The Selling of the Last Savage Download PDF

On a planet crowded with six billion people, isolated primitive cultures are getting pushed to the brink of extinction. Against this backdrop, a new form of adventure travel has raised an unsettling question: Would you pay to see tribes who have never laid eyes on an outsider?

I’m somewhere in a godforsaken rainforest on the north coast of West Papua, Indonesia, and I’m ready to get the hell out of here. I’m five days into a three-week jungle trek with 43-year-old Bali-based outfitter Kelly Woolford, and things have gotten both weird and dangerous. Now I’m scared and confused, and I’ve lost all faith in my guide.
“We’ll meet ’em, share a little tobacco, chill for a bit, and then move on—like passing nomads,” Woolford had said. But five minutes ago we encountered bow-and-arrow-wielding bushmen who were so angry that they charged our camp, lobbing three arrows high above our heads. To avoid puncture wounds, I ran straight for a nearby river and almost swam across it, until I remembered that it contained crocodiles that might have torn me to shreds. Continue reading →

Splendid Isolation Download PDF

It’s a 21st-century Robinson Crusoe fantasy: Your own private island—but with none of the inconvenience and discomfort of being a castaway.

The twin-prop De Havilland touches down on what looks like the ninth fairway at Pebble Beach—a runway of perfectly manicured grass. Greeting us on this emerald carpet are whirling throngs of seabirds: fairy terns, tok-toks, lesser noddies, and a few magpie robins—the seventh-rarest bird in the world. An attendant from Frégate Island Private, the sole property on this 740-acre speck of land in the Indian Ocean, meets us at the airstrip with fresh coconut milk and ice-cold terry-cloth face towels, then loads our bags onto a golf cart and takes me and my fiancée, Ashley, to our villa.

As we weave among almond trees and coco de mer palms, our driver tells us that some guests never leave their cottages. When we arrive at our 2,000-square-foot ocean-view compound, bordered on three sides by a ten-foot hedge of ferns and orchids, it’s easy to see why. Continue reading →

My Radical Round-the-World Sabbatical Download PDF

Learn the ropes from a traveler who took 15 months off to roam the planet.

While Malawi’s principal highway is illustrated on maps as a proud red swath, its northern half—unpaved and deeply rutted—is more like a crudely graded horse trail. This hasn’t stopped our wild-eyed driver from achieving near-freeway speeds. At daybreak, he picks up my wife, Jackie, and me near Chitimba, a tiny village beside Lake Malawi where we’d been thumbing a ride. Suddenly we’re soaring through lush landscapes, the tiniest bumps pitching us airborne. Jackie and I are enduring this perilous trip while clutching plastic jump seats in the back end of a Mitsubishi SUV, watching the road recede. It’s only the first part of a day’s journey that will include several hitched rides, a two-mile walk in the midday sun, and four sweltering hours packed into a Toyota minivan with 22 passengers, one of whom sits on my lap for at least half the ride, and another to my left who has sustained some sort of head injury that no one seems to notice. The collar of his white shirt is saturated with blood trickling from a wound above his hairline. Continue reading →