How a Peru Trip Cut my Dentist’s Bill by Nearly 80% after Travel Expenses
Don’t let the weak dollar keep you from traveling. There are still countries where the greenback goes a long way. And life is too short not to try to see as much of the world before you get too old.
Nothing leaves deeper and warmer memories than travel. Nothing helps you better understand the world around you.
One way to pay for your trip, and even to leave you a little richer, is to combine your journey with health care, which is cheaper anywhere outside the United States. Dental work, for instance, can be had in some countries for only a fraction of what it costs here.
A year ago, I learned that two of my molars needed root canals--at $900 each. I had been planning a trip to Peru, and decided to have the work done there. But I waited too long, and both teeth had to be pulled out. Now, to fill those two tooth gaps, I would need two bridges, each one anchored on two adjacent teeth. Dentists count such bridges as three teeth. Plagued by bad luck, and only days later, one of the support teeth of an existing bridge broke. The bridge had filled a single gap, but a new one would now have to fill two gaps. To fill four gaps in my mouth, I now needed three bridges covering ten teeth. At $800 a tooth (more at fancier dentists), it would cost me $8,000.
I could wait no longer to travel to Peru. Through a friend in Lima, Peru’s capital, I found not only an excellent dentist, but also a well-lit and very comfortable small apartment for only $20.00 a night. Situated in a nice part of town, at a 15-minute walk from the dentist’s office, and looking down over the avenue below, It had private bath and furnished kitchen.
My meals in Lima cost me between $3.00 and $4.00 each, including drinks and tips. Just across from the dental clinic, for example, I paid $2.00, for a large and juicy barbecued chicken breast with salad and a mountain of real French fries.
Anyone preferring American fast-food would walk only minutes from the place I stayed in to Pizza Hut, Dominos, Kentucky Fried Chicken, MacDonald, Dunkin Donuts, and Starbuck, as well as to a supermarket selling all kinds of delicious prepared foods and snacks, all at prices well below American ones. An internet café across the street charged me $0.70 an hour. The cost of an average taxi ride was $2.00. Buses only cost pennies, though exposing one to possible pickpockets.
I sat at the dentist for three hours during four mornings--before, between, and after two different Andean trips. His office was not luxurious, but he was amazingly good and conscientious. To take care of those ten-tooth bridges, a cavity, and a cleaning, he charged me only $1,500.00—less than those two root canals would have cost me in Pennsylvania. The New York- Lima flight cost me $633.00.
For the price of two root canals in the US, a person could fly to Lima, have teeth fixed there, and enjoy a trip to Machu Picchu.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Benin: Barred From Access To My Car
People ask me sometimes whether I have faced danger among tribal people. To this I respond that it is considerably safer living among them than walking the streets of Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I live, at two in the morning. However, while photographing 35 indigenous peoples in three continents, I have inevitably run into occasional difficulties, as in the following case.
The man stood squarely against the driver's side of my car, a small Renault 4cv, arms and legs spread apart to impede my entrance. Except for a loincloth, he was naked, and his muscles bulged all over the black skin of a medium-height body. His left hand held tightly a big black dog by a chain. We were in the Atakora Mountains, in northwestern Benin, on the west coast of Africa. I was passing through on my way elsewhere, and was returning to my small French car after taking some pictures of the landscape that spread far below an escarpment on one side of the dirt road and of the fairyland miniature clay castles that dotted it.
"Pay!" the man said in French (until 1960, Benin was a French colony, and to this day its official language is French). He was a Somba tribesman, and I didn't need an explanation. The Somba, like many other Africans, demand money for being photographed.
I had not taken his picture, but assumed that one of those picturesque miniature castles, which the Sombas learned to build at a time when they had to defend themselves against the attacks of Moslem Bariba horsemen, belonged to him. I handed him the equivalent of one dollar, but he threw the money down furiously. I gave him five times the amount, but he flung it to the ground with equal scorn.
Considering that, due to the distance, the houses were a small part of my picture, I did not feel that I should have given him anything. But "Paie!" was the only French word he knew, and it was much simpler to part with some money than to try to explain anything to him.
I thought him unreasonable, however, for in 1969 five dollars was a lot of money for a primitive tribesman. And as I now saw other Somba men climbing the mountain in my direction, bows and arrows in hand, I understood that what they all had in mind was modeling fees for every resident. That was impossible, as I wasn't carrying much cash. The only way out was to retake my car by force, and quickly, before the men shot arrows through me.
Because I had boxed in my youth, I might have hoped to win a fist fight, but surely the dog would not watch quietly. What was I to do? I thought fast, evaluating my poor options, and quickly running out of time. And then I thought no longer, and hurled myself against the man. With an eye on the dog, I tried to shove him sideways, but I might as well have tried to move his house. He was immovable. The dog bit through my shoe, leaving a hole in it.
I jumped back and had a better look at the man. He was built like a gorilla, and he stared at me fiercely. I tried to look fierce myself, but it would take more than mean eyes to get out of this absurd situation.
Since I would not win this one by force, I decided to play it by wits. Pretending to suffer greatly from the dog bite, I slowly limped to the car hood, as if to brace myself against it. And then, suddenly nimble again, leaped over it, stormed through the opposite door, scrambled to the wheel, and started the engine.
Unfortunately, if I had left the doors unlocked when marching off to take my picture, I had also left the windows open because of the extreme heat. The dog, which the man immediately released, ran after me around the car, and jumped right through the window. As he landed on me, ready to bite again, I let loose in its ears such a loud and maniacal cry that he kept going right through the opposite window and into his master’s arms.
As I tried to drive away, however, the Somba tried to wrest the wheel from my hands while furiously banging the heavy dog chain on my car's hood. When I started gaining speed, he dropped the chain, grabbed the roof rack with his right hand, and with the left forced the car to turn towards the precipice down which I had photographed his people’s miniature castles. The other Somba, now only fifty paces away, came running faster with great whoops. Everything was happening much more rapidly than I could describe here.
By then, with no control over the car's direction, we were headed down towards the escarpment--I at least, for the Somba could jump off at any time. I had to get rid of the man quickly, and as this was my last option, I punched him in the face harder than I ever punched anyone in the ring. This time he rolled to the ground, and as I righted my car out of its deadly course, nearly ran over him. As I finally drove safely away under a shower of what sounded like insults, I saw in my rear mirror one of the men aim an arrow at the car. It hit it with force, and its metal point left a small hole in it, but I was already driving at full speed.
Four years later, as National Geographic was preparing to do a book on primitive peoples, I proposed to return to the Somba, who are as interesting as they can be aggressive, and to write one of the book’s chapter on them, which I did. This time I first talked to their priestess, and negotiated a price to be freely allowed to take the pictures I wanted. With the Somba as with other tribes, it’s always better to talk first.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Part Two - Back to Africa
In New York I spent two years working 16 hours a day in two waiter’s jobs, and sleeping little. Then, having saved enough to cover the purchase of additional photo equipment (I owned only one camera and two lenses), a journey on the cheap, and my family’s upkeep during my absence, I returned to Algiers. The year was 1963. Passing through Brussels, I overheard my father-in-law whisper that I was a boy scout who would not grow up. I understood his feelings and empathized, but was glad not to have grown up yet, or I might not have dared to risk another failure.
Through the Algerian part of the Sahara I rode on oil trucks. Through Niger and Benin I squeezed at the top of overloaded and overcrowded trucks that broke down continuously. Again, I had no budget for hotels or restaurants, but was hardly ever close to any. I lived on a dollar a day, plus what little I paid for transportation.
All through the Sahara I tried to pay Tuareg nomads to take me on a camel ride adventure, but they laughed and thought that I had lost my head. Back in the Sahara after Benin, I finally found two of them willing to do it. Over a month and 650 miles of desert, we would ride from Agadez (Niger) to Tamanrasset (Algeria) through the Air and Ahaggar Mountains, two beautiful parts of the Sahara.
Back in New York, I returned for a year to a 16-hour work day, though half of it as a photographer’s assistant this time. Meanwhile, Venture, published by Look Magazine, gave me the cover and ten pages of its third issue. Argosy, a man’s magazine, used my pictures to illustrate the story of a man’s jeep trip across the Sahara. And a photo agency sold a large numbers of my Algeria pictures. Not only had I recouped my journey’s expenses and the purchase of two camera bodies and lenses, but I was left with a profit.
It took National Geographic a whole year to decide not to use that story, which I had also submitted to them. Most of my shoot was in black and white, and at that time the editors thought that they would never run black-and-white pictures again, though they would return to that some day. They did give me some money to allow me to return to the Sahara the cheap way to ride with a Tuareg salt caravan and spend another three months sharing the Tuareg’ lives.
When those nomads refused to let me travel with them, saying that no Westerner would survive such an ordeal and that they had no business having to bury my bones in the desert sand, I offered them to share their work, which they could not resist, for they were undermanned. They might also have accepted me in exchange for money. But I had hardly enough left by then, and it would have to last four months. On my way there I had run into problems that had cost me much of what National Geographic had given me. It hadn’t been much anyway, as I was still an untested photographer and writer.
The 22 days that I traveled with the caravan, up to 16 hours a day, often without water to the limit of survival, and with very little food, would indeed be galley slavery, but I count them as the most wonderful days I ever lived.
National Geographic gave me the cover of its November 1965 issue, and Paris Match, the French counterpart of Life magazine, followed suit by publishing that story on 17 outsized pages. That story, and others that I would do later for NG, appeared in my book, Wind, Sand and Silence: Travels with Africa’s last Nomads, now out of print.
National Geographic asked me what else I had for them. And so they would give me another 11 assignments, resulting in articles and book chapters, three of which they would not publish. I would also travel for many other magazines, nearly all of them long out of business now.
To my everlasting wonder, I was now able to travel anywhere I wanted--in Africa, South America, and Asia—for assignments nearly always resulted from ideas I proposed. My interest in anthropology would push me to share the lives and cultures of more than 30 indigenous peoples. To this day, the Tuareg, whom I have visited again and again over the years, three times for National Geographic alone, remain my favorite people. But do I not owe them my career?
In 1974 I moved to Colombia. Up to 1996, when life there became fraught with problems, I self-published photo books on that country, while still traveling elsewhere on assignment. After that I had to move back to the United States.
Though all this happened a long time ago, I keep traveling to the places of my choice and producing articles on my trips. There is no money anywhere now for extended journeys, but I learned to do in two or three weeks what used to take me three to four months. I’ll do that until the end of my life, for I could not imagine a different life. To keep in shape I jog and work out at the gym three to four times a week. I learned that life is not what you get, but what you make it.
http://www.victorenglebert.com
Through the Algerian part of the Sahara I rode on oil trucks. Through Niger and Benin I squeezed at the top of overloaded and overcrowded trucks that broke down continuously. Again, I had no budget for hotels or restaurants, but was hardly ever close to any. I lived on a dollar a day, plus what little I paid for transportation.
All through the Sahara I tried to pay Tuareg nomads to take me on a camel ride adventure, but they laughed and thought that I had lost my head. Back in the Sahara after Benin, I finally found two of them willing to do it. Over a month and 650 miles of desert, we would ride from Agadez (Niger) to Tamanrasset (Algeria) through the Air and Ahaggar Mountains, two beautiful parts of the Sahara.
Back in New York, I returned for a year to a 16-hour work day, though half of it as a photographer’s assistant this time. Meanwhile, Venture, published by Look Magazine, gave me the cover and ten pages of its third issue. Argosy, a man’s magazine, used my pictures to illustrate the story of a man’s jeep trip across the Sahara. And a photo agency sold a large numbers of my Algeria pictures. Not only had I recouped my journey’s expenses and the purchase of two camera bodies and lenses, but I was left with a profit.
It took National Geographic a whole year to decide not to use that story, which I had also submitted to them. Most of my shoot was in black and white, and at that time the editors thought that they would never run black-and-white pictures again, though they would return to that some day. They did give me some money to allow me to return to the Sahara the cheap way to ride with a Tuareg salt caravan and spend another three months sharing the Tuareg’ lives.
When those nomads refused to let me travel with them, saying that no Westerner would survive such an ordeal and that they had no business having to bury my bones in the desert sand, I offered them to share their work, which they could not resist, for they were undermanned. They might also have accepted me in exchange for money. But I had hardly enough left by then, and it would have to last four months. On my way there I had run into problems that had cost me much of what National Geographic had given me. It hadn’t been much anyway, as I was still an untested photographer and writer.
The 22 days that I traveled with the caravan, up to 16 hours a day, often without water to the limit of survival, and with very little food, would indeed be galley slavery, but I count them as the most wonderful days I ever lived.
National Geographic gave me the cover of its November 1965 issue, and Paris Match, the French counterpart of Life magazine, followed suit by publishing that story on 17 outsized pages. That story, and others that I would do later for NG, appeared in my book, Wind, Sand and Silence: Travels with Africa’s last Nomads, now out of print.
National Geographic asked me what else I had for them. And so they would give me another 11 assignments, resulting in articles and book chapters, three of which they would not publish. I would also travel for many other magazines, nearly all of them long out of business now.
To my everlasting wonder, I was now able to travel anywhere I wanted--in Africa, South America, and Asia—for assignments nearly always resulted from ideas I proposed. My interest in anthropology would push me to share the lives and cultures of more than 30 indigenous peoples. To this day, the Tuareg, whom I have visited again and again over the years, three times for National Geographic alone, remain my favorite people. But do I not owe them my career?
In 1974 I moved to Colombia. Up to 1996, when life there became fraught with problems, I self-published photo books on that country, while still traveling elsewhere on assignment. After that I had to move back to the United States.
Though all this happened a long time ago, I keep traveling to the places of my choice and producing articles on my trips. There is no money anywhere now for extended journeys, but I learned to do in two or three weeks what used to take me three to four months. I’ll do that until the end of my life, for I could not imagine a different life. To keep in shape I jog and work out at the gym three to four times a week. I learned that life is not what you get, but what you make it.
http://www.victorenglebert.com
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