Give Us Your Best Line | Contest 4
Posted by Carmin Arnot
in Of Interest
We have a winner!
Oh my goodness, you people have some stories to tell! Our call for “The first line of your best travel story” drew a great response—which did not make the judges’ task an easy one. Eventually they decided that of them all, the story they would most like to hear is the one that begins with the words:
“The driver was drunk by the time we left Cuzco to cross the Andes to the headwaters of the Amazon, our truck loaded with six months of supplies.”
That spine-tingling lead-in comes from Meg Symington who will receive an Apex baseball cap as her prize and from whom we hope to hear the full-length tale someday.
Here are our second and third place selections:
“It was 1976, we were totally broke and out of options, when a friend said, “You know, there is a way to travel up the Amazon to the Colombian border for free.” by Robin Biellik
“It wasn’t a question of whether or not we were going to survive (which would have been the obvious choice); it was imagining what macabre sport the orca was going to play with our frail bodies before it tired of us.” by Roger Hill
And here are all of the rest of the really excellent entries:
“Lisa and I were standing with our thumbs out on the side of a two lane highway in the New Mexican desert right before sundown after being booted out of a semi truck for refusing the driver’s proposition, which turned out to be one of many adventures that illustrate why my teenage years should have been themed “I thought it was a good idea at the time.” by Ginger Iglesias
“As our intrepid leader dangled a brilliant-green highly-poisonous snake over our canoe, he said “If I drop it, be sure not to move.” by Pam Mitchell
“Indescribable, such raw beauty, appears to be from another planet, words or photos cannot describe it – you have to see it to believe it!” by Barbie Gibson
“On our first walking safari in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park we moved slowly and silently, snapping photos as we followed the guide and the armed scout through the forty-foot gap amid the herd of 300 Cape Buffalo. And as the beasts stared at us Charlotte turned to me with a grin that split her face.” by Timothy Sparks
“Leaving Stanley for the adventure of a lifetime. Ice! Penguins! Shackleton! The ships doctor and I were on the top deck to have the best view. Thirty seconds and twenty feet from the pier we both hit the rail totally seasick and puking out our proverbial guts! Four hours later I returned to the planet and did indeed have the adventure of a lifetime.” by Hal Osteen
The Contest
Collectively, you’ve been nailing the photo identification contests the last few weeks. So this week, we have something different—more of an essay question.
What binds our far-flung Apex family together is our love for exotic travel, wildlife, and adventure. People who travel on these kinds of trips inevitably end up with stories to tell—stories of good times and bad, triumphs and disasters, stories that are gripping, amazing, or hilarious (at least in retrospect). In fact, for some of us, that’s why we do what we do—for the stories we can tell.
What we’d like you to do is give us the first line of your best travel story. Make it engaging, intriguing, scary, funny, whatever. The one that pulls us in the most, that most makes us want to hear the rest of the story, as judged by our panel of veteran travel raconteurs, will be the winner of another fabulous prize. We’ll publish that one, and any others we like, in next week’s issue…and maybe we’ll get to hear the whole story someday soon.
To enter the contest, just leave your “essay” in the comments below. We won’t publish any of the comments until it’s time to announce the winner, Friday, May 8.
Good luck to everyone!
It was 1976, we were totally broke and out of options, when a friend said, “You know, there is a way to travel up the Amazon to the Colombian border for free.”
On our first walking safari in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park we moved slowly and silently snapping photos as we followed the guide and the armed scout through the forty-foot gap amid the herd of 300 Cape Buffalo and as the beasts stared at us Charlotte turned to me with a grin that split her face.
“Essay” – Indescribable, such raw beauty, appears to be from another planet, words or photos cannot describe it – you have to see it to believe it!
As our intrepid leader dangled a brilliant-green highly-poisonous snake over our canoe, he said “If I drop it, be sure not to move.”
Leaving Stanley for the adventure of a lifetime. Ice! Penguins! Shackleton! The ships doctor and I were on the top deck to have the best view. Thirty seconds and twenty feet from the pier we both hit the rail totally seasick and puking out our proverbial guts! Four hours later I returned to the planet and did indeed have the adventure of a lifetime.
Lisa and I were standing with our thumbs out on the side of a two lane highway in the New Mexican desert right before sundown after being booted out of a semi truck for refusing the driver’s proposition, which turned out to be one of many adventures that illustrate why my teenage years should have been themed “I thought it was a good idea at the time.”
It wasn’t a question of whether or not we were going to survive (which would have been the obvious choice); it was imagining what macabre sport the orca was going to play with our frail bodies before it tired of us.
The driver was drunk by the time we left Cuzco to cross the Andes to the headwaters of the Amazon, our truck loaded with six months of supplies.
It was well after the hour of midnight,
high up in remote Taroko Gorge.
All I had was a mini-flashlight.
The only sounds were from that guy George,
his cot somewhere over left, snoring,
and outside, buckets of rain, pouring.
This may be late and long, but here comes my story start:
Our daughter lost a baby tooth at the age of five inside a kangaroo (actually within the Kangaroo Restaurant in Bariloche, Argentina); years later, and on the other side of the world, we ignored the advice of avoiding driving at dusk in Australia, hit and killed a kangaroo to the tune of $2000 car damage, ate our first kangaroo meal that very evening (not the one we killed), and coincidentally did that all on Kangaroo Island.