By Zachary Moses

Today we departed from our tranquil lodge in Tortuguero and started our journey toward Sarapiqui. We retraced our path through the winding streams of the delta, then followed the river back to the restaurant where our bus was waiting for us.

During the boat ride I soon realized that I had not followed my own advice of visiting a bathroom just before our long ride, and I had to pee so bad, I felt like I was going to burst. I foolishly mentioned this to my seat mate and news of my discomfort spread like wildfire; everyone seemed to enjoy gabbing about the worst possible things for someone in my condition to hear. They spoke of airport toilets, cascading waterfalls, swimming pools, etc …  Today was going to be one long ride for me. But when we got back to the bus, I had Frank (our driver) stop at a market so we could fill a cooler with beer. I became the savior of the day, and all mockery went away. This made the rest of the day go by just swimmingly.

Soon, we arrived at our eco-lodge in Sarapiqui. Everyone was shocked at just how luxurious an eco-lodge can be. We had the afternoon free, so we all made a bee-line for the swimming pool. The swimming pool had an amazing infinity edge, which appeared to drop off into the jungle ravine. We stayed in the pool for what seemed like hours. Even though the unheated pool water was a bit chilly, it was nicely offset by the 85 degree February air temperature!

The next day was our ultimate adventure: after a huge Costa Rican breakfast, we split for Hacienda Pozo Azul, where we geared up for our zip lining. We donned helmets, leather gloves, and an adventurous spirit. Everyone climbed into a huge trailer pulled by a tractor and we were hauled up the mountainside to where our course began.

At first I stood to the side, taking photos and video of everyone zipping off through the canopy. My turn came, and it was an exhilarating experience. We flew through the trees, hundreds of feet off the ground. Between each run, we landed on platforms 60 or 70 feet up in the trees. Coming in for a landing was the most fun because we controlled our own speed with a large braking glove. (I of course always came in blindingly fast.) After landing on the platform, we would hop onto the next cable line through a convoluted process of clipping in and out of several safety connections.

Some of the zip line runs are faster than others. While we literally “zip” down some of the steeper runs, it’s amusing to watch guys try to figure out how to gain momentum on some of the slower runs. In the orientation session, we were told how to turn around and gain momentum by using hand over hand movements but alas, we forgot our ”training” in the time of crisis! When someone got totally stranded hanging out over the middle of a run, the guide would zip out to him, wrap his legs around him (maybe this was not so bad?) and pull him hand-over-hand back to the platform.

As we ziplined down the mountain, we also took scenic hikes up through the jungle to regain altitude for additional runs.  A highlight was the extra long zip line run over the river, at least a hundred feet up in the air. The line had a nice steep slope to it, which got us going super fast … practically like a sonic boom-producing flight … (well, maybe not that fast).

After zip-lining, we went directly to whitewater rafting. We used oar boats, with six passengers paddling and one river guide steering like crazy. When we launched into the Sarapiqui River, which features an obstacle course of boulders and pointy objects, it was so much fun! We got hung up on rocks and spun around backward several times. One of our groups even flipped their boat over. (This is why we require life jackets!). Everyone made it through the rapids safely, but my fingers and toes were tingling with adrenaline. It was so wild!

We stopped halfway along the river course and climbed up the cliff-side. The river guides sliced up several big ripe Costa Rican pineapples. While we were eating, the guides said it was OK to do some cliff jumping into the river. I did a cannon ball and landed on my feet at the bottom of the river. Jeff, who is maybe 12 inches taller than me did the same thing … but he smacked his butt right into the river floor, so I don’t recommend this for our taller rafters!

After rafting, we went back to Pozo Azul and had a fabulous lunch on the restaurant’s veranda, overlooking the river. Everyone was so hungry from all the exercise. The food tasted soooo good, but I’ll be honest. We were all so hungry that they could have given us a bowl full of tiny cold sausages and we still would have thought it was delicious. *shudder*

We had the afternoon free, and most of us took a nap. Then in the evening after dinner, I went outside behind the restaurant to call home, and they locked me out and turned out the lights. It forced me to do some jungle-crawling in the pitch-black darkness to get back to my hotel room. There I found a fruit bat flapping around. It was way more scared of me than I was of it. At one point it tried to get away from me and smacked right into the ceiling so hard that it knocked itself out. I scooped it up and put it outside before it awoke.

This trip just kept getting better and better! […to be continued]

If you would like more information on the Tortuguero Expedition tour click here! or visit www.AlysonAdventures.com to see all of our amazing adventures!

Have you ever seen an image in a magazine and thought to yourself “wouldn’t it be great to visit that place?” Perhaps you cut out the image from the magazine and stuck it to the side of your fridge with that plumbing or real estate refrigerator magnet that has been mysteriously on your fridge since you received it in 1995. You said to yourself, “someday… this is where I am going.” You weren’t sure how to get there or when, but you just knew that eventually, no matter what it would take, you would get there. This is your bucket list.

A few years pass, and one day you say to yourself “You know what? I’m going to do it! This year, I’m going.”

So you’ve made your decision, but now what do you do? Maybe you make a Google search or take a trip to Trip Adviser. Oh boy! It turns out that there are a lot of opinions on the Internet, and they often contradict each other. It can get a little bit overwhelming. So you break down and call some random travel agent. In the best case, the agent understands exactly what you want, and recommends the perfect spot. Or maybe the agent tries to sell you an entirely different destination that they know better, or encourages you to book a mainstream cruise where you get to wait in line to go ashore at your dream destination with your 5,000 new friends.

Sound familiar? If you still feel you haven’t found the right solution, you can go back to the Internet and try to book each part of your holiday by yourself. However, there are so many online options that it can be overwhelming. This hotel looks great, but is it in the right neighborhood? That restaurant sounds fantastic, but how do you get there? Do the locals speak English? How do you exchange money in this country? This hotel sounds too good to be true, but is this some scam? Yikes, wouldn’t it be great to have a knowledgeable editor?

This is where we come in. HE Travel and Alyson Adventures are what are known as international tour operators. We design and develop small group tours around the world, and we’ve been doing it for more than 40 years. We scour the globe, not only finding the most fascinating places, but figuring out the best way for you to see them. We always know who to talk to so we can stay current about what’s worthwhile seeing and doing. When possible we introduce you to our friends in the destination, and we know which local can be persuaded to let you into that section of the park that’s “closed” to the public. We would never just put you on a bus and drive you around so you can take pictures out your window.

Our mission is adventure! Whether you are on one of our group tours, or on a customized tour that we’ve designed just for you, our goal is to make sure that you experience the region for what it truly is, and to learn what the people who live there are most proud of. We immerse you in the destination, and adapt to the place, rather than making the place adapt to us. You will see the impossible, taste the incredible, and feel the freedom that comes from a well-run tour.

Our tours generally take months to develop, with tours to some unique destinations actually taking years to get everything just right … and just like you, we have magazine clippings of our dream destinations on our refrigerators. This is how great tours start, from dreams.

Every tour company has their primary ”market.” For us, it’s the gay community. We know what gay people want from their time spent at a destination, and we know the best way to deliver it.  When we are designing our tours, we find our suppliers, then we have months of site visits, emails and phone calls aligning everything down to the smallest detail. We make arrangements to deal with the miles (or kilometers) of cultural differences. We make sure that the destinations are gay-friendly and we send our professional tour directors with nearly every tour, in order to make sure that every aspect of the tour is delivered as promised. Our tours bring together a small group of gay folks (and sometimes friends and family), so that no matter where we are, we’ve brought the gay community with us. We are your professional trip adviser. We bring you the world so that you only have to bring yourself.

I departed Key West bright and early. I hardly even remember the flight to New York for the GLBT Expo. I was so sleepy that I spent the majority of my time on the plane sawing logs. Due to a delay of my flight from Atlanta to Newark, I got the opportunity to eat at the airport McDonalds, although if I had known the amazing McDonalds that was waiting

for me in Times Square, I would have waited to have this most cherished experience….

When I finally got to Newark Airport I helped a nice Canadian woman and her daughter figure out how to book train tickets into Manhattan. Cocky! I had no idea how to print train tickets into Manhattan, but every time I hit a snag, I just complained out loud about the worthless NYC transit system. They seemed to accept this well. I sat with them for the whole journey, and chatted all about the wonders of Canada. I had not actually bothered

finding my hotel on any map before arriving in New York, so the Canadians returned my worthless favor of pretending to help them, by walking with me through the city pretending to help me find my hotel.

For dinner, I had my first ever New York Kebab from a street vendor. They put the kebab in a hot dog bun. Why would they do this? There was a pointy stick involved. I can’t eat a hot dog bun with a pointy stick running through it. This could have killed me! All I could think about was Inuits hiding flexible seal bones encased in frozen meat to kill polar bears. I kept looking over my shoulder while eating my kebab bun, to make sure I wasn‘t being hunted.

In the morning I got out bright and early so that I could get some video of people acting rude, immoral and downright inappropriate for the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. I got plenty of video of twenty-something’s ruining all their chances of ever running for political office.

The trade show got off to a great start with lots of people coming by the booth to see me and Marty. Marty runs Grand Canyon Expeditions, the supplier of the boats and superb crew that we use to run our Splash! Grand Canyon rafting tours. We had a lot of visitors to our booth, because Marty and I were giving away a free week-long Grand Canyon rafting trip to one lucky winner.

My feet hurt so badly by the end of the day from all the standing. I was also doing so much talking that I was starting to lose my voice. I sounded like Fran Drescher after getting a face full of corn starch. I started to eat candy like some kind of home-schooled teenager (who had been denied sweets his whole life), just shoving it in with the heel of my hand in order get the juices flowing and to prevent a sore throat.

That evening I went out with the sales manager of Lucky Strikes Lanes in New York City. He happened to be manning the booth across from me during the show. We, of course, went over to see the Lucky Strikes facility. Wow! Did you know that there is a bowling alley in New York City where you have to cross the velvet rope? Seriously, there are doormen, bouncers, hot employees and even a bathroom attendant (whom I still owe money to, since I had no tip money… I was not expecting to have to tip a bathroom attendant).  After “slummin’ it at the bowling alley” Bryan showed me the Hudson River waterfront. Along the way, I had to pee so badly. Doesn’t anyone realize that you should have urinals along any waterfront? I had to duck behind a building to relieve myself. I walked back around the front of the building only to realize it was an NYPD building. Luckily for me, no one was looking. Whew…

The following morning I got on the subway train and went over to Central Park. It was really refreshing to just sit and take a break from the hustle bustle of the city, although “break” is a term I use very lightly for this city. I’ve never seen people in such a hurry to live their lives in my Life.  It was nice just sitting and people watching for the morning, even if the passers-by were all jogging while drinking quadruple shot Americanos and chatting on their blue tooth headsets with “clients.”

After the expo that afternoon, I decided to go out exploring on my own. … This was a strange experience. No one said hello to me while I was out. There were a bazillion people in New York, all acting like no one else was there. This is so different from the One Human Family attitude of Key West, where one can spend 20 minutes of any given day discussing with random strangers about how hot our (openly gay) police chief is.

At some point this really good-looking guy sidled up to me and started following me around. He kept asking me all kinds of questions. “Where are you going? How long are you in New York? What do you do?” Ack! I was ordering pizza when it occurred to me that this guy was a total psychopath … I felt in this moment that if I didn’t remove myself from him that I was going to get robbed by him (note to self … not all people are flirting with me). Wow! It was soooo exhilarating! Potentially robbed?!! My god, I felt like an adventurer first class: danger, thrills, excitement … like something right out of the Hardy Boys.

Really, though, I just tucked myself in a corner and awkwardly ignored cookoo-bananas-guy for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile I spent my time sending cryptic text messages about my plight to loved ones and Facebook. Eventually he left, and I booked it back to my hotel, putting a stop to my spiraling paranoia.

Of course I should have gone straight to bed, but I couldn’t resist a quick pop into the hotel bar. I met a personal trainer in there, who told me I was working my butt out all wrong. Ouch! Until now, no one has dared question my posterior-size-maximization-techniques. It was like an open-hand slap to my ego, followed by a nice barefoot kick to the ear … although, I will admit that the new exercises are working and my butt now hurts every single time I take a step. Thank you mysterious-personal-trainer!

From here, mysterious-personal-trainer and I took our over-sized booties out on the town and got lost in the hubbub of Times Square. It is amazing to me that companies spend so much money to put video screens up on all these skyscrapers with moving ads. I will admit that it did captivate me to see these New Years-like scenes in person, and that I stayed out a little too late, but it was worth it. In fact, it totally gave me the chance to get pictures of myself standing on a pointless lighted red staircase to nowhere. Hooray!

New York, you are lots of fun! Although I think I came home with just a touch of sleep deprivation and a few new gray hairs.

Here’s more about the trip I was promoting at the GLBT Expo in New York: Splash! Grand Canyon white water rafting tour

To see the full Alyson Adventures calendar, click here!

I was recently invited to participate in a tour of Israel, hosted by the Israel Tourist Board. Their goal was to show me and the other participants as many highlights of Israel as they could in less than one week. I have to say that Israel far exceeded my expectations, right down to the fresh baked pita on EL AL (the Israeli airline.

I will start from the beginning (or should I say Genesis?) of the trip:

As usual, I was rushing through JFK airport trying to make sure that I didn’t miss my flight. I arrived for what at first looked like a very short wait at the El Al ticket counter… (eye roll). I had been given at least 700 warnings about the protective nature of El Al ticket counter agents, but I still had no idea of the level of questioning I was about to go through. Honestly, it was like being in a room with interrogator Jethro Gibbs on an episode of the TV show NCIS. The El Al team asked me so many questions that I started to wonder if they ever intended to let me board my plane. Maybe they really just overbooked the flight and wanted to keep me earthbound in New York, while my money flew away. They were so determined to make me forfeit my right to board the plane that they had an undercover agent suggest that I sneak a mysterious package onto the plane for him. In fact, the old woman ahead of me in line got busted for meat and cheese in her bag. This was hilarious to watch. The agents asked her “are you trying to bring pork on our plane?” She replied “no, I swear it’s kosher!”

At security, I opted for the physical pat down.  It wasn’t that I was trying to avoid walking into the full-body x-ray machine, but I was just feeling lonely that day.  I don’t know what people are complaining about. I found the pat down quite refreshing… even a little… exhilarating.

Once I was on the plane, I knew I was off to see a culture that was wildly different from my own. For starters, I have never seen so many hat boxes in my life.  From the vantage point of my seat, it appeared that none of the Hasidic Jews were willing to let anyone else’s hat touch their own hat. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where to put my roll-aboard, since each and every overhead bin contained two hat-shaped hat boxes, each the size of a cocker spaniel. Then at dinner, I asked the flight attendant for the non-kosher meal… the look she gave me was poison. Maybe she hears the joke on a regular basis?

Jerusalem was amazing. The climate is very similar to that of southern California. In fact, driving through the Jerusalem suburbs reminded me of my days spent in Malibu and Hollywood. Practically the entire city is made of beige Jerusalem Stone, giving the city an amazingly unified look.

After checking into our hotel, we walked down to the old city and haggled with the local merchants for some great stuff. I bought some amazing jewelry at prices that seemed to low to be true; of course, this was right and the jewelry broke after the second wear. You get what you pay for. There were also shops with an amazing variety of bulk spices. We stopped at an Austrian hostel and got a fabulous strudel; possibly the best strudel of my life. We went up to the roof of the hostel for a memorable panoramic view of the city of Jerusalem, then attended a welcome party at the YMCA, where we enjoyed watching dancers, drummers and local musicians.

Before going back to our hotel for the night,  a few of us went to a local felafel joint. We then walked to the “Plaza of Cats,” a meeting place where Jewish teenagers congregate in the evening to talk about nothing and smoke a hookah (apparently a perfectly legal activity for Israeli teenagers.)

The next day, we had a fabulous breakfast in the hotel. In all my travels this was the most delicious hotel breakfast I’ve had. France may have good food for lunch and dinner, but France has nothing on Israel when it comes to breakfast. My favorite thing? The dates. The fresh dates in Israel are fantastic. (I had no idea that what I had been eating my whole life was a dried/preserved product). In the afternoon, we went back to the old city and saw all the major sites, the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Dome of the Rock to name a few. We saw where followers of different religions fight over every speck of dust on the most sacred corner of the city. To think of all the holy wars that have been fought over this place is mind-blowing. This City must have been rebuilt half a hundred times.

My feet were killing me and I had started eating the inner lining of my jacket by the time we finally stopped for lunch. I had a bit of a panic attack when I saw the food spread. Nothing but hummus and pickles as far as I could see, so I just sat there stuffing myself with bread. Ten minutes later the waiters showed up with the most amazing dishes I’d ever seen… and I now had a belly full of bread. I decided to risk stuffing myself to the explosion point and it was worth it. (I kept flashing back to Monty Python’s “the Meaning of Life.”)

Next stop? The Dead Sea. The absolute lowest point on the planet… if you don’t count the bottom of the ocean, coal mines, or certain caves in Vietnam. It seemed quite a paradox as we passed peaceful date palm groves and at the same time heard about the bloody conflicts between Israelis, Jordanians, Palestinians and other neighbors that have taken place over the last… well… forever. I learned that the Dead Sea has receded significantly in the last 100 years. Our guide showed us where the water level once was and it was scary. Is it global warming? Is it natural? Did the water recede due to actions of man? At this rate, the Dead Sea could be gone by the time I’m an old man. There is now talk of a joint project between Jordan and Israel to bring water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. I am sure this would be carefully engineered, but I can’t help but get apocalyptic images of the waters of the Red Sea bursting through from the south and pouring into the below-sea-level Dead Sea valley. That would be a lot of water. Hmmm, this would make a great sci-fi movie!

When we arrived at our Dead Sea resort, we all went down to the spa and swam in Dead Sea water that had been heated and pumped into pools. It was already dark, so we couldn’t go over to the actual Dead Sea. The water was warm and I was amazingly buoyant, but the salt water made a cut on my hand feel as if it was on fire.

We got up bright and early the next morning so that we could be the first tourists to arrive at Masada. At Masada are the ruins of an ancient Roman fortified mansion built on a plateau overlooking the Dead Sea. The tram ride up offered spectacular views . Until the tram was built, visitors would have had to make this grueling trip on a dangerous snaking trail that would take hours in the blazing sun.

When we got back to the Dead Sea we still had a couple of hours for daylight swimming. The water was beautiful, and smells much better than the Great Salt Lake near where I grew up in Utah. The water in the Dead Sea was really cold, which is not surprising since it was December, but we got in anyway. The saltiness gives the water an oily feeling… or at least that’s why they said it felt oily… *shudder*

Next stop Eilat, home of the Underwater Observatory. The observatory is surrounded bycorals and tropical fish, the exact opposite of the lifeless Dead Sea. From the windows we could see some of the underwater scenes that you might see while scuba diving. I stood near some tourists and asked out loud, of no one in particular, why the floor was all wet. (They weren’t amused.)

Afterward, we visited a place called the Dolphin Reef. Here they have fenced off a section of the Red Sea and have 8 or 9 captive dolphins swimming among divers and snorkeling tourists. Floating above the dolphin habitat was a series of platforms that allowed us to see what all the underwater fuss was about. Being out over the water also afforded a view to the borders of four different independent countries (Israel, Jordan, Egypt and just down the coast, Saudi Arabia).

There was also a retreat center that conjured up images of lush tropical islands. The center was built with huge wooden beams and logs, then covered in vegetation. You could imagine Robinson Crusoe taking up residence in one of the tree houses. In the lower portion of the retreat center they have several relaxation pools. Some have Red Sea water, others are salty like the Dead Sea, and yet more pools have sweet water. Visitors can have a massage from therapists or do other relaxation therapies while in the water.

Later that day we took a domestic flight to Tel Aviv. In the local market, I purchased my very first fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice. This was soooo much better tasting then the usual glass of pasteurized pomegranate juice from the supermarket. I searched the market high and low trying to find a dreidel (4-sided spinning top) for my son. One would think that there would be no easier place to find a dreidel than in Israel…not so. Especially since the dreidel is typically a Hanukkah toy, and Hanukkah was coming up in two weeks. In the evening we visited a museum and enjoyed listening to a local a cappella singing group.

The following morning we took a tour of Tel Aviv, and saw the house where the Israelis first declared their independence as a Jewish state.  Next we went to historic Jaffa: one of the worlds oldest seaports. At the base of Jaffa is Andromeda Point. This is where the Greeks claim Andromeda was offered as sacrifice to the Kraken, a legendary sea monster epic proportions, before being saved by Perseus. Littered all around Andromeda Point are stones that are said to be bits and pieces of the monster after Medusa’s severed head (Perseus’ heroics again) turned it into stone. This was possibly the most culturally significant place I visited, since I had just watched Clash of the Titans. Before leaving Jaffa we saw a show by an amazing music and dance troop. The troop is called Mayumana, and is a must-see when in Israel.

Our flight home from Tel Aviv to JFK was leaving at 1:00 am, so all of the Americans had to skip dinner and get directly on our transfer to the airport. The immigration and customs procedures were so much easier for me on the return. Unlike my trip into Israel, they seemed like they couldn’t have been happier to send me home.

But I hated saying goodbye to all my new friends, and to this unique land that I was just getting to know…..

For more information on the HE Travel tour to Israel follow the link:
http://hetravel.com/gay/travel/Israel_tour.htm

From Cienfuegos, we drove along the Caribbean coast to Trinidad. This small city has received UNESCO’s World Heritage Site designation due to its several blocks of low-rise colonial-era buildings. As in Havana, many have been beautifully restored (including our hotel, the Iberostar), but every block also has numerous dilapidated structures. Trinidad was one of Cuba’s first centers for the cultivation of sugar, so it was a very rich city until the sugar planters moved their operations to the plains of central Cuba. Left behind in Trinidad though are extravagant homes, as well as plantation houses (and a steam railway) in the nearby “Valley of the Sugar Mills”. One morning we spent an hour watching crews weld together the smokestack of one of the century-old steam engines, then we rode in a restored open rail car about 20 kilometers into the countryside.

Our hotel was across the street from Trinidad’s Central Park, which was lively during the day with boys on skateboards and roller blades, and at night with singers strumming guitars for friends, and lovers on benches in the darker corners of the park.

Just up from the town’s largest church is a set of steps with a level stretch in the middle. Every night there is a salsa dance party there, and the town comes out to watch, seated around small tables or on the steps. It’s quite a friendly crowd, and both nights we were there members of our group had a chance to chat with local residents. A couple of gay guys and their well-dressed female friend invited me to “las Cuevas” or “the Caves”. I had no idea what that meant, but I followed them along a winding road up the mountain, and saw a large crowd at the top gathered around the entrance to a cave. There was a large sign overhead announcing “Disco Ayala.”

My three Trinidad friends and I entered the mouth of the cave, and we went down a long set of stairs until we got to the entrance of a huge room filled with perhaps 400-500 people. Most were probably in their 20s or 30s, and both the men and women had clearly dressed up for their night out. We stayed almost up to the closing time of 3 am, then took a run-down Russian Lada taxi back down to the town. (Only one door worked for the back seat, and the driver had to open the hood and turn something to start the engine, but it saved us the walk back to town.)

We got out of the taxi opposite our hotel, at a 24-hour restaurant / mini-market, full of loud revelers from the disco. We watched the crowds come and go for an hour or so until we walked back through the park, and I wished my friends good night before returning to my room for 2 hours of sleep. All-in-all, it was an exhausting evening, but an unforgettable chance for an authentic Cuban experience alongside new Cuban friends.

During this trip we spent time in Havana on the north coast (the Florida Straits connecting the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic), and in Trinidad, a much smaller city on the southern Caribbean coast, with a stop in Cienfuegos along the way. It has been fascinating to see what has changed and not changed since my previous visit with a group of educators in 2000, both in terms of the people and the environment in which they live.

What hasn’t changed is that the Cuban people long ago understood that they cannot change either their own government or the American government, and they’ve gotten on with their lives. They are all victims of a political stalemate that is vastly beyond their control, but in their daily lives, they refuse to play the role of passive victims. Despite the extremely low income of most residents of Cuba, most people are well-dressed (especially younger people), have enough to eat, and smile and sing a lot.

Quite striking is the clear sense of shared identity and community which transcends race, age, gender, sexual orientation or profession. In this regard, Fidel and Raul Castro have succeeded in creating a society that at least on the surface is quite egalitarian. This is a society with far more racial integration than is visible in the United States several decades after the landmark civil rights legislation.

A large percentage of the Cubans who still live on the island are of mixed racial background, and most groups of friends that we saw included black, white and mixed-race people. This is also visible among hotel and restaurant staff, salsa dancers in Trinidad, audience members for the flamenco dance performance, chess players in the park, and residents and staff of the home for elderly women where our group donated a portion of our medical supplies.

Contemporary Cuba is famous for its classic cars from the 1950s and for its large sections of grand buildings built as far back as colonial times. On the surface, the city of Havana has not changed much during the decade since my last visit. However, most building facades show another decade of deterioration, and too many of those facades betray empty space behind, where walls and roofs have caved in.

There are virtually no recently-built buildings, either in the city center of Havana, the suburbs, the countryside or in the smaller cities of Cienfuegos and Trinidad. However, in the heart of Havana’s historic district there are several grand old buildings that have been restored and turned into restaurants and shops. This demonstrates the potential of this area, and offers hope as one surveys the vast stock of dilapidated buildings. The renovations are part of a creative process that began with a UNESCO grant, and has become a self-sustaining loop with funds from thriving new businesses being used to renovate other buildings.

In Havana we were exposed to artists in several different mediums. We had a lecture on the diversity of Cuban music and several members of our group attended a Spanish flamenco dance performance at Havana’s largest theatre. We also drove to the upscale Miramar district to the home of Jose Fuster, a very creative Cuban artist. His specialty is colorful ceramic tiles, and these adorn all the walls of his home – and his neighbors’ homes – and the walls in front of each house – and the bottom of his swimming pool.

One night several of us had drinks on the panoramic terrace of the Hotel Nacional, a huge classic hotel overlooking the sea. From there we walked back to our hotel along the Malecon, Havana’s seawall. Along the way were various couples and groups of friends, but at one spot our “gaydar” went off and the smiles from the guys there assured us that we had found the gay part of the Malecon. We found a couple of young men who had fairly good English and we wound up sitting down with them for drinks and getting their perspective on what it is like to be gay in a country where most young men live with their parents until marriage (not easy). Outlets such as the Malecon wall, parties that move between different venues and a couple of dance clubs provide them a chance to meet friends.

 …Kings -yes, Valley of the Kings - and we’re not talking about King Tut’s burial place in Egypt. Our Valley of the Kings cycling tour in the Loire Valley of France has so many chateaux built by Kings that we have renamed the tour Valley of the Chateaux.

I had the pleasure to be a guide on our September 2011 tour, along with our experienced French bike tour guides Charly and David. This tour was a blast! We must have seen two or three chateaux every day, each more grand then the last. 

During the free day between our Big Loire, Little Loir cycling tour and this tour, Charly, David and I went to a nude beach in the middle of the Loire river. Charly told me the water was a nice temperature, but I thought it was dreadfully cold. I guess living in Key West has thinned my blood out. There were a couple of German guys who laughed when my nether regions hit the icy water. I guess squinching up your face and groaning painfully crosses all language barriers. It was all great fun after getting used to frostbite…I was sad when it was time to go back to work.

After the swim, it was back to Blois where we would welcome our next group in the morning. We did some restaurant scouting, which was awesome, because when the restaurant knows you might bring a big group, they try really hard to impress you. The owner came out and gave us some mousse and local wines; the food is the best part of the job.

Our first day with the guests got off to a great start. All the bikes fit with few adjustments, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood.  Before dinner, we had a nice tour around the city, complete with the usual 10 French cathedrals, 85 fabulously unreal bakeries, beautiful vistas, grand staircases, sexy people, and a statue that seems to be vomiting into a pool.

We started off our next morning bright and early. Breakfast was the classic croissants and a piece of ham. Ah, France. I wished I had time to go by a bakery where I could have gotten something truly amazing.

Everyone was in high spirits, (since no-one had wind in their faces yet). Our first destination of the day was Chaumont, famous for its yearly garden festival. Each year the individual gardens follow a specific theme. This year’s theme was sustainability. There were gardens with elaborate mushroom statues that made compost, gardens grown in bags of garbage, a garden draped in a wazoo of strange ribbons, and my favorite of all - the set of floating flax seed globes on pikes (seen here with castle in the background.) Chaumont is a classic example of pre-modern fairy tale architecture, sitting on a hillside with its cute little drawbridge and its knights in shining armor.

From Chaumont we rode toward Amboise, which also happens to be the final resting place of Leonardo da Vinci. His house, Le Clos-Luce, was very lovely and contained scale models of his famous inventions. We took some video of me talking about it, but my hair was all windswept to one side, so I decided not to show that bit. Instead, here is our friend Faiyaz at the huge Amboise Chateau. It has a spiral stone entryway so that horses could pull carts up from the bottom of the cliff. Believe it or not, it was once twice the size that it is today. The enormous chateau was largely demolished two centuries after it was built, when maintenance costs got too high for the owner.

Dinner as a group in Amboise was fun, but even more fun was when we went out for drinks afterward. That’s a picture of me and Jeff hiding from the waitress.

This restaurant/bar actually had fresh squeezed orange juice. It was the only good juice I had the whole time I was in France. (The French are good at food, but horrible at juice). Of course I went and ruined the juice by adding Vodka to it, then spending a couple more hours chatting with my new friends.

After the evening out with the guests I had to get up early to help prepare the bikes for the day’s ride. The guests all got to sleep in, but there is no rest for a bike guide. And no, I did not learn my lesson to go to bed early!

Day three: our first stop, Chenonceaux. This chateau is famous because it is built over the river. It is awesome! With all the money and technology today, I would love to see more marvels like this one. Our modern claim to fame? Really tall office buildings. Boring compared with this centuries-old handiwork.

I loved Chenonceaux. It has amazing gardens built on fortified islands, and the entire castle is a bridge. So you can imagine that the nobles were thinking “you want to cross to the other side, you’ve got to come through my living room, and why should I let you come through my living room?” Can you imagine if the San Francisco Mayor decided to build his house on the Golden Gate Bridge? It would be a nightmare.

I went down to the arches of the bridge in the basement. This is where the kitchens are. They had some really amazing stuff down there. I know a lot of people who would be proud to have this cooking range even today. The kitchen was equipped with a winch to bring water up from the river. If you’ve read any Game of Thrones books you would realize this is not so good during a seige, because your enemies will just pile dead bodies upriver.

The next day we bicycled toward Azay Le Rideau.  This was my favorite of all the towns on the tour. Our hotel was on the cobblestone road leading up to the chateau, which I never made got to see, as I fell asleep the moment I got into the hotel room.

That night we had our wine tasting. Charly gave me and David a fright when he told us that we would have to run the wine tasting on our own. I know nothing about wine. There was no way that I could wing my way through a wine tasting in France…I can’t even pronounce the names of California wines! I studied the wine, I studied my map, I panicked. Mean ol’ Charly was there after all and had just wanted to mess with us. After that, the wine tasting was lots of fun; I didn’t drink a whole lot since I was coming down with a cold so I poured most of my wine into a friend’s glass every time he looked away. He got a bit silly by the end of the evening.

We spent two nights in Azay, which was great because it meant we got a break from hauling luggage up the stairs (a service we guides try to offer at each stop of our French bike tours).

We set out the next day for Villandry. This Chateau is famous for its three formal gardens. It takes a staff of 12 full-time gardeners to maintain them. The views of these gardens were spectacular. They looked absolutely amazing anytime you could get above them and really see a birds-eye view of the patterns.

My favorite parts of this chateau were the trellises covered in grapes. I ate so many grapes it was ridiculous. While everyone else was touring the castle, I was walking back and forth gorging myself. I must have eaten at least 652 grapes. Luckily I was driving the van.  Besides, it was worth it, since these were by far the best grapes I had ever had. I definitely ate my way through my 6 euro entry fee.

The last visit was to Chateau de Langais. This was my favorite chateau of all. Most of the chateaux in France were redesigned during the Renaissance, leaving only the keep or the dungeons in the original medieval design. Chateau de Langais is still intact. With its fantastic towers and arched windows, it looks like it’s right out of Camelot! All the furniture inside is even original, including thousand year-old chairs and 600-year-old tapestries; it was truly amazing. Plus there was a yummy cafe across the street.

Dinner that night was in a cave…the restaurant was literally built into the side of a cliff. The food was incredible as always. My trip to France answered my lifelong question “How good can butter and baguettes actually get?” — VERY!!! My Key West Cuban bread just cannot compare.

Alyson Adventures really does spoil everyone. Come join me or any of our other fabulous guides on your next trip.

If you want all of the beauty of traveling, but none of the pedaling, check out our HE Travel Classic tours.

I knew I was no longer in the United States, when I looked out my subway car door and saw an attractive man wearing a shirt that fit! I mean it actually fit, like it was tailored by a professional. I really doubt this shirt came from a generic mall store. I mean seriously, look at this guy’s shirt. I think that every gay man in America needs to go to France and buy themselves a shirt like this. Where in France should you buy it? Ask your Alyson guide on your next bicycle trip.

As I crossed Paris to catch my train to Vendome, as luck would have it, my first day in France happened to be the one day that they decided to close the Paris Metro line that I needed to take to Montparnasse train station. Great! To make matters worse, I can’t actually read anything written in French, so I had no idea why I couldn’t get on the Paris Metro.

After some time I decided to leave the subway and head to street level where, lucky me, I happened to be at the doorstep of Notre Dame!  What a sight to behold! I would have loved to go inside, but I was too busy trying to deflect a woman pretending to be deaf and begging for money. Apparently there’s this scam going on in Paris where gypsies pretend to be deaf to get money from you. Do Not Pay Them: they or their friends will try to steal your wallet.

I finally found a tourist information booth where the nice lady pointed me in an ultimately unhelpful direction. In the end I got out my Paris map and solved my own problem. Within a matter of minutes I was on the efficient Paris bus system headed toward… well I wasn’t sure, but within minutes someone pointed me toward Monparnasse. Once I actually got to the train station, I decided to have my first cup of French coffee. It would have been magnifique, except that I accidentally added aspartame to it instead of creamer. The coffee shop was lovely, including the birds that appeared to live in the shop. It was picture perfect as long as you ignored the fact that there were bird droppings on the pastry case.

I boarded my TGV high-speed train, and before long I was walking through the ancient stone gate that marked the opening in Vendome’s city walls. It was a short walk to the hotel where I thankfully crashed out for several hours before I had to meet our other guides to start preparing 21 bikes for our group. After I woke up, I joined Tom, one of our guests who had arrived early, for a quick bite to eat. We went to a mediocre kebab place where Charly and David (the other two Alyson Adventures bike guides) found us. Charly mocked me for the rest of the trip for choosing Greek Kebab of all things as my first meal in France.

Our bike tour started with a walking tour of Vendome where Charly told everyone about the town’s rich history. We were all amazed at how beautiful Vendome is. The city is built all around the Large Loire and Little Loir Rivers and it is amazing the way the city has been built to highlight the waterways. Several of the buildings sit atop pylons and have the river flowing underneath them.

Most of the group saw Vendome and said how much they would love to live here. Of course, that was because they hadn’t yet been on the rest of our tour. By the end of the tour, no one knew which pretty part of France would be best to move to.

That night we ate our first dinner together and everyone began making fast friends among the group. This was a big group, 21 people including the guides, which is bigger then most Alyson groups ever get. Amazingly, Charly was able to find restaurants that were not only fabulous, but could actually accommodate the entire group at one table! The man is amazing… and really cute too.

The ride got off to a great start as we rode our way through Vendome, then off toward Troo, a Troglodyte village. Troglodyte literally means cave dweller and I was expecting something out of the Flintstones. I was surprised to see amazing luxury cave dwellings that make my dinky shoebox of a Key West apartment look like a very modest chicken coop.

We set off the next day toward Châteaudun. We rode through glorious farmland full of sunflowers and vineyards ready for harvest. Soon, we came to the first big hill of the tour (luckily downhill). David went on ahead to make sure that everyone made the turn, while I hung back to make sure we didn’t lose anyone. After the last of the group made it to the bottom of the hill, I sped ahead to catch the faster members of the group. Unknown to me, the riders ahead of me decided to stop at a bakery for a delicious french pastry and I rode right past them at my best “Tour de France” pace.

After a while I realized that either every single person had gone the wrong way, or I was clearly in front of the group, and not behind. I stopped to wait for everyone, and I have to say there is no better place to wait around than at Montigny Château at the top of a cliff overlooking the Loire Valley.

When everyone else arrived we had a lovely picnic lunch that Charly had prepared for us, and then we got to tour the Château. Inside was a tremendous amount of historic art and furniture. I was impressed at how our tired riders resisted the urge to sit on the irreplaceable furniture. In one room was a hutch full of tiny antique doll furniture. Nora went nuts for it. Below you can see her with her adorable New Jersey accent.

From Montigny we continued toward Chateaudun, an adorable fairy tale village at the top of a hill, complete with its very own Chateau (of course, this is France!). I lollygagged at the hotel till the last minute and nearly didn’t get to see the chateau. I had to beg the gate keeper in broken french (very broken french). In the end he took pity on me and allowed me to go in. And not only did he allow me to go in, but he let me in for free, and gave me 2 euros. Weird. I really liked this Chateau because there was no furniture in it, just this very, very strange statue of a deer with a thousand antlers stuck in the floor.

The following morning was another breakfast of croissants…I have to say, there were a few things I found out about France which I had not expected:

* Breakfast in France is not very interesting: Coffee and Bread, everyday. The bread and croissants are delicious, the coffee was tasty, and it was great for about three days, at which point I found myself fantasizing about a smoothie, an omelette, or really just about anything else.

* I did not see one single bidet.

* I found out that despite what my mother had told me, the French are very friendly.

* I also noticed that many American tourists in France seem to obsess about World War II, and love to remind their hosts that if it weren’t for us they’d all be speaking German … tacky.

* Oh, and don’t get me started on macarons (almond meringue pastries). Sure they look beautiful, and they are all the rage in the blogosphere, but alas, I did not find them appetizing at all!

Luckily, most of the things that matter were right on the money. Dinner was always amazing (except for the pre-tour Kebab incident), the variety of cheeses was incredible, and the bread…don’t even get me started about the bread…the smell alone is worth the $1200 plane ticket. And look at these mini Creme Brulees!! Not only were they delicious, but there were three kinds, and they were MINI so I could try all three with no guilt!

Our farewell dinner was in a tiny restaurant where the food was made in the basement and sent up to us by dumbwaiter. The food everywhere on this tour was incredible, but the final evening really takes the cake. Since our group was so big we practically owned the place. Charly took us there on a beautifully scenic route through the narrow streets of Blois. He even shared with us his dream of being immortalized in bronze as a city statue.

I hated saying goodbye to everyone, so several of us went out for after dinner drinks! I pretended I was a smashed drunk American tourist, and Charly pretended to be helping me get through the bar (it gave me the opportunity to snap a photo of a really cute guy’s shoes for David; he has a thing for men with nice shoes.) After we established that his shoes were not of interest to David, we asked him to snap a picture of our group.

I’ve found I really get attached to the people with whom I share these unique experiences. It’s really hard as the trips come to a close and I realize I won’t be with my new friends much longer. I got to meet so many new people from so many different places and I got to spend time with a few locals from my own Key West! Some of us Key West folk got a nice game of Hand and Foot (a Key West version of canasta) going and nearly missed the farewell drinks.

Come join us on our next adventure! Just look at the bike guides in these photos - how can you resist?

Alyson Adventures tour calendar

This is a lovely article by a young timpani player with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra about a recent trip to Cuba by the Orchestra. They performed concerts with their Cuban counterparts in three cities, Cienfuegos, Santa Clara and Havana.

The culmination of their tour was a performance in Havana of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – the Ode to Joy. How fitting to conclude with a work whose chorus begins “Alle Menschen werden Brüder” or ”All men will be brothers.” (I had the great joy of performing this work with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony while a student member of the Harvard Glee Club, and then of being in the audience in Tokyo as Maestro Ozawa performed the same work there a few years later.)

In 2000 the People-to-People Ambassador Program invited me to be the tour director for a group of 61 American educators for a week-long study tour in Cuba, under the Clinton Administration’s licensing guidelines. As did the author of this article, I was struck by both the timeless beauty of the architecture and the landscape, and by the warm welcome we received from the Cubans, who knew that we American citizens had no more control over our government’s Cuba policy than they had over Fidel Castro’s whims.

I am very much looking forward to a humanitarian trip to Cuba that I will be leading November 1-9 for a small group of gay men, lesbians and friends. This is not a tour run by Hanns Ebensten Travel and Alyson Adventures, but is operated by an organization that has run humanitarian trips to Cuba for over 15 years. We will be taking medical supplies to a clinic in Havana that serves people with HIV and AIDS. If you would like information about the trip, please send an email to me at psheldon@aol.com.