Excerpt: 'Adventure Divas'

Oct. 3, 2005 — -- Holly Morris was leading a comfortable life in the publishing world, but gave it up to tell the story of extraordinary women around the globe.

In the PBS documentary "Adventure Divas," Morris, 39, interviewed women who tackle their fears and take on challenges, often in the face of opposition. Now Morris has written a book about her experiences. "Adventure Divas" hits stores on Tuesday.

You can read an excerpt from "Adventure Divas" below.

In Cuba

I insert the latch into the metal buckle, pull the strap low and tight across my lap, and am scribbling notes on a slightly waxy barf bag when two white guys approach down the aisle. One is a collared priest and the other, big-bellied and teetering on the last rungs of middle age, carries a blue gym bag emblazoned with cia in gold letters. They plunk themselves down on either side of me.

Flanked by paradox.

The Cubana Airlines Yak-42, a Soviet-built plane bound for Havana, looks as if it got left in for a few extra tumble cycles. The plane's interior is a chamber of chaos: broken seat belts and floppy chairs. Disconcerting smokelike vapors billow around my feet.

The threadbare burgundy fabric itches. I shift and try to look demure. Why would a priest be on a flight to one of the last communist (as in, aggressively secular) strongholds in this part of the world? And why would anyone sling a CIA gym bag?

The Spy turns to me and offers intelligence. "Don't worry. The vapor is normal. These old Russkie air conditioners aren't what they used to be."

"Oh … okay." I respond with a half-smile, leaving only an infinitesimal crack in the door of airplane social etiquette. The Spy slams his foot in the door and is off: "First time? Traveling without your husband?" The only thing I fear more than sitting next to the CIA when trying to sneak into a country and avoid getting busted for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act (which holds a penalty of up to ten years in prison) is sitting next to a lonely person on an airplane. I have no problem with loners. I just don't like being pinned between one of them and … God. Don't know whether I'd burn faster in Langley or Hell, but I've challenged their respective moral codes enough to ignite on contact.

"Reagan gave me this gym bag in 1985," the Spy rattles on, "and I've been to a cocktail party or two with Castro," he adds casually. Sounds like an oxymoronic social gathering to me.

Luckily, the Spy is mostly interested in hearing himself talk, so there is no pressure to explain my own presence on this flight. Just as well. With no visa and six thousand dollars in cash strapped to my body, I might raise suspicion. My hand brushes over the important bulges: cash and passport. Ordinarily I list these as the only two essentials for a journey, but this time the list has lengthened considerably to include two cinematographers, a load of 16mm film, a sound person, and -- my mother. A hurricane delayed us in Cancún but eventually we made it onto this flight, where we are now scattered about the plane in single seats. We are finally on our way to film the pilot episode for Adventure Divas. I wonder if my colleagues are as nervous as I am.

We tried to go legally. Really we did.

For months we begged and pleaded and touted our professional stripes, but no one would grant us the journalist credentials we were after. We had not foreseen the antipathy, or, in some cases, simple apathy, of the U.S. government and the Cuban Interests Section (Cuba's officiate in lieu of an embassy).

Fruitless pandering to bureaucrats left us desperate and defiant. "We've got to go guerrilla, through Mexico," I eventually concluded to Jeannie.

"Yep. No choice," she'd agreed.

Deciding to go on the sly raised a new set of anxieties. Would we piss off our hard-won investors? (Would we tell them?) Would we get sent upriver or fined into bankruptcy? Would our film get confiscated on our return to the United States?

A host of stressors have replaced the damn-the-torpedoes hubris that accompanied the early, blushing days of our endeavor. I jot "Can adventure really be institutionalized?" onto the barf bag.