In Search Of An Exotic Animal
Before I die, I want to see a platypus. If you don’t know what a platypus is, just imagine that a beaver and a duck decide to rent a cheap hotel for a night, and …
Torre DeRoche is the author of two travel memoirs, Love with a Chance of Drowning (2013) and The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World (due out September 2017). She has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian Travel, The Sydney Morning Herald, Emirates, and two Lonely Planet anthologies.
Before I die, I want to see a platypus. If you don’t know what a platypus is, just imagine that a beaver and a duck decide to rent a cheap hotel for a night, and …
Some say those who journey into dangerous places are ‘stupid’ and I won’t argue with that description. ‘Nuts’ is another popular adjective, and ‘crazy douche bag’ packs a nice punch, don’t you think? I admit that I’m all of those things. But I’m also a big coward.
We were in the middle of the Egyptian desert and the day had been perfect, so when we saw electrical storms on the horizon, we figured it was a pretty scene over the dunes. I woke up just after sundown to find that rain was flooding the road ahead of us …
As with any great adventure, it began with a carefully orchestrated plan. Funds carefully procured and squirreled away, third-world-travel immunisation shots and pills carefully administered, maps carefully studied and marked up …
I’m going to die, I thought sadly. The sadness actually surprised me more than the thought itself. I wasn’t panicking, I wasn’t stressed. I wasn’t kicking and screaming with every ounce of energy I had to prevent my untimely death. I’d simply accepted that I was going to die.
It was a Sunday, and I was almost twelve. It started, like many weekend adventures do, with a phone call. “Mrs. Walsh, can Billy come out to play?” On the other line would be my best friend Ronnie – my chum of chums, and the ringleader of our little troupe of troublemakers …
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