Tonyâ€™s Travel Journal

Notes From the Road ... Jamaica

By Anthony Bourdain

Regular viewers will know that in my quest to appease the television Gods, I have found myself in some difficult situations. In Namibia, for instance, where I found myself politely (if reluctantly) munching on a crap-filled tube. Weeks later, after a suitable interlude on high dosages of antibiotics, I made a silent vow to myself that I would try to avoid meals like this in the future. There would be no more crap filled tubes.

Then, just a few days ago, I found myself and my crew descending into one. Yes. You heard right. Now, my producers are a fairly responsible bunch. When I read "cave exploring" on the list of suggested scenes for the Jamaica show, I figured there'd be hand rails and a gift shop. I figured we'd pull the production van into the parking lot, take a spin around the cave with our trusty guide, buy a T-shirt--and I'd be back at the hotel pool nursing a rum punch before you could say Peter Tosh. Perhaps I should have inquired further. Maybe we all should have.
Which is how me, Todd, Zach, new producer Paul and Diane found ourselves rapelling backwards into pitch blackness, down a vertical, crap-slicked shaft, deeper and deeper into the earth, the bat-guano inches deep, cockroaches the size of Cuban cigars skittering under and around us. Safety equipment? No. Not really. Unless you count a couple of ropes as safety equipment. Trained adventure-sport guides? Uh-uh. Two bat and invertabrate specialist who really really like guano--and are willing to lower themselves into an unmarked freakin' cave, two miles into the steaming jungle and crawl around on their hands and knees for miles and miles with only tiny lightbulbs on their heads for illumination . It was like a horror movie. It was worse than a horror movie. After lowering ourselves for what seemed like hours, squeezing and slipping and tripping and crawling, slowly picking our way across slippery "mud" and wet, smooth stone--inches from vertical drops which disappeared into...nothingness, we found ourselves on a rare horizontal level, the air around us getting curiously warmer. And warmer.

"Feel that?" says Dr. Guano, Phd. "That's the body heat of two million bats."

Now, I am a distinguished gentleman of some years. I should, at my age, if I had a brain in my head, be doing something respectable and less punishing in the way of recreational activities. Like golf. Or shooting at birds. So it did not fill me with satisfaction or confidence when, after a particularly dodgy section of backwards traverse into a puddle of black goo, I found the narrow light on my "safety" helmut fixed on Zach, our youngest and fittest cameraman. Usually a happy-go-lucky sort, always the first to volunteer to be strapped standing to the bow of a speedboat, fond of hanging out of helicopters and moving cars in order to "get the shot"., his face was drawn and filled with what can only be described as terror. He looked up at me, voice trembling and said, in a tremulous, high-pitched voice, "This is fuuucked up, Sarge!"

By the end of the day, after miraculously managing to climb out of the cave (up the mossy wet roots of a tree, no less) we all looked like we'd been dipped in ordure. Scraped, strained, scuffed-- bitten by untold numbers of carnivorous insects, reeking of the reduced, toxic sludge of two million bats, we silently began the two mile hump through steep, muddy jungle. We were not a happy bunch that day as we headed back to the hotel. I suggested jumping straight into the swimming pool, turning the water instantly brown in front the horrified guests--but was over ruled. Todd had had some kind of incident requiring a doctor. Diane looked like she'd been strafed with buckshot. Paul appeared to have lost a wrestling match with Willie Wonka. I ended up throwing out every scrap of boots and clothing.

It sucked. Big time. The hardest, most physically demanding, insanely foolhardy and irresponsible venture ever on NO RESERVATIONS. I hated every second of it.

It's gonna make great television.

Posted by: Anthony Bourdain