Salon Wanderlust | Your money's no good here

A complete list of Salon's Money Week coverage
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Your money's no good here
By Tim Cahill
Travels in a cashless culture
Fantasy isle
By Stephen G. Bloom
You can vacation with Oprah, Demi and Arnold -- for a price
D E P A R T M E N T S
The Surreal Gourmet
By Bob Blumer
Champagne taste on a McDonald's budget
Mondo Weirdo
Searching for roots at the bottom of the boot
Road Warrior
Business travel & beyond
Table Talk
Is there too much testosterone blowing around the windy city? Join the "Chicago: Ease up on the Testosterone" discussion in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk.

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Your virtual travel agency

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LA S T+W E E K
Tuesday, Oct. 21, 1997

Women's dilemma
By Dawn MacKeen
Is solo travel worth the risk?
A full list of all
Wanderlust articles

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[Illustration by Trisha Krauss]

____Y O U R_M O N E Y ' S
_________no good here
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_____ VISITING A CASHLESS CULTURE
_____ PROVIDES NEW PERSPECTIVES ON
_____ OUR SENSE OF MONEY AND SELF.

BY TIM CAHILL | "they went that-a-way, chief."
I kept walking, checking addresses. This was in New York City, on Fifth Avenue, somewhere around 50th Street, and I was looking for an unfamiliar address. My attire, I felt, may have been inappropriate.
"Chief! Hey, chief. I'm talking to you."
The man was walking behind me, breathing into my neck. "They went that-a-way, chief."
I half turned. The person pursuing me wore a dirty trench coat and a black watch cap. His curly red hair bunched out around his neck in that peculiar '70s style reminiscent of Bozo the Clown.
"Who?" I asked. "Who went where?"
"The buffalo there, chief." He pointed west on 50th. "They went that-a-way."
My unique attire had convinced this gentleman that I was a particularly homely and pale-skinned American Indian. He was, I figured, one of those panhandlers who feels that he must entertain you in exchange for a handout. I was carrying a primitive, but unconcealed, weapon on my shoulder. Something you might use to hunt buffalo.
"So," the man said, "you got any spare change for me, chief?"
Out where I come from -- a little town located between the Crow and Blackfeet reservations -- you don't call anyone chief.
"Yeah," I said. "I got something for you. Just let me get my pack off."

All this happened nearly 20 years ago, and the best way to understand what I'm talking about is to put yourself in my boots. Like this:
For reasons that, to this day, have never been adequately explained, you've been given an assignment to travel out of state and out of country to a place somewhere at the end of the earth and at the beginning of time, where you are expected to make contact with persons living in one of the few pre-technological, pre-industrial societies left on the face of the planet. Upon your return, your job is to write an article about this peculiar journey and the people you've met. In what ways, the assigning magazine editors want to know, are these folks different from us? In what ways are they similar?
Because you are relatively young and not the most experienced reporter who has ever lived, these editors -- the sadistic bastards -- expect a report immediately upon your return from this strange sortie into the past.
The editors work in New York City. You live in one of those big square states out in the middle of fly-over country. The airplane tickets they've sent you show a scheduled stop in New York on the return leg. Your instructions are to deplane, cab into the city, meet with the editors for a few hours, then get the hell out. Cab back to the airport and flee.
You figure this is a big deal in your reportorial career: the first foreign assignment. The editors have never actually seen you and all the arrangements have been made over the phone. The editors, you suspect, probably wear pinstriped power suits. You yourself don't actually own a suit and feel that these men and women, who have the power to withhold payment, will undoubtedly peg you for a rube.
That's the deal. The question is: What clothes do you pack? Your trip will take you to the high, wind-whipped plains of El Mundo Perdido, the Lost World, the area where Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana all come together on the map. It will be cold: near freezing some nights. It will be humid and hot in the lowlands. In the mountains, which rise to 10,000 feet, it should rain every day. Or snow. To get where you are going, you will have to walk. For weeks.
So you'll need a backpack. Stuff it full of tropical gear. And for the cold and rain you'll want quick-drying long underwear, fleece pullovers and pants, along with top quality rain gear. Freeze-dried food. Stove. Fuel. Mountain boots. Sleeping bag, mat, tent. Dishes, utensils, first-aid kit and water purifying tablets.
The question is: Are you going to take a sport coat, tie, slacks and tasseled loafers for your meeting with the editors? Stuff this stuff in the bottom of your backpack and hump it over the mountains and through the rain? For one two-hour meeting?
Naaaahhhh.
Which is how, two decades ago, I came to be walking down Fifth Avenue, in New York on a November afternoon, wearing a seriously soiled rain jacket and my waffle stomper boots (still caked with red South American mud). I was carrying a backpack and a set of lightweight pre-industrial weapons that consisted of a weathered bow and a long, thin, woven basket containing 20 arrows. None of the stuff I was carrying fit in an airport locker, and anyway, the weight didn't bother me much. I'd already carried it halfway around the Western Hemisphere.

N E X T+P A G E+| Reverse culture shock
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ILLUSTRATION BY TRISHA KRAUSS