Contact: don(at)evidenceofalostcity.com

 

This is how we fished for tuna when I worked on the MV Cape Falcon. I was 19 years old. Our first trip out was for two months in the Pacific off Mexico. Our second trip, however, a special one sponsored by the French government, lasted five months and took us to the Polynesian islands—the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, and Tahiti.

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I emigrated from California to Australia at the end of 1960. I had the boat ticket—on the SS Orcades—and ten dollars in my pocket. I found work, bought a motorcycle, and rode it up the center of that country, from Adelaide to Alice Springs to Darwin, back in the days when there was scarcely any kind of road, just a rough track alongside the railroad. In Darwin I worked as a teletype operator (I've always been a good typist) and, in this photo, was visiting a friend who lived out in the bush amongst ant hills, swamps, and crocodiles...

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A poster of the SS Orcades under Sydney Harbor Bridge. Sailing on the big ship was a glorious experience for a 21 year old boy, and my first contact with what could be called gracious living.

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Moro pirates in the southern Philippines. I stayed with a family of Moro pirates on the island of Sibutu, in the Sulu Sea, iin 1963. Haji Aba had a hand-carved outrigger canoe, about 30 feet long, with three outboard motors at the back—and a .50 caliber machine gun mounted at the front. Later they smuggled me into Borneo. I didnt have a camera with me, unfortunately, but I found this photo of Moros while browsing the internet. They are very much like the people I knew...

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After wandering through Australia, Asia, and Africa, I went roaming through Central and South America. This is Yaxchilan, a ruined Maya city in the jungle, on the Usamacinta River between Guatamala and Mexico. I took a canoe here from Sayaxche, in the Petan lowlands of Guatamala, a two-week trip where I slept in this and other ruined cities and Indian villages, stringing up my hammock and mosquito net....

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In my mid-thirties, I went wandering around the world again, this time with my bicycle, an old French Follis. This is Bali, near Ubud, about 1978.

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My parents, Marie and Martin Stuefloten. Both were born in the 19th century, my father to Norwegian immigrants and my mother in Germany.

 

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My wife, the Mexican poet Jacqueline Lizarraga de Stuefloten