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Category: Travel/General Nonfiction
Description: Holly Morris is the founder of Adventure Divas, Inc., a multimedia production company, and is executive producer and writer/director of the award-winning prime-time PBS documentary series Adventure Divas. She is the former editorial director of Seal Press and the editor of two fishing anthologies, A Different Angle and Uncommon Waters. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Ms., Outside, and numerous anthologies and on abcnews.com. When she's not writing or producing television documentaries, Morris is a correspondent for television series such as Lonely Planet Treks in America, Treks in a Wild World, Globe Trekkers, and Outdoor Investigations.
eBook Publisher: Random House, Inc./Villard,
Books By Dames Release Date: October 2005

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Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended)/Microsoft Reader/Adobe PDF - What's this?]: SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT [1.2 MB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT [932 KB], SECURE ADOBE PDF FORMAT [2.5 MB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [969 KB]
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"A delightful triangulation of adventure travel, telecommuting and self-reinvention...[Morris] can be hilarious….[Her] self-deprecating wit, sense of pacing and brainy insights into the nature of fear and self-reliance hold the book together….When Morris becomes her own subject, the result is always vibrant honesty.…[she] is not afraid to show her everyday self on the page, which is invigorating in a genre that too often has only two speeds: turbo self-aggrandizement and ambling naturalist instrospection. The female perspective is also refreshing: how many men could survive not one but two international waxing appointments–Brazilian and Persian?" -- The New York Times Book Review

"Writing with compassion, humor, and activism, Morris empowers women to follow their dreams by showing that determined women can indeed effect change in their lives. Highly recommended." -- Library Journal

"Morris shows an admirable fearlessness… genuinely interesting subject matter." -- Kirkus Reviews

"This is not just about travel, although it’s as adventurous as can be.…Morris’ interviews…are thoughtful and probing…[and] her text adds context–and humor–to the project, warts and all." -- Booklist

"Smart, sexy, inspiring! Holly Morris is the ultimate adventure diva. Whether she's deconstructing Cuban politics, finding meaning in a Brazilian bikini wax, or succumbing to the pleasures of a Tehran security pat down, Holly lives and writes like a brainy bad girl. I loved reading Adventure Divas is like riding shotgun on a high-octane global road trip." -- Cameron Tuttle, author of The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Open Road

"Let us celebrate Holly Morris and all of the other amazing, hilarious, tough, and tender Adventure Divas in this book. There is no substitute for the old-fashioned adventurer with frequent flier miles, dirt on her boots, and new ideas." -- Sherman Alexie, author of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

"Beware. If you read this remarkable book you will pack your bags and go. And you will want to take Holly Morris with you as your friend and guide–she notices everything and she’s wickedly funny." -- Susan Fox Rogers, editor of Solo: On Her Own Adventure

"Holly Morris is hip, wise, concerned, endlessly curious, fearless, and fiercely independent–and her richly textured account of her adventures is filled with more fun and excitement than The Perils of Pauline." -- Nick Lyons, author of Full Creel

"The Adventure Divas really do go where angels fear to tread. Meet the 81-year-old Cuban poet and her 41-year-old husband; the rebellious spirit behind Iran's foremost women's magazine; a female Maori band-leader. Holly Morris has written a lively and fascinating old-girl’s-guide paean to never holding back on life. What woman–or man–can ask for more? Move over, Mr. Hemingway." -- Jacki Lyden, National Public Radio

"Holly Morris has given us a fresh and individualistic take on the American tradition of lighting out for the territory." -- Howell Raines, author of Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis

"Find your passport to excitement, enlightenment, intelligence and ingenuity in Holly Morris's spirited exploration of the global sisterhood. Adventure Divas is what the world needs now!" -- Evelyn C. White, author of Alice Walker: A Life

PARADOX FOUND

We do not have the right, in the name of social justice, to bore people to death.

—assata shakur,

black panther in exile


In Cuba

I insert the latch into the metal buckle, pull the strap low and tight across my lap, and am scribbling notes on a slightly waxy barf bag when two white guys approach down the aisle. One is a collared priest and the other, big-bellied and teetering on the last rungs of middle age, carries a blue gym bag emblazoned with cia in gold letters. They plunk themselves down on either side of me.

Flanked by paradox.

The Cubana Airlines Yak-42, a Soviet-built plane bound for Havana, looks as if it got left in for a few extra tumble cycles. The plane’s interior is a chamber of chaos: broken seat belts and floppy chairs. Disconcerting smokelike vapors billow around my feet.

The threadbare burgundy fabric itches. I shift and try to look demure. Why would a priest be on a flight to one of the last communist (as in, aggressively secular) strongholds in this part of the world? And why would anyone sling a CIA gym bag?

The Spy turns to me and offers intelligence. “Don’t worry. The vapor is normal. These old Russkie air conditioners aren’t what they used to be.”

“Oh . . . okay.” I respond with a half-smile, leaving only an infinitesimal crack in the door of airplane social etiquette. The Spy slams his foot in the door and is off: “First time? Traveling without your husband?” The only thing I fear more than sitting next to the CIA when trying to sneak into a country and avoid getting busted for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act (which holds a penalty of up to ten years in prison) is sitting next to a lonely person on an airplane. I have no problem with loners. I just don’t like being pinned between one of them and . . . God. Don’t know whether I’d burn faster in Langley or Hell, but I’ve challenged their respective moral codes enough to ignite on contact.

“Reagan gave me this gym bag in 1985,” the Spy rattles on, “and I’ve been to a cocktail party or two with Castro,” he adds casually. Sounds like an oxymoronic social gathering to me.

Luckily, the Spy is mostly interested in hearing himself talk, so there is no pressure to explain my own presence on this flight. Just as well. With no visa and six thousand dollars in cash strapped to my body, I might raise suspicion. My hand brushes over the important bulges: cash and passport. Ordinarily I list these as the only two essentials for a journey, but this time the list has lengthened considerably to include two cinematographers, a load of 16mm film, a sound person, and—my mother. A hurricane delayed us in Cancún but eventually we made it onto this flight, where we are now scattered about the plane in single seats. We are finally on our way to film the pilot episode for Adventure Divas. I wonder if my colleagues are as nervous as I am.

We tried to go legally. Really we did.

For months we begged and pleaded and touted our professional stripes, but no one would grant us the journalist credentials we were after. We had not foreseen the antipathy, or, in some cases, simple apathy, of the U.S....