Enrichment Voyage, Part 9: I Kissed a Fish (and I Liked It), or Neptune Day is a Very Strange Tradition

If you're just joining the voyage, you can catch up on the previous Enrichment Voyage posts over here. Or, if you prefer, you can also start from the top and read all the stories, oldest to newest, in one long post.

King Neptune surveys his scalywag subjects.
Thanks to Dean Jacobs for the excellent photo.

Location: The Equator 
Today's telling detail: The long line to kiss the fish

When I heard that there was going to be some sort of ceremony when we crossed the equator, I figured there would be a good amount of droll pomp and circumstance, maybe a speech or two accompanied by boisterous cheering. I promised myself I would enjoy the moment and activities, and embrace the goofiness of it all as an active participant.

I had not counted on fish guts being involved in any way. I had certainly not counted on a bucket of green liquid--cold, frothy, slimy, noxious-looking stuff--being poured over my head, oozing its way into my every pore, its clammy tendrils matting my hair, pasting my shirt to my back, and making a particularly unwelcome pass below my waistband. Nor had I anticipated that I would not only volunteer for the experience but wait in line for it.

As I stand there, shivering, covered in goo--some of which, I have been told, once belonged to the inside of  fish--and standing next to two strangers in a similar state, I think to myself: this is how cults get started. Everything that follows only confirms this belief.

That's me in the yellow shirt, taking the Neptune Day plunge with my
fellow shellbacks. Thanks to Frank Murphy for the sweet action shot.

The three of us jump into the pool to wash off. When I clamor out, a beautiful woman dressed in a white robe stands next to a large, imposing man with green skin and wearing a crown--King Neptune, overseer of the ceremonies.

The woman in white waves a fish in front of my face and commands me to kiss it.

I demur, offering a sort of cheek-to-cheek nudge, like the French do. I'd rather not get too frisky on a first blind date, not just because it's a fish but because I know there are various mysterious illnesses are going around the ship, and I know the fish has had many suitors before me. As my eighth-grade health teacher might have put it, when you kiss a fish, you're kissing everyone the fish has kissed.

Suddenly the fish lurches toward me, aiming for my mouth.

"No, KISS it!" cackles the woman in white.

It's part of a tradition, I remind myself, followed immediately by the inner musing, for roughly the hundredth time this morning, that, man, do these ship people have some weird traditions, and, man, is this Neptune Day thing is the weirdest of them all.

They tell me it all goes back centuries--this is what seafarers have done forever to celebrate the equator crossing. I see this as proof positive that there is no surer recipe for bizarre, bad ideas than having lots of bored men in close quarters, removed from the rest of society. See, for example, Lord of the Flies, Animal House, or my high school soccer team bus. On an old-fashioned ship, you'd have the extra delirium-creating elements of malnutrition and not knowing if and when the map would simply run out and you'd be in real-life "here be monsters" territory. Given the circumstances, it's amazing, frankly, that they weren't doing this sort of stuff every single day, but managed to bottle it all up and wait for the equator crossing.

If you go read the Wikipedia page about "Line-crossing ceremonies," it's full of wry descriptions like this one from an officer on a ship called the HMS Blossom, observing a ceremony in 1825:

There were on board the ship a great number of officers and seamen, who had never yet gone South of the Tropics, consequently were to be initiated into the mysteries of crossing the Equinoctial line, and entering the dominions of Neptune; great preparations had been making since our leaving Woolwich, for an event which promised to some part of the crew great amusement, to the other great fear; many a poor girl at Woolwich, and at Spithead had been deprived of some part of her wardrobe, to adorn Amphitrite; from one a night cap and gown had been stolen, from another some other part of dress, and although I had no hand in it, I was as bad as the rest, for I was consenting thereto. An immense grey horse hair wig, sufficiently long to reach well down the back of Neptune, had been purchased in England by subscription, accompanied by a venerable grey beard to sweep his aged breast; a tin crown and a trident completed the regalia.

In many cases, though, the ceremony went way beyond silly costumes into straight-up hazing: beatings, tarrings, horrible stuff. In Charles Darwin's diary from his trip on the HMS Beagle, he recounts being shaved and put on a plank, at which point Neptune's minions

lathered my face & mouth with pitch and paint, & scraped some of it off with a piece of roughened iron hoop. —a signal being given I was tilted head over heels into the water, where two men received me & ducked me. . . . Most of the others were treated much worse, dirty mixtures being put in their mouths & rubbed on their faces.

So, hey, at least I've avoided that. And, I remind myself as I stand there on the pool deck, I've gotten conflicting information about the fish content in the green slime I've just washed off--some sources tell me there really are guts in there; others say it's just a few token drops of fish sauce in the whole big plastic cauldron. I never saw any actual internal organs slide past my eyes, so that's good.

But there is still a fish--a real, dead fish directly in front of me. It gazes back at me, its eyes amber circles with a black dot in the middle, glassy and unperturbed. Jaded fish, this one; been through a lot. "Dude, just do it already," it says to me. "Show me some lip-love. I'm not gonna bite you."

Everyone's watching. For the crowd, for the sailors who have had to endure far worse things, but mostly for my own sense of pride, it has to happen. I pucker up and lean in.

--
There were more odd Neptune Day festivities after the fish-kissing. And you can read all about them ... over on the Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day Facebook page. Or send me a postcard and I'll mail you Part Two. Yup, sorry, I'm going to make you work for it. 

Enrichment Voyage, Part 8: My Kind of Party

If you're just joining the voyage, you can catch up on the previous Enrichment Voyage posts over here. Or, if you prefer, you can also start from the top and read all the stories, oldest to newest, in one long post.

Location: At sea, on the way to Guayaquil, Ecuador
Today's telling detail: The beds 

One day, I arrive back to my cabin to find, in the little shelf above the cabin number on the door, a gray sheet of paper carefully torn from a notebook and folded in half, to roughly the size of an index card. I'm baffled. The only things typically left for me are the pastel-colored Daily Explorer pamphlets, which are distributed to all rooms and list important information like the next day's Cocktail of the Day and schedule of speakers. This is useful because it lets me know when to start panicking and finally finish preparing that speech by retreating to the bar with my laptop and ordering a Cocktail of the Day.

But this is more intriguing, less panic-inducing. On the outside of the little gray piece of paper, centered and in handwriting far neater than my own, it says:

Doug 

5038 

Inside, again centered and thoughtfully laid-out, is an invitation. Wine, cheese & crackers in Chuck & Ce's cabin, just down the hall.

So it is that a few days later, there are nine of us crammed into a small room, drinking wine and eating snacks and having one of those conversations that pinballs gleefully from one subject to the next.

I've brought my own chair from my room, at the request of the hosts, and I sit wedged between the built-in desk and the end of one of the two twin beds that flanks the sides of the room. Si--short for Simon--leans against the desk; his wife, Bertie, sits on the other side of me, on one of the beds. In all, four or five people are seated on the two beds.

This packed-together set-up lends the party a agreeably familiar air: I think to myself, This feels like college. Well, aside from the boat thing and the better quality of booze. And the fact that the conversation includes moments like Si's story about the guidebooks.

"Have you ever heard of Baedecker's guides?" he asks after Barbara--my new friend who introduced herself to me with  Manneken Pis postcard--mentions that I'm a writer who used a vintage Frommer's guide to tour Europe.

"Of course!" I reply. "They were the first guidebooks to have brand cachet and real name recognition." I want to continue with all the fascinating details of the books' little-known role in history, like the infamous Baedecker Blitz during World War II, but I catch myself before my mouth and brain are off to their usual Awkward Anecdote Races. Party small talk, I think. Keep it simple.

"Yeah, I used to have a whole bunch of them,” Si says. “Old ones, too--from 1919. I bought them in New York in . . . I think it was 1936." 

It bears mentioning: I am the youngest person in the room by at least thirty years. And yet my presence feels entirely natural here--the conversation flow rapidly and easily, one moment contemplative, the next sarcastic, even ribald. 

We talk about Trader Joe's snacks and blue eye/brown eye experiments. We agree that peanut butter filled pretzels are sublime and that racism is, well, pretty damn horrible. Eventually, as often happens in conversations among strangers traveling together, the topic turns to places we've been, places we've lived. Two of the women are startled to discover that at different times, they each lived in Cambridge Bay, a small Canadian town in the northerly reaches of Nunavut.

The conversation ricochets again and we're talking about toilets around the world. We're making stupid jokes, telling stories that, in other settings--not among friends, in a small cabin on a cruise ship--would make any of us blush. I'm struggling to keep up, frankly, while Chuck and Barbara and Bertie toss one-liners left and right. 

"I was on a train in India a few years ago, there were some squat toilets," someone says. "This guy was using it, on this bouncing train, and while talking on his cell phone. I don't know how he kept his balance without two hands on the railing!"

"Well," says Bertie, with the confident cackle of someone who knows she's about to get off a crowd-pleasing line, "At least he wasn't texting!" 

Enrichment Voyage, Part 7: In a Quiet Nightclub in the Panama Canal

If you're just joining the voyage, you can catch up on the previous Enrichment Voyage posts over here. Or, if you prefer, you can also start from the top and read all the stories, oldest to newest, in one long post.

Location: The Panama Canal
Today's Telling Detail: The lack of empty seats

Most days, the Glazer Lounge is all but empty in the mornings--but most days, we aren't going through the Panama Canal.

It's about 11:30am, and the Glazer Lounge is packed with more people than I've seen since karaoke night. This time, though, there is no off-key warbling of "Don't Stop Believin'" and there are no parents covering their kids' ears and eyes as college students do a grinding, grinning version of "The Thong Song." The room is library-quiet. Above the empty dance floor, a now-stationary disco ball provides the room's only slight twinkle of liveliness. Nearly every one of the red C-shaped cocktail-lounge chairs is occupied; the frosted-glass-topped tables are spread with books and maps and paper cups of coffee taken from the dining room early this morning and long-since drained. But to get up to throw it away would be to risk losing your front-row seat for ... 

... For what? We're anchored, waiting for our turn to proceed to the next lock. The landscape isn't changing and, anyway, a drenching rain limits the view, even if it does lend the nearby islands an ethereal quality--tiny, misty, jungly Lost Worlds in miniature.

Of course, that's not the point. We're in the Panama Canal. It wouldn't matter if visibility were all of two inches. We might not that be all that impressed if the Loch Ness Monster suddenly poked its head out of the water in front of us, followed by a flotilla of unicorns ridden by Elvis. Because, honestly, there's basically nothing that can top the very existence of the Panama Canal and our current presence inside it. 

The Panama Canal. The very thought of it is unreal. In size (the thing cuts across an entire continent), in water usage, in history, in sheer ambition ... it's unreal. Even the seemingly minor details defy belief, like the fact that when you transit from the Caribbean to the Pacific you are, in fact, moving east. That can't be right. And those other ships passing by, the Panamax behemoths built specifically for this transit, their dimensions immense but calibrated down to the inch, to take up the absolute maximum amount of space in the canal locks. They shouldn't fit in that space. And those colorful cargo containers stacked high on the decks, a Brobdingnagian Jenga game designed by Mondrian. That's some CGI stuff, not reality.

When you're in the Panama Canal, there's really not much to see, which is perhaps the neatest trick of all. It's all so low-key. You'd think there would be fireworks, a laser show in the mist, a deep-voiced announcer proclaiming each ship's entry into the locks, followed by the chorus of "We Are the Champions." At least a neon billboard on the shore. That's how they'd probably do it back in the States, if we were building it now. 

I like it better this way, the unreal, ambitious project manifest in a way that makes your forget how unreal and ambitious it really is. We see only water, mist, trees, some other ships--the same sort of things we've seen basically every other day on this voyage. None of that has brought so many people to the Glazer Lounge before. 

But we need to be here, just like we needed to be out on the deck, stomping through puddles, at 6am, as the ship approached the Gatun Locks, the canal's entry point. We need to be here not for the things we can see in a glance but for what this whole experience represents--in a large sense, we're here simply to know that we were here. In the Panama Canal. Verifying with our own eyes, that, well, yes. This thing. It's real. All those stories, all that ambition, all that history, all that turmoil ... all that stuff. It's crazy. And it really happened. And now, even in our own small way, reading a book in a hushed cocktail lounge, we're a part of it.

Enrichment Voyage, Part 6: Mr. Travel Writer Stays on the Ship

If you're just joining the voyage, you can catch up on the previous Enrichment Voyage posts over here. Or, if you prefer, you can also start from the top and read all the stories, oldest to newest, in one long post.

Location: Colón, Panama
Today's telling detail: the cookies

The most adventurous thing I did today was buy cookies. I risked my life to do this. And they weren't very good cookies. But they were the highlight of my trip to Panama, because I hardly saw anything in Panama--arguably, I saw nothing genuinely Panamanian. 

For all but a half-hour or so today, Mr. Travel Writer stayed on the ship.

*

There's an assumption among a large portion of the population that "travel writer" inherently means things like swaggering, adventurous, worldly, dashing. Streetwise. Wise, period.

Those people have not read my book. As I confessed there, well ... 

I’m kind of a wimp. Trekking across Nepal holds zero appeal for me, and meditating in a forest sounds like a great way to get eaten by a bear.

Still true--even if, to be sure, I had made some small gains in the confidence and competence departments by the end of that trip. 

Throughout the Enrichment Voyage--and at other readings and author events--I've had all kinds of people ask me for advice. Where should I go in this city? How do I negotiate with a cab driver? What are your tips for finding the best, most authentic [insert Cool Local Thing]? 

To which my first reaction is to think, "Hell if I know. You're asking the wrong guy." 

But you can't say that when you're Mr. Travel Writer. People are counting on you, looking up to you for advice. You'll disappoint them and feel like a total phony if you confess that you're just as much out of your element as anyone else, just as inept at haggling with drivers and vendors, just as unsure which of those dumpy-looking streets will lead to unexpected delights and which one dead-ends at the Tourist-Hating Thugs Annual Convention & Ritual Sacrifice.

And you're just as susceptible to utter panic wisely-considered concern when warned about an unfamiliar town. 

*

Here are some fun facts about Colón:

• It's the Caribbean gateway to the Panama Canal, the port closest to the entrance. That's why you, the tourist, come here. No other reason. It's about five miles by sea from the industrial port of Colon to the front door of the Gatun locks.*
• It's the third-largest city in Panama, if you believe Wikipedia, with a population of 232,748 (ibid).
• As we learned in the pre-port presentation, Colón is the second most dangerous port on our voyage. (You are probably wondering exactly what we all were wondering: Hold on, then, what's the MOST dangerous port? And I, like the presenter, will keep you in suspense until we get there.)
• It's a high-risk, low-reward sort of place. There were excursions you could book through the ship (nearly all of which were sold out by this point), but there was basically nothing to see in the town itself--no big museums or interesting historic districts or anything like that--and it's evidently pretty dangerous to walk around on your own, as a tourist. I talked to a few other people who had been there before, and they all shook their heads. Don't bother. Stay on the ship and catch up on your reading.
• Proof of the high-risk part: I heard of only two people who decided to ignore all the warnings and walk around town (together). They were robbed at gunpoint. Not kidding. 
• Proof of the low-reward part: If you go to the Wikipedia page listing the largest cities in Panama, there's a representative photo of each of the top four. The photo of Colón is billed as the "skyline," and the brightly-colored buildings in the foreground appear to be the most interesting and well-kept structures in town. Those are, in fact, at the cruise port, and that photo was clearly taken from a cruise ship. I know because I snapped that same shot from Deck 7. 
• There is a casino at the cruise terminal, just out of the left side of the frame in that "skyline" photo. There's also a Radisson there. And some restaurants and souvenir shops and a large store offering electronics at discount prices. But let's go back to that first one: there is a casino right there, as if it say to cruise passengers, "Okay, look, we realize there's not much for you to see or do here, but we do want you to get off the ship. So, here. Have a casino."

*

Mr. Travel Writer did get off the ship. It wasn't the casino that attracted me. It was the souvenir shop. Mostly, I needed to get some COLON-branded swag for a friend who has a delightfully immature sense of humor and, as it happens, also has colon cancer. (For you, Ari, I braved the mean streets of the Cruise Terminal Mall. I thought about posing for a photo in front of a city sign, giving Colón a one-digit salute on your behalf, but there was an armed guard standing right there and, well, I didn't want to cause an international incident.)

So I bought a red baseball cap with large white lettering reading COLON. I got some postcards. I went over to the edge of the terminal area and stuck my head outside that invisible tourist-protecting force field and into the street; I lived to tell the tale. 

And I went to the local big-box grocery store, just to see how the average Panamanian--or rather, the sort of Panamanian who shops at a store in a cruise terminal--lives. I headed for the cookie aisle, because my goal had been to sample the baked goods in every country, and this would have to suffice for Panama. There were the full range of Oreos--double-stuffed, inside-out, Christmas-themed--next to the full range of Digestive Biscuits and shortbreads and the like. As with the rest of the store, the shelves offered an intriguing mix of European brands and American brands, all flashy logos and layer upon layer of plastic wrapping. 

After much searching, I found a package of cookies that appeared to be made locally. Or at least there was no English on the package, and the little discs were filled with guava, meaning tropical, meaning probably from around here, or at least trying to be, and that's good enough for now, because I'm hungry.

* 

In all likelihood, there really are a least one or two interesting things to do in Colón. In all likelihood, not everyone there is carrying a gun. 

But Mr. Travel Writer decided not to investigate. 


---
* Some bonus fun facts for you: 

• The largest vessels that can fit in the locks are called Panamax ships, and they're built specifically for the purpose of transiting the canal at the absolute maximum size. 
• Panamax ships are 950 feet long by 106 feet wide. Or, to it another way, they're about 18% of a mile long.
• Therefore, it would take 28 ships, lined up bow to stern, to stretch from the Gatun Locks back to the port.
• A chase across 28 Panamax ships would make an excellent scene in a Bond flick. They could call it "A Man, A Plan," in reference to the famous palindrome. Or, if the plot involved purging the bad guys from Colón, the title could be "Colón Cleansing." (You're welcome.)

Enrichment Voyage, Part 5: Cartagena Dreamin'

If you're just joining the voyage, you can catch up on the previous Enrichment Voyage posts over here. Or, if you prefer, you can also start from the top and read all the stories, oldest to newest, in one long post.

Location: Cartagena, Colombia
Today's Telling Detail: The bookstore

It's sometime after the third or fourth hour of wandering and eating (and wandering some more and eating some more) that one of us puts our amused, slightly perplexed facial expressions into words.

"I really can't believe I'm in Cartagena," Erica says with a small laugh. "Eating tamarind ice cream." She stops in the middle of the sidewalk, ice cream in hand, and surveys the scene.

"It's pretty great," I reply. "This is ... not quite what I expected." I take another bite of my own ice cream--guava, because, like tamarind, it seemed an appropriately tropical choice.

Our two companions chuckle and nod in agreement, even Charlie, a history professor who's been to this history-rich city before. Keith's smile isn't quite as big and goofy as mine or Erica's are at the moment, but his wide eyes signal his glee. He's an entertainer on the ship, a comedian and magician, used to being on stage, and he has the most expressive eyes I've ever seen, every slight widening or virtually imperceptible half-wink telling a story of its own.

There's something surreal and wonderful about seeing a place for the first time and feeling that out-of-body sensation of questioning if you're really here, doing this thing, in this unfamiliar place--because you'd swear that thirty seconds ago, you were still at home, living out your everyday life. Your brain hasn't quite adjusted to being on the road; you still get a sort of Novelty Buzz from the newness and strangeness of it all. That Novelty Buzz is especially profound if you've stepped straight into this new world from a ship that is basically a continuation of life at home, what with all its cushy amenities and familiar language and potable water. And the Novelty Buzz is most potent--most brain-tingling, most mood-enhancing--when a place is drastically different from your expectations.

Let's just put it out there: I did not anticipate being completely charmed by a city in Colombia, especially not after last night's pre-port presentation, which included warnings that there had been explosions in the country. So, you know, watch out for that.

The fact is, in the Venn diagram of tourist expectations, there is no overlap between Daydream Caribbean City and Colombia. 

Well, I'm here to tell you: It turns out that when you're thinking of your daydream Caribbean city, you're actually thinking of Cartagena, Colombia. The Caribbean that doesn't exist outside of your daydreams and the Colombia that doesn't exist at all, if you go by news headlines and Hollywood thrillers (always such an accurate indicator of reality) are somehow manifest in a single municipality on the Caribbean coast. 

Charlie and Erica walk along the top of the wall of the original fort.

In fact, Cartagena will see your Caribbean Daydream Checklist and up the ante. For example, there are two forts because. Charlie, the history professor, excitedly tells us the town's decidedly siege-filled past, as we stand on top of the stone walls surrounding the old town--these walls were the first fortifications, built in the 16th century. They did the job for a while, Charlie explains: "The locals can't take it. But here come the English and the French, and they've a lot more firepower. So now we need a bigger fort." He points to the hill on the other side of the walled city, where we see a massive fort surrounded by angular walls, the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. It's impossible to overstate how massive and intimidating structure this is--it's the Spanish Colonial Death Star.

But for all that history and all those balcony-lined streets, it's a more discreet detail that sticks in my mind as the day's best moment, the town's most alluring feature. It's a small shop, part bookstore, part cafe, called Abaco. We nearly walk past it without noticing, but Keith is on the lookout for a place to get some water--it's a hot day--and spots the coffee shop display case just inside the front door. When he steps back outside, there's an Evian bottle in his hand and a look of delight in those expressive eyes.

"That's a really nice little place," he says to the rest of us. "You should go look inside."

The space is seriously not big--compare the footprint to a typical Barnes & Noble and it's probably not much bigger than, say, Self-Help or Teen Paranormal Romance. But there are very high ceilings, and large windows on the street side flood the room with light. A brick archway divides the room in two, and the bookshelves, stretching high above arm's reach, are tucked in a larger framework of exposed-brick walls, as though the books are revered icons on display in the niches of a church.

It feels like some ideal combination of library, chapel, and hip modern loft; an effortless blend of old and new, and crammed with books yet somehow uncluttered. We linger for several minutes, enjoying the calm and the utter charm of this store. Erica and I try to find our books, to no avail, although we do spot the Spanish translations of Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels. And when we return to the bustling streets and outside, we look back over our shoulders, slightly dazed, the Novelty Buzz in full effect. In this city of unexpected delights, this is the most surprising and wonderful of them all.

Enrichment Voyage, Part 4: Seasickness and Its Discontents

If you're just joining the voyage, you can catch up on the previous Enrichment Voyage posts over here. Or, if you prefer, you can also start from the top and read all the stories, oldest to newest, in one long post.
--

Location: At sea, in transit from Jamaica to Cartagena, Colombia
Today's telling detail: The bear

Sea legs, it turns out, are most definitely a real thing, but no amount of acclimation can keep you steady on your feet in ten-foot swells.

It's a day at sea, and walking has become an exercise in slapstick comedy; the floor is a moving target, never quite where our feet expect it to be. Our attempts to stay upright are an exercise in absurd ambulatory adaptation. Dramatic recreation:



Outside the piano bar, three generally spry Road Scholars in their 70s are amused and frustrated:

First Man: Everyone's walking like they're drunk! 

Woman: I haven't walked like this since I was 23!

Second Man: It's embarrassing--stone sober but I can't stay up!

The effects of the waves on our gait is embarrassing, but even worse are the effects on the inner ear. Where there are swells, there is seasickness, and there are a whole lot of green faces today.

One person I meet says that the guy in the neighboring cabin has been holed up all day, making all manner of loud noises of nauseated agony: "He sounds like a bear!" My own stomach is feeling a bit topsy-turvy, though I'm actually mostly functional, a pleasant surprise, given my generally impressive/alarming abilities as a nausea magnet, capable of finding queasiness in the unlikeliest of conditions.

The clinic gives out free Dramamine, which is generous if amusingly Halloween-like, although probably the guiding principle is not benevolence so much as the crew's understandable desire not to have the evening's entertainment be a show called "800 People Projectile Vomiting."

The ship has its own coping mechanisms: four-meter-long stabilizing fins that are deployed in rough seas. As they're being deployed, they make the most horrible noise, an ominous THUNK THUNK THUNK that reverberates throughout the ship, as conversations stop and eyes widen and, inevitably, some smartass starts whistling "My Heart Will Go On." We hear it several times throughout the day, and it's never less than bone-chilling, even after a nearby crew member has offered smiling reassurance that's just the stabilizers. Not everyone has gotten this information, though, and I hear several people speculating, passing along rumors that evidently make their way to the voyage's Program Director, Nathan, who prepares a special slide for the evening's pre-port discussion:

"Please don't worry," Nathan says, with a patient smile, to the assembled passengers. "We are NOT running over a pod of whales."

Enrichment Voyage, Part 3: Jamaica's Vital Signs

If you're just joining the voyage, you can catch up on the previous Enrichment Voyage posts over here. Or, if you prefer, you can also start from the top and read all the stories, oldest to newest, in one long post.

Location: Montego Bay, Jamaica
Today's telling detail: The rebar

THE STREET
We're only about a mile from the port in Montego Bay when we spot the first unexpected sign, on a street corner. It's not the content so much as the placement and the precise form that are striking: atop the crossroads sign at intersection is fully-formed, 3D, larger-than-life KFC bucket. As we drive on, into the urban heart of the town, we notice that seemingly every street sign has advertising space at the top, as  though the roads themselves are brought to you by Juci Patties or Rainforest Seafood.

THE BRIDGE
On the outskirt of town, we stop at the Great River Bridge, where the eponymous river drains into the Caribbean. The area here is incredibly lush, in that tropical way: palm trees, sugar cane, all manner of tall grasses and trees that I can't identify, the whole backdrop a showcase of every conceivable size and shape of leaf, every possible shade of green, with the occasional grace note of bright pink bougainvillea.

This is what we wanted to see. There are six of us along for the ride, and when we got into the van at the port, we asked our driver and guide, Mark, to take us out of the city. We want to see more, we said: the remote villages, the overgrown hills, the potholed, precarious road less traveled. Mark is an an affable native of Montego Bay, casual but professional in jeans and a untucked white button-front shirt. I guess him to be around forty.

The Great River Bridge, is our first stop. We park down the road a bit, where the highway shoulder is wider, and as we walk back toward the bridge, we pause to take in the rest of the scene. There's a field with two small soccer goals and a pair of goats roaming around. There's a three-sided and slightly ramshackle hut that is empty now but evidently transforms into a restaurant later in the day--a hand-painted sign reads "Las Vegas Jerk Shop." Out front, there's a grill fashioned from the metal inner part of a car wheel; a piece of rebar bent in half sits on top. Mark says this is called a coal pot. When we drive back this way a few hours later, we'll see a few people standing in the hut and smoke rising from the coal pot, a large hunk of meat on the rebar.

What most intrigues me, though, are the signs by the bridge. One identifies the body of water: GREAT RIVER. The sign doubles as an ad for Grace, a large food manufacturer in Jamaica. (See the photo at the top of this post.) Across the street is a sign reading, "Welcome to St. James," the Jamaican province we've just exited (the country has fourteen provinces in all); as we crossed the bridge, we had seen an identical sign saying, "Welcome to Hanover." In each sign, the Os are Pepsi logos, and a photo of a glistening, oh-so-refreshing Pepsi bottle stands to one side of the text.

Throughout the next several hours, as Mark drives us around the region, into the mountains, along remote roads, we'll see this over and over: municipal signs of all manner doubling as billboards.

THE SCHOOL
Our group includes four Enrichment Voyage speakers: me; Susan, the artist-in-residence; Bob, a writer; and Dean, an author and photographer. Dean tells Mark that he'd like to visit a school, as part of his ongoing work to document people and cultures--when he's back in the States, he does presentations to schools, showing pictures and telling stories about what life is like for kids in other countries.

Mark laughs slightly the first time Dean says this, but then shrugs. Sure, let's find a school. By now, he's gotten used to some of our goofier tourist requests and our interrogation regarding Jamaican culture ("What kind of fish is that guy carrying?" "Are there many shipwrecks here?" "Are the police corrupt?")

The security guard at the gate of Merlene Ottey High School greets us with a quizzical look, but she lets us in anyway, pointing us to the school office, a one-story building painted in the brightest of yellows, with a grey corrugated-metal roof. Beyond the office are a few slightly larger but otherwise identical buildings, with students in brown uniforms walking around the the campus.

Dean offers his spiel to the principal, works his charm, and we're in. We wander the grounds for a few minutes, escorted by the principal, who answers our questions and introduces us to students and teachers. We visit a shop class and a drafting class, where Susan chats with some students about their drawings. The principal is quick to point out that there's also a computer lab and the standard curriculum of math, science, writing. Her pride in the school is evident.

As we leave, I turn back to look at the school and see that a slogan has been painted  on a low wall in the courtyard between the classroom buildings. It says: "Determination to succeed through commitment and service."

THE HUT
We drive on, higher into the hills, farther along the winding, narrow roads, the encroaching trees often forming a deep-green tunnel. Every now and then, a few houses appear--and they really do seem to appear spontaneously: it's all leaves and branches, leaves and branches, and then a hut suddenly bursts from the undergrowth. Sometimes, they're clustered together, forming a village; other times, there's just a lonely abode perched on the edge of the road, dangling above the steep drop-off below.

More than a few of these buildings are pieced together with scrap lumber of varying conditions, and many of these are tiny--not just one room, but so small that if any adults sleep there, it'd have to be standing up or lying across the diagonal. And several of these huts--structurally questionable and with no nearby neighbors--bear bright-red signs with white text: "Top up your Digicard Here." There does not appear to be any other commerce going on inside the buildings--no items for sell, no services offered. Just an all-but-empty hut with a red sign.

I'm confused and intrigued. In my mind, where I'm from, "Cell phone store" equals "Gleaming Verizon storefront at the mall"--or, at the very least, "Phone card store" equals "Random convenience store that also sells a gazillion other things."

After seeing a dozen of these signs, I ask Mark. Are they really selling phone cards here? In these overgrown, rolling hills, where the houses are, few, far-flung, and more than a bit ramshackle, do that many people have cell phones, let alone service?

Mark looks at me like I've asked the goofiest tourist question yet. "Yeah, mon," he says. "There's good coverage. People go to those stores to buy more minutes. We don't have contracts like in the United States--you just go to these places and get more time."

THE SKY
Near the end of our day of driving, Mark takes us into a posh subdivision overlooking Montego Bay. The housing here is considerably larger and typically surrounded by large fences.

Several of the houses appear unfinished. There's a complete ground floor--doors, windows, everything, and the places appear to be occupied. But it looks for all the world like the second story has been pulled off by some sort of impossibly precise tornado, which left behind only a forest of rebar protruding from the first floor.

We had seen this on the smaller houses in the countryside, too, over and over: one-story structures with rebar sticking out the top. But seeing them here, and feeling that same sense of confusion and wonder, is a good reminder that intriguing, unexpected, and culture-revealing things are to be found wherever you travel, not just the so-called "real" places out in the countryside, but even here in suburbia.

Of course, as Mark patiently explains, the second floor never existed. Yet. In someone's dreams, though, it does. The rebar is aspirational; it is the foundation of the future, the root of what's to come. Though it has no written words, this is the most important, telling sign we've seen all day. It says: When we have the money, we will keep building. And we know that day's coming, someday soon enough.