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Background Notes



The Wildest Shore
Lisa Cach

Coming in October

ISBN: 0505524546


 

The Wildest Shore...


Researching The Wildest Shore took me on one of the greatest adventures of my life: to the island of Borneo, in southeast Asia! I spent three weeks in the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak (they were filming Survivor I on an island off Sabah while I was there), doing everything from climbing Mt. Kinabalu to staying in a long house with the descendents of head hunters, walking (carefully) through a cave filled with millions of bats and their guano, shrieking as insects the size of birds splashed into my dinner, picking leeches off my legs, traveling by long boat up a river during a rain and lightning storm, and learning to treasure my flashlight and private stash of toilet paper.

I also got to put to use an older adventure, that I undertook while a college student. I spent six weeks on a schooner with 23 other students, sailing the Caribbean while learning about nautical science, oceanography, and marine biology. Or that was what I was supposed to be learning: mostly I concentrated on vomiting over the lee rail (never the windward!), and wondered what had possessed me to sign up for such torture. I am a wimpy adventurer, who likes a warm freshwater shower at least once a fortnight and a bed that does not bounce me like a hackeysack. I did love my turns at the helm, though, and being on bow watch in the middle of the night, searching the dark sea for the lights of oncoming boats.


At the helm of the RV Westward, in the
Caribbean.


Trekking the Headhunter Trail
in Borneo, where I constantly
checked for leeches on my legs....
and occasionally found them.


Your hard-working romance-writer at a jungle
camp, with filthy hair. The only place to bathe was
"Crocodile Lake," where I eventually did, despite
the constant fear that a crocodile would swim
through the murky water and snap off my foot.


The river was bathtub and shower, and the coolest place to spend
the day during the two nights at an Iban longhouse.


Travel buddy Dr. Bill, napping in the longhouse.

 

 
 
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