Beware of negotiating with a leisurely Berber salesman, and other life lessons
I have been climbing mountains for over 20 years. I climbed mountains before I became sober and continue to climb them now. Every single mountain and the simultaneous trip, from Everest to Grand Teton, has taught me some sort of lesson: large, life-changing ones and silly, small ones. Mount Toubkal (2008) and Carstensz Pyramid (2011) were no different, I hope you enjoy their offerings.
Mount Toubkal, Morocco
This is the tallest mountain in the Atlas Mountains. I had been traveling from Madrid, and I rented a car and drove down to Gibraltar and put my car on a ferry and ended up landing in Tangier. Now, this was not a place that Europeans or white westerners found themselves going to often. It didn’t seem like a place that one might travel to for fun, it’s a kind of scary place in Africa. When I got there I noticed all the young Muslim men everywhere carrying large guns freely, while middle eastern music played loudly all around. I understand I’ve been programmed by Hollywood and the American government to associate these things with the idea that bad shit is going to happen. I acknowledge this, but I’ll tell you I did get the heebie-jeebies. After leaving there I drove down past Rabat and Casablanca and found my way to Marrakesh. I truly recommend traveling there. After staying in a cute little location and riding a camel, I headed out to the mountain which was a two-day climb.
When I ran a boxing gym for a decade, I learned something that I’ve taken with me all around the world on my travels. The brown guys, the white guys, the Black guys all got along great in the boxing gym. We’re all training, we all get to know each other, and the respect isn’t about color or age or social status. It’s about how hard you train. It really encourages everyone to train hard and it’s a beautiful thing to see because you don’t feel or see prejudice while you’re sparring. I notice that it’s the same thing on the mountain. Once you leave Marrakesh and you’re on that mountain, you see and embrace people from all over the world. No prejudice, no Muslim or Jewish or Christian, we’re all just climbing and training. It’s a true sense of comradery that I hope everyone gets to experience.
When I reached the summit it was morning and it was gorgeous to overlook the land below. I felt this euphoria and joy that coupled into my sense of accomplishment by getting to the top of the highest mountain in the Atlas range. That same day I’m walking down the mountain, and as I got near to the bottom I came across a hut with a Berber man who sells carpets. I decided to look around and potentially buy something, but really I just wanted to interact with this man and his trade. I sat down with the man, and had him show me carpets and he told me about many of them; their history, how they were made, how they came to be there. I see one that I really like and he spent time telling me about the four women who hand wove this particular carpet. Now, I am a half Jewish New Yorker, and I consider myself both a successful business man and a shrewd negotiator. Not only this, but I have about $700 on me and I knew that worst case scenario that’s what I might end up spending on a carpet. What I’ve learned from my haggling is that you start shockingly low, and once we got to the part of the conversation where we began to discuss price, I broke into my fanny pack and I pulled out two dollars. I said, “I would like to buy this carpet, and I realize it’s worth much more than this but I love this carpet and I would like you to sell it to me for $2.” The man smiled at me and said excuse me while he went to make tea. He came back, we had tea, and we spent four more hours talking together. At the end, I wired him $4,000.00 and I left with two carpets. He kicked my suburban ass, and I love him to this day. I keep the carpets in my sacred meditation room and I get to appreciate their beauty every day. I truly appreciate and relish them and that experience. Beware of negotiating with a Berber carpet salesman who seems to have much more time than I did!
Puncak Jaya or Carstensz Pyramid, New Guinea
Sometimes traveling can be a challenge. You don’t always get to drive or fly directly to your location when you’re climbing mountains. Getting to West Papua was a challenge in and of itself, and I hadn’t even yet set out on the climb. When I got to a very remote town I remembered that people I was staying with told me they ate dog as a meal. I was curious so I asked how do you prepare dog to eat? I thought maybe there was an exquisite native sauce recipe that I could remember to use for my beef or pork. My host looked at me like I was stupid and said, “the same way you prepare cat.” I left it at that. Now I wish I had still inquired further: a curry? Do they grill it? Is it better sautéed? I’ll never know.
On the seven-day hike on the way to the base camp, we passed two tribes of active cannibals. I wasn’t aware that there were still active cannibal tribes and was shocked. We saw them from a distance, but my guide and I avoided them and moved fast. We both were relatively nervous.
When I got to the face of the mountain, there was a 3,000ft. mostly fixed rope climb. All day I was pulling myself with my two arms up this gosh darn mountain. Once we got to the summit there was a Tyrolean Traverse which connected the peaks. Someone had fixed a wire that was 60 feet long across. My guide said it was very easy to hook your harness onto the wire and to pull yourself across. Not only had I been hiking for 7 days, but I had just pulled my entire body weight and pack up 3,000ft. I was exhausted, I was light headed, and I was not thinking clearly. I watched my guide slide across it and it looked super easy. I hooked my harness in and started shimmying across. The first half was relatively easy because it was tilted downward, but when I got to the center point and I went to pull, I realized it was a lot harder. I let out a deep breath to get myself ready and I was 2,000ft. in the air on a 60ft. line when I looked down and saw that I had forgotten to tighten my harness and my belt slide by about 2 inches. I had about 2 inches left before my harness would come off. Adrenaline fully kicked in and I panicked. I put my elbow over the wire and used my arm like a pulley. I then mustered all my strength and put my leg over the wire and pulled myself up. I made it across, thankfully. It is very important when you’re mountaineering and doing anything with a harness that you check everything to make sure it is secure and tight. I didn’t die, and I did make it to the summit, but this was a big lesson in climbing for me.