I met the author through his podcast, Personal Landscapes: Conversations on Books About Place, which included interviews with some of my favorite authors: Paul Theroux on Orwell and Burma Sahib, Thomas Swick: Life in Cold War Poland, Nicholas Shakespeare on Ian Fleming, Barnaby Rogerson: The making of the Middle East and Jeremy Bassetti: Pilgrims on Bolivia’s Hill of Skulls.
Murdock’s latest book, A Sunny Place for Shady People, takes place in Malta and blends travel writing and political reportage to show why a journalist was killed in broad daylight in a tiny European Union member state. But I chose Vagabond Dreams because it takes place in my favorite part of the world, Central America. It was the beginning of wanderlust for both of us. Murdock started his journey in 2000 when he was 28, and I was 23 when I entered Guatemala with the Peace Corps in 1971. Similar ages, but very different times, and yet I recognized and felt a connection to many of the places he visited.
Murdock starts his book with an excellent description of the misperceptions that exist about Central America:
At the time I went there, Central America was a place of shady geography for most North Americans: a land of violent revolutions, of Sandinistas, and contras, of military intervention and a kidnapped dictator. Drama for the eleven o’clock news. Beyond that, what? One of the many gauge regions where coffee comes from?
His description a travel writer assured me this was the author I wanted to follow, “Every traveler is, in a sense, an anthropologist: a bridger of cultures, a recorder of customs, a fieldworker immersed in the incredible diversity of human life, searching for understanding and experience.”
Murdock’s travel memoir focuses on the relationships he developed with the people he met. He sets off alone in the Darien Gap in southern Panama and takes us through his personal transformation during a carefree week with new friends on Corn Island in the Caribbean Sea off Nicaragua. He lets go of culturally bred inhibitions with colorful depictions of characters he met, like Zack, an outgoing, uninhibited Chicagoan. Other memorable characters include Jack Romano, a socially awkward hanger, and Ivannia Gonzales, a beautiful 19-year-old Costa Rican who is his love interest, and whose family takes him in with a pair of like-minded Slovenia women.
A country is often known for its fine liquor in one form or another, which was the case of Nicaragua, where Victory Beer looked quite communist.” … It had a plain revolutionary-looking label painted directly onto the bottle. Exactly the kind of bottle I’d imagine would be produced in a third world, formerly communist republic. In retrospect, it was the best-tasting beer that I drank in Central America.”
Flor de Caña was symbolic of Nicaragua for both of us. Murdock describes one drink with this local elixir: “The rum transmitted through its very genes the essence of the Caribbean. It released and mellowed me. It slowed me down and pushed my irritability to a distant place. It made me realize that it had all been in my head.”
Murdock gets philosophical as the story progresses: “We all ponder the meaning of life now and then, but to do so armed with a bottle of the world’s smoothest rum is considerably more enlightening than to do so without.” He has a point…
According to Murdock, Nicaragua served the best food, “The plantain held a natural sweetness—a hint of bananas baked in brown sugar – which the butter brought to life and caused to run down my chin in a rich oily sheen. The meat fell apart in my mouth and left an aftertaste of charcoal that lingered in the nose. The cost of all this: one dollar.”
Murdock also described life’s seamy side: “But of course, naivety and daydreams had to be balanced by harsh reality. You couldn’t airbrush out the unpleasantness: the poverty, the petty crime, the ugliness, and the dirt, the fact that people drank too much. All you could do was accept it and wait. Given a bit of time, that too would pass.”
The author shares an uncomplimentary conversation between two Peace Corps volunteers. “I’m working in this village diggin’ latrines, tryin’ to teach these people about sanitation.” He said the word ‘sanitation ‘ as though he’d read it in a manual somewhere… He says that one of the villagers works hard, “But the rest, what a bunch of lazy fucks.” Another volunteer chimes in with, “They’re so fuckin ‘ stupid.”
Social commentary includes the clash of cultures, “Silicon Civilization exists purely on the surface. It has no real depth. Grey factories and mirrored office towers crank and shuffle night and day, churning out weak backs, environmental allergies, fibromyalgia, hypertension, and obesity—lifestyle diseases of overfed and under exerted…”
Things were different in Latin America, according to Murdock. “Life wasn’t sterile… The Third World streets were raw and primal, and they taught me the essence of Life—of Life stripped down to absolutes, to necessities.”
When Murdock finally arrived in my favorite country, Guatemala, his description of what he didn’t see was enlightening. He was told to go to backpackers’ “paradise” on Lake Atitlan, San Pedro:
“In hindsight, I’m glad I never went. When I finally got to Guatemala, I learned that San Pedro had very little to do with the life of that country. Even the locals mockingly referred to it as “gringo-tenango.” Those backpacker places were always the same. The people who stayed there went on and on about some village in the highlands where they were the only foreigners, where they couldn’t speak the dialect, and where they got ringworm and dysentery. They sat up all night arguing about who found the most “authentic” culture, and they thought they were terribly original. But Everyone with Lonely Plant was doing the same thing. In their self-professed originality, they were simply identifying with a group of like-minded others. It’s not hard to be different with a support group.
At the end of the book, Murdock tells us what he hopes to accomplish (and he did): “I work hard to ensure that travel writing draws larger connections to our lives as a whole, and I hope each piece leaves my readers with meaningful insights that continue to resonate long after they’ve turned the last page. Travel writing without meaning bores me.”
About the Author
Ryan Murdock has written about travel, culture, and the world’s marginal places for over 20 years. His journeys have taken him to 78 countries, including desert expeditions and long solo trips through Central America and East and Southeast Asia.
He is Editor-at-Large (Europe) for Outpost, Canada’s national travel magazine, where his popular print column “Adrift on the Continent” explores odd corners of Europe, strange bits of political, human or physical geography that are largely unknown to Canadian readers. His feature articles have taken him across a remote stretch of Canada’s Northwest Territories on foot, into the Central Sahara in search of prehistoric rock art, and around Wales with a drug squad detective hunting for the real King Arthur. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
About the Reviewer
Mark Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world. Walker’s three books are Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, named Best Travel Book, and The Guatemala Reader: Extraordinary Lives and Amazing Stories. He’s written 80 book reviews, and of his 30 published essays, two were recognized by the Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing. He’s a contributing writer for “The Wanderlust Journal,” “Literary Traveler,” and “The Great Writers You Should be Reading.” His column, “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading and Why,” is part of the Arizona Authors Association newsletter. His honors include the “Service Above Self” award from Rotary International. He’s a Board member of SEEDS for a Future, Advance Guatemala, and the Arizona Authors Association. His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com