<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Where to begin?\u00a0 On the back cover of his 2015 book <\/span>Walking the Nile <\/span><\/i>(Grove Press) Levison Wood is described as a \u201cwriter, photographer, and explorer.\u00a0 He served in Afghanistan as an officer in the British Army Parachute Regiment.\u201d\u00a0 His resume is expanded some on the back of <\/span>Walking the Americans <\/span><\/i>(2017, also printed by Grove Press) to include, \u201cHis work has taken him around the world leading expeditions on five continents, and he is an elected fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers Club.\u201d\u00a0 I can\u2019t say exactly what it says on the back of his book <\/span>Walking the Himalayas<\/span><\/i> as I haven\u2019t read it yet.\u00a0 I am sure that you have now caught the connecting thread in Wood\u2019s books:\u00a0 Walking.\u00a0 That he writes books (and films documentaries) about his expeditions hits you right between the eyes in the titles.\u00a0 That he makes the acquaintance of a fair number of \u2018characters\u2019 on his travels only comes out as one digs deeper into his adventures.\u00a0 Wood does more than just tell readers about walking from point A to point B.\u00a0 He goes the extra mile (pun intended) to dig into the history of the places he visits.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was able to pick up a copy of <\/span>Walking the Americas<\/span><\/i> from the Menominee County Library via the Ontonagon Township Library\u2019s interlibrary loan program.\u00a0 It was totally coincidental that I read through the first seven chapters during several days of brutal heat and humidity that enveloped the south shore of Lake Superior in late July 2020.\u00a0 Levison details the even more brutal conditions he faced when he began his <\/span>Americas<\/span><\/i> walk after hopping off a fishing boat near Sisal, Mexico on the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula.\u00a0 I am not a big fan of this type of climate.\u00a0 In light of the hot and humid streak we were experiencing in Upper Michigan, it wasn\u2019t hard to relate to the conditions he faced stepping off the boat to begin his latest trek.\u00a0 Prior to serving his hitch in Afghanistan, Wood had spent some time doing jungle training in Belize under similarly hot and humid conditions. The jungle training probably did not help him much serving in the notoriously jungle free Afghanistan, but it did give him another opportunity to visit Merida in the Yucatan.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Wood had previously been in Merida while on R & R from the Army.\u00a0 He had met a Mexican girl named Ceci there and made it a point to visit her whenever he could.\u00a0 It was Ceci who convinced him to return after he left the army and try his hand at photography.\u00a0 In 2010 he found himself back in Merida with nary a clue how to make a living as a photographer.\u00a0 Ceci finally pushed him to explore and photograph the Yucatan and the Mayan people rather than spend all his time and money hanging around Merida.\u00a0 On the way back from his first photographic tour, a local crook boarded the same bus and plunked himself down in the seat next to Wood.\u00a0 Though he claims that he can never sleep on a bus, Wood woke up at his destination without his kit bag.\u00a0 Levison finally figured out that the low-life had spiked his water and then made off with the bag containing all of Wood\u2019s equipment, picture disks, and cash.\u00a0 Ceci came to the rescue when she introduced Levison to photographer Alberto Caceres.\u00a0 Caceres loaned him a replacement camera, taught him the finer points of being a photographer, and said those important words, \u201cNow, let\u2019s go explore.\u201d\u00a0 It seems Levison took the phrase to heart.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When he finally left Mexico, Wood planned to help a friend obtain an ambulance for a hospital in Malawi, Africa.\u00a0 Levison suggested his friend could save the shipping costs by letting Wood drive the ambulance 10,000 miles from the U.K. to Malawi.\u00a0 Levison had explained the whole adventure to Alberto who claimed it sounded interesting even though he didn\u2019t know where Malawi was.\u00a0 Five months later, Lev was 4,000 miles into the trip when Alberto tracked him down in a cafe in Damascus.\u00a0 Alberto joined the grand adventure and it was during this trip that he planted the idea of a journey through Central America:\u00a0 \u201cImagine it, Lev, a road trip – we\u2019d start in Merida at my house and go all the way to South America.\u00a0 Jungles, beaches, parrots, pyramids, and hot girls,\u201d Alberto winked.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s my dream trip.\u00a0 Don\u2019t forget about it, Lev.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another six years would pass before Lev called Alberto to ask if he still wanted to make his dream trip.\u00a0 In between his Malawi adventures and then, Wood had hiked the wild foothills of the Himalayas over a six month period followed by a nine month trek the length of the Nile River.\u00a0 Having heard that Alberto had recently been married, Levison wasn\u2019t sure if his Mexican friend would still be interested in the trip.\u00a0 Things didn\u2019t sound promising as Alberto explained how the Malawi trip had bankrupted him and cost him his photography business.\u00a0 When Wood called him, Alberto was working as a hired gun on fashion shoots (or as Albert put it, he had been forced to get a real job).\u00a0 Levison listened to his friend\u2019s tale, all but convinced that he would be going\u00a0 solo on this hike.\u00a0 \u201cThree days ago,\u201d continued Alberto, \u201cI was on a beach in Tulum with some English girls.\u00a0 They were clients actually.\u00a0 We were doing a photo shoot for some fashion magazine.\u00a0 One of the girls was sad because she had lost the book she was reading.\u00a0 She said, \u2018It was about a guy traveling and stuff and he had been to Africa as well, travelling all the way to Malawi.\u2019\u00a0 She finally found the book.\u00a0 She showed me and it was <\/span>Walking the Nile<\/span><\/i> by Levison Wood.\u00a0 It\u2019s true.\u00a0 That three days ago I had no idea what you\u2019ve been doing the last few years, but now I can see.\u00a0 So now you ring me up, asking to come and drive the length of Central America, What choice do I have?\u201d\u00a0 Of course, Levison had to tell him that the plan was to walk, not drive, but none-the-less, Alberto was all in for some diversion.\u00a0 He and his new wife had parted after being married for all of a year and Alberto had been feeling down about it.\u00a0 Six weeks later, Wood made his way from Sisal to Merida and he appeared at Caceres\u2019s door.\u00a0 As I said, Wood has a habit of collecting \u2018characters\u2019 as well as stories.\u00a0 In the nine month trek the length of the Nile River, he was accompanied by several different locals he picked up along the route.\u00a0 Each brought something different to the expedition and as Wood would find, Alberto did the same for the Central America trek.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Wood explained that he would not be setting foot in North America at all and the trip would end shortly after they entered South America.\u00a0 His <\/span>Walking the Americas <\/span><\/i>title seems a little misleading but he recalled that this was \u2018America\u2019 when explorers (and later conquistadors) arrived during the age of discovery.\u00a0 \u00a0 Call the title poetic license, but the subtitle tells the rest of the tale:\u00a0 <\/span>1,800 miles, eight countries, and one incredible journey from Mexico to Colombia.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Coming on the heels of his six and nine month jaunts in Asia and Africa, Lev figured the Central American hike would be a less complicated affair spanning only four months.\u00a0 Unlike Africa, Central America\u2019s only real predator is the jaguar, however, I was a little dubious about the \u2018less complicated\u2019 comment after he described some of the obstacles they would face during the <\/span>Americas<\/span><\/i> walk.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Here is a condensed list of \u2018other\u2019 concerns Wood would face in the jungles of Central America:\u00a0 \u201c[like Africa, there are many of the same risks in Central America like] Amoebic and bacillary dysenteries to deal with, yellow and blackwater and dengue fevers, malaria – of course – and cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and rabies.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s some very special extras.\u00a0 Bot fly, for instance, whose larvae bore into your scalp, eat your flesh from the inside, and then, forty days later emerge as inch-long maggots.\u201d\u00a0 I won\u2019t bother with the gruesome blow by blow description Wood gives about Chagas disease other than the final outcome:\u00a0 \u201cWhen you scratch the resulting itch [from the bug bite] . . . a cargo of protozoa is released into your bloodstream and then between one and twenty years later, you die from incurable brain damage.\u201d\u00a0 By comparison, the bandits, highway robbers, gangs, and revolutionaries that inhabit some of the more lawless bywaters they would be passing through sounded less dangerous.\u00a0 With that said,\u00a0 more than one expedition through the same region have mysteriously disappeared with no trace, so \u2018less dangerous\u2019 is probably my too optimistic armchair observation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Why would someone subject themselves to these dangers in the first place?\u00a0 Why did George Mallory (and later Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay) want to climb Mount Everest?\u00a0 As a student of history, Wood has always been fascinated by the European explorers who first entered these remote areas.\u00a0 In Africa, he was following in the footsteps of Victorian explorers like David Livingstone, John Hanning Speke, Henry Morton Stanley, Samuel Baker, and a host of others.\u00a0 Even Alexander the Great\u2019s expeditions failed to locate the source of the Nile River.\u00a0 Wood\u2019s first companion-guide in Rwanda, Ndoole Boston, began the Nile River trek with him beside an insignificant spring of water in the Nyungwe National Forest.\u00a0 The spring marks the furthest tributary of the Nile (many mistakenly think the river originates in Uganda at Lake Victoria).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Along the way, Wood fills readers in about the horrible genocide that took place in Rwanda twenty years before he walked the Nile.\u00a0 While traveling through Uganda, Tanzania, and South Sudan, he contrasts their colonial past and turbulent modern history.\u00a0 This was a far\u00a0 more detailed version of recent African history than I had followed from afar via the news dispatches.\u00a0 Levison Wood opens <\/span>Walking the Nile <\/span><\/i>by describing a frightening night in Bor, South Sudan when the sound of rebel gun fire filled the air.\u00a0 After this attention grabbing introduction, Wood backtracks to the beginning of his trek in Rwanda.\u00a0 The Nile walk was complicated by the death of outdoor writer Matt Power joined Wood for part of the journey.\u00a0 Even though he was a seasoned trekker, the brutal conditions in Uganda broke Power down and he died before medical help could be summoned to their remote location.\u00a0 Levison had to travel cautiously through the civil war that was raging in South Sudan.\u00a0 Wood had been in the midst of similar conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, Burma, and the Caucasus, but the war in South Sudan was by far the worst he had seen.\u00a0 It took an unpleasant detainment by the South Sudan Army to force Wood to send Boston back home for fear of losing another hiking partner.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The war also forced Wood to fly south to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.\u00a0 This meant he had to skip a 450 mile leg of the Nile journey, but he had wisely concluded that courting death in the civil war ravaged South Sudan was not a good idea.\u00a0 From Sudan, Wood was able to navigate the Sudanese desert leg of the Nile.\u00a0 Assisting Lev on this section of the trek was Moez Mahir.\u00a0 Mahir hired two Bedouin Hawawir tribe members to tend the camels employed to haul the expedition\u2019s gear.\u00a0 Even though they were all seasoned desert travelers, Lev became concerned when he discovered they were trying to navigate across a parched landscape without sufficient water and outdated maps.\u00a0 Discovery of an unmarked oasis in the eleventh hour allowed them to survive and the expedition to continue on to Egypt.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Egypt was also a country in turmoil at the time Wood crossed the border heading north.\u00a0 With the aide of Mahmoud \u201cTurbo\u201d Ezzeldin, Lev gained permission to walk from the border along the shore of Lake Nassar, the backwater created when the Aswan High Dam was built in 1964.\u00a0 Having been refused permission to hike from Sudan into Egypt, Wood took the Wadi Halfa ferry down the lake to Aswan.\u00a0 Turbo then drove him south to the border so Wood could resume his northward walk from there.\u00a0 Egypt\u2019s own revolution meant having to dodge smugglers, police, and government officials in order for Wood to complete the final leg of his nine month journey.\u00a0 In the end, he accomplished his goal, but wondered inwardly if he had been crazy to attempt the hike to begin with.\u00a0 Such pondering did not keep him from dialing Alberto and arranging the Central America walk.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Now that I am hooked, I will need to find some of Levison Wood\u2019s other works, among them <\/span>Walking the Hinalyas, The Last Giants, An Arabian Journey, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Arabia.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 To underscore the continued dangers Wood and Alberto faced, we need to return to the early part of the <\/span>Americas<\/span><\/i> walk.\u00a0 As they prepared to leave Belize, Wood asked Aron Tzib, the soldier who conducted jungle survival training with Lev\u2019s troops years earlier, to provide a quick refresher course in jungle survival before they entered Guatemala.\u00a0 When Alberto inquired, \u201cWhat is the biggest danger in the jungle?\u201d Aron summarized how to survive there:\u00a0 \u201cLike I say, you\u2019ve got deadfall from the trees (he had previously told them about a friend who was seriously injured by a falling branch), and then the risk of flash flooding.\u00a0 Don\u2019t put the camp too close to a river.\u00a0 And then there\u2019s the animals.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry about the big ones – you won\u2019t even see a jaguar unless you\u2019re very lucky.\u00a0 Spiders won\u2019t hurt you too much.\u00a0 It\u2019s the snakes you\u2019ve got to worry about.\u201d\u00a0 What he didn\u2019t mention were the bandits, drug lords, and rebels they might encounter as they proceeded farther south.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Wood wrote detailed descriptions in both the <\/span>Walking<\/span><\/i> books I read about the plight of the refugees in both Africa and Central America.\u00a0 He took time to detail the harsh conditions, famine, poverty, war, gang violence and the like, that displaced the thousands of people he encountered living in makeshift camps on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0 These conditions are still affecting hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.\u00a0 It is no coincidence that agencies of world relief\u00a0 plead for more support (even more so now with the COVID-19 pandemic raging).\u00a0 Wood\u2019s books should be required reading for those who choose to demonize these unfortunate immigrants, many who see the United States as their one hope for survival and a chance for a better life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At the conclusion of the <\/span>Americas<\/span><\/i> adventure, Levison and Alberto celebrated entering the gateway to South America by jumping into the emerald green ocean at the bay of Sapzurro, Columbia.\u00a0 \u201cSo, are we going to carry on walking to the bottom of South America?\u201d Alberto joked.\u00a0 \u201cNot right now,\u201d replied Levison.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe that\u2019s an adventure for another time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Since penning the first draft of this article, I was able to get a hold of his 2018 book <\/span>An Arabian Journey<\/span><\/i> (also from the Menominee County Library system – someone there must like Wood\u2019s travels).\u00a0 The <\/span>Arabian Journey<\/span><\/i> follows a similar template as the Nile and America treks, replete with more interesting characters, war zones, and refugees.\u00a0 Near the end of his trip around Arabia, even Alberto makes an appearance when Levison meets up with some friends and family in the Holy Land for Christmas.\u00a0 In his other books,\u00a0 Wood talks about things he misses \u2018back home\u2019 when he is making these treks.\u00a0 Near the end of <\/span>Arbian Journey<\/span><\/i>, he mulls the thrill of adventure and ponders what he might do next.\u00a0 Perhaps it is time for him to settle down and enjoy life closer to home?\u00a0 After a decade of adventure travel, only time will tell how long Levison Wood will be able to tolerate setting down roots.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Joe South wrote it and sings it better than ayone…Walk A Mile in My Shoes<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Where to begin?\u00a0 On the back cover of his 2015 book Walking the Nile (Grove Press) Levison Wood is described as a \u201cwriter, photographer, and explorer.\u00a0 He served in Afghanistan as an officer in the British Army Parachute Regiment.\u201d\u00a0 His resume is expanded some on the back of Walking the Americans (2017, also printed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1973"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1976,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}