INTERVIEWS

ADVENTURES OF A CONTINENTAL DRIFTER

Sun Post (Miami)
September 22, 2005
By Omar Sommereyns
Staff Writer

Ex-Beach Resident Tells How He Left His Job, Ditched His Stuff and Traveled the World
Picture this: You’re a fairly trusting American on vacation in Bangkok and you’ve been lured into a grimy strip joint, where you sit at the bar, minding your own business, and order a beer. Within a few seconds, you’re thinking, you don’t belong here. You should know better. The dancers are emaciated and sleazy; the patrons and bartender all look slimy. When you order your bill after just one drink, a flagrantly inflated check arrives. You complain but, suddenly, you’ve got three Thai ex-boxers standing in front of you and ready to knock you out.
 
Another scenario: You’re on a bus in Tahiti – Michael Jackson is playing on the speakers; the driver up front is smoking a big fat spliff. The only other passengers are several enormous, 250-pound transvestites with “gargantuan butts,” resembling a twisted version of Gauguin’s Tahitian women. Problem is, one of them can’t get her (his?) eyes off you and seems to have an indomitable urge to jump your bones.

Now, back at Books & Books on Miami Beach, an audience listens attentively as author Elliott Hester reads these stories and others culled from his new book, Adventures of a Continental Drifter: An Around-the-World Excursion into Weirdness, Danger, Lust, and the Perils of Street Food. The crowd is entranced, occasionally laughing at the off-kilter details in these anecdotes, and momentarily taking a vicarious trip from their quotidian (and oft-mundane) routines.
 
Hester accomplished something most of us merely envision in daily reveries at lunch hour, while internally grumbling about the tedium of nine-to-five. The former flight attendant quit his job; vacated his Miami Beach apartment; sold his belongings, including his car; gave his clothes to a homeless shelter, his books to the Miami-Dade Public Library and became a, well, “continental drifter.” Since October 2002, he’s been traveling the world and claims no steady home.
 
Technically still employed by American Airlines, yet taking what he has dubbed a “permanent leave of absence,” Hester has eschewed the rat race and isn’t going back anytime soon.

“As a flight attendant, I was able to see so many places, but I only really got to see glimpses,” Hester said, talking to the SunPost before his reading at Books & Books a week ago. “I wanted to see more – go back to the places I’d frequented, but never really understood.
 
“I noticed, in this society, that there’s an extreme desire for material things. I think we all have too much stuff – you know, the accumulation of the plasma TV, new digital toys and such…and when I gave up everything, I started to realize how unimportant having all that was. It really taught me a lesson about freedom. For the first time in my life, I had no keys.”
 
Hester seemed very sentient and critical of the systematic approach to living in society – go to school, get a job and eventually retire. He saw that all along, especially in the United States, people are submerged in debt yet consistently tempted by pervasive marketing and advertising to get the “better” product. Hester saw the futility in this and decided to escape.

“We have a disturbing attachment to buying things that are unnecessary and then showing them off to our friends and family as some sort of sign like, ‘Look I’ve made it,’” he said.

A former Salon.com columnist and recipient of the Lowell Thomas Silver Award for outstanding travel essay, Hester’s articles have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Details and Caribbean Travel & Life. He also writes “Continental Drifter,” a syndicated travel column that runs in 50 dailies including the Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald and Philadelphia Inquirer.
 
In Adventures of a Continental Drifter, Hester travels the globe, passing through Argentina, Australia, French Polynesia, India, Egypt, Russia, Italy and other countries, describing his exploits, mishaps and encounters in fluid, often-humorous prose. The only baggage he carries is a backpack and a duffel bag, which contains Lonely Planet guidebooks, an iPod, a digital camera, a laptop and a minimal amount of clothes (which he often gives away to the needy and replaces accordingly).“There are better books out there if you want to learn about the politics of the place,” he said. “This is a book about stories, about the people I met along the way and how my life is affected by meeting these people.”
 
Hester’s stories are written without pretense from the perspective of a curious, open-minded American who genuinely wants to learn about other cultures. In “Being Samuel L. Jackson,” locals he meets convince him to impersonate the famed actor at the 38th annual International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. To boot, he gets a stretch limousine and four real bodyguards, and ends up having dinner with Evetu Bartosovou, a prominent pop star from the Czech Republic.
 
In “Black Russian,” the locals on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, Russia, are utterly fascinated by the blackness of Hester’s skin and insistently (well, perhaps ironically), grab him for photo-ops. Later, at a nightclub, he’s almost seduced by a Russian prostitute, but can’t seem to communicate because of the language barrier.
 
Hester makes light of the frustrations induced by unfavorable living conditions, such as in “Snoring in Paradise”: He’s staying at a Club Med – the planned community of vacations – in Moorea Island, French Polynesia, and wakes up one morning to find a stranger’s briefcase in his room. Turns out he didn’t read the fine print, and a French G.O. (Group Organizer) lets him know that “‘zingal’-room status allows for guest pairing.” His new roommate ends up being an affable Canadian – but with a torturous snoring problem.
 
“I think every American should live or at least spend some time out of the United States because, first, you start to appreciate what you have in this country and, also, you get to see your country from a different set of eyes.”
Referring to when the U.S. first attacked Iraq, Hester said he was able to see how the world observed his country.
 
“Most were actively against the war, but it wasn’t directed to me as an individual, more toward government.” On the beach in Indonesia, he added, a country where there’s a massive Muslim population, a little kid walked up to him and showed the front page of The Jakarta Post: images of Iraqi children that had been blown to bits, missing legs and arms.
 
 “You didn’t see any of those photographs in the United States,” he said. “If people were allowed to see those shots, there might have been more of an outrage because you’d see tangible evidence of what’s going on.”
 
Many Americans – essentially those with means – travel as tourists on lavish trips (often packaged ones) to experience some sort of getaway from routine. At the Books & Books reading, audience member Javier Torres asked Hester to define the difference between a tourist and a traveler. For some reason, the author didn’t elaborate, but mentioned travelers tend to stay away longer and have less money. Torres added, “But the traveler also leaves richer as an individual, while the tourist stays the same.”
 
During his SunPost interview, Hester had echoed that view: “I think most people need to have a home base and be around familiar people and surroundings, but there’s a time in many of our lives where we should benefit from going off and exploring.”


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