I met Jel on the first day of my vacation. I was traveling overseas and my plane crashed into hers, so we both fell into the ocean together. Within a week, we were so much in love that we couldn t stand to be apart. So begins Vacationing with Jel the story of a love so enduring it survives every imaginable hardship, including poverty, infidelity, separation, imprisonment, torture, and even death. The two ill-fated lovers of this offbeat tale find themselves lost and alone in a part of the world that neither of them even knew existed. As they search for a way to get back home, we follow them to some of the most unusual places on Earth and learn about the language, the culture, the history, and the traditions and rituals of the people who live there. Sometimes absurd and other times comically grotesque, Vacationing with Jel is an adventure story like no other. At times it reads like a fairy tale for adults, at other times more like a linguistics textbook, a travel diary, an anthropological field guide, or a cookbook. Vacationing with Jel is evocative of all these things, but at its heart, it s a love story."