Posted by chicagomedia.org on November 17, 2008 at 19:40:27:
Celebrity traveler: Bill Kurtis
By Anne Stein
Emmy Award winner Bill Kurtis has narrated more than 1,000 documentaries and produced nearly 500 in the last two decades. Through his Kurtis Productions, he makes about 20 documentaries a year, which often can be seen on the Arts & Entertainment network. Though he and Donna LaPietra have a home in north suburban Mettawa, Kurtis also is chairman and founder of Tallgrass Beef Co., based outside the tiny town of Sedan, Kan., where he has a 10,000-acre ranch.
Q: Where's your favorite vacation spot?
A: I travel so much on stories, so I don't take vacation much, but one place I go back to again and again is my ranch. Business takes me down there, but it's become a spiritual center for me. Long horizons, big sky and tall grass appeal to me. I'm from there, and it looks like Africa. I have an affinity for Africa, especially East Africa, and Kansas looks very much like that.
Q: Who goes with you when you travel?
A: A lot of time it's just me and the crew. A cameraman, a producer, and soundman�it's team travel. Sharing with somebody is more fun than going alone.
Q: What's one thing you can't travel without?
A: Most of the places I go I take a snakebite kit, an iPod, a flashlight, a change of clothes and that's about it. And Cipro [the antibiotic]. I was in Mombasa [Kenya] and flew to Kigali after the massacre in Rwanda, and we stopped in Uganda, and there were some U.S. soldiers who'd had dysentery for four days. I gave each of them a Cipro pill and cured them in three hours.
Q: What's your favorite hotel?
A: The Oriental in Bangkok [now the Mandarin Oriental, www.mandarinoriental .com/bangkok]. I haven't been back since just after the Vietnam War. You can sit at the Riverside Terrace restaurant outside the Somerset Maugham suite and eat oatmeal while you watch the river traffic go by.
Also The Miyako in Kyoto, Japan [www.chicagotribune.com/miyako]. If you ask for an Oriental room, they'll lead you to the 10th floor, which is built along this small mountainside. It opens into a room of cedar. Your tatami mat is there, a soaking bath and windows that open to the tops of the trees so you're literally sleeping in the treetops.
Q: What do you search for when you arrive somewhere new?
A: One quest I undertake is to find the best bar in the world. Not that I'm a big drinker. The thought of sipping a sundowner cocktail and watching the sunset over the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi [Kenya] just keeps me going. There's this great bar overlooking Ngorongoro Crater [game preserve], in Tanzania. There's another one in Luangwa River valley in Zambia.
Another is Bella Vista, an hour outside Quito, Ecuador. It's a geodesic dome built out of bamboo in a rain forest which is swarmed by hummingbirds. All of these I'd go back to in a minute. They create memories. All vacations can come down to a few little moments�what do your remember when you're alone, totally relaxed and taken out of yourself to appreciate this other world.
(Chicago Tribune)