Hey everyone, I finally read another travel related book! Back in the spring I gave you my thoughts on A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson and this time I switched gears from hiking to living in the South Pacific. The book is titled Getting Stoned with the Savages and it chronicles the lives of the author, J Maarten Troost, and his wife, Sylvia, during the time they lived in the island nations of Vanuatu and Fiji. The title caught my attention. I thought that the author has to have a good sense of humor and I was right, Troost describes his exploits in one funny story after another.
Troost was frustrated by his desk job in Washington DC when he and his wife decided to make the switch and move back to the South Pacific. The couple had spent two years on Kirabati which was the subject of Troost’s first book, The Sex Lives of Cannibals. Sylvia landed a job on Vanuatu while Maarten spent the time writing his first book and soaking in the local culture. In this case the local culture includes church on Sundays, drinking kava and cannibalism ( Which last occurred on the island in 1969!) Apparently kava is pungent but intoxicating drink that mellows the drinker without the nasty side effects of alcohol and the author becomes a regular at his neighborhood nakamal or for lack of a better phrase, kava bar.
Troost continues to an amusing tale of how they survive through earthquakes, typhoons, giant centipedes but through everything he feels more at home there than he did the hustle and bustle of D.C. When Sylvia finds out she’s pregnant, they decide to move to the more civilized nation of Fiji. Maarten finds out that although the health care and rugby is better on Fiji, the kava is inferior. I guess there has to be a down side to everywhere, including paradise.
This was a fun read and great book for reading on the beach or by the pool. Have a margarita or two while you’re at it unless if you can score some kava. Does this book make me want to pack it all in and move to the South Pacific? No, I’m perfectly content living in earthquake free, typhoon free Arizona but the book has given me the itch to go visit someday.
Any thoughts on what book I should read next. It has to be travel or adventure related so I can blog about it.
See you on the trail!
Ray H.
Tags: adventure books, Adventure Travel, book review, South Pacific Life
