Dear Readers,
The following is not mine. It's something I found on the Lonely Planet website and just had to preserve for myself. I found it in the "Thorn Tree" section, where people were invited to discuss the worst meal they'd ever eaten. I have been to a lot of places, but I've never had to put up with what this guy did. He is a true adventurer. Compared to him, I am a complete and utter travel wanker wuss.
Alan
In 20 years of travelling, I've had more than my share of god-awful food, and have often been at the point of wondering whether or not starvation might not be the less miserable fate, or forced down mouthful after gagging mouthful just to be polite, secure in the knowledge that my health was seriously at risk by doing so.
I've prided myself on being able to eat anything, but despite many opportunities had never been able to bring myself to try dog. This isn't due to any particular affection for man's best friend, but rather probably because of unpleasant childhood memories of being licked in the face by dogs with very bad breath, and observing some of the things that dogs themselves eat. I was ready to try it a few years ago in Hanoi where it's a bit of a specialty (dedicated restaurants and all), but my appetite waned after seeing a basket full of raw snouts and other parts at the market. Well, I've just returned from Indonesia (48 hrs ago), and am happy to report that I finally became a caninophagist in the Rumah Makan H.K. in Manado (North Sulawesi) last Sunday evening. I expected a nice leg roast or perhaps some ribs, but I was served a dish of little bony fatty bits in a thick sauce (I strongly suspect it was mostly diced paws - "the foreigner won't know the difference"). I only ate half of what was put in front of me, since despite being heavily spiced, I couldn't help but think that it tasted like "dog". It was probably all in my head, but I kept imagining the warm dog breath, and childhood memories of the smell of dogs, still soggy from frolicking in the swamp on hot summer days. I didn't get around to trying the giant fruitbats nor the forest rats also popular in this region, but I'm sure I would enjoy them more than Rover.
What else springs to mind...
Madagascar was notable for the sand in the rice that provided extra crunch.
A windy day in a dry dusty highland town in Ethiopia often ensures that the injera (a moist pancake-like bread) sitting by the roadside in the market collects a fair amount of grit, which fortunately doesn't affect its ability to soak up the pool of red grease which the gristle-covered goat bone is soaking in (quy wat).
But, (the person posting the original question) asks if we've actually eaten dung, and I have to raise my hand here and admit that it occurred in my home and native land. In May 1977 my friend Doug Gifford talked me into dropping out of university (Carleton U. in Ottawa) and travelling up to the Yukon with him to try to "live off the land". My parents didn't like the idea, but I was ready for something new and I figured two years of advanced education was enough for anybody. Doug's sister had given him her barely-running Plymouth Cricket, which we loaded up with warm clothes, books, and musical instruments (we were "folk purists") and proceded northwest in a halting fashion - driving each day until the vehicle broke down, camping for the night wherever we were stuck, and proceding whenever we got it running again. After about two weeks we had logged close to 4500 km and were on the Alaska Highway in northern B.C. one sunny afternoon when the car started shaking violently and came to a screeching halt as a piston seized in the cylinder.
We'd neglected to bring a spare engine, so we were stuck on a dusty gravel road in the middle of nowhere, with a carful of stuff. Miraculously, within a couple of hours, a gas station owner happened by in a towtruck. He took us up on our offer of the car carcass in return for a ride back to civilization, which turned out to be his gas station in the village of Trutch, (which seemed to be nothing more than the gas station and the owner's house next to it). Late that night (as the northern summer sun was just setting), we pulled up at the gas station where our luck continued as we found three guys who were delivering a schoolbus with a load of steel pipes from Arizona to Alaska. There was room for us and all our stuff in the bus (on top of the pipes), and we drove through the short night and most of the next day arriving in Whitehorse late in the afternoon. The bus boys dropped us off - and we put all our possessions except for camping equipment and one dobro on a Greyhound bus for Dawson City, and proceded to hitchhike ourselves since we couldn't afford the tickets.
We eventually made it up the Klondike Highway to the Dempster Highway cutoff (near Dawson). The Dempster Highway was still in development at the time (today it goes all the way to Inuvik, on the McKenzie River Delta not too far from the Beaufort Sea). We left our possessions with Greyhound in Dawson and proceded to walk up the Dempster. The area was sparsely inhabited by a mixed population of "bush hippies" and fugitives from the law. The lucky ones lived in beautiful old log cabins dating from the gold rush days, and others in less impressive cabins they'd built themselves, or even in old board skid shacks.
We made our way about 40 km up the Dempster to Benson Creek on foot (the only traffic was to and from the construction camps, and they seemed to have a policy against picking up "locals", which we were about to become). We were looking for a place to live. Bruce, an escaped convict who lived in a skid shack not too far off the road near where Benson Creek empties into the North Klondike river, told us that there were three cabins upstream, and that the occupant of the furthest cabin might be vacating. We made it up to that cabin on the second attempt, the first thwarted by my falling into the creek while trying to cross the frigid rushing torrent, losing my glasses, and suffering from hypothermia.
When we did make it to the last cabin, we found a young man who went by the name of "Billy the Kid". He was skin and bones after having spent the long winter in the dark dusty little hovel. To complete the picture, he was covered in scabs, and was allegedly recovering from a case of staphococcus poisening contracted from contaminated salmon. And yes, he was planning on vacating the place within a day or two -- the Yukon had become too crowded for him so he was heading for the relative solitude of Labrador.
So, to finally get to the point - showing true northern hospitality, Billy prepared some bannock for we the hungry travellers who had journeyed so far. I paid close attention, since bannock was to be the staple that I lived on for the next eight or nine months. Basically it's a bread made from flour, lard, baking powder, and whatever else you might have handy (sugar, raisins, etc), cooked in a pan on a stovetop (not many ovens in this part of the world - just cheap sheet-metal "airtight" wood-burning stoves).
Billy started pouring flour out of a bag that had been sitting open on the rough wooden table. I noticed that it was full of mouse turds (actually vole turds - voles are chubby red-haired, short-tailed little rodents that scurry around all year long - in the winter they tunnel under the snow). He made a half-hearted effort to pick out a few of the bigger fresher ones, but most stayed in there. In went the baking powder, lard, and water and it was all mixed together with a fork to form a thin dough (or thick batter) which was poured into the pan. The lid was placed on top, allowing the bannock to cook on the top and bottom.
The finished product was like a nice moist cake, studded with little brown treats, which had sort of melted and leaked into the surrounding white bread much as a chocolate chip melts into a cookie. What can I say, I was hungry, I closed my myopic eyes and ate it.
Billy left for Labrador two days later. Doug and I took possession of the cabin and survived on a diet of bannock and creek-water for the next couple of weeks, until we got the gumption to make our way back to Dawson City to collect our possessions from the Greyhound terminal. We had to sell a bunch of stuff to get enough money to buy a few cases of beer for a guy with a pickup truck who delivered our gear to the Dempster / Benson Creek "junction", from where we had the unenviable task of lugging it 8 km upstream. We also saved a few $'s to buy some cheap fatty bacon since our newly-discovered lack of hunting skills had left us protein starved. We "refrigerated" the bacon by putting it in a hollow of rocks at the bottom of the creek, then putting a washbasin on top of it held down by some big rocks. The next day we woke up looking forward to our first meal of meat in two weeks, only to discover that one of the neighbour's dogs had somehow sniffed it out and managed to dislodge it from our not-so-cleverly constructed storage device. A few weeks later, even more protein starved, we made our way back to town, and got our hands on another slab of bacon. We'll make this last, we thought, by eating just a bit at a time. No more creek fridges - we slung it up in a high tree (bear protection). Bacon is smoked and salted anyway isn't it - no need for refrigeration...
... so we thought. Within two days it was crawling with maggots. This may be the last meat we ever see, we thought - besides maggots are protein too aren't they? We cut up the bacon with some potatoes and made a stew. You wouldn't believe how many maggots there were - more maggot than bacon I think. We cooked it a long so we were sure it was safe to eat. After a few mouthfuls we looked at each other, both put our spoons down at the same time, and almost spewed. We couldn't eat any more - it wasn't that it tasted bad, it's just the way it looked. The local dogs loved it.
In the end, I did learn to nab the odd squirrel and ptarmigan (note, ptarmigan taste vile, acrid, and acidic in the winter when they eat nothing but pine needles). Our more skillful neighbours occasionally invited us for feasts of caribou, moose, bear, muskrat, and beaver (note that beaver tail does not become edible no matter how long you cook it).
A fecal footnote - we discovered that a proper outhouse could not be easily constructed in this part of the world - the permafrost lay fairly close to the surface and you couldn't dig a deep hole without special equipment. So, we just squatted over a fallen log to do our business. As winter arrived, we acquired a couple of malamute puppies (perhaps hoping to have a team of sled dogs one day - this turned out to be another failed ambition). A few weeks work on road construction had provided me enough money to buy winter supplies, including dry dog food. Think of a poor dog in the Yukon winter, eating dry cold food and quenching it's thirst by eating snow. Think of a nice warm moist meal. Think of the eating habits of dogs. Think of two extremely energetic pups who knew what was up when you left the cabin and headed for the log carrying a roll of toilet paper. Think of the challenge of trying to perch on the frozen log and do your business with two highly motivated eating machines behind you. After a while we just gave up and let them at it, but I've never let a dog lick me in the face since then.
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