80-yr-old traveller`s 18-yr-old walk!
{mosgooglecenter}
Panama City (Panama), April 21: Striding around Panama City on tree-trunk legs that have carried him through 66 countries, 80-year-old US citizen Harry Lee McGinnis reckons he knows the secret of staying healthy into old age.
He explains that one has to keep moving as he readies for the final stage of an 80,000-mile (129,000 km) around-the-world walk that has taken him 18 years so far, inspired by glossy photos of foreign lands he pored over as a child.
A towering figure with the muscular build of a linebacker and rugged looks, McGinnis is not your average old-age pensioner.
Strolling along the Pedro Miguel locks next to the Panama Canal and up Panama City's skyscraper-lined Avenue Balboa, where he walks into a restaurant, McGinnis puts his nomadic retirement down to a deep curiosity about the world, which comes through as he chats about everything from the Chinese economy to nanotechnology.
Born in rural Indiana in 1927, shortly before the Great Depression, McGinnis's grandparents taught him to read before he started school by studying National Geographic magazine.
"A lot of people ask why does anybody want to walk around the world for 18 years, actually it's going to be when I'm finished, 23 years. I've said many times it's a dream that probably built up because my grandfather took National Geographic and I read that before I was six years of age. I was taught to read by using the NG magazine.
It became a favourite of mine and all the pictures of faraway places with those strange sounding names," he said. They sparked a stubborn wanderlust that has seen McGinnis spend the last two decades on his feet, accompanied by a huge steel-tipped wooden staff and a 100 lb (45 kg) backpack.
Nicknamed "Hawk" during his time as a World War Two army sniper in east Asia, McGinnis never settled into the domestics of everyday life. He married and divorced five times.
After spells as a bandleader, a country club manager and a Methodist minister, he embarked on his first expedition in August 1983, aged 55, setting off on a 4-year walk across the 50 states of the continental United States. After a five-year lull, during which he gave marriage one last shot, he decided to get back on the road, funded by his army pension and sponsors who donated some equipment.
"There are 194 countries in the world. If you started walking when you were 1 year old you could not walk around the world and see all the countries. But I've seen 70 of the largest capitals, largest land masses and I'm always asked, well 'aren't you finally getting tired?' How can you be tired when everyday you don't know what's around the corner, you don't know what the next mountain might hold, it's always a new horizon."
He speaks with passion and wonder as he urged people to travel around the world. He said that in order to live longer, one had to keep moving.
"This is a big, wide, wonderful world and I say that to everybody. You want to live longer, go out and see the world. When you retire, don't sit in front of the TV set and gain 20 or 50 pounds and drink the beer and eat the sandwiches and can hardly get out of the chair. Go see the world! I've been given a great gift and that gift is to walk around the world."
This time McGinnis began a worldwide trek, choosing Dublin's St. Patrick's day parade of 1992 as the starting point. Continental Europe, Africa, Asia and South America followed.
Fans chart his progress on his Web site, www.hawkwalk.com, which describes how he sets up his tent and camping stove by roadsides or in church foyers and mentions his brushes with knife-wielding assailants in north Africa.
Now McGinnis plans to walk through Central America and Mexico before finishing up the walk in the United States, estimating he will reach Texas in around 2010 or 2012.
Once there, he plans to write a book about his adventures, and also harbors one more goal. He wishes to play tennis at 100.
