“Over a hundred years ago,” I began, “an Englishman named Fogg bragged to his fellow members at his fancy gentlemen’s club that he could go around the world in eighty days . . . or less. At the time, of course, there were no airplanes, nor telephones, nor any of the ways we travel and communicate these days. Only steamer boats, hot air balloons, elephants, camels, mules, and the like, plus on foot. For communications, there was the telegraph. Still, he claimed he could do it, and some of his fellow club members, being Englishmen I suppose, and by all accounts the bettingest people on the face of the earth, took him up on it, and so a wager was agreed on. Mr. Fogg, was not one to waste time, and not that he had any to waste. As a result, immediately afterwards he grabbed a few things and dragging his surprised French servant, Passepartout, with him, set off to see if he could do it: to see if he was man enough to back up his brag, or plumb-full of hot air and smoke. Whatever made him do it, I don’t know, but he almost made it, and by his own admission got back narrowly missing the deadline . . . by one day, which was no small feat in itself. Only, he had miscalculated, and because he travelled going east, had actually gained an extra day, by the calendar that is, and that’s what mattered. He had come back in eighty days flat, and was able to narrowly win his bet, and in the process save his life, since I believe he had bet his entire remaining fortune, what was left after travel expenses, on this one shot. But that’s not all. At the same time and totally by accident during those eighty days, he found his girl.
“I feel much the same way,” I continued. “And not that I bet or anything before coming here, or traveled east around the world, unknowingly gaining an extra day. No, I traveled south instead, way south, thinking that here I would find few if any people, and could stay indoors, out of sight and by myself for a while. A good long while. I wanted to find solitude, to be alone. But, same as Fogg, I miscalculated, and found you people instead, found Sra. Inés and her two grandkids, totally by accident. Then three months later, look what came down from the north, and found me.” Here I went looking for Tatiana and stood next to her. “I didn’t gain an extra day, but I gained a family instead. Isn’t that the most beautiful thing a man can find, no matter where he looks, or how many times he goes around the world?”
From In the Land of Fire.