Herbert Bailey Livesey
Lower Hudson Valley, NY

Call me “Bailey”. For over thirty years, I’ve been writing about travel, from Sydney to Istanbul and Hudson Bay to Easter Island.

My articles have appeared in Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, and Playboy, among many magazines. I’ve authored or contributed to fourteen guidebooks in the American Express and Frommer series, published in up to a dozen languages.

While I’ve soared over New Mexico in a hot-air balloon, fished for blue marlin in the Caribbean, para-sailed over Flathead Lake, ridden horseback in the Andes of Ecuador, spelunked in Maya caves, rafted the River of No Return, and snorkeled black coral reefs off Cozumel, I rarely write about adventure travel. My usual focus is on food and restaurants, about the easiest work you can do while upright and breathing.

The title of this site reflects time spent in a remote region of Spain called Terra Alta - “High Ground”. It was my admittedly quixotic notion to buy a house there.  Sepo, a local man-of-all-work (as long as it didn’t involve lifting) volunteered to guide me around the archipelago of hilltop farm villages scattered across the region.  The largest of the villages had only 3,000 inhabitants, the smallest barely 300 hundred. Many of them didn’t appear on maps.

House-hunting is a leisurely process in Terra Alta.  No quick walk-through, no immediate questions about well water or abatements.  Rituals had to be observed.  Most of the owners had a barrel or two of home-brewed wine in a closet or cellar.  After a tour, Sepo and I were invited to sit for a negotiatory glass or two. Gestures and words of appreciation had to be made before taking up details of the property.

Tramping up and down narrow alleys in the several villages, I noticed an anomaly that seemed most unusual to this security-conscious suburbanite:  Doors to houses frequently had heavy ancient keys inserted in their locks.  Sepo explained that people left them in the expectation or hope that friends might stop by while the owners were out. The key was there so those friends could enter and await the owners’ return.

In years to come, I turned those keys, pushed open those doors. They invited me to join them at dinner - there was always enough - or to sit in their gardens or read their books or trade tidbits of gossip.  I entered their lives. I passed beyond the unilingual bubble in which tourists too often confine themselves, detoured around the barricade of waiters and concierges and tour guides who are the closest most travelers get to meeting the people who inhabit the places Americans decide to visit.

I settle in. Stay awhile. Long enough to be recognized, even greeted with warmth. No marching through five cities in seven days.  No theme parks, no dude ranches, no faux ski villages, no beach resorts walled off from the people who live there.  Not if I can help it.  I stay out of the loop, watching for keys in doors.