Travel Bug Infects West Covina Mechanic, and He Delights in the Disease

When the travel bug bit Jeff Mitchell he took off down the Amazon River in a dugout canoe and never recovered.

He has since been bitten by countless real bugs. He’s eaten the indescribable food of remote jungle tribes, survived tropical diseases, endured weeks without bath water, walked amid a pack of wild dogs and near a herd of rhinos and felt the muzzle of a machine gun in his back.

Not for Mitchell the charms of quaint bed-and-breakfast inns or the grandeur of Europe’s great cathedrals. He probably will never relish the delights of a package deal at a fabulous tropical resort hotel.

Instead, what gets him going--what stirs his blood and moves him to emotional heights--is encounters with people, animals and plants that are alien to the comfortable, predictable life of Temple City where he grew up.

Mitchell, 32, discovered in that first trip abroad five years ago that traveling can span centuries as well as great geographical distances. He has been with Amazon tribes and African Bushmen who are living as they did 200 years ago, and has hiked in primeval forests.

Mitchell also discovered that being an auto mechanic with a modest income and without ambitious career goals is no hindrance to the kind of adventure he seeks.

“It’s kind of odd the way this happens,” he said. “I don’t know where I get the money. It just seems to be there when I’m ready to go.”

Mitchell is single and lives in an apartment in Covina. He studies photography, mostly in night classes at Pasadena City College, and hopes to someday publish a book of photos from Africa.

“My car is a piece of junk, but that’s all right,” he said. “I work hard, long hours and I’m in school most of the rest of the time. I guess it’s hard for some people to understand that I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.”

His two-week trip to the Amazon in 1981 was with UCLA Extension and cost about $4,000. He saved about $5,000 for four weeks in Africa in 1983, and last summer spent $7,000 on a two-month African journey that covered about 10 countries.

“I’m kind of infatuated with Africa,” he said. On his two trips there he joined groups of about a dozen Britons who traveled in old trucks that were converted to hold camping equipment. Their only contacts with civilization were at the beginning and end of long journeys through several African countries.

Communist influence is highly visible in most Third World countries, where armed military people openly wield guns and threaten foreigners, Mitchell said.

“My first exposure to Third World countries included having a machine gun stuck in my back in Colombia,” he said. “I found out that’s not uncommon.”

Meeting a remote jungle tribe on his first trip, Mitchell presented the contents of “an old duffel bag of stuff, like a fishing reel, perfume, pieces of cloth.” He watched apprehensively as native women grabbed the stuff and ran off, only to reappear with their own offerings of blowguns, necklaces and belts, which they believed were of equal value.

“We had no communication at all, and yet we understood. That was real exciting,” Mitchell said. He has used the same kind of hand, body and smiling communication to seal friendships with people from other remote tribes and to negotiate trades for many of their artifacts.

He has had only a few frights, such as being ringed by wild dogs “that tear people to pieces” in Botswana. He shrugs off the ailments he has suffered, such as a fungus that required long treatment.

“Over and over I’ve seen the old blending with the new, and I know the old is all going to be gone very soon. The wild herds are dying out, there are very few Bushmen left, and if I don’t capture it now I may never get another chance.”

“It’s in my blood, I guess,” Mitchell said when asked to explain how a normal Temple City kid could develop such a yen for off-beat adventure.

“Growing up, I always had this urge,” Mitchell said. “I remember as a little kid having a book of big sailing ships and how I thought it was interesting that people could go off and leave everything behind. Then I learned I had a grandfather who changed his name and went to China, and that appealed to me.”

Mitchell returned from Africa in August, but his mind is still there.

“I’m going back to Zaire to photograph the Pygmies,” who he said are fast disappearing. “I have to hurry.”