Travels with Carolyn

Find Carolyn's Individual Books and Audios Here:

A complete chapter on writing media releases and putting together a media kit that lets editors find what they need may be found within the pages of The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't. (-:

Click here for Carolyn's first person essay, "Beating Time at Its Own Game."

Click here for story ideas for the media.

With Apologies to Steinbeck's Charlie . . .

I mostly travel alone or with my spouse (also a writer), never with my Great Dane, Malibu. She's very large and would require an adult ticket. (-: Sometimes I write travel articles (scroll down for a sample of one) but mostly my travel inspires poetry.

Carolyn sails the Stars and Stripes of America Cup fame. Well, she got to help hoist a sail and stand at the helm. (-: (Above)

Below: My husband Lance with, for want of a better description the huge jeep sized Mercedes four-wheeler we toured Catalina in. Great fun putting our backs out!

Above: The beautiful Stars and Strips where it is docked in the San Diego harbor.

Tip

In the world of writing one of the best perks is that some travel is tax deductible. Keep perfect records, receipts and copies of the writing you do while doing you research.

Find at least one tip on writing, promotion or tech on every page of this website.

Making the Princess Fit:

Or How a Girl Who Loves Museums and Archaeology

Can Find Happiness On a Cruise

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This is the Place and

Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered

In My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins says—with perfect diction that emphasizes his delight, “By George, I think she’s got it!”

He isn’t, of course, referring to Eliza Doolittle’s finally learning how to fit the conventions of a cruise into her travel preferences but, nevertheless, it was an “Aha!” moment similar to what I felt this year when I finally figured out how a girl—well, OK, a woman—who loves to spend hours in museums and isn’t much on cutting her feet on coral or wrangling with jellyfish, could live with the cruises her husband likes to take.

I admit to taking three cruises with my husband in six months. Maybe this is the kind of intensity required for me to learn how to make this kind of travel work for me, provide me with just such a moment of elucidation.

Because my husband and I like to travel differently, we have taken separate vacations for years. He loves first class (He says he got enough roughing it in the Army.) I on the other hand, never tire of extended hanging about in foreign corners—out of the way spots if only the basement rooms of museums—by myself. I am not much on shopping, and hate to pay for the luxury of gold-plated faucets when I’m too tired to notice them. Still, we thought it was time for us to share some good times together. He—this new traveling partner of mine to whom I’d been married 45 years at the time—has always said, “Even lab rats learn to run a maze after a few tries.” I guess that applies to me. I’m a slow learner. But at least as capable as a white rat.

Here are my secrets for adapting a cruise to my preferences:

For psychological reasons, choose a cruise with ports that are inaccessible excepting by water (the Greek Isles are an example.). This sets one’s synapses—if they are arranged at all like mine—into a pattern that makes it impossible to say to oneself, “If I had been traveling by train I would have spent two extra days in St. Petersburg at the Russian Museum gazing at Repin’s ‘Barge Haulers on the Volga.’” You see? No trains available. No choices. Happy camper.
Choose a boat—er, ship,--that’s small enough so that disembarking at ports of call does not resemble a cattle call for Spartacus.
This onerous task of getting on and off the ship is minimized if you resist the temptation to save $10 by purchasing your tour from someone who hangs around the pier hawking his wares. To save those extra few dollars you will probably disembark with hundreds of others who want to shop or hang out on the beaches. Instead, choose a tour from the many offered by the cruise lines. Most organize these tours so the crowds on and off are staggered.
To extend suggestion #3 one more step, select more expensive tours (Over $80). I am known for my, er, thrifty tendencies (I'm sometimes known as The Frugal Book Promoter) but I have found that the more costly tours are the best values if only because they tend to attract fewer travelers. That improves the quality in general but also makes egress easier.
Any tour will become more enjoyable for travelers who share my preferences if they avoid shopping during the time allotted for that. The time is too short, you don’t want to miss the bus. Turn those moments into something relaxing instead. (Save shopping for your return to the port city.) Instead:

§ Talk to a local.

§ Practice your Spanish with someone sitting on a park bench.

§ Play with children in the plaza.

§ And if you must buy something, nose around the shops that might be used by natives like the pharmacies or grocery stores. If you can’t resist a souvenir, buy from a local vendor and get a snapshot of yourself with her.

Choose tours that interest you, of course. For me that means selecting ones that take me to the sites I’d visit if I were backpacking or going on a dig with university students. Fewer fellow cruisers take these tours—perhaps because they are more arduous. I talked my husband into one from the port of Acapulco to Taxco—four and ½ hours on the road each way. There were only five other people with us including the ship’s tour master. That gave us a chance to relate to our fellow tourists. We saw amazing terrain on the way including a kind of Saguaro cactus called Candelaria that had dozens of elegant arms. I bought pescanovios (finger catchers), at 35 cents each, for the children at home from a vendor who sold from her home on a side street. On a similar tour, from the port of Manzanillo to Colima, we sampled coconuts (Scroll down for the recipe/poem.)at a potty stop. I didn’t once wish I had more time to explore because every minute of both of these tours was fascinating.
Now for the most important tip. Take a journal and use it. A few years ago, my daughter and I were given a cruise to the Caribbean. It was a business perk from one of our suppliers. I hardly remember which islands we visited. They all blended together excepting for Cancun (that one stood out because of the Mayan site, Tulum). If you see five ports in 6 days with only one of those days at sea and they are all kind of well, Caribbeany in character, you may not have time to assimilate details. My journal works well as a memory booster.
Take a moment when you’re at sea to assemble the pictures, notes and treasures into your journal. This can be as much fun as reading a forgettable mystery from the ship’s library. Of course, you’ll want to prepare for this. Take with you:

§ a tiny bottle of glue

§ double-sided cellophane tape

§ blunt-nosed scissors that security won’t confiscate

§ a couple of marking pens and plenty of pencils and ballpoints

§ maybe even a hole punch, miniature stapler and travel themed stickers

Do something creative with your journal. Pick up a streamer or some confetti shot into the audience at a dinner show and tape it to a page. I write poetry—very rough, of course, but some have turned into publishable material when I returned home and rewrote them.
Here, for an example, is what I did in Antigua instead of playing on a beach:

§ I learned Antigua is pronounce An-tee-guh, because the British, (I imagined a Rex Harrison kind of Englishman in 16^th Century garb)—mispronounced it. I also learned the country recently became a fully independent state.

§ I discussed the recent election on the island with my tour guide and how “the lovely green stone” used in construction there was really limestone.

§ We encircled the entire island and I learned about their NASA tracking station from some locals at lunch.

§ And I wrote this poem, in spite of poor roads and a bouncy bus when it struck me that Antigua, in spite of a thriving tourist business, was indeed enduring economic woes often experienced by newly emerging nations:

Antigua’s Hope

Sweet Potato Man sits

on the tailgate of his battered

pick-up, parked near the road

that tracks Antigua’s shore.

Like a flower drawn to the sun,

Sweet Potato Man turns his face

toward traffic. Crumpled, brown

as a prune it is. Languid he is.

Waiting. Waiting for someone to pay

for his crop. Nearly black-baked

by the Carib heat as he, sweet

potatoes lie on a blanket like twists

of dark yarn. Sweet Potato Man’s

legs dangle from his perch, limp,

puppet limbs. His shoulders hunch,

sweat glints on his cheeks, his eyes

white buttons. I sense he wants

me to stop, knows I will pass him by.

All in all, my last cruises couldn’t have been better if I’d been trekking overland by train or zipping by rented car because, well, I finally learned that when I cruise I can combine the best of both worlds. I even came to appreciate the enforced days of relaxation at sea. They are very fine additions, indeed.

---------------

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards. Her newly released Harkening, a collection of stories, has won three and her poetry and short stories are frequently seen in review journals. She is an instructor for UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and her practical and detailed how-to books are THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOU’RE PUBLISHER WON’T, the winner of USA Book News’ “Best Professional Book 2004” and the Irwin Award and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS. They are available at Amazon.com and some university bookstores.

Sidebar /Recipe

Colima’s Coconut Treat

A recipe within a poem dedicated to Roberto, a former schoolteacher

turned tour guide in Manzanillo, Mexico

Roberto used a machete. (Substitute

a sharp carving knife in your kitchen

at home.) With one swift stroke

he scalps a coconut pod, instructs

us that the head must be green. The juice

sweet water then, no deadly cholesterol

he assures us Americanos.. When in Mexico

do as the Mexicans do, they say:

We drink the fruit’s gift, retain liquid

at the bottom of our new chalice,

slice chunks from the hat Roberto

removed from the fruit, place

them in the bowl we made,

sprinkle with a pinch (no need to measure)

of chili powder. Roberto says La via

de Mexico, sure he and his countrymen

are genetically programmed

to appreciate its bite. Now you have,

red and white, two-thirds

of Mexico’s national bandera. Green.

We still need green, to complete

our patriotic salute, the sap from limones

de Mexico. Sweeter. Juicier than limes

at home. We, Diego Reviras at work,

perch twists of color on the summit

of our coconut bowls, sprinkle rock salt

to intensify the flavor. Margaritas.

Tongue to salted edge of

the glass, bests tequila itself.

We eat with our fingers, mimic

our host. Dip the last coconut shards

into the juice left at the bottom

hand-feed our lovers who suck

the flavor from our fingers—one piece

at a time. Even Mescal could not improve

the flavor. An easy morsel, eaten

at a stand by the side of a dusty Mexican

road. Memory’s favorite souvenir.

The essay and accompanying poem above is available for reprint at no charge. Please include the tagline and byline. Please inform me that you are using it and where. If you need to make changes, please check with me and I will try to arrange that for you.

Ellie, Carolyn and Gracie with a friendly stingray in Carib waters, Nassau, Bahamas. 2007

Vegetarian

I've eaten animals

disguised by deceitful

words.

Beef not cow,

pork not pig,

mutton not sheep,

calamari not octopus.

Octopuses blush

before, during

and after they make

love.

A pretty name

or breading will never

again be masquerade enough

for me to dip their

curls into hot sauce.

I fed a stingray today,

held it in my arms,

it's skin silky

as a soft, wet kiss.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of an award-winning chapbook of poetry, Tracings

The poem above is available for reprint at no charge. Please include the tagline and byline. Please inform me that you are using it and where. If you need to make changes, please check with me and I will try to arrange that for you.

Purchase THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER as a thick, full-size e-book priced to accommodate the budgets of starving students and authors at Star Publish.

Purchase THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER and THE FRUGAL EDITOR in trade paperback at Amazon. The Amazon Short, THE GREAT FIRST IMPRESSION BOOK PROPOSAL, too!

Purchase THIS IS THE PLACE, HARKENING and TRACINGS at Amazon.

Purchase CHERISHED PULSE at the Compulsive Reader.

Purchase and find all the audios for writers at Double Dragon Publishing.

"Careers that are not fed die as readily as any living organism given no sustenance." ~ Carolyn Howard-Johnson

This author is founder and a proud member of Authors' Coalition.

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