Co-Ed Naked Spa Hopping

            My friend Diane and I were spending two weeks traveling around Japan, which included a jaunt to the southern island of Kyushu where Beppu is located.  Beppu is a geo-thermal wonderland of natural hot mineral springs.  Billows of steam rise everywhere, giving the town an atmosphere of a giant outdoor sauna or a film noir movie set.  We had already spent several days in Beppu experiencing the wonderful variety of available tourist attractions.  We had been buried in 140 degree sand up to our necks, had enjoyed several mineral baths that claimed therapeutic properties ranging from improving one’s complexion to healing arthritis, and had toured around the “hells” of Beppu, which are boiling ponds ranging in color from vermilion to sky blue.

It was our last day and we had just hours left before our train departed to Tokyo.  I felt we had “done” Beppu, but soon learned that Beppu was not “done” with us. 

While taking our final stroll around town, we came upon another spa that Diane wanted to try.  I had immediate reservations since this resort was not mentioned in my guidebook and all of the signs were in Japanese, leading me to believe this was “off the beaten track” for tourists.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I believe the best part of traveling happens spontaneously and I love the adventure of having “non-touristy, local” experiences.  But when it comes to exposing my body, I’m extra cautious.   

“Come on.  We’re fourteen time zones away from everyone we know,” Diane argued.  She had a point.  Completely ignoring my gut that was shouting, “Don’t do it!” always a mistake, we entered the building.  

We disrobed in the locker room and entered a communal indoor mud bath. Luxuriating in the slick mud with other women, we moved back and forth between the hotter and cooler areas of the bath until we had had enough. We rinsed off under a cold shower and just before stepping outside, one of the attendants grabbed onto my arm.  She urgently tried to tell me something that was obviously very important.  But my ignorance of the language and inability to decipher Japanese charades had rendered her communiqué impossible to interpret.

So it was that Diane and I, two fairly well-endowed women, stepped outside, naked as the day we were born, whereupon we made three crucial discoveries: we were the only Gaijin (foreigners) at the spa, the resort was co-ed, and the two of us were missing one small, but essential item.  Every Japanese person we encountered, and 99.9 percent of them were of the male persuasion, was holding a small hand towel the size of a wash cloth, over his genitals.

Diane and I were not just naked. We were beyond naked. We were Über-naked.

Had we missed the warning sign in the locker room: “Please remember, don’t shame Buddha, all of the Shinto deities and the memory of hundreds of generations of your ancestors by stepping outside without your little washcloth?”  Or perhaps there was no sign because the Japanese are born holding these tiny cloths as they exit the birth canal?

Desperate to cover ourselves, Diane and I crisscrossed our arms over our bodies.  With our hands hovering ineffectively over our nether regions, we darted to the nearest hot spring for cover.  The dark gray, mineral-laden water conveniently covered our nudity, and thankfully, we were alone. 

But not for long.

Apparently, word of the two, too-naked, big-breasted American women, had spread like wildfire throughout the spa.  Suddenly, dozens of extraordinarily friendly men, also unclothed, but of course with the obligatory washcloths, joined us in our pool.  I did my best to fend off the many overtures from these interlopers who floated dangerously into my personal space, trying to chat us up.  The Japanese love nothing more than to practice English, but the last thing I wanted to do was encourage naked fraternizing. 

After a few minutes, I noticed that I had begun sweating profusely from the intense heat. After fifteen minutes, I felt nauseous.

I knew that I had to get out of this bubbling caldron, but escaping would have required climbing up a three-foot ladder to exit the pool, thereby providing a front-row view of that to which only gynecologists and lovers should be privy. My mind, which was now melting along with the rest of me, struggled to reason that I was thousands of miles from home, and the chance that I would ever see any of these men again was infinitesimally small.  But I couldn’t bear the thought of baring my undercarriage, free of charge, to this rapt group of strangers.  Diane agreed, so the two of us waited it out with a steely determination that would have impressed any prisoner of war.

One by one, our fan club left, and finally, we were alone, once again.  We quickly made our getaway. Like two boiled lobsters plucked from a pot, steam rose off our crimson bodies, as we climbed out and once again scurried for cover to the nearest pool.

And so it went.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sprinting from one hot spring to another until we came to the last one of the day.  Divided into three sections, each about the length and width of a bathtub, Diane and I chose adjacent pools.  As we stretched out, we discovered that the water was only a few inches deep, so our entire torsos were completely exposed to the air. 

We sat up and struggled to reposition ourselves to find some cover.  A moment later, a man in a deep pool next to ours who had witnessed our thrashing, floated over to us, stuck his foot out of the water and pointed at it.  It took only a moment to realize that Diane and I were lying in the footbaths—a fitting end, I suppose, to an altogether much too naked and humiliating day.

 Please visit my website www.joannhornak.com where you can sign up to win a free copy of my second novel, A Delicate Bond.

Three Cheers for the Plague

            For those of you planning your first trip to the developing world, you will undoubtedly be advised by a well-meaning healthcare professional to visit the International Travelers Clinic.  Here is my advice.  Don’t do it.  Trust me, when it comes to tropical diseases, ignorance is bliss.

At the clinic, I was deluged with inoculations, pills and warnings about the many health hazards awaiting me should I be so foolish in Tanzania, as to perhaps, eat something, drink water, go swimming, have sex or be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which in the developing world, is just about anywhere, anytime.

I left the clinic loaded down with paperwork about "health precautions" and "disease risk summaries" for East Africa that I made the mistake of actually reading.

Diseases carried by insects included yellow fever, which is endemic, dengue fever, and trypanosomiasis or African sleeping sickness, caused by the bite of a tsetse fly and fatal if left untreated. I made a mental note to pack a few more long-sleeved shirts.

Next was filariasis, something I'd never heard of, which is "prevalent" in East Africa, not a good sign. Also listed was leishmaniasis, both "cutaneous" and "visceral." While I was completely unfamiliar with leishmaniasis, I was equally concerned that I didn’t know what cutaneous or visceral meant.

Onchocerciasis or river blindness is “epidemic” in parts of East Africa. No problem, I just wouldn't plunge into any rivers. But then I learned that just being near flowing water is all it takes if one is unlucky enough to be bitten by an infected female black fly. I decided I would do well to avoid rivers and streams.

The food and waterborne illnesses category was also disturbing. The fact that the food and waterborne diseases were all "highly endemic" was not comforting in the least, since there was an excellent chance in the coming year that I would be eating food and drinking water. These included the "usual" diarrheal diseases, giardiasis, typhoid fever, cholera, viral hepatitis and something called echinococcosis. To be helpful, the handout explained that echinococcosis is also known as hydatid disease. Of course, the famous hydatid disease, that certainly clarified things.

Then I came to malaria. I remember thinking that malaria wouldn't be so bad to catch but then I learned that it’s a leading cause of death in Africa and kills roughly one million people each year worldwide. Malaria turned out to be nothing to trifle with, which is why I decided to spend $400 on mefloquine despite anecdotal warnings of side effects such as "debilitating neuropsychiatric adverse events" and "suicidal ideations". 

Dracunculiasis was next. Described as "widespread", I immediately wondered how something I'd never heard, something that no doubt involved vampire bats sucking on the necks of unwitting foreigners, could possibly be "widespread?"  I didn't want to think about it so I moved on, but I wasn't quite through with the medieval diseases.

The next disease jumped off the page at me, "plague." Wait a minute. This couldn't actually be The Plague, the kind carried by infected rats, causing inflamed armpits and groins, with corpses hauled away by the cartload by toothless, hunchbacked men through dark alleys to nameless mass graves, could it? Is it possible the travel doctors at the clinic threw this one in as a sick joke?

The plague is a bacterial infection, cured by antibiotics if caught early, but somehow this disease sounded the worst. Imagine calling home:

"Hi Mom. Oh yeah, things are just great here in Tanzania except, well, I have, um…I have the plague."

I'd never live it down. My fifteen minutes of fame would never end. I'd inspire dread and repulse every person I'd ever meet for the rest of my life. Forevermore I'd be known as the person who'd had the Black Death and lived.

The final catchall category, "other hazards", as if enough hadn't already been mentioned, included HIV, measles, leprosy, elephantiasis, diphtheria, polio, influenza, parasitic worm infections, meningococcal meningitis, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis and trachoma.

Good Lord, what sort of Dark Ages nightmare was I plunging myself into?

Grasping for any faint ray of light at the end of a long, dark, disease-ridden tunnel, I took great reassurance in the fact that I didn’t see the Ebola virus listed anywhere. Besides, I'd already sold my house and taken a one-year leave of absence from my job so it was too late to back out of my volunteer commitment.

So in the spirit of fearless explorer Dr. David Livingston, I gambled away any hope for longevity and got on the plane.  But little did I know that I was to learn of yet another disease that was missing from the reams of paperwork I'd scrutinized before leaving.

The third day in country, our group of thirteen volunteers, eleven Americans, one Brit and one Canadian, still dazed from jet lag, attended a health lecture given by a Tanzanian doctor.  Much of the talk concerned malaria and the other diseases I’d already read about, but then the doctor’s talk shifted to what I’d previously believed to be a mundane subject, washing clothes.

The doctor explained that when washed clothes are hung outside to dry, something I would likely do since clothes dryers in Tanzania are mighty scarce and I hadn't brought enough clean clothes to last for 365 days, then, something very bad happens. An insect, never specifically identified, lays eggs inside the clothes. When the clothes are worn, the larva burrows into your skin and forms pus-filled pustules that can ulcerate and become gangrenous at which point that exceedingly unlucky body part falls off or rots away until amputated.

As Dr. Doom was describing this little journey through pestilence and perdition, I looked around the room. Our thirteen faces had changed from masks of polite boredom to utter horror. So assuming I didn't catch a fatal illness, which was suddenly looking quite attractive, the best I could hope for was to return home a hideously pockmarked shell of my former self.

 The doctor kept talking but I was no longer listening. I was thinking about catching the next flight home. But then, almost as an afterthought, he waited until the end of his lecture to tell us that simply ironing clothes kills the little wadudus (bugs) dead. I bought an iron within the hour.

As the year turned out, I had never been healthier, succumbing to just one case of the common cold, certainly nothing to call home about. Perhaps just one bout of the plague wouldn't have been so bad after all? 

Ode to Tanzanian Transportation

If you've ever had the unique pleasure of taking public transportation in Africa, you will appreciate this first (and so far only) attempt at poetry, based upon the most horrific 10-hour bus ride I ever experienced.

For journeys to places remote and afar

            Lushoto, Iringa, Dodoma and Dar

It's a motor coach or passenger bus you will need

But there's anguish and suffering ahead so take heed

If you see "express" or "luxury" as part of the name

Beware for it's just part of an elaborate game

They doth protest too much, here's a word to the wise

Be prepared in advance know their tricks and their lies

If the coach is "express" it means a stop every minute

If the bus is a "luxury" there’re three hundred passengers in it

There is no timetable, the prices they refuse to relate

Your ability to haggle will settle the rate

If they tell you the bus will leave straightaway

You'll sit there for hours they don't mind the delay

If they promise the bus will arrive at seven

You have just as much chance you'll turn up in heaven

If the bench will fit two they'll squeeze in some more

And suddenly your seat is now perfect for four 

It's the typical journey I've described thus far

But the trip I took yesterday was pure misery from Dar

I sat next to a man in business attire 

I had no notion, no clue my situation was dire

It struck without warning like a nighttime criminal

This was nothing imagined, not close to subliminal

My senses assaulted I needed to heave

Oh my God this man reeks, I just want to leave

With unwashed body, his whiff steadily wafted

Against my will and my wishes my lungs continually quaffed it

For relief my head hung out the window for hours

My body contorted, my mind filled with sorrows

I stewed and simmered in the man's sickening smell

Light a candle for me for I'm surely in hell

The Pare Mountains like a blanket folded over the land

The green sisal spiked out o’ the red sand

Snow-capped Kili in the distance behind billowing cloud

Obscured almost hidden as if covered by shroud

But the beautiful scenery graced not my eye

For the only thought in my head was “I hope that I die”

The trip went on and on and into the night

The blackness outside was a mind-numbing sight

They could strap me to the roof, it'd be better up there

At least there'd be stars and the moon and fresh air

The man left at Moshi an hour before my trip ended 

But his presence prolonged, the aroma suspended

And then it was over I had somehow come through

I looked at the world as if it were new

And if I should expire with a blemish on my soul

Whether it's now in my youth or when I'm quite old

I'll go to my death without trepidation or fear

Because I know Dante's hell, it's called luxury here   

The Hair Saloon or Ali’s Magic

           I've been at war with my hair ever since childhood.  Fiber optics uses cable thicker than my hair.  Even on the best of days with top-of-the-line salon products, my shoulder-length bottle-blonde do resembles wilted hay.  I don’t have bad hair days.  I have a bad hair life.  But, the life-long battle with my locks escalated to the global thermal nuclear level the year I volunteered in Tanzania.

            When I first walked through my new neighborhood in Tanzania, one of the poorest in Arusha, I was surprised to see a building, more like a ramshackle hut with a corrugated tin roof that advertised itself as the “International Hair Cutting Saloon.” At first I thought “saloon” was a simple spelling mistake, but I soon discovered that there were “hair saloons” all over Arusha.

            What could this mean?  And why did the hair saloon in my neighborhood advertise itself as “international?” Could I expect to see jet setters flying into town to get their hair styled while swilling mugs of cold beer or downing shots of whisky?  Like the Wild Wild West would there be gunfights over saloon girls who doubled as hair stylists?

            Every day on the way to my volunteer job I walked by The International Hair Cutting Saloon.  I’d strain to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside this curious establishment but was sorely disappointed.  Nothing ever happened.  I never saw a single customer exit or enter the entire year.  Even the mangy dogs lying in front of the saloon day after day didn't do anything.  They didn't move when a car drove by or when a person approached them on foot.  It was as if the wards of all the animal hospitals in the world got together their most hopeless and unhealthy dogs and released them here to live out their lives in front of the hair saloon.  I imagined Humane Society officials visiting Arusha, bursting into tears and then falling into a deep depression at the sight of these pitiful creatures.

            As the months went on the hard water, equatorial sun and lack of conditioning had reduced my hair to a state of disaster.  My split ends had reached stratospheric levels, nearly to my scalp, which unfortunately had done nothing to add volume.  I could no longer ignore the state of my tresses that were now the consistency of corn husks.  But The International Hair Cutting Saloon was certainly nothing like the chic salons I was used to visiting in the States.

            And then I heard of Ali, the self-proclaimed “European trained hair stylist.” I had yet to secure an appointment with Ali, who was apparently famous in the way of Cher and Madonna, by first name only, as he was booked up for weeks at a time.

            I soon learned that Ali, who was of Indian descent but had grown up in Tanzania, was infamous not just in the town of Arusha, but throughout Tanzania among the ex-pats.  Shortly before seeing him I’d met some American missionaries who worked several hundred kilometers south of Arusha.  They were in town to buy supplies, eat pizza and get haircuts.

            “Are you going to Ali?” I asked them.

            “Who else?” they answered.

            “What is he like?” I asked.  “Is he good?”

            “He’s okay but a bit of a character,” said one of the female missionaries. “You’ll see.”

            By the time the day for my appointment had finally arrived, I was so panicked I almost backed out.  I’ve always been nervous when trying a new hairdresser, but I especially anxious about getting my hair cut in a developing country by a “bit of a character.”

            Ali looked like the type of stylist one might see in a horror movie about hair salons.  He had unruly tufts of black hair jutting out at all angles from his head, an intense, somewhat maniacal gaze and was wielding a large pair of cutting shears.  He took one look at my hair and practically fainted.  Naturally, the subject of conditioning came up. 

            “Castor oil,” said Ali as he began cutting my hair. “That’s the key.”

            I looked confused.

            “You know, the stuff that makes you shit,” he added.

            “Oh right.  How much do I use?”

            “One teaspoon,” said Ali.  “Or one tablespoon.  And you mix it with olive oil, the same amount.”

            “All right,” I replied feeling anything but.

            “But for God’s sake don’t use too much or you’ll never get it out!”

            “So, is it a teaspoon or a tablespoon each of castor and olive oil?”

            “That’s what I said,” Ali replied, sounding perturbed.

            Ali snipped away in silence for several moments.  Maybe I should’ve gotten up the nerve to try the International Hair Cutting Saloon after all?

            “And, about twenty minutes before rinsing, put an egg on your hair,” he added.

            “A whole egg?”

            “Absolutely.”

            “Why an egg?”

            “It will help get the oil out,” he said.

            It sounded like I might have to have my head shaved if this didn't work but then again, Ali seemed to be taking care of that already with his furious clipping.  With no mirror to see what was going on, I could only judge how much hair he was chopping off by the increasingly large mounds of it piling up on the floor.

            “Or, just use egg whites,” Ali said.  “And take a lemon with you into the shower and squirt that on your hair too, that will really help to rinse it out.”

            How about if I add some romaine lettuce, Parmesan cheese and a few croutons while I’m at it Ali?

            I left with far less hair than I’d arrived, but the haircut itself was decent enough.  Although I had six months left in Tanzania I never was brave enough to try Ali’s hair conditioning recipe.  But if anyone reading this is, I recommend that you hold the anchovies.

Air Maybe or Is It Normal To Experience Frequent Brushes of Death While in Africa?

Not only did I have to run for my life from a herd of 50 elephants (please see my last post), I had a near brush with death on Air Tanzania. 

Normally, the simple act of boarding an airplane would not be considered adventure travel. But flying, like all forms of transportation in the developing world, is notoriously dangerous for the simple reason that there are no rules to follow. If airplane maintenance schedules do exist, there is no guarantee that they’re adhered to with any sort of regularity, or at all for that matter. So there is little comfort in taking a flight with Air Tanzania, an airline so unreliable and precarious that Tanzanians themselves refer to it as "Air Labda," Swahilit for "Air Maybe."

I was on my way to Dar es Salaam via Kilimanjaro International Airport with Moyo and Eunice, co-workers from the African Wildlife Foundation in Arusha, where I was working as a volunteer. The three of us were securely seat-belted in a row near the rear of the plane as it rumbled down the runway, gaining speed for take-off.

Suddenly, I heard a loud pop! The pilot quickly slammed on the brakes triggering an earsplitting noise of grinding gears and metal parts that sounded as though a pack of rabid hyenas had attacked the engine and was gnawing it to shreds.

But we kept going; the plane refused to stop.

I clutched onto my arm rests in a white-knuckled death-grip preparing for our certain demise when we barreled through the barbed wire barrier at the end of the runway, took a nosedive into the bottomless trench beyond and burst into flames.

After what seemed like an impossible amount of time and a miraculously generous length of runway, we did stop. All of the passengers looked around at each other in the absolute silence that usually follows near disaster, where seconds seem like minutes. “Whew, we made it!” I remember thinking.

But then the cabin filled with the acrid smell of smoke and I saw flames shooting out from underneath one of the wings. The engine was on fire! Everyone on board was no doubt gripped by the same terrifying thought—our plane was nanoseconds away from exploding.

The steward seized the intercom and began shrieking as if his testicles had unexpectedly been clamped in a vice, "Evacuate! Evacuate! Evacuate!"

Utter pandemonium erupted.

People crammed into the aisles, pushing and shoving and climbing over each other to get out. The strap of my purse was caught on something under the seat. I yanked at it for what seemed like an eternity until it broke free. But then, as I turned to the aisle, I was faced with a solid mass of African men and women, who proved more difficult to push past than wall of granite.

After finally squeezing my way into the aisle, my near hysteria increased when I saw that I was going to have to slide down the chute to escape.

Like a disembodied voice in a dream that sounds very far away, I heard someone shouting, "Shoes! Shoes!” What about my shoes? Only later did I find out that we were supposed to take off our shoes before going down the chute. I hopped down. My skirt slid up beyond my waist and the friction between the rubber and my bare skin scraped my legs and behind raw. I hit the tarmac and ran like the wind, trying to put as much distance as possible between myself and the ticking time bomb behind me.

Moyo, Eunice and I met up far out in the field. The three of us stood there breathing heavily, too stunned to speak. As I turned back toward the plane, I saw hundreds of papers floating in the breeze along with shoes, books, purses, briefcases, and hats scattered everywhere on the runway.

There's nothing like a brush with death to pull people together. When we arrived back in the waiting room of the airport, it was a celebration. Families and friends were huddled together wearing relieved smiles. Sworn enemies were hugging and kissing one other. Well, I’m not positive about that, but my supervisor Eunice and I, not exactly on warm and friendly terms before this, were now clasped arm and arm recounting our getaway down the chute.

“Can you believe, our skirts slid up to our waists?” said Eunice in a voice all giggly and girlish, a woman normally about as giggly and girlish as a sumo wrestler.

The passengers who were seated in the middle of the plane were the ones that had really gotten the raw end of the deal. They had been forced to de-plane via the wings, by jumping twenty feet onto the tarmac. Several were injured, including one man who suffered a broken leg and sprained spine.

One family with a tiny infant and toddler was having a joyous reunion, extraordinary under the circumstances since the wife had grabbed the toddler, but the husband had jumped off the plane alone, leaving the baby behind to die in the explosion or be rescued by a passing good Samaritan. If I were his wife, I would've been searching for the nearest lawyer to initiate divorce proceedings, but I suppose some people are more forgiving than others.

Of course all of this could have been avoided. Personally, I blame the steward. What happened to that calm, cool demeanor that airline employees are supposed to maintain under any and all circumstances? Where was that droning voice that normally puts everyone to sleep, who could’ve made an announcement like, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're experiencing a few mechanical problems, so if you would calmly proceed to the nearest exit …"?

Later that night, safely back in Arusha, I told my housemates Katie and Stacy about my harrowing experience. Apparently, I’d failed to adequately express the true terror I’d felt since Stacy's reaction was, "Wow! You got to slide down the chute! Cool! I've always wanted to do that."

"Was it fun?" Katie asked.

"Not really. It was actually very terrified…" I started to explain.

"Good old Air Labda," said Stacy.

The National Park no one has ever heard of...Lassen Volcanic National Park, California

Fifteen Minutes Can Last Forever

I originally published this essay in Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures:  Funny Women Write From the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides 2003).  It is a true story, although when it happened to me, it certainly wasn't very funny at the time.

The day that I nearly drowned after my raft flipped on rapid number one of twenty-six mostly Class V rapids, and I was sucked and held under the Zambezi River for what seemed like hours, I had assumed this was my one brush with death on my first trip to Africa. But just one week later, in pursuit of what a travel brochure had promised as the "complete safari experience," I found out how wrong my assumption had been.

I was on the final leg of a six-week tour that I'd taken with Sam, a friend from the States. We'd spent four days at Kayila Lodge, a private safari camp on the banks of the Lower Zambezi River in Zambia. We'd waited until our last day to take our first walking safari into the African bush with Rolf, our guide and host.

On the jetty over coffee that morning, Rolf, a Zimbabwean, lambasted the current political situation in his country of birth. He had no use for animal rights activists who threatened his part-time livelihood, big-game hunting. Nor did he care for those "damn liberals" who wanted to redistribute land by taking it from the white settlers and giving it back to the natives.

But I wasn't interested in Rolf's politics. Oozing testosterone, he gave the impression that a barehanded scuffle with a charging Cape buffalo or a thrashing crocodile was an everyday occurrence and just part of his job. Through his square-jawed, self-assured manner, he inspired complete confidence in everything he did from serving drinks to telling bush stories late into the starry evenings. Here was a man who could deliver me unharmed from the jaws of a carnivorous beast. In short, he was the quintessential man's man and safari guide.

But it wasn't just Rolf's masculine attributes that took away any trepidation I might have had about setting off into the African outback on foot. It was my ignorance. For some reason I had the whimsical notion that a walking safari would be similar to taking a stroll around the zoo, only the cages would be missing. The animals would certainly keep a respectful distance while I could admire them at my leisure. I couldn't possibly be in any real danger.

We set out early, driving a short distance into the bush in the Land Rover. Along the way, we met up with Warrix, a game scout for Kayila. Despite the fact that this grown man was the size of a young teenaged boy, he seemed formidable, armed with an AK-47 and two strings of ammunition strapped bandit-like across his narrow chest. He joined us for our trek.

We drove farther into the bush. Rolf stopped the jeep. He grabbed a .22 and a .50 caliber rifle from the trunk, tossing the .22 to Sam. We started walking.

I heard an elephant trumpet in the distance. We walked toward the sound to a small rise and saw fifty elephants in the clearing below us. It was exhilarating to be only several hundred feet away from these lumbering giants. I asked Rolf if the elephants knew we were there. He said they didn't know and that he'd hoped it would stay that way. Because of poaching, elephants have learned to associate the scent of humans with extreme danger.

But then the wind shifted.

One of the bull elephants caught our scent, panicked and trumpeted. Rolf whipped his head around and said only one word as we locked eyes, "Run!"

Run? What do you mean run? It took me several seconds to process the fact that I was in grave danger. The person I'd entrusted my life with, Mr. Oozing Testosterone, was clearly scared stiff. It took me another second or two to realize that three men armed with one weapon each couldn't do much against a herd of fifty stampeding elephants that can reach speeds of up to thirty miles an hour. But under the circumstances, with my options being severely limited, I ran.

As quickly as possible, we climbed over vines and roots, waded through thigh-level grass, skirted around bushes, and ducked under low-hanging branches. Rolf, in the lead, constantly ordered us to stay together but I kept falling behind. My heart was pounding and adrenaline coursed through my body. I heard them but couldn't see them. The sound of elephants trumpeting and charging through the bush is deafening.

One part of me knew they were coming after us, but another part of me refused to believe it. My mind played little games telling me that all I had to do was to run for a few minutes and then I would be perfectly safe. I ran as fast as I could, but like the classic nightmare where a monster is chasing you, I felt as though I was wading through quicksand.

We reached a clearing. Rolf screamed for us to drop to the ground. We dropped. Lying in the dirt, the ground reverberated, red dust swam through the air choking me. My heart beat against the earth. I could see the elephants just sixty feet away crashing through the underbrush.

We moved out again passing a tsetse fly trap. We were about twenty feet beyond the trap when Rolf screamed for us to run back to it. We stood next to the tattered cloth soaked in poison, suspended from two rods. Rolf was hoping that this flimsy piece of fabric would somehow mask the smell of four sweating, terrified human beings from fifty frenzied elephants with their acute sense of smell. I couldn't have felt more exposed had I appeared on the Larry King Live show naked.

When the thundering died down, we ran to a nearby cluster of trees. Rolf told us the herd had separated into three groups and that we were almost completely surrounded. This was information I definitely didn't need to hear at that moment since I was in a state of near-hypoxia. I did the only thing I could. I leaned my head against a tree and prayed with every fiber of my being, muttering over and over like a crazed lunatic, "Please God, don't let me die."

We had to move out again but I was frozen with fright. Rolf gripped my shoulders, pulled me towards him and held me close. It was a scene straight from a Hollywood action romance flick minus the obligatory passionate kiss and the fact that my hair was plastered to my face with sweat, my eyes bugged out with fear, and I looked like a zombie possessed.

"I know where to shoot an elephant to drop it. I've killed them before. Just stay close. But whatever you do, don't run if an elephant jumps out!" he said.

Elephants jumping out of bushes! I knew they were smart but I didn't know they were capable of hiding, lying in wait, and then launching a planned attack like a platoon of Marines.

We quietly sprinted, ducked, and tiptoed gingerly along the twenty-five-foot-high expanse of bushes, made it past, and continued on. We reached a ten-foot-tall termite mound and stopped there. Rolf said the jeep was nearby and he went off alone to get it. By this time, my emotions and the adrenaline had caught up with me and I started crying. Warrix told me I shouldn't cry because, "Madame did good."

Finally, fifteen minutes after Rolf had first ordered us to run, he drove up in the jeep. It was ten in the morning and we hadn't eaten a thing, but it seemed like the perfect time to start drinking. We each grabbed a forty-ounce Tusker from the cooler tucked under the back seat. I drank mine in about three minutes flat. It had no effect on me. I had another, not even a buzz.

At brunch an hour later, Rolf was back to his swaggering, you-call-that-a-brush-with-death self, although he'd confessed during our drinking binge that he'd had many close calls but none this close. On a scale from one to ten, with a ten described by Rolf as the four of us "looking like pieces of bacon after being gored and stomped to death," we were at nine. He'd almost shot an elephant during our ordeal so we could crawl up against the carcass to mask our smell from the rest of the herd. What a pleasant thought. Exactly how long were we supposed to stay in that position? Until the corpse began rotting and crawling with maggots? Until the vultures picked it clean? For the rest of our lives?

Many people hope for Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame. But if this experience taught me anything, it's to heed the old adage, be careful what you wish for. Sometimes fifteen minutes can last far longer than you want it to.