A Little Nostalgia for Ancient History

Congratulations, it’s my 20th Travel Anniversary!   In 2025, I set out on a 12 month, solo, round-the-world adventure to run away from adulthood and search for adventure.  So many crazy things happened during that one amazing year, recorded in a long-form now defunct blog called Modern Gonzo, that I got a tattoo on my leg to permanently remind myself it really happened.  The plan was to return to Vancouver and get a job doing…something.  Sometimes I’m asked where I think I’d be if that car hadn’t run me down that fateful day on Alberni Street, triggering into motion all the wild adventures that continue to follow.    It’s a silly exercise, wondering about the if onlys and the what ifs.   What if one of the bands I believed in more than anything hit the rockstar jackpot?   What if I wasn’t born in South Africa?  If only that show got picked up, that book got published, that project got greenlit, that first internet boom didn’t explode while I was right in the middle of it!  It’s easy to rationalize that things happen for a reason, and we humans are zen masters at it.   What’s that wisdom:  worrying about the past leads to nothing but misery, and worrying about the future leads to nothing but anxiety.   Nonetheless, here in the now, I’m taking a moment to reflect on my journey from budget backpacker to TV personality to newspaper columnist to bestselling author to husband, father, landowner, speaker, travel expert, consultant, and however else you want to label me.  Actually, it’s a little overwhelming and probably best left to a book one day.  But it has triggered all sorts of nostalgia, although for some reason, my brain is casting for memories much further back than twenty years.  Let’s see where it takes us.

First Time in the Sky
 
My very first plane trip was recorded for national television news in South Africa.  SA Airways had a special promotion for people to fly for the first time, taking off from what was then Jan Smuts International Airport (now Oliver Tambo) for a half hour joyride over Johannesburg.   My parents booked us onto that flight.  I don’t know how they did it, or why, or how much it cost, but off we went to the airport to hit the skies, in a plane much like the one above, accompanied by an SABC TV news crew on the plane to capture a feel-good story at a time when South African media were prohibited from covering the actual news, that is, the protests against the apartheid regime.  I think I was 8 or 9 years old.   My parents had been overseas once, so they’d been on a plane before.  My older brother got the vox pop at the very end of the news segment, which we watched that evening abuzz with the flight and possibly more excited we might be on the news.  They interviewed the whole family I think, because I remember saying something to the camera.  But my older brother got his voice on national television, just a single line that I still recall.  He said: “It was very cool.”   He was always beating me at everything, my older brother, then as now. 

I Got Stoned in Mea Sharim
 
The next time we got on a plane was on an El Al flight to Tel Aviv.  Years ahead of the intergenerational travel trend, three generations of my family were booked onto a bus tour of Israel.  I think it was 1988.   My grandfather, Abie Esrock, always wore a bowtie, walked with a cane, spoke with a thick accent, and looked much older than he was due to a stroke.  My younger brother, who was 3 years old, threw up every day on the bus.  We were joined by a large contingent of South African families. The teens gathered into a crew, the little kids played together, and I was a tween awkwardly stuck in the middle, as tweens are wont to do.   I have some strong memories from that trip: the taste of the shawarma, hummus and eggplant; the typical Israeli breakfast, served each morning without the slightest touch of variation; the smell of pink Bazooka bubble gum; the T-shirts with funny catchphrases; the teenage girls on the bus with all their alluring mysteries.  We went to Masada and the Dead Sea, we went to Jerusalem and Haifa.  One day, a rock came flying through the bus window, landing close to my grandparents.  This was the start of the second intifada, and I don’t recall parents being particularly bothered by it all, because I wasn’t paying too much attention.  I’m sure the incident freaked them right out of their eyeballs, and the army showed up quickly.  I was probably listening to music on my blue Sony Walkman throughout the entire episode. Someone bought a T-shirt that said I got stoned in Mea Sharim.  Mea Sharim is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood known to be hostile, sometimes violently, towards modern visitors. I didn’t get the joke, because I was 13.   Ironically, I think we were close to Mea Sharim when technically, we did actually get stoned.

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At the Dead Sea, 1987.

​Envy the youth for their ignorance
 
My family visited Israel again, when I was 15, and again when I was 17.   That’s how I can honestly claim to have visited Gaza, because my great-uncle, an Israeli pioneer, lived in the territory in a tiny Israeli settlement on a hill surrounded by three large Palestinian towns.  We were reassured that someone in the army swept the playground for bombs before our arrival.  We climbed up a water tower, and I remember looking at the Arab towns, which looked peaceful in the late afternoon sun.  I didn’t understand the politics back home in South Africa, much less Israel.   Envy the youth for their ignorance.

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​Bloodsport with a Legend
 
It's interesting what you remember, years later, even when your head is saturated with several lifetimes of experience.  That same trip, my brother and I left the hotel in Tel Aviv one night to see a movie.  It was called Bloodsport, with a then-unknown Jean Claude Van Damme, and it was the coolest damn kung-fu chop-socky movie we had ever seen.  In the line-up outside the theatre, waiting with us to get tickets, was a tall, big, and handsome black American man.  He had a moustache and looked like a movie actor. I don’t know what he was doing in Israel, but we struck up a conversation with the guy.  I like to remember that he said he “fought in ‘Nam” but I might have adopted that memory from watching too many movies.  In my movie-infused memory, he also looked very much like the actor Jim Brown in the 1970s, or Bubba Smith, the former footballer who played Hightower in Police Academy.  Maybe it was.  Anyway, he asked us where we were from, and my brother looked at me and I looked at him and we both remember, to this day, being embarrassed to say we were South African. Because we knew what apartheid was, and we knew it was wrong, and it was embarrassing and shameful to present our white sorry asses to this tall, proud, black American man, the first black American we’d ever met.   But we didn’t fib, we told him we were visiting from Johannesburg, and to his credit, he didn’t shun or shame us. He just shrugged and continued the conversation. I think we sat next to him for the movie.  Man, did Bloodsport ever kick Chong-Li ass. I think we were high-fiving our new American friend at the end.  We did a lot in Israel that trip, but that’s the one moment I vividly recall the most.  The people you meet on a journey often leave the biggest impression. 

Inspiring Others to Inspire Others
 
This month I had the privilege to fly to the Mayan Riviera and address a conference room of travel agents and suppliers.  I was invited to give a keynote about the Power of Story to the lovely folks at The Travel Agent Next Door, a network of Canadian agents, gathered for their annual conference at the fantastic Iberostar Selection Paraíso Lindo along the Mayan Riviera.  Whoever designed this mega-resort is an artist, it’s absolutely gorgeous.   I had some wonderful conversations with agents from around the country, learned a few things, pondered the future of tourism, and sparked up various opportunities. My keynote clearly resonated because it got a standing ovation, which in the world of speaking is like a year-end, feel-good bonus.  I’ve mostly been doing smaller events of late and it felt good to be on a big stage with three jumbotrons, inspiring others to inspire others, making a positive difference at a time the world desperately needs some hope and positivity.  I encouraged everyone to take a media diet from the bad news, and also encouraged myself while doing so.  In a month of utter economic chaos caused by the will of a madman, this captivating hour on stage is the one moment I hope to remember.