TWO FOR THE ROAD

Both Christopher Reynolds and Susan Spano began trotting the globe as professional travel writers at roughly the same time, about seven years ago. So as this year ends and the next 1,000 begin, it seems a fitting time to ask them to reflect on their experiences, good and bad, during what many of us might consider to be dream careers. What follows is a conversation between Reynolds and Spano that began with a question: Was there a formative childhood trip that got you hooked on travel early on?

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Christopher Reynolds: In the summer of 1969, my parents took me to New York. We stayed on Madison Avenue, in the high-up apartment of a friend. It was the year of Tom Seaver and the Mets (who were halfway through their championship season), of Joe Namath and the Jets (who’d won their championship earlier that year).

At the Empire State Building, a man in line warned me not to drop anything because a dime falling from the top would go 10 inches into the sidewalk cement. I told him it must be wet cement. Also, thanks to some string-pulling by my mother’s friend Charlotte, who worked for the United Nations, I got to stand on the podium in the United Nations General Assembly Hall and deliver a pretend address to a roomful of impressive empty desks.

And I remember gazing down onto Madison Avenue from our high window, like a tourist on the lip of the Grand Canyon, to watch a clattering early-morning garbage-collection crew at work far below on the street. I loved all of it. I was 8.

Susan Spano: Mine was when I was about 6. My family took a trip to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. I remember gazing in awe at the college-age guides, dressed in breeches and crinolines, and posing for a picture with my brother in the stocks and pillories near the jail. Most of all, though, it has stayed with me because I fell in love with history there and learned what the Revolutionaries were fighting for during the struggle for independence. I wish that all American children could visit Williamsburg too.

C.R.: Since then, you’ve seen a few dozen countries, stayed in a few hundred hotels, motels, hostels, campgrounds and cruise-ship cabins, and seen more than a few postcard views. What are your favorites?

S.S.: My favorite cities are easy: Hong Kong, Rome, New York, Cairo. I like big, crowded, messy, noisy cities most.

I’ll always go back to Italy and France, of course. But also Oaxaca in Mexico, Hana on Maui, the English Lake District, the Virginia Piedmont, southern Utah and Litchfield County in northwestern Connecticut.

C.R.: Since I’m just back from Paris with renewed appreciation, I have to put it on my top cities list, along with Rome, New York, London, San Francisco and Sydney, Australia. And I have to mention Esfahan, Iran, for the incredible 17th century architecture of its main square.

What about hotels?

S.S.: At the top of the expensive category, I’d put the Mercer in downtown New York and Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. Mid-price range, I’d highly recommend the historic La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Ariz., the quirky Miracle Manor in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., and St. Margaret’s Hotel in London’s Bloomsbury district. But above all I love good budget hotels, like the French-run Hotel Gallia in Marrakech, and the delightful Hotel Las Golondrinas in Oaxaca.

C.R.: Picking hotels is tricky. The best view room I had this year, believe it or not, was at the Captain’s Bounty Motor Lodge in Rockport, Mass., about 45 miles north of Boston on Cape Ann. Every morning about 5, my wife, Mary Frances, and I awoke to blazing sunrises over the Atlantic. Of all the places I’ve been, with money no object, I’d pick the Hotel Bora Bora in Tahiti. Also the very modern Post Ranch Inn, on the bluffs in Big Sur, and the not-at-all modern Lake Country House Hotel, a 19-room estate in Llangammarch Wells, Wales. I haven’t slept at La Scalinatella, a very fancy little ocean-view hotel on the Italian island of Capri, but since I inspected it two years ago, it’s stuck in my mind as a near-perfect place for a budget-be-damned honeymoon. On the affordable end, no young backpacker in Australia should overlook the Sydney Central YHA hostel in a 1913 building with modern laundry, pool, bistro and bar--about $16 for a dormitory bed, $46 for a room with bath.

S.S.: Udaipur, the lakeside city in India’s southern Rajasthan, is one of the most romantic places on Earth--even if you can’t afford a room at the fabled Lake Palace Hotel. But you can have a sunset drink at the Lake Palace and stay at the Kankarwa Haveli, a renovated townhouse overlooking Lake Pichola. It has 14 rooms that cost $13 to $35.

C.R.: But what about the other side of the coin? If you didn’t have this job, you wouldn’t go to . . .

S.S.: The Napa Valley, Cancun, Bulgaria, Prince Edward Island (too cute) or Rhodes and Stratford-upon-Avon (both too touristy). But let’s not dwell on it. There are still lots of places on my wish list. I finally got to Egypt this year, but I also want to go to south India, the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park in Utah--said to be one of the most isolated places in the Lower 48--and across British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska in an RV. Also the island of Lipari, north of Sicily, home of my father’s forebears.

C.R.: I want to see Lower Small Point, Newfoundland, where my father was born. And Glacier Bay, Alaska; Buenos Aires; the Okavango Delta in Botswana. And I’ve been to Ireland alone, but I want to go back with my wife, so I can watch her see it for the first time.

Places I wouldn’t go back to are Berlin--fascinating, but all the stark new architecture downtown seems like such a missed opportunity--and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I used to say I wouldn’t go back to Las Vegas, but I haven’t been in nearly three years, and I’m kind of curious about all the new hotels.

S.S.: What’s the best--and worst--service you’ve ever had?

C.R.: Worst first. In 1992 I arrived in Riga, Latvia, after a long train ride and checked into the Hotel Latvija. When I got upstairs to my room, I found the door open and a maid inside, sitting on the bed, smoking, watching television. “Very good film,” she said. “Ten minutes.” I shooed her out.

The best was delivered by the Bangkok tour company courier five years ago who forged my signature on a Myanmar visa application (I was out on an all-day tour) to keep my itinerary from being disrupted. This year’s highlight was Janice, the front desk clerk at the Costanoa Coastal Lodge & Camp in Pescadero. After my wife mentioned how much she liked the old TV series “Northern Exposure,” Janice brought in videos of three favorite episodes from her home collection.

S.S.: I found worst and best this year, in the same place: aboard the Amtrak Southwest Chief, from L.A. to Albuquerque, N.M. The tireless, good-natured cabin attendant went to the cafe car for elderly coach travelers who couldn’t manage to get drinks and snacks themselves. But the train was late on every leg of the trip. Later, an Amtrak official told me that the main reason for delays is that freight and passenger trains use the same tracks, but freight trains have priority right of way.

C.R.: The more you travel, I think, the more the time in transit can wear you down. But at those peak moments, travel makes you a kid again. You’re amazed all over that the world holds such things. And sometimes the best and worst are in such proximity.

S.S.: Yes. My worst adventure, for instance, was also my best. Four years ago, my brother, John, and I went driving in northern Baja’s remote Parque Nacional San Pedro Martir. We were on a reasonably good dirt road, headed in the direction of 10,154-foot-high El Picacho del Diablo. When the road started to deteriorate, we should have turned back. But we kept going and got hopelessly stuck, with two wheels of John’s Toyota 4Runner sunk in sand and rock. We worked all afternoon trying to get it out, but had to give up when darkness fell and the temperature dropped. So we made camp, ate a couple of yogurts and spent a wretched, sleepless night as the wind spat sleet against the tent flap.

The next morning we hiked 10 miles to a road leading to an observatory in the mountains, where we saw two Mexican men in a Land Rover. All we wanted was a phone. But they insisted on driving back to the car and hooking it to a winch. John looked pale as the 4Runner whined and rocked, then bucked 2 feet off the ground, landed solidly and literally flew up the hill behind the Land Rover. The men refused to accept money for the rescue and, to top it off, wouldn’t let us get away without giving us a tour of the observatory where they worked, and where gazing at celestial bodies is rewarding because the night sky is so clear. I trust that there will be a reward in those heavens for our two good Samaritans.

C.R.: One of my worst adventures was Baja-related too. I went on a seven-day kayaking trip a couple of years ago at the peak of the whale season and saw no whales. Instead, we kept finding dead sea lions, dead pelicans, dead sea turtles, a dead dolphin. Maybe it was El Nino, maybe just a reminder of how nature in the raw works. But the scenery was magnificent, the guides and other kayakers were good company, and we did have coyotes licking dew from our tents while we slept. I’m still glad I did it.

My favorite adventure might be climbing Mt. Sinai in Egypt between 2 and 5 a.m. You carry a flashlight and trudge in a long line for about three hours, with desert dust and camel smells and Bedouin water-vendors. When you reach the top, where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments, you face east and wait for dawn. I arrived just in time: The sun just exploded on the horizon, sending beams of yellow and orange everywhere while all the murmuring Christians, Jews and Muslims broke into songs and chants. Fellow travelers end up playing a bigger part in your trips than you expect.

S.S.: Speaking of that, what about characters you’ve run into along the way?

C.R.: Most memorable is the threesome I met in January on the long train ride from Adelaide to Alice Springs, Australia. One was a woman who’d worked for years as a bush nurse, serving Aborigines and the rest of the scarce human population in the flat, red middle of the outback. With her was a married couple whom she’d recruited to join her in Alice Springs. The wife was going to teach, and the husband was going to help manage government housing. The farther we rolled into all that flatness, the more I admired them. Also, the more wine we drank.

S.S.: Unfortunately, I’ll never forget the blithely anti-Semitic young Chinese woman I met on a train from Suzhou to Shanghai in 1996. Then there’s the Dutchman I talked to for an hour while waiting for a delayed plane at the airport in Jodhpur, India, a year later. I never saw him again and failed to get his name, but I think I fell in love with him. This year a woman I met told me to get in touch with her friend in London, Lady Doone Marley. Lady Marley lives near Victoria Station in a lovely little mews apartment filled with china, books and cigarette boxes. Elderly but still elegant, she’s a travel writer too. We talked and drank scotch for several hours one night, leaving me with a fuzzy head but a clear picture of the sort I woman I want to become in 30 years or so.

C.R.: As professional travelers, we dole out advice all the time, but sometimes we don’t follow it ourselves. I always tell people to avoid airport money-exchange desks because they sometimes give the worst rates. But I never remember to use a bank or exchange company before I leave, so in the end, I always seem to wind up changing $100 for pocket money at rotten airport rates.

S.S.: I’m lazy about counting my foreign change. So I don’t know when I’m getting ripped off, which is foolish. And my mother taught me not to talk to strangers. But if I didn’t talk to strangers when I travel, who would I talk to?

C.R.: Eating is a big part of travel. What are your strongest food memories?

S.S.: I once had a delicious fried fish sandwich at a stand on the banks of the Bosporus in Istanbul, but it gave me stomach sickness for two solid days. A dozen tiny, intense Brittany oysters in the French seacoast town of Cancale and a Navajo fry bread taco at the Tuba City Truck Stop Cafe atop the Echo Cliffs of northeastern Arizona left me with fond memories and no ill effects. This September, at a simple trattoria near the Spanish Steps in Rome, a waiter who seemed to sense that I felt a little tired and demoralized treated me to a diminutive glass of Limoncello, a lemon-flavored liqueur that makes you see the world through rose-colored lenses.

C.R.: My top meal is a tie between Portugal and Italy. In 1997 in northern Portugal, my dinner in the 16th century Pousada de Oliveira in Guimaraes featured a rich, wonderful, semisoft cheese from the country’s Serra da Estrela region. The other was in 1995--in the middle of an ecstatic seven wonderful days of starting dinner with prosciutto and melon--when I had amazing pasta with black truffle sauce and roasted potatoes in orange rind at Le Tre Vaselle, a restaurant and hotel owned by the Lungarotti wine-making family in Torgiano, a town in the Umbrian hills of Italy.

S.S.: How about great bargains?

C.R.: A ferry ride in Sydney Harbor. Thousands of tourists troop onto tour boats every week, but dozens of commuter ferries chug around the same inlets, under the same Harbor Bridge, past the same opera house. A five-day transport pass--which includes ferries, trains and buses--works out to less than $12 a day.

S.S.: I got a beautiful, king-size cotton quilt in Jaipur, India, the best city in the world for shopping, I think. And speaking of ferries, the Alaska State Ferry is great for seeing the majestic Inside Passage at a fraction of the price charged by cruise ships.

C.R.: Even though you’re a seasoned traveler, have you had embarrassing moments? Three years ago, for instance, while driving out of New York at rush hour, I got in the wrong lane on a toll bridge, despite many large and clearly worded signs. I made hundreds of homeward-bound New Yorkers wait--and honk--while I fished around the upholstery for correct change. And there was that glorious afternoon in Portugal in 1997. While I sat coolly sipping something in a sidewalk cafe, a shade umbrella fell on my head.

S.S.: I’m sure I looked like a complete fool learning to fly-fish last year in western Montana. A Moroccan goatherd once caught me bathing in a stream in the Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco. And a man walked into the women’s toilet at an out-of-the-way archeological site in northern Egypt I visited last spring. But was I embarrassed on any of these occasions? Not really. I’ve gotten beyond that.

C.R.: I think that’s one of the things that makes traveling alone so different from traveling as part of a couple or a group: With a fellow traveler, you get to elbow that special someone in the ribs and say, “Look at that!” Also, you have somebody to blame when you make a wrong turn. But alone, you always end up seeing more places because you can turn on a dime.

S.S.: I love the complete self-indulgence, freedom and opportunity for introspection of traveling alone. Yet as Frances Mayes, who wrote “Under the Tuscan Sun,” reminded me, “It’s hard to drink a whole bottle of wine alone.”

C.R.: Remember the Spalding Gray monologue about traveling and hoping for that perfect moment? Any of those this year?

S.S.: I have at least one a year. This year it would have to be when I jumped into the frigid Baltic Sea buck naked, after a sitting in a 200-degree sauna near Helsinki. In 1997, it was the magic of watching the incoming sea swallow up the sandy spit that connects the tidal island of Grand Be to the walled town of St.-Malo in Brittany. In 1995, it came at the end of a long, hard trip across South America, on a bus nearing Buenos Aires. For some inexplicable reason, the driver celebrated our imminent arrival by playing Frank Sinatra singing “New York, New York.”

C.R.: This was a big year for perfect moments for me. Standing above Sydney Harbor while it glittered and teemed with boats on a brilliantly sunny Australia Day, their independence day, in January. Sipping beer and watching all the waltzing Czechs at Prague’s municipal ball--for only $6 admission. Sitting with my wife and my mother in July on the Massachusetts coastline where my mom played every summer as a girl.

S.S.: After seven years of this, any lessons learned?

C.R.: Never say yes to in-flight alcohol or no to in-flight water. No matter how tired you are, never go to bed before 9 p.m. on the day you arrive abroad. Always have a map and the address of where you’re staying written in the local language. If there is a reasonable bathroom, use it while you have the chance. Never dial a long-distance call direct from a hotel room. Sunscreen, of course. Always put your fanciest hotel at the beginning of the trip, when you’re getting your bearings, or the end of the trip, when you’ll most appreciate its comforts. Also: Outside this country and a few others, nobody is under any obligation to speak English. But if you ask humbly for help, anywhere in the world, there’s almost always somebody around who does.

S.S.: Above all, traveling has taught me that at the end of the 20th century the world is still full of beautiful places. I have friends who point to strip malls, slums and junkyards and say that we’ve ruined it. But, believe me, I know. Beyond every strip mall is a road to turn down that leads to something wonderful.