aksportingjournal.com | AUGUST 2019 ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL 17
EDITOR’S NOTE
I
have some vacation time I want to use this fall and plan to
make good use of my passport and visit another country.
After speaking to Gwen Grimes, an Alaska homesteader
who completed a 21-day challenge in Mexico that was chron-
icled on the Discovery Channel series Naked and Afraid, I was
reminded why I love traveling abroad (and led me to wonder
yet again, why the hell didn’t I start earlier than when I hit 40?!).
When Grimes had finished her 21-day challenge along the
coast of southern Mexico, she had a free day before she began
her trip back to Alaska. It proved to be one of the highlights of
her stay there. She was invited to visit one of the local villages
to get a glimpse of locals’ everyday life. Grimes, who lives on
a homestead in Eagle, on the Yukon just west of Canada, was
delighted to get some perspective at the riverside location.
“They had us go at night so we could see the bioluminescent
fish. It’s one of the few places in the world where they have these
microbial organisms that glow a greenish-yellow color in the wa-
ter and leave these stripes. We were able to swim with them,”
said Grimes, who also witnessed local fishermen ply their trade
while using fire to coax jumping fish into boats.
Grimes then went back to the town she was staying in and
was one of the guests of honor at an outdoor party. “We had so
much fun that night. It was a pretty cool adventure.”
That was Grimes’ first international trip save for visiting
Canada, and she caught the bug to do more exploring. She re-
cently got back from a two-month backpacking tour of South
America, presumably now bitten by the same travel bug as I
was about a decade ago when I made my first venture outside
of North America.
Grimes’ experience in Mexico is just one of two features
this month about Alaskans getting a taste of adventure Out-
side. Soldotna fishing guide Greg Brush and daughter Kend-
ra discovered new thrills abroad too, plains game hunting in
South Africa, a safari that Greg wrote was “such an incredible
trip that I have already rebooked for 2020.”
“Traveling, man; there’s where it’s at,” Grimes told me. “It’s
an incredible life-changing experience to interact with different
cultures.” I couldn’t agree more. -Chris CocolesAlaska homesteader Gwen Grimes (left), here with daughter
Mackenzie, caught the travel bug – the good kind – when she
participated in a 21-day survival challenge in Mexico. (GWEN GRIMES)