"Indiana Dan..."

My grandparents, Henry and Frieda Foege were some of the first Lutheran missionaries into the jungles and highlands of New Guinea. My mother was born in the village of Nobonob, New Guinea, where she grew up wearing a grass skirt as a little girl.  

As a young kid, I would spend part of every summer at Grandpa and Grandma's house rummaging through their old trunks and chests of artifacts from New Guinea. Hearing them talk pidgin english, listening to their stories, and looking at all the nose rings, grass skirts, headhunter stone axes, spears and old faded brown and white photos made me wonder what it was like to live in the steamy jungles of New Guinea. I'm sure this is what first piqued my wanderlust and interest in exploring tropical jungles and faraway lands. It is no coincidence that we now raise Eclectus Parrots and Sugar Gliders from Papua New Guinea! (Now you can see why our male Sugar Glider is named "Papua" and his girlfriend's name is "Guinea"!)

In 1978, I was fortunate enough to spend several months traveling with an LYE (Lutheran Youth Encounter) singing group as a short-term missionary in India, and I finally got to visit tropical jungles firsthand on tiger safaris on elephant back. (I'll never forget finding a 15 foot python in the jungle at the Khana National Park!)

During my time in India, I enjoyed learning how to read and write the Tamil and Malayalam languages of southern India. One of my favorite memories was meeting some Indian fishermen on the beach in Madras, Tamil Nadu, and getting to learn Tamil fishing chanties while spending the day out fishing with them on a large wooden catamaram raft in the Indian Ocean. (The word "catamaram" comes from the Tamil words "katu", which means "cut" and "maram" which means "wood"). While in India, I also learned some of the basics of playing sitar and snake charming cobras myself. I also came down with a nasty bought of Malaria fever, which still sometimes reoccurs from time to time to remind me of India.

When I returned from India, I moved to the Bahamas, and for several years I lived alone on "Little Stirrup Cay", a secluded little island about a mile long and 1/3 of a mile wide in the northwest Berry Islands (map) of the Bahamas (map) where I worked as caretaker of the island for a friend of mine who owned the island.

People often ask me if I was the original "Survivor". For several years, I lived in a thatched hut, cooked over a campfire, ate coconuts, lemons, turtlegrass seaweed, and whatever sharks, stingrays, grouper, or lobster I could spear, and basically lived like Robinson Crusoe.

Most of the time I wore my Indian "chutka" or Tarzan loincloth that I had learned to wear in India, and my hair got bleached really blonde from the sun and salt water.

People often asked me if I was there to 'find myself' or 'get my head screwed on right' or 'find God'? And I would always tell them, "No, I am very happy with the way God made me, and I enjoy myself. And God had already found me, and we have a great relationship. As a matter of fact, I spent most of my time very close to Him, since there was nobody else to talk to!" Was I the original Survivor? Who knows. I was "a" survivor, and all I know is that I really enjoyed it! Why not? I was living on a beautiful island in the Bahamas!

I later went back to manage the Out-Island Activities Department for a couple of years for the cruise ship the S.S. Emerald Seas, became a Scuba Instructor and for several years was known by the local Bahamians, passengers, crew members, and even the Captain as "Diver Dan".

In 1995 I joined a buddy on an expedition to the Amazon Rainforest of Ecuador, and we stayed with a couple of tribes of Indians in grass huts in the rainforest in Pujo Pongo, on the Rio Pastaza river just outside of Puyo. I enjoyed catching and studying the many types of butterflies in the jungle, and I fell in love with coatimundis and the beautiful macaws and other parrots.

I also got to really experience the rainforest jungle firsthand with a WET ride in dugout canoes on the Rio Pastaza when the dugout canoes got swamped during a rainforest deluge. I also enjoyed skinny-dipping in a cold waterfall in the jungle, soaking in the hot waterfall baths in the mountain jungle picinas at Baños, and shopping for blankets and sweaters in the mercado in Otavalo. During the spring of 1996, I returned to Ecuador again to get married there in Quito, and this time we travelled on to Peru to visit Lima, Cuzco, Lake Titicaca, and explore the lost Incan jungle city of Machu Picchu high in the Andes mountains, where I first fell in love with llamas and alpacas. (Our llama Oscar Farinango is named after our Peguche Indian friend Oscar Farinango in Otavalo Ecuador.)