed at least one of them, had things gone awry.

This book is a collection of bad and fearful things that do occasionally happen to travelers despite their best efforts to avoid them. But bad things DO happen now and again, and it's best of course to avoid them in the first place, but, of course, if we cannot, we should certainly do our best at least try to escape them.

While there's no easy, simple list of failsafe strategies for always staying safe in dangerous situations that may arise in travel, there are, however, meaningful strategies to be learned from the examples in this book that will enable one to increase one's safety and reduce the risks of dangerous outcomes.

While many of the Nine Lives Travelers tales are not strictly about life and death situations, some are about difficult, embarrassing, funny, and otherwise annoying situations that we all would do very well to avoid and certainly do without.

The scope of the close calls and ultimate escapes in this book may very well surprise you. And some would never even occur to you. Some are even funny, like, for instance, El Diablo Rojo Loco, the very close-call story of riding the Crazy Red Devil "chicken bus" through the horrifying mountain roads of Panama.

Yes, such an adventure may never happen to you, but after reading about it, it may give you some pause — who knows? Maybe you'll never, ever happen to board a chicken bus!

Sure, you'll read stories in this book that will alert you to situations that may never even occur to you. But if you avoid even one new travel or life danger — if you can avoid losing that one of your nine lives) by simply reading this book —then I'll have accomplished a very useful purpose.

Since it's impossible to include every tale of nearly losing one of your very valuable nine lives, in my collection of True Travel Tales all in one single volume, they do, of course, appear throughout my True Travel Tales series.

A few books elsewhere in the series, for example, Travel Tales: Wild Animals, Travel Tales: The African Safari Reader, and Travel Tales: Snakes and Other Critters, of course, do specifically include tales of close calls (and, hopefully, great escapes) by travelers, largely on safari in Africa and elsewhere in the world, with wild animals, including lions, tigers, snakes, hippos, elephants, Cape buffalos, crocodiles, dogs, bulls, monkeys, baboons, birds of prey, cougars, hyenas, bears, snakes, scorpions and many more.

Just What Is a "Nine-Lives Traveler?"

In Travel Tales: Nine Lives Travelers we broadly consider that those of us travelers and adventurers though having naturally our one and likely only single cherished God-given life to live have the potential, of course, to court seriously dangerous or potentially disastrous (or even funny or embarrassing for us) close calls such that we may very easily and loosely have skillfully managed to "save" or even sometimes hypothetical "lose" in our travels or adventures. Yet we live another mindful day.

We say we have "lost" (or nearly lost) one of our potential so-called "nine lives" when we have managed to maintain, contain, or even sustain ourselves in these sometimes risky (or exceedingly embarrassing or funny situations during our travel lives) and have duly managed to "survive" and "overcome" to live yet another travel day!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Brein
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223673873

Michael Brein

Michael Brein, also known as the Travel Psychologist, is an author, lecturer, travel storyteller, adventurer, and publisher of travel books and guides as well as books on UFOs and the Paranormal. He recently appeared as a guest on CNN, and is regularly quoted in the news media and blogs, and is an invited guest on Internet radio programs on the psychology of travel as well as UFOs and the paranormal. Michael is the first person to coin the term ‘travel psychology.’ Through his doctoral studies, work and life experiences, and extensive world travels, he has become the world's first travel psychologist. His travel guide series, Michael Brein's Travel Guides to Sightseeing by Public Transportation, shows travelers how to sightsee the top 50 visitor attractions in the world's most popular cities easily and cheaply by public transportation. Michael also publishes his True Travel Tales series, a collection of books of the best of 10,000 travel stories shared with him from interviews with nearly 2,000 world travelers and adventurers Michael has encountered in his own extensive world travels. Finally, Michael also publishes The Road to Strange series on the true accounts of people who have had sightings of UFOs or experiences of the paranormal. Michael Brein resides on Bainbridge Island, Washington. His website is www.michaelbrein.com, and his email is [e-mail].

Book preview

Chapter 1

Long Roads Traveled

Snippets of Nine Lives Lost

Nine lives or perhaps just a single lifetime, lives are invaluable and irreplaceable. Whether either singly or with groups of people in the various stories in this book we consider just how disastrously close some travelers have come to losing their precious God-given lives whether almost losing the ones they were born into, or the hypothetical multi-lives (we often jokingly refer to them as so-callednine lives!)

In one travel tale, someone’s life ends precipitously short of reaching a goal to achieve a state of nirvana.

Others die because of happenstance horrendous accidents or gross cross-cultural misunderstandings.

If so many regrettable misunderstandings among travelers and locals alike had been better understood under the circumstances, many disastrous close calls with potential woeful losses of travelers and citizens surely could have been avoided.

End of the Road

Only One Life to Lose?

The 1970s

Dalhousie, India

As told to me by Karma Rienchen Dorjiy (mainly known as Michael Jason Miller). It’s 1970 and I'm in Dalhousie, India, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. I'm living in a monastery with Tibetan monks. We’re living quite isolated, some 8,000 feet above sea level in the mountains. I'm studying their culture, their ways, and their attitudes about what they do.

They are doing things from embroidery to meditation to yoga to all the cultural things that make up their existence. I'm also very interested in trying to learn their language, trying to learn their ways. In fact, the Tibetan name they gave me is Karma Rienchen Dorjiy.

Karma is one word meaning from Heaven. Rienchen means very precious, or anything precious, such as gold, silver, or a jewel. And Dorjiy means a single syllable or a single seed in the universe.

So I mean a precious little tidbit of the universe! or something like that.

Before coming up to this monastery, I had met so many people in the Southlands, many of whom were Tibetan refugees. I found them to be the most interesting people whom I have ever come across in the East, besides the bubbas, the sadhus, and the gurus. So I wanted to spend time with them and sought them out way up in the isolated mountains.

One day I encountered a lonesome traveler up in those mountains who had come all the way from France, through Europe, the Near East, and the East, and finally all the way up into the high mountains of the Himalayas to reach some sort of knowledge or just to come up there — period! I don't know — I couldn't understand what his point was or if there was any point to it all.

But the point I realized was that this guy had come all this way just to get to this point of leaving his gear on the side of the road saying, I finally made it here, and walking off down the road saying, I'll be back in five or ten minutes. Now that I've gotten here, I'm just going to have a walk, and coming around a turn and being hit and killed by a truck instantly within just fifteen or twenty minutes of his arrival.

I see a message in that experience, like, What is the point? Where are we going? What is our purpose?

I think he achieved his purpose, whatever that was. He got to where he was going and achieved his whole fulfillment in life. He walked around one turn and there it was.

Commentary

There you have it!

To attribute a single, ostensible purpose to our walk along The Road to Strange in this life is to presume to understand what the purpose of it all truly is.

Or to presuppose that we really know anything much at all in our quest to know the meaning of life and our purpose through a single, solitary lifetime adventure in search of The Contiguous Universe... in this one lifetime... is sure to presuppose an awful lot perhaps.

To walk The Road to Strange and feel comfort and solace by simply doing so is sure to wish for a lot.

Rather, the messages we get to keep, the peeks into the vastness of the ALL of The Contiguous Universe may — rather than be the be-all, end-all of one singular journey of a lifetime — may merely be the briefest of glimpses of an infinity of awarenesses and realizations without beginning or end, an endless trek or journey to knowing the ALL through an endless stream of teeny discoveries across many lifetimes in which the process becomes what is maybe the most important.

We may never seek an end to all our exploring but always, always, with each new beginning, have a glimpse anew of but a single piece of the eternal puzzle that awaits our endless discovery and understanding over presumably endless lifetimes.

And you know what?

I think we are all precious little tidbits of the universe, you know.

Kings of the Road

When Great Escapes Are the Only Options!

King of the Road Story #1:

In Morocco

As told to me by Jack Joyce. Consider for instance, what happened to me: You're driving on a mountain road in Morocco and a truck comes around the corner. And you're on the outside, and you veer to the right to get around the truck because he’s not going to slow down. The bigger the truck, the more it’s the King of the Road.

And you're literally going around the corner with two wheels up in the air with the other two wheels still on the ground. Now, that’s what I call a life-threatening situation.

Author Michael: You did this?

Jack: Oh yeah. That was in 1968. Yep. And after that, we’d then get back onto the road and just continue driving. Whew!

Michael: Jack, you’re what I call a Nine Lives Traveler.

King of the Road Story #2:

In Bombay (Mumbai) India

Sometimes a brazen escape is the only true safe alternative. And things don’t always go as you may have wished.

As told to me by Michael Jason Miller. This was in the 1960s. We were traveling in our Volkswagen Bus, traveling very super economically and enjoying ourselves. We were above Bombay (now Mumbai), just after visiting the Indian state of Rajasthan, traveling with a bunch of people of different nationalities.

We were on our way from Delhi to Bombay intending to go on to Goa and were traveling along the coast in the area of Maharashtra near where Gandhi was born. It was a very pleasurable trip so far. The main thing was that the people we were with were very new to India.

We were traveling through there in our van on a one-lane highway for cars and trucks and everything else. One lane existed for everybody. The bigger you were, the more seniority or power you had.

So you went along this highway with the understanding that if a truck was coming; you would pull off the road because he was bigger than you were. Pure and simple!

With this understanding in mind, we proceeded south on our way to Bombay. Every once in a while we encountered people on the highway, whether they had donkeys or camels, or whatever they had.

You would usually just give them a little toot, and that would be enough; they’d pull off the road, but you needed to warn them miles in advance seemingly because they’d often be rather slow on the uptake.

As we were coming into this one small village in the middle of wherever an older man was riding his bicycle. We figured he must have been upper or upper middle caste (class) because the poorer classes could not afford to buy bicycles.

After all, these people worked all day long on the roads breaking up big stones into little ones for a mere three rupees a day, which was about 25 cents U.S., you knew these people could not afford bicycles.

This guy on his bike in front of us must have been an upper-caste, Brahman because he was wearing all white; he had his white Lungi (characteristic Indian robe) on.

We beeped the horn because he was riding right in the middle of the road. In fact, he swerved off a little, and as we approached closer, he came back onto the middle of the road again. Naturally, we beeped again, and again he swerved back off. So, we thought he heard us the second time for sure, so there was no problem.

As we approached him even closer, to maybe within twenty-five feet or so in the back of him, suddenly, he pulled back onto the middle of the street once again. So we beeped him again, but this time it was too late. Just as we came up to him, we tried to swerve off, but we bumped into him.

He did not even get knocked to the side of the road, but landed, instead, right on the road itself. He just got knocked off of his bike. We continued on. And as we looked back we saw that he was just a little dirty but none the worst for wear. He was brushing his legs off. So, he evidently not hurt at all, but maybe just a little scratched and shaken up — a little worse for wear but essentially unharmed.

We thought we had better just continue on without stopping because if we were to stop there, who knows, the Indian people might have crowded around us, perhaps fifty at a time, and created such a scene, that we surely would not have wanted to be involved with this at all. Maybe it wasn’t the right decision at all, but we just kept going on.

However, as we passed through the town, we noticed that there was suddenly a big truck in the back of us honking. We turned around to see right behind us a truck filled no less with angry Indian farmers with their pitchforks, machetes, and all of their gear at the ready.

There must have been at least 25 guys in the back of that truck; it was just packed solid.

They were stomping on the side of the truck, yelling at us, ranting and raving, and shouting at us... I could understand their language a bit... things like, Terri mahkajut, which meant your mother’s an old whore, ’cause you knocked our Brahman man off of his bicycle...!

I tell you, it didn’t look at all good.

So we carried on, thinking they’d surely nail us if they caught us.

Of course, we stepped it up, and they were following us right head and head and neck and neck. We were going around turns, and they were skidding around these turns as well.

We skidded around this one particular turn, which was like a hairpin turn —  it was very deceiving  —  it just went right back the other way, almost in a U. So we drifted around that turn with our four wheels sliding in the dirt, skittering over sand and dust and gravel. We just barely managed to hold on and continue along the road.

But the truck full of irate Indians now came screaming around the corner and just sailed right off the embankment, right over the cliff’s edge. I’d say that truck went down some thirty-five to fifty feet, at least that steep.

Needless to say, we did not stop. We never looked back. And we never found out what exactly happened to that truck full of angry, vengeful men with machetes and pitchforks seeking instant retribution and justice.

It could very well be that all lives of those Indians were lost — whether nine lives maybe in all. Maybe bunches of them! We will never know.

Opening Vignettes

One or More of Nine Lives Nearly Lost?

#1:

And then a woman who had been harassed by men in Mexico figured it might be because she was blonde, so she dyed her hair black. That reduced the incidents considerably.

#2:

While traveling in Southern Spain I heard stories from fellow travelers about American girls or European girls traveling in North Africa, specifically in Morocco, who were kidnapped and supposedly sold into white slavery...

#3:

And then there was the woman who was chased down a street in India by someone in a mysterious black car with tinted windows. White slavers, perhaps, she figured. She was a lucky one: she escaped!

#4:

I don't actually remember whether the girls were Peace Corps volunteers or not. This dates back to February 1998 when I was visiting a Peace Corps volunteer friend of mine. We were traveling by train from Dakar Senegal to Bamako, Mali.

The story I remember hearing was that these two girls arrived in Bamako late at night, got into a taxi, and were driven out of town where they were beaten and raped. Being that we were also going to be arriving in Bamako at around 1 a.m. this story naturally fueled my own anxieties. I believe the girls did survive but my recollection of any other details is thin.

#5:

And there was the case of the European couple traveling somewhere in North Africa‚ who decided to go their separate ways briefly in a public market. The wife disappeared and has never been found — possibly having been sold off into ‘white slavery’ maybe?

#6:

Hey, I'm from New York! I’m tough. I’m Italian Are you crazy? I'm not afraid of anything! That is until I arrived in Cairo!

More Roadside ‘Infractions’

Near East Frontier Justice

More Single Lives Lost

As told to me by Steve Keil. This story was told to me by an unnamed Australian couple whom I met in Phuket, Thailand.

They recalled hearing of an Australian father and son who maybe around 1977 or thereabouts had driven through Afghanistan, sometime before the invasion of Afghanistan by the Russians, you know, a few years before my meeting this couple in Phuket who told me the story. What they apparently heard and told me about was that an Australian guy who had his son with him was driving somewhere in a remote area of Afghanistan.

They were passing through a small village somewhere. And suddenly, apparently, out of nowhere, some little Afghani kid runs right out onto the street right in front of their car and gets hit in a simply unavoidable accident. He was killed right on the spot, through no fault of the driver. So they didn't know what to do. They had gotten out, and they're standing around helplessly, you know, trying to figure out what's going on and what to do.

Meanwhile, apparently, I guess the word had gotten through to the father of the poor, unfortunate child, and he came back and looked over the situation and saw that the Western father had a son with him.

At that point, he drew out — I don't remember whether it was a pistol or maybe a sword — but this Afghanistani father dispatched the foreigner’s son right then and there on the spot, I guess, as a form of retribution.

And there you have it. And that's how justice was apparently meted out in Afghanistan at that time.

Author Michael: What happened to the father?

Steve: He left. He didn't do anything. There was nothing he could do. There was no one he could turn to. There apparently was no one in authority whom he could complain to, you know. That was it. This was a remote village, you know. It wasn't a main population center of Afghanistan.

The moral of the story is don't f*ck with the Afghanis. I don't know any more details than that.

They should have probably under the circumstances just jumped back in their car and made a run for it. But that is just not the Western way, I suppose. The so-called civilized way is to own up to a situation and do what’s right, as the saying goes.

But that was not out of keeping with what was going on elsewhere in Afghanistan around that era. It was during the time they had what amounted to a communist insurrection there in Afghanistan. Apparently, the communists were trying to take over the government but failed.

They were stopped right in their tracks supposedly. While this whole thing was going on, toward the end of it, when the communists had been subdued, there was such violence in the country.

The locals were said to be taking the communist sympathizers out of their cars and were summarily executing these guys right on the spot, and in some cases were cutting their heads off.

Afghanistan was no place for a Westerner to be in those days. Driving as that father and son were doing through Afghanistan was taking a huge risk, so to speak.

Another Similar Event

By author Michael. You just keep going; sometimes that’s all you can do is attempt an escape. But that’s hard for Americans to do, for Westerners to do.

But, you know, our tendency in the West is we stop for somebody who's hurt, you know.

Here’s yet another story where a guy hits a little local girl, with the same thing happening. The Near East. And he thought the right thing to do would be to take her to the next town to look for a doctor.

As a good gesture, I’m an honorable man. Therefore, my wife and my kid will stay here. And then I'll come back; I’ll bring your daughter back.

But when he came back he found his wife and kid hanging from trees because they thought the American just ran off. Misunderstanding?

Distorted sense of justice? Who knows.

But two cases of Westerners having the misfortune to have two accidents of running into two kids in some God-forsaken Near East remote outbacks, just trying to do the right thing, but yet they have no apparent way out.

It cost the fathers two additional lives, but, unfortunately, not a situation leaving lives to spare!

El Diablo Rojo Loco

(The Crazy Red Devil Bus from Hell!)

As told to me by Ron Anderson.

Author Michael: Tell me about your bus trip from hell on the Diablo Rojo Loco, or Crazy Red Devil!

Ron: Well, it was in June of 2005, and I was traveling from Santiago to Sona, which is a pretty rugged, mountainous area of Panama. And there was a strong, heavy rain. And I got on a bus not dissimilar to the one used by Michael Douglas in the movie, Romancing the Stone.

The only difference was they didn't have some of Mama Rosas’s chickens in a cage or strapped to the luggage carrier on top of the bus, and so forth. Actually, I only think I saw two pigs with ropes around their necks riding along with the passengers.

So basically, I got on the bus, and we traveled through the mountains. I was sitting just two rows or so behind the bus driver. He was an elderly man, and he seemed to be slouched over in his seat and kind of oddly askew.

I didn't really notice anything all that odd at first, but the road was in extreme disrepair with a lot of potholes. And so he had to dodge those with this big mother of a bus.

Michael: This is like a refurbished old Bluebird U.S. school bus, right?

Ron: Oh yeah; they’re American hand-me-down buses found all over third-world countries. (Laughs.)

Michael: Were you nervous?

Ron: Yeah, you bet.

I was not exactly excited about going through those mountain roads because there were steep ravines on each side. But what really disturbed me were the narrow steel bridges because it is so mountainous there, and there are a lot of rivers flowing off of the slopes of the mountains.

Michael: These buses are safe, aren’t they? There are millions of them, huh?

Ron: I mean, well, I don't know about that. They look like they have bald tires most of them. And they don't look like they're repaired very often either or very well at all — they probably lack the funds to do it.

Michael: Probably a bus a day somewhere in Central and South America rolls off a cliff, don’t you think? Did you ever hear anything specific about that?

Ron: Oh, well. I suspect that they probably have a lot of accidents. You can see the carcasses of vehicles just about everywhere in the ravines way down below. So who knows exactly what happens, but I certainly care enough to think about that especially when I'm a passenger on a bus like that!

So at any rate, we're traveling some distance, and we have a slight rain and the roads are slick, and he's dodging the potholes right and left. He's shooting right through these; he didn't have but maybe six inches on each side of the bus, between the edge of the bus and the steel girders on the outsides of these bridges.

So as I keep looking at him. There's just something funny and odd about it all. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the get-go.

I didn't notice at first that he was talking to someone sitting in a jump seat just to his right next to him. There's a young guy who collects the fare money from the passengers. Whenever they stop. Wherever a person is waiting along the highway, they’ll stop or they'll deposit someone who calls out a stop along the way.

So at any rate, they're shooting through these damn bridges — very narrow bridges they are indeed — and up and down these hills.

And the thing I finally noticed that caught my eye was something about the driver. He only had one arm! (Laughs heartily.)

So, I guess I had good reason to be concerned! (Laughs again.)

Michael: Was he on a cell phone, too? (I laugh.)

Ron: I think he was probably smoking a cigarette, too. He's talking to his buddy, the guy in the jump seat, and his attention is always diverted all the time from the road and his horrific driving. After I knew he only had one arm, this, of course, gave me extreme cause for concern.

(Laughs again nervously.)

Michael: Do you think his days are numbered with his so-called Bluebird bus? Do you think we should rename this story to maybe El Diablo con Nueve Vidas? (The Devil with Nine Lives?)

Ron: I don't know. So far, he's seemingly managed to stay alive. So how long he goes on is anybody's guess.

Michael: And so have you, fortunately, managed to live through this one time, huh?

Ron: Yeah. The locals must call his bus El Diablo Rojo Loco, the Crazy Red Devil Bus!

Michael: Anything more you would like to add?

Ron: I’m just basically glad to have made it out of the bus alive! I still apparently have all of my nine lives! (Laughs.)

El Lujo Bus to El Salvador

(Luxury Bus to El Salvador)

If you travel ‘by the numbers’ like me and want to, thereby, add yet an additional country to your growing list of countries visited as part of your quest as a member of the Travelers' Century Club (TCC) to reach the next level of 150 countries, you cannot help but be excited.

By author Michael. In 2005, My good friend and former graduate school mentor, Dr. Lorin Ekroth, and I took the luxury bus one weekend from Guatemala to El Salvador and back.

I just cannot comprehend why the collective bus passengers seem overly quiet, maybe even a bit sullen. No one is smiling, much less talking; in fact, no one seems the least bit interested in his or her journey. It just doesn't compute. We are tourists and are eager; they are locals and are entirely unenthusiastic. This is a grand disconnect, and we are wondering why that should be.

The ‘Innocent’ in me is the naïve and curious child and seeker of new adventures. But the ‘Collector’ in me needs to add yet another country to my growing Travelers Century Club (TCC) list of countries visited at just about any cost.

Going

This is not an ordinary, infamous, typical ‘Chicken’ bus ubiquitous throughout Central America; this is the Autobus de Lujo (luxury bus) as such, including a deluxe meal. So we set out, all the while, looking forward to the touted luxury meal dinner stop.

What this amounts to is that the bus pulls up to the deluxe restaurant, whereupon the two cute costumed bus stewardesses, dressed in smart red suits, caps, and white gloves promptly disembark and shortly return with a mass of boxed McDonald's hamburgers, no less, one box for each of us passengers. This is our luxury meal. Oh Well.

The bus departs once again, and we have a relatively uneventful three-hour trip to El Salvador.

We would spend the weekend at an international student's house, do a few things around the capital city, San Salvador, and then pick up the return bus Sunday evening for the trip back to Guatemala City, aka ‘Guate.’

What impressed us the most about El Salvador was the razor wire on just about every building, with armed security guards toting shotguns at the fronts of virtually every place of business, especially in front of banks and other similar institutions. Needless to say, we were happy to finally get out of there for the trip back. I was glad, though, to be able to add El Salvador to my TCC list as my latest country, so that was that. And the ‘Collector’ in me was satisfied.

Returning

Again, sullen, anxious-looking passengers, seemingly resigned to a bus trip that is probably a necessary evil, and one they'd rather not have do at all. I mean, so quiet and resigned these passengers seem to be.

Not us, though. The trip was pure fun for us, and we are now eagerly awaiting our return trip back to Guatemala.

And wouldn't you know it, the front window seats upstairs, just above the driver, are available to us this time and afford the best possible views.

You look out onto the road and see through a big open bay window exactly what the driver sees. Doesn't get better than this, huh?

Geez, are we just two simple-minded visitors from a first-world country, too enthusiastic, and with no burdens to bear, and simply too much in contrast to the third-world passengers, who are more than likely very much concerned with the serious business of coping with and living their daily mundane, boring, burdensome lives?

Are they just so very different from us? Why is this apparent disconnect and malaise that pervades throughout this bus as well?

We continue our journey, observing what we can out of the upstairs picture window of the bus. We arrive safe and sound and then continue our journey from Guatemala City to Antigua, where traveling friend, Loren, and I are enrolled in a two-week Spanish language course.

What We Learned

What we later learned — and I don't mean just Spanish! — surprised us to no end, and may surprise you as well.

Sitting up front by that bay window not only afforded us the best view but also fostered a very good view of the U.S. IF, the Bandidos just happened to decide to hit this bus AGAIN!

Yep, again. Apparently, they stopped one of the recent buses along this particular route, perhaps only a week or two before. People were robbed, and I believe that someone was killed as well.

It is no wonder, then, that a sullen malaise pervaded the two buses we were on. People must have felt that they were sitting ducks and easy targets for whenever and wherever the robbers decided to hit these buses again.

There wasn't much anyone apparently could do about it, and the passengers, now, after the fact, must have unfortunately resigned themselves to this distinct possibility.

The ‘Collector’ in me successfully suppressed the ‘Innocent’ in me by the allure of an exciting new adventure, while throwing all caution to the wind.

There’s no question but that this round-trip bus excursion was somewhat akin to the ‘luck of the draw.’ I think our roundtrip Lujo Bus trip to El Salvador and back to Guatemala may have been nearer to what we thought of as a close call.

Chapter 2:

More of Jack Joyce

Fearful and Life-Threatening

Perhaps Number One

— The King — of Nine Lives Fame!

The first story in this chapter is not a wildlife story although it takes place in a famous Uganda national park; it’s a people story. It is a dreadful story of the notorious heinous deeds of the then-evil dictator, Idi Amin.

I was a witness to a mass murder that took place in the famous Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda in 1968 for a gruesome reason. You’ll shortly see why.

If I had to choose the one single world traveler among all those whom I’ve interviewed over nearly four decades (nearly 2,000 or so) whose stories of close calls and great escapes grace these pages — and who retained not only their single God-given natural life but indeed also what could be termed their nine lives, I would pick Jack Joyce!

For there were so many close calls that Jack has so intelligently and elegantly overcome with ample experience, accrued travel wisdom,  and, yes... we have to add in and say... just ample plain old ‘good luck.’

Witness to Murder

A Dictator’s Undoings

[Note: some graphic material. Reader discretion is advised.]

This is not a wildlife story; it’s a people story. I was a witness to a mass murder that took place in the famous Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda in 1968 for a gruesome reason. You’ll shortly see why.

As told to me by Jack Joyce. We were in the national park to view wildlife. We camped out of sight behind some bushes, and we heard some trucks coming up late at night. We were fortunately out of view, turned the lights off, and got very quiet. We were now out of our vehicle and were about to walk toward these trucks to see what was going on. We were sort of peering very cautiously and quietly around the corner at them, of course.

It was dark; it was pitch black, actually. And that was a very good thing, I can tell you. There were four army troop carrier-looking trucks that were parked there. And Ugandan soldiers were ushering a bunch of people off the trucks and taking them aside where they point-blank shot them.

Author Michael: How did you feel when you heard that?

Jack: Well, I knew these things were happening in Uganda. So of course we weren't surprised, but of course, we're, you know, alarmed because we were witnessing something that we shouldn't at all be witnessing.

Michael: That would have been instant death if they’d seen you. How did they not see you?

Jack: Because it was pitch dark. Using their trucks, after they had done their grisly work, threw the bodies into the Nile River. Because we were right on the edge of the Nile, they put the bodies in there for the crocodiles to eat all the bodies, so that none of the bodies would ever get over the wild Murchison Falls right there. And the gruesome truth was if any of the bodies did manage to breach the Falls, there were more crocodiles down below as well to intercept them.

Michael: How many would you say they killed on that night?

Jack: At that time, approximately a hundred or so.

Michael: Were you scared when you heard all those gunshots? Could you hear screaming and that sort of thing?

Jack: Oh yeah, but I wasn't scared while I was watching because I was in the dark, and they couldn't see me. So there was no more reason for me to be frightened or to hold my breath.

The other two people that were with me were more concerned.

Michael: Like maybe terrified?

Jack: What was the more terrifying thing was we couldn't turn the lights back on on our vehicle after the army trucks left. They wouldn't come back on. We had to be very careful for the next several days in the area of the National Park in case some of the Military would put two and two together and realize that our vehicle must have been in the area. So we had to carefully evacuate that part of the park and stay in other parts of the park for the next time period. Supposedly thirty thousand people were killed that year by Idi Amin’s troops.

Michael: Is it fair to say the other people with you were terrified?

Jack: We talked about it a fair amount. But I don't think they were frightened because we weren't in direct contact with the military.

Michael: About how far away would you say they were from you?

Jack: Maybe a hundred yards or so, probably three hundred feet. Lucky for us we were still fairly far from them and hidden in the bushes, so fortunately they hadn’t any idea we were there.

Michael: Was that the closest call in your travels?

Jack: In Uganda? Oh, hell no. (Laughs.) But you mean a close call to what? No, not by any means. I didn't feel I was that close to death at all in that particular situation.

Michael: Oh, no. You were very lucky. They could've turned on you in a flash. Just from maybe a light reflecting from one of the army trucks on the metal on your vehicle.

Jack: I mean, it certainly might have been possibly life-threatening, but again, you have to separate a possible life-threatening situation from an actual life-threatening situation. In sum, I don’t believe that I was at risk at all of possibly losing one of my nine lives.

When an Elephant Walks

Pay Attention! Stop Dead in Your Tracks

As told to me by Jack Joyce. I was in Uganda in Murchison Falls National Park around 1970. And there was this old rogue elephant that was walking down the road toward my vehicle. The general thing you do is just stop the vehicle, turn off the engine, and don't move because the motion and the noise of the engine are what will upset the elephants.

Well, this elephant just stopped for a while, trumpeted at me a couple of times, and waved its ears. And since I didn't react and didn't do anything, after a while it must have realized there was nothing much for it to fear there.

And so it started moving toward the vehicle, and because it was a narrow dirt track, and there's really no real place for it to go, there certainly is very little room for it to maneuver. And elephants when they walk move forward, of course, but they do so in a left-right swinging motion.

In other words, they rock back and forth as they walk. And so, as it got closer to the vehicle, every time it rocked in the vehicle’s direction, it was just like being hit by a sledgehammer because the elephant couldn't probably even feel it but would bang right up against the side of the vehicle, and the whole vehicle would tilt over toward tipping over and be pushed over the roadway just a bit. And it was a walk like a bump, bump, bump until the elephant got to the back of the vehicle.

Author Michael: Were you concerned about it at all?

Jack: Well, yeah because I mean, you know, I was afraid the vehicle was going to tip over, and we'd be trapped right in the middle of a wild Game Reserve. And we wouldn't be able to get the vehicle upright again.

Moreover, we just happened to be in an area that was under severe pressure by Ugandan brutal dictator Idi Amin (at the time) who was using this game park as his private slaughterhouse for killing his enemies. So we couldn't even let any people know that we were in this game park; it simply was too dangerous.

I think it is fair to say that this dictator was far more dangerous than the wildlife!

Michael: Were you frightened then?

Jack: I was concerned the vehicle was going to tip over; I wasn't frightened of the elephant because I knew what to do. I mean, I knew that if you just played dead, so to speak, the elephant would probably just ignore you.

Elephants are like that; they won't usually attack — and especially a rogue elephant — it won't attack unless it's completely threatened. And if you're doing something non-threatening, it won't likely attack.

[Author Michael’s Note: I can recall hearing another story about the simple click of a camera that resulted in the death of a tourist. But that’s another story.]

Trigger Happy Soldiers

Guns Pointed at Me

Immediate Fear vs. Life-Threatening Dread

Says Jack Joyce again, "Furthermore, I've had 36 life-threatening experiences! And I’ve had five separate instances of having a gun pointed to my head and the trigger pulled which then went ‘click!

Author Michael: Well, why didn't they just shoot you right then and there on the spot?

Jack: Oh, they probably would have chopped me with machetes. And that would have been the end of me. But I mean, you know, life-threatening experiences have to be taken into the context of immediate life-threatening situations. That's not an immediate one: that's a potential one. So that's the next level.

I've had around 36 life-threatening experiences. Of those, I've had five separate instances of having a gun pointed to my head and the trigger pulled and then going click, whereupon the person then took the gun, pointed up in the sky puzzled, and pulled the trigger again with the bullet exiting the barrel of the gun!

Michael: Then what happened? You say that's not once but has happened five times? Really?

Jack: Well, the first time was in Nigeria. And it was some drunken soldiers who were robbing vehicles as they were going by.

I went up to them as they were robbing a vehicle at the time. I just stood there and shamed them into letting the vehicle go. And then the guy was really angry because he didn't get anything from this one vehicle. So he put the gun to my head and actually pulled the trigger.

Michael: How did you feel about that?

Jack: Well, it all happened so quickly. So I didn't have much time to react actually. And then he raised the gun up in the air and pulled the trigger and it went off!

He then put the gun back toward my head whereupon I took my finger like this (gestures — finger in the barrel) and I moved the rifle end off to one side of my head so that it just brushed past my ear.

And I kept my finger on the gun, and I said, Now that's not a very nice thing to do. You know, you shouldn't be doing something like that. You shouldn't be robbing people, you should be ashamed of yourself. You shouldn't be trying to kill people like that. That's not what you're here for.

I next said, I want to see your Commander. Where's your Commander? And he did what most people would do in a situation like that. He said, Oh, da boss, he's over there robbing that one."

So I said, Go get him; I want to speak to him.

And so, would you believe, he actually went over to speak to the guy and even brought him back, and I was shaking my face at him, This is not nice. This is not good. You're supposed to be giving a good example to the people. You're not supposed to be robbing them like this. You should go home and drink some more beer and think about what you're doing.

Michael: Jack, this is very surrealistic. Weren’t you concerned for your life?

Jack: This is Africa; it happens all the time.

Michael: Then what happened?

Jack: I don’t know. They went off and another vehicle came by. That’s what happened. They all went off to see what they could rob from that vehicle, and they simply left me alone.

Michael: Why didn’t they just shoot you right then and there?

Jack: They really weren’t interested in shooting me, I guess. I mean this just doesn’t really happen I guess.

Another Gun Pointed at Me

I’m Arresting YOU! Un-Uh.

No! I’m the One Arresting YOU!

He was trying to argue as to why I (Jack) couldn't arrest him because I was obviously the one being arrested by HIM!

As told to me by Jack Joyce. Another time I was in the Congo. It was in 1969 or 1970. And I was arrested by somebody... some border official... ostensibly because I had a Nigerian stamp in my passport of all things.

They were apparently arresting all the Nigerians. And of course, I obviously had to be Nigerian because I had a Nigerian stamp in my passport! (Even though I obviously was a non-African White man!)

I said, "No, I'm obviously NOT a Nigerian. He was dead set on arresting me. And there we were arguing about it.

Like most people, he needed both of his hands in order to argue. So he had his gun, just resting there. And I took the end of the barrel of the gun... I sort of just took it. And thus, he could now have both of his hands free so he could gesture and argue about how he was going to arrest me.

So, I was just standing there with one hand resting on the rifle barrel and the other one at rest, you know, he was sort of talking with the one hand.

And suddenly he realized that I had the gun and he didn't. And he was sort of getting nervous. You could see him looking down at the gun like that. He suddenly, you know, what with the light dawning in his eyes, and that had he been nicer I would have given his gun back to him.

I now said, We're not going to do that; we're simply not going to do that!

Finally, a European came by and told this person that he was a stupid idiot. And he shouldn't be arresting me, after all, because I was trying to arrest him! (Because he wanted to arrest me. And so I was trying to arrest him.) And that he was the one creating all this unnecessary conflict in his own mind. He was trying to argue as to why I couldn't arrest him because I was the one being arrested. And I was arguing back that I was not going to be arrested.

I was the one obviously arresting him.

Michael: So you said did you ever have a gun pointed at you and clicked again?

Jack: Yes. Well, actually, I was fired on by the Sudanese border officials when I was in northern Uganda.

And one other time, a very angry person in Rhodesia fired first. And then he came up to me and tried to fire again, the gun wouldn't go off the second time.

Michael: Jack, do you think you're one of these people who has like nine lives?

Jack: Yes.

Michael: Do you consider yourself lucky?

Jack: Not lucky. I think things just like this just happen. And they happen repeatedly.

Michael: But you know, you have your wits about you. You're dealing with these situations, with with cold logic. I mean, it's intuitive to you.

And this stuff worked for you. This is pretty amazing after all is said and done.

Other people would panic; they'd be dead by now. You know, they would not handle the situation very well at all.

Guns Pointed at One Another

A Mexican Standoff with the Syrians

The Defense Attaché and I were on the floor of the car. The guns were pointed out the window.

As told to me by Jillene MacCleery. I took a trip to Lebanon. In 1996, the United States had a very small diplomatic presence in Beirut. It was considered an embassy outpost, and only around 25 or so people were actually posted to the embassy. And that's because the danger in Lebanon was so high to U.S. personnel.

So to be able to even have the authority to go to Beirut and to spend some time with embassy personnel was a very difficult process.

To get to Beirut you could not fly on a commercial air carrier because U.S. citizens were not allowed to travel to Lebanon. There was a travel warning, and essentially, we were not allowed to take commercial flights.

Author Michael: What was going on in Lebanon around that time?

Jillene: Later, in the 70s, and continuing into the 80s, Lebanon had gone through a long protracted civil war. And you'll recall the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983.

And then in 1985, I believe, a hijacking occurred whereby TWA 847 wound up being hijacked and diverted to Beirut from Algiers, or somewhere like that. A group of hostages were taken from that plane and were held in the southern suburbs of Beirut for a very long time.

And so counterterrorism efforts were more focused on Beirut to get these American citizens released over a long number of years.

There were a number of continuing security incidents that occurred, starting with the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks through to these different hijackings.

And then I think onward there may have been kidnappings of personnel and targeting of personnel.

So over the years, our diplomatic presence and our footprint in Lebanon became smaller and smaller, and it became more and more difficult and dangerous for any U.S. Embassy personnel to travel.

At the time, I think the only other place that was considered just nearly as dangerous might have been Bogota, Colombia.

Michael: And then there was Jillene!

Jillene: So in 1966, I cannot fly directly into Beirut. So the way I get there is I fly to Nicosia, Cypress. I go to the airport there at an appointed time, and somebody meets me there. I want to say it’s a Marine Guard, and they put me on a helicopter.

Michael: Is this the scariest travel experience you think you have had in your life in so far as going to Beirut?

Jillene: No, it wasn't scary to me at all. Rather, it was super-exciting, actually!

So I was the only passenger on this helicopter. The way that they referred to it was an air bridge. So this helicopter was an air bridge for me to Beirut from Nicosia. I think they threw some mail on this as well.

And get this: there are three helicopters because the center one is the one you’re in that's protected. And so, you have a lead one and a rear one, you know, to keep you safe, and they've got weapons.

Michael: So like a very short flight, really?

Jillene: I want to say it might have been about an hour-and-a-half, or so. And I am so absolutely excited! And then we're also flying in under the radar so you cannot be detected by the Syrians, you know, or the Lebanese as you're going in.

Michael: Where, before all that, did you travel in the world?

Jillene: Oh, I have traveled quite a bit to the Middle East. I was a Middle Eastern terrorism analyst. So I spent a lot of time in different Middle Eastern countries and traveled a lot to Europe. I had already been over to Asia. And probably by that time, I had already done some travel to South America. I was a fairly seasoned traveler.

The U.S. Embassy in Beirut had also been blown up, I want to say twice. Yeah. And I was coming to the remains of certain parts of it. And so they had a sort of makeshift landing pad there for us.

As the three helicopters land, they open the door and bring me out while everything is still running. In other words, they don't land; they just touch down. They essentially bring me over, get me out, get the mail out, and then the helicopters just take off. They don't stay.

And the whole time we're coming in, they also have gunmen posted all over, you know, with the gunman focused on the three helicopters, you know, to keep us safe, and to make sure we are who we say we are. Right?

So all that was just super exciting, to say the least.

Going to Northern Lebanon

I got all settled into the Embassy. And during my time there, I was asked to go up into the northern part of Lebanon to check out an airport for some reason. And that's something I normally do, and we agreed to do it this time because it meant a lot to the Lebanese Government.

Jillene: You see, around that time, areas of Lebanon were under the control of Syria. Anyway, in order to make this trip up to Northern Lebanon, we had to abide by certain agreed-to protocols. It had to be a motorcade of some kind that strictly followed military protocols. And to say the least, this Beirut motorcade was an incredible sight to see in and of itself.

I traveled along with a Defense Attaché stationed at the Embassy. We were in the main