cover image Volleyball with the Cuna Indians: 2and Other Gay Travel Adventures

Volleyball with the Cuna Indians: 2and Other Gay Travel Adventures

Hanns Ebensten. Viking Books, $22 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-670-84993-2

Key West tour operator Ebensten has been escorting travelers on imaginative expeditions for 40 years. In his early days, his appetite for off-beat adventure took him around the world as he lived in private castles or YMCAs, went beachcombing, or sybaritically covered himself with hot mud in the ancient stone troughs of Italy's Lacco Ameno. He enjoyed a wild night in a dormitory with 98 armed and priapic motorcycle cops and accepted the casual hospitality of the rich or famous, partying with Lady Diana Cooper and tutoring Bertrand Russell's granddaughters. As a tour operator, Ebensten attracted a clientele of artists, scholars, playboys, gays and the more intrepid of the general run of travelers. Under his guidance they tended either to rough it or to live high. In Peru, for example, while others might have satisfied themselves with the standard visit to Machu Picchu, his groups trekked to Vilcabamba, the true Inca capital; in Greece they not only viewed sacred Mount Olympus but climbed it. Stylish, cultivated, witty and frankly gay, Ebensten draws often hilarious portraits of travelers whom readers would not otherwise meet, and places rarely visited. (Dec.)