Places I Remember with Lea Lane
On this monthly award-winning travel podcast, host Lea Lane shares travel memories and travel tips with passionate travelers, travel experts, and savvy locals around the world. Lea has traveled to over 100 countries, is the author of nine books, a blogger at forbes.com, and a contributor to dozens of guidebooks. Smart. Fun! Over 100 episodes!
Places I Remember with Lea Lane
Travel Tales From An Award-Winning Badass
Margie Goldsmith, author of Becoming a Badass: From Fearful to Fierce, suggests "do one thing every day that scares you" – a mantra that transformed her into the adventure-seeking "badass" she is today. She shares captivating stories from her journeys across more than 100 countries, revealing how memorable travel experiences often arise from unexpected human connections.
We start in the remote mountain paths of Bhutan, where Margie found herself teaching American camp songs to fascinated schoolchildren. In Morocco, what began as local women laughing at her marathon training outfit evolved into a joyous mountain-top celebration.
Her tales take us to Mongolia, where an 85-year-old toothless horseman (the country's fastest racehorse rider) led her across vast plains, and to Easter Island, where she recounts the dangerous traditional Birdman competition where participants risk their lives.
Whether she's distributing harmonicas to children in developing nations, playing blues with an Acadian women's drum corps in Canada, or exchanging personal items with a mountain guide in Argentina despite having no common language, her tales ring with authenticity, and resonate decades later.
From following a Finnish reindeer herder through Lapland's snowy forests to navigating past aggressive elephant seals in Antarctica, Margie demonstrates how facing fears leads to extraordinary experiences and personal growth.
This engaging conversation, including many of Lea's travel tales as well, will inspire you to seek authentic connections in your travels – and challenge yourself, as Margie does. As she proves through her harmonica performance ending the episode, it's never too late to develop new passions and continue growing through travel and creative expression.
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Margie Goldsmith is an award-winning writer, musician, and author of Becoming a Badass: From Fearful to Fierce, available in print, Kindle and audiobook, with Margie narrating (including some of her music!). Contact her at margiegoldsmith.com
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Podcast host Lea Lane has traveled to over 100 countries, and has written nine books, including the award-winning Places I Remember (Kirkus Reviews star rating, and 'one of the top 100 Indie books of the year'). She has contributed to many guidebooks and has written thousands of travel articles. Contact her at placesirememberlealane.com
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Our award-winning travel podcast, Places I Remember with Lea Lane, has dropped over 120 travel episodes! New episodes drop on the first Tuesday of the month, on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Travel vlogs of featured podcasts-- with video and graphics -- now drop on YouTube.Please subscribe, like, and comment.
Our guest is Margie Goldsmith, multi-award winning travel and culture writer, whose new memoir Becoming a Badass from Fearful to Fierce is just out. Welcome, Margie, to Places I Remember.
Margie Goldsmith:Thank you, Lea. it's good to be here.
Lea Lane:Well, we've each been to well over 100 countries and we've both been travel writing for many years, so I thought it'd be fun for both of us to chat about some of our favorite places and experiences, and both of us share some insights and fun tales with our listeners. But before we start talking travel, I'd love for you to tell us briefly about your memoir and why you named it Badass.
Margie Goldsmith:I think, because most people always talk about what they want to do but they never really do it because they're always afraid. And my philosophy in life has always been since I heard Eleanor Roosevelt say it on a piece of paper: "Do one thing a day that scares you." So I started doing that, and it always had to do with travel. And the more difficult the challenge became, the more I insisted on doing it and I considered that a badass. But I didn't start out as a badass, so that's why I call it From Fearful to Fierce.
Lea Lane:I read it. It's really interesting. You've had so many different aspects to your life, not just travel writer and author, but business owner, and then you've met so many interesting people. I highly recommend the book, and I know one of your newer pursuits has been writing music and playing bluesy harmonica, or harp as it's sometimes called. So maybe we'll end with that, but right now let's talk travel, and this is going to be quite the convo. I asked you to note some of your favorite travel tales, and I'll add my own as well. Let's start with Bhutan. Tell us where Bhutan is.
Margie Goldsmith:Bhutan is this tiny little kingdom wedged in between India and China. Most people have never heard of it. It's a place where they say happiness is their national product, because they didn't really have anything else to sell in terms of infrastructure. And I went on an adult outward bound invitational trip, which means you're sleeping in tents and you're climbing mountains, and the main highway was a dirt path about as big as two feet could walk on, and sometimes the Indian army would walk up it carrying liquor. For the whole season. They'd be there all winter. [Oh really, what kind of liquor?] P Probably rum.[Okay.] what kind of liquor? Probably rum, uh-huh, okay.
Margie Goldsmith:And then one day a mother came by leading a pony with two little red-faced toddlers on it, and I was just so entranced. And then you'd have to push yourself to the side when you heard the jingle, jingle of the yak trains, these big, huge, buffalo-looking animals who could squish you. But one day and I'm a middle-of-the-pack hiker, there were always the alpha males up ahead and the slower people behind. So I'm always hiking alone and suddenly this group of 18 schoolchildren, all in uniform, in the middle of nowhere, come up to me and say hello, hello. And I always try to learn hello and thank you in the language. So I say, "cousin zamba," which took me a week to learn, and they say, oh, and they think I speak Bhutanese, which I don't, and they start to sing to me. But they sing a song in Bhutanese. It's so familiar to me from Girl Scout camp it's "do your ears hang low, do they waddle to and fro."
Lea Lane:I know that song.
Margie Goldsmith:Yes. So I sang it to them in English and I showed them the hand motions and they learned all the hand motions and then I thought well, what other song can I do easily? So I did Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham and they all rocked the baby. It was such a wonderful experience because and they're touching my Gore-Tex They'd never seen fabric like that. They followed me all the way to camp. I would have had them all sleep in my tent with me, but the guide kicked them out.
Margie Goldsmith:But I will never forget meeting these children and connecting with them. Without a word of the same language in the middle, perfect.
Lea Lane:I think some of the best, best memories are with people and with children especially. I have one little memory, when you brought it to mind. I was in Oman, which is in the Middle East, a beautiful country, mountainous country, and I was at a river and these children came by. They asked to take a picture with me. Someone took a picture of us and I got the picture. I looked at it and it was adorable because they're all smiling. But one of the little girls had her hand up behind my head with the two fingers. You know the little international sign for stupid or devil.
Lea Lane:It was the most charming memory. It's tiny, just like yours, just tiny and wonderful. Okay, what about Morocco? You have a memory there.
Margie Goldsmith:Well, in Morocco I was training for a marathon and I was in the Atlas Mountains or the Altus Mountains, I'm not sure how you pronounce them. Very hilly, and you don't wear shorts. In Morocco you don't wear t-shirts, but I'm American and I was wearing shorts and t-shirts because I was training for this marathon and it was hot. So I run all the way down the hill and I'm passing these truckloads of cars, of people coming back from work, laughing at me, and there were two Moroccan women, all in their jalabas and their little pointy slippers, pointing and laughing at me and I thought, ok, you know, this is a little weird. Maybe it's my outfit, maybe people just don't run in Morocco. So I get to the bottom of the hill and now I start to run up and I'm halfway up the mountain and suddenly those two women who had been laughing at me grab a hand each and we scream all the way to the top of the mountain and you know that sound they can make with their mouths that we can't.
Lea Lane:Oh, you can do it, I can I can I know?
Margie Goldsmith:I know, and it was the most joyful moment. They had run with this foreigner for the first time in their lives and I had run with them, and it's those moments that you never, ever forget. That might have been 25 years ago, oh yeah. But I can still see them smiling and cackling at the top of the mountain.
Lea Lane:I can hear it too, because I know that sound, because I hear it a lot, I guess they learn it early. It's like a happy sound, really right yeah.
Margie Goldsmith:We learned to snap our fingers and they learned to do the screeching from the back of the throat.
Lea Lane:All right, so how about Mongolia?
Margie Goldsmith:I've always wanted to horseback ride and of course I never could. That was always for rich kids. So I get to Mongolia and they say what do you want to do? I say I want a horseback ride. They say fine, because it's all open plains, there are no fences anywhere.
Margie Goldsmith:So they bring me this horseback rider with his horse and I look at him and he's got to be 85 years old and he's got his little cap on and he smiles. He has no teeth. And I turned to my guide. I go you're sending me with this guy. And they say listen, madam, he's the fastest racehorse rider in the country. He just rode eight ponies in from the West today. You should be so lucky to ride with him. So my knees are shaking, I'm shaking. He takes my horse, he ropes up a rope, he tethers it to my horse. He's right next to me. We are knee to knee, elbow to elbow, arm to arm. I'm holding onto the horn for dear life. They call it the sissy bar. And we take off across the hills of Mongolia and about every 10 miles or so you pass a gare which is their version of a tent and everybody's going. Ha, ha, ha ha. They're laughing because it's so ridiculous the American woman with a brilliant rider. But I did it and it was fun. Just another moment. You just don't forget those things.
Lea Lane:I know I'm thinking of a moment on a horse too. I was on Lake Louise in British Columbia in Canada and I wanted to go horseback riding. It's so beautiful, you know, just gorgeous turquoise blue lakes. And so I asked about it. They said oh, it's very easy, An 85-year-old just rode a horse around the lake and it's fine. So I'm not a very good horseback rider, to say the least. So I got on the horse. I said, well, if someone that old can do it I could.
Lea Lane:I was young at the time and it was five hours on the edge of a precipice with rocks falling down, and I just was praying that the horse wanted to live because it was all up to him. I was so exhausted at the end of those five hours even though I wasn't walking, I was just sitting, that I fell off the horse. When I saw the stable, I just couldn't even wait till the stable, I just dropped off the horse. I was so happy. So I know what that feels like a little bit when you're riding and people say, oh, you can do it, it's fine.
Margie Goldsmith:No problem. You know, before I had gotten to this guy in the mountains of Mongolia, I had gone to a national park with a guide and he said do you want a helmet? And I said yes, and he gives me this like 1920s helmet, probably a bike helmet, and the horse is about two feet high. He goes. You might think our horses are very little, but they are very fast. They are the fastest horses in the world. Now you might have to hold on to the sissy bar and you don't say giddy up, you say choo. So I go choo, the horse doesn't move. I go choo, the horse doesn't move. He starts to kick the horse with his whip. Horse doesn't move. I say let's switch horses. He goes no, no, no, no. You don't understand. You have the fastest racehorse horses. Same thing. The horse wouldn't move. For three hours. He pulled me by the rope with his horse. It was so uncomfortable and they have these awful wooden saddles. So I think I'm done with my horseback riding days as are you.
Lea Lane:Okay, how about Peru?
Margie Goldsmith:In Peru, I had decided to go follow an archaeologist who was looking for Peruvian mummies in the cloud forest, which is more like a mud forest because it's so muddy.
Margie Goldsmith:And a woman had gotten credit for finding these mummies. But this guy, Peter Lerche, who later became the mayor of Lemibamba, was the actual finder of the mummies. So we take off on this trekking trip and he doesn't wait for us. He's like Peter Pan. He is skipping over the stones. We don't know which way to go. Meanwhile we're in mud up to our knees and you have to stop and pull out your rubber boot and start again. And then we stop for lunch. And I go. Well, where's lunch? He goes well. Didn't you take some crackers on the way out for lunch? And I said no, so there was no lunch.
Margie Goldsmith:But that night there's this howling going on and he comes to my tent and he goes. Can you help us? I go. What's the matter? He goes. Well, one of our guides who was in jail for killing a man has a horrible toothache. He's in so much pain we don't know what he's going to do. Well, I had one leftover Ambien from something. As an emergency I gave it to him. They were so happy. The next day I was the heroine. They go now we need one for tonight and I had no more.
Margie Goldsmith:None of us slept that night. It was very funny.
Lea Lane:Go to Antarctica. How about that?
Margie Goldsmith:Well, in Antarctica you're out all the time from your boat and you walk along the shores and you have to pass a lot of seals, and sometimes it's elephant seals. They are big, they are ugly, they are mean, they have huge teeth and I've never been more scared in my life. So our guide is taking two stones and tapping them together and thinking that the noise will stop them. So we keep on walking along like that and I was just really holding onto his waist, just praying that we could get through this gauntlet. And then another time, we're following Shackleton's footsteps, so we're in a dinghy but it's got a leak in it and there's an elephant seal following us and we're near Elephantine Island whatever it was called,
Lea Lane:well, that's appropriate
Margie Goldsmith:which is very scary because it's got big waves and I was sure that this was a leopard seal. He was going to devour us and eat us.
Lea Lane:is remember elephant seals. Yeah, the noises, they they bellow, and the smell. When you have a lot of them it's like a men's locker room on steroids. Quite a sensual feast, I would say. But again, a memory. All these things are wonderful memories. At the time.
Margie Goldsmith:They may be scary or funny, whatever, but they, they last yeah, isn't it interesting that we both remember these things as vividly, as though it were yesterday it's not the prepared thing, so much you know.
Lea Lane:Very often they're wonderful things, but it's the unexpected.
Margie Goldsmith:Yes.
Lea Lane:Okay, let's go to Mexico. You have a good memory there too.
Margie Goldsmith:Okay. So I decided to go to Mexico to take a curso de inmersión, the intensive, immersive five-week course in Spanish. And it was right before Christmas. And I walk out into the square of Oaxaca and you see radishes the size of watermelons and as long as the biggest squash you've ever seen, and they call it the Radish Festival and it takes place the day before Christmas Eve and they are carving the most beautiful figures out of these radishes. Sometimes it's the nativity scene, sometimes it's just someone on horseback, sometimes it's someone making mola, but it's art and it's eventually just going to get thrown away. But the shock of seeing something so unexpected was just one of those experiences that, unless you travel, you're never going to get that.
Lea Lane:In some areas you use red as a color in Christmas, but that seems to be a beautiful symbol. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Do they make food out of the radishes after, or do you know? Or they just throw them all out.
Margie Goldsmith:There's a lot of food around with radishes that you can eat, but these are art things. I'm not sure if it's the color red or maybe radishes are in season because their seasons are the opposite of ours.
Lea Lane:Right, it's interesting. I went to a Spanish immersion school too, in Antigua, Guatemala, where they speak perfect Spanish. I remember vividly my tutor there. She was a lovely girl from a village and she walked hours to get there every day and she was a poet. She showed me some of her poetry and it was absolutely beautiful and I brought it back and I showed it around but nothing ever came of publishing it. But you just never know. This was a village girl in Guatemala who was a beautiful poet. So I remember her. I honor her right now because I haven't thought of her in a while. So thank you for making me remember her.
Margie Goldsmith:And how is your Spanish.
Lea Lane:My Spanish is okay, así, así
Margie Goldsmith:Better than mine,
Lea Lane:Poco a poco. Okay, Easter Island, tell me.
Margie Goldsmith:Have you been to Easter Island?
Lea Lane:Yes, I have.
Margie Goldsmith:Okay, so everybody goes for the Moai. Yes, big, huge sculptures which they claim walked around to their places. They cut down every tree in Easter Island, so you know they rolled them like train tracks. But they have a festival called the Birdman Festival. Did they take you up there?
Lea Lane:And I did see the big caldera where they fly.
Margie Goldsmith:Yeah, and so what they do is they keep a virgin down in a cave so she remains lily white, because the winner is going to get the virgin and become chief for the year, and it's all these 19 to 25-year-old boys. They have to make their own raft out of straw, jump off a cliff with a raft, swim as fast as they can, using the raft as a surfboard, and get to the island to get the first terns egg. That happens during Easter time during the spring. They take that egg and they put it on a kind of a handkerchief made out of string on their forehead, swim back through the shark-infested waters and have to climb back up the cliff. And the first one up the cliff with the egg wins.
Margie Goldsmith:So the following happens Everybody's got a knife and they all try to stab each other with a knife because then the sharks will get them. So that's one way to get rid of them. If they haven't gotten rid of their competitor and the competitor has the egg, they try to grab the egg and they stab them as they're trying to go up the cliff, so they'll fall down the cliff. I mean it's a horrible cutthroat and I mean that's a competition now.
Lea Lane:Like a cutthroat Iron Man
Margie Goldsmith:Well, that's exactly what it is with the prize being the Virgin and the Chief. Oh my gosh. The Christians banned it when they came in, but they started it again, and I think Red Bull is sponsoring it now.
Lea Lane:Oh my, that's appropriate, right, okay, that's a memory. That's kind of gruesome, but it's vivid. How about Argentina?
Margie Goldsmith:One of the most beautiful countries of the world, with so much to offer in terms of architecture and culture and dancing and tango and life on the streets, and I was actually trying to climb a volcano there,
Lea Lane:oh, really.
Margie Goldsmith:Down in Patagonia and our guide was wearing the typical hand mittens and a wool cap. And we got up to the top of the mountain and they make a little toast with tobacco and whiskey to the four corners of the world or the four directions of the gods, and we looked at each other and we both started crying and he gave me his hat and I gave him my red fleece hat and he gave me his mittens and I gave him my red fleece mittens and it was such a connection. I didn't speak a word of Spanish at that time. That was before Mexican school and I will never forget that I still have his mittens and hat. Oh, it's always the people, always the connection.
Lea Lane:Well, it's always the people, except in Argentina. I went to an area it's a nature reserve called Punta Tombo. I don't know if you've been there. It's the world's largest colony of Magellanic penguins and it's awesome, if you like penguins. They don't look like the ones in Antarctica. They're smaller. They're the cutest things. They come right up to you. One tried to get in the bus with me. He followed me into the bus. It was so cute. He waited in line, he queued up, he was standing there, but there are thousands and thousands of them. I went twice. The second time there were not as many. I'm hoping it was just the timing and not the climate change or anything. But yeah, animals also are a wonderful memory for me, besides people. How about Canada?
Margie Goldsmith:Well, I was in New Brunswick at the Acadian Festival. In Moncton, which is the middle of nowhere, every house was decorated with the Acadian flag and flowers and it was like our 4th of July and there was a parade on the street.
Lea Lane:Yes, I've been to that they bang right, they bang everything. Yes, very noisy.
Margie Goldsmith:They had a whole drum corps of women, not to mention all the little instruments, toy instruments and everybody's banging and laughing and screaming and this drum corps of 12 women comes by. I jump into the middle of the fray with my harmonica and just played with them for three hours and it was so much fun. It was no judgment, it was not are you playing well enough, it was just becoming part of their culture. I think is what you and I both do. We immerse ourselves into where we are.
Lea Lane:Absolutely, and I think if you have a good attitude and you smile at people, people will respond to you wherever you are in the world, whether you speak the language or not. As you mentioned, there are a couple of words you can learn and even if you don't learn any words, if you smile at someone and and are friendly, you're going to get that back and I think it's so important today. I'll finish with Finland. Tell us.
Lea Lane:Tell us about
Margie Goldsmith:So I went to Lapland and I followed a Finnish reindeer herder. He put me in like a Michelin suit of a nice, warm suit which was made of everything reindeer. They use every part of the reindeer which they keep in herds. So we drove out by snowmobile to his reindeer herd, which was about five miles away in the forest. Don't think that wasn't a cold, bumpy ride. And they used to ski out to these reindeer, which is why their boots are all turned up at the toes, because that's how they put their ski boots onto the skis.
Margie Goldsmith:So we get out there and he goes and suddenly here, clack, clack, clack, all the reindeer come. He feeds them, he makes a fire out of rubbing two sticks together and cooks some reindeer sausage. And then we went back and he said I'm going to teach you how to lasso a reindeer. So he had a little wooden reindeer there and I had to lasso it. But the experience of being with him and learning how important the reindeer are. You never ask a Sami reindeer herder how big his herd is, because that's like asking how much money you have in the bank.
Lea Lane:Really I won't do that. It's a no-no. I did do that as well. I remember we had reindeer games where we had races. The thing I remember most about that. This was maybe 25 years ago. It was the first time I'd seen a cell phone. The reindeer herder had a cell phone because I think they started Nokia, I think started in Finland and they used them because of the distances and that was the first time I ever saw anyone using one. So that's a memory. Anyway, these are fabulous experiences. I know you have so many more, some of them in your book, but just endless wonderful things. We're both so lucky to have chosen travel writing as a way of life.
Margie Goldsmith:And we're not done, we're not done.
Lea Lane:We're still doing it. We've done it a long time. We're slowing down but we're not done. Well, but we're keeping up, down and up. The name of the podcast is Places I Remember. So let's end on a travel memory we shared. A few years ago you were playing your first quote-unquote international road trip, playing your blues harmonica in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada. I came along as kind of a companion groupie and you were playing gigs informally. I caught the feeling of how great it is not only to be a musician but to react with people. It was wonderful. It was so free and I just was delighted to see how you went up there and this was at the beginning of your musicianship, years ago. But you were up there playing and I just wanted to know traveling and playing music, do you have any experiences you want to share and maybe afterwards share a little bit of your music?
Margie Goldsmith:Sure, I would love to.
Margie Goldsmith:I bring my harmonica every place I go and I get in touch with Hohner Music and I ask them to send me 30 harmonicas.
Margie Goldsmith:And when I'm in third world countries like Mongolia or Papua New Guinea or Myanmar, I ask to be put in touch with the third or fourth grade class, because that's when they're really getting into it, and I give them each a harmonica and I teach them how to blow in and blow out and they're joyful. And once when I was in with the Botwi Pygmies -- I'm having a blank --somewhere in Uganda I had given the kids the harmonicas the day before and the next day we were leaving and I had left my little cabin and I was walking towards the place where you put your suitcase and I hear this harmonica in the forest and I followed the little path and there's a little eight-year-old boy who's gotten a harmonica, big grin on his face, playing, and it just touched me. It was so moving because you can change a person's life by bringing music into it. And they have nothing. You know they will play with stones the way we play with toys as children.
Lea Lane:Exactly. This is a perfect time for you to perhaps play us something as we end this convo. Will you riff a bit?
Lea Lane:bit s this has been travel, I figured I'd do a very international song ¶¶.
Lea Lane:So great. Margie Goldsmith, travel culture writer, musician and author of Becoming a Badass From Fearful to Fierce. There's no doubt that you deserve the title of your book. Thank you so much.
Margie Goldsmith:Thank you so much, Lea . . s. And you are . " Oh O , oh my goodness, thank you.
