Volleyball with the Cuna Indians: And Other Gay Travel Adventures Book

In this wild, picturesque romp through some of the world's most exotic and undiscovered travel destinations, Hanns Ebensten recounts his adventures hiking across deserts, hacking his way through jungles, and climbing mountains over the course of nearly sixty years - and he describes the fascinating cast of characters he has encountered. Beginning in 1935, when eleven-year-old Hanns met (and developed a crush on) King Sobhuza II of Swaziland, Ebensten takes us to postwar Paris, where he (inadvertently) went nightclubbing with movie stars and generals; to Florence, where he shared quarters in a youth hostel for one soon-to-be-notorious night with ninety-eight motorcycle cops; on a cruise to Turkey and Russia with, among other notables, Dame Rose Macaulay, with whom he discussed black leather; to the ruins of the almost mythical Vilcabamba in Peru, the last refuge of the Incas, considered impossible for tourists to visit. In 1972 Ebensten founded his own travel company, pioneering the concept of all-male gay guided tours to excitingly exotic locales, and throughout much of the book he recounts the joys and vicissitudes of these journeys. In wonderfully dramatic vignettes. Ebensten describes rubber-rafting the frothing rapids of the Colorado River on annual river-running trips that turned the Grand Canyon gay; lolling in thatched huts with the primitive Cuna Indians on the San Blas Islands, off the coast of Panama; visiting the monasteries of Mount Athos in northern Greece, where access is forbidden to women and the monks are more than friendly; serenely cruising the Nile on felucca sailboats and the congenial ambience aboard; nearly causing a riot in Beijing's Summer Palace when his entire tour group of men insisted on trying on the last empress of China's gowns and headdresses; and numerous other escapades. This enchanting collection of true stories about travel and travelers is both a one-of-a-kind armchair-travel book and the fascinating autobiography of a gay