The Wandering Gringo

Unearthing the Past in a City Focused on the “Now”

2008-06-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see Sebastián Moreno’s fascinating 2006 documentary La ciudad de los fotógrafos, and I just wanted to jot down a few thoughts about it. The film revolves around a series of interviews with men and women whose cameras documented the state repression that marked Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile, which lasted from 1973 until 1989.

Moreno begins and ends on a personal note, because his own father is one of these photographers, and Moreno—like most of the viewers of his documentary—first became aware of the violence that was going on in his country through the photos taken by his father and his colleagues. Moreno’s experience of the photos is the first of many ways in which the photos—static, occasionally grainy, black and white, remote—come alive before our eyes. One of them, when he first sees it as a young boy, appears to be of a group of people standing around a castle; he later finds out that the stone structure is the entrance to a mine, in which a group of laborers, seen as threatening to the regime, were “disappeared,” buried alive within.

The most interesting aspect of La ciudad de los fotógrafos is the way it stimulates the photos taken so long ago into new significations, new angles, causing them to take on the dynamism sufficient to bring the past they depict into the present. From the mine, located on the outskirts of Santiago, Moreno moves closer and closer into the very center of the Chilean capital. More photographers lend their voices and their photos—works of art in themselves, starkly beautiful in their unblinking, up-close depictions of the horrors of the dictatorship—allowing a broader, more three-dimensional depiction of the past to emerge.

But Moreno supplements the photos themselves, along with the testimonies of those who took them, with video footage of the events photographed and, occasionally, testimonies of those who are photographed. We are also able to see the context of the photos—what happened before and after they were taken, who else was nearby, what else happened outside their frames. Violent protests on the streets of Santiago take on new gravity when we see how the water cannon—known in Chilean slang as the guanaco, a llama-like creature with a propensity to spit—mows down not just the man throwing rocks at the police in one photo taken, but also many others standing beside him. We can also better appreciate the bravery of the photographers, since we see what they had to go through to take their shots.

They also go to the very places where they took their photos; the documentary shows the mine on the outskirts of Santiago, with the photographer who took the photos of the bodies there, and of the protest against their murder. From there we move to a photo of a funeral procession and protest, following the regime’s murder of the teacher José Manuel Parada just a few years before the return of democracy. Not only does the photographer who took the picture of the procession return to the intersection in downtown Santiago where the procession passed, but we also turn to video of the procession as it approached the cemetery. There, the police try to block its entrance into the grounds of the cemetery with water cannons, and we see the shouts of Chile’s future president Ricardo Lagos denouncing the dictatorship’s tactics. And this signification, this stimulation of meaning, is infinite, as Susan Sontag shows in an analysis of Tyler Hicks’ photos in the New York Times in 2001: “the pity and disgust that pictures like Hicks’ inspire should not distract you from asking what pictures, whose cruelties, whose deaths are not being shown” (Regarding the Pain of Others, 13-14). What wasn't photographed? What can we never see?

Many of these photographers are activists, in addition to being artists; one of them acknowledges that their guild, the AFI, or the Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes, was popularly known as the Asociación de Fotógrafos de Izquierda—the Association of Independent Photographers was called the Association of Leftist Photographers. In addition to simply documenting the horror, they consider it their mission to publicize, and to remember, what they saw; to bear witness, in the spirit of protest. Several of them note that their cameras were as powerful as any weapon, and they wield them with purpose. Moreno shows how they use their photographs as tools of memory: photographing the mothers whose children have disappeared, they themselves, in turn, wearing the photos of their children on their lapels; documenting and archiving the photos of those who were disappeared, and photographing their loved ones holding those photos; and wearing their own photos, blown up, in a procession through the Paseo Ahumada, Santiago’s busy pedestrian thoroughfare, in the final scenes: a procession of memory.

As Giorgio Agamben points out, any witness of horror is inevitably complicit in that horror. Writing about those who gave testimonies of what happened to them in Auschwitz, he states that the witness’s duty is to demystify the horror of what happened, “even at the risk of discovering that what evil knows of itself, we can also easily find in ourselves” (Remnants of Auschwitz, p. 33). The photographers discover the same phenomenon: they find themselves craving violence, since this was what was necessary for them to obtain “good” photos, photos able to offer the coup de grace of evidence that could denounce the Pinochet regime once and for all. Many of them describe how this caused them great guilt; one states that she quit taking these photos as soon as she realized this. But this leads to the central problem that Agamben and others have described when writing about testimony: who will take the photos, then? Taking the photos implies complicity in violence, but not taking them means that no evidence can be registered. It’s a classic Catch-22.

The city of Santiago is as prominent a character in the documentary as the photographers are. By returning to the places where the photos and videos were taken, which are familiar to all Chileans and anyone else who has ever visited Santiago—the Paseo Ahumada, the General Cemetery, the intersection of Bandera and Moneda Streets, La Moneda Palace, the Alameda, Lonquén—we are forced to remember the city’s painful past. This is not always a pleasant exercise, since it reveals that Chile’s image as a stable, consensus-based country to be somewhat tenuous and perhaps even fleeting, given the recent protests that have cropped up there—particularly in Santiago—and the police repression with which they have been met. We are forced to realize that in this city, despite the flashy signage of neoliberal capitalism that lines places like the Paseo Ahumada, which privileges the latest fashions, the newest purchases, and in which goods from the past run the risk of being considered “out-of-style,” the past persists. La ciudad de los fotógrafos shows how this past is embedded in the very urban landscape that attempts to paper over it with signs that advertise the latest sale. No amount of neoliberalism can cause it to completely go away, however much it obscures and devalues the past. This is particularly clear when we are faced with the hard evidence that so many photographers risked their lives to obtain, and which Moreno works diligently to restore.

[Sorry to go all grad school on you, but, there were things that needed to be said.]

The Winter of Discontent

2008-06-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing I remember about my time in living in Chile, it was the word conflictivo. If you're conflictivo, you're often more trouble than you're worth. This is a big difference between Chile and the US: a high social premium in Chile is placed on getting along with people, at all costs, whereas in the US, you're encouraged to "stand up for what you believe in" and "raise your voice." Anyone who has attended American public schools (a typical environment for the inculcation of US culture) will be familiar with these platitudes, even if they don't necessarily follow them in every possible situation. A phrase often heard in Chile, meanwhile, is agacharse el moño, which means literally "to duck your head down," and more figuratively, "to bow down," or even more loosely, "to suck it up." In the work environment, it's usually a much smarter strategy to agacharte el moño than to even offer your boss suggestions on certain things, because it's likely to be seen as threatening, and it's not in your best interest to be considered conflictivo.

So how do you explain this photo, taken yesterday from the safe distance of my balcony, or these pictures, taken by the brave photographers at the El Mercurio newspaper, from right in the thick of things? Chile is seething right now with social conflict (although not at the level currently seen in Argentina, where truckers have blocked the highways and food has grown scarce in the supermarkets). None of these kids are bowing down to anyone, not even the police decked out in riot gear (revealing the fascist roots of the Chilean military) and ready for a fight.

The current protests are related to the famous protests of the elementary and high school students just about exactly two years ago--right at the beginning of Michelle Bachelet's presidential term--demanding better learning conditions. Their main demand was the repeal of a law known as the LOCE, the Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Educación, which basically privileges the right of private citizens to make money by running schools over the right of students to learn. In Chile, a large proportion of schools are funded by the public purse but privately run; but that doesn't mean that they are non-profit organizations. So people are making money by running schools with public funds, and under the LOCE, the government does not have much freedom to regulate the way students are taught at these schools, even though it pays for them. Meanwhile, fully public schools in Chile are of generally low quality, and--as in the US--municipally run, which means that the amount of funding they receive depends on how wealthy the tax base in their area is. This exacerbates the already rampant level of social inequality in Chile. Then as now, students were demanding better conditions in publicly funded schools, and the most radical of them are now demanding that privately-run, publicly-funded schools be prohibited from profiting off the government and the students they (selectively) enroll. The LOCE, by the way, was put in place by Pinochet, signed on his last day in office. The dictatorship's economic focus was often on privatization and this law was no exception.

So the government has responded with a new bill, the LGE, or Ley General de Educación, to replace the LOCE. It's currently being debated in Congress, and passed the lower house yesterday, thanks to an accord between the presidential administration and the right wing (keep in mind that President Bachelet is a socialist). The new law does not prohibit school owners from using government money to run their schools for profit, which is why students are protesting. Meanwhile, it imposes stricter regulations on teachers, which is why they're protesting. Basically, no one's happy. So the Carabineros police bursts onto the scene with their water cannons and their teargas, and arrest like 3,000 people per day (setting them free hours later...you can always see anxious parents waiting outside the police station the evenings after the protests for their kids to be processed). In Congress, one right-wing representative stated rhetorically that "if profit is a sin, let's all work for free," ironically defending the right of school owners to profit off their schools. A member of the teachers union, sitting up in the gallery, shouted back and challenged him to try making $500 a month, which is at the low end of teachers' salaries. [Members of Congress make approximately US$8,000 a month (senators make more); minimum wage in Chile is a bit over US$400 a month.] The members of the teachers union were escorted out after they began throwing ten-peso coins down to hit the representatives.

Chile is known as a country of consensus, thanks to the political climate that has generally prevailed in the years following the dictatorship, since the ruling Concertación coalition has continued the neoliberal policies introduced under Pinochet. Chile has become one of the most prosperous countries in South America, if not the most prosperous. And it is a relatively peaceful place.

However, I think it is simplistic, anachronistic and even unethical to deny Chile's tradition of social protest, as many do (such as analysts at the OECD) when expounding upon the country's "economic achievements." Assertions of this kind run the risk of whitewashing Chilean history for political and economic gain. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary, as well. This year the government commemorated the 100th anniversary of an uprising of nitrate miners in the northern region of Iquique, which was brutally put down by the police (all the miners were machine gunned to death). Also, there were many brave souls, about 3,000 in total, who lost their lives protesting against the dictatorship in the 70s and 80s.

It's quite inspiring to see these new generations of Chileans, who didn't grow up with their wings clipped by dictatorship, standing up for their legitimate rights, even at the risk of being considered conflictivos.

The Andes

2008-06-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

These are pictures taken from the balcony of the apartment I'm staying in, which offers me a really impressive view of the Andes Mountains, or as they are called in Spanish, La Cordillera de los Andes. The Andes are the (almost) omnipresent backdrop for any postcard view of Santiago, towering over the city in a way that can only be described as imposingly majestic. I say "almost" omnipresent because thanks to the smog, sometimes you simply can't see them. The smog is due to the fact that in the wintertime, atmospheric conditions push the level of smog much lower; also, the past 2 winters, Argentina has periodically cut off Chile's supply of natural gas, and so factories must run on gasoline, diesel or even coal, which are much more polluting. But on clear days that immediately follow rainy ones, they are sharply visible.

This first picture was taken this morning; it rained the past few days, which cleaned up the air quite a bit, and today it's sunny.

This one was taken at sunset. For some reason I find myself fascinated by the red sunlight that falls on the mountains from the west on waning afternoons. Often when the city is completely in shadow, the mountains are still illuminated by the sunset, and it's a beautiful effect (again, when it's not too smoggy).

This last one is maybe a bit avant-garde, but whatever. A more prosaic view of the Andes, with my boxers in the foreground, drying on the line strung along the balcony.

Back in the Saddle of the Huaso

2008-05-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided to continue with my blog for this summer as well, because once again I am beginning it in Santiago de Chile and planning to end it in California. After a somewhat arduous year at Princeton University, I have four months to regroup, recuperate, and collect my thoughts before returning for more in September. Concretely, I am planning to use this time to read books from the list of works that I will be tested on in my general exams next May, look around Chile for dissertation ideas, travel a bit in July (in Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and possibly Brazil as well), and think. So once again this blog will serve as a travelogue and also as a place to jot down my thoughts on my surroundings and then submit them to cyberspace for reactions.

The problem is that aside from my long (really long) flight from New York to Santiago, I’m not really planning to stray that far for the next two months. So I’m hoping to use this space in the meantime more as a place for thoughts than as a travelogue. Which brings me to my first question, one I’ve kind of been turning over in my mind these days as I’ve shuttled around Santiago with dear friends, revisiting places that are at once familiar and quite foreign: by traveling to Chile, to Santiago, am I really traveling? Or just moving from one home to another? I lived here for two and a half years, after all, and only left just over a year ago. This is a place I love (and hate); this is a place I know. And yet, even a short time away from it blurs it in my mind, placing it out of necessity on the back burner, in order to make room, and to process stimulations and situations that require more immediate attention. My intimate knowledge of Santiago is always mediated by this distance. Things that used to be routine for me, things I did day in and day out for years, are once again strange: for example, making sure you have your fruit weighed and labeled in the produce section of the grocery store rather than at the check-out counter, and looking for the ATM in the airport, even though it’s in the same place it always was. Now, when one “travels” to an “exotic place” (and Santiago de Chile could be considered exotic by the standards of most gringos like myself), one expects to encounter the unknown, the unfamiliar. And what I’ve encountered here isn’t exactly unfamiliar, but it’s not familiar either. So have I “traveled,” or have I just returned?

After all, this is Chile! The people hurry through the streets in their practically-identical dark coats, talking on their cell phones and looking intently ahead of them. I spent years doing just that. The gleaming stores, monuments to this country’s neoliberal economic achievements, under constant renovation, bringing in new goods and slashing the prices of what goes unsold, pricing it to move. All of it under the constant vigilance of security guards, looking down from their perches one floor above, protecting and enforcing the system, but also joking with each other in their high-pitched voices. The cranes along the skyline (just below the jagged line delineating mountains from Chile’s cielo azulado), building apartment complexes at alarming speeds and casting shadows upon the tin-roofed shacks down the block.

I’m afraid that I’m going to catch myself being overly critical of my beloved adopted Chile this time around, after a year of full-time training in how to spot the flaws, the dark spots of the past that neoliberalism tries to erase, as Idelber Avelar says. Chile focuses constantly on commodifying whatever’s new on the showroom floor and sweeping away last season’s goods, just as it sweeps away painful periods of its history into oblivion, to be replaced by the gleaming haze of “consensus.” Is the security guard watching for shoplifters from above analogous to the often-violent vigilance of the military regime that installed this free market “paradise”? Despite the fact that Chile is now a democracy, how much has really changed?

How much have I changed, since the last time I was here? In a way I feel like a huaso, a Chilean cowboy—sometimes a word used in Chilean slang for a clueless yokel unable to cope with “modern” things. I have moments where I have no idea what I’m doing. Other times I’m afraid that I know too much.

Conclusions, Part 2

2007-07-31T21:48:00.000-07:00

Some people have requested that I put up a Top Ten List of my favorite places along the way. Here they are (in order from South to North):

-Humberstone, Iquique, Chile (because it was awesome to walk around this mining ghost town and imagine what it was like during its glory days)

-Codpa, Chile (because I had such an awesome time hanging out with my friend Tibor, eating grapefruits still warm off the vine and stargazing at night)

-Coroico, Bolivia (because I loved the place I stayed, and I loved the tropical feel to it, and I was reading a really good book at the time)

-Isla del Sol, on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia (because of the sunset over the lake the night before in Copacabana, drinking coca tea on the hotel balcony, and because it was awesome to imagine the Inca kings on retreat there)

-Guayaquil, Ecuador (because I had such a good time with Carlos in this cosmopolitan, orderly port city)

-Quito, Ecuador (because it was easily accessible, and because of the awesome shawarma and the gilded Jesuit church)

-San Agustín, Colombia (because of the sugar cane juice with lemon, and the tour of the sculptures, and the heaping bandejas of Colombian food)

-Playa Blanca, Islas del Rosario, Colombia (because of the snorkeling, and the beautiful beach...and because next year they're going to build some homogenized resort there and I got to see it before they do that)

-Monteverde, Costa Rica (because we saw quetzals there, and howler monkeys and an agouti...and also because of the Tarzan swing)

-Tulum, Mexico (because we had a beautiful white beach practically all to ourselves)

-Chichén Itzá (and the cenote azul), Mexico (because we got to Chichén Itzá before the crowds did)

-Mexico City, Mexico (because it sent me into sensory overload)

Sorry, that's 12. I couldn't narrow it down. But that's the cool thing about having your own blog: you can make up the rules as you go along.

Conclusions, Part 1

2007-07-31T21:23:00.000-07:00

It's good to be home. You can get the best of both worlds (north and south) right here.

The fact is, I can gain access to all the cultural goods of Latin America, even when I'm in the US, so I'm never too far from Chile. Or at least, from Spanish. I have the internet. I can watch Univision, and Telemundo. "José Luis Sin Censura" (Google it, you won't be disappointed) is on every day at 6:00. "La Esclava Isaura" comes on every night at 9.

I have learned the following things from my little trip.

1) If you are familiar enough with the culture of one Latin American country, you can manage in all of them. Even if the culture you're most familiar with (Chile) is the most un-Latin American country of the bunch.

2) Travelling is a good time to catch up on your reading. I read some really good books along the way, and I would recommend these ones in particular:
-Los detectives salvajes, by Roberto Bolaño (translated into English in the US as The Savage Detectives)
-Noticia de un secuestro, by Gabriel García Márquez (Translated into English as News of a Kidnapping)
-Assassination on Embassy Row, by John Dinges and Saul Landau
-What is the What, by Dave Eggers
-Calibre 39 (an anthology of Colombian authors under 39)

3) I love cities. The grittier the better.

4) Latin America will only leave poverty behind if other countries do what Chile has done, economically speaking. I saw no other viable alternatives.

5) You can't travel from Chile to California in just three months on a small budget, unless you plan really well. You need to either have money, or more time (or both), to do it right.

6) There are very few cheap "travellers' paradises" in Latin America anymore. The word is out on most of the nice places, and locals have jacked up the prices accordingly (as well they should). There are still lots of unexplored places, but I didn't have the time to take the risk to see if there were cool things off the beaten track (in most places). Next time.

7) I have a lot of faith in the people of Latin America. Its greatest resource, far more valuable than all its minerals put together, are its human resources: clever, resourceful, warm, friendly people--extremely highly trained, in some cases. I have faith that the people of Latin America will find solutions to their problems, and that these solutions will have a human face.

The Border/La Frontera

2007-07-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

(En español, abajo)

I flew to Tijuana, and then crossed over the border into San Diego. From there, I called my brother David, who lives in downtown SD. No sooner had I sat down to a "Meat Lovers' Breakfast Burrito" (god bless America) at a Jack in the Box just over the border, when a familiar-looking minivan pulled up outside. My parents and my brothers picked me up, and we had a nice day in San Diego before driving back to Camarillo.

My parents had been following my progress on a bulletin board in the breakfast nook. I hope I inspired them to see some of the places along the way. When are you going to Colombia, Mom?

Así que volé a Tijuana, y crucé la frontera a San Diego. De ahí llamé a mi hermano David, que vive en el centro de San Diego. Mientras lo esperaba, fui a un Jack in the Box (una cadena de comida chatarra) y pedí un burrito de desayuno (en gringolandia los burritos se comen a cualquier hora). Lo hice en español, a todo esto, porque la señora en la caja no entendía inglés. En fin. Una vez sentado y comiendo, entró una señora, gringa, apoyada por lo que parecía su marido. Tenía la cara hinchada, muy grotesca, y llevaba bata y pantuflas. Entraron al restaurante y fueron derechito al baño. Hubo una pausa en la conversa, y todos los parroquianos nos mirábamos. Un mexicano sentado delante mío de repente dijo: "¡Una fantasma!" Y todos nos reímos a carcajadas. Supongo que muchos gringos cruzan a México a hacerse su cirujía plástica porque ahí ahorran algo de platita.

Bueno, después de un ratito llegó una minivan que me era familiar. Mi familia entera salió y nos abrazamos en frente del Jack in the Box. Tuvimos una tarde agradable en San Diego, antes de emprender rumbo a Camarillo, nuestro pueblito en los suburbios del mero sueño americano.

Resultó que mis viejos habían estado siguiendo mi viaje en su sala de estar (véase foto del mapa, arriba). Así que estoy en casa, descansando. Preparándome pa' la próxima aventura.

DF, DFondo

2007-07-26T12:09:00.000-07:00

Un gran "órale" a mis cuates en los países hispanoparlantes. Les cuento que estoy impresionado con México, pues todo este tiempo lo tenía al lado y nunca tomé el tiempo para conocerlo. Es una lástima porque es una cultura tan, tan rica, muy latina y a la vez muy cercana a la mía. Aquí estacionar es "parquear," y arrendar es "rentar." Hay más velocidad y más comida rápida, más tallarines ramen y más de lo cosmopolita. Más gente. México realmente está en el mundo, con una cultura globalizada, con hechos que van mucho más allá del discurso globalista (pero más que nada, comercialista) de Chile. Sí hay más pobreza que en Chile, pero menos de lo que hay en la mayoría de los países que he visitado. Y está la esperanza, se siente en el ambiente, de que todo se va mejorando.

Con la excepción de Oaxaca (hay que agregarlo), donde la atmósfera era más que nada una de conflicto social. Justo el día que nos fuimos de Oaxaca, estallaron desmanes relacionados con las demandas de los profesores de mejores sueldos. O por lo menos, así comenzó la cosa; ahora abarca las demandas históricas de los pobres en una región desigual, latifundista y aún gobernada por el PRI.

Bueno, como puse en mi último posteo en inglés, DF me instó a un estado de delirio. Ya había estado viajando tanto tiempo, pasando por tantas cosas (mi abuelita se murió, me dio una infección de estafilococco, de la que recuperé), tanta logística (que adónde va este bus, que cuándo partimos para Chichén Itzá, que si el taxista me está estafando, que hay que empacar la mochila por enésima vez, que este hotelucho no sirve, que ese camino en bus será de 22 horas aunque cubre una distancia de como 200 km...), tanta cerveza...

Así es que llegué a DF con las defensas un poco en baja, cuando realmente tienes que estar en forma para enfrentarlo. Es una ciudad maravillosa: el Museo de Antropología tiene unos artefactos impresionantes, el sol azteca para empezar. DF estaba celebrando el centenario del nacimiento de Frida Kahlo con una exhibición en el Palacio de Bellas Artes y otra en la Casa Azul, que es donde vivió ella (y donde vivió León Trotsky hasta que tuvo un affaire con Frida, se enojó su mujer y tuvieron que mandarse a cambiar a una casa cercana, que es donde un asesino catalán lo mató con una piolet a la cabeza, pero esto es otro tema...). Disfruté mucho del Templo Mayor, un gran templo azteca sólo parcialmente excavado al lado de la catedral, en el Zócalo de la ciudad.

DF, o por lo menos las partes turísticas, tiene una estética única. Tiene elementos de lo futurista kitsch (lo que pensaban que iba a ser el futuro en los años 60, onda Tomorrowlandia), lo azteca guerrillero de las ruinas, lo colonial de la llegada de los españoles y lo decimonónico afrancesado del Porfiriato. Es una mezcla inolvidable, y por más dispares que parezcan los elementos que la componen, es una mezcla que funciona. Esto es el encanto de México, para mí: el hallazgo de la coherencia en una variedad muy rara e improbable de elementos.

Y claro, no me puedo olvidar de los pirámides de Teotihuacán. A sólo una hora de DF, pero en otro mundo.

O sea: desorientación y delirio. DF me agotó. Y llegué a la conclusión de que no me quedaba otro remedio que irme para la casa, ahora ya. Y me fui.

Frida Fever

2007-07-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

I think Mexico City induced a sort of delirium in me. It's a fairly disorienting city in the best of scenarios, but when you've been traveling for close to three months, you're a little nervous about grad school (coming up as soon as you cross that border), and you've been through the death of your grandma and a staph infection in the process, the existing chaos of DF takes on kaleidoscopic and phantasmagorical qualities. The clowns doing entertainment on the Metro for spare change become grostesque. The smog gets into your eyes, and your subconscious.

One Mexico City personage who experienced the delirium of this city and externalized it even as she suffered it was Frida Kahlo. Some of you may have seen the recent Salma Hayek movie? Well, this year is the centennial of her birth, and Mexico City is celebrating that by capitalizing on the mounting international attention that Frida received both late in life and since her death, even when she was lesser known in Mexico than her husband, the muralist Diego Rivera. The result was a special exhibition of her art at her house in the southern Mexico City district of Coyoacán, and a huge solo show at the capital's Palacio de Bellas Artes. So me, my Stanford friend Nick and his girlfriend Desha had a Frida day once they arrived. We went to the Fine Arts Palace, and then to Frida's house (the Casa Azul, where she grew up and which she later lent to Leon Trotsky when he was in exile in DF), and then to the house that Diego and Frida shared, nearby in San Ángel.

Frida suffered in life. She was run over by a streetcar, which left her incapacitated, on and off, throughout her life. It also probably led to her early death, in 1954. She was in a lot of pain, and many of her paintings reflect on the delirium that pain and suffering can cause. The tricks they can play on our minds. Frida painted many self-portraits that showed her suffering in very novel ways. Having spent a lot of time in the US, she also reflected on popular culture and fame. Many images come to my mind now, two in particular. One: a painting of two Fridas next to each other, bound together by veins, one of which is being cut with scissors by one Frida, causing it to bleed on her white dress. Two: a painting of Dorothy Hale, a movie star who jumped to her death off the Empire State Building. Frida gave the painting to the star's mother.

Diego Rivera's murals are another iconic example of Mexico City's rich visual arts scene. Using a number of themes, which were often Marxist, Rivera painted huge scenes taking in a variety of themes, including man's and science's triumphs over nature, war and peace, fascism, death, work and leisure. Fascinating and overwhelming. Diego and Frida's relationship was one for the books. Though tempestuous, he was the love of her life, and she his.

In Mexico City, I found that I couldn't just take things in without getting intensely involved in them. This is probably because the city's monuments and sights are so wonderfully imperfect, or layered, or conflicted, and therefore quite accessible. You don't see the slickness of the Louvre, or the manicured perfection of Versailles. But this doesn't make DF's sights any less important. Its cathedral is just as impressive as any European one, but it's sinking into the ground. It's actually a bit crooked (Mexico City used to be a lake, after all). Its National Anthropology Museum has amazing archaeological artifacts, dramatically displayed. But you can't look at these Aztec runes without thinking balefully about how Cortés came in and basically wiped this amazing civilization off the map of living cultures, denying its achievements and trying to replace it with one that was far inferior. These layers of presentation were spell-binding for me.

It was just too much. I came to the conclusion that I just needed to go home. I had travelled long enough. I'll come back to DF when I'm a little less worn-down, because it needs my undivided attention.

DFinitely not for the faint of heart

2007-07-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

I have reached one of the most highly-anticipated parts of my trip (by me): Mexico City. I think this entry is going to have to be about expectations vs. reality. Let me start off by saying that I have even dreamed of going to Mexico City. Literally. Several times. And I was super stoked to get here.

So I'd love to say that it has totally lived up to them, but the jury's still out, even after a day and a half (an eternity in this fly-by-night, speeding through Latin America trip). Right now I'm just sort of on sensory overload. This city is noisy, and smelly, and literally I have a headache from straining to see everything there is to see. It's just so big! It's also been raining since Anne and I got here yesterday, so that has definitely colored my perception of things as well. In addition to weaving and ducking among all the crowds (crowds...everywhere...), I've also had to weave to avoid all the puddles and the busses that spray you on the sidewalk.

This is a very vibrant city, though, and in its glory periods it has built some impressive monuments to itself, and to the country as a whole. There is a huge Frida Kahlo exhibition on, as it's the 100 year anniversary of her birth this year, and the city is constantly putting on a number of different cultural activities. There's definitely a lot to love. It's even a bit like Santiago, in its own sprawled-out, smoggy little way.

It has a whole French vibe as well, particularly in the centro histórico. Wide boulevards, wrought iron. The Metro is also very much like the one in Paris; it even smells the same. It's a lot more crowded though. There's a section of every platform where only women and children can stand to wait for trains, the idea being that they can then have a whole car to themselves (though no one seems to respect this).

But there is a lot of poverty. There are massive slums on its outskirts, that stretch out literally to the horizon. The whole city is sinking, as well, and I'm pretty sure that one tower of the cathedral is higher than the other. And everyone's in everyone else's grill, all the time.

I'm trying to like it.

Orale, mi cuate

2007-07-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

The journey continues through Mexico, land of colors and sights that continue to amaze. I just knew nothing about it, despite the fact that I have lived almost my entire life right above it. I have been really missing out.

I left off in Mérida, which is a very prosperous town on the Yucatán Peninsula, pretty close to the Gulf. It's a tropical place, and specializes in (among other things) the manufacture of guayaberas, which keep you cool despite the surrounding stickiness. Their other regional specialty is hammocks, which keep you cool by allowing air to circulate all around you while you're sleeping.

We were also able to take a side trip to Celestún, west of Mérida on the marshy coast of the Gulf. Celestún is a breeding ground for flamingoes (although they do their nesting up the river at a place called Río Lagartos), and on a good day you can see up to 7,000 flamingoes sunning themselves. We came on just an ok day, so we only saw like 1,000, but it was fine. The area also included a beautiful beach, and a swamp of mangroves, which had a freshwater swimming hole. I was disappointed because I had thought it was a cenote (my new obsession), but it was still nice to take a dip. There were much fewer tourists in Mérida as well, especially in comparison to the Caribbean coast, so it was really calm and peaceful there. Anne and I had a good time talking to the other people on our tour of Celestún, who were all Mexican and gave us good tips on Mexico City. They were really zen about their capital, assuaging our fears by saying things like "in DF, you have to watch without seeing."

So that's what I'm planning on doing.

From Mérida we covered a ton of ground. We first flew to Toluca, which is an industrial center to the west of Mexico City (they manufacture Spring Air mattresses there, among other things), on a low-cost airline owned by Carlos Slim, a Mexican who recently surpassed Bill Gates to become the 2nd richest man in the world. Volaris Airlines was super nice, great service. From Toluca, we took a shuttle to DF, then took the Metro (fast and efficient, though faded and crowded...less crowded than the Santiago Metro, post-Transantiago) across the city to another bus station. From there we took the 6 hour trip to Oaxaca.

Oaxaca is a beautiful, colonial city with a major tradition of artisanship. It's a place of contrasts, though, because it's the capital of the poorest state in Mexico. Some may remember the news last year of social conflict there, particularly after an American journalist was killed. Lisa Thompson, a friend of a friend, hung out with us yesterday and tried her best to explain the origins of the conflict (although the city is currently calm there is a very palpable underlying current of tension), which began as a teachers' strike and has ended up as an explosion of centuries-old racial and socioeconomic problems and inequalities coming from the fact that Oaxaca is one of the states in Mexico where the resources are most unevenly distributed.

Now that the annual festival of Guelaguetza is about to start, all eyes are on Oaxaca to see whether conflict breaks out again. We shall see. Guelaguetza, by the way, is just one of the events during the year during which Oaxaca's rich cultural customs are on display. Anne and I did manage to see a dance performance (pictured here) of what's to come. It was pretty amazing.

I should also mention the organization Lisa works for, Puente Mexico, an NGO that seeks to bring good nutrition practices to the poor communities around Oaxaca City. Using amaranth, which to hear her talk about it is basically a miracle grain, people's health has vastly improved.

Continuing about the culture of Oaxaca, Anne and I also saw a parade of chinas, women who keep the indigenous culture of Oaxaca alive. The chinas we saw carry baskets on their heads and wear traditional dresses. The parade had chinas grouped together by age, in ascending order. My guess is that the group is now maybe more like a sorority or a charity league. But anyone who wants to do more research and correct me on that is welcome to.

Oaxaca is also known for its cuisine, particularly for its famous mole (pronounced "MOL-ay", by the way). Mole is a sauce made from like 50 ingredients in a delicate balance, and when made right, can be spicy, sweet, salty and rich all at the same time. They put it on chicken, pork, fish and turkey here.

Finally, because I could probably go on all day, Oaxaca is the birth state of Benito Juárez, who was born a poor indian in a rural town and became one of the most important Presidents in Mexican history. He was governor of Oaxaca State on his way up. He was a liberal and spent his time in office working to extend healthcare and education to more Mexicans.

As you can see, Oaxaca has a proud tradition and it was nice to be part of it for a while.

Tulum or not Tulum

2007-07-11T18:16:00.000-07:00

A quick post today. First, greetings to my family in Berkeley, who were all together today for Grammy's funeral, which I unfortunately had to miss. You guys were all over my thoughts today. I was remembering that the last conversation I had with Grammy was about her honeymoon, which was in Mexico. I guess she and granddaddy ran into a boy along the way whom they knew from Texas and he showed them around for a while. So, cosmic coincidences in space and time today, as I write from Mexico.

The Yucatán Peninsula is way different from the typical border towns in Mexico I'd been to before-- this is the Caribbean! The sand is white, the tourists are from all over the world, and the ocean is turquoise and warm. You don't even need a snorkle to see the fish swimming around you in the clear water. We have stayed away from the touristy areas nearby (ahem, Cancun, ahem) and have stuck to smaller places, like Tulum, which is about a 2 hour bus ride south of Cancun.

A quick note about Mexico, by the way. While it has kind of a bad rap in the US, let me just say that in comparison with just about every other Latin American country I've been to, this is about the most orderly, efficient, and clean one of the lot. It's so interesting how relative everything is: some Americans may consider Mexico a bit tawdry from their perspective, but this is a very wealthy, prosperous place in comparison to its neighbors to the south.

Tulum's attractiveness lies in the fact that not only do you have a white sand beach and turquoise waters, you also have amazingly photogenic ruins perched just above it all. Here is a picture of my college friend and travelling buddy Anne in Tulum.

We also went to Chichén Itzá, recently voted one of the new 7 wonders of the world. It did not disappoint. It's really well-preserved, and all the stones are intricately carved with a ton of different friezes. So the structures are super dramatic from afar, but then you look closer and you can see all the details, and the amazing work that went in to building them.

Then we cooled off with a dip in the 60 m deep cenote, which is a natural well in a limestone cave (there are a bunch of them nearby). Many were used for Mayan rituals, and some of them have been dredged recently, and they've come up with a ton of skeletons (they threw people into them to ask the gods for rain) and gold and precious stones. And you can swim in them!

People! Mexico is like paradise, and it's a 4 hour plane ride away from most of you! You cannot pass this place up!

Guate and Guatemala (C.A.)

2007-07-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

First, an apology for taking so long to write. I haven't been in the best mood of late, for several reasons, and I'd rather say nothing at all if I'm in too bad of a mood to say anything nice. If I'm down, I can't do that happy-go-lucky traveler schtick you have grown to know and love. But I'm on a bit of an upswing, so I will catch you up on my adventures.

Wow, I'm looking at my pictures here, and they look really good! Well, you're going to enjoy this, then.

After Antigua, of which I posted pictures in my previous entry, we continued on to the town of Panajachel, which is on the shores of Lake Atitlán, a volcanic crater in the Guatemalan highlands. It is surrounded by three volcanoes, and countless little towns. We took a boat tour of three of them: Santiago de Atitlán, San Antonio and San Pedro. Our visit to Santiago, the most traditional of the three, was centered around our pilgrimage to MAXIMON, which is this pseudo-Catholic icon that the town "worships." I'm actually not sure at this point where the worship ends and the tourist trapping begins when it comes to Maximón, but it was still cool. We had to pay 10 Quetzals to see Him, and we went into a room where this statue was standing on an altar. The statue had a cigar in its mouth and it was wearing three ties (real silk, our guide informed us, from Japan and Italy). We tried to be as serious about it as we could, so we paid our respects and got back on the boat, basically.

Another cool aspect of Santiago was its main church, because of its memorial to an American priest, Fr. Stanley Rohter, who was murdered there in 1981 because he took sides in the bloody conflict that gripped Guatemala for so long.

After Panajachel (aka "Gringotenango", by the way, because of all the foreigners living there) we were able to go to a big market day in the famous town of Chichicastenango. This was amazing. I will let the pictures speak for Chichi, because it actually looks better in the pictures than it does in real life. In real life it's huge and disorienting, but in the pictures it's colorful and exciting.

Then it was time to go to Guate (the capital) to say goodbye to Joris, my Belgian friend. I have to say that of all the Latin American capital cities I have visited, this was the one where I felt most unsafe. Once out of the uppity area of town (the "Zona Viva," "Live" or "Alive" zone), which was heavily guarded due to the International Olympic Committee meeting there, walking along the street was actually a bit nerve-wracking, even in the middle of the day. Could it be that I was influenced by all the newspapers, like this one, which were headlined every day with graphically-portrayed violent crimes and murders?

Joris left on Friday morning, and on Friday night I left for Flores, up in the Caribbean region of Guatemala. Flores, a little island town, is the closest town to the mythical Mayan ruins of Tikal, to which I took an excursion once I arrived in Flores on Saturday morning. Tikal is amazing. I overheard a group of American tourists talking about the movie "Apocalypto," which I hope did it justice. Because Tikal rivals Machu Picchu, I think. It's not all controlled yet like Machu Picchu is, so you can totally climb the ruins and have your lunch at the top if you want to (this will probably not last, though). You can definitely have mystical alone time with the pyramids, which I did. It was great.

Entre panas y compas

2007-07-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

Saludos desde Guatemala, donde los colores abundan, y la lluvia también (por lo menos en esta época). Estoy ahora con mi compadre Joris el belga (un compañero de depto de Stanford) en el pueblo de Panajachel, a orillas del majestuoso Lago Atitlán. Hemos tenido un montón de aventuras.

Nuestra primera parada en Guatemala fue La Antigua, un pueblo colonial cuya arquitectura abarca lo maya y lo español al mismo tiempo. Fue la capital de Guatemala, antes de una serie de terremotos que terminó derrumbándola. Por suerte la han reconstruido. Antigua es un lugar muy cosmopolita, donde se puede salir de un restaurant tailandés y toparse con un niño descalzo vendiendo chicles. Hay mucho extranjero, además de los propios guatemaltecos que vienen a Antigua (que está a una hora de Ciudad de Guatemala) a escaparse por un fin de semana de carrete y descanso. Recorrí las librerías de viejo y compré una novela de Asturias (Guatemalteco/"chapín" y Premio Nobel 1967). Era muy agradable sentarme en la plaza central del pueblo, comiendo un helado y mirando la gente.

Hay que comenzar en Antigua con el Arco de Santa Catalina, debajo del cual tienes que pasar para llegar a la plaza (aunque no antes de pasar por una sucursal del infaltable restaurant cadena de Centroamérica, Pollo Campero). Delante tuyo, a varios kilómetros de distancia, puedes apreciar el Volcán Agua.

Hablando de volcanes, con Joris subimos a uno, el Volcán Pacaya. He aquí la prueba fotográfica de dicha hazaña. Me alegro de que lo haya hecho, pero pucha que me dio miedo en el momento. Al subir, sobre todo en las partes más altas, hubo varios lugares en donde se veía la lava debajo de nuestros pasos, o bien al ladito, y de hecho a veces el suelo mismo estaba caliente. Los suelos de mis zapatillas se empezaron a derretir, de hecho (se lo juro). A un chico en nuestro grupo se le cayó su botella de agua en uno de los hoyos de lava (calderas, en realidad) y enseguida el plástico se derritió y cuando salió el agua de la botella se convirtió en vapor altiro. Nuestro guía puso unos ramos dentro de un hoyo y se les prendió fuego al contacto. Muchas veces el suelo no estaba muy sólido y estaba seguro de que me iba a caer. Se me aguaban los ojos por el calor y el polvo volcánico. Pero viví para contarla. Para que vean lo atrevido que estoy últimamente. No sé qué tan seguro era este tour, pero por suerte el gobierno de Guatemala considera que el volcán no es demasiado peligroso para llevar masas de turistas casi hasta la cumbre, en dos turnos por día.

Gracias a la sugerencia de la estimada Marcela Díaz, ex jefa y actual socia del autor, al día siguiente arrendamos unas bicicletas y recorrimos los pueblos y las fincas de café alrededor de Antigua. Lo pasamos muy bien y pudimos apreciar lugares que de otra forma jamás hubiéramos conocido por lo remotos. Además era entretenido conversar con la gente cuando teníamos que parar a pedir direcciones, porque nos perdíamos a cada rato. Eso fue ayer, antes de abordar un bus a Panajachel.

Al llegar ahí, nos dejamos asombrar por el Lago Atitlán. Y hoy, tomamos una lancha que nos llevó a tres otros pueblos alrededor del lago: Santiago, San Pedro y San Antonio. Lo más divertido fue nuestra visita a Maximón, que es como el santo de Santiago de Atitlán. Tuvimos que pagar 10 quetzales de ofrenda (US$1,25) para entrar a su sanctuario, donde estaba parada una figura de madera, vestida con textiles de la región, además de pañuelos de seda y corbatas supuestamente traídos de Japón, Corea e Italia. Ah, y tenía un puro entre los labios de la cara (o sea, una máscara, porque según nuestro guía, Maximón tiene una cara detrás de la máscara, pero sólo los que están a punto de morir la ven). Me alegro de que su cara me haya sido invisible. Así que hicimos nuestras reverencias a don Maximón, y a la cofradía de hombres que lo cuidaban mientras se tomaban su aguardiente. Lástima que no nos hayan dejado sacar fotos. Pero por respeto a Maximón me abstuve.

Saludos especiales a Marcela y a Eli Aranda por los datos.

Pura Vida

2007-06-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

Whereas the earlier parts of my trip have focused more on cities and ruins, my time in Central America, particularly Costa Rica, has been mostly about nature. Costa Rica has an amazing level of biodiversity, and since there's not much else to do besides check it out, I have been "forced" to slather on the ol' mosquito repellent and, like, go outside or whatever.

And it has not been a let-down at all. Costa Rica is a highly developed country, in comparison to other places in Central America, and tourism--particuarly nature tourism, and the often-misused term describing its cousin, "ecotourism"--is priority number one for these people. Obviously they can't guarantee that you will go into a forest and see a ton of animals, or that if you go to hike up a volcano it won't be pouring rain on top of you, but the sights here are so amazing they barely need to worry about that.

My Belgian friend Joris, who was my roommate my first year at Stanford, is here with me and persuaded me that it was a good idea to rent a car (he is a management consultant and he's paid to make things more efficient, which I guess goes for this part of the trip as well). Despite my initial misgivings (would Che Guevara ever use Avis?), I went along with it, and I'm glad I did. We have been able to cover a lot more ground, and go at our own pace. And Costa Rica is a safe and easy place to drive, so it's no big deal.

For me, a major highlight of the trip was the area around Monteverde, in the northwestern part of the country. Monteverde was initially a settlement of Mennonites from North America who went to Costa Rica because they were against the war in Korea and didn't want to fight. Costa Rica, by the way, is a very consciously anti-war country. It doesn't have an army, and people can't carry guns. The President (Oscar Arias) is a Nobel Peace Prize winner for brokering peace within El Salvador (I think). Very cool. Monteverde has the double distinction of being at the forefront both of Costa Rican pacifism and environmental protection.

The town of Monteverde is right next to a big nature reserve and "cloud forest." We first did what's called a "canopy tour," where you harness up and then fly over the forest on a zipline. It was awesome, a total adrenaline rush. At several points we were 90 m above the forest, and the lines were up to 700 m long. The best part was the end of it, where you do what they called a "Tarzan Swing," grabbing onto a rope (with a harness on and stuff) and then jumping off a 20-foot cliff. I was sure I was going to die. The picture here is of Joris; the picture of me doing it is on his camera.

We took a night hike there as well, but there weren't that many animals because it was "too windy." The poor guide was a little frustrated, and spent too long showing us moths, sleeping birds and tarantulas cowering in their holes. It was kind of disappointing, but we totally made up for it the next day. We went to the reserve for a 2-hour guided hike, which turned out to be one of the highlights of my entire trip so far. Our guide, a guy named Carlos, was very knowledgeable about the area, and his enthusiasm about nature was infectious, particularly on that day. This was apparently a red-letter day for the Monteverde Reserve, because we saw so many animals that Carlos was practically jumping up and down with his bird-watching telescope device. We saw three (!) quetzals (pictured here, taken with my camera), which are endangered species--amazing green and red birds native to Central America. We also saw bellbirds, which are also endangered. We saw a family of howler monkeys running through the trees RIGHT above us. We saw tarantulas, millipedes, larvae of different things, walking sticks, an agouti (a type of rodent), several turkeys (not like the kind we eat at Thanksgiving, but they were still big) and a ton of different kinds of butterflies. Apparently it's super hard to see quetzals, so we were really lucky.

Our guide in Monteverde, as well as the other guides and hotel administrators that we have had contact with along the way, have been highly professional and incredibly knowledgeable people. Aside from knowing English impressively well and being able to articulately explain the intricacies of the ecosystems of Costa Rica, they have been unfailingly friendly and nice. Most have gone out of their way to make our trip a pleasant experience. They make travelling in this country almost disconcertingly easy (I need to remember that I can't get used to that!). Costa Rica is a great place to go for people who don't necessarily know Spanish but want to go to an interesting, far off destination. It's safe, accessible and easy to travel here (I think I have seen more gringos than Costa Ricans, actually...that might have annoyed me if I hadn't just come from Colombia). It's refreshing for me to see my compatriots enjoying Latin America en masse. Costa Ricans like to say "pura vida" ("pure life") all the time--they use that to say "cool," or "ok," or "no problem." It really works.

From Monteverde we drove to La Fortuna, which is a town at the foot of Arenal, one of the world's five most active volcanoes. It spews lava all the time, and it's really spectacular at night. Apparently Arenal supplies 45% of Costa Rica's energy. We also spent some time at some hot springs nearby. I had been to hot springs in Chile, but this is Costa Rica, where tourist attractions are more like destinations. So these hot springs had a restaurant, swim-up bars, massage areas, 9 pools with different temperatures, and saunas.

Oh, and on the way from Monteverde to Arenal we went to Viento Fresco, with four waterfalls. And we swam under one of them. It was great.

Now we are back in San José, because we are flying to Guatemala tomorrow morning. San José is impressive for how unimpessive it is. There are very few buildings higher than 3 or 4 stories, at least in the center--I'm assuming due to earthquakes. But it's a very agreeable town (it totally feels like a town, like Temuco or something), and doesn't have the unpleasantness of the "zona rosa" with gringo bars jumbled up next to slums. There are plenty of nice, unpretentious places where ticos (that's what Costa Ricans call themselves, probably because it's annoying to say "yo soy costarricense") and gringos mingle and where it's sometimes even hard to distinguish between the two. Which is a nice change. I hear Guatemala's a little different though.

A Man, a Plan, a Canal...

2007-06-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

Couldn't get that palindrome out of my head today. It's kind of catchy though, in my case...

After almost two weeks in Colombia, it's almost as if I am experiencing reverse culture shock in Panama. In its non-third world sections, it's practically like the 51st state. They sell Spicy Nacho Doritos at the grocery stores (haven't found Ranch yet, but I'm not giving up hope), our hostel serves pancake breakfasts, and taxis quote you their prices in English. Oh, and in dollars, since Panama uses the US Dollar as its currency. The hostel is clearly not used to dealing with Americans that are a little less clueless about how to move around in Latin American cities, and I was surprised with their genuine concern when I asked the lady at the reception desk about taking a taxi to the canal zone and not asking it to wait for us there (and sort of taking a chance as to whether we could get back via taxi...even though you can take busses as well): she said that the hostel couldn't take "responsibility" for us if we did such a thing. It almost made me laugh: since when has a hostel in Latin America even used the word "responsibility" in my presence, particularly in regard to my own well-being? Luckily I can handle the "foreign" and "unknown" aspects of Panama without needing my hand to be held throughout.

As for the canal itself, it was truly impressive. We went to the Miraflores Locks, which is the section of the canal closest to the capital. We went through the museum there, which went over the origins of the canal, the thousands of people who died during its construction (mostly of tropical diseases, which were later eliminated), the massive and innovative machines that dug out the canal, the nationalist uprising in the 60s during which Panamanians began to claim the canal for themselves (it was controlled by the US after it was built), its handover in 1999 to the Panamanian government, and furture plans to expand it. There were exhibits of the gnarly insects from the surrounding jungles as well, and the techniques used to guide vessels through the narrow canal (trains on tracks on each side of the "Panamax" ship tug it along, leaving just inches between the ship and the sides of the canal). And, the trade routes the canal serves: South America's west coast (Chile is the canal's 4th-largest user...holler) to Europe, the US's west coast to its east coast, the American east coast to Asia, and even South America's west coast to its east coast, among others. With globalization, traffic through the canal can only grow. And now that it's owned by Panama, the revenues from the vessels can go in benefit of the Panamanian people (in theory).

Panama has also offered us a ton of interesting people-watching opportunities, because its population (at least in the capital) is so diverse. From the herd of Americans who seem to live here (because most of them were talking on their cell phones), to the Chinese people who own the laundromat where I washed my clothes, to rico y famoso blond Panamanians, to people of African and mestizo descent, it seems to be quite a melting pot. And that's very interesting.

We went to a music festival this evening in the city's Casco Viejo, the colonial section. It was a lot like Cartagena's old city, but ten times more dilapidated. Restoration efforts seem to be gathering steam, though. Hopefully the inevitable gentrification can take place in such a way as to not push the poor residents of the casco out.

Panama City is a modern metropolis with a skyline that's way out of proportion to its size: with just 700,000 residents, it has a ton of highrises with representations of banks from all over North America, Europe and Latin America. Panama proudly announces itself as a "tax haven," which I think might be a bit of a euphemism (at least sometimes) for money laundering and tax shelters. The term is best in Spanish: a "tax paradise." Works for me.

Locombia se despide

2007-06-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

Para que no se preocupen, después de leer el último posteo, que me haya integrado a las FARC, les aviso que me he ido de Colombia a Panamá, y me encuentro sano y salvo de cuerpo y mente. Pasé mucho más tiempo en Colombia de lo previsto, porque lo encontré absolutamente encantador. A diferencia de otros países en Latinoamérica, no están chatos con la cantidad de gringos desfilando por todos sus sitios turísticos. O sea que si eres un extranjero, todavía te tratan súper bien, te preguntan muchas cosas, y te hacen sentirte un poco menos extranjero. Aparte que los colombianos son tan amables y cálidos por naturaleza.

Algo de sentimientos encontrados: después de todo, me he ido definitivamente de Sudamérica.

En Colombia, me fui después de Popayán y San Agustín a Armenia, en el mero corazón del eje cafetero colombiano, donde me quedé en una finca cafetera y visité el Parque Nacional del Café. De ahí a Bogotá, donde me encontré con mi amigo Liam, que tal vez algunos conocerán porque me vino a visitar en Chile. Fuimos al museo de oro de Bogotá--ciudad que se parece bastante a Santiago, por clima, elevación, cultura y gente, con la excepción de que el TransMilenio funciona y el Transantiago está ahí no más--y al museo de Botero. Pero pasamos repoco ahí antes de seguir a Cartagena, donde sí pasamos bastante tiempo.

Evidencia del funcionamiento del TransMilenio:

Cartagena es un paraíso. En su casco antiguo, es una ciudad colonial, muy bien restaurada--un poco como La Habana. Y un poco más allá por la costa encuentras un banco de condominios rascacielos para colombianos millonarios y/o narcos. Y de ahí llegas a las casas del Presidente Uribe, de García Márquez y de Shakira. Cuando nos cansamos de recorrer las calles coloniales y los museos, nos mandamos a cambiar a Playa Blanca, una hora afuera de la ciudad en lancha, donde las aguas eran turquesas, cálidas y cristalinas y aún no hay mucho desarrollo turístico (aunque parece que esto está a punto de cambiar, pues nos dijeron que ya se va a construir un gran resort). Ahí dormimos en hamacas y cubiertos por redes para protegernos de los mosquitos (aunque igual me picaron ene), y durante los días comíamos pescado y nadábamos, e hicimos esnorkel. Me sentía como Jacques Cousteau--nunca había hecho ese tipo de buceo y quedé maravillado con este ecosistema bajo el agua que nunca se ve así como así.

Y pasamos un día en el Parque Nacional Tayrona, más hacia Santa Marta, donde todo es mucho más agreste y hay muy pocas playas donde se puede nadar, por las corrientes peligrosas. Pero igual era muy lindo. Me hubiera encantado colgar una hamaca ahí mismo y dormir al son de las olas, pero no había tiempo.

Así que ayer, después de tres chequeos de nuestro equipaje de mano, una inspección completa del equipaje despachado (tuvimos que sacar todo lo que había adentro para que se aseguraran de que no llevábamos drogas), dos chequeos de detectores de metales, y el pago de algunos impuestos (y la devolución de otros--no me pregunten por qué), volamos desde Cartagena a Ciudad de Panama, en un avión de turbohélice.

Guest Post II de la web MSGG

2007-06-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

[This is from one of my old coworkers back at the Presi's Palace in Stgo...]

Informe N° 002, del Ministerio de Seguridad del Estado de la Página Web, Departamento del Código HTML, Unidad Copy Paste.

Antecedentes: Estado de avance y falta de satélite para la búsqueda del ciudadano norteameraucano*: Carl [redacted]

Nombre de Pila en Chile: "Cafiche(r)", "Gringo".

Siendo junio 15 del año en curso, con un frío de los mil demonios posterior a un frente de mal tiempo, se informa lo siguiente:

1º Que luego de pasar meses con déficit de lluvias, lo que en realidad preocupaba a las autoridades en relación a una nueva crisis energética, se comunica que el país cuenta con un superávit del 2% de lluvias......... 15 damnificados, dos pasos bajo nivel anegados, y 6 tapas de alcantarilla extraviadas, las que se presumen se encuentran en el fondo marino frente a las costas de Valparaíso.

2º Que aunque no existan nuevas lluvias en lo que resta del año, y se tema por una crisis energética, la Institución se encuentra en absoluta tranquilidad debido a que los últimos estudios indican:

Que las reservas de vino tinto, ron, pisco y cerveza alcanzan sin inconvenientes hasta el Bicentenario de la República. Posterior a este magno evento se declarará al país bajo "alerta máxima" y "estado de sitio".

3º Que debido a un error involuntario (extravío de la Resolución Nº 35376711, que reglamenta la compra de huincha aisladora), se informa que no se sellaron lo cables del satélite chileno Fasat Alfa encargado de buscar al ciudadano norteameraucano Carl Fischer y de coordinar el sistema GPS del Plan de Transporte "Transantiago". Este hecho provocó la caída del satélite sobre un bus troncal, lo que ha generado retrasos de hasta dos horas..... en los 5 últimos meses.

Finalmente, la institución informa que se encuentra en buen estado sorteando con hidalguía las diferentes tareas, a pesar de las inclemencias del tiempo, y la nula contratación (hasta la fecha) de un traductor norteameraucano(*) a la altura de Fischer.

Esperamos que el Sr. Fischer se encuentre en buen estado, tanto físico, como sicológico y a la vez etílico.

Se adjunta la última foto satelital enviada desde el fax de Fasat Alfa.

(*) Norteameraucano: Gringo nacido en USA, que se vino a Chile y habla Mapuche.

PD: Con fecha 19 de junio, se procederá a la construcción de un nuevo satélite con el fin de seguir la búsqueda del mencionado ciudadano.

Se aceptan sus donaciones en el teléfono 56 2 600 200 SATELITE o en la página web: www.unsateliteparachile.cl

Tropical Paradise

2007-06-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

If you've been following this blog regularly, you know by now that I am loving Colombia. I wasn't planning on staying this long, and I should be close to Panama City by now on a sailboat, but instead I've decided to just fly to Panama tomorrow (making this my last full day in Colombia, which is mega sad) to take full advantage of this place. My friend Liam is here, which I might have mentioned before, and we decided that exploring more of "Locombia" would be a lot cooler than just sitting on a boat looking out at the water.

We spent a lot of time in Cartagena de Indias, which is right on the Caribbean. It's been spared most of the problems that have plagued this country over the years, since it's kind of on the margins of the country and away from the biggest cocaine plants (from what I understand). Cartagena is very "Pirates of the Caribbean." It's the city that pretty much every pirate movie takes place in. You take a lot of interesting colonial architecture, balconies with a ton of vines, a little cracked paint, and women of African descent walking around with big trays of mangos and passion fruits balanced on their heads, and you're ready for Red Beard to jump out from behind the next building any second. Meanwhile, there are a ton of 6-foot-tall Colombian supermodels everywhere, on vacation I guess, and lots of opportunities to drink ice cold beers while sitting in hammocks. In short: paradise. Plus it's totally safe--much safer than other parts of the country. If you ever have the opportunity to come to Cartagena, you should.

We also took a side trip to Totumo Volcano, which is more like a 10-foot-tall pile of warm mud that bubbles up from the ground. Supposedly it has healing properties. Liam actually dunked his head under the surface of the mud to see just how curative it was. For a second there I wasn't sure if I'd ever see him again, but we survived. So did my watch, by the way. Takes a lickin'...

From Cartagena we took a boat about 1 hour east to Boru, which is the first of an archipelago called the Rosario Islands. We stayed at a place called Playa Blanca, which was just the textbook white sand beach with warm, crystalline turquoise waters. Nothing like eating a salad of fruits like maracuyá, mango, guanabana, pineapple while overlooking the ocean (my stomach didn't even flinch...I am invincible to South American bacteria). We also took a snorkeling tour through the coral reefs of the Rosario Islands, and I wish I could have taken pictures of what I saw under the water. I had never gone snorkeling before, so it was like a revelation to me. I felt like Jacques Cousteau...or at least like Steve Zissou. There were fish that literally glowed in purples, oranges and blues that were really striking.

Last night we went further up the Caribbean coast to the city of Santa Marta, and today we went to Tayrona National Park, a huge protected area with wild beaches and some untouched jungle a bit further inland. We hiked through the park, past leaf-carrying ants, Audrey II-like flowers and tarantulas (Liam said they were crabs, but they looked like tarantulas to me), to a gorgeous beach. If we'd had an extra day on our hands we could have hung up hammocks nearby and fallen asleep to the crashing waves, but unfortunately we had to return to Santa Marta (a trip that included an interesting, and as-yet unexplained, encounter with the cops, who stopped our bus and used a knife to cut a hole in the upholstery of the roof of the bus...luckily they didn't seem to find anything) so that we could get back to Cartagena tomorrow morning and fly to Panama tomorrow afternoon. Where we will meet up with my Stanford friend Joris, who will be flying in from Brussels tomorrow evening.

The Last Andean City-in-a-Bowl

2007-06-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

I have to say that Bogotá was a lot like Santiago, and thus, a decidedly lackluster tourist destination. Sorry. I'm sure it would be a great place to live, as was Santiago. But in terms of sights and general spectacularness, not so much. Of course, it had some tough acts to follow (see below), so maybe I was a bit biased. But the best part of Colombia is the Colombians. And in cities, Colombians become guarded and a bit rude. And they jack up the prices on the places they go and eat.

It did have several cool attractions though, including the madness that was the restuarant Andrés Carne de Res, and the Gold Museum, with amazing artifacts on display. Pictures to come.

And even though I didn't go to Medellín, I did go to the Museum of Fernando Botero's paintings. I will post some up soon.

I am now in Cartagena, and I will write more soon, but right now the stifling heat is killing my ability to do anything other than sit in a hammock and drink beer.

So, chau. I have a Club Colombia calling my name.

Coffee and Sugar

2007-06-13T18:22:00.000-07:00

Let me leave all self-righteousness aside for a sec and just talk about how much admiration I have for the Colombian people. Colombia is a beautiful, dynamic country, with amazingly nice people and lots of possibilities. Its only problem is that like 30-40% of its territory is a no-man's land where guerrilla fighters and paramilitary groups battle over cocaine profits. That's, like, the only problem. And this ugliness doesn't really make it to the other 70% of the country.

The other thing is that the leaders of the different factions of Colombia's civil war all totally know each other and deal with each other on an everyday basis. They make deals, they dialogue. It's not like they're surprising each other with dastardly surprise terrorist attacks at every turn. Not at all.

In general, this is a gorgeous country, and I urge everyone (don't laugh) to give it a chance. It's gorgeous. I've had an awesome time so far, and not one single problem. I've visited San Agustín, one of the most important archaeological sites in the Americas (pictured left), which was amazing. For example.

Now I am in the coffee zone, outside of Armenia, where I am staying at a traditional finca, or coffee plantation. It's so great. They wait on me hand and foot (they'd better, it's mega-expensive) and are so nice. The owner of the finca took me around teh town of Armenia today. I also visited the Coffee Amusement Park today, which included coffee roller coasters and a field of different kinds of coffee. I also learned about the process of picking, peeling, drying, toasting, packing and exporting coffee. Fun AND educational. Which describes the entire country of Colombia, in a nutshell.

Raw Materials, Part II

2007-06-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

So, here's the thing: my eyes continue to be opened here by how we consume things in North America and Europe with absolutely NO REGARD for the source or origin of those items. I wrote about this before, and I will repeat it again: if we really thought about what it took for our gold, our food, our coffee and our gas to get to our fingers, mouths and cars (respectively), we might reconsider our choices.

I make this statement from the perspective of Colombia, specifically the Department of Quindío, in the heart of this country's coffee-growing region. You know: "Made from the best stuff on earth"? Yeah, that. Well, guess what else comes from Colombia? Cocaine. And I was infuriated by an article I read in this past Sunday's New York Times, which practically glorified the use of cocaine, talking about how it was totally the cool new drug. The article was in the Styles section, even.

Now, I will acknowledge the fact that some people are addicts and have practically no control over their drug use. Addiction is a disease, etc., and that's a different thing. But most of the people quoted in that article seem to be occasional users. And they don't even seem like terrible people. So, I think that they might reconsider using cocaine a bit if they knew about the chain of violence, corruption, pain and death that it takes for that cocaine to get from Colombian fields to their prissy hipster Williamsburg noses. With every line, they are treating Latin America like their own personal backyard cocaine crop.

Why do you think there is so much cocaine in Colombia? It's not because the Colombians are bad people or whatever; it's because there is a huge demand for it, in our country. A demand that is growing fast, if you believe the Times. And the path it takes to the US is ridden with absolute terror.

Latin America has been referred to a number of times as the "back yard" of the United States, often in a very paternalistic manner. But I was thinking the other day that the term "backy ard" has another meaning, too. You know how in everyone's back yard there is always one area that's a little unsightly, a part where the tools and the clutter all pile up? Things that you need, but you don't know where to put? Or maybe the ugly piping for your pool or your air conditioner that you can't hide anywhere else?

Well, Latin America is a little like that for the US, unfortunately. Latin America is the place where we pile up our necessities, our clutter, our piping, the parts we can't put in any other place. That sucks as it is. And really, we are perpetuating that when we use products that are produced in an unjust fashion. Like cocaine. Sweatshop clothes would be the logical extension of this argument, but I'm not going to get into that onr. Gold is another one: many gold mines are manned by workers who are fully exploited. And, of course, coffee.

Don't get me wrong: gold items, coffee products and clothes are obviously not all bad, and many are made, refined and manufactured in a just way. And as for cocaine, who am I to condemn the vices of others? But I will say that we should think carefully and get informed about the origins of the products we consume, because we might think twice about our choices that way.

It's very easy to gloss over this when you're at Target (or wherever) and something is gleaming before you, begging to be bought. But remember that what you're buying didn't come from the Target factory: its origins likely lay in the raw materials that are extracted from Latin America and other poorer regions in the southern hemisphere, at a very low cost by a multinational company, which then sells it to you at a huge mark-up. So tell that to the devil on your shoulder telling you to buy more crap that you don't really need.

Felicidades

2007-06-11T12:53:00.001-07:00

Colombia es el país más lindo que he visitado hasta ahora, pero también es el más desafiante. Desde el momento en el que llegué me he enfrentado con situaciones que alternan entre encuentros bonitos con gente muy amable y situaciones un poco complicadas, por decir lo menos.

Al cruzar el río que separa Tulcán, Ecuador con Ipiales, Colombia, me paró un oficial de la policía. Tuvimos una conversación muy interesante, porque aunque en la superficie parecía que me preguntaba de mis planes en el país y que me recomendaba lugares que visitar, el tipo logró preguntarme entremedio qué llevaba en mi mochila, si llevaba mucho dinero, cuánto, y de dónde había venido. No estaba seguro si quería una coima o qué, pero le seguí el rumbo de la conversación, muy tranquilo (pues no tenía nada que esconder tampoco). Pero al final, me dio la bienvenida a su país, y una hoja con su número de teléfono por si me pasaba algo y un mapa donde había dibujado una ruta con los lugares turísticos infaltables del país. Respiré, y seguí mi camino.

Me han contado de un fenómeno acá llamado "la pesca milagrosa," donde los FARC o los paramilitares paran buses que viajan dentro del país, y todos lso pasajeros se tienen que identificar y darles la plata que tengan. Y pobre de ti si piensan que pueden sacar más plata si te "pescan" a ti, o sea, si te secuestran. Así que ojalá no me "pesquen milagrosamente." Igual parece que ya no pasa tanto como antes.

De Ipiales fui en bus a la ciudad de Popayán, y a partir de ahí empecé a sentir el calor de la gente. Me quedé esa noche en una "casa turística," un hostal pero en un barrio residencial donde viven los dueños del hostal también. Fue súper lindo cómo me trataron. A veces hasta me siento como una celebridad menor, porque la gente parece tan contenta de que haya llegado un gringo ahí de paseo. Supongo que no somos muchos los que llegamos. En el terminal de buses de la ciudad, pregunté a un policía dónde estaba la custodia de equipaje, y no sólo me llevó a la custodia, sino que me habló de su vida, me preguntó de la mía, me dio la mano tres veces durante la conversación, me dio el nombre de un policía en el centro de la ciudad que podría darme un tour especial (tour que no tomé al final, pues no encontré a dicho oficial), y concluyó diciéndome "felicidades," como si hubiera ganado un premio al llegar a la custodia de equipaje.

O sea: los Colombianos se pasaron de amables. Se desean felicidad entre sí a cada rato, me imagino, porque hay mucha tristeza en el país, o por lo menos lo ha habido.

El centro colonial de Popayán, a todo esto, está muy lindo. Mucha iglesia, mucho puente antiguo. Mucha gente me miraba mientras caminaba, así que les decía "buenas tardes," y siempre se ponían a hablar conmigo. Comí una "bandeja" de pollo asado que venía con papas bañadas en una crema de coco, y arroz y plátano frito y ensalada...estuvo riquísimo. La comida colombiana es increíble. Ah, y acompañada por una cerveza Poker. Mmmmmm.

De ahí tomé un bus a San Agustín, y juro que era amigo de todo el bus cuando llegamos al cruce de San José, donde el bus me dejó. De hecho sé que me tenían cariño porque insistían que el chofer del bus esperara a que llegara un bus a San Agustín mismo. Pero no llegaba y al final me dejó ahí igual. De repente, otra situación complicada. Eran como las 9 de la noche, y estaba en una zona donde recién había guerrilla, aunque "ya no" (la frase favorita de los colombianos, la escucho a cada rato). Ahí estaba, solo, al lado de la carretera. Tuve que hacer dedo. Y no llegaba NADIE, esperé como una hora. No había teléfono ni nada, ni nadie. Era un poco desesperante. Al final un tipo me llevó, y resultó ser guía turístico y me llevó a la puerta de mi hostal. Estaba agradecido del alma cuando vi luces por fin en la carretera. Ya había pasado ene películas, de que iba a tener que dormir ahí, que me iban a encontrar los FARC en la noche, que me iban a secuestrar y mis viejos iban a tener que hipotecar su casa para liberarme...

Resultó que el tipo que me llevó era amigo del dueño de mi hostal. Eso sí, tuvimos que llegar a la ciudad por una ruta un poco circuita porque había venido de donde las putas (o "chicas de tiempo," como lo decía él...estamos en tierra de García Márquez, después de todo) y no quería que su señora lo viera entrar al pueblo. "Pueblo chico, infierno grande," me dijo. Tienen ese dicho en Colombia también, parece. ¿Ya ven lo fácil que es entrar en confianza con los colombianos?

Hoy he recorrido el Parque Arqueológico San Agustín, uno de los sitios aqueológicos más importantes de América. El tour que me hizo mi nuevo amigo Humberto (no el que llevó anoche, sino otro tipo, un guía esperando fuera de la entrada al parque) incluyó reiki, ya que se supone que sale mucha energía de las ruinas y las tumbas de San Agustín. Aprendí que mi aura es de 4 m de radio. Y ¿la suya?

Ya pondré fotos, se lo prometo.

Muchos saludos a tod@s.

Quito is Bonito

2007-06-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

Today is unfortunately my last full day in Ecuador, and I couldn't be more sad about it. Ecuador is the first country on my trip where I felt like there was so much more I could have done, and it will be great to come back here someday (hopefully soon) and explore the place a bit more in depth. I would also recommend it to my gringo friends, particularly the ones who don't speak Spanish, because it's a very accessible place, very safe, the people are incredibly cordial and it has a well-developed tourism infrastructure. Plus, in terms of sights, it's a very small country that packs awesome beaches, the Amazon jungle and the Andes mountains all in one place. Oh, and the Galapagos Islands as well (!).

From Guayaquil, I took a bus to the town of Cuenca, which is basically Ecuador's third city, in terms of both size and importance. Cuenca is kind of like an Ecuadorian Salamanca: it's a university town with very evident Spanish influence (as opposed to Guayaquil, which was a bit more cosmopolitan). It has about 75 different colonial churches, ranging importance from the cathedral (shown above) to small chapels in the surrounding countryside.

The highlight of my time in Cuenca was a trip to a Panama hat maker, where I bought a Panama hat. What's that, you say? Panama hats...in Ecuador? Well yes, mi amigo, Ecuador is the world's main producer of Panama hats. Carlos says that he's not even sure if they make them in Panama. The guy who I bought mine from (pictured in the first photo) was awesome. He was mute (probably a case of too many cigarettes) and so we communicated by gesturing. He was quite an artisan: the hats are all made by hand, out of this one specific variety of straw, and then steam-ironed so that they are about as thick as paper. The best-quality ones are so tightly woven that you can roll them up tight enough to fit through a man's ring, and then unroll them and they will go right back to their original shape. Mine's currently rolled up in a box, so we shall see how good quality it is when it needs to pop back.

I also took an excursion outside of Cuenca to the most important site of Inca ruins in Ecuador, known as Ingapirca. Cuenca was an important stop-over place for the Incas, as it is close to both the jungle and the sea, and well-located between Cuzco (which, as we ALL know, was the capital of the Inca empire) and Quito, which is about as north as the Incas got before the Spaniards arrived.

After a nightmarish (literally) overnight bus to Quito, I got right into things here, where I have been since yesterday morning. Yesterday I didn't do too much, since I was so tired: just 2 big excursions a bit outside the city. One, as you can see, was to the actual line of the Equator, which is just north of Quito. So I'm not QUITE in my home hemisphere yet (I was for one brief moment there), but I will be starting tomorrow. Which is a big milestone: Go north, young man.

Yesterday's other big excursion was to the Osvaldo Guayasamín Museum. Guayasamín was Ecuador's most important artist, and his paintings reflect the struggles and themes of the Latin American continent (mostly from a fairly leftist perspective, although some of the values reflected in his paintings were quite traditional, such as the idea of the family as the center of society). Some of the themes include: mestizaje, the class struggle, dictatorships, the dignity of the poor, and civil wars. He built what he called "The Chapel of Man," which houses most of his paintings today. The painting I posted here is actually a giant mural, and it depicts a condor, which represents the cultures of the Andes, dominating a bull, which represents Spain.

As this is my last day in Ecuador, and I realized that Quito had way more to offer than I initially realized, I had to fit a lot of things in. So I started my day early at the Presidential Palace (pictured here), known as Carondelet. You can't go inside but I realized that that was probably ok, as I have had about enough of presidential palaces to last a lifetime. I then explored other areas of Quito's colonial quarter, including the Jesuit church (plated with 7 tons of gold--I would have posted a pic but you aren't allowed to take pictures inside--you can probably google "iglesia de la compañía quito" and see better ones than I could ever take), the Dominican church, and the Panecillo, which is a hill where a winged Virgin Mary presides over the city.

I also managed to hit the Mariscal, a neighborhood known as "gringolandia" because of how Americanized it is, and go up to the top of a mountain next to the city via cable car, where you go from 2800 m to 4100 m above sea level in about 15 minutes. I even had time left over to buy some books and see the movie "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and...Spring," which was awesome by the way. It came out in the US like 3 years ago (came out in Chile like a year ago, I don't know why they're so behind here) so you can rent it.

And that's all for now. Tomorrow I am off to Colombia. The first stop for the night will be the colonial town of Popayán. Will I make it? Stay tuned!

A Cordial Welcome to Ecuador

2007-06-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, as planned, I took a bus across the border into Ecuador and arrived in the city of Guayaquil in the evening. Ecuador is a curious place: it's incredibly poor in the countryside--like, Bolivia poor--but its cities are completely prosperous, orderly places.

My friend Carlos picked me up at the bus station, and from that moment I passed an entire weekend where I didn't have to be constantly on guard about my stuff, and where I didn't have to worry about where I was going and how to get there. Because Carlos took care of everything. We had a great time. I had time to just relax and watch TV (including TV Chile, channel 51 in Ecuador!), and he took me out and I met a lot of his friends. I learned some interesting tropical Guayaquileño slang (like, for example, they use the word "man" to refer to women, men or things, as in "Vamos a llamar a esas mans para que salgan con nosotros"), and saw a lot of Guayaquil. We walked around the city's recently-rebuilt Malecón and walked up the hill of the charming colonial neighborhood of Las Peñas. I let myself be pampered by the family's maid Luz, who makes amazing fresh blackberry juice. We partied until practically the break of dawn at a disco with the beautiful people of Guayaquil on Saturday night.

On Sunday we drove out to his parents' beach apartment in the town of Salinas, but not before a driving trip along the Pacific coast of the province of Guayas. We stopped and had lunch in the town of Montañita, where hippie Argentines sit on the sidewalk drinking their mate and braiding things into each others' dreadlocks. I had Ecuadorian ceviche, which is more soupy than the Peruvian variety (and, sorry, but not as good). We spent the night at the apartment and I slept like a baby for 10 hours, with the sound of waves breaking in the back of my subconscious.

Now I am in Cuenca, Ecuador, which is actually kind of cold in comparison to hot, tropical Guayaquil, as it is up in the Andes a little bit. All is well.

Thank you to Carlos and his family for allowing me to make myself at home for a couple of days.

Guest Post del Web MSGG

2007-06-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

Esto viene de mis ex compañeros laborales, de la página web del gobierno en Stgo, específicamente mi socio, el destacado diseñador gráfico Ale Ramírez.

---

Informe N° 001, del Ministerio de Seguridad del Estado de la Página Web
Antecedentes: Busca del ciudadano norteameraucano : Carl [redacted]
Nombre de Pila en Chile: "Cafiche(r)", "Gringo"

Según los últimos antedecentes recopilados por esta Secretaría de Estado se informa que el individuo se encuentra en un lugar indeterminado en Perú. Imágenes de satélite nos informaron que los primeros días del mes de mayo se observó un brillo en la ciudad Putre, posteriormente se confirmó que se trataba de la "pelada de Carl]". Al realizar una operación rastrillo por los países de Bolivia, Perú y últimamente en la ciudad de Arequipa, se han confirmado las sospechas de que el individuo en cuestión realizó más de alguna estadía en dichos lugares. Esto se confirmaría al escuchar a los residentes del lugar con frases nunca antes pronunciadas por ellos, en las que destacan:

1.- El pulento condoro
2.- He PERREADO
3.- Pato Yáñez pa´ tí.

La institución a su vez informa que se encuentra en buen estado a pesar de los golpes de la naturaleza, tales como: influenza de Rita, esguince de Vero, y la nula contratación (hasta el momento) de un traductor a la altura de Fischer. El resto del equipo sigue mantiéndose en pie, sorteando con hidalguía las diferentes tareas.

Esperamos que el Sr. Fischer se encuentre en buen estado, tanto físico, como sicológico y a la vez etílico.

Se adjunta foto satelital.

Where the Desert Meets the Water

2007-05-31T17:24:00.000-07:00

Today is my last full day in Peru. I am very close to the Ecuadorian border and tomorrow I am taking a bus to Guayaquil to visit my Stanfordite friend Carlos Burgos. Where I am it is completely warm, all the time, despite the fact that it's winter. I've been within the tropics for a month now, but here where I am is the first time that it's really felt tropical.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. To pick up where we left off, I took a night bus to Trujillo, about 9 hours north of Lima. Here, you have to go by the time it takes to get to a place, not the distance, because distances can be completely deceptive here. It might very easily take 6 hours to go 150 miles, due to road conditions, mountainous terrain, and other variables.

Trujillo is the capital of the Chimú culture, which rose and fell before the Incas took control of everything from southern Colombia to northern Chile. The Chimú capital city, Chan-Chan, is right outside Trujillo. Unfortunately it wasn't very well preserved, mostly due to periodic El Niño-related flooding that had the tendency to sweep everything away. The fact that their buildings were basically big piles of sand right next to the ocean didn't help, either. But hey. Now they are restoring Chan-Chan, bit by bit, and I took a tour of it. Here is a picture of its main square:

Trujillo itself is a pretty quiet place. It does have good ceviche though. I must have that stuff on the brain, as I have eaten it for lunch every day for the past week. And I haven't gotten sick once!

From there, I took another night bus to Máncora, which is where I am now. Máncora is a completely laid-back beach town, and I have spent the last two days a) sitting under an umbrella by the beach; b) swimming in the warm, warm water; c) ordering ceviche for lunch; d) ordering beer and/or Inca Kola whenever I get thirsty and/or the ceviche is too spicy. Life is good.

Tomorrow: Ecuador.

Alerta: Esto está en castellano

2007-05-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Varios amigos hispanohablantes me han escrito para reclamar la falta de entradas en castellano en mi blog. La verdad es que tenía todas las intenciones de escribir más en castellano pero como estoy atrasado en lo que debo estar escribiendo en inglés (acabo de publicar algo sobre Lima, por ejemplo, y dejé esa ciudad hace como 5 días) no estaba entre mis prioridades escribir en español hasta poder ponerme al día con el inglés. Pero, me encuentro con tiempo y ganas de repente, así que me lanzo. Téngase en cuenta que no he hablado en castellano mucho últimamente (salvo para decir cosas como "¿me puede traer otra cerveza, por favor?" y "pero ¿cómo va a estar tan atrasado el bus?") así que ojalá perdonen cualquier falta inevitable de ortografía y/o gramática.

Lo primero que quiero decir es que--y esto es para mis lectores chilenos--ustedes no saben lo bien que lo tienen en Chile. Mientras nosotros nos quejamos de Transantiago, hay combis en Lima que corren por las calles a altísima velocidad sin ningún recorrido fijo aparente, y los taxis en todo el Perú no tienen taxímetros, así que antes de subir a cualquiera tienes que negociar la tarifa. En Bolivia, apenas se ven los combis de La Paz a través de las nubes negras y espesas que emiten. De hecho con cueva paran cuando se lo pides. En Chile todos somos muy buenos para reclamar las cosas molestas, pero vivimos con un nivel envidiable de tranquilidad, incluso en las partes más caóticas de Santiago.

Segundo: Perú, sobre todo, está muy, muy pujante últimamente. Es un país muy power. La gente es muy creativa, y tienen un empuje turístico muy fuerte acá. Aprovechan muy bien de la diversidad geográfica del país (porque no sólo tienen playa, cordillera y desierto, sino también selva amazónica, ruinas majestuosas, y mar tibio), y su situación económica está mucho mejor que antes. Tienen mucho que ofrecerle al turista. Así que Chile tiene que seguir compitiendo mucho.

Mientras tanto, ustedes deben viajar al Perú ahora ya. Ahora que GOL va por $150 ida y vuelta, deben aprovechar de visitar Cusco y Máncora, en el norte (donde estoy ahora). Hay ceviche muy rico, buenísimo, por algo así como 1.500 pesos el platito. Acá se puede vivir como un rey por unas 10 lukas el día.

Tercero: estoy con mucho orgullo de la empresa chilena, que acá es muy visible. Hay Falabella y Ripley por doquier. Se vende Casillero del Diablo en incluso las licorerías de esquina de pueblo chico. Hay mucha capital chilena invertida acá. Además de esa sensación agradable de familiaridad (que me pasa doblemente, ya que Ripley y McDonalds también son como "de casa" para mí), es un orgullo ver que somos respetados y conocidos acá por las buenas empresas. Así que eso.

Yo he estado acá en el Perú por casi dos semanas ya. He ido desde Puno (donde el Lago Titicaca) a Cusco, Arequipa, Lima, Trujillo y ahora Máncora. Es un país lleno de buena gente, con una tranquilidad nueva que parece que todos disfrutan. Es más seguro y más próspero. Lo he estado pasando como el vino en caja (o sea, la raja).

Una amiga mía del colegio, Kaitlin, estuvo conmigo hasta Lima, y después se volvió a Londres. Ahora me voy a juntar en Guayaquil con un amigo de mi magíster--un ecuatoriano llamado Carlos Burgos. Pero por ahora he estado disfrutando estos días de playa. Hoy, por ejemplo, me senté en un puesto bajo un paraguas enorme en la playa principal de Máncora, y había una señora que me trajo Inca Kola en la mañana, un riquísimo ceviche para el almuerzo, acompañando por un litro de Pilsen (la cerveza del Callao), y otra Inca Kola en la tarde. Hasta vigilaba mis cosas cuando quería ir a nadar en el mar a ratos. Quién como yo, ¿cierto?

Me despido señalando lo chévere que es mi vida últimamente. Saludos, abrazos y cariños a tod@s.

Lima: La Horrible?

2007-05-30T16:18:00.000-07:00

Lima, like most other Latin American capitals (like, for example, La Paz, ahem) is not an easy place to be a tourist. It's enormous, its public transportation apparatus is all but indescipherable, it doesn't have a ton of tourist attractions and it's kind of ugly in parts. Actually, most of the nice parts of Lima are hidden behind 10-foot high walls topped off with electric fenses, particularly in its most exclusive district, La Molina.

That being said, if you know where to go, you can have a really nice time. Lima is full of restaurants where new, amazing things are being done with food. Ceviche, for example, is at its peak here. For the uninitiated, ceviche is raw fish (it has to be fresh), which is chopped up and then "cooked" in lemon juice. Then you add in a slice of sweet potato, finely chopped red onions, a slice of pepper, some dried corn kernels and maybe (in some regions) some yucca, you have yourself a plate of heaven. Might sound gross, but it's not. This is a mix of the robust flavors of fish, the spices of the peppers and onions, and the tartness of the lemons that just can't be beat. The gourmet cachet of Peru lies in the fact that four cultures have been mixing in earnest there since colonial times--Chinese (who were brought over to South America as slave laborers on the railroads and plantations), Africans (ditto), Indigenous and Spanish (and other European countries as well). Ceviche incorporates influences from Europe, Africa the Americas and Asia.

So Kaitlin and I had a good time sampling the local cuisine, seeing as how Peruvians are really undergoing a renaissance in this area (judging by the number of new culinary academies sprouting up all over the place, anyway). And, since Lima is right on the coast, the fish is fresh. We also were able to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and this was last Thursday, before it was even out in the US.

We explored the center of Lima, including the Barrio Chino (where we ate at a chifa, which is what they call Chinese restaurants here), as well as the districts of Miraflores (where we stayed), San Isidro, La Molina and San Borja. One really cool attraction was the Larco Museum, which had quite a collection of Pre-Columbian erotic pottery. Here is a photo just of its storage area, which is open to the public: lots of pots.

The thing about Lima is that it concentrates such a large number of people from so many different economic and social backgrounds pretty close together. In a city that has grown from 1 million to over 8 million in the span of about 50 years ("¿En qué momento se había jodido el Perú?"), this means that the upper classes have been constantly trying to move further and further away from the lower classes that continue to filter in from Peru's mountainous and jungle areas. So on one end you have the aforementioned walls and electric fences, while on the other end you have the northern and southern "cones" of the city, full of "human settlements" (shantytowns, and sometimes just campsites) where migrants have literally just set down their stuff and said "Aquí me quedo."

But whereas 6 years ago on my first visit to the city it practically seemed like it was under a state of siege, with people afraid to even walk down the streets, there are signs of progress. Malls have been built in the cones (many with Chilean capital), because the "human settlers" have increasing adquisitive power and have proven themselves to be good credit customers, paying what they owe on time. There are really nice street cafés in the district of Miraflores, a sort-of upmarket suburb of Lima, where you can sit on the sidewalk without too much fear of having your stuff snatched. And any place selling shawls made out of baby alpaca for US$200 can't be too bad off.

The Republic of Arequipa

2007-05-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

We then took a night bus and arrived early on the morning of the 21st (I think) in Arequipa, Peru's "white city." Its inhabitants are so fiercely proud of their city that there's a sign at the entrance to the city saying "Welcome to the Republic of Arequipa." Although I later found out that it was an ad for the newspaper La República, I think it was a good echo of people's sentiments. Lima, like Santiago, and Seoul, and Paris, and other important capitals in the world, is where the vast majority of the country's economic and political clout is concentrated. Arequipa wants to change all that. Its inhabitants once demanded that they be given their own passport and flag, to distinguish them from other Peruvians!

It's called the white city because its main buildings are made out of white volcanic rock. So all around its main plaza you can see a ton of gorgeous, shining white archways. Looming above everything is Misti, the local volcano and source of the rock. The cathedral is one of less than 100 in the world that is authorized to put the papal flag on the altar. It takes up one whole side of the square.

Arequipa is also the native city of Mario Vargas Llosa, arguably Peru's most famous author. Aside from his books, he was recently in the news because a photo was revealed of the black eye that he gave his Colombian literary contemporary Gabriel García Márquez about 30 years ago. A round of applause for the Arequipeños, everybody.

The coolest part of Arequipa, for me anyway, was the Santa Catalina Monastery, which was much more than a Monastery. It was basically a small city within Arequipa, with tons of rooms for colonial nuns from upper-class families (read: they included servants' and slaves' quarters!). Apparently it was more of a sorority house than a nunnery for a time, but then a new bishop or something came in and cracked down on things. (Dude, if you want a real, touristy explanation, you can look at the website...I don't have to be perfectly accurate here.) Kaitlin and I had fun quoting Shakespeare at the monastery. First, the obvious "Get thee to a nunnery." And then, "Out, out, damn spot" at the mass laundry area. Hope the nuns that still live there (cloistered, still, in 2007) weren't offended.

Peru: New and Improved

2007-05-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

I will start off this entry with an apology (to all 3 of my readers) for the lack of entries in the past week or so. I just haven't had any decent time for updates, because in Kaitlin's and my efforts to cover so much ground in so little time, there wasn't a ton of time to sit down and write a decent blog entry. So here is my attempt to make up for that. Maybe even the first of several attempts.

From Copacabana, Bolivia, where we last let off, we took a bus across the border to Puno, Peru, and then to Cuzco. Cuzco is really Peru's showpiece town. It is dramatic and gorgeous: an amazing main plaza whose architecture combines Inca-era stonework (enormous stones--who knows how they carved them and moved them to where they are now--that interlock perfectly, without any need for mortar) and colonial Spanish cathedrals. The cathedrals themselves are a bit politically incorrect, with a ton of depictions of St. James (Santiago is St. James, right?) riding his horse roughshod over bloody (defiant) brown natives, but this can actually be overlooked if you focus on the elaborate stone carvings in the entryways of the buildings, and the bright Andean touches given to traditional Catholic iconogrpahy (ie, the Virgin Mary whose head is surrounded not by a halo but rather by a sun, a nod to Inti, the sun god of the Incas).

Cuzco's main plaza is also surrounded by restaurants on balconies where you can sit and have ají de gallina and a pisco sour (sorry Chileans, but the Peruvian one IS better than the Chilean one) and watch the Cuzqueños chase after the gringos trying to sell them tour packages and/or postcards, and watch the gringos' awkward responses (will they just ignore them? try to engage them in a clunky English-language conversation? run away? We saw all these, and other, variations). You can also dign into some cuy, or guinea pig--an Andean specialty. We didn't, though. I have too many memories of Wickers Berkeley, my fourth grade class's pet guinea pig. May he rest in peace.

Following our explorations of Cuzco proper, we took excursions out of town as well. First to the Sacred Valley, where we saw the Sunday markets in Pisac and Chinchero (pictured)
. There was cool stuff but I didn't get much. We also went to the lesser-known (in comparison to Machu Picchu, at least) Inca archaeological sites of Ollantaytambo and Pisac. Ollantaytambo is one of the few sites where the Spanish colonizers lost a battle to the Incas, so it's an extra special site. It's also lit up really beautifully at night. Here is a pic of the terraces of Ollantaytambo:

And then, of course, Machu Picchu. This was my third time there, and it was just as cool as ever. The sun was shining and we got some amazing photos. One thing I did differently this time was that we went and had lunch at the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, a 5-star hotel located right next to the ruins. We paid something like $30 each for it, which has to be close to a week's minimum wage in Peru. It was good food, and a look into a whole different approach to tourism in the third world, which basically involves protecting yourself in an uppity little bubble that manages to block you off from all the ugly poverty surrounding you.

Peru has really developed since I first went there in 2001. The changes are really evident. There is much better road infrastructure, nicer green areas, more tourist facilities, and a general feeling of stability and safety. We had a really nice time in Cuzco.

From there, we headed to Arequipa.

To be continued...

Bye Bye, Bolivia

2007-05-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

My friend Kaitlin arrived in La Paz early on the morning of May 16, and we hit the ground running. After a day walking around the city (including a trip to the Zona Sur, the uppity part of the city--it was almost like Las Vegas), we set off for new horizons.

Let's be honest: La Paz is a difficult city. It's so high up that you have to be careful not to exert yourself too much, yet every street besides the main one is on a steep incline. The poverty is overwhelming. It was (for me) a very unintelligible place. I wasn't sad to move on. (Neither was Kaitlin.)

So, with the help of our faithful and newly hired guide Alejandro, we departed the city of La Paz early on the morning of the 17th for the ruins of the ancient city of Tiwanaku, located about an hour to the west of La Paz by vehicle. We walked around there for a couple hours, and it was amazing, although it doesn't compare to the archeological sites of Peru. The problem is that the Tiwanaku buildings were looted by the Incas, who conquered them around the 1100s or so. But it was cool to see how the Tiwanakus set the stage for later Inca innovations, in terms of irrigation, astronomy, building technologies and the arts. Here we are at the largest-surviving monument within the city of Tiwanaku: the door of the sun. On the winter solstice, the sun rises directly over this.

We spent that night in Copacabana, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. This is the sunset that night:

The next day, we sailed to the Sun Island, where supposedly the Sun God Inti Raimi comes from. There were some amazing Inca ruins:

And then we left Bolivia, and crossed into Peru:

We have been in Cusco now for a couple of days, but that's another whole blog entry. So stay tuned...

Welcome to the Jungle(s)

2007-05-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

I have been in Bolivia since Friday night, first in La Paz, and then in Coroico. This country is the kind of place that assaults you the second you arrive, with new smells, people in your face, and a general sense of foreignness (at least in my case). It has not been easy.
I guess one problem is that I'm used to being in Chile, and to me, Chile has become metonymic for Latin America. Chile is familiar, and easy, and I guess I sort of expected that the rest of this continent would be too. So I was taken by surprise at how different everything is here. It was sort of an unrealistic expectation, though.
My only consolation is that even Bolivians are foreigners in their own land, on some level or another. This country is full of divisions that cause its citizens to look at one another as "others": Divisions between east and west (La Paz and Santa Cruz, collas and cambas), divisions between the rich and poor (this is something Bolivia has in common with the rest of Latin America), divisions between politicians and those they represent, divisions between whites and indigenous people (I read in the newspaper that this country has been living a "de facto apartheid" since colonial times), divisions among indigenous groups (Quechuas, Aymaras, Guaraní...), and geographic divisions that make it very difficult to move around the country. So, there is basically no way for anyone--Bolivian or foreigner--to ever fully understand all aspects of this country.
I do feel very detached from this culture, though. This is partly because both the US and Chile are countries "non gratos" here: Chile because it usurped Bolivia's coastline (and an area full of copper and other natural resources) during the War of the Pacific, thereby (as Bolivians see it) permanently crippling its ability to export its goods and generate wealth; the US is not so well looked-upon either, due to its ongoing meddling in Bolivian affairs (spraying coca crops in the name of the War on Drugs, and imposing neoliberal economic systems, etc. etc.).
Anyway, I got to La Paz on a bus from Putre (Chile) on Friday evening, and walked around the city's main streets on Friday and Saturday. La Paz is built inside a deep canyon, 4000 m above sea level. So one's first approach to it is looking down into it. There is one main street that runs along the bottom, and then all other streets go uphill on each side. The city itself seems like it's threatening to slide down onto you at any minute.
Most of the sidewalks are taken up by stands, where mostly women sell everything from dried llama fetuses (!) to weavings, to adult diapers, to flowers, to powdered milk, to hot foods. Most sidewalks on the streets leading away from the main street are stairways because they are so steep. There are very few traffic signals, so you kind of have to cross the street and dodge cars (kind of like that Frogger episode of Seinfeld). Indigenous women with gold teeth, in thick skirts and bowler hats, carrying enormous loads on their back, sell pocket-sized kleenex packages in front of Burger King. That is a very La Paz image for you. I haven't taken any pictures of them, because I think it would be disrespectful.
Here is a picture of a park in La Paz:
Then on Sunday morning I took a bus to Coroico, 2000 m downhill and over mountains into a new Department of the country, the Yungas. Coroico is built on a mountain, which means that it has spectacular views. It had a lush feel to it (and the ensuing bugs--thank you Lisa Whelan for taking me to REI to buy repellant in April!), with amazing flowers and animals. I stayed at a beautiful place called Sol y Luna, where I had a hammock with a view, and a private room and bathroom, for like $4 a night (Bolivia is cheap). It was a nice place to just read and relax. I am reading "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño. It's awesome, and I think an English translation just came out. I highly recommend it.
This is Coroico:
Take care for now!

Bienvenido a Bolivia

2007-05-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

Después de 6 horas de viaje desde Putre, llegué a La Paz ayer en la tarde. La Paz es como la mina Chuquicamata, en el sentido de que es un enorme rajo abierto, pero en este caso hay ciudad adentro--abajo y creciendo arriba por los costados. Con la montaña Illimani al sur, encima de todo. Las calles cerca de mi hostal son como La Vega, si la hubieran puesto en la Alameda de Santiago. Y si todos los puestos fueran atendidos por mujeres aymaras con sus sombreros negros y cargando bultos enormes en sus espaldas.

Llegando a la ciudad era algo impresionante: hay una carretera que va alrededor de la ciudad por como medio kilómetro y ahí puedes ver toda la ciudad desde encima. Y después bajas al cañón.

La gente ha sido súper simpática, por la mayoría, a pesar de mi acento chileno. El tipo que atendía en el Museo del Litoral Boliviano ("El mar era, y será, de Bolivia") me preguntó con tono de sospecha si era chileno, y casi dije que sí pero al final le dije la verdad nomás. Y había otro tipo en la calle, un borrachín, que me dijo que volviera a mi país (creo que se refería a EEUU). O sea, estoy cagado si me hago el gringo y estoy cagado si me hago el chileno. Jajaja. Tranquilo, pues, hermano.

Es un cambio porque físicamente no me parezco a ningún boliviano y de repente me siento súper conspicuo. Pero nada que hacer...me voy a acostumbrar.

La comida es interesante. Comí ahora para el almuerzo un guiso de cerdo y ají amarillo, con choclo y papa. Comida bastante criolla. Y una Paceña. Excelente.

Estoy disfrutando mis caminos por las calles, observando la gente (desde las mujeres indígenas pidiendo limosna hasta los funcionarios públicos saliendo del trabajo) y sacando fotos. Las cuales se subirán al blog muy luego, se lo prometo.

Saludos.

Stuff I forgot to mention before

2007-05-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

As I run from town to town, cybercafé to cybercafé, I always find myself way to hurried to write all the stuff I want to. My mind is always on other things, like answering emails, making reservations for a hostel in the next town, etc. So I forget to mention things that I later think, wow, I wish I had put that in the blog. So here are some of them, with photos as well. (Especially because some of the photos turned out really good.)

While in Codpa, I participated in an age-old Aymara ceremony known as "dressing the cross." I went with Tibor to a plot of land a bit outside of town, where the family was in the process of putting up their cross on an altar overlooking their farm. First, they dressed it in sort of pink fabrics and blue gauze, and there was a round of praying in which each person had to kneel in front of it, drink a beer, and pour some of it on the altar in front of the cross. Then you had to throw coca leaves onto it and make a wish. They also poured onto the altar some wine made from Codpa grapes (harvest was at the end of April). The point was to pray to the Pachamama (which is the Altiplano earth god, as far as I know) for a good harvest in the coming year. Then, they took some flowers and plants and put them into bushels, which they tied onto the cross (that is what the picture is of). And then there was another round of kneeling, wine and beer, except this time you had to eat candy as well. The cross then stays up for another year, until it's time to change the plants again next May. They have been doing this every year for more than a century, since they first got to Codpa.

After the ceremony we ate chicken cazuela and picante de conejito. It was good stuff.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I saw some petroglyphs in Codpa, or actually in Timar, to be exact. Basically the valley itself--one of few fertile areas in a massive desert--was a major travel route for the Incas, between what is now Bolivia and the Pacific coast. So the engravings on the rocks there--mostly pictures of llamas and men, pointed towards the ocean--were messages for travelers. I put my hand near one so you can get a better idea of their size.

Here are some pictures from Lauca National Park as well. First, Lake Chungará.

And then, one of a vizcacha, which is kind of like a rabbit but not.

That is all for now. I have now left Chile, so here's one last patriotic photo.

Up in the Altiplano

2007-05-10T16:28:00.000-07:00

I am writing this from Putre, Chile, almost 4,000 m above sea level. My head aches and my brain is a little cloudy from the altitude, so I ask for your patience if this comes out a bit illogical. I have put off writing because every cybercafe I've gone to recently has either had keyboards that don't type the e key anymore, or have computers that are so slow that putting up a picture would take like 35 minutes. And really, who wants to be stuck in a cybercafe if you can be outside exploring, right?

This computer isn't much better than any of the others, but it's time to put something up, because I've been to so many places in the past few days that if I wait any longer I'm going to have a really high bill at the cyber. So here goes.

I got to Arica and spent a night there. It's a small-ish city, but is well-located as a jumping off point to La Paz, Bolivia (which is connected to Arica via a paved highway) and also Peru: the city of Tacna is right across the border. Tacna is the Tijuana to Arica's San Diego, as far as I can tell: Ariqueños cross over to go to the dentist, eat better food and get cheaper pills. It was always sort of a strategic area, because it was the site of a major battle in the War of the Pacific, Before that, the area had belonged to Peru, but Chile took it over. The same war is also the reason for the paved road to La Paz: Arica is Bolivia's port, because Bolivia became landlocked when Chile took over its coastline. The Chileans took over the Morro de Arica, pictured here:

From Arica, I headed inland to Codpa, where a friend of mine is running a hostel. Codpa is in the middle of nowhere: you have to take a total chicken bus down a dirt road for like 3 hours to get there. But it was like Shangri-la when I got there: fruit trees with mangos, guavas and grapefruits, and no phones or electricity. So at night, you could see the Milky Way. I slept like a baby the entire time. The pictures in the previous entry correspond to Codpa: one in the central plaza (in front of a church dating back to the 17th century), and the other in the Hostería that my friend Tibor runs there. Scroll down so I don't have to put up the photos over again.

Then I went back to Arica, I returned last night. Today, I took an all-day tour of Lauca National Park, which is way inland from Arica, in the province of Parinacota. This excursion included a ton of stops to see llamas, vicuñas, alpacas and vizcachas, which are the different camellids of the Americas. They just walk right up to you and eat out of your hand. The highlight of the trip, though, was Lake Chungará, which (according to our guide) is the world's highest lake. It's very shallow though, so maybe that's why it's not as well known as Titicaca--it's not navigable. Anyway, this lake is full of cool wildlife, including Andean flamingos. Condors flew overhead, as well. The only downside? It was 4,500 m up. Thus, the headache and the shortness of breath. Here in Putre it's a little more bearable...more and more so with some tea made from coca leaves and a pair of Advils.

Tomorrow I'm off to La Paz, which is also considerably high up. So I'm just trying to get acclimatized. And, dealing with the fact that tomorrow I am leaving Chile behind in a rather definitive fashion, after almost 2 and a half years. It's sad, but it's time to move on.

Dejando Atrás Mi Querido Chile

2007-05-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

Por fin alcanzo a postear algo en castellano en este blog, para mis amigos en Santiago y el resto de Chile (y cualquier otro que lea este idioma). He estado desconectado del Internet varios días porque he estado en el Valle de Codpa (Camarones) por dos noches. Codpa fue todo un descubrimiento. Me había reído de mi amigo Tibor, un antropólogo que renunció de su trabajo en la Conadi hace más de un año y se fue a vivir en Codpa. O sea, ¿quién se va a meter en un pueblo tan apartado, sin luz, teléfono e Internet? ¿Cómo puede uno vivir así en esas circunstancias?

Pero al sólo ver dónde está viviendo, me cambié completamente de opinión. Codpa es espectacular. Cualquiera que diga el contrario está profundamente equivocado. Situado entre medio de un valle pequeño, el pueblo mismo no tiene mucho más que un retén de Carabineros, una iglesia del siglo XVII y un almacén que Tibor llama el “Líder Express.” La Hostería que administra Tibor está un poco afuera del pueblo, y tiene 16 habitaciones, una sala de reuniones y un comedor. Ahí reina la tranquilidad absoluta: puedes leer en paz, con sólo el sonido del río acompañándote. Puedes estirarte en el pasto, bajo el sol nortino (ya que casi nunca está nublado y el clima es muy temperado todo el año). Hay frutales por todo el recinto, así que puedes agarrar un pomelo y una guayaba y comerlos todavía tibios por el sol. En las noches, se apaga el generador de electricidad, junto con las luces de todo el pueblo, y ahí está la Vía Láctea.

Ahora la Alcaldesa de Camarones (esa señora que andaba desaparecida por un rato y después volvió cuando la absolvieron de los cargos que se le habían imputado) dice que va a traer luz al pueblo, así que esta tranquilidad no va a durar mucho más. Hay que aprovechar ahora ya. Pucha que la rayé con Codpa, me encantó.

Ahora voy a Putre, y después de esto, La Paz. Es decir, no falta mucho para que me vaya de acá. Igual me da pena.

He conocido harto del país sólo en la semana y media desde que me fui de Santiago. Primero Calama y San Pedro, donde codeé con los hippies (santiaguinos y gringos). En camino hacia Iquique, pasé por la mina de Chuqui (ahí se ve la foto abajo) que me impresionó. Como que miré para abajo y vi que desde ahí venía me sueldo esos años.

También pasé una noche en Tocopilla para ver el mar de nuevo.

Iquique estuvo bonito, como Miami chico un poco. Grandes edificios, y mucha plata dando vueltas. Aproveché de ir a la oficina salitrera de Humberstone, donde visité el teatro, la escuela y el hotel que tenían para los trabajadores ahí. Ahora se ha convertido en el Museo del Salitre. Después a Arica, donde subí al morro y me sentía todo un patriota chileno, con el orgullo que tenía viendo las maquetas de la batalla ahí.

Bueno, les dejo por ahora porque me estoy muriendo de hambre y ya se me hace tarde. Mañana me pasan a buscar a las 7:00 para el tour del Lago Chungará.

Abrazos a tod@s.

Raw Materials

2007-05-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

I have spent the past couple of days in Chile's extreme north, visiting the places where the country's wealth is (or was) extracted in mineral form. The profits are then diverted straight to Santiago, where they are then redistributed by the State to the rest of Chile. I guess it could be worse: at least Codelco, the State copper company, is State-owned, meaning that its profits remain in Chile. In many other countries, foreign mineral companies rip out the minerals, pay a modest tax to the country they're in and then their profits go back to the developed world. And actually, this happens a lot in Chile as well, since some of the mines are privately-owned, and in the past, all of them were.
I guess I am struck more than anything by what I now see as a veneer of gentility that we use to cover up the real sources of our wealth. And by "we," I'm talking about Chilean elites in Santiago just as much as elites in the developed world who make their profits off the extraction of raw materials in poorer countries. We sort of tell ourselves that we are living in nice, comfortable surroundings because of our own merits, our own abilities. But really, it's thanks to a bunch of dudes working in pits, often for very little wages and in crap conditions (although that's not the case for Codelco miners, who make tons of money, they do almost invariable die very young, shortly after retirement: "un minero sale de la mina pa' puro morirse," goes the saying).
Hope the same thing doesn't happen to me (I figured out how to put up my photos!):

As I toured Chuquicamata, the world's largest open-pit copper mine in the world--it's a little outside of Calama, where we last left off on this little travelogue--I was struck by this. It was almost like seeing the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz: now I know what really goes on behind the scenes. So this is how we got everything to be so nice in Santiago. Ah.
Not that the place isn't impressive in and of itself. The mine is 1 km deep and 5 km long. It has a spiral of roads going down into it. There are 6 trucks with hoses that drive around all day and all night (it operates 24 hours a day) hosing down the roads so the dust doesn't blow up over Calama and pollute everything. There are massive earth moving machines (for every massive rock, like a little speck of copper gets produced) whose tires alone cost US$12,000 each. It is a massive operation. I took a tour that started in the actual town of Chuquicamata, which is right next to the mine. From there we got on a bus that took us to the edge of the pit, which was awesome. Chuiquicamata itself had to be evacuated of residents about 5 years ago (everyone got moved to Calama) because it was too polluted. All around the town, and the mine itself, are literally mountains of "sterile" earth that has been stripped of all its copper. I guess they'll just leave it there, I don't know.
This is what Chuqui looks like (this is not my photo):

By the way, Chuquicamata was started by the Guggenheim family in the early 1900s, before the copper mines got nationalized by the State. So I guess that's where a lot of the money for their museums came from. Maybe they should put a museum in Chile?
After Calama, I went to Tocopilla and am now in Iquique (inexorably northward). Both Tocopilla and Iquique got their start as cities by the boom in nitrates and saltpeter that could be mined in the northern pampas here. The problem was that the US figured out how to make synthetic nitrates, which left Iquique and Tocopilla pretty much SOL. So now there are a bunch of nitrate mines, called oficinas in Spanish, in these far away areas that are just abandoned.
Today I went to the best-preserved oficina, which was about 45 minutes inland from Iquique. It's called Humberstone, named after this guy who invented a new method of processing nitrates (I think). Humberstone, at its height, must have been pretty cool (for a town dedicated exclusively to mining and miners). It had a swimming pool, schools, a general store, a hotel, a lit soccer field, a rail transit system, a huge theater, and housing for workers and their families. All set up by the company to provide workers with good (or, good enough) conditions so that they wouldn't unionize. Now Humberstone is a little long in the tooth, but you can still go around and get an idea of how it was. Plus it was just named a UNESCO Heritage Site so it's undergoing a process of preservation now.
So, between the copper and the nitrates, it was cool and educational to see where the money for my salary came during the two years I worked as a Chilean Government functionary.
Tomorrow, I'm off to Arica: Chile's northernmost large city. From there: Bolivia!

De-Santiaguinating Myself

2007-05-02T16:24:00.000-07:00

...And he's off!
I left Santiago on Monday afternoon, after I managed to coordinate the movers coming and packing up my stuff (it will be sent to my parents' house in Camarillo...sorry guys, it looked like a garageful!), handing my keys over to the property manager, and getting to the airport on time, all within a span of like 5 hours. For those of you who have ever been to Chile (or anywhere in Latin America, I'm sure), you know that this kind of logistical coordination is almost impossible. So I was pretty proud of myself when I got on my plane. Or at least, I was for like 10 minutes, before the accumulated exhaustion hit me and I fell asleep.
Yes, by the way, you did read that right: I went to the airport. Yes, I know I reneged on my commitment to not take a single plane on my trip, right from the get-go. But really, the first place I was going, Calama, was a 24 hour bus ride from Santiago, and you could fly (in 3 hours) for basically the same price. And I have already taken busses more than halfway up there, so I felt like I paid my dues. Anyway, this is my trip, and I can do whatever I want.
However, I think my urgency to get out of Santiago as fast as I could came from a mentality that I am (at least for now) trying to escape from on this trip: the urban mindset of always needing to do things as quickly as possible, always being in a hurry, always running from place to place. Santiago is like that. The rest of Chile is...not. At all. So since leaving, I have tried to put myself through a process of detox from the fast-paced way of life I was leading up till now.
This process began in San Pedro de Atacama, a sleepy adobe town near an oasis in the Atacama desert, the world's driest. It's sort of a backpackers' paradise, with a ton of hippies decked out in Inca knits and checking each other out as they lounge in the plazas, trying to figure out who's traveling down the so-called gringo trail in a more authentic fashion.
North American and European "more granola-than-thou" pretentiousness aside, it's a beautiful little town, where the white adobe contrasts amazingly with the deep blue, cloudless (it hasn't rained in like 5 years) sky. From there, I was able to take several cool day tours. One, yesterday evening, to the Moon Valley, and another, early this morning, to the Tatio Geysers.
I was at the Valle de la Luna, so-called because of its cratered, uneven landscape, in the early evening, and so I was able to watch as the setting sun bathed everything in orange-reddish-gold colors. Meanwhile, behind me, the moon rose. It happened to be a full moon (or at least almost full), so it was really striking and it seemed like the valley was just as illuminated by the moon as it had been when the sun was up. The moon even cast shadows, which I don't think I've ever seen before. A lot of stars were also out, as well, and were particularly visible because of the atmospheric conditions there. In fact, apparently there's some huge project underway (ALMA, I think it's called) by Japan, the EU and the US to set up a series of telescopes there to find out "the origin of the universe" (according to our guide). Who'd have thought that would be possible here in little ol' Chile?
This morning, a bus picked me up at 4 am (ouch) to go to the Tatio Geysers. They aren't really geysers, though, as far as I could tell...my idea of geysers comes from Yellowstone, with forceful jets exploding every which way. The Tatio ones were more like steaming pits of sulphur. It reminded me of Bumpuss Hell in Lassen. In fact, that's why you have to get there so early--because later on it gets warmer and you don't even see the steam coming out, and it's just (I assume) a barren yellow field of smelly pits. And no one wants to see that, so that's why they make you get up so early. Not that it wasn't cool, anyway. I don't want to be a jerk about it. I liked the geysers, despite my bleary-eyed, crabby observance of them. Apparently some Italian energy company is going to try to harness the geothermal energy of the "geysers," so they might not be around for too much longer. But those copper mines need their power, and we sure ain't gonna get it from Bolivia!
And on the way back (for you animal lovers) we saw ñandus, vicuñas and vizcachas, which are all altiplano camellids. So check that out.
Still figuring out how this all works, so be patient! I will be posting often now. I am going to figure out how to upload photos, too, because I already have some good ones.
Now I am in Calama for the night. Calama is a city, but it's smaller, so as you can see I am slowly weaning myself away from my fast-paced city kid mentality. Calama is the capital of miners (it's near a big copper mine, but I'll get into that another time), easy money (copper prices are up right now), and--the result of putting the previous two together--whorin'. But I guess I will not be partaking of that particular aspect of this ugly, ugly town tonight, as I have been up since 3:45 and I'm a bit tired. I know--disappointing!
So, for now, buenas noches.

Tentative Itinerary

2007-01-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

These are the places I intend to go during my trip. If anyone has any suggestions re: places that I left out that I "just have to see," please feel free to comment.

May 1-6, 2007

(Chile)
Santiago
La Serena/Totorolillo
San Pedro de Atacama

May 7-13, 2007

Arica/Codpa
(Bolivia)
La Paz
Coroico

May 14-20

Santa Cruz de la Sierra
Copacabana/Lake Titicaca
Floating Islands
(Peru)
Puno

May 21-27

Cuzco/Sacred Valley (Machu Picchu?)
Arequipa
Nazca/Pisco

May 28-June 3

Lima
Trujillo
Máncora/Tumbes (beaches)

June 4-10

(Ecuador)
Cuenca
Guayaquil
Quito

June 11-17

(Colombia)
Popoyán/San Agustín?
Medellín
Cartagena de Indias
(To Panama, via sailboat)

June 18-24

San Blas Islands/Colón
Miraflores/Panama Canal
Panama City
(Costa Rica)
San José

June 25-July 1

Costa Rican Rain forest(s), TBD
(Nicaragua)
Managua
(Honduras)
Tegucigalpa
(Guatemala)
Guatemala City

July 2-8

Antigua
Chichicastenango
(Mexico)
Oaxaca
Mérida/Tulum

July 9-15

Puebla/Pyramids
Mexico City

July 16-22

Morelia
Copper Canyon
Guadalajara

July 23-29

Zihuatanejo
Puerto Vallarta
Tijuana
(USA)
San Diego
LA/Camarillo by August 1 or so

The Planning Phase

2007-01-18T09:08:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog, which will document my upcoming trip from Santiago, Chile (where I have been living for the past 2 years) home to California. I plan on taking about three months to get back to my parents' house in southern California, leaving in early May 2007 and arriving in early August. I have to get home in time to pack up and go off to grad school, which will start in late August/early September.
I haven't gotten into grad school yet, though (the suspense is killing me). I guess that will be the topic of another post, when the time rolls around. But I have already given unofficial notice at my job here in Santiago that I plan on being out of here by the end of April.

Meanwhile, I am planning for the trip. I have invited a number of friends and family to join me for parts of it along the way, and I'm hoping that some people will be up for it, although no absolute confirmations yet.

The red line on this map shows the path I'm planning to basically follow:

I will be packing very lightly. I am planning on shipping a lot of stuff to my parents' house from Chile, and I can only hope that it beats me home, because I'm going to need it once I get there.

The main rule of the trip is to not take any planes, unless it's some sort of emergency or I'm running extremely behind schedule. I have 2 ATM cards (one from my US bank account and one from my Chilean account), which will be providing the funding for this sojourn following years of saving my pesos in Chile.

I will be following a rough itinerary, and there are certain things I am planning to see along the way, but I'm going to make up most of it as I go along. That's the way things are done around here, and after two years of living in Chile I am prepared to roll with unpredictability.

For those of you who feel that an uppity white boy traipsing through the third world with nothing but a backpack is cause for concern, I urge you to remain calm. I am going to take my malaria pills regularly. It is highly unlikely that I will be kidnapped and held for ransom. I am not planning on going native and becoming a covert guerrilla freedom fighter for the EZLN or the FARC. Rabid Guatemalan pumas will probably not devour me alive. And I am planning to take the "good" taxis in Mexico City (not the ones where the drivers slit your throat)...the green ones, right? Or is it the white ones...