The Best American Travel Writing 2012

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Foreword

Introduction

MONTE REEL
How to Explore Like a Real Victorian Adventurer

PETER GWIN
The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu

HENRY SHUKMAN
Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden

ELLIOTT D. WOODS
Garbage City

THOMAS SWICK
My Days with the Anti-Mafia

ROBIN KIRK
City of Walls

J. MALCOLM GARCIA
Now Ye Know Who the Bosses Are Here Now

PAUL THEROUX
The Wicked Coast

MICHAEL GORRA
Letter from Paris

KENAN TREBINCEVIC
The Reckoning

BRYAN CURTIS
The Tijuana Sports Hall of Fame

KIMBERLY MEYER
Holy City of the Wichitas

DIMITER KENAROV
Memento Mori

PICO IYER
Maximum India

LYNN FREED
Keeping Watch

LUKE DITTRICH
Walking the Border

MARK JENKINS
Amundsen Schlepped Here

MARK JENKINS
Conquering an Infinite Cave

AARON DACYTL
Railroad Semantics

Contributors' Notes

Notable Travel Writing of 2011

About the Editors

Copyright © 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Introduction copyright © 2012 by William T. Vollmann

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

The Best American Series
^®
is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
The Best American Travel Writing
™ is a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

 

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ISSN
1530-1516

ISBN
978-0-547-80897-0

 

e
ISBN
978-0-547-80913-7
v1.1012

 

“The Tijuana Sports Hall of Fame” by Bryan Curtis. First published in
Grantland
, September 20, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Bryan Curtis. Reprinted by permission of Bryan Curtis.

“Railroad Semantics” by Aaron Dactyl. First published in
Railroad Semantics
#5. Copyright © 2011 by Aaron Dactyl. Reprinted by permission of Microcosm Publishing.

“Walking the Border” by Luke Dittrich. First published in
Esquire
, May 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Luke Dittrich. Reprinted by permission of Luke Dittrich.

“Keeping Watch” by Lynn Freed. First published in
Harper's
, January 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Lynn Freed. Reprinted by permission of William Morris Endeavor.

“Now Ye Know Who the Bosses Are Here Now” by J. Malcolm Garcia. First published in
McSweeney's
. Copyright © 2011 by J. Malcolm Garcia. Reprinted by permission of J. Malcolm Garcia.

“Letter from Paris” by Michael Gorra. First published in the
Hudson Review
, Vol. LXIV, No. 2 (Summer 2011). Copyright © 2011 by The Hudson Review, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the
Hudson Review
.

“The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu” by Peter Gwin. First published in
National Geographic
, January 2011. Copyright © 2011 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permission of National Geographic Society.

“Maximum India” by Pico Iyer. First published in
Condé Nast Traveler
, January 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Pico Iyer. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Amundsen Schlepped Here” by Mark Jenkins. First published in
Outside
, October 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Mark Jenkins. Reprinted by permission of Mark Jenkins.

“Conquering an Infinite Cave” by Mark Jenkins. First published in
National Geographic
, January 2011. Copyright © 2011 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permission of National Geographic Society.

“Memento Mori” by Dimiter Kenarov. First published in
The
Believer
. Copyright © 2011 by Dimiter Kenarov. Reprinted by permission of Dimiter Kenarov.

“The American Scholar” by Robin Kirk. First published in
City of Walls
, Autumn 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Robin Kirk. Reprinted by permission of Robin Kirk.

“Holy City of the Wichitas” by Kimberly Meyer. First published in
Ecotone
11. Copyright © 2011 by Kimberly Meyer. Reprinted by permission of Kimberly Meyer.

“How to Explore Like a Real Victorian Adventurer” by Monte Reel. First published in
The
Believer,
Vol. 84, October 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Monte Reel. Reprinted by permission of Monte Reel.

“Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden” by Henry Shukman. First published in
Outside
, February 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Henry Shukman. Reprinted by permission of Henry Shukman.

“My Days with the Anti-Mafia” by Thomas Swick. First published in the
Missouri Review,
Winter 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Swick. Reprinted by permission of Thomas Swick.

“The Wicked Coast” by Paul Theroux. First published in the
Atlantic
, June 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Paul Theroux. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

“The Reckoning” by Kenan Trebincevic. First published in the
New York Times Magazine
, December 4, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by the
New York Times
. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this content without express written permission is prohibited.

“Garbage City” by Elliott D. Woods. First published in
VQR
, Spring 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Elliott D. Woods. Reprinted by permission of Elliott D. Woods.

W
ITH EACH PASSING YEAR
, we seem to reach another strange milestone in the evolution of travel. I have been seized by this thought each year during the process of putting together another edition of this anthology, and it never ceases to amaze me how much travel has changed since we began publishing
The Best American Travel Writing
in 1999.

This past year it struck me as I was browsing the App Store, downloading English-Spanish editions of popular voice-activated translator apps for my iPhone and iPad. I was doing this at the behest of an editor, who had asked me to test out these apps during a trip to Spain.

Since I was genuinely embarrassed at how badly my Spanish had deteriorated over the years, I was hopeful that the trio of apps I was downloading—Google Translate, SpeechTrans, and Jibbigo—might work better than the reviews suggested. I briefly considered a fourth, iLingual—one in which you take a photo of your mouth and then hold the iPhone or iPod Touch up to your face while the screen animates your lips in the foreign language. Thankfully, for my dignity's sake, I couldn't find iLingual for Spanish, only in French, German, and Arabic.

Eating breakfast at my kitchen table a few days before departure, I gave Jibbigo—the speech-to-speech translator that seemed the most user-friendly on the iPad—a test spin.

“I'm eating French toast,” I said slowly, trying to be clear.

“I need in French toast” is what Jibbigo transcribed on its screen, which then spoke in a sultry female voice:
“Necesito francés en tostada.”

I shushed my kids, who were watching cartoons, and turned down the TV—I'd read that background noise really threw speech-to-speech translators off. Once it was silent, I again pushed the red Record button on the screen. “I am eating French toast,” I said, even more slowly and with as much enunciation as I could muster.

“All right and even French toast,” Jibbigo transcribed on its screen.
“Está bien incluso y pan tostado francés,”
said Sultry Voice.

“Noooo!” Now my kids began laughing at me and Jibbigo.

One of my sons grabbed the iPad. “Mom, are you cutting pears in the kitchen?” he said through the app to his mother, who was indeed cutting pears in the kitchen. “Are you hiding Harrods in the kitchen?” wrote Jibbigo, which Sultry Voice dutifully said in a bizarre game of mistranslation-down-the-lane.

By then my kids were hysterical. I grabbed the iPad back, pressed the red button, and shouted, “Go get dressed and ready for school!”

“Do you just ready for school?” translated Jibbigo.
“Solo la lista para la escuela?”
said the voice. “Ahhhhhh!”

Needless to say, I was not particularly optimistic about the utility of a speech-to-speech translator during my journeys through the wine regions of Ribera del Duero and Toro. But I was determined to give it a try.

My first chance to use the app—once I'd gotten off the plane and through customs with a mere
“Buenos dias”
—was at the rental car counter. As I approached it, I spoke slowly to Jibbigo. “I have reserved a rental car for Mr. Wilson,” I said.

“I have reserved a rental car for Mr. Wilson,” transcribed Jibbigo.
“He reservado un coche de alquiler para el Señor Wilson
,” purred the sultry voice.

Okay! I thought. Here we go! Maybe I'd misjudged Jibbigo. Maybe this was all going to work out fine! Reaching the counter, I hit play.    “Yeah, we have that reservation,” said the young woman behind the counter. In English. She raised an eyebrow at me. “And no worries, sir. I speak English at a high level.”

In fact, in most interactions with tourist-service people—hotel clerks, taxi drivers, cashiers—a speech-to-speech translator was very unnecessary. Basic, polite high school Spanish worked just fine. Jibbigo usually just complicated matters.

In a crowded, noisy café I asked Jibbigo, “May I have a café con leche?” and Jibbigo responded with “May I have a tactical mentioned?” To which Sultry Voice said,
“Puede darme un tactical mencionado?”
Of course, I'd accidentally thrown off Jibbigo by not saying “coffee with milk.”

So I simply said,
“Café con leche, por favor,”
to the guy behind the counter—and it all worked out fine.

At one point, driving through a toll plaza, I figured I'd use the translator to ask the toll-taker whether I was going the right way. I pulled out the iPad and said, “Is this the right road for Valladolid?” Jibbigo transcribed, “Is this the right road for liability?” and Sultry Voice said,
“Es este el camino correcto para el obligatorio?”

The toll-taker looked at me like I was nuts. So instead I did what many Americans do in a foreign country—I pointed wildly ahead and said, loudly, “Valladolid!?”

“Si, si. Claro,”
the toll-taker said.

Again I knew I'd complicated matters by saying the name of the city rather than just “Is this the correct road?” But honestly, it's not easy to remember Jibbigo's limitations when you're holding up a line of traffic.

This is not to say that all my interactions with translation apps were unsuccessful. In a tapas bar in León, I used Google Translate to help with a nice, informative conversation with the bartender about the Prieto Picudo wines of the region. The bar was so noisy—with Barcelona's league-title-clinching game blaring on the TV—that Jibbigo or SpeechTrans would have been useless.

With Google Translate, I kept surreptitiously tapping my questions and conversation cues into the iPod Touch as the guy poured another customer's drink. It simply looked as if I were perhaps texting friends at another bar. When the barman returned, I had my queries all mapped out in my head.

I did this in a couple of other situations too, and what I realized is that because I already have some competency in Italian, I often knew more Spanish words than I thought. The translation apps helped me fill in the blanks and formulate more coherent sentences. Still, I'm not sure how much they'd help a complete beginner with only
Sesame Street
Spanish.

In the end, there was one situation, a casual dinner-party scenario, in which Jibbigo was relatively useful—and enlightening. I was drinking wine in an ancient wine cellar near Toro, Spain, with a young organic winemaker named Maria. She makes a lovely Toro wine called Volvoreta, which means “butterfly” (and which Jibbigo translated as “Buddha actor”).