Upon arrival there was an international incident concerning the binoculars. A little known fact is that in Jordan binoculars are right up there with machine guns and grenades as instruments of war. Security was called, and under intense questioning and promises of never ever to take my binoculars out of my suitcase no matter how many interesting birds were flying past, and much swiping for powder traces, and much examination of the stamps and visas in my suspicious Swiss passport, I was finally allowed into the kingdom.

Aqaba town is small and in a state of arrested development. There are mom-and-pop shops selling blown up plastic buoys and sea-horses. These are known as “swimming tools.”  There are relaxing terraces under mimosa trees where men lounge around with their bubbling hookahs. There is a faint smell of petroleum in the air.

Restaurants are quite friendly even though there are no alcoholic refreshments to be had. Sometimes there are no toilets or hot drinks to be had either. The filled falafels and flat breads were delicious.

And then came the highlight of our short sojourn—our one day road trip to Petra. The rental was picked up the evening before; a boxed breakfast was arranged; and we set out in the deep dark before dawn for the 2-hour drive north.

Now, I really should have been paying more attention to the Aqaba population stocking up on Chinese quilts, blankets, ski jackets, hats, mittens and Bedouin fleece-lined capes the day before. Something was definitely up.

As it turns out, I guess I must be about the only tourist in the whole wide world (except perhaps for Lawrence of Arabia who was busy waving a switch and riding a camel side-saddle) who has travelled long and hard to Petra and has not had her picture taken in front of ANYTHING. Not the Treasury, not the Monastery, not the Theatre, not even a donkey.

I didn’t even really SEE the towering sandstone carvings as my glasses were so wet and fogged-up due to the driving sleet and rain. The mists were hanging low over the biblical wilderness. You couldn’t actually look UP as drowning was a hideous possibility.

Before the camera got totally water-logged and gave up the ghost, there is one scowling snap of me wearing a too-small “one-size-fits -all” blue plastic raincoat bought from the souvenir stand for about $600. (US) (The umbrellas were double that.) It stopped well above my knees.

My pants were frozen, sodden and sticking to my legs; my fingers were like carrots wrapped around my walking sticks; I am standing ankle-deep in the river running down the Siq to the wonder-of-the-world Nabataean necropolis. The temperature is hovering just below zero degrees. The High Place of Sacrifice was snow-dusted.  

Arriving at the centre of the site we were met with filthy-tempered drenched camels and unmanned souvenir stalls. The colourful painted bowls were overflowing with ice-water and the head-scarfs hung sodden and dripping.

I have surprisingly fond memories of Jordan in January. We might even go back.

When the nightmares came to get me last night, I was being chased by a giraffe.

Now, this just might have to do with reading an article about food in Namibia. It seems the braaivleis is very popular, and ostrich, springbok and crocodile are all delicious delicacies that can feature in this mixed-grill BBQ. In the traditional three-legged hot-pot bubbling over the open fire (the potjiekos), you can find just about anything. There doesn’t seem to be much of a vegetarian option except in May and June when Kalahari truffles MIGHT appear.

There is a diverse range of opinion concerning our upcoming Namibia trip. As usual, it is home-planned. There is no group, no guide, no guru. There is a map, a tube of Cenovis and a bag of caramels. I got binoculars for my birthday.

The children, of course, think we are mad.  The grandchildren think we are lucky ducks and have asked for a manatee to be brought home.

Friends have offered various pieces of advice and practical information. Yvonne gave us the tip to smear peppermint oil up our noses to deal with the stink of the seals in Skeleton Coast. Helen said to take tons of warm clothes as she almost froze to death at night. Nick said to beware of slippery, dusty, blind corners. And Charles just took out his phone and reeled through hours of videos of galloping herds and flocks of birds.

We will rent a car and drive. And drive. And drive. All lodges are booked and people keep sending cheerful messages that they are waiting in great anticipation for our imminent arrival. They seem friendly and concerned.

The usual Namibian desert disaster is getting a punctured tire due to the gravel roads. We must check the rental for the spare, and make sure there is a jack. In Namibia there are almost no people and gas stations are as rare as hens’ teeth, so you must change the flat yourself while the zebras, elephants and antelopes look on in wonder and admiration.

But we are old hands at this. Some years back, they reluctantly rented us a minuscule car in Hokkaido, northern Japan. It was not much bigger than those toy cars you see rich children driving around in Doha airport. The tires were the size of dinner plates, and sure enough, the inadvertent sudden presence of a misplaced curb, resulted in a busted tire.

Yes, there was a spare (it was the size of a saucer) but no jack. As one of us held up the little car and the other went scavenging for rocks to hold it up, we were saved by a nice man in a pickup calling out “Jack-o? Jack-0?”

We dropped the rocks and the car and smiled warmly.

So let the adventure begin! Heat, dust, and punctures will be offset by quiver trees and wildebeests and lilac-breasted rollers. They also say that the Brötchens and the beer are delicious.

Nestled in the soft bellybutton lint of the southern Ontario summer holiday fantasy, is the primordial concept of “the cottage.”  It is a crisp-aired yet dreamy place, where you escape for a week or two. It is always “up north.” Much more than a building, it is a dose of mental medicine that untangles your knotted mind from quotidian urban preoccupations and draws you back to the cry of the loon.

The cottage is built on the tranquil shores of a mussel-fresh lake. It is made of wood and surrounded by trees. There is no lawn, but rather a deep carpet of pine needles with the occasional trillium or jack-in-the-pulpit poking through. There is a stony path leading down to the boat house where there is a crumbling dock and an old canoe. The shore is pebbly. There are braided rugs and painted wooden chairs.

I vividly recall my first childhood cottage: it had no refrigerator. Instead, the iceman came with a block of sawdust-crusted ice that with a great forceps-type instrument he placed in a drawer underneath a smelly cabinet.  It took a week for the block to swelter slowly away. It was magic.

So, with great interest and excitement, I have lived the cottage life vicariously this past week, as my sister took an assortment of family members “up to the lake”.  It seems things have progressed in my absence.

A cottage now needs to have a lake in the vicinity, and, sure enough, Lake Huron was a short walk away from the bungalow that was part of a cottage development neighbourhood. However, municipal by-law rules on the beach can be a real party-pooper: no drinking, no smoking, no glass, no pets, no noise, no picnics, no games, no drones, no fishing. So, after finally getting to the wave-lashed beach with the kids, it can be quite challenging to have a good time.

In my sister’s party, no one was actually arrested or imprisoned, but it was a close call as an unmarked police car stopped the small family group on their way back home to inquire if alcohol was being consumed ON THE SIDEWALK by the adult male. Fortunately, the beer bottle had been emptied and discarded prior to the question, so it was moot. That the youngest child was being carried, screaming and kicking away from the water, was also a useful distraction.

Of course, there was the initial family squabble about who had to sleep in the laundry room. Then there was the visiting monster child who bashed through the rented cottage screen door threatening to kill people with the kitchen knives. This was followed by the teenager hogging the bathroom while a 6-year old had to go #2, and the inevitable rainy day monopoly game with smoked turkey thigh in a shrimp sauce for supper.

The cottage holiday is almost over now, and my sister assures me she, as ever, will be most refreshed and reinvigorated when she gets back home.

And so, the myth lives on.

Well, we had successfully motored south from Naples on the autostrada. There were the usual minor thrills: the exciting instant narrowings from two lanes to one, the huge transport trucks suddenly veering out in front to try to pass something large like themselves, and smokers (think Waterworld) tearing up from behind to stick to the back bumper flashing and honking their impatience

Just the usual uneventful Italian jaunt down to Tropea to catch a few days of sun, buy some sweet red onions and  soak up some Mediterranean blue.

During the drive we made a few interesting social observations. For example, the latest successful Calabrian businessman’s automobile-of-choice is no longer the black Mercedes, but the elegant Maserati.  (The onion business must be booming.) Also, be warned. If you pull off into a small scenic Italian village expecting lunch, you will be lucky to find yourself eating a slice of old cold pizza with a bunch of bored teenagers as all proper restaurants have closed.

About twenty kilometres from our destination, we peeled off the motorway and came to the merge of the coastal highway. And right there, there was a crunching crash.

We had been rear-ended.

By the time the police arrived, the young man perpetrator had calmed down considerably.  As he had been driving his mother’s car, there had been many urgent calls home with all the latest updates. Friends, family members, and total strangers all arrived at the junction to express distress and dismay as the sun was setting into the sea.

The young man claimed he had been blinded by the sun. This might have been true, but he would have had to have been looked backwards over his right shoulder.

The cops had been called as our car papers did not belong to our rental car. The family rejoiced and dispersed, as they thought they had won on a technicality.

The police couple arrived with their red lights flashing and parked importantly in the middle of the road.  He was standard, but his female partner was wicked. Imagine a young Cher in a uniform. Her hair was long, straight and black with bangs down to her eyeballs. No silly hat. Her lipstick was fuschia. Her eye makeup was, for sure, dark and sultry but impossible to see as she was wearing aviator sunglasses with mirror lenses. Her long fingernails matched her lips and she was studded with jewellery—bracelets, rings and necklaces. Improbably, she also wore firemen’s boots.

But her attitude was the best. She was unfazed by the small amount of damage. She seemed to care little about the erroneous car papers. She wanted to get back to where she had been before the tourists had interrupted her life. A bagattella.

The sun had long-since set into the wine-dark sea and Stromboli was puffing gently when we finally reached our hotel. Climbing hungrily up the hill to the village restaurant, our holiday had finally begun.

My attention has been drawn to the fact that you are currently searching for bold new projects to help you quickly rebuild your church that burned down last month. As you have not contacted me directly, I thought I’d pitch you my ideas as I’m sure that you’re a fan of Swiss newspaper blogs and like to keep your English snappy (unlike our unfortunate Swiss president.)

Notre Dame de Paris is an old-time favourite in our family. My sister once stayed in a little fire-trap hotel that looked directly onto it and got some fantastic photos. And here in Geneva, of course, our very own St. Peter’s Cathedral is also filled with bells and timbers and also has a 19^th-century Gothic spire. We feel a very special connection.

My personal qualifications as advisor in this matter include the following: I have suffered shocking architectural calamity; I grew up in churches; and I happen to know a lot about roofs.

About the initial shock, try to stay calm and get the very best local workers lined up. In our case, we immediately called Frank and Patrice when the log pierced our house in the Haute Savoie. (You might have heard about it, it became quite a cause célèbre in the Vallée du Giffre.)

Anyway, the mess stayed in situ for many months as the insurance companies had to figure out who was to blame. I certainly hope you had insurance for your cathedral, as did the person who inadvertently started the fire (in our case it was the loggers who had piled unsecured logs up the mountainside.) Mostly, insurance companies do not want to pay anything and try to claim that the accident was an act of God. In your case they might have a point.

About church knowledge, as a preacher’s kid in Canada, my Sundays were spent listening to Bible stories. So the proposition of a new spire being a carbon fibre and gold leaf permanent flame symbol is a really bad one. The most exciting Biblical flames are the horrifying, tormenting eternal flames of Hell. And they are really quite depressing when compared to the glorious and positive power of the sun.

Which brings me to my roof-knowledge which has been born out of our long political battle to get solar panels on our roof here in the Geneva countryside. We have finally won, but the Department of Monuments people can be a real pain in the butt. You will probably have lots of hassle with them too, but in my opinion, solar panels would really be the way to go.

Of course, they won’t let you have the normal, ordinary, ugly, Chinese, shiny-black ones, but you could try to get the new, classic, orange-clay coloured, French-made ones. They are bit less efficient, but much more beautiful. Just think, yours could be the first cathedral that is helping to save our planet. I think the idea is a real winner.

There are no signposts in Cuba and you should always take a local guide with you on even the simplest of walks; otherwise, you could become lost in the fields and end up chopping sugar cane and living in a rural commune for the rest of your life.

The overture of the walk meant finding a muddy spur road at the top of the hill. The air was clean and the sun was comforting. We stepped into our first orange puddles with a feeling of calm, brave stalwartness. As the path became a lake, mild adventure took over and barbed wire fences were crossed as the path disappeared. We were mildly lost and got fearless soakers.

We were saved by a group of riders as they bumped and splashed along on their rented horses, losing objects from their pockets and grimacing in terror. We followed them and broke out onto the upper plateau: Butterflies, birds, vistas. I sang an aria that expressed my exuberance in the midst of such great natural beauty.

After the first intermission (where beer was served) the trails then converged and, suddenly, there was a plethora of horse-tourists. All politeness had vanished, and a cowboy brushed too close and kicked me in the backpack.

A word was spoken to express annoyance and the Cuban horse-tour primo uomo became deeply, darkly angry. His solo from the saddle expressed Wagnerian rage, hatred, and macho supremacy. His gesticulations became so wild (as he demonstrated the size of his own personal private parts) that he dropped his horse whip.

We continued, sadder but wiser, on our way.

We followed the deep hoof prints along the rolling river and up a steep muddy bank to find a farmer smashing beans beside his hut. We asked the way back and he gesticulated towards a far-off hill. Calm slowly returned as we slogged through the heat and the dust towards the Mirador—a shed with stools that offered us a vista, shelter, and drinks.

Nice young men (horseless) pointed out, with pride, an apartment tower rising from the tobacco fields. It had been built by Chile’s Allende back in the day in support of the Cuban social system. They found maps on their cell phones and pointed us in the right direction (6 km) through the underbrush. I gave them Swiss chocolate. They gave me plant-stem straws.

Half way down the hill, we were caught by the glittering eye of Viñales’ very own Ancient Mariner, and he showed and explained his collection of fossils, meteorites, medicinal plants, tobacco, honey and home-made liquor. He told us his tale of being a professor in Africa for the Revolution. It was poco difficile. I fell asleep.

Trudging the last few miles along the paved road, the finale was filled with testy fatigue and boredom and we sang a duet of sore feet and dissonance.

In retrospect, though, it was a most enriching, endearing and entertaining walk. Bravo!!! Encore!!!

As a tourist, one of your obligations is to shop. You do this for yourself and for others. A delightful scarf here, a lucky temple bracelet there, and sculpted frogs wherever you find them. You quietly shop and you collect and you forget. This is tourism at its very best.

Japan is probably my favourite tourist-shopping destination. You head off to your local suburban Peacock Department Store and you are sure to find curious and unusual treasures—a dried pack of seaweed, a porcelain bowl with painted fish, a vacuum-packed octopus, an elegant ink brush or knife—all delightful and inexpensive.

In Thailand you look out for bamboo placemats and silk underpants with green elephants. In India you find intricate metal cows and beads from the Nagaland. In Egypt you buy parchment, dusty antique jewellery and camel-bone miniatures.

In Cuba you buy nothing, as there is nothing to buy. Their best cigars and finest rum are all exported, so you are left with banana-leaf cigars and run-of-the-mill, bargain-basement Havana Club.

In certain towns where the tourist groups are bused, there are millions of identical Ché Guevara t-shirts, hats, licence plates and posters. In front of bakeries and drug stores there are constant line-ups as Cubans wait patiently to see what can suddenly be purchased.

In front of supermarkets, however, this is not the case.

Our first supermarket was in Viñales—an idyllic countryside town set in the middle of tobacco plantations and picturesque rock formations. Tourists come here to relax and do a bit of horse-riding along the unmarked trails. Everyone stays in the casa particulars (bed and breakfasts) for about two nights before heading back to their beach or boat worlds.

The supermarket there was picture-perfect: shelves were filled with bottles of rum, beer and wine which sold merrily at good strong Swiss prices. There were packs of chips, cookies, and cheese and the ubiquitous (expensive) bottled tourist water.

The second grocery store was outside the city of Cienfuegos and we were quite excited when we encountered a uniformed security lady at the door who made us remove our packs and put them in a locker. This was obviously a first-class, though sadly undiscovered, store and theft was rampant.

As it turned out, all the shelves in the whole shop held the same item: miniature cartons of pineapple juice. These towered up to the ceiling along all the aisles. It was a stroll through a pineapple juice castle.

At the back of the shop was the fresh meat section. This consisted of two pigs that had been butchered, boiled, and packaged into two oblong plastic sausage cases about the size and shape of a real live pig. The colour was bubble-gum pink and there were foreign objects added for interest. This is Cuban ham.

Anticipation, exultation, disappointment, epiphany: Cuba in a nutshell. We bought enough pineapple juice to keep us in piña coladas for the rest of the trip.