Fresh Air Fiend (19 page)

Beyond these remnants of roads was tropical vegetation and a network of waterways, the banks held together by the spindly legs and arms of mangroves. It delighted me to think that Florida (even then regarded as spoiled, vulgar, too flat, and too hot) had this stretch of paradise that was like the deep tropics—a jungly coast with glittering, beckoning islands. I kept going back. Even its hidden parts began to be discovered and developed, though some of it is still wilderness in the sense of being a place where you can be lost and never found.

This thirty-mile-long outflung pattern of barrier islands, protecting Charlotte Harbor and Pine Island Sound, was charted by Ponce de León in 1513 while he sailed down Pine Island Sound looking for the Fountain of Youth. He saw only Indians, the Calusas, who were such determined warriors—their name means "fierce"—that they fought to the death. Most of them were killed by the well-armed Spaniards, and the rest were dispersed to Cuba and other parts of Florida. But the Calusas had left behind fascinating remains of their traditional culture, notably their shell mounds, which are impressively high, as much as forty feet, creating actual hills on what were the flattest lands imaginable. The Calusas used these mounds in their rituals; they had a cult of the dead that linked them with the Indians of Mexico.

After the Calusas, conquistadores, and pirates had come and gone, millionaires and settlers arrived—this was in the 1920s and 1930s. These well-heeled pioneers were so impressed by the Indian mounds that they squatted on them and built their mansions on the ancient heaps of shells and human bones, an act of desecration that, like most acts of desecration, gave them wonderful views.

The large low-lying area of swamps, barrier islands, and bays is variously known as the Shell Islands, the Pirate Islands, or the Coconut Coast. Sanibel, the southernmost link in the chain of islands, is the most heavily visited, as many as a million cars trundling across the causeway link to the mainland in a single season. Or not trundling at all but rather standing still in a mile-long halted line. The road, a continuation of Route 867, carries on, winding through pines and palms to a bridge to Captiva Island. At the end of the road is a sprawling resort where, on most days, rambunctious jet skiers vie with dolphins and yachts for space at the edge of the intracoastal waterway, all of them captivated, so to speak.

North Captiva, another barrier island of sand and mangrove, lies isolated just across Redfish Pass. It is accessible only by small boat, because of the mud flats and shoals that surround it. North of it is Cayo Costa, a state park, the prettiest island of all, and with almost no population, about four miles long and a mile wide at its thickest point. Cayo Costa, also known as Lacosta Island, is the haunt of ospreys and bald eagles, alligators and wild pigs, and a few campers. A small, environmentally friendly campsite lies on the western, gulf-facing side, near its spectacular beach.

None of this is wilderness in the sense that it has been left unexplored, but it is wild enough, and in the maze of islands that make up this swampy offshore archipelago there are plenty of snakes, gators, herons, and turtles. The endangered gopher tortoises can't burrow in the densely planted lawns of Sanibel, but they have no problem in the dunes of the islands farther north.

Yachts enter the anchorages of Useppa ("A Private Membership Island," a sign warns on the waterway), and most dinghies can get into Cabbage Key, where there is a small hotel—it was once the winter home of the novelist and playwright Mary Roberts Rinehart—but scores of other islands hereabouts stand in such shallow water they are off limits to almost all boats except those which draw only a few inches of water.

I was once in the house of a friend on Gasparilla Island, near the prosperous settlement of Boca Grande, when an elderly and very wet gentleman appeared at the front door.

"Just swam to shore—got stuck on a bar," he said, dripping salt water onto the welcome mat. He held a soggy stogie in his fingers—probably force of habit. "Mind if I use your phone?"

His name was Larry, and he was seventy-one. He had been out fishing in his small boat and, distracted by a nibble, soon found himself high and dry a half mile out. He had had no choice but to slosh and swim to shore.

"Happens all the time," my friend said.

And that was why, when I made my tour of the islands, I used the smallest boat I could find, a flat-bottomed fifteen-footer with a simple outboard motor. A kayak would have been more suitable, and would have given me greater access. Next time, I thought.

If it is (as I think) axiomatic that anywhere pleasant that is easy to get to is eventually spoiled, it should not be hard to understand why the little islands in and around this area remain lovely. Even Little Gasparilla, the five-mile island just north of Gasparilla, is reachable only by boat, which is probably why its shores are full of ospreys, herons, and turtles. The beaches here and on Gasparilla—an undeniably splendid place with a bottleneck of a causeway (toll: $3.25)—are long and mostly empty, palm-fringed, and with white powdery sand. The proof that the beaches on Cayo Costa are seldom visited is that the ospreys actually nest in the low trees overhead. Elsewhere, these big, squeaky-voiced falcons nest on poles put up by birders.

The tiny humps of land, mostly held together by mangroves, that lie behind these bigger barrier islands still contain old shell mounds under the sturdy gumbo-limbo trees. If you have the right boat, it is easy to spend a week exploring the small islands that seem to float in the recesses of Turtle Bay and Bull Bay. These bays are about halfway down the western side of Charlotte Harbor, but the harbor is so wide you can't see the far side from here: in the middle of it, among the dolphins and the occasional manatee, it is like being at sea.

Nearly everyone in the area has a pirate story—actually the same pirate story in different fanciful versions, of the buccaneer Gasparilla and his cutthroat crew. It is likely that Gasparilla did not exist, though a Friar Gaspar certainly did—one of the passes was named after him on a Spanish chart made in 1783. Treasure undoubtedly exists, but it is less likely to be found in sea chests buried under the insect-haunted dunes of the islands than in the vaults of the Du Pont estate, and those of the surrounding mansions, in Boca Grande.

This part of America was first explored by the Spanish almost five hundred years ago. The area has experienced successive waves of people looking for Indians, for gold, for silver, for slaves, for seclusion, and, more recently, for sunshine and game fish (the annual tarpon tournament attracts masses of fishermen). It is reassuring that a place so pretty and so apparently fragile should still endure and still sparkle.

The people risking sunstroke on the beach, the folks on the yachts, the motorists struggling toward North Captiva, all of them believe they are in the very bosom of the place, but have little idea of just how huge and hidden most of these islands are. That surely is one of the many paradoxes of travel. I spent days in my small boat going from one waterlogged island, and one remote beach, to another, hardly seeing anything move except a heron, a gopher tortoise, or a ruddy turnstone. Yet all I had to do was make a forty-minute detour and I would be within hailing distance of a golfer in green pants or a potbellied teenager on a Jet Ski.

The interior islands, and the ones with small populations, resemble the keys of Belize—very similar contours and vegetation, and the same tropical heat and insects. This is "the Mosquito Coast" in more than one sense. Building is bound to increase, more of the land will be steamrolled by developers, and some of the unluckier animal species are doomed, but it is safe to say that many of these islands, in spite of your trespassing, may never be violated—you'd drown, you'd starve, you'd become marooned if you tried.

I nearly drowned myself in one of the sudden storms that frequently explode over these islands. I was about a mile from shore and saw the sky quickly blackening with clouds—it was like the lid of a kettle being slipped over the earth. I soon found myself trying to outrace the storm, and losing, fighting sixty-mile-an-hour winds and gusts of even greater velocity. The storm danger and the mud flats, the mangroves and the mosquitoes, have in their way kept much of the area liberated, obscure, and somewhat empty—in a word, ideal.

I
N THE EXTRAVAGANT
African sunset, the Zambezi River was deep red, reflecting the crimson sky, and it shimmered in oxbows across the dusk-black landscape of the floodplain like a vessel thick with blood.

That vivid arterial image seemed appropriate to the Zambezi, which is teeming with life throughout its 1,633-mile length. "This magnificent stream," David Livingstone exclaimed when he first traveled down it in 1853. More tellingly, he called it "God's highway," an access route for Christianity as well as commerce. Livingstone imagined the Zambezi's future as a vast thoroughfare, with good-sized trading ships plying the river, bringing prosperity to the interior of Africa.

From my vantage point in a small plane over the upper Zambezi in western Zambia I saw old, eternal Africa, clusters of mud huts and fishermen in dugout canoes. What could have been clumps of boulders scattered all over the river were pods of hippos, preparing to scramble up the banks for their nighttime grazing. And the small villages of thatched-roof huts glowed by the light of cooking fires and candles.

It was pretty much what Livingstone had seen all those years ago when he traveled hopefully upriver, making charts. He went to Africa from Scotland in 1841, when he was twenty-eight, and except for brief absences, he spent the rest of his life there, thirty-two years. Among his gifts was his linguistic skill (though he spoke with a thick Scottish accent) and his ability to get on with Africans who, having seen so many instances of enslavement, were understandably hostile toward outsiders. Livingstone could be difficult—he often exhibited manic-depressive behavior. Yet his travel was to a great extent a record of his success in charming the African chiefs up and down the river, putting their suspicions to rest.

In the Zambezi twilight, the landing strip looked like a small bandage on the great flank of the floodplain. We descended through the smoky air of the dry-season bush fires and rolled to a halt on this grassy plot.

In the morning I could see that the riverbanks were lush, and that was the first indication I had that, no matter how drought-stricken or starved the rest of the land was, the banks of the Zambezi were green from end to end.

I had woken to the sounds of the busy bird life of the river: kingfishers, bee-eaters, herons, egrets, and fish eagles. From time to time I could hear the warning sound of a hippo, which is misleadingly comical, like a tuba played underwater. Now and then there was a sudden splash—a jumping tiger fish, startled by the blowing hippo. Tiger fish can grow to thirty-five pounds, have ferocious teeth, and are known for their terrific strength in battling anglers.

"We're off the map here," said Bernie Esterhuyse, and it was true—I never found this bend in the Zambezi, called Ngulwana, on any map. With his wife, Adrienne, Bernie runs a small tent camp devoted to tiger fishing. Like many other South Africans over the past few years, they had migrated north to the Zambezi Valley to start a tourist-related business. Apart from a few small villages near the river, they have no neighbors.

"The Litunga gave us permission to build here," Adrienne said later, referring to the king of the Lozi people, the dominant tribe in the province. "Most of this land is his."

We were driving through deep sand toward the market town of Lukulu, two hours away.

"Where's the road?"

Strictly speaking, there was no road. The idea was to go cross-country, following the riverbank, in the general direction of Lukulu. This Zambezi floodplain, stretching for miles along the river, was very sandy, like a beach that had become detached from an ocean, part of the Kalahari sand veldt. The soil was pitted all over with the sort of holes you see crabs skittering into.

But these were rat holes. The rain had been so sparse the season before that the river had stayed low and the rats had not drowned in their holes, as usually happened. As we labored on, rats were diving for cover.

At a cluster of huts under some deep green mango trees, I saw a group of women pounding corn in a mortar, taking turns with the loglike pestle. Like many other riverside villages, it was orderly and well stocked. "We know we are lucky," one of the women said, acknowledging that they owed their lives to the river.

After we passed the time of day, I wondered whether, in leaner times, anyone ate those rats. The word for rat is
khoswe
in Chichewa, which I had learned as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi. "
Kodi ichi amadya?
" I asked. Are they edible?

"We Lozis don't eat them," another woman boasted. She followed what I said: because of the wide dispersal of Malawians, I was to discover that Chichewa was understood along the Zambezi. "But the Luvale and Lunda people like them."

The Luvale and the Lunda are the far-flung and poorer tribes of this immense area of the upper Zambezi, the Western Province of Zambia, once known as Barotseland, kingdom of the Lozis, who are still loyal to their king.

The river traffic I could see was not motorized, but there was plenty of it—men in dugouts big and small, paddling slowly upriver. Still speaking in Chichewa, I called out to the paddlers, asking them where they were going.

"To market!" The market at Lukulu was a day's journey upriver.

These fishermen told me that their villages were distant. During the dry season they lived in the temporary fishing camps of reed-walled huts with thatched roofs that were numerous on the riverbanks.

They had gardens too, fields of corn, which they made into flour. Boiled with a few pints of the Zambezi, this was one of their starchy staple foods (called
sadza
upriver, and
nsima
downriver), a soft dough they ate with fish or stewed greens. Cassava and beans were also sprouting in these riverside gardens. At a distance from the river, people foraged for wild berries, called
muzawe,
which they made into porridge. Though drought conditions prevailed throughout much of the province, the Zambezi provided the means of life for dwellers on its banks.