Seth of the Equator

Empire State of Mind

2010-05-12T13:23:00.003-04:00

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. So, I'll try to say what I can to sum up the last four months. I'm a bit reminded of a great Onion article about This American Life, and the subject of "things ending" being the final subject they have left to cover. I've talked about basically everything I could think of on this trip. So this seems like the right time for this particular thing to end.

I've been back in New York for five days now, trying to regain my grasp on reality. I've been reunited with my family and my dog Sonny (whom, the other day, I awoke to find asleep on my shoe). I've had several people ask me if it's weird to be home, but in truth it's surprisingly not. In fact, what's weirdest about it is how normal it feels. It doesn't feel like I've been gone as long as I have. When I think about specific things that happened before I left, or how long it's been since I've seen specific people, then I feel the full weight of it. But it doesn't feel like four months since I woke up in this apartment, since I rode the subway, or since I took Sonny out for a walk. It feels like some time has passed, certainly, but more like a few weeks than a few months. It's amazing how easily the routine things stay routine.

The weird result of all this is that my trip also feels, in my mind, like something that existed outside of normal time. In a way, it's true, because, in relative terms, it existed far outside of my normal experience. Travel time always feels a bit different, and when it's all you're doing for four months, things get a bit skewed. But the net impact is that it almost feels like it must have been a dream. Not because the memory of it isn't still vivid, but because it seems so improbable that I should have had the opportunity to do something like this trip. At any rate, I seem to have very quickly moved past the point of not wanting to talk about it at all--I did, after all, document much of it in elaborate detail on the internet--to the point of wanting to talk about it a lot. I'll apologize now to the people this may annoy in the coming weeks. I think it's just a function of my brain trying to come to terms with the fact that I actually did this.

At any rate, this seems like a good time for big picture stuff, so I want to come back to something I haven't really gotten into since I was in Nicaragua, but which was a pervasive issue throughout my trip: poverty. For me, as much as this trip was about the incredible experiences I've had, it was also about what I saw of the world and the lives of others. I'll take with me my memories of the people I met and saw as much as anything else. Obviously not everywhere I went was destitute, although people in Uruguay and Argentina would occasionally explain one dysfunction or another by saying "well, it's a third world country." Having also been to Ecuador--which can't even support its own currency--and Nicaragua, I think there is no doubt that, terminology aside, the Rioplatan region is just on a completely different economic plane than those two. But there is still a significant difference between everywhere I went and the U.S., particularly in terms of access to technology and quality of life. It's also worth noting that the two countries that are the most developed overall--again, Argentina and Uruguay--are the two with the smallest indigenous populations. In both cases, as with the U.S., the original population was almost completely wiped out, and nearly everyone has ancestry from somewhere else. In Uruguay, in fact, the indigenous Charrua culture is completely gone. This may be an indication of greater natural resources more than anything--greater resources would have meant more aggressive colonization, as well as more long-term wealth. But, spending some time down there, the long-term impact of colonization is very apparent.

In that light, it's not particularly surprising that one encounters the mythology of Che Guevara frequently. This is in spite of the fact that the Argentine government has denied any legacy one might grant him--there is not a single street named for him in the country, even though he was arguably the most famous citizen in its history. When traveling through and around South America, it is impossible to escape the fact that a young Guevara himself once traveled a similar route in an effort to get to know himself and to see the world. Anyone who sets out with similar intentions and sees similar places ultimately ends up thinking extensively about Guevara and the things he fought for.

Guevara was, of course, a murderer--even if you do believe many of his actions to have been justified, it's clear that at a certain point he came to delight in violence. Moreover, fighting against a system that perpetuates hegemony by backing a system in which bloodshed is the only source of power is a deeply flawed approach. But the poverty and systematic oppression of indigenous peoples Guevara saw throughout South America saw were a real thing, and still are in many parts of the continent. As in Guevara's time (after all, it's only been fifty years), we have a status quo in which the centuries-old oppression is institutionalized. It's in the U.S. as well, in other forms. The original structures may no longer be in place, but their repercussions are a major factor in many people's daily lives. Of course, the fact that so little progress has been made is just another piece of evidence that Guevara's tactics achieved little aside from changing the body in the dictator's chair. Although given that his ideology seemed as driven by a sense of vengeance as by a sense of justice, this might not be much of a surprise.

Ultimately, regardless of our politics, it becomes a huge problem when we end up trying to decide who deserves what amount of comfort, wealth, and power. It's not a question I can answer, and it's not a question I am interested in answering. But I do think we can largely agree that everyone deserves a few fundamental rights. And walking around Granada or Guayaquil, for example, it's clear that the status quo remains largely unacceptable. As Guevara noted, too many people have no access to opportunities because of who their ancestors were. But too often, those seeking social justice--Guevara included--are preoccupied with the past. As I've noted before, punishing people for the sins of their forefathers is a woefully backward-looking approach to moving forward. It is not possible to reverse the pain of past injustices, but their long-term effects can still be mitigated. The question cannot be "how do we make up for the oppression people have felt?" It can only be "how do we move to a system in which they are no longer feeling the burden of that oppression?" So the focus, in my mind, must be on creating opportunities where currently there are none.

I recognize that I'm writing in terms that are both overly idealistic and extremely simplistic. It's much easier to say "everyone should get a great education and equal access to government" than it is to figure out how to give everyone a great education and equal access to government. The road is far from obvious. There's a scene in The Motorcycle Diaries (the movie, at least) in which Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado visit Machu Picchu, in Peru, and discuss the poverty they've seen along the way. Granado suggests forming an indigenous political party, giving people the opportunity to build a a movement. Che arrogantly scoffs, and argues that change cannot come without bloodshed and bullets. In the end, the kind of change he brought--that won by mass murder--has shown itself no less oppressive and self-serving than the powers it replaced. Granado's solution is no silver bullet, but adding a previously absent voice to the conversation is always a good step. I do believe there must be some way to extend the opportunities which are humanity's birthright to peoples who have for centuries been denied them. I don't know whether it can happen in my lifetime, but I have no doubt that we can make a lot of progress. So, what is the solution in the long run? I certainly don't have an answer. But I know that it's important to keep asking the question. And for me, in many ways, this trip has been about doing just that.

It has been interesting to consider these ideas at a time in which my own country has just completed a massive healthcare debate. It was a debate in which one side argued that providing low-cost or subsidized healthcare to the sick and poor amounted to handouts for the undeserving. I do believe that it's important to have a society in which capitalist opportunities exist--in which people can work hard and achieve and advance, and in which there is always room to grow. And I understand that it is a biproduct of such a system that there will be people whose opportunities, from birth, far outstretch those of fellow citizens. But I also believe that we are all obligated to remember that it is circumstances beyond our control--whether you believe it to be God, luck, or pure random chance--that give us the mere capacity to advance. It was not my choice to be born into a wonderful and supportive family, who could provide for me a great education. Nor was it my choice to be born in a country where I have never had to fear that police might come and take me or my loved ones away for the color of our skin or the thoughts I express. It was not my choice to be born without any major developmental impairments, such that I have the ability to read and to write, to speak and to comprehend, and to get around as I please. It was not even my choice to be born a human being. None of this came from anything I did. That I, this soul, was born into this body in these incredibly fortunate circumstances was nothing short of a blessing. And so to consider myself more deserving of this life than others would be to thumb my nose at the very forces that grant me these opportunities in the first place. So it is that I believe in a fundamental human duty to lend a helping hand whenever the opportunity arises. I don't believe we can--or even should--all be Mother Teresa. If you are sailing along and see a shipwrecked man drowning in the water, diving in to save him won't help if you're not a good swimmer. But sailing blindly on is no better. Not when it would cost you so little, and help him so much, just to toss him a life preserver.

Anyway, I think I'll get off my preachy high horse, and wrap things up. It just seemed appropriate to discuss all this as part of this blog, because it has been the one thing I've thought about every day since I arrived in Nicaragua on January 9th.

It has been an unbelievable thrill to share my journey with you. I am so grateful to live in an age in which this kind of travel and this kind of communication are possible. I hope you've found what I've had to say enjoyable, or at least not completely self-indulgent. Now, at long last, it is time to get back to my dog and my family, and to spending time with old friends as well as new, before starting the next chapter of my life in graduate school. And so, reminded of just how grateful I am for the life I have, I'll continue on to the next adventure, keeping this memory close, always thinking back, and looking ever forward.

Saludos,
Seth

Send Rudy Giuliani his royalty check

2010-05-10T14:37:00.001-04:00

I'd like to take one last next-to-last post to write about something I'd been thinking about for the last few weeks of my trip. I'm home now, so I certainly don't have much new ground to cover, but this is something that showed up as a theme in every place I visited. As such, I think being in New York, which is as much the center of this story as anywhere else I've been, makes this an appropriate time to discuss it.

I've arrived home at a time when much of New York is, once again, concerned about terrorism. Last week's attempted bombing of Times Square is a reminder that, though I may feel less vulnerable here than I did on my travels, I am not necessarily any more safe. This is notwithstanding Stephen Colbert's point that New Yorkers will be fine because the bomber targeted Times Square, the one place in the city New Yorkers never go. At any rate, I mention this mostly to bring up something I've been thinking about for a while. I know I'm grossly overgeneralizing here, but New Yorkers, I think, don't think of 9/11 all that much, at least not when thinking of our city. It might pop into your head from time to time walking around, but if you're away and thinking of what you remember about home, it's not going to be one of your first thoughts. During elections, it can often feel like other parts of the country make a much bigger deal of it than we do. The truth, however, is that by being so close to it, I think we often miss just how wide its repercussions were. When I told people in Latin America that I was from New York, I almost always got one of two responses: "Ah, la Gran Manzana" ("the Big Apple"), or "¿Qué tal Las Torres Gimelas?" ("How about the Twin Towers?"). Nearly everyone I met asked me if I was in the city that day (I wasn't--it was freshman year of college) or what I thought about it. The dialogue was often a bit bizarre ("How about the Twin Towers?" "What about them?" "They fell." "Um, yes, I know.").

This line of inquiry, it's worth noting, wasn't limited to the Spanish-speaking locals. It came up in conversation with plenty of English-speakers and travelers as well (though none from the states). And, I suppose, it's just something that made a major impression on the world. So if you're someone who was relatively close to it, they want to know what you thought about it. It makes sense. If I'd met an octogenarian from Pearl Harbor, I'd probably have the same reaction. But it mostly felt kind of weird because, although I felt deeply affected by 9/11 at the time, I don't really have much to say about it now, and certainly don't have much interest in talking about it. As such, I'd usually try to change the subject as quickly as I could. I'd usually just say some basic things that are true: "it was a huge tragedy," "that day was awful, I remember it clearly," or "hey look, a dog!"

On the plus side, once I went through the basic motions, things generally stayed pretty normal. There were, however, a few times people asked my opinion on conspiracy theories. For example, an Irish friend asked me if I thought the Bush administration secretly blew up the World Trade Center and was very surprised that I am certain they did not* I also had a Galapagan hostel owner ask if I knew that Osama Bin Laden used to be the director of the CIA, and that he coordinated 9/11 from a hotel room in D.C. before flying to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein. He told me "I watch TV, I know all about the world." The moment shook me a bit--not because of anything to do with the conspiracy theories, but because it was a reminder of the incredible good fortune I experience every day. Here I was blissfully seeing so many things that are so far removed from my experience, and this man has no other window to the enormous world beyond his island's shores than a TV that parrots distorted accounts of information.

As a result, I got very tired of the 9/11 conversations. I understand why people wanted to have them. They had no way of knowing that neither of us would get anything out of it. So I was obliged to go through the motions until something appeared that could distract us.

There's an almost-certainly-apocryphal story in the travel community about American backpackers sewing maple leaf patches to their backpacks in order to pass as Canadian. I didn't have a problem admitting to be from the states, and was always happy to say "soy de Nueva York." But after enough questions about 9/11, I started thinking I might say I was from California. After all, I'm much more interested in discussing economic policy than in discussing terrorism.

I'd been struggling to decide whether to write this post or not. Ultimately I've decided that although it isn't really about the places I've been so much as where I came there from, it's still worth noting. I've tried to make this blog not just about the things I've seen but also my experience in seeing them. And, whether I wanted it or not, this was a consistent part of the experience of this trip.

I'll be back in the next day or two with--I think--my actual final post. For now, a real celebration of New York: matzoh ball soup.

Saludos,

Seth

*I told him that the idea that they could pull off something so coordinated and devastating suggests a massively higher level of competence than they demonstrated at every single turn. They did enough major damage to the world with things that were and still are real that we do ourselves a disservice to distract ourselves with fictitious abuses of power.

Fact.

2010-05-07T13:59:00.005-04:00

Maybe it's the statistics nerd in me, but I felt like dedicating a post entirely to a series of lists and facts. The "tale of the tape," if you will. So here are some random lists of random facts about my trip. Note that these lists are based on my memory as of the last few days, and as such are incomplete in at least a few cases. There is also almost never any particular order, aside from the first two, which are chronological. Usually, the order is just the order in which I remembered things. At any rate, here are some things that happened.

Pictures taken: 9,495

Blog posts: 47 (not including this or any subsequent posts)

Blog posts that I posted on lonelyplanet.com's blogsherpa program: 37

Countries on whose soil I set foot:

Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Panama (1 night)
Uruguay
Argentina
Brazil (1 day)
Chile
Colombia (airport)
Ecuador

Books I read:

The Audacity to Win - David Plouffe (started before I left)
The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
A Briefer History of Time - Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Díaz
Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut

Countries whose citizens I met on my travels:

United States
Germany
Canada (French and English-speaking)
France
Denmark
Sweden
Spain
Italy
Netherlands
Sweden
Russia
Belarus
England
Ireland
Scotland
Australia
Austria
Finland
Switzerland
Portugal
Japan
Peru
Paraguay
Norway
Israel
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Panama
Uruguay
Argentina
Brazil
Chile
Ecuador
Colombia

Countries and territories from which this blog has been read:

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Costa Rica
Czech Republic
Ecuador
France
Germany
Greece
Guatemala
Hong Kong
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Italy
Kuwait
Malawi
Malaysia
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Norway
Pakistan
Panama
Peru
Philippines
Puerto Rico
Romania
Russia
Slovakia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
U.S. Virgin Islands
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Venezuela

Types of transport (*indicates something I'd never done before):

Bus (school, city, and coach)
Car (taxi, rental, and friend's)
Van
Pickup truck
Boat (ferry, yacht*, sailboat, zodiac*)
Airplane (small as 12 passengers*, large as a 767, and some others in between)
Dune buggy*
Bicycle
Zipline*
Chairlift
Snorkel fins
My feet (a lot)

Things I saw for the first time (non-animal division):

Crater of an active Volcano
Glaciers
Icebergs
Solidified fresh (meaning within the last few centuries) lava flows
Lava tube caves
Organic farm
Murga
Soccer match
Fjords
The inside of a cruise ship (first time I ever slept on a boat, in fact)
Moai (very location-specific, but still worth mentioning)
Cactus trees
Live theater in Spanish

New fruits I tried:

Nispero
Sapote
Calafate
Maquí (in fairness, I only tried the ice cream)
Guanábana

Animals I saw (in the wild) for the first time

Monkey--Howler, White-faced (Capuchin), and Squirrel
Scorpion
Sloth (three-toed and two-toed)
Tree frogs
Crocodile
Macaw
Parrot
Coati
Penguin--Magellanic and Galapagos
Rhea
Flamingo--Chilean and American
Sea Turtle
Boobies (heh)--Blue-footed, Nazca, and Red-footed
Shark--White-tipped and Galapagos
Iguana--Green, Galapagos land, and Galapagos marine
Frigatebird
Tortoise
Fur seal
Manta ray
Moray eel
Triggerfish
King Angelfish
Damselfish
Common dolphin (had previously only seen bottlenosed)

Favorite regional foods:

Quesillo (Nicaragua)
Gallo Pinto (Nicaragua and Costa Rica)
Tuna a la plancha (Costa Rica)
Chivito (Uruguay)
Mate (Beverage--Uruguay and Argentina)
Grassfed steak (Uruguay and Argentina)
Meringe / dulce de leche pastries (Argentina)
Ice cream (Argentina--listed because it's that much better than other ice cream)
Patagonian lamb (Chile and Argentina)
Venison (Bariloche, Argentina)
Ceviche (Easter Island, Ecuador)
Locro de papa (Ecuador)

UNESCO World Heritage Sites I visited:

Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay
Iguazú National Park, Argentina
Iguaçu National Park, Brazil
Glacier National Park, Argentina
Rapa Nui National Park, Chile
Galápagos Islands, Ecuador

Blogopagos - The Dread Pirate Frigates (or So Long and Thanks For All The Fishes)

2010-05-07T12:50:00.002-04:00

I once again find myself writing an entry from an airplane, this time between Galapagos and Guayaquil, where I'll catch my final flight home to New York. Before moving on, though, I thought I'd write a bit about my last three days aboard the Angelique. In particular, I want to discuss our trip to Genovesa, the island that, among those I had not yet seen with the Cachalote, I most wanted to visit.

Genovesa is most noteworthy for its enormous population of nesting Great Frigatebirds. I've mentioned the frigatebird a bit already, and I knew that I found them fascinating, but getting to observe them up close crystalized my feelings. Let's get this out there now: frigatebirds are assholes. They are the assholes of the bird world. Seriously, total jerks. Frigatebirds*, also known as Man-O-War birds**, are most well known for their piratical habits. They steal everything they get. I've already mentioned that they often get food by harrassing other birds into disgorging a fresh catch, and swooping down to snatch it before it hits the water. It turns out they do this with nesting material as well, as I've now seen firsthand.

On Genovesa, we witnessed scores of Red-footed Boobies--the tree-dwelling and alternate-colored cousin of the Blue-footed and Nazca varieties--cutting small twigs from bushes with their beaks, and attempting to fly them back to their loved ones. You'd think birds would leave them alone. After all, they're just trying to build a good home for their kids. Well, most of the time, not a moment after the booby took flight, a frigatebird would swoop in from above and start pecking at and colliding with the booby. Occasionally, the booby would escape with the twig still in its mouth, and make it home--or at least out of my line of sight. For the most part, however, the incredibly dickish behavior of the frigatebird would cause the booby to freak out and drop its twig. As impressive as it may have been to then watch the frigatebird swoop down faster than the twig***, great feats of athleticism don't make up for shoddy morals. This ain't the NFL.

As I watched these acrobatic thugs do what comes naturally, I struggled to find the appropriate analogy. I initially thought it a bit like a neighborhood with a heavy mob presence. The frigatebirds take a taste of all the food and all the construction materials. The problem with that analogy is it would have to be a combined mob neighborhood / police state, because if you really lived in such a neighborhood, you would always have the option to leave it, and you almost certainly would.

I think, at the end, it's most like a normal American high school. I say "normal" because this kind of thing didn't really go on at the artsfest I attended during my formative years, but that's beside the point. The frigatebirds are the bullies and the red-footed boobies are the A/V club. Or the sci-fi club. Or the D&D club. Or Mathletes, perhaps. Take your pick. The only difference is that, in PS Genovesa, there are about twice as many bullies as there are nerds. The nerds wish more than anything that they could escape to a place without bullies, but they have nowhere else to go really. This is where the fish are, so that's where the nerds stay. So, the nerds have no real choice but to tolerate the frigatebirds' stealing their lunch money and their twigs. The boobies occasionally yell a bit in exasperation, and even throw the odd weak-looking peck. But they never really manage to retaliate in any meaningful way.

The courtship traditions of the frigatebird are also noteworthy. The male frigatebird has a big red throat-pouch that he can inflate to impress the females. If I may continue the game of "Torture That Analogy," (a favorite pastime of my brother Art and I), it is the bird equivalent of the bully--clearly already overcompensating for something--stuffing a sock in his pants. Often, on Genovesa, one will come across a large group of male frigatebirds sitting on the ground with their pouches fully inflated, waiting for a female (who has a very visible white patch of feathers in lieu of the pouch) to fly overhead. Whenever this happens, the males spread their wings and shake them, proudly displaying the size and redness of the pouch. In order to ensure the female's attention--just in case she might confuse the group for little Jimmy's fourth birthday celebration--they ullulate. Eventually, the female will choose the "ballon rouge" that suits her fancy the most, and settle down with a male. She will then blissfully pretend, a la Carmela Soprano, that the twigs and aluminum siding he brings her have come from an honest day's work****.

At any rate, Genovesa, isolated in the northeastern part of the archipelago and located fully north of the Equator, is unique because it is the only island that has neither introduced species nor land reptiles (of Galapagos's two iguana species, only the marine variety has made it as far as Genovesa). As a result, it is so full of birds as to be an appropriate setting for a remake of the Hitchcock movie. In addition to the frigatebirds and all three kinds of boobies (though Blue-footed are not very common there, and nest on other islands), it has a wealth of Red-billed Tropicbirds and a freakish amount of petrels.

The petrels pass their time trying to impress each other with aerial acrobatics along the cliffside, sweeping and swooping all over the place. The boobies and frigatebirds, by contrast, mostly just sit there and try to mate, giving off a range of freakish noises. As on the other islands, one can walk right up to the larger nesting birds. In addition to large amounts of puffed-up frigatebirds, we got to witness a Nazca Booby***** couple preparing to mate. The nesting ritual of the Nazca Booby is so endearing it makes me want to adopt a pair of them. First, as do all species of booby, they do a little dance with each other. Next, however, the male starts to help the female build a nest. Rather than fly off and find some good material for a foundation, like the other birds in the area, he just looks in his immediate vicinity. Upon finding a twig or a small pebble, the male will pick it up in his beek, and very gently place it at the foot of his mate. He will proudly repeat this process at least a few times, each time newly giving his bride the precious gift of a thing he just found.

As with any small cruise in Galapagos, we spent our fair share of time in the water as well. This time, however, the sights on land outshone the experience underwater, though there were certainly some good things to see below the surface. The water was very murky in Genovesa--less so in Bartolomé, which I had visited with the Cachalote and to which I returned with the Angelique. However, I did manage to see three major animals I had not previously seen, as well as a few new fish. In Playa Las Bachas, on the northern part of Santa Cruz, I saw a juvenile Galapagos Shark. Fully grown, these are slightly bigger than the white-tipped sharks, and more menacing-looking as well. In the obscure waters of Las Bachas, it appeared as a silvery flash in front of me, and then swam past without paying much attention. At Genovesa, we briefly saw an iguana in the water, feeding on some seaweed. I had seen this from land, but this was my first time in the water with one. Unfortunately, right as I got out my camera to take a picture, an enormous wave knocked us back about fifteen feet, and I missed my chance.

A short while later, we came across a fur seal, which is a relative of the sea lion, of course, but which behaves differently. Fur seals are nocturnal, so when they get into the water during the day, it's usually just to relax a bit. Their standard approach, which we witnessed, is to lie upside-down at the surface, all four flippers facing the sun, and head facing down. It's not as curious or playful as its Californian cousin, but it's still a lot of fun to watch.

Yesterday, in Bartolomé, I hoped to get another opportunity to swim with a penguin, and capture the photo that I missed last time. Although we saw a few of them sunning themselves as we swam by, our group apparently missed the only one that had been swimming by about five minutes, so it seems it was not in the cards. Fortunately, there's an important lesson to be taken from this. The thousands of pictures I've taken in the last four months serve as a wonderful record of all the excitement of this trip. They are, however, just that--a record. They are not, themselves, the point of the trip. As much as I might feel like kicking myself for not checking my camera before the first time I got in the water at Bartolomé, I am so lucky to have had the unique experience of swimming with a penguin in the first place, to say nothing of everything else I've had the opportunity to do in the last four months. The lesson is an obvious one, of course, but it was nonetheless good to be reminded of it before heading out with only the memories in my head and the pictures on my computer.

So, all told, I had an excellent final few days in Galapagos. Of the nine islands I visited in the archipelago, it would be very difficult to pick a favorite. Genovesa, however, would be in the top three, along with Española and Fernandina. Anyway, I started writing this post this morning on the flight from the islands to the mainland, and I'm now finishing it in the air over South America, only five and a half hours from JFK. This is not yet my last post, but that will happen soon enough. I'll stop getting to self-importantly broadcast my opinions and I'll rejoin my friends and family in the rest of the world. Not yet, but soon.

Saludos,
Seth

*The name, as I learned from Sid Meier in my youth, comes from the best boat a civilization can have before it discovers steelwork.

**Ibid, but switch in "colony" for "civilization" and "wins independence" for "discovers steelwork."

***Something high school physics class taught us would be impossible without air resistance.

****This part just works better with the mob analogy than the high school one. Apologies for any confusion.

*****I suppose I should address, at long last, the fact that this species is called the "booby." I'll just say two things about that: 1) The name comes from "bobo," which is a Spanish term for "clown," so given because of their mating dance, in which they show off their oversized feet. 2) Heh.

Fotografía:

Galapagos - Santa Cruz - Playa Las Bachas

Galapagos - Genovesa - Prince Phillip's Steps

Galapagos - Genovesa - Darwin Bay

Galapagos - Santiago - Sullivan Bay

Galapagos - Bartolomé - Pinnacle Rock

Galapagos - Santa Cruz - Charles Darwin Station

Blogopagos - No Soap, Radio Silence

2010-05-01T17:50:00.000-04:00

This is my last post from the road. It feels really weird to say that, because it hadn't occurred to me as I was writing my previous post that it would be my last major post before getting home. But I've since finished making my final plans for Galapagos. On Monday, I'll get on another sail cruise, at the end of which they'll take me straight to the airport for my flight home (with a brief layover in Guayaquil). Because, of course, the boat doesn't have internet, this means that my next post will be from New York--or at least, it will be posted from New York.

I have to say, I'm very excited to go home. I've had a lot of people ask me if I'm ready, and I would say "ready" is an understatement. This trip has been truly amazing--undoubtedly the experience of a lifetime. But traveling on your own for so long gets exhausting sometimes. There's always another logistical hurdle to jump, or a choice to be made between spending time on your own and battling through a perfunctory round of small-talk to make a new friend. I enjoy meeting people, and am always happy to have conversation, but I've definitely found myself receding into books a bit more as the social fatigue has increased. This is absolutely not anything against the excellent people I've met throughout this trip. But it does speak to my readiness to move on.

At any rate, I'm really looking forward to getting back to my family, my friends, and my dog. I'll miss the friendly sea lions who've filled my days here and sneezed on me, but I think the trade-off is a worthwhile one. I've also decided that my plan for my first meal back is a bowl of matzoh ball soup, a slice of real New York pizza, and a plate of chicken with garlic sauce--all three major cuisines I've missed in one fell swoop. It will also be nice to have the same home for more than three weeks at a time. This is particularly salient when I think back to a 10 day stretch in Patagonia during which I slept in 10 different places. I'm really looking forward to a bit of stability before I move to the other side of the coast to start something new.

But, of course, I'm getting ahead of myself. Starting on Monday, I have one last adventure ahead of me, which should take me to the nesting sites of frigatebirds and red-footed boobies, among others. I should also mention that all of my pictures from aboard the Cachalote (thought none of the videos) are now up. The relevant albums are linked from my previous post.

So, with that, I just want to say that it's been a great time, and it's been cool getting the opportunity to share my thoughts on everything as its happened through the magic of this here internet, and I think all of you for reading, whether you're my family or one of the surprising people who's read this blog from Hong Kong or Pakistan. I'm planning to write one more post once I get back stateside just to sum things up, so this isn't yet goodbye. So, for now let's just say I'll see you on the other side.

Saludos,
Seth

Galapagos - Santa Cruz

Blogopagos - Come Sail Away

2010-04-29T20:05:00.009-04:00

Green Sea Turtle and Me

I'm back on land after a week on a sailboat. The eruption in Iceland of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano (pronunciation here) meant that a number of Europeans had to cancel their trips, meaning there were only six of us on the sixteen-passenger Cachalote. It turned out that was just the start of a run of good luck.

Before I arrived in Galapagos last week, I was actually a bit concerned. This is my last stop before returning home to New York. How could I possibly put a proper cap on the trip of a lifetime? Moreover, this place has always fully captured my imagination. It seemed impossible for Galapagos to meet my unreasonably high expectations, especially coming on the heels of all the remarkable things I've seen in the last three and a half months.

Well, I was clearly underestimating the wonders of the Galapagos archipelago. I thought I had things figured out when I wrote last week about the pelicans, sea lions, and iguanas I've been seeing. Then I got in the water, and I experienced an entirely different world. It seemed like every time in the water, the islands threw something new my way, and each experience even more mind-boggling than the last.

Swimming with sea lions was cool. They're extremely curious and playful, and will often swim right up to you and go around in circles, trying to figure out what you are before swimming off. I was amazed and even gleeful.

Then I swam with sea turtles. They're not as playful as the sea lions, but they're certainly beautiful and mesmerizing. They're also very easy to follow for a while, because they don't generally move much faster than people. They can when they want to, but don't generally seem to feel the need.

Then I swam with a shark. Not a big one. It was a white-tipped reef shark, which is about as long head-to-tail as I am head-to-toe. Lest you fear for me, it's also worth noting that they're completely indifferent to people.

So, I was astounded by all I had experienced. Using the underwater case I got for my camera, I got great pictures.* I was extremely pleased with all I had seen and experienced.

Then I swam with a penguin.

I had taken my head out to talk to some of my fellow Cachalote passengers, when I heard the unmistakable call of a Galapagos Penguin**--it sounds like a little lamb looking for its mother. I shouted to my fellow passengers, "penguin!" and swam toward it. And there it was, tiny head above water, occasionally dipping below the surface. Just a few feet in front of me, and swimming toward--and then right past--me. I can't express how incredible that brief moment was (it swam off at a speed I couldn't match within a minute or two). Galapagos penguins are the northernmost penguins in the world--the only ones that ever travel north of the Equator. This is one of the few places where you have the opportunity to swim around with a little snorkel and mask, and look up to see the world's most adorable flightless waterfowl paddling your way, taking its head out of the water and calling out for a compatriot of the same species.

I lined up my camera, and had the penguin perfectly centered in the frame. What I, infuriatingly, didn't realize until a few minutes later is that my memory card was full. For the first time on this trip, I had forgotten to make sure there was room on my camera before going off to do something of which I'd want pictures. On the plus side, I found this picture that someone posted, which is almost exactly what I saw, though from the other side. But I've been kicking myself for the last 48 hours.

It's worth noting that if I didn't already know that there were penguins here, I wouldn't have believed it. When you're getting sunburns in 80 degree heat, you just don't expect to look out at the water and see a bird most commonly associated with Antarctica. Of course, now that I know that there are Flamingos in the Andes (as well as here, by the way), I suppose I'm a bit less surprised by the spread of interesting birds.

Of course, the underwater inhabitants aren't the only fascinating thing about Galapagos. After all, the birds are even more famous, and Darwin himself was most interested in the volcanic geology and fresh lava flows. So it is that the most impressive fact of the Galapagos once one leaves the comforts of Puerto Ayora is how unspoiled it all is. There is an extremely focused--and successful--effort to preserve the ecosystem and let it progress naturally. So it is that one sees huge colonies of marine iguanas--swimming iguanas that exist nowhere else, solitary and enormous land iguanas, flightless cormorants--which have evolved into swimming birds with awkward and useless vestigial wings, enormous albatross, and thousands upon thousands of specacular blue-footed boobies--which live up to their name with nearly flourescent webbed feet. These creatures don't really seem to care one way or the other about people, and so don't bother to flee when you approach, creating amazing opportunities for observation and picture-taking. I've been in Galapagos for a week and a half now, and I'm still having a hard time believing this place is real. When people ask how it is, I have a hard time saying anything other than "almost fictional." It really just seems like someone's imagined version of a wildlife paradise.

Before I head off to figure out my plans for my last week on the islands, I want to take a moment to thank Juan Tapia, the spectacular guide who led our Cachalote group around several islands for the last week. Juan has 21 years of knowledge crammed into his brain, and he shared a sizeable amount of it with us. He knew exactly when and where to take us so that we almost completely missed the other tour groups. If you look through my pictures, you will rarely see anyone other than Juan or one of the other five Cachalote passengers. If you ever make your way down to Galapagos, hope that you're lucky enough to get a guide as excellent and professional as Juan. And if you bring along a guitar, you might--as we did--be able to get him to play you "Besame Mucho."

At any rate, although I'm still recovering from the last week aboard the Cachalote--sleeping on a sailboat for a week means that sleeping on shore again feels like you're rocking back and forth--I should get going and figure out what I'm going to do for an encore. It's going to be hard to top the last week--completely unique in my life to date--but I now have a great deal of confidence in the endless array of surprises that lay hidden in the various corners of these incredibly special islands.

Saludos,
Seth

*As of this writing I have a bit fewer than half of my pictures uploaded, and none of the videos. Internet is very slow out here, so most of this will likely have to wait until I've returned home to the states.

**One thing that our group observed is that there's an easy way to guess the name of the species of animal you're looking at. It's almost certainly the Galapagos _______, where the blank is filled in with the type of animal it is. See also the Galapagos Hawk, Galapagos Shark, Galapagos Land Iguana, Galapagos Marine Iguana, Galapagos Tortoise, Galapagos Flightless Cormorant--with which I also swam, Galapagos Cotton (the plant), and so on. These islands are so isolated that so many species of life here have evolved completely separately from their counterparts in the rest of the world.

Fotografía:

Galapagos - Española - Gardner Bay

Galapagos - Española - Punta Suárez

Galapagos - Floreana - Champion Rock

Galapagos - Floreana - Punta Cormorán

Galapagos - Floreana - Post Office Bay

Galapagos - Isabela - Punta Moreno

Galapagos - Isabela - Elizabeth Bay

Galapagos - Isabela - Urvina Bay

Galapagos - Fernandina - Punta Espinosa

Equator

Galapagos - Santiago - James Bay

Galapagos - Bartolomé

Galapagos - Santa Cruz - Black Turtle Cove

Blogopagos - Living in a zoo

2010-04-22T16:38:00.000-04:00

I'm at the bar at the Sol y Mar hotel in Puerto Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz, in the Galapagos. The bar is in the back, and has a small pool and a deck which faces out into Pelican Bay--named for the many pelicans who live here and feed on the fish. There's actually a pelican standing on the deck immediately adjacent to the pool, enjoying some shade, but no one's paying him much attention. That's not actually surprising. It's easy to miss a preening pelican when there's a sea lion swimming in the pool.

I've been here three days now, and easily the most striking thing is the total indifference of the animals to the humans around them. The sea lions, in particular, are happy to put themselves anywhere that there's shade, whether that means on a bench or next to a table at the bar. Some of the smaller finches and lava lizards might freak out and flee when approached, but one can walk right up to a sea lion, pelican, marine iguana, or giant tortoise without scaring it away. Although there is now a decently-sized human population living out here--Puerto Ayora has over 10,000 inhabitants--it still has the feel of a place that evolved over the course of millennia free of human contact. The Galapagos dove, which is basically a pigeon with a piercing blue circle around its eyes, was described by Darwin as being so oblivious that "I could kill by throwing my hat at it."

The animal that has actually captured my attention more than any other so far is the frigatebird. It's rather large, with a wingspan similar to that of a vulture or some other large bird of prey. Among the frigatebird's methods of obtaining food is a technique called kleptoparasitism. In this, the frigatebird will identify another (smaller) bird--let's say a gull--who has just eaten, and harrass said gull until the it vomits. Sometimes this involves catching the gull by the tail and shaking it aggressively in the air. The frigatebird will then eat the regurgitated meal, taking the needed nutrients for itself. Nature, as they say, doesn't fuck around.

The islands have a massive number of species of plants and animals that are endemic, meaning they don't exist anywhere else. One of these is a form of prickly pear cactus that grows as a tree, and mostly appears along the coastline. I'm still trying to figure out how to incorporate such a thing into my conception of reality. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting close.

Another well-known group of endemic species is the finch family. They're generally not that exciting to look at--they're quite small and the coloration isn't particularly thrilling. But, given that they're the very birds that contributed so significantly to the development of Darwin's theory of natural selection, they end up being rather captivating. What's funny, however, is that Darwin came here far more focused on the geology of the place--it's basically a big series of volcanos. In fact, he barely even collected any samples of finches--just two of the thirteen or so species. It was not until he got back to England that he realized what he had seen, and had to borrow samples from Robert FitzRoy, the captain of the HMS Beagle. Accidental though Darwin's realizations may have been, it's fascinating and wonderful to be in the place responsible for them, and to witness firsthand the amazing biodiversity of an ecosystem left to evolve more or less on its own for thousands of years.

This evening I'll be boarding a schooner for a six-day cruise around the islands. I'm expecting to see a lot of amazing things, and hoping to avoid letting the boat treat me like a frigatebird treats a gull. I'll check back in when I'm back on land.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Galapagos - Santa Cruz

Seth of South of the Equator -or- Wrap-a Nui

2010-04-19T12:30:00.000-04:00

So, I'm in the air over the Pacific Ocean heading out to the Galapagos for the last few weeks of my journey, and I figured I'd do a wrap up of my time in Argentina and the southern part of the Southern Hemisphere.

Argentina is certainly an interesting place, with a very proud culture. I may have mentioned this before, but my buddy Matt back in Uruguay made the point that there's a certain stubbornness and even bitterness to Argentina's impression of itself. There's a sense that for just a moment they were major players on the world stage, and that it's something that really should have continued. Unfortunately, their tumultuous history over the last few decades--combined with the rapid development of the world's other large nations--has kept them on the outside. They seem to feel a bit snubbed by the Obama administration (all the while noting what an improvement it is on the days of the Bush administration), and there's a not insignificant amount of jealousy toward Brazil, which is much more on the rise on the world stage. There also seems to be a sense of superiority towards other surrounding countries--for example, most Argentines will tell you you can skip a visit to Uruguay, and that you definitely don't need more than a day trip to Colonia. If you've been reading this blog, you know that I strongly disagree.

So it is that Argentina appears to be a place struggling with its own identity, and even more with its own reality. The Kirchners (former President Nestor and his wife, current President Cristina) have seen their popularity collapse, largely after privatizing the pension system. Most people still haven't recovered from the various economic bubbles that have burst over the last two decades. Many people who were formerly middle and upper-middle class have been reduced to begging on the streets--several dress up in their nicest clothes to differentiate themselves from what might be considered more standard panhandlers. Unfortunately, the question of whether an economic recovery or a dampening of the national ego will come first remains open, and, unfortunately, the latter strikes me as more probable in the immediate future.

That said, Argentina--and Buenos Aires in particular--has a rich cosmopolitan culture to offer. I left feeling like Buenos Aires would be a lovely place to live, even though I might personally still prefer Montevideo, a sacriledge in Argentine terms. The people I met were lovely, and often a bit wistful when talking about their country and how far it has fallen. When I look inward at the tarnished reputation and irrevocable mistakes of my own country in the last decade, I can certainly relate. At any rate, it seems improbable that any kind of real recovery will happen while the Kirchners remain in power, and they have a couple of years left. So perhaps a new administration and, let's hope, an improving world economy, will put a bit of shine back on Argentina's apple.

As for Chile, the truth is that I don't have much to comment on. I was talking to a Chilean couple a few nights ago, and explained that although I'd spent cloes to three weeks in their country, I hadn't gotten to see the real Chile. Having only been to Easter Island and Patagonia, I did sort of the Chilean equivalent of seeing Hawaii and Yellowstone. They're important components of the country, to be sure, and spectacular places. But neither one is really representative of the national culture, one because its only full-time inhabitants are animals, and the other because its only full-time inhabitants are Polynesian.* I'm thrilled to have seen these things, of course, but it does leave me less able to speak to the country's issues with the kind of detail in which I've been able to explore Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Argentina.

I will, however, add a bit more about Easter Island. There is some dispute over whether the pre-colonial Rapanui civilization crumbled due to decimation of natural resources or whether it might not have ever been all that big to begin with. There is also dispute as to whether the island's palm tree population died off due to humans cutting them down or rats eating the seeds. Those siding with the not-that-big-and-also-rats argument make the claim that our modern society's guilt about our own damage to the environment causes us to create a false narrative about the Rapanui, and use them as a cautionary tale. I don't have much of a theory on that front, but I will offer one thing as evidence of a collapse. The moai industry on Easter Island appears to have mirrored the real estate market in the U.S.. For centuries, moai were built and placed on altars looking out over nearby towns. However, for some reason or another, there was a major boom, and production skyrocketed. In some cases, moai too big to ever move were constructed. For whatever reason--perhaps the workers revolted, perhaps the market for new moai collapsed--the bubble burst. As a result, the number of moai left abandoned in the quarry in various states of construction outnumbers the number of moai at altars around the island by a factor of about six.

I will say that the rat theory does make a fair amount of sense to me--there wasn't that much reason to cut down so many palm trees, but rats could certainly have eaten a lot of seeds. Moreover, I do agree with the theorists who posit that we as a society have a tendency to project our own issues onto others. But it really does amaze me how easy it is to envision a huge collection of moai going up in the sun belt, perhaps financed by the Rapanui equivalent of variable tranches of moai-backed securities. On the plus side, at least a giant stone statue is more aesthetically pleasing than an empty McMansion.

Anyway, in about half an hour I should be landing on Isla Baltra and sinking back into the wonderful relaxation and isolation of island life. I'm extremely excited to be finishing up what has been a truly spectacular experience with yet another stop in a long series of amazing sites to see. I'm not sure how reliable my internet access will be there, but I'll check in when I can.

Saludos,

Seth

*The Yellowstone and Hawaii analogy totally holds up.

Whoa-i Moai

2010-04-16T01:05:00.003-04:00

I'm writing this from the Santiago airport, waiting for my flight back to Buenos Aires after spending the last three days on the island of Rapa Nui, more commonly known as Easter Island. If there was any concern I'd be jaded about travel after the last three months, it was quickly dismissed. You're most likely to know Easter Island as the site of giant stone heads (called "moai")*, and they do feature prominently. I was thrilled to discover, however, that the island brings so much more to the table.

Rapa Nui, the name for the island in the local Polynesian dialect (called Rapanui), which is spoken by the native people (also called Rapanui) is an enchanting place.First off, the setting is unreal. The island is the most isolated inhabited place in the world. The closest airport is Santiago, and that's a five hour flight. You can drive right along the coast until you find your way back to the same place (within only an hour or two), you will never see anything but ocean out one side. My friend Mark, a Dubliner I met on the island, noted that you could easily see how the island's original inhabitants might have thought their little island was the entire world.

Easter Island was formed by several underwater volcanoes erupting together, leaving over 100 volcanoes, craters, vents and the like above ground. Three major volcanoes, all extinct, have spectacularly beautiful crater lakes at the top. The ancient lava flows also created a number of natural caves, many of which housed native Rapa Nui for over 1,000 years, and as recently as the 1950s. The culture of the island had actually already been decimated by warfare and rapid population growth before Europeans first found it in the 18th century. Many people lived in caves for protection, hiding from rival groups and even cannibals. These days, one can go into several of the caves and look around, contemplating an existence so completely different from our own. Amusingly enough, the two caves that I visited with Mark and his girlfriend Sarah had architectural features that would make them highly sought after in the New York real estate market. One had two windows out of a cliff, looking out onto the ocean. The other had several openings in the ceilings--skylights, if you will--which enabled vegetable gardens. Crawling into the first of the two, the Caverna de las dos Ventanas, was a bit claustrophobic at first, but well worth it once we got to see the view from the living room.

Rapa Nui may not have an abundance of megafauna to compare with, say, Patagonia or the Galapagos, but it's far from a barren wasteland. There are falcons everywhere. You cannot drive along a road without seeing several hanging out on fenceposts, or zipping past your driver-side window. Along the coast one sees frigate birds, which are enormous and majestic. By far the best thing I got to see, however, was a family of sea turtles who came up to the beach to feed on fish. My sister-in-law Shirley wouldn't agree with me (she thinks, accurately I'll confess, that turtles look like old men), but they were majestic and beautiful, and fascinating to watch.

The main draw of the island is, of course, its archaelogy. The moai are absolutely enormous--generally about 3-5 times my height, and weighing as much as 100 tons. Historically, they stood on ahu--stone altars that were usually built along the coastline. The moai faced inland to watch over the people and protect them. Many of the moai also have pukao, which are red hat-like stones that are believed to represent a fashionable hairstyle from the time. Over time, the warfare that wiped out most of the population combined with the occasional natural disaster to topple all of the moai from their perches. These days some 40 or so moai have been restored to their original positions.

Although a decent amount is known about how the moai were made--they were cut from the volcanic rock at Rano Raraku volcano--and they were apparently hoisted to their platforms over several days with ramps made from logs, no one knows how they were moved from the site of their construction to their locations on the ahu. In some cases they were moved as far as 10 miles, so this particular mystery is a truly impressive one. Perhaps as impressive is the fact that some 320 moai were under construction at Rano Raraku (known as the "nursery") at the time construction was ceased. The nursery is the site of most of the largest moai ever made, as well as most of the iconic images of Rapa Nui, with the heads of various moai sticking out of the ground, the torsos buried below while the faces were detailed.

An additional feature of interest is the cult of the bird man, believed to be the deity responsible for bringing bird life to the island, which happened many years after the arrival of people. There are a number of petroglyphs around, many of them featuring the birdman. The major annual ritual of the cult involved a swimming race to a rocky crag three kilometers off shore to search for the eggs of the sooty tern. The first man to return with an egg would be crowned bird man for the following year.

The bird man cult, it's worth noting, is from the last few hundred years. And that highlights one of the island's most intriguing characteristics: although the moai look as old as time itself, and have the feel of ancient mysteries, the entire Rapanui culture is barely a thousand years old. They are certainly old, but while the moai were being built, for example, Europe was experiencing the rennaissance and exploring the globe. In Asia, meanwhile, Genghis Khan was conquering civiliations and repopulating the entire planet with his own DNA. But Rapa Nui was still literally living in the Stone Age. I don't meant this as an insult of the Rapanui culture--which has some beautiful songs and dances, and which obviously pulled off some remarkable feats. Rather I mean to highlight the force of extreme isolation with which the Rapanui had to contend. Stranded so far away from the rest of the world, and facing the dilemma of an increasing population fighting for decreasing resources, it's no wonder that so many people were lost, taking so much history with them.

So, quite simply, Easter Island is a fascinating and multifaceted jewel dropped into the middle of the ocean. It's a place that makes you ponder deep questions like the vastness of the planet and the ephemeral nature of civilizations, and it gives you an idyllic environment in which to do so--with a plentiful supply of delicious fish to make it all a little easier to handle. By the time I post this, I will have landed back in Buenos Aires, having left behind what felt a bit like a three-day dream. On Saturday I'm off to Guayaquil, Ecuador, before continuing on to the Galapagos on Sunday to begin the final portion of my journey. It's hard to believe I'm so close to the finish line, but I'm thrilled that Rapa Nui has made it clear just how much I can still be enthralled and amazed by the world around me.

Saludos,
Seth

*If you're like me, the moai conjure up images of both Marty Sherman's classmate on The Critic, or some bad guys from Super Mario Land for Gameboy. But ~~you're probably not like me~~ unless you're my brother, you're probably not like me.

Fotografía:

Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Easter Island - Mark's Pictures

Bloga Juniors Dos - El Fulgor Argentino

2010-04-11T00:12:00.004-04:00

I have arrived in Easter Island, a land which can easily make one feel like Super Mario. However, my hostel has no internet, which means you'll be seeing this a good deal after I write it. Travel is complicated like that, especially when it involves trying to connect to the global community from the most remote inhabited place on Earth. At any rate, the subject of this post is not Easter Island (I got in after dark, so I haven't seen any moai--giant heads--yet), but rather my most recent night in Buenos Aires.

Last night I had the great pleasure of attending a work of Argentine community theater, called Club Social y Deportivo El Fulgor Argentino. The show was at Teatro Catalinas Sur in La Boca, and had some truly excellent props assembled by my friend and fellow Wesleyanite Hannah Nielsen-Jones. Hannah and her boyfriend John have been living in BA for a while, but we only just managed to get together this week. They are truly awesome people, but I'll come back to them in a bit.

The show was excellent. I tend to be pretty jaded about all things theater, but this was really everything it should be. The piece is a revue of Argentine history from 1930-2030 (the future part is pretty crazy), with the country represented by El Fulgor, a social and sporting club of the type that is quite prominent in Argentine society. It's a musical with a cast of over 100 performers, very creative songs and staging, and phenomenal costumes. It also features some astonishing puppetry--puppets made by the same guy who does most of the lifesize statues (muñecos, in Spanish) in La Boca--executed in truly creative ways. For example, there is a sequence in which the whole group dances Tango in a circle, each pair made up of one person and one puppet, connected at the feet, so that the puppets' feet move in synch with those of their partners. There is another moment in which an actor appears in military garb with a puppet on either side, connected both at the arms and the head, so that they mimic his every move. It is really something to behold.

In a lot of ways, my enjoyment of the show mirrors my enjoyment of Uruguayan Murga. In addition to having moments in which the musical style was similar--the finale, in particular--I was most impressed by the wholehearted commitment of everyone involved, and the degree to which this is really just a labor of love for the local culture. The cast is all volunteers, and the logistical nightmare that must be involved in coordinating so many people in something so complex is totally obscured by the seemless transitions on stage. It's clear that everyone involved has put a tremendous amount of sweat into the project, but seeing them perform gives the impression that they were all born into the script.

I was also particularly happy because this was the most accessible Argentine culture has felt for me in Buenos Aires. It is easy to feel that there is a Buenos Aires for the locals, and a separate one for the tourists. Certainly New York can be like that, so I don't mean this as a criticism. But even something like tango, which is a major part of the cultural history of the city, often shows up in a form that feels somewhat camped up for the sake of the out-of-town crowd. At El Fulgor, those feelings washed away. I don't know that anyone there other than Hannah, John, John's parents, and me spoke English--certainly not as a first language. I finally felt a part of the city in exactly the way I had been looking for and struggling to find. So, a hearty thank you to Hannah and John for inviting me to share in that.

And now that I've come back to the subject of how awesome Hannah and John are, I have to say that it was really great to see a familiar face. What's funny is that I hadn't seen Hannah in six years, and I'd never met John. So there's no reason it should have been that different from spending time with the various friends I've made throughout the trip. But one thing that does happen when you're meeting new people and making new friends is that you inevitably have your guard up a bit--no matter how awesomely down-to-earth your new friends may be. So it was just incredibly relaxing to be in a spot where I had even the slightest sense of home. I even felt that way after we discussed the most academically intimidating class I ever took, Colonialism and its Consequences in the Americas*. At any rate, it's really remarkable how valuable a bit of familiarity can be after a three-months of new experiences. And, to repeat, Hannah and John = good people.

There's a three-hour time change that I'm dealing with now, so I'm going to go to sleep. Hopefully I'll be able to find some time to post this, and presumably by the time that happens I will already have seen some giant stone heads. I've been working on my moai impression, so hopefully I can break that out soon. For now, I'm going to work toward an early start tomorrow.

Saludos,
Seth

*My struggles in that class forced me to confront how unseriously I took academic study, and, to an extent, myself. I still think it's good not to get too wrapped up in oneself, but I've at least gotten the intellectually serious thing down--or at least some semblance thereof.

El Fulgor Argentino

Hielo, how are you*

2010-04-05T17:30:00.004-04:00

Yes, that is a glass of scotch with glacier ice in my hand

I'm sitting at my computer in Bariloche and loving the fact that I live in an age in which I can watch the Mets on opening day even though I'm several thousand miles away. I figured I'd take advantage of the few hours I'm spending in front of a screen and check in. I don't have much big-picture stuff to say, so I'll just go through some of what I've been up to and what I've been thinking lately.

The other day I went to Perito Moreno glacier, in El Calafate, Argentina. Lonely Planet describes Perito Moreno as "to ice what Iguazú is to water," and that's pretty accurate. It's absolutely immense. It is comprised of nine cubic miles of ice. Let that marinate for a moment. If you made it into a block a mile high, the base would be three miles by three miles. If you covered the island of Manhattan with the ice from Perito Moreno, it would be a little over 2,000 feet high (the Empire State Building is less than 1,500, including the spire). What happens is that cold winds pick up water vapor over the Pacific, and then dump it down into the ice field as snow. Over time, the snow is compacted into ice. The weight of the new snow on top pushes the old ice downhill, which is part of why the glacier is actually advancing at a rate of about six meters a year. I've already discussed glacier calving a bit, and Perito Moreno is particular famous for calving. In the two hours I was there, I saw three utterly enormous blocks of ice come crashing into the water below. The calving occurs because water running at the foot the glacier melts pockets of ice and destabilizes the front of it. In this particular instance, the calving is a naturally-occurring phenomenon that has nothing to do with global warming. Perito Moreno is actually a stable glacier, due in large part to the heaping piles of snow constantly deposited at its source. When you're looking at the glacier from the viewpoints, you just see ice stretching back as far as the eye can see, up into the mountains and disappearing into the clouds. I've said it before, but I'll repeat it here: Nature is humbling.

I'd like to follow up on that point about the computer age at the top of the post. Technology is absolutely amazing. It is quite literally magic.** We don't really think about that because we're so accustomed to it, but it is. If you went to someone from a thousand years ago and said "there is this energy in the universe, consisting of particles too small to see, and I have a device that can manipulate them and allow me to see, hear, and speak to my family in real time from a continent away," they would accuse you of sorcery, and they would be right. We may not be using wands and encantations, but we're capable of interacting with the world around us in many of the same ways as Harry Potter and the kids at Hogwarts.

I've never been huge into ornithology, but this trip is making me into a serious bird-lover. The variety in Patagonia is unbelievable, and big. In the last week, I have seen penguins, condors, flamingos, rheas (sort of like an emu), a (huge) woodpecker, and an eagle. I always thought of flamingos as tropical birds, but apparently the Chilean Flamingo is perfectly content in weather that has me wearing two sweaters under my coat.

My pictures are a good deal behind where I am, just because there are so many, and uploading them takes a lot of time and bandwidth. So, for example, there are still more pictures and videos going up for Alacalufe Fjord, Magdalena Penguin Colony, and Parque Torres del Paine.

My Spanish has progressed to the point that when someone asks me "hablas español" (or, in Buenos Aires, "hablás español"), I say "sí." I can usually get through a conversation without much trouble, and can get information I need or ask an important question confidently. I even know all twenty grammatical tenses (of which they only really use sixteen). Sometimes, however, I run into issues where I'll just come across a pretty simple word I just don't know because I've never encountered it for one reason or another. One of the things about learning a language in an intensive fashion is that you can easily end up being rather competent, but with big and unexpected gaps. This leads to some exchanges like the one I had while hiking around Torres del Paine last week (entire exchange translated into English, but originally spoken in Spanish):

Seth: How's it going? Dude: Good, thanks. Do you know how far it is to the Torres campground? Seth: Hmm, you still have a while left. It's probably four or five hours. There's a refuge before that, but it's closed for the season. You can still camp there in a tent, but the refuge itself is closed. It's only another hour from there to the campground though. Dude: Okay, thanks. How's the hike Seth: It's not too bad. In your direction it will probably be a bit harder, because you're going uphill. Coming downhill was pretty nice. It's not that steep though, it's mostly pretty flat. Though there are some hills toward the end. There's also a lot of... what's the word in Spanish... what's it called when dirt and water mix? Dude: Mud. Seth: Mud, ok. There's a lot of mud.

The point at which I decided to give up and turn in from my attempted four and a half day hike around Torres del Paine was very precise. I was on my way to the Refugio Los Cuernos, which is a refuge in the middle of the park, and having a rough time with the hills. I came to a sign that had a little star with "you are here" written next to it, and which had a line from there to Los Cuernos that said 2km. "Okay," I thought. "I can do two kilometers. That's not a whole lot more than a mile, even if some of it is uphill." A little while later, I came to another sign that was similarly structured, but had the 2km on the right, and a new number, 2.6km on the left. It turned out that the previous sign had just been telling me "it's two kilometers to the next sign." It was at this point that I shouted some obscenities at the sign, decided that I had had enough, and then walked the remaining two hours to Los Cuernos. I had another 5 hours to walk the next day, but I made it. As a follow-up, my ankles are feeling a lot better, though the occasional mis-step hurts a lot more than it normally would.

Something I've noticed is that crossing borders repeatedly and quickly can get pretty confusing. It was tough enough when I spent half a day in Brazil and had to struggle with a language of which I know less than even Greek, Czech, or Hungarian (in all of which I know how to say "thank you."). It turns out though that even if it's a country that speaks the same language, it can get a little tough. I spent about a week in Chile, never more than a few hours from Argentina (granted that describes the entire country). But adjusting to the currency, and even more, to the accent, has really thrown me for a loop. I spent a month and a half getting accustomed to Rioplatan Spanish (pronouncing "y" as "sh" and using "vos"). When I went to Chile, it was surprisingly easy to slide back into the more familiar style I'd always known. But coming back into Argentina has completely messed with me. I will now literally change accents and grammatical structures mid-sentence, with no rhyme or reason. What's more, I'm here for a week and then I'll be going back to Chile, so it's likely to get more confusing before it gets easier.

I haven't seen that much of Bariloche yet, but I'm excited about the food. Venison and boar are local specialties here, and it's the chocolate capital of South America. Moreover, Helados Jauja is purported to have the best ice cream in all of Argentina. I had a cone earlier today and there's a very good chance the claim is accurate. I had two flavors (you always get two flavors): maqui*** with sheep's milk, and raspberry-mascarpone. This was even better than the calafate-berry ice cream I had in El Calafate. I'm very happy.

I'm currently sitting in the lounge in my hostel, and there's music on. This is nice, and it is pleasant. However, some dude and his girlfriend have come in with an ipod and mini-speakers, and are now blasting music from the other side of the room through some tinny-sounding tubes, and it is competing directly with the music that's already in the room. The music on the stereo right now is Radiohead. The ipod is playing some schmaltzy songstress I don't recognize. These things do not mix well, and it's extremely irritating. Please: if you go to a hostel, don't be that guy. That guy is a jerk.

The Mets have dispatched the Marlins 7-1, continuing their tradition of being a much better team on opening day than on the other 364 days out of the year. But Jeff Francoeur took a walk, so I'm trying to stay optimistic. And Peñarol is 11-0-0, so my backup interest of Uruguayan soccer is at least shaping up pretty well. I'm going to go explore Bariloche. I still need to try the chocolate, and I'm almost definitely going to make it a two-cone day.

Saludos,
Seth

*"Hielo" is Spanish for "ice."

**I will abashedly admit that I started thinking about this point when I read it in Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol," which I read while I was in Costa Rica. It is hardly a high-brow work of fiction. It is, in fact, candy in book form, and not even as flavorful a candy as Brown's first two books. But I do think that on this particular subject it has an unexpectedly good point to make.

**Maqui is a Patagonian berry that, according to one website, has more antioxidants than any other berry in the* world. I don't know if that's true, but it tastes really good.

Fotografía:

Perito Moreno Glacier

Reserva Laguna Nimez

Yo no soy mochilero

2010-04-02T19:23:00.001-04:00

Backpacking is hard. This is what I've learned. I don't mean backpacking as in just traveling with a backpack, the way I've been doing it for the last three months. I mean backpacking as in hiking around a park with all your food, clothing, and lodging on your back. Climbing things can be exhausting. Doing so with an extra 40-50 pounds can result in some serious pain.

For me, this trip is about exploring my own abilities and sensibilities as much as it's about exploring the world around me. It's also about finding my limits. Having already hiked up a Nicaraguan Volcano in sandals, I had begun to forget that my limits existed. I'm in pretty decent shape--or, I oscillate between very good shape and very bad shape, so I average out to decent shape--so I figured a five day hiking trip through a national park might be a bit challenging, but certainly something I could get through.

What I learned, instead, is that my backpacking limit is 25 miles. That's how much I walked (probably a bit more actually) over the course of three days before I headed back. A lot of it was over very hilly and rocky terrain, but a decent amount was flat as well. Plenty of it was up some steep inclines, but there were long stretches of coasting downhill to balance it out. I don't doubt that with a bit of training, I could get myself to the point where I could get through the entire trip, but this time it wasn't in the cards--walking just hurt too much.

I can certainly place some of the blame for the pain I was experiencing on my having the world's flattest feet. I can place a bit more on the fact that I tend to shuffle more than stride when I walk, and the fact that my backpack was a bit too large for me, leaving too much weight on my back and shoulders, and not enough on my hips. But ultimately, whatever the case, the full W wasn't happening. I gave it my best shot, even continuing through day two after having serious doubts on day one. The conclusion that I ultimately reached is that while leaving would have been giving in to the pain, continuing would have been giving in to stubbornness. My feet were killing me. Every step hurt. And though I was seeing some amazing things, it had gotten to the point where I felt I was risking the rest of my trip if I didn't pack it in and grab the boat and bus back to Puerto Natales, and give my weary legs some rest.

I have newfound respect for hikers and backpackers ("mochileros" in Spanish--hence the post's title). I never knew that walking could require such cardiovascular endurance and muscular strength. There's also the rather complicated science of figuring out how to carry just enough food to eat without weighing yourself down. I'm grateful that I was able to head out there with my new friends Todd and Valerie--with whom I've now eaten both the best and the worst meals of this trip. I met Todd and Valerie on the boat, and they were really patient and wonderful about taking me through the fundamentals of trekking, and making sure we stuck to a leave-no-trace philosophy, taking all our garbage with us.

I will say that Torres del Paine is a truly spectacular place, and I only saw one of its three major attractions (though it also has countless spectacular vistas sprinkled along a wide variety of trails). The actual Torres del Paine are granite towers that rise up out of the very glacier that formed them, with small trickles of water flowing down the base and pooling in a lake at the bottom. The entire structure is about 2,000 meters (about 6,600 feet) above the viewpoint, which is itself 800 meters (2,600 feet) above ground level. The most impressive thing about it when you're up there is realizing just how far away you still are from the peaks themselves. It feels like you're right there, and then you see a waterfall coming down from the glacier at what looks like a snail's pace, and only then do you recognize that the entire thing is actually too big to truly comprehend.

The rest of the park includes a seemingly endless array of glaciers, all of which flow down a variety of deliciously drinkable streams and rivers and create some of the most startlingly electric blue lakes I've ever witnessed. The water is anything but clear, but it nonetheless manages to look pristine--the obscurity is, after all, from mineral content, not pollution. I also had the opportunity to witness an avalanche (from a safe distance), as a big chunk of snow up on the Glaciar Francés dislodged itself and came crashing down into the valley below. In all, I was constantly reminded of something Todd said when we saw our first glaciar from the boat down in Tierra del Fuego: nature is humbling. Few things will remind you of your own impermanence like seeing a multi-million year-old block of ice do something that could crush you like a mosquito, without any kind of guiding hand.

I didn't get to see a whole lot of wildlife--although a brush with a puma track was as close to one of those as I'd like to get. I saw a Magellanic woodpecker and a few Andean condors, though, which was enough to keep me happy. The condor, which is extremely endangered, is the bird with the biggest wingspan in the world, but it flies so high up in the sky that it's sometimes hard to remember that. It's pretty awe-inspiring however, and it's easy to see why the Inca people revered the condor as a symbol of the heavens. I'm still waiting to see my first guanaco (an alpaca-like creature that's common down here) and my first rhea (sort of like an emu). I'm hopeful I'll manage a sighting of one or the other on the bus tomorrow. On the plus side, I did get to see one of the most spectacular rainbows I've ever witnessed.

So now I'm taking it easy in Puerto Natales, ancient home of the mylodon, and feeling a bit like a giant ground sloth myself. I've spent the last two days doing a minimal amount of walking, trying to make sure I'm not hobbled when I get to Perito Moreno glacier--the next mind-boggling experience I have on tap. In the meantime, I'm enjoying what the small town of Natales has to offer--namely a really good chocolate shop, some cormorants and black-necked swans, and a very interesting African-Chilean restaurant. Between the failed hike and some other logistical issues, I was a little grumpy yesterday, but I reminded myself to be tranquilo, and that this trip is much more marathon than sprint. It's easy to get caught up in the moment, but just this morning I met some Americans who are doing a study abroad program in Santiago, and their entire semester of study is shorter than my trip (it started later and will end earlier). So it's certainly important for me to take all the hiccups in stride (I'm looking at you, DHL).

I'm still in the process of uploading the final pictures from the boat, to say nothing of the pictures from Torres del Paine. For now, however, I'm going to pay for my Cafe Chileno (coffee with pisco) and make sure I'm all set for tomorrow.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Torres del Paine

Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales

Fjordy Days and Fjordy Nights

2010-03-28T12:16:00.002-04:00

I'm back on terra firma after three days spent on a boat and off the radar. My mind is officially blown. The things we saw were absolutely spectacular, and I'm realizing that I'm rapidly running out of superlatives to describe my experiences on this trip. I think I have a lot less insight to offer into things when it's just "this naturally-occuring phenomenon is awesome" and there's not any cultural stuff involved, but I'll take you through my time aboard the Mare Australis.

The first day began with a sunrise stop at Cape Horn, the southernmost point in the world--not including Antarctica. The view from the largely unspoilt cliffs of Isla de Hornos out over the vast southern seas was one in a long string of glimpses of the humbling power of nature. From there we headed over to Wulaia Bay, where we disembarked and hiked up a hill to a viewpoint. It was up there that I turned to Todd and Valerie, possibly the only other people on the boat traveling with a backpack, and said "yeah, I think I'm starting to understand this whole Patagonia thing." I took some massive panoramic photos up there if you're curious as to what I mean.

Wulaia Bay also offered some excellent wildlife sightings. Patagonia is one of the few places in the world where the most aggressive resident is Canadian. And indeed, on the way up the hill, we saw many telltale signs of beavers, and eventually caught a glimpse of one swimming around its dam. Beavers were brought to Patagonia from Canada over 100 years ago in the hopes of giving the area a fur industry as strong as its wool trade. Apparently, however, beaver fur requires stressed-out beavers--the adrenaline makes the fur usable somehow through the magic of endocrinology. The beavers in Patagonia found the region much more accommodating than Canada had been, and instead of providing a stressed-out foundation for the economy, they grew from a population of 50 to about 50,000. Seriously people. Stop bringing invasive species to places because you think you're smarter than millions of years of evolution. I don't care how adorable they are. It messes things up. Though, that said, the beaver was adorable. On the zodiac boats back to the ship (yes, I do feel like a character from LOST), a few dolphins swam around us and jumped around in the water. I got one decent video of them and a whole lot of videos of looking for them.

Day two involved a drip to the Alacalufe Fjord in Chico Inlet, where we got to take zodiacs over to Nena and Piloto Glaciers. This was where I learned that glaciers and the fjords they create are some pretty impressive geographical formations (understatement alert). What's completely daunting is the total loss of spatial perspective. You sit in a boat next to this enormous thing, but you're far enough away that it's tough to tell how far away you are, and just how massive the thing is. Our guide said the glacier runs about 1800 meters up to an ice field. It's basically the world's largest freezer.

The glaciers were comprised of mostly blue ice--meaning that the ice is very old and has spent centuries being compacted by the glacier's enormous weight. On that particular day, there had been a tremendous amount of calving, which happens when part of the ice underneath melts down, and the glacier can't support the weight of a large chunk, which falls into the water. The water was so full of icebergs it looked like you could get out and walk. In some places, you probably could. There were icebergs twice the size of our zodiacs (which hold about 14 people each) that had apparently fallen off the glacier earlier in the day. We got to see a small amount of calving, as a piece about 3-5 feet high fell off and landed with an astonishingly thunderous crack. Again, humbling.

The fjords themselves are extremely impressive. The sheer basalt cliffs carved out over millenia look downright forboding, and the waterfalls cascading down in places from the ice fields on top give the whole thing an otherworldy feel. In places, one can see moss, grass, or even small trees, giving a sense of how relatively long ago the glacier receded from a certain section of the rock. The water that winds its way through is the most reflective I've ever seen--presumably relating to a high mineral content. In a lot of places it looks like a mirror. I tried to get some pictures that captured this, which came out okay, but suffice to say it's really an incredible phenomenon. Remarkably, the ferociously salty and incredibly cold water has a very healthy jellyfish population. I saw one from the boat that was a good two feet long. I guess they're the ocean's cockroaches, durability-wise.

I'm fairly certain everyone who's reading this is intellectually honest enough to recognize the threat that global warming poses. I just feel the need to mention that having now seen just some of the world's smaller glaciers, I realize not just how much more water that will mean in the ocean, but also what a magnificent thing it is that we're slowly losing. Our guide told us that just in the last couple years since he started coming to these glaciers, they have receded immensely, melting and falling into the salty seawater, and it is truly a tragedy.

Our last stop was at Magdalena Island, home to a colony of 50,000 or so Magellanic Penguins. This might sound a bit silly, but the thing that was most striking to me was, when you see them in the wild, just how clear it is that they are birds. I note this simply because I remember being a kid and learning that penguins are birds and being completely confused. But they waddle around like ducks, they have feathers and beaks, and they really just look like birds that haven't bothered to figure out how to fly. They are also some of the loudest creatures I've encountered. They wander around braying out loud--it sounds like donkeys--in the hopes of tracking down their monogamous partners. To be clear, it's not to find a new mate, it's to get back in contact with the old one, who they sometimes lose in the crowd of 50,000 other birds that look almost exactly the same. Somewhat amusingly, they mate for life unless they really just can't find their partner, in which case they find another. They are also, as it happens, criminally adorable.

What's also pretty cool about Magdalena is that the penguins don't really care much about the human presence, so they'll just walk right by you. If you're walking faster they'll run out of the way, but generally speaking they'll just sort of assume some unspoken terms of feigned mutual ignorance. They're obviously wrong about whether we're paying attention to them, but that's another issue entirely.

I'm now in Puerto Natales in Chile, home of a giant ground sloth cave and the base for trips to Torres del Paine national park. I am also hungry, so I'm going to do something about that.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Cabo de Hornos - Cape Horn

Wulaia Bay

Alacalufe Fjord

Magdalena Island Penguin Colony

Tierra del Blogo

2010-03-24T01:00:00.000-04:00

Today, for the first time in two and a half months it was colder where I was than it was in New York. I arrived this afternoon in Ushuaia, the main hub of Argentine Tierra del Fuego. Technically, Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world. I say technically because that relies on a strict interpretation of the word "city," as Puerto Williams is further south, but claims only 2,000 residents to Ushuaia's 64,000. Whatever the case, it's far enough south to be pretty freaking cold, even as the Summer is just starting to turn to Fall. Today was mostly in the 40s and 50s, which meant busting out the cold-weather wear that had been going mostly unused for the last few months. Given that this trip was motivated in part by a desire to escape Winter, my decision to come down here initially caused me a bit of cognitive dissonance. The rationale I ultimately settled on is that if you're going to be somewhere cold, it might as well also be pretty freaking amazing. So far, so good.

Ushuaia is surrounded on all sides by jarringly jagged peaks that are draped with snowy glaciers. The effect of this is that you end up with a surprisingly dramatic vista anytime you're looking down any street in town. The town is built on a hill, with the top part at the northern end and the Beagle Channel--named for Darwin's boat--at the southern border. The Beagle Channel's royal shade of blue forms a striking contrast with the gray, brown, and white peaks all around, meaning that one can just stand by the water and take in the beauty, and nearly forget that your hands are starting to feel a bit numb.

The main street in Ushuaia, San Martín, has a surprisingly familiar range of gear shops for outdoors activities. Hiking and ski shops are more common than basically anything aside from food and lodging. In a lot of ways, Ushuaia resembles a ski town in the states--at least in part because it's a ski down down here in the Winter. It's pretty populous--much more bustle than, say, Penn Yan, NY, but most of the people are just here as part of the tourist economy, be it on the supply side or the consumption side. There isn't much else to rely on, resource-wise. Ushuaia gets most of their basic goods on boats from the mainland--Tierra del Fuego is an island, after all. Most of the early population growth here came out of its service as a penal colony, and the prison remains a tourist destination (which I'll likely visit tomorrow).

I feel like I got through my Buenos Aires wall before I left, and started to appreciate it as a city that really does have a lot to do if you live there. After spending much of my time there feeling sort of underwhelmed (and perhaps overwhelmed at the same time), I left feeling a bit sad to be leaving it behind, though obviously excited for this next phase of the trip. Tomorrow I'll be starting a three-day boat trip down to Cape Horn* and then across the Magellan Strait to Punta Arenas in Chile. I should have some time to explore a bit more of the Land of Fire before I go, but until then I need to get some shut-eye. I doubt I'll have internet on the boat, so I suspect I'll check in a few days from now feeling amazed and seasick.

Saludos,
Seth

*Cape Horn is called Cabo de Hornos in Spanish. This translates as "Cape of the Ovens," which is obviously different from the English meaning. I'm not sure what the origin is, but if I find out I'll pass along the info.

**Tierra del Fuego means "Land of the Fire," an odd name for such a cold place. It gets its name from when Magellan sailed through and saw the many fires the region's indigenous people lit to keep themselves warm at night.

Fotografía:

Tierra del Fuego

Holy Guaçu, Sethman!

2010-03-19T13:01:00.002-04:00

I spent the last two days at Iguazú Falls on the Argentine-Brazilian border. It was among the most awe-inspiring things I've seen in my entire life. Supposedly, when Eleanor Roosevelt visited Brazil, she went to the falls, and exclaimed, "Poor Niagara!" Poor Niagara indeed. If you can imagine dropping a tropical jungle into the Grand Canyon, and then having 275 individual waterfalls springing out everywhere you look, that gives a bit of a sense of the place. What I had never quite comprehended from pictures was the scale of the thing. On the Brazilian side, your first peek is of a very impressive torrent, which I initially mistook for the entire falls. I was left standing there, jaw agape, from what turned out to be less than a fifth of the whole thing.

Note the rainbow to the left of my legs.

As I continued walking along the path, stopping at increasingly impressive lookout points from which increasingly more of the falls were visible, I could not stop exclaiming "wow" and "oh my goodness" to no one in particular. I sounded like Beaver Cleaver on hallucinogens. The best way I can think to sum it up is in a way that brings back the Grand Canyon comparison: When I was a kid, my family took a trip to Arizona. One of my father's friends explained before we left, "you always hear that the Grand Canyon is cool, and you think 'okay' but you don't realize until you get there that it's this big freaking hole in the ground!*" Well, Iguazú is a big freaking hole in the ground**, with a big freaking river*** flowing through it, to boot.

Let's get some basic facts out of the way. Iguazú has the greatest average annual water flow of any waterfall in the world. At its highest (about 269 feet), it is 1.6 times the height of Niagara, and it is two and a quarter times as wide (a mile and two thirds). It is comprised of 275 individual cataracts, but you can't see them all at once from the ground. Although the border between the two countries cuts down the middle of the river, the shape of the basalt shelf is such that the water roughly flows from Argentina to Brazil. As a result, the Brazilian side offers the more spectacular panoramic views, while the Argentine side, sitting behind the falls, allows one to see the individual falls from up close.

I had the benefit of nearly perfect timing with the weather, arriving after several days of steady downpour--meaning spectacularly high flow at the falls--and on two straight days of glorious sunshine--meaning rainbows and what seemed like half the world's population of butterflies, especially on the Argentine side. My friend Praz pointed out that if one were to design paradise from scratch, a verdant subtropical forest filled with waterfalls, rainbows, and butterflies would probably be a good place to start.

I wasn't expecting to be able to go to the Brazilian side, because American tourists need a visa to enter Brazil, and by all accounts this has to be done in advance. It turns out, however, that "in advance" can also mean "the same morning" if you go to the Brazilian consulate in Puerto Iguazú, on the Argentine side. There are rumors that Brazil unofficially tolerates a day trip if you have both directions of the voyage arranged beforehand. Unfortunately, I didn't know this until after the fact, so I ended up getting a visa. On the plus side, in so doing, I managed to avoid violating any international treaties.

I always mostly just thought of Brazil as a big country with a blue cheeseburger on its flag, but there's clearly a lot going on. My five-hour visit to Brazil turned out to be a pretty serious culture shock. After so much time spent learning and practicing Spanish, entering a country where it's not spoken was a major challenge. I've been to countries where I don't speak the language before, but never without any kind of phrase book, or without even knowing how to say "hello." So it was pretty challenging. My conversations would generally go like this:

Employee of Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: [unintelligible].
Me: [blank stare].
Employee of Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: [unintelligible and louder].

Me: [blank stare].

Employee of Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: [blank stare].

Me: ¿Hablas Español?

Employee of Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: Não.

Me: [blank stare].

Fortunately, I managed to get through the day without any kind of major linguistic disaster, and even managed to order ice cream (twice) and a beer. I eventually managed to learn the exchange rate, which was not posted anywhere near the ATM. In the interim, I avoided accidentally overspending on anything, which I consider a major victory. Needless to say, however, I was very happy to get back to good old Spanish-speaking Argentina.

The Argentine side covers a lot more ground than the Brazilian side. We devoted about six hours to it, and still didn't see the whole thing. This isn't actually that surprising given the sheer volume of waterfall one can see, but it's impressive nonetheless. We managed to get pretty lucky in terms of the crowd, as there were a lot of people, but not so many that we had to wait in long lines at the various viewing stations--something I'd seen from the Brazilian side the day before. It felt a little bit like Disneyworld if the main attractions centered around the awesomeness of nature and not Space Mountain. There's even a little electric train--controversial, but ultimately sparing the park a great deal of vehicle traffic--that takes you out to the trails.

The eternal question before going to Iguazú/Iguaçu is whether one really needs to see both sides. My answer would be that the Argentine side was probably a bit more spectacular, and worth visiting if one really only has one day, but I would definitely have regretted missing the Brazilian side. I think the order in which I did it was just about perfect, getting the scale of the whole site on the first day, and then getting to explore it up close the second day.

This is a bit off-topic, but I think I should also take a moment to follow up on my Buenos Aires post from last weekend. I have to say, if I thought that complaining about being unimpressed by things would ensure three days like the ones that followed, this blog would be the whiniest collection of words the internet has ever known. Fortunately, as a stats geek, I know a thing or two about correlation and causation, so I'll just stick to being extremely grateful for the incredible experiences I've been fortunate enough to have.

And now, it's time to find some lunch and figure out my last few days in Buenos Aires, before leaving for Patagonia on Tuesday.

Saludos,
Seth

* Language cleaned up in case any children read this.
** Not as big as the Grand Canyon, but still freaking big.
*** See "*".

Fotografía:

Parque Nacional do Iguaçu (Brazil)

Parque Nacional de Iguazú (Argentina)

Bloga Juniors

2010-03-15T20:52:00.001-04:00

Buenos Aires has delivered. This morning I hopped on a bus with my flatmates Elizabeth and Marty, and we headed to La Boca. La Boca is an old immigrant neighborhood, sort of the Buenos Aires version of the Lower East Side. It originally drew so many immigrants because of the port, which provided a number of jobs in the shipping industry. La Boca is perhaps best known as the birthplace of tango (although San Telmo makes the same claim), but it has much more than just that to commend it. Because the economy centered so much around the port, the houses were built from scrap zinc, and were painted with paint leftover from the ships. Thus the extremely specific sheet-metal-and-bright-paint Boca aesthetic was born.

Boca has a bit of a reputation for being one of the tougher areas in the city. While I'm certain that there are parts that one is best off avoiding, I'd spoken to a number of people who reported that the areas just off the extremely touristy El Caminito (little road) are perfectly fine, and in fact more pleasant. I probably wouldn't wander around there at night, but it was a lovely place to walk around on a Monday morning. Although El Caminito is full of the usual touristy schlock, the surrounding areas were downright tranquil. What's more, the look and feel of the place held firm, and in many ways felt more authentic.

An interesting thing about Buenos Aires that I hadn't really picked up on until my trip to La Boca is the role of direct-marketers in the street. Just as in New York and plenty of other places, one encounters an endless sea of people handing out flyers. And just as in New York, my initial instinct is to just ignore them--usually saying "no, gracias"--and keep walking. But twice today, Marty, Elizabeth and I found ourselves stopped to figure out where to go next, while standing immediately adjacent to one of these hawkers. And both times, after it became clear that we weren't going to take their flyers, they started talking to us. It turns out that they're extremely friendly--especially if you speak Spanish. One ultimately directed us to a lovely little courtyard parilla where we had lunch. I also got to try a proveleta, which is literally just a 5-inch diameter circular slab of grilled provolone cheese. I paired it with a salad of course. Sort of the Mitch Hedberg philosophy of eating. (e.g. "if you eat something healthy, the unhealthy stuff you eat with it doesn't count. It's like the lettuce says 'don't worry, he's with me.'") It was delicious, but definitely made me feel like I needed a nap.

Boca is also home to Boca Juniors, one of Argentina's two most popular soccer teams (along with River Plate*). Boca Juniors was the team for which Diego Maradona used to play, and they play in the famous La Bombonera stadium. La Bombonera, decked out in the team's classic blue and gold, is an architecturally interesting structure. When they built it, they didn't have enough room for a traditional bowl-shaped stadium. So it's as though they built one, and then just pressed it in from one side--one of the long sides of the pitch has vertically-tiered seating like boxes in an opera house. The stadium also houses the "Museum of Boca's Passion," which is the very excellent official name for the soccer museum.

At any rate, I was thrilled with the whole experience because I had been looking around for something that distinguished Buenos Aires from any other large city. For all I had heard of how European it feels, it seemed to be sort of a recreation of a generic European city, as opposed to its own unique entity. Having been to La Boca, I no longer feel that way. Although the touristy parts were almost Disneyesque, the historical authenticity of the neighborhood couldn't help but come through.

I should also add that yesterday I went to El Zanjón, which is a recent archaeological find. It was a mansion in the late 19th century, but the owners fled it during the yellow fever outbreak around that time. San Telmo, where the mansion was, was originally one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. But the threat of disease caused a lot of wealthy families to uproot and move to Recoleta, paving the path for that neighborhood to become the upscale home of dignitaries living and deceased. Excavations of the house also revealed a series of tunnels underneath that date to the 16th century, and which were part of the original canal system to bring water to the houses of settlers. Some historians speculate that the original settlement of Buenos Aires--both founded and abandoned in the first half of the 16th century--started in this area, and it's possible that these canals were part of it. Of course, this is yet another historical claim over which La Boca and San Telmo are in dispute--the Boquenses think the settlement was in their neighborhood at the mouth (boca) of the Riochuelo. I have no real interest in getting in the middle of this fight. So, I report, you decide, as it were.

Anyway, now I'm at a hostel in Puerto Iguazú, which is a base for a trip into the park tomorrow to see some of the world's most spectacular waterfalls. It is in the jungle, which means that in the first ten minutes that I was outside, I got bitten by about fifty bugs. Anyway, the hope is that I can get a visa from the Brazilian consulate, and see the Brazilian side tomorrow, and the Argentine side on Wednesday. Whether that will pan out remains to be seen. The park does apparently offer a great deal in terms of wildlife and natural beauty, so even if I'm "stuck" on the Argentine side, I'll be more than happy with that. Now I just have to figure out what to do about dinner. Preferably, it won't be a giant hunk of grilled provolone--I'm looking for some variety.

Saludos,
Seth

*River Plate gets their name from "Rioplata," the name for the region surrounding the Rio de la Plata--the river that runs between Uruguay and Argentina. Rio de la Plata actually means "River of Silver," an optimistic name chosen by Spanish explorers who were expecting to return home with ships full of precious metals. Therefore, "River Plate," the English term that is sometimes used to describe both the region and the soccer team (as well as Uruguayan and Paraguayan teams of the same name), is actually a mistranslation. Although, given that the explorers never did find any silver here, it probably makes more sense.

Fotografía:

La Boca

El Zanjón

Buenos Aires

Blognos Aires

2010-03-13T22:53:00.000-05:00

I haven't been writing much lately for two reasons. The first is that I've been a bit under the weather. I got some sort of stomach flu, which is always fun. I'm mostly better now, probably around 80-90%. Anyway, the other reason is that I haven't had a whole lot to write about. The truth is that, although I've certainly enjoyed Buenos Aires so far, it hasn't grabbed me in quite the same way that Montevideo did. I was talking with my parents last night, and trying to figure out why that was, and I think there are a few reasons.

First off, I haven't yet encountered the things about Buenos Aires that make it uniquely Buenos Aires. Right now, most of what I've seen is more big city culture than anything else. Obviously I love big city culture, having lived in New York for a while, but it's not as exciting a thing for me to visit. Another thing is that I happen to be exactly halfway through a four month journey, so I've been needing a bit of a breather. It's obviously impossible to go full-bore for that long, so I just haven't been as active here as I was in other places. The third reason is that I think I just haven't seen the best of this town yet. I've seen a lot of staples--Recoleta, the Casa Rosada, Puerto Madero--but I haven't yet found whatever it is about Buenos Aires that is unique, the way that Murga was in uruguay or Ometepe was in Nicaragua. I still haven't been to La Boca, which is touristy but apparently pretty incredible, so that may well change things. And I have some other good stuff planned for the next week, so I certainly remain optimistic.

I should add that I don't consider this a criticism of Buenos Aires. Among other things, it strikes me as a wonderful place to live. It's extremely cosmopolitan, and full of great food and culture. I think the circumstances are just such that right now it's not grabbing me. What's funny about it is that it might just be that it feels a bit too much like a South American version of home. I've been stopped on the street for directions more times than I can count. In part that's because, unlike in Nicaragua, there are actually locals here who look like me. But I think in part it's because I feel pretty at home walking down a city street. So I think that keeps me from looking like a tourist, even if I am in flip flops and carrying a backpack.

At any rate, I managed to get an excellent big city cultural experience today, when I went over to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. It was smaller than your Met or your Louvre, for sure, but still very impressive. In particular, there was a Goya room, which featured some of his works that I've never seen before. Goya is best known for his Black Paintings, which feature extremely dark subject matter. One of my particular favorites is his painting of Saturn. Anyway, it turns out that at the end of the 18th century, he did a series of prints called "Caprichos" ("Caprices"), which were almost like editorial cartoons, satirizing the lightheartedness of Spanish society. The museum had a few prints--you can look through them here--and they were pretty captivating. In addition to an excellent impressionist collection--Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas, and Gaughuin are all on hand--there's an excellent little satirical drawing of Picasso's, entitled "Sueño y Mentira de Franco" ("Dream and Lie of Franco"). I like these all less specifically because they're satirical cartoons, and more because they're so far outside the normal realm of what we're accustomed to from these artists. Additionally, I always find well-done political protest art to be incredibly potent.

The museum, it happens, is just across the street from Recoleta Cemetary, where I went last weekend. This gave me another opportunity to stroll through the little market that pops up there on weekends. The thing that I'm most struck by about the market is the range of goods. Not in terms of just that things are different, that's not what I mean. I mean there is a serious range, to my mind, of likelihood of someone wanting to buy a certain thing. On the one hand, one can find beautiful handmade jewelery, lush handknit scarves, and really interesting paintings. On the other, one can choose instead to buy miniature sculptures of mate gourds that say "Argentina" on them--the Buenos Aires equivalent of the Empire State Building pencil sharpener. Another option is chintzy pewter dragons for high schoolers going through a goth phase. There are also people who sell individual dreadlock extensions. I'm not kidding. And the thing is, the handmade goods are sold by the people who actually make them. And they are all there at the same market. And I sometimes wonder whether the guy who's done all of these incredible watercolors might be setting up on a Saturday morning. And maybe the mass-produced mini-mate guy shows up a half-hour later (tell me I'm wrong) and sets up next to him. I wonder if, at that moment, the watercolor artist just thinks, "#$&%@ you."

Anyway, given my ongoing state of illness, I'm going to head to bed. I'm off to Iguazu National Park on Monday, at which I'm expecting a total mindblowing. So I'll talk to you all soon.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Buenos Aires

Ciudad de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre (Buenos Aires, for short)

2010-03-07T23:40:00.003-05:00

Buenos Aires is for lovers. Well, perhaps I should rephrase that. Buenos Aires is for teenagers who are apparently out of sight of their parents for the first time in weeks. Walk down any street and you're very likely to see two kids in their mid-to-late teens aggressively sucking face. For me, the pinnacle of this phenomenon came during my trip yesterday to Recoleta Cemetery--an old historic cemetary with some truly beautiful tombs, as well as the resting place of several Argentine presidents and one extremely famous first lady. I was walking down one of the pathways amid some intricately crafted family vaults, when I happened upon two kids, probably about 19, determining each other's tonsillar textures. Nothing too noteworthy there. Until I noticed that there was someone about 5 feet away from them, taking a photo. A little strange. I then watched as this initially-creepy-seeming photographer fellow handed the camera back to the couple. They thanked him, he said "you're welcome," and he walked away. It was so important to them to have an action photo of themselves that they stopped a stranger in a cemetery! It was at precisely that moment that, for me, Argentine-teenage-lung-consolidation went from minor nuisance to minor amusement.*

Setting aside the raging hormones of its youth population, Buenos Aires definitely requires a bit of getting used to. At 13 million people, it is the second biggest metropolitan area in South America (after Sao Paolo) and seventeenth biggest in the world (ahead of London, Beijing, and all U.S. cities other than New York and Los Angeles). And it has all of the bustle accordant with such a ranking. Arriving here as a tourist is a bit comparable to being dropped in midtown Manhattan and told, "ok, go." There are so many options it can be tough to know where to start. Moreover, the moment you hit the street, there are thousands of people walking with a purpose, and you're just another one of them. It's almost enough (I said "almost") to make me understand why some tourists never leave Times Square. It's certainly a significant change from Montevideo, which the orientation literature from my new school refers to with a single somewhat dismissive sentence: "Montevideo is a small, quiet city and it has a beach."

Argentinos have a bit of a reputation for arrogance, and it does seem to show up when they discuss Uruguay--although one of my teachers said they could learn a great deal from the recent successes of the Uruguayan government in enhancing the quality of life of its citizens. The distaste, as it happens, is mutual. A taxi driver in Montevideo told me "Argentina is a beautiful country. It's a shame it's full of Argentinos." The people I've met here have generally been perfectly nice, although it does seem a bit more closed off and inaccessible, as a culture. It's probably just a city size thing, of course, but, just as an example, in Montevideo, one rides in the front of a taxi, and the drivers are always gregarious and talkative. In Buenos Aires, when I sat down in the front seat of the first taxi I took, the driver looked annoyed, and grunted his way through the trip. Subsequent taxistas have been more neutral, at least, but nothing close to the welcoming feel on the other side of the Rio de la Plata.

Fortunately, Buenos Aires is a fantastic walking city. I've walked almost everywhere I've been, though the subway and bus systems are thoroughly useful as well. But walking gives one a much better sense of the overall geography, as well as the structure and interaction of the neighborhoods. So far, I've really just been to the most touristy areas, as evidenced by the fact that I've heard more English spoken on the street here than I've heard in quite some time. Fortunately, as is the case in most places other than New York, the touristy areas often get to be that way by virtue of being places that are worth visiting, so I've seen some good stuff.

The layout of Buenos Aires reminds me a bit of D.C., in that it's a very orderly grid with the occasional surprising diagonal slashing through, and a number of wide-open plazas plopped in for good measure. To further the comparison, the architecture of congress was based on the U.S. Capitol building, and it sits directly opposite the Casa Rosada (literally, "Pink House," pictured above), which houses the president's offices.

The Casa Rosada sits with its back--and its many famous balconies--facing the Plaza de Mayo, home to the one of the more tragic and compelling stories I've come across. During the late 70's and early 80's, the Argentine government--a military dictatorship that seized power from Isabel Perón, Juan's incompetent widow--ruled with a brutally oppressive iron fist. In what's known as La Guerra Sucia ("the Dirty War"), General Jorge Rafael Videla's regime kidnapped, tortured, and/or killed an unknown number of people, with estimates as high as 30,000. Anyone who was suspected of dissidence was dissappeared. Many of the Disaparecidos, as they're called, were ultimately drugged and thrown from planes over the Atlantic Ocean or the Rio de la Plata to drown. Starting in 1977, a group of women met at the Plaza de Mayo to protest, and demand that the government account for their disappeared children. Three of these women were, themselves, disappeared, and eventually sent on a "Death Flight" over the Atlantic. The mothers, however, kept coming. Although the mothers are no longer protesting the government--they announced about five years ago that they no longer had any enemies in power--they still show up to remember the crimes of their former leaders, and to call attention to the ongoing search for their grandchildren. To this day, every Thursday, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (now the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) gather and keep a vigil in memory of their lost children. I'm not sure how long it goes, but last Thursday's started at 3:30 and was still going when I walked past again at 7:15, so it clearly lasts a while. Videla, meanwhile, will spend the rest of his life in prison--though this after having been convicted and pardoned, and having his pardon subsequently deemed illegal and overturned. I don't know if hell exists, but Videla is one of those people who makes me hope it does.

These days, Argentina's political woes are a lot more tame. They went through a major financial crisis at the start of the 21st century, when a Peso pegged to the U.S. Dollar gave the appearance of increased wealth where there was none (sound familiar?). They have also been hit by the recent crash, and are trying to pull their way through that now. My buddy Matt, who I met in Montevideo, put it very well. The Argentinos carry around this angst of having had all the potential of being a major player on the world stage, but never having achieved it. Regionally, they're being surpassed by Brazil, and though many Americans come here for tourism now, I've had it pointed out to me more than once that Obama still hasn't been here, and that Hillary usually seems to stop at Brazil and head back. I don't really have a lot of advice for them. My ability to lead a nation onto the world stage has never been tested, but I doubt it would go well. But, especially in comparison to Uruguay, which seems quite comfortable with its role in the world, Argentina does seem to have a bit of a chip on its shoulder.

That said, I'm having a lovely time here. The city has a heartbeat that you can feel while you walk, and it's not without its share of quirks (forgot to get that sign made before getting on the subway? No problem!), both of which are things I enjoy. I will also add that the rumors of even-better-than-Montevideo-steak-and-ice-cream are turning out to be true. And, unlike in Uruguay, you can even find the occasional green vegetable, along with some delicious slow food. So, needless to say, I'm looking forward to exploring the city more in the coming weeks, and then going out and seeing what the rest of the country has to offer.

Saludos,
Seth

*It also reminded me of a Mitch Hedberg joke about the song "We Are the World," but that's another thing altogether.

Fotografía:

Buenos Aires

Recoleta Cemetery

Buenos Aires Botanic Garden

Buenos Aires Zoo
Note: The Buenos Aires Zoo, as with most zoos that are not the Sonoran Desert Museum, is a particularly potent combination of totally depressing and utterly mesmerizing. For more on Zoo science and philosophy, check out this Radiolab episode.

Bye Guay

2010-03-02T23:54:00.001-05:00

"I've never heard of anyone going to Uruguay. That's a pretty aggressive move." That's what my buddy Sam said to me back in Costa Rica, about a week before I headed south to Montevideo. I definitely felt the same, except that for me it was a bit more of a concern, because I was the one who would be heading off into the unknown. I could not have hoped for a better experience. Having finished my three week stay, I can unequivocally say that I am smitten.

I absolutely adored Montevideo, its people, and the Uruguayan culture in general. To some extent, this was a function of fortuitous timing. I managed to arrive right as the summer was cooling down a bit, so it was warm but generally not unpleasantly hot, and smack in the middle of the Carnaval season--which gave me the opportunity to see two Murga shows. I also arrived just in time to attend the inauguration of the new president. In a lot of ways, however, this was a near-perfect match of tourist and culture. For a winter-hating, ex-musical-theater-camp-going, city-dwelling, political wonk, it's hard to think of a better place to be than an urban center with temperatures in the mid-70s, passionate political involvement and a rabid scene in support of what amount to local musical theater sketch groups. And I haven't even mentioned the copious amounts of delicious steak and ice cream*. Top it off with some of the more consistently outgoing people I've ever met, and you get a pretty giant smile on my face. Outside the city is lovely too, as Colonia offered a connection to the region's history, and the eastern shore has some breathtaking natural landscapes (even if I did find the scene at Cabo Polonio a bit irritating).

I came away thoroughly impressed by the political involvement of the Uruguayan populace. I thought I had a pretty decent handle on it, but yesterday's trip to Mujica's inauguration really drove home just how sincere it is. In part, it may just be easier to keep everyone involved in a country of only three and a half million people. But the rabid fandom persisted well past Mujica's official assumption of office, into chants for every member of the cabinet. Can you imagine legions of people going nuts for Janet Napolitano? The spectacle of the thing was truly impressive, with flags and patriotic fervor everywhere, and people overcome with happiness. A taxi driver the other day told me "I'm going because I feel like this is the first time it's really my president." Given that I cast my first presidential vote in 2000, and watched the next eight years thinking "not my president," I can certainly relate to that sentiment.

The one other thing I can't seem to stop thinking about is the remarkable nature of the many stories I heard about Uruguayan history. Given its location stuck between the two regional superpowers, Uruguay is often completely neglected by the rest of us, and so its history is just completely unfamiliar. Plenty of people could tell you at least one thing about most of the other countries in South America. But we know very little of the Uruguayan history. The thing about it is, even just the recent history is completely enthralling. I've talked about about the political upheaval of the 70s and 80s, the Punta Carretas prison escape, and Pepe Mujica's fourteen years in prison and six bullet wounds. These stories are amazing. And they're just completely not a part of our world knowledge. What's particularly odd is that even when Uruguayans mention these things, a lot of it is presented as a throwaway fact, e.g. "oh, yeah, 111 inmates escaped from Punta Carretas." The details are just skipped. My guess is that there's an assumption that as an American, I wouldn't really be interested. So I personally am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to come into contact with this history, and to learn about it up close, and I hope you've enjoyed hearing about it.

Obviously, there are downsides to Uruguay, as there are with any country. The conspicuous absence of green vegetables is a pretty noteworthy issue. Sure, one could get eggplant or squash, or any number of things on the starchy side of the spectrum. But leafy greens, green beans, asparagus, and their ilk were pretty tough to come by. Cilantro is also, as far as I can tell, nonexistent, which I consider to be an enormous drawback. If you ask for cilantro, you get coriander, which is the same plant, of course, but a very different life stage (and flavor). The dearth of vegetables is a health issue too, obviously, as it makes it pretty tough to have anything but an extremely protein-and-fat-heavy diet. I love steak more than any reasonable human being should, but the first week of the Uruguayan diet left me googling "angioplasty" on a daily basis.

All told, Montevideo is the first city I've been to where English is not the native language in which I could honestly see myself living. That's not to say that I'll likely move there--the odds of the opportunity presenting itself seem a bit long. But it is pretty remarkable to visit a place where you only understand about half of what is being said to you (on a good day), and still feel so completely at home. Last night I was talking with my buddy Matt, who also took classes at Academia Uruguay, and we agreed that Montevideo was an extremely comfortable place, and it would have been easy to extend my stay such that it took up the bulk of this journey I'm on. But the purpose of my trip is to see and experience new things, and, frankly, to keep moving outside my comfort zone, so I think to stick around for longer would be selling myself short, as lovely as it might be.

And so it is that I find myself in Buenos Aires after a three hour boat ride, preparing to eat still more steak, and to continue pronouncing my "y" sounds as "sh." I'm very much looking forward to exploring the vast range of experiences this city and this country have to offer. I walked around for a few hours tonight, and it's clear that I'm not going to get bored any time soon. I'll check in at some point in the next few days, once I get my bearings and have a few new experiences. Until then, hasta luego.

Saludos,
Seth

*neither sold nor consumed simultaneously, to be clear.

Fotografía:

Montevideo

Mujica Inauguration

Uruguay, I'm a guay cinco - Todavía más notas

2010-03-01T11:02:00.006-05:00

I've been running around the last few days trying to get in my last fill of fun before I leave for Buenos Aires tomorrow, so I don't have much to report outside of "I did this cool thing and then I did this cool thing." But in the interest of keeping this up to date, I thought I'd check in with a little summary of said cool things.

On Thursday, I went to Castillo Pittamiglio, which is a house built by the extremely eccentric architect / alchemist Humberto Pittamiglio. I had no idea there were practicing alchemists in the twentieth century, but apparently there were. The place is full of Masonic symbols--circles, squares, and the like. It has a number of odd things like doors, windows and staircases leading nowhere. My personal favorite thing was the sign indicating that Pittamiglio left the house in the custody of the city of Montevideo upon his death, to be given back to him upon his return by reincarnation.

Thursday night, I attended a tango concert at Teatro Solís, one of the oldest and most beautiful theaters on the continent. The concert was a bit odd, in that the three singers never sung together, but rather did five songs each. Something else that seems fairly uncommon about tango is that when the songs ended, there wasn't really a clear ending with a final note, so much as the musicians would just sort of stop playing in turn, and the song would die out over the course of a second. It sort of has the feel of "I've been playing this entire song for five minutes, but actually never mind, I think I'm done." The songs all seemed to be standards, because the audience would start applauding moments before the songs were done. My favorite piece of the night was actually an instrumental, Adiós Nonino, which came during the break between the first two singers.

I twice went to Estadio Centenario, one of the world's great soccer stadiums, and host of the original World Cup in 1930 (Uruguay won, defeating Argentina in the final). The first trip, on Friday, was to the Futból Museum. The second trip was on Saturday, to a game between River Plate and Peñarol. Peñarol is probably the most popular team in the league, and is also currently the best, at 6-0-0 on the season. It was a pretty crazy game, with Peñarol scoring twice in the first 10 minutes, losing a player to a red card in the second half, giving up two goals to let River Plate tie it up, and scoring on a free kick in the last ten minutes to win 3-2. It was also just amazing to see a soccer match in one of the game's cathedrals.

Yesterday I went to the Feria de Tristán Narvajo, a public market that stretches across about ten square city blocks on Sundays. It is a completely crazy affair, with people selling pets, vegetables, home improvement dvd's, clothes, antiques, bootleg clothes (Gioven Kelvin underwear?) and other stuff. My friends Matt and Liz went a few weeks ago and saw a bird vendor selling, along with several canaries and parakeets, an owl and a falcon. The Feria is probably the closest thing I've found here to a Walmart, one-stop-shopping-wise. It is definitely a preferable experience to Walmart as well, although it is a bit overpriced.

Last night I went to another Murga show at Cine Teatro Plaza, an indoor theater. It was a very different way of seeing Murga from my experience at Teatro de Verano, which is a large outdoor amphitheater. We went primarily to see Agarrate Catalina, one of the most popular groups in the city, and the favorite to win this year's competition. They put on an incredible show, and featured two of the most stellar tenor voices I've heard in my life. I now know a bit more about Murga, so I think I'll take this moment to elaborate on it a bit. The season lasts through all of Carnaval, which is from mid-January to mid-March. The Teatro de Verano is the big venue, and each of the groups take turns passing through to be judged. There are three rounds there, so the winners will perform three times at the largest theater. However, there are also theaters and tablados (makeshift stages, often with pretty cool scenery made by the local community) all over the city. Each group will perform their forty-five minute show several times in a given night, taking a rented coach bus from venue to venue. Last night, Agarrate Catalina performed their show seven times. If you're wondering, that amounts to five hours and fifteen minutes of performing. And they do that more or less every night for two months. It's really nothing short of incredible, particularly considering the precision of everything--from the singing and choreography to the costume changes and lighting. In the second group we saw, El Gran Tuleque, there were a few performers who were no younger than sixty. What's also remarkable about it is that it is almost impossible for all but a select few groups to make any kind of profit on it. In fact, El Gran Tuleque had some lyrics about how they're so in debt that last night's show was just paying for the show on February 17th, and tonight's will pay for the show on the 18th. Though this was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, there is a good deal of truth to it. So it really is just a labor of love.

Today is the assumption of Mujica to the Presidency. Hillary Clinton is in town for it, and visited with Mujica this morning. Interestingly, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are also here. Ceremonies kick off at about 2pm, in the Palacio Legislativo, house of the Uruguayan Congress. Then there is a parade down to Plaza de Independencia, where, for the first time in Uruguayan history, the handing over of the sash--the formal act of changing presidents--will occur outside. I'm planning to head over at about 2:30 or 3, in the hopes of getting close enough to see it. Avenida 18 de Julio, the main commercial street through Montevideo, has several barricades and large video screens set up to handle the crowd. I'll be coming from the opposite direction though, so hopefully that will help. I definitely saw a lot of security last night around the plaza, including U.S. Secret Service agents.

Tomorrow I'm off to Buenos Aires, and I suspect I'll have some closing thoughts on my time here, as per usual. For the moment though, I need to get ready to head to the Plaza, so that's all I have for now.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Cine Teatro Plaza Murga Show

Peñarol Game

Estadio Centenario Museum

Castillo Pittamiglio

Montevideo

Uruguay, I'm a guay cuatro - Más notas

2010-02-24T22:20:00.004-05:00

The concert at Teatro Solís turned out to be sold out, so I got tickets for tomorrow's tango performance instead. In the meantime, I thought I'd check in with some general musings and observations about Uruguay, Montevideo, and my time here.

Graffiti reading "Mujica is a murderer," painted over with "Mujica is President."

I've become completely fascinated with one particular moment in Uruguayan history. During the late 1960's and early 1970's, President Jorge Pacheco Areco, amid a labor and economic crisis, suspended many constitutional protections and instituted military rule. The primary opposition came from the Tupamaro movement, a group of leftist guerillas looking to emulate the still-recent Cuban revolution. Among other things, Areco's government tortured its opponents, and threw many of them in jail, often without due process. Specifically, dissidents were imprisoned in the Punta Carretas prison. However, in September 1971, 111 political prisoners (including the new President-elect, Jose Mujica) escaped through a tunnel they had dug under the wall. Remarkably, there's a story of someone calling the police precinct to report the escape, informing the officer on the other end of the phone that 100 or so prisoners had just dug through his floor and left. The officer responded that none of the guards had seen anyone trying to escape, and admonished the citizen not to waste police time with any pranks. Presumably the officer was later fired. Punta Carretas, it's worth noting, is now one of the nicest neighborhoods in Montevideo. In one of the stranger metamorphoses I've heard of, the prison has been converted into a shopping mall. As you can see from my pictures, Punta Carretas Shopping ("shopping" is the word for "mall") still retains a good deal of the original prison architecture. At any rate, the story of the escape has grabbed my attention, so I've picked up a copy of Fuga de Punta Carretas, a book written by Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, one of the escapees. I intend to make it the first book I read in Spanish, after I finish the book I'm currently reading in English. And for any of my friends in the film world, I am certain that this would make an excellent Hollywood screenplay.

I've decided to stay in Montevideo through Tuesday. Not only will this give me the opportunity to see what Montevideo is like on a weekend, it will also allow me to attend Mujica's inauguration, which is at Plaza Independencia, a short walk from my school. Apparently Hillary Clinton is expected to be in town, which should be cool to see. From what I've heard, there are also likely to be a large number of parties and performances, something akin to the dozens of inaugural balls in the U.S. To me, however, as well as to a number of Uruguayans, the most fascinating thing is that Mujica has managed to be elected at all. It is important to note that the Tupamaros weren't political prisoners of the Nelson Mandela variety. As a group, they were rather violent. Many of them killed people. Mujica himself was convicted of killing a police officer. Moreover, the Communist dreams of the Tupamaros were never realized. Instead, they become more moderate, and formed a legitimate political party on the left side of the spectrum. So Mujica's election isn't the inevitable result of some steady stream of leaders forced on the country by the victors of the war. In that light, I find it truly remarkable that Mujica was elected, by a 9 point margin no less, to represent many of the same people with whom he was once at war. This is not, to be clear, a matter without controversy (as the picture above indicates). There are plenty of locals who are uneasy with Mujica's progression from guerilla to statesman. But on the whole, everyone I've met seems very excited about his potential as President. As a side note, after his escape from prison, Mujica was shot six times by police and taken back into custody. He was held for the next fourteen years. Two of those years were spent at the bottom of a well. As though that were not enough, I've also been told that the bullets were never removed. So I think he's probably earned his new job.

One of the results of the success of the Tupamaros (now part of the Frente Amplio or "Broad Front" party) is that a lot of Uruguay's policy has something of a leftward lean. The primary example of this is the significant role of the state in many aspects of the lives of its citizens. Sometimes this shows up in ways that are somewhat expected--e.g. that Antel, the energy company, is state owned. Sometimes the effects are more subtle, such as in the case of Montevideo's lone amusement park--a river-side Coney Island type affair with some truly rickety attractions--which is state-run as well. The thing that I find most impressive, however, is that every student in a public Uruguayan elementary school is given a state-issued laptop. In addition to the usual hardware, the laptops are equipped with LoJack, which addresses any concerns of rampant theft that might otherwise spring up. The first group of students are entering middle school with their laptops this year, and the program has been an overwhelming success. Though it's obviously much easier to have government-mandated computers in a country of three million than in a country of 300 million, the United States could stand to take a lesson from Uruguay's efforts to ensure that its children aren't lapped by competetors in the internet age.

As I've mentioned, the two major soccer teams here are Nacional and Peñarol. As opposed to just saying "I'm a Nacional fan" or "I'm a Peñarol" fan, the fans of the two teams have special nicknames. Fans of Nacional are "bolso," which stems from the pocket ("bolsillo" in Spanish) that historically adorned the Nacional jerseys. Peñarol fans are "manya," which actually stems from the Italian word "mangiare," which means "to eat." Peñarol fans were referred to by rivals as "manya mierda," which is a colorful term for people who eat excrement. The Peñarol supporters decided to reclaim the term, and now proudly wear shirts declaring "soy manya."

This isn't a particularly Uruguay-specific thing, but last weekend in Cabo Polonio marked the fifth different incorrect spelling of my name I've come across in this trip. Spanish speakers have a really tough time both hearing and pronouncing the name Seth. I'm not too bothered by it, having grown up with grandparents who called me "Set," but it is amusing to see the wide range of ways there apparently are to butcher a one-syllable name. I'd already been Sef, Set, Sez (because in Spain, the "z" is used like the "th" in English), and Sed. In Cabo Polonio, I received my newest moniker, Serth. It's important to note that the pronunciation is using the Spanish version of the letter R, so it's not quite as far out there as it looks. Still. I'm excited to be at 5 names and still counting.

I'd often heard that it was fairly easy for Portuguese speakers to learn Spanish and vice versa. I have learned that this is pretty true. In a very large number of cases, Portuguese sounds very much like Spanish with slightly different consonants. On the trip to Colonia, most of our tour group was Brazilian, so the tour guide spoke in Portuguese much of the time, and I found that I could follow a lot of what was being said. That said, Portuguese, to an English speaker, is a pretty bizarre sounding language. There are a lot of "sh," "zh," and "ch" sounds. I gave my Brazilian friends a hard time by claiming that I could translate Black Eyed Peas's "I Gotta Feeling" into Portuguese as follows: "I gotta feelin / that tonightch gonna be a goodch nightch / that tonightch gonna be a goodch nightch / that tonightch gonna be a goodch goodch nightch." I also learned that the Portuguese word for iPod is spelled the same as in English, but pronounced, as you might expect, "i-potch."

I've been spending a lot of class time lately practicing the subjunctive, which is a tense that doesn't really exist in English. Or, to the extent that it does, we certainly don't have specific verb conjugations for it. Subjunctive is used, among other things, to express a desire or a wish, and one of the forms of doing that is to say "Ojala que [subjunctive form of thing that you want to happen]." This roughly translates as "I wish that [the thing will happen]." Interestingly, however, it comes from Arabic, from the phrase "Inshallah," praying that a certain event will come to pass. I had always noticed that Spanish contains a number of words that have a somewhat Arabic sound to them (e.g. the word for "carpet," which is "alfombra") but never managed to put together the ~~fairly obvious~~ fact that the ~~Ottoman occupation of Spain~~ influx of North African immigrants into Spain starting in the 8th century* had a significant linguistic impact. For that reason, Spanish includes a number of words that are completely distinct from other Romantic languages--with the notable exception of Portuguese, because the ~~Ottoman rule~~ Arabic influence covered the entire Iberian Penninsula. This was all explained to me last night by my friend Liz, so I thank her for that excellent contribution to my ever-expanding knowledge of random stuff.

I'm hoping to get to one last murga show before I head off to Argentina, probably on Friday or Saturday. If you're interested, I tracked down the website of the excellent murga group I saw perform two weeks ago, Queso Magro.

Tomorrow should be fun, as I'm hoping to explore some fun stuff down along the Rambla, including the state-run amusement park, before heading over to the tango show. I suspect I won't have time to check in tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll be back before too long. Until then, hasta luego.

Saludos,
Seth

* My father corrected me on this. Knowledge of random stuff expanded further.

Fotografía:

Montevideo

Uruguay, I'm a guay tres - Cabo Polonio is duned

2010-02-23T23:02:00.003-05:00

I spent the weekend in Cabo Polonio, an isolated beach town along the eastern coast of Uruguay that is renowned for its sand dunes and laid-back style. Because it's so far out on the coast, with dunes that get as high as some New York City brownstones, Cabo Polonio can only be reached by large 4x4 shuttles that run between the local bus stop and the town itself--normal cars can't traverse the road. The isolation also means that the town is almost completely off the grid, in a literal sense: the lone electrical line powers the lighthouse, and nothing else. As a result, it has developed into something of a hippie commune, where there are no schools or government services, and people go to live a life apart from the rest of civilization.

I should note at this point that Cabo Polonio was the first place I've been on this trip that didn't leave me thrilled and amazed, which might bother me some if it didn't also connote an absolutely stellar batting average in terms of (places I''ve visited that are jaw-droppingly awesome) divided by (places I've visited). On the plus side, the natural beauty was spectacular, and it was pretty amazing to spend two nights in a place that is largely untouched by technology. On the other end of the spectrum, I think that, between summer camp and college, I've seen enough drum circles to get me through a lifetime, so I didn't feel like the cultural experience offered me much of anything new. So I left Cabo Polonio feeling pretty ambivalent--I was certainly glad I'd come to see what it had to offer, but at the same time thrilled to be heading out of town.

I traveled up to Cabo Polonio with my friends from school Adrian (from Switzerland) and Elisete (Brazil), and we were met the next day by Tuanny (Brazil), Pepe (Spain--he's not a student, just in Montevideo for work), and Hedda (Germany). The night we got in, I actually loved the place. First off, the truck ride out was a pretty uncommon experience, topped off by the last 10 minutes of it spent driving along the beach. Moreover, we found a really lovely place to eat some dinner, and had quite an adventure finding our way around what pass for roads--really just paths of sand that don't have grass growing on them--with my tiny pocket LED flashlight. The whole atmosphere of the place was as serene as could be, and I was pretty thrilled, notwithstanding the frankly unreasonable prices of the hostel we stayed at. When we visited the lighthouse the next morning and looked across the water to a rocky island that was covered in sea lions--which were, unfortunately, more easily heard than seen--I started to understand the uniqueness of the place.

The dunes, which stretch for miles from the coastline, give one the feeling of having suddenly left the fairly developed comforts of Montevideo and arrived in the middle of the Sahara. For no particular reason, I felt a burst of energy as we approached these massive mounds of sand, and took off running for the top of one. Once my friends made their way to where I was--mostly confused by my reaction to a large plot of empty space--I sprinted off again to the next peak, just a bit to the West, and at a slightly higher elevation. Crossing just over the crest, I found myself in a spot where neither my compatriots nor the ocean were visible, and where sand stretched out in every direction, patches of grass springing up in places, and the hazy outline of civilization painted on the horizon to the South. The only clear evidence of human presence was the line of footprints that ended exactly where I stood. The ocean was still audible, though not much more so than what you hear when you put your ear to a conch shell. The experience left me with the feeling of an almost hyper-awareness of my surroundings, stemming from the total isolation of the place. I'm not a particularly meditative fellow, but if ever there was a place to go and just exist, this was almost certainly it.

The illusion was unfortunately shattered for me when I began the walk back to my friends and I came across a large plastic crate sticking out of the sand. If this were an isolated incident, I could have written it off, or at least let it go. But it quickly became one of those situations where noticing one example of a thing attunes your senses to other examples of that thing, and I found myself coming across discarded sandals, containers, and even a glo-stick. At this point I started to process the fact that Cabo Polonio, in spite of being so naturally unspoiled in so many ways, was at the same time one of the most neglected and exploited places I've been on this trip. I had already picked up on what was quite frankly the foulest odor I've come across in a long time. The infrastructure is just not set up to handle the sewage of the crowds that descend on the place for the music festivals and hippie vibe, to say nothing of the town's few thousand permanent residents in their shacks (with only rudimentary plumbing in the best cases). The result is a distinctive stench evocative of a mountain of week-old dead snails. And that, in combination with the truly pervasive issue of litter on the ground, led me to the realization that the culture that has sprung up in Cabo Polonio appears to be completely unsustainable.

There is certainly something fascinating about witnessing a group of people espousing a lifestyle unaffected by social conventions, a lifestyle that is purportedly pure and unblemished, and being able to see clearly how blatantly hypocritical the whole operation is. Cabo Polonio has the feel of a Bob Marley poster in a Wesleyan dorm room. There were Jamaican flags all over the place, and our hostel proudly displayed red, green, and gold over its roof. But as one sees all too often in the states, the embrace of Rastafarian culture is really just an excuse to smoke pot. If that's your cup of tea, it's well within your rights--philosophically, if not necessarily legally. But it has always rung hollow to me, sort of along the lines of claiming to be Jewish because you like to eat knishes. I don't know a whole lot about the Rastafarian faith, but I'm fairly certain it gets sold short by the denizens of Cabo Polonio, who have created an entire community out of a characature of a legitimate religion. As a result, the whole town feels like one big excuse to rail against society, smoke a bowl, and throw trash on the ground. I realize that you can find this type of thing pretty much anywhere, and that I'm likely to encounter no end of it when I move to Berkeley in the Fall. But to me, the issue isn't so much that this culture exists in Cabo Polonio, as that it is the only culture that exists in Cabo Polonio. Moreover, it is a culture that is not only destructive to its habitat, but unlike what I saw in Costa Rica, for example, it is a culture that seems blissfully unaware of just how destructive it is. As such, the situation seems unlikely to resolve itself anytime in the foreseeable future.

So, at the end, I came away from this excursion feeling completely astounded by a landscape that was unlike anything I've ever seen before, but utterly infuriated by its treatment at the hands of its inhabitants. I do think that it was good for me to finally travel somewhere on this trip that I did not love, both because I always enjoy (ever so slightly) having something to complain about, and because it is, of course, important to remember that, even in the middle of the adventure of a lifetime, things don't always turn out as you hope. The lesson, I suppose, is to take away the good things: a completely new experience, an excellent time with friends, and a little more knowledge about what's out there in the world.

Tomorrow night I'm going to a show at Teatro Solís, one of the oldest theaters in South America, to see a concert of Uruguayan folkloric songs performed by two singers and the Montevideo philharmonic orchestra. From everything I've heard, it should be a pretty remarkable experience, so hopefully this time I'll manage to check in without letting two or three days slip by. In the meantime, it's late here, even by Urugurayan standards, so I'm off to sleep.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Cabo Polonio

Uruguay, I'm a guay dos - Notas Rioplatenses

2010-02-19T10:16:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd check in with some news and notes (Peter Gammons style) before I head off for a weekend in Cabo Polonio:

I have more pictures up in my Montevideo album.

This week I was given the assignment to give a presentation on the topic of my choosing. I elected to explain the game of baseball to my teacher, Claudia, who came into things knowing literally nothing about the sport. I've had this conversation with my brother before, but you really have no idea how complicated a game baseball is until you try to explain it to someone who's never seen it. What was supposed to be a ten-minute presentation turned into a three-day seminar, at about 20 minutes per day. By the end of the first day, I hadn't even gotten to such basic things as "how runs score." At this point, however, Claudia seems to have at least some sense of the game, to the point that I was able to show her a video of a pretty sick curveball, and she understood what was going on. Now I'm trying to hunt down video of Mookie Wilson's ten-pitch at bat in Game 6, just to fully demonstrate the game within a game that is the pitcher-batter interaction. Man, I miss having a good Mets team to root for.

Mullets are extremely popular in the Rio de la Plata region. I have no good explanation for this. It is probably the most common hairstyle for men. I would try to grow one, but given my looming male-pattern baldness, I would look like a washed-up guitar teacher.

One think I've noticed about studying the language is just how much easier it is to have a conversation with another non-native speaker. Native Spanish speakers breeze through words and sentences at a speed that often makes it difficult to pick up. If you think of the way you might speak English in the middle of an excited conversation, that's fairly analogous. Add in the fact that words sometimes get so strung together as to be indistinguishable, and it makes it pretty tough. So, as a result, my best Spanish conversations have been with people from Switzerland and Brazil, for the most part.

Another funny thing about languages is the little idiosyncrasies that show up, in particular as it relates to names for things. For example, I was extremely excited when someone told me about the marine wolves at Cabo Polonio. Yes. Marine wolves. Badass right? It turns out that's just what they call sea lions. What amuses me is that the exact same conversation could happen in reverse with a Spanish speaker learning English--"you mean there are lions that swim in the water?!" It turns out that this isn't the only example of this issue. It seems to just be a problem when an animal doesn't have its own name, but rather a variation on the name of another animal (e.g. a sea lion is called a type of lion, even though it's not). This issue came up again when our tour guide last weekend brought us to her friend's apartment at the top of Palacio Salvo to see the view. She said she'd never brought a group there, so we would be her little Indian rabbits, or "conejitos Indios." It's about as indirect a translation of "guinea pig" as can exist, but, as a name for the creature, it makes at least as much sense.

The internet here is really slow. Uruguay ranks 152nd in the world in download speed, well below every other country I'm visiting on this trip.

The people here are just incredibly friendly. Last night on the way back from a bar, I got into a conversation with the cab driver about politics. He was telling me about how deeply passionate the entire country is, when it comes to political issues. As we arrived at our destination, he gave me his phone number, and said that if I was interested in meeting a Uruguayan senator, he'd be happy too take me--the senators are obligated to take meetings with constituents.

That's all I really have for now. Cabo Polonio is pretty remote. It has some of the most intense sand dunes in the hemisphere--cars and buses can't drive through the town, so after the bus arrives, we'll have to take the local dune buggy service to our hostel. I'm looking forward to seeing a whole lot of amazing natural beauty, eating some delicious fresh fish, and hopefully getting a peek at some marine wolves. I'll be back Sunday, and I imagine I'll have something to say about Cabo Polonio at some point.

Saludos,

Seth

Co-lo-ni-a, Co-lo-ni-a, You border on the Rio de la Plata

2010-02-15T14:56:00.002-05:00

I spent the weekend traveling to Colonia del Sacramento, generally just referred to as Colonia. Colonia is the closest Uruguayan city to Buenos Aires, and is positioned right at the point where the Rio de la Plata starts to open into the ocean, so it was a desireable territory for much of its colonial history. The Portuguese founded Colonia in 1680--the first European settlement in what is now Uruguay. Due to its strategically advantageous location, Colonia spent the next 150 years as a colonial ping pong ball, changing sovereignty as follows: Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Liga Federal (a liberated region which would mostly eventually become Uruguay), Portugal, Brazil, and finally, in 1828, Uruguay. As though this were insufficient evidence of its historical value, Colonia is also a UNESCO world heritage site. So I was obviously excited to spend a day there and get a sense of the place.

Although a modern city has sprung up alongside the Barrio Antiguo (Old City), the original colonial pueblo maintains its historic charm. Cobblestone streets wend their way around a series of low, old buildings, everything pulling you downhill towards the coastline. The streetlamps are tinted with yellow glass, presumably intended to retain the feel of the oil lamps that used to light the passageways. One thing that's sort of interesting about it is that you can tell whether a road was build by the Spanish or the Portuguese, depending on the layout of the cobblestone. The Spanish cut stones into little cubes and rectangles that could easily fit together, making foot and carriage traffic a lot easier. The Portuguese, it seems, just threw a bunch of rocks on the ground, maybe raked them a little, and said "Behold, a street!" Seriously, the old Portuguese streets are comically haphazard in their construction, as you can see from some of the pictures.

These days, Colonia remains an object of much desire, except that it's sought by tourists instead of imperialists. Seriously, the place was so packed to the gills with Argentines and Brazilians that prices at stores were listed in Argentine Pesos and Brazilian Reales before they were listed in Uruguayan Pesos. When I tried to find a place to get some dinner on Saturday night, there were almost no tables available anywhere, because everyone had come into town for their Carnaval vacation--the weekend before Ash Wednesday is a four day weekend here, extending into Monday and Tuesday, although many people take the entire week off. I did ultimately find a place to sit down and have some pasta* and a couple Pilsens before shuffling back to my quarters for the night. Unfortunately, the table where I ate happened to be on the mosquito superhighway. So, as I'm sitting in my room writing this, my legs are so thoroughly spotted with pepto-colored calamine lotion that they give me the appearance of a cow that almost certainly produces strawberry milk.

Colonia's history as a tourist mecca is almost as old as its history as an object of Iberian dispute. In 1910, Argentine shipping magnate Nicolás Mihanovich set up a sort of Argentine equivalent of a Catskills retreat. Real de San Carlos, in the northern part of Colonia, included a luxury hotel and casino, a horserace track, a bullfight ring, and a jai alai court. As it turned out, though Mihanovich may have made the right gamble, he made it at precisely the wrong time, as bullfighting was banned by the Uruguayan government only two years later, and World War I left the entire operation bankrupt by 1917. The Plaza de Toros still stands on the outskirts of town, an impressive piece of urban ruin, with its steel arches and girders visible through the crumbling brick. The racetrack, as it happens, is still in use, although I did not make it there. But, as anyone who watches Mad Men knows, jai alai remained "the next big thing" for at least another fifty years.

On the way to Colonia, our bus stopped briefly Nuevo Helvecia, known locally as Colonia Suiza ("Swiss Colony"). The name comes, as you might expect, from its origin as a Swiss colony in 1862. For this reason, you get such comical street names as Calle Frau Vogel. We did not see much of the town, but we did stop for about 20 minutes at the Granja Arenas collection museum, which includes the world's largest keyring collection, world's largest pencil collection, world's smallest pencil (which, not joking, I managed to miss), and some other world record that I didn't catch. It was incredible, primarily because it's the sort of crap that you expect to see when you pull off at a highway rest stop in eastern Indiana. It's really not what you think of when shuttling around such far-flung locales as the Región Rioplatense. So, just as an anthropological experience, it was fascinating. I will also add that, for a room with 13,600 keyrings, there were surprisingly few from professional sports teams. I noticed, for example, that he did not have the Mets bottle-opener keyring I have in my room. This strikes me as a good opportunity for expansion. Similarly, he was lacking in keyrings associated with professional music acts, as I did not spot a single Meat Loaf key ring, like the one I used to have, but which I sadly lost to the ages. On the plus side, they have a nice little gift shop, where they sell local cheeses and jams (Colonia Suiza is, not surprisingly, known for its cheeses). I got a really nice block of a cheese that's somewhere between Swiss and Gouda, and some fig jam. The gift shop also sells keyrings--presumably only duplicates of keyrings that already in the collection--so I picked up a Nacional keyring to keep my archaic Uruguayan keys on.

So, now I'm back in Montevideo, having enjoyed my trip and enjoying the fact that there seem to be fewer people here right now than there were in Colonia this weekend, even though this is a much bigger city. But everyone has left for Carnaval, leaving the streets delightfully free for romping and roaming. So I'm going to take my pink-tinted gams over to Punta Carretas, a lovely little neighborhood by the water, and eventually (probably closer to 9 or so), get myself some dinner.

Saludos,
Seth

*I've generally been of the opinion that eating Italian food as a tourist in any country other than Italy is cheating. I'd thought it to be depriving oneself of a good local experience in favor of something both familiar and, generally, not as well-prepared. I then realized that Uruguay has an extremely large Italian immigrant population--a lot of the same immigrants who fled Europe for the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries also had family who ended up here or in Argentina. Once I embraced a willingness to try the pasta here, I discovered that it's actually incredible. So I've now had pasta for three out of my last five meals.

Fotografía:

Colonia de Sacramento

Murga, She Wrote

2010-02-12T22:28:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned at the end of my soccer post, last night's excellent adventure also included a trip to a Murga performance. Murga is a Uruguayan style of theater that is performed during Carnaval. The performers consist of a large group of singers--generally a chorus of about 20 people, usually men--and three drummers. One of the singers also jumps out and conducts from time to time. The groups are generally not professional performers, and are usually just a collection of people who know each other, often from the same neighborhood. Each group writes an original piece--about 45 minutes in length--focusing on a general theme, and offering humorous commentary on the last year's events, and numerous inside jokes. The music is original (although sometimes borrowed for humorous purposes), and there are short scenes sprinkled throughout. For those of you who attended summer camp with me at French Woods, this is just like the Sing skit, but on a massively impressive scale. In the month-long Uruguayan Carnaval, these groups perform their shows several times, and they are ultimately judged at the end, with one group being crowned the winner.

You may have noticed that the list of performers did not include any musicians other than the three drummers. This is because, aside from the very occasional mixing in of a lone acoustic guitar, the singers perform with only percussive accompaniment. This means that, for 45 minutes, the singers need to rely only on each other and themselves to maintain the proper pitch. If this doesn't sound impressive, consider that they're also singing in at least two and often three-part harmony. Moreover (for the musically-inclined among you), they regularly drop in really unexpected chords, Augmented 7's and madness like that. I tried to catch some of it in the videos I shot, so hopefully they can give you some sense. But, just in musical terms, the performance was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. I definitely recommend scanning through some of the pictures and--especially--videos of the performance. It doesn't quite do it justice, but I think you can get a feel for how remarkable it is that they can put this all together.

Perhaps equally impressive is that the groups manage to be funny, even to those of us who don't speak Spanish particularly well. We saw two groups, both of them incredible and hilarious. The second one in particular really managed to get its jokes across. Their theme was "aquello," which roughly translates as "it," but is a general pronoun used to refer to something very far away. It followed a group of people desperately searching everywhere (including in heaven) for aquello. This seemed to be a significant part of the plan, as the trip to heaven set up a series of Michael Jackson jokes. Lewis Black once said that Michael Jackson is a punchline, and you don't even really need a joke before it. Any set-up will do (e.g. "two Jews walk into a bar." "Michael Jackson."). This group made excellent use of that strategy. The premise of that section revolved around Michael Jackson meeting someone in heaven--no one in my group was particularly sure who the other person was, but the logical guess would be a famous Uruguayan who died in the last year. Although someone else thought it was old Michael Jackson meeting young Michael Jackson. Hard to say. At any rate, the jokes were still often clear and the performances (right down to the moonwalk) were excellent. I also felt a nice little surge of glee when they started singing about Jackson to the tune of "New York, New York:" "No es de New York. No es de New York. Es de Los Angeles...." The other group focused its theme on "Secretos," including one character's particularly shameful admission that he wasn't planning to vote (voting is mandatory in Uruguay, punishable by a large fine). So, clearly we managed to get a lot of the jokes that were made. But even during the parts on which we were less clear, there was so much else to pull you in and invite you to listen.

In addition to the tremendous work that clearly goes into writing, rehearsing, and incorporating the often complicated choreography, the groups had stunning costumes, as you can see from the pictures above. Both groups that we saw started the performance in one set of costumes, and then changed further along to set up for the big finale. The finales seem to warrant very flashy costumes, as one group was sequined and rhinestoned to the point of nearly blinding the audience. The second group elected to go with Sgt Pepper style satin military suits with epaulettes. The word "finale" isn't really appropriate of course, because the show ends with the entire group continuing to sing their final song as they march off the stage and into the audience, where they walk around singing for another five minutes or so.

Another amazing thing about all of this is that these groups assemble their performances on a very limited budget. Throughout the year they hold local fundraisers to get the costumes together and cover whatever other incidentals they might need--for example they show up for performances in buses. Fortunately, the thing that really brings it together, I think, for the performers, is the crowd. This was a Thursday night, albeit one during the summer, and the show ran from about 8pm to almost 2am.* And the audience, in spite of all that, was completely into it from start to finish. They got all the inside jokes we missed, and when each group finished, they went absolutely nuts. The concession area--where the actors ended up once they stopped singing--was just mobbed with people wanting to talk to the performers, get autographs, take pictures, or just be part of the scene.

These performances take an entire year to put together, and countless hours of writing, creating, and rehearsing. In the end, there is little reward but the pride in a job well done. This entire Murga style is clearly a labor of love, brought about by a deep connection between a group of people and the culture that unites them. Getting to witness it, even as an outsider, was a pretty incredible experience.

With that, I will bid you goodnight, as it's after 1am here, and I have to get up early tomorrow to catch a bus to Colonia, an adorable historic down a couple hours west of here. I'll have a post on Colonia in time. Meanwhile, have a wonderful weekend.

Saludos,
Seth

*We arrived late because of the soccer game, and left at 12:30, which is why we only saw two groups perform.

Fotografía:
Murga Show

Center holds it. Holds it. Holds it.

2010-02-12T17:44:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was one of those days one only really has while traveling in a foreign city. I was originally expecting to write a post about the one incredible thing I had planned. But, as happens sometimes, I stumbled into yet another equally-if-not-more incredible thing, so it looks like it will take two posts to properly address the awesomeness that was my Thursday night in Montevideo.

After morning classes, Liz, Matt, and I took in a nice shwarma lunch made by some very pleasant Armenian Uruguayans and then hopped in a cab to head over to Parque Central. Unlike the Parque Central in Granada (or New York for that matter), this Parque Central is a soccer stadium.

I have the good fortune to be in Uruguay for the start of the Copa Libertadores season. Libertadores is the South American champions league, which has a structure that is likely familiar to those of you who know much about professional soccer. For those who don't, the way that it works is this: Each country has its own league, and each league has several divisions (first division, second division, etc.). At the end of a year, the top few teams in the lower divisions get to move up to a better division, while the worst teams move down. So, if you imagine a universe in which the Nationals got moved down to the International League and the Durham Bulls moved up to the Majors, that gives you some sense.

The league champions from each of the countries--along with various runners-up--get to play in the Libertadores, which includes a total of 32 teams. What's particularly interesting is that the leagues vary greatly in terms of quality. Some leagues have excellent professional caliber teams (Brazil and Argentina, of course, among them). In other countries the leagues might be won by a University team, as is the case in Chile, whose representative in Libertadores is U of Santiago. Nacional, which won the Uruguayan Primera División last season, is one of three Uruguayan teams in this year's Libertadores. Historically, they've also been one of the most successful teams, having won Libertadores 3 times. They've also played more games in the league than any other team, due in large part to their 11 Primera División titles.

Uruguay has a very strong soccer tradition, including having both hosted and won the first world cup ever, in 1930. In addition to Nacional's three Libertadores championships, Peñarol, the Yankees to Nacional's Red Sox--or maybe vice versa, depending on which league you're thinking about, has won Libertadores five times. For this particular game, Nacional was hosting Deportivo Cuenca, from Ecuador. It was Nacional's first game of the season and the fans were stoked. So, needless to say, the experience was absolutely crazy.

First off, despite soccer's ho-hum reputation in the U.S., it is an extremely exciting and action-packed sport. We managed to get seats in the second row--higher is often considered better, because the view from down in front is obstructed by a fence topped with barbed wire. The players do not stop running the entire time, and the ball is literally constantly in motion. Of course, the real action is on the short sides of the rectangle, behind the goals. I have been to NBA playoff games, NFL playoff games, and World Series games. I've watched a lot of sports on TV. I have never seen fans as crazy as the Nacional fans behind the goals.

The most obvious difference between sporting events I've attended and this one is the singing. The fans, especially those behind the goal, spend literally the entire game--all 90 minutes of play, plus halftime, plus a decent amount of time before and after, singing team fight songs. Half of them aren't even watching the game--they're just jumping around, playing drums, and going nuts. Almost as impressive is the endless array of songs. I lost count around 20. I take some pride in knowing all the words to "Meet The Mets," including the verses ("Oh the butcher and the baker and the people on the street, where do they go? To meet the Mets!"). But these guys make me feel like I just learned a limerick only to see someone else reciting the Iliad in the original ancient Greek. The singing doesn't die down for anything--even a goal by the opposition. In the U.S., when the home team's pitcher gives up a home run, the crowd might go silent for a bit before regrouping. Here, the singing just got louder, the fans either oblivious to the negative result, or just pushing right through it.

If that's the reaction to something bad, you can just imagine what happens when Nacional scores. I managed to see this happen three times. Some people light road flares (in the stands). Others light fireworks (again, in the stands). Some climb up to the very top of the 20-or-so foot fence behind the goal and scream with what I assume is excitement, but might well be an adverse reaction to rusty chain-link.

An additional interesting note is that there did not appear to be a scoreboard anywhere in the stadium. I realize that soccer is an inherently low-scoring affair, but I'm impressed that they can genuinely rely on the crowd to keep track of the tally. When the game ended with a 3-2 score in favor of Nacional, no one had to ask their neighbor what the result had been. Granted, the scoring of one game matters a bit less in champions league soccer. The concept is probably a bit strange to those of us who are accustomed to more common American sports, but the score from this match will be added to the score when Nacional visits Cuenca, and the combined tally will determine the winner.

The food (of course I have to mention it, even if just briefly) was also delicious. There isn't really such a thing as an orderly line down here, so I had to elbow my way past at least one child and one elderly gentleman, but I got my chorizo on a bun, and it was completely worth it. Add to that the churro I got from a vendor walking around, and I was in ballpark food heaven. They don't sell beer at the stadium (a good idea, believe me), but one can easily swing by a nearby parilla for some Pilsen or Patricia before the game.

So, we left the game at about 9, satisfied with the awesomeness of the experience (I mean that in the traditional sense of the word "awesome," as in "awe-inspiring"). We had a bit of trouble making up our minds as to what to do next, but ultimately settled on a trip over to the Teatro de Verano (Summer Theater) at Parque Rodó for a murga show, which might have been even cooler than the match. More on that later, though, as right now it's 8:30, the sun will be down inside of an hour, and I need to find something to eat for dinner.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:
Montevideo Soccer Match

Uruguay, I'm a guay

2010-02-10T21:20:00.003-05:00

Well, it's 10pm here in Montevideo, and the sky has been dark for about 45 minutes. Time just exists in a different way here, and it's a thing I'm still trying to wrap my mind around. In a place where you eat lunch at 2:30ish, dinner after 10, and where the sun sets around 9, I think the entire thing would make a lot more sense if everyone would just agree that it's two hours earlier than we're claiming. Unfortunately, I seem to be alone in that idea. Seriously, I'm getting up at the exact same time as I was in Costa Rica, but here it's called 4 hours later.

I didn't really know what to expect when I got here. I'd only ever met one Uruguayan person, a Spanish teacher I had when I went to Peru for two weeks in March of 2005, and took classes there. I took it as a good sign, however, when I woke up for my first morning and encountered Claudia, the very same Spanish teacher, who in the last five years has moved back to Uruguay and taken a job teaching Spanish here. Seriously. The only person I've ever known from this country happens to work at the very school I'm attending. It's downright ridiculous.

It's a nice change of pace to be back in a real city, and all the more exciting that it's one in which it is summer and there are palm trees. I have to say though, I have absolutely no idea how all of these people are not only alive, but apparently healthy. The local specialty food, the chivito, is the kind of thing a cardiologist might dream about a few days after contracting malaria. It consists of meat wrapped in ham, cheese, and bacon. The entire thing is sauteed in either butter or olive oil, and served with an absolutely necessary side of greasy french fries. More often than not, dinner is a steak. Just a steak. For what it's worth, I have seen vegetables. I just haven't seen anyone eating them.

As with neighboring Argentina, almost everyone here drinks mate, almost all the time. Mate (pronounced "MAH-tay") is a tea-like beverage made from a South American plant. They fill a mate cup--usually a hollowed out gourd--with hot water and powdered mate leaves. They then drink through a special straw called a bombilla, which resembles a hollow spoon with holes at the bottom. The holes allow the water to seep through while filtering out the chunks of mate, thus letting the drinker imbibe only the tea. It's a nifty little thing that I have tried before in the states, but have not yet gotten to test out here in actual mate-drinker land. Oddly, they don't serve mate at restaurants or cafes. People just bring their gourds with them wherever they go. Today, however, I got a gourd, so tomorrow I'll be mate-ing it up, and I'll let you know how it goes.

I haven't gotten to explore the city a ton, but I've walked around a few areas and it's really nice. There are parillas all over the place, which are restaurants where basically all the food is slow-grilled with indirect heat from a charcoal flame. "Parilla" literally translates to "grill," so that makes sense. One really cool thing here is the Mercado del Puerto, the port market, which is basically a shopping mall of parillas. I had only been to the touristy outside, but today I took a pass through after lunch and it's amazing. I was too full for anything other than a beer (the main local options are Patricia and Pilsen), but I expect to eat there more or less every day between now and when I leave. In addition to fairly decent beer, the Uruguayans make some reasonably tasty red wine (I'm currently drinking a glass of Tannat-Merlot blend) and a concoction called medio y medio--literally "half and half," consisting of half white wine and half sparkling muscadine wine. Medio y medio is possibly the sweetest thing I've ever consumed, but it's quite refreshing when it's 80 degrees out (apologies to my friends and family snowed in in the Northeast corridor).

Something I always enjoy noticing in other countries is what kind of businesses tend to combine in ways that we don't expect. In the states, it's Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. In Nicaragua it was hot dogs and coffee. Here, it's pastries and liquor. Yes, I've seen three different pastry shop / liquor stores here, with every indication being that there are others. It's nice to be able to grab a dulce de leche filled croissant and a bottle of dulce de leche liquor at the same time. In fairness, I haven't tried either yet, out of concern that all my teeth would spontaneously dissolve. But it's good to know I have the option. Of course, I've been spending those same calories on two ice cream cones a day, so maybe I'm not gaining a whole lot. The ice cream here is incredible (although I've heard Argentine ice cream is even better). Yesterday I had mascarpone ice cream. Today I had breadfruit and something that was a swirl of cream, dulce de leche, and chocolate pieces. Win.

I suppose I should also talk a little bit about the challenge of learning Spanish in the Rio de la Plata region (which is basically Uruguay and Argentina). If you've ever heard an Argentine speak spanish, you know it's quite different from other types of Spanish. It actually sounds beautiful, almost like a cross of Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, which makes sense given the immigrant backgrounds of the region. The "ll" or "y" sounds, which in other places are something of a cross between an English "j" and "y," are instead pronounced the way we'd pronounce "sh" or even the "zh" sound, like the "j" in "Jacques." So it's extremely difficult when you're accustomed to "Yo me llamo" being pronounced "jo may yah-mo" and instead hearing "sho may zhah-mo." Moreover, Rioplatense Spanish uses the "Vos" form, and does so with much greater frequency than I found in Nicaragua. "Vos" is used almost exclusively, with "tú" showing up in occasional formal circumstances, and "usted" largely reserved for VIPs. The conjugations of most verbs are completely different when using "vos," so it's not an easy adjustment, and something I've never really learned before. On the plus side, it's a fairly easy conjugation, as there are almost no irregular verbs (for those who speak the language, the verb "tener," for example, goes from "tu tienes" to "vos tenés." The accent moves to the second syllable, but it is otherwise almost completely straightforward. That said, one of the challenges I'm encountering is the incorporating and applying all the various types of Spanish I've been learning. It's not really a big deal so long as one stays consistent, but it's tough to do that when you've gone from "tu" in Nicaragua to "usted" in Costa Rica to "vos" down here, so I frequently find myself botching pronouns. In the long run I do think it will be better for my language skills, but for the moment it's a bit of a challenge.

Politics* here are also worth talking about. I've been told by multiple people that Uruguayans are deeply passionate and interested in national politics. The incumbent liberal party is very popular here, and their newest candidate, Pepe Mujica, was recently elected to the presidency (the incumbent, Tabaré Vázquez, can't run again for another five years, according to term limit laws). Voting is mandatory. If you do not vote, you are taxed. In all honesty, this could make a very interesting subject should my graduate research take me more towards comparative politics.

Montevideo is sort of a hard city to pin down, although I've done my best here. I've encountered a pretty broad range of opinions, pretty quickly. Initially I met a number of people who mostly seemed to bash the city. The primary complaint seemed to be that it has less to offer. This strikes me a bit as choosing to go to Charleston, SC over New York, and complaining that Charleston isn't New York. Certainly it's true, but that doesn't mean Charleston isn't a wonderful city in its own right. It is, in fact, one of my favorites. So I've withheld criticism of Montevideo, and I'm starting to think that was wise. I'm really enjoying this city. It doesn't have the bustle of a major city, or the active nightlife scene. But it's a really pleasant and relaxing place with a lot of cool cultural traits and really beautiful areas.

Anyway, with that, I'm off to watch last night's Lost episode, and then head to bed. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to make it to a soccer match. The South American champions league is going on right now, and Nacional, one of the Uruguayan teams, is taking on Deportivo Cuenco, from Ecuador. I'm planning to go with my new friends Matt, Liz, and Sam (a different Sam from the one in Central America), so hopefully we'll be able to get in and avoid any damage at the hands of riotous South American soccer crowds (note to my mother: don't worry, it's no more dangerous than a Mets game).

Saludos,
Seth

*For those who are wondering, Laura Chinchilla won the election in Costa Rica, and will be Costa Rica's first female president.

Fotografía:
Montevideo

Adiosta Rica

2010-02-07T21:09:00.001-05:00

I'm writing this from about 30,000 feet above probably Ecuador or Colombia, en route to Montevideo, Uruguay. The flight is about 7 hours, and, with Central America in my rearview, at least for a while, this seems like an opportune moment to try to synthesize my thoughts on my time there.

First let's start with Costa Rica. I was talking last night with my brother Art, and he asked me to tell him about the place, and I found I had a tough time explaining it. I think we can agree at this point that I rarely run out of things to say, so I found it a bit surprising, but the truth, I think, is that the real Costa Rica is less tangible to a tourist than the real Nicaragua was. Costa Rica is a beautiful country, with excellent people and a strong cultural identity, to be sure. However, it at times also feels like a country that has given its identity over to tourists and expats. I was trying to articulate this idea to Art, and I think the best explanation I came up with for how Costa Rica differs from other countries is this: visiting another city or country necessarily puts you into the midst of that region's culture. Its food, its music, its architecture, and its language are all things that you cannot avoid--not that you should want to--and that are just part of the experience of being a tourist. In Costa Rica, it seems to me to be distinctly possible to visit the country, see a number of places and things, and never once encounter authentic Costa Rican culture.

Tico culture is certainly there--and it's great. But you have to look for it much more than you do anywhere else I've ever been. In places like Manuel Antonio, La Fortuna, and, from what I've heard, Jacó, it almost feels like the local culture has quietly moved out of the way to make room for tourist culture. Even the popular tica refrain, "pura vida"--which literally translates to "pure life" but is used more like "no worries"--is emblazoned on every crappy mug, t-shirt, and stuffed animal you see, making it feel at times like a phrase that belongs more to the country's visitors than to its residents. I suspect this issue will only continue to grow, as many locals get priced out of their homes in developing tourist hubs like Quepos.

This is, without question, one of the downsides of having a tourism-based economy, and of creating a place in which any traveler can feel at home. The news is not all bad, of course. Costa Rica is easily the most stable country in the region, with a good education system and a leading environmental research university. Many of the people I met were college-educated, with a number of them having studies abroad in Europe. The lack of a military has allowed Costa Rica to spend on public services far superior to those of their neighbors. I spent two weeks there without once being panhandled--something I could never say about New York. A recent ranking system devised by Yale and Columbia placed Costa Rica third in the world in environmentally sustainable policies. As much as there are any number of tourist services that take advantage of the appeal of the phrase "eco-tourism," there are many more operations that really take the idea to heart, and try to preserve the natural beauty that draws so many of the people who make the economy run. It would be nice to see outside developers catch up, however.

The Costa Rican political situation is also pretty complex. The lack of a military has earned it respect in the region and the nickname "the Switzerland of Central America." President Oscar Arias tried to negotiate a resolution to the Honduran coup last year, although he ultimately failed when the military refused to restore the old presidential government--sort of an important point in those negotiations, I imagine. There are plenty of domestic issues, as well. A few of the presidents between Arias's first Nobel-winning term and his current less successful one have been convicted on corruption charges, with another having fled to Europe to escape his own comeuppance. Interestingly, he political system was a straight two-party system for years, until Ottón Solís mounted an credible third-party push four years ago, narrowly losing to Arias as the candidate of the left-leaning Citizen Action Party (PAC). This year there are four candidates. Laura Chinchilla represents Arias's incumbent party, the National Liberation Party (PLN), while the other establishment party, Unidad, tries to overcome all of its convicted former candidates. Their candidate, Luis Fishman, is running under the amusing and telling slogan "el menos mal," or "the least bad." The other two candidates, Solís and Otto Guevara, are the surging challengers. Guevara, the candidate from the Libertarian Movement Party (ML) is a Harvard grad with the most right-leaning agenda in the group. Of course, in this case, that just means that he recently abandoned his thoughts of privatizing the healthcare and education systems, and he wants to lower taxes. What's also interesting is that, even with four candidates, virtually no one I talked to seemed particularly inspired by any of them, and a lot of them felt resigned to just voting for their usual party, because they didn't know what else to do.

At any rate, Costa Rica is clearly very different from Nicaragua. Before I left, Nicaragua had been described to me as "Costa Rica without the excessive tourism." There is some truth to this, in the sense that there are a lot of cultural similarities--they even argue over who invented gallo pinto--and a lot of the natural landscapes are similar. But Costa Rica is, in truth, a developed country with no military and a functioning--if occasionally corrupt--democracy. Nicaragua is, by contrast, still just beginning to climb out of the hole it found itself in by the end of the 1980s. Relations with the U.S. and its revenue stream obviously have a lot to do with this, but a lot of it can also be traced to the fact that while Sandinistas and Contras were killing each other in the streets of Nicaragua, Costa Rica was spending money on social programs and infrastructure. A socialist government like Managua's FSLN isn't going to be able to do a lot for the populace if it's spending most of its money on beefing up the military and consolidating power. Costa Rica has also historically done a better job of utilizing its natural resources. Even before tourism became king, pineapples, coffee, and palm oil took turns as staple exports. Nicaragua has the ability to produce all of the same things, but has been stuck dealing with internal turmoil for too long to do anything about it. So it is no surprise that the two countries are positioned as they are.

The truth is that Nicaragua and Costa Rica remind me a bit of estranged siblings. They share a great deal, but there is a lingering animosity between them. Nicas say ticos* are "muy fresa," and ticos blame Nicas for recent surges in crime in the northern part of the country. Ticos also point out--rightfully although less self-consciously than might be warranted--that Nicaragua does a poor job of protecting its natural resources and landscapes. Whatever, the case, the countries need to find a way to coexist, economically and physically. Right now, some 20% of Nicaraguans live abroad, most of them just across the border in their employment-rich southern neighbor. Perhaps some combination of Costa Rican investment and Nicaraguan policy change (e.g. less military spending, improved education and environmental protection) would start them down that road. For the time being, however, it seems a long way off. As long as one brother remains the second poorest country in the hemisphere, and the other remains the favorite son of all the other countries in the neighborhood, we can expect to encounter these types of issues.

Anyway, with that I move on to South America, where I'll have to learn (again) how to conjugate verbs when I'm calling someone "vos." I also happen to be arriving barely a week into the month-long festivities of Carnaval, about which I'm incredibly excited. Uruguay is one of the most developed countries in South America, known largely for its beaches and small old-world style cities. It is a common vacation destination for Argentinos and Brasileños alike. I'll have to make friends again pretty much from scratch, so I'm going to leave my misanthropic tendencies at the door. For the time being, however, I have about 4 hours to kill on this plane, so I'm going to read and maybe take a nap. If past history is any guide, it may take me a few days on the ground before I get to check back in, so enjoy the Super Bowl, and I'll talk to you all soon.

Saludos,
Seth

*If you're wondering about the capitalization, "Nica" comes from the country name, whereas "tico" comes from the diminutive form used in Costa Rica's countryside, where, for example, a baby might be referred to as "el chiquitico."

Scholastic fantastic

2010-02-07T00:32:00.000-05:00

I'm in Panama City, Panama for the night and thoroughly exhausted from a long day of mangrove-seeing, flying, and blogging, so I'm going to head to bed. My flight tomorrow is 7.5 hours long, so with any luck I'll be able to use it to be semi-productive.

This does seem as good a time as any to plug the two schools where I've so far taken Spanish classes. In Granada, Nicaragua Mia has an excellent and capable staff, and offers great cultural activities as well. They set me up with a wonderful homestay, and were very helpful in my efforts to navigate Nica culture.

In Quepos / Manuel Antonio, Academia D'Amore has a small but highly qualified staff, connections to lots of local tours, and also set me up with an incredible host family. They are very dedicated to their students' learning the language and the culture of Costa Rica--two things American tourists in the area often undervalue.

The philosophy is different between the two schools. Nicaragua Mia emphasizes private lessons whereas D'Amore prefers small groups, so that students can learn to notice each other's errors and improve that way as well. I don't know where I fall in this argument, as I think there is a lot of benefit to both approaches. So, I'll just simply say that if you ever decide to go to one of these two places, I highly recommend the two schools above.

And with that, it's bedtime. I'll leave you with the youtubed version of my video of the sloth outside my school.

Saludos,
Seth

I don't practice Santamaría

2010-02-06T16:05:00.004-05:00

Lest anyone doubt Costa Rica's emergence as a sort of unofficial 51st state, I am currently sitting in Juan Santamaría International Airport in San Jose opposite a Church's Chicken and a Schlotzsky's Deli. Moreover, I partook of a Cinnabon about an hour ago (I hadn't had one years, and vacation calories don't count anyway).

Anyway, while I await my flight to Panama, where I'll be staying for less than 24 hours, I figured I'd take the opportunity to let you know that my Quepos album is now posted in its entirety, and that I have pictures up from last night's trip to the Wildlife Refuge run by hotel Sí, Como No, and this morning's boat trip around a mangrove swamp. Both were really amazing in completely different ways.

If you're wondering who Juan Santamaría is, by the way, he is a Costa Rican national hero, who was killed setting fire to the quarters of invading troops. Who was invading? William Walker, one time dictator of Nicaragua and the original "filibuster." With all the idiocy that's been going on in the senate in the last year, it's interesting to know that "filibuster" originally meant invading a foreign country as a private citizen. Walker hired an army (with covert US support) and invaded and controlled Nicaragua for years. As he was losing an uprising, he retreated, burning Granada to the ground, and placing a plaque that said "Here was Granada." Fortunately, the Nicas are more resilient than he realized, and built the city back to its original splendor. Walker then tried to invade Costa Rica, where Santamaría and others caught his troops off-guard by bringing the battle to them. After a decisive defeat here, Walker turned his attention to Honduras, where the populace decided he was sufficiently dickish to warrant his death by hanging.

They're announcing my flight now, so I'm going to get ready to board. I'll try to check in later with some final thoughts on Costa Rica, and all her pura vida wonder.

Saludos,

Seth

The Guy-O Más Gallo

2010-02-06T13:21:00.007-05:00

There's a chain of electronics stores in Central America called El Gallo Más Gallo. Literally translated, this means "the rooster most rooster." More accurately, it's something like "the most macho rooster," because the word for rooster ("gallo") is also used to mean "tough."

One of my concerns before heading down here was the realization that in hot climates like the ones I have been and will continue to be visiting, scorpions are known to pop up from time to time. Most just give a really painful sting--though I've also heard of it giving people a metallic taste in their mouths for a few days, or giving them partial numbness. Occasionally, if not frequently, the stings can be fatal, especially if you turn out to be allergic to them.

I have no idea if I'm allergic to scorpion stings, but I was endowed by my creator(s) with a fairly acute sense of my own mortality. It's not so much that I'm afraid of death as that I would really greatly prefer to continue living. I'm only a month into this adventure, and there's a whole lot more that I want to see.

So, heading into this trip, I anticipated that I would likely experience my first face-to-exoskeleton encounter with a scorpion in the wild. And I truly had no idea whether I would stay calm and deal with it, or scream like Ned Flanders and run away. Score one for my animal instincts.

Last night, while packing up to leave Quepos (and subsequently, Costa Rica), I was pulling my shirts out of the dresser. To my surprise, I picked up my black cotton tee to reveal the friendly fellow pictured above, probably about three inches head-to-stinger. I should add that, although I had prepared myself for the probability that this trip would include a scorpion, I had not encountered one yet, and had in fact been told by my host family that they had never had one in the house in the many years they'd lived there. So this wasn't one of those "I should be careful in case there are scorpions" moments (of which I've had many). This was a "holy shit, that's a scorpion!" moment. My only immediate reaction was to say "whoah!" a little loudly--though fortunately not loud enough to wake Doña Haydee or Don Victor.

So, I looked at the little bastard, and thought for a moment. And I realized, well, obviously I need to kill it. But first, I totally have to take a picture. So, the last thing little Scorpius saw was a flash bulb immediately followed by a hiking shoe--a shoe guided by my swift right hand of justice. He squirmed after the first attempt (again, I didn't want to wake my hosts), so I gave him another shot.

I have to say, I'm not accustomed to killing a type of insect big enough to completely retain its shape after it meets its demise, so I stared at it good and long to see if it would move again. When it did not, I scooped it onto the sole of my shoe and flushed it down the toilet.

As you would expect, I spent the rest of my night shaking out every piece of clothing and luggage I had. I did not encounter any of his friends, although I did find several pieces of exoskeleton that he had shed in one of my luggage cubes (including an earlier version of his stinger).

We're not really sure where he came from. The best guess is that he snuck into my backpack somewhere and found his way into my luggage. He was there long enough to molt and grow a new exoskeleton, so it's hard to say when it would have happened. At any rate, I have by no means won the war. But today I hold my head high having won the first battle. Gallo Más Gallo, meet Guy-O Más Gallo.

Saludos,

Seth

Slothful

2010-02-04T18:56:00.005-05:00

I ducked into a little smoothie place to escape the heat, enjoy a fan, and take advantage of the free wi-fi. I thought I'd use this opportunity to check in with some notes and thoughts. I'm off to Panama City for one night on Saturday, and then I have a seven and a half hour flight down to Montevideo, Uruguay on Sunday. The trip from here to there is the rough equivalent of crossing the U.S., distance-wise, so it's not a short one. Sadly, this means I'll be missing the Super Bowl. I will, however, be discovering exactly what South American airline food is like, so that's a plus.

Today's been a bit of a lazy day for me, which is what the title's all about. The Spanish word for sloth, "perezoso," is also the word for lazy. I realize that this is true in English as well, but for us "sloth" is a less common term. In Spanish, "perezoso" is the main word you use for lazy.

Thought one is that I love fresh fish, and I will miss the abundance of that here. Mahi mahi being one of the cheaper items on the menu is a really amazing thing. Ceviche is everywhere, as is grilled fish, and it's just been heavenly. It allows me to convince myself that even with all the butter, it's still pretty healthy. It's almost certainly not, but shh, don't tell anyone.

I got to try octopus ceviche at long last. It was really pretty tasty. Per my father's request, I posted pictures of it.

Sloths are absolutely my new favorite animal. We had one show up at school today, a young one, and it was just preposterously and unreasonably munchkintastic. Seriously, I have no idea how evolution has permitted these animals to persist, because they move like molasses, but I'm so very glad they're still here. Interestingly, the mothers raise their young in a certain neighborhood, and then move away when the child reaches adulthood, leaving the child to continue living in an area with which they're familiar. I imagine that's the longest goodbye in the world, because it must just take a day for the mother sloth to get two trees over. Seriously, check out the Quepos album for pictures and videos.

On the subject of adorable creatures, Junmei, the three year-old great granddaughter of my host parents refused to let me leave the house the other day until I used her scissors to cut her an elephant out of paper.

I haven't mentioned this yet, but Costa Rica's presidential election is this Sunday. I've been very interested, watching a debate and discussing it with many of the ticos I know. However, I'm still having a hard time discerning the actual differences among the candidates. I'm sure there are some, but being so unfamiliar with the issues, it's really hard to tell. Based on things that have nothing at all to do with actual politics, I'm partial to Laura Chinchilla. In addition to having a last name that is the same as a pet I had in middle and high school, she has an extremely catchy theme song. She is also one of two sitting Vice Presidents under current president and Nobel laureate Oscar Arias. Other candidates are Ottón Solís, Luis Fishman (not the most Costa Rican name ever), and Otto Guevara. Laura started off as the bigtime frontrunner, but has lost a lot of ground to Guevara. She still leads the polls however, and seems poised to win on Sunday. I know that she has the vote of my host mother Doña Haydee.

God bless the internet. The only TV I care about keeping up with is Lost, and I managed to watch the newest episode only a day after it aired. I also learned today that I'll be back home for the last episode, which makes me really happy, because I can watch it day of with other lunatics like me.

I think that's all for the moment. I'm gonna grab some dinner and figure out how to spend my last day here tomorrow.

Saludos,

Seth

Blogue Manuel Antonio

2010-02-03T18:11:00.004-05:00

I've posted some pictures from yesterday's guided walk through the national park, available here. The guide showed me how to put my camera lens up to his telescope, so we got some pretty cool up-close pictures of animals, such as that above. We saw two sloths (one two-toed, one three-toed), several capuchin monkeys and howler monkeys, two nutria, some iguanas, and several spiders and birds.

There are also some new pictures from Quepos, including my sighting of several amazing scarlet macaws (above), as well as pics of the host fam, available here. This album should also include two sloth videos that apparently didn't upload properly before.

At some point I'll write some more about my experiences and thoughts on Costa Rica, in particular the comparison with their neighbors (and rivals) up in Nicaragua. But for the moment, I'm off to try some octopus ceviche.

UPDATE:

Apparently a sign saying "Special: Octopus Ceviche" actually means "we had octopus ceviche the last few days, but don't have any left, but haven't changed our sign." Bummer. I'm going to try again tomorrow. This is important, dammit.

Saludos,

Seth

Alemanas and Me

2010-02-02T18:56:00.005-05:00

I wanted to devote a post to something I really wasn't expecting to give a lot of thought to before I left, but which has been popping up a bit lately. It is, I think, a lot more personal than most of my other posts so far, and it's not really about traveling, but I think a large part of this experience isn't just what I learn about the places I visit, but also what I learn about myself and the world in general. So, in that regard, I think something about self-discovery, which this is, is relevant. Anyway, I wanted to talk a little bit about my travel experience thus far as a Jewish person, and, specifically, as the grandson of holocaust survivors.

I don't feel the need to get into a great deal of detail here regarding my own relationship to Judiasm, as it's not actually that relevant, and it's not something that I've been reflecting on much during this trip. I think it suffices to say that I feel a deep cultural and familial tie to Jewish history, and I love the traditions. I generally believe that questions of theology are, as Barack Obama once put it, above my pay grade. But I adore the idea of Yom Kippur being a time to reflect on our own imperfections and possibilities for self-improvement, and nothing beats getting together with family and friends for a wonderful Passover seder, and a celebration of the great fortune of being free people. So in that regard, even though I do not follow most of the specific practices of Judaism (I really like bacon), it still has a lot to do with how I percieve myself. And, as noted, my maternal grandparents survived the holocaust, and lost nearly their entire families, which is the type of thing that tends to linger a bit in one's mind. So this is something I tend to think about a little when people here asks me why I have a Spanish last name.

Anyway, as I mentioned at the top, this is something I wasn't much expecting to confront on this trip, at least not in any kind of depth. But it has come up a couple of times, and came to a head a little bit last week, so it's been on my mind. Again, I don't much feel the need to get into the details because that's not the focal point for me, but I've had a couple of strange conversations. I'd just as soon skip specifics, but I spoke with two different people, one Nicaraguan and one American (a classmate), who made some fairly sweeping and unfounded generalizations about Jewish people. In particular, my classmate from the states seemed to believe that all Jewish people were spiteful, simply because his ex-wife's Jewish mother was. He qualified his statement by adding, "maybe it's just the poor ones." My response was "maybe she was just one person." Needless to say I was happy when it was decided that my Spanish skills were sufficiently superior to his that we should be in different classes.

So this had all been present in my mind, if not at the very front of it, for a little while. On top of all that, I spent a lot of time last week with three new friends, Anna and Olive, from Germany, and Valerie, from Switzerland. I mentioned to Sam, only half-jokingly, that I wondered what my grandparents would have thought about my having dinner in a group where half the conversation was in German. Of course, throughout my life I've had a variety of German friends, and my babysitter growing up was German. But I'll confess to the fact that the deeper history tends to linger in the back of my mind. It's something I can get past of course, but generally when I meet a new person and find out that they're German, I have to fight the instinct to cringe a little. It is extremely difficult for me to separate thoughts of Germany from the thought of my grandparents, and the unspeakable tragedies they endured.

So, flash forward to last Thursday night, when a few of us went to this beautiful apartment on the hill to hang out, have a few beers, and play guitar with David, the director of my Spanish school, and some of his friends. It's worth noting up front that David is a solid dude, and the woman on whom this story centers is not a friend of his. She was someone several chain links out from the hosts. Anyway, the night was a lot of fun--good people, great music, and general fun times. At a certain point in the evening, however, a thoroughly besotted woman in her 40's came over and started talking to me. She was asking about my guitar and making fairly normal conversation for a while. She then asked if I was Jewish, and when I said yes, she said "I knew it. I could tell." This in and of itself was something I didn't give much thought at the time. Blueish-green eyes aside, my face isn't exactly Aryan in appearance. As the woman continued talking, I began to find her aggressive drunk-talk unpleasant, and I decided to walk over to where my friends Ben, Anna, and Thomas were playing Bocce. Feeling snubbed, she became downright rude, and started saying a number of things that ranged from slightly insensitive to downright offensive, mostly about my being Jewish. She seemed to have been particularly bitter about her divorce from a Jewish man. How that had anything to do with me, of course, is beyond comprehension. Initially I engaged her, simply because the things she was saying were so absurd I was certain that she was joking. However, as she persisted, I grew weary of her, and I tried to withdraw from the situation.

Unfortunately, once someone like that gets going, they tend not to let up, so she grew louder, and I grew increasingly peeved. It was at this point that Anna had clearly had enough, and decided it was time to switch from passive-aggression to straight aggression. Anna started challenging the woman directly, pointing out the idiocy of everything she was saying, adding, "he's a good guy, so what does it matter if he's Jewish or Hindu or whatever? Why should someone's religion or culture matter to you at all?" For the next 20 minutes or so, I watched Anna pick apart (in her non-native language, no less) every single stupid thing this woman was saying. At this point, it was getting late, so my group decided it was time to head out anyway. But watching Anna take my side and go after this woman's misconceptions and prejudices made me consider my own.

As I thought about it, I realized that one can reasonably draw a parallel between the relationship of young Germans to the holocaust and that of young Americans to slavery and, more recently, Jim Crow. I look at the civil rights attrocities that went on in my country, and feel so utterly disconnected from that, and feel so firmly the need to distance myself from that type of thinking and behavior, and confront it when I see it. And I think the same is true of many young Germans with respect to the Holocaust. I asked Anna her take on this, and she agreed, noting that her education in Germany had involved a great deal of learning about various world religions, and strongly promoted the ideas of tolerance and equality. And for the most part, she told me this is something young Germans feel pretty fervently about. This is not to say, of course, either that racism is dead in the U.S. or that anti-Semetism is dead in Germany. But it certainly gives one a good deal of hope for the future. And I have to say, it was a pretty powerful moment for me when I realized that in my interactions with these lovely German girls, I was the one who was clinging (even if only slightly) to old prejudices.

So, on this particular front, I've come away with two important lessons. The first is, outside the bubble of the northeast, being Jewish can definitely mean being noticed as different, and idiots are everywhere. The second, much more important thing, is that although history is a profoundly powerful force--especially family history--it is undoubtedly worth making the effort to overcome it. Moreover, when you have to make multiple generational leaps just to mentally link a grudge to someone, it is just not right to bear that particular grudge with them. I'm doubtful that any kind of lasting peace is likely in my lifetime, but I am certain that blaming people for the actions of their ancestors is as fruitless as it is detrimental. So all that remains is the question I posed to Sam, regarding what my grandparents would think. Frankly, given the immense amount of love they held in their hearts, I feel pretty confident that they would have been proud of my ability to learn this lesson for myself, and happy to see me come out of the experience with some great new friends.

Rancho Margot Blogo

2010-02-01T15:10:00.004-05:00

I'm now back in Quepos, excitedly awaiting my lunch of sauteed local grouper, and this seems an opportune moment to reflect on my last two days at Rancho Margot. I originally intended to go to the Arenal area to see the volcano, and with the hope of finally glimpsing some lava at the third volcano of my trip. Instead, I got completely taken in by the incredible world that is Rancho Margot, in tiny Pueblo Nuevo, west of Arenal.

As I mentioned in my last post, Rancho Margot is a sustainable organic farm and ecotourism operation. What I did not realize at the time, however, is the extent to which Rancho Margot surpasses the high expectations with which I approached it. The farm tour was a truly remarkable experience. My initial instinct would be to describe the farm as something of a circular chain, in which every point has some sort of output biproduct that is used elsewhere as another input. A circle, however, is not complex enough, and I'm thinking it is a bit more like a web.

Part of a tributary of the nearby Rio Cano is diverted to two turbines that provide hydroelectric power to the entire site, inluding the bungalows, which in turn provide the funding that pays the workers who operate the farm, which contains chickens for meat and eggs, cattle for milk (and meat, I think, though it wasn't on the menu when I was there), and pigs for meat. They're not fully self-sustained in terms of the chicken or beef yet, but they expect to be soon. Animal waste is separated into liquids and solid. The solids are placed in bins with thousands of worms, who over the course of a few months digest it and turn it into soil. The liquid is diverted to a pipe system that harnesses the methane gas for use in the kitchen, and the remaining liquid is used as fertilizer. Fertilizer and soil is also combined with compost piles housed in two enormous containers, which, perhaps most impressively, have seemingly endless coils of pipe running through them, so as to use the naturally heat-producing biodegrading process of the compost to provide hot water for the rest of the complex--meaning not just hot showers but a hot pool in which to swim and relax. The compost and fertilizer are used to grow a massive range of plants, trees, herbs, fruits and vegetables, all which are used to feed both people and animals, and ultimately generate compost. Uneaten people food goes back to the animals, and uneaten animal food goes to the compost pile. Excess grease from the kitchen is converted into soap for the bathrooms. Pesticides are all natural, and produced on site, ranging from microbes originally harnessed from nearby mountains and cultivated in vats to pungent basil plants meant to draw the attention of insects away from more important plants nearby. To keep insects from developing any immunity, the farmers constantly rotate through the various pesticides (which, it's worth noting, keep insects away, rather than killing them). Even the drinking water flows from a nearby spring. For more detail on the farm side of things, check out this recent article from triplepundit.com.

In addition to all that, the ranch has an animal rescue program, which works to train animals rescued from black market trade, and ultimately release them back into the wild. There's also a reforestation program, which is designed to restore nearby patches of razed rainforest to their former glory. I am certain that I've forgotten something, because their accomplishments are pretty numerous. They have earned four of five leafs from a sustainable tourism rating program. According to Tom, Juan's childhood friend who runs a lot of the day to day operations of the ranch, the only thing keeping them from the fifth leaf is adequate handicap accessibility, something they are working on, and are hoping to have accomplished before the next inspection.

Lest that last statement sound like this is some blind chase of accolades, it is clear from walking the grounds and talking to the people that Rancho Margot is a labor of love. Juan seems to be one of those rare people Malcom Gladwell might write a book about, who possesses a unique combination of brilliance, creativity, charisma, and funding. He opened the first Burger King ever in Europe, which remains, according to Tom, the most successful Burger King in the world today. So, it is worth noting that even the funding flows directly from Juan's own ingenuity. In Rancho Margot, Juan has managed to follow through on his lifelong dream, teaming and working closely with a number of scientists and engineers from Costa Rica's EARTH University to figure out all of the incredibly complex details involved in setting up the infrastructure for this operation.

Almost as remarkable as the farm itself is that they have done all of this in less than six years. If that sounds impressive in writing, a tour around the facility reveals it to be nothing short of staggering. Last night I mentioned to Juan's son, Freddy, who runs the volunteer program, that I was amazed that they had gotten all of these things up and running in such a short period of time. His response, to his and all of their credit, was, "well, it's up, I don't know about running." He was still feeling the heat from the 90 distance runners who camped out last night on the facility's soccer field. The small paid and volunteer staff had to deal with serving what seemed to be the longest buffet line the area (and probably any of us) had ever seen. Although Tom was a bit concerned that they might appear overwhelmed, the truth is that from my perspective, they really seemed to take it all in stride, and handle it quite well, with everyone chipping in to help out wherever it was needed. Though, I should add, I certainly do feel for the kitchen staff, who had to stay late serving food last night, and who started making breakfast around 3 this morning so that the runners could eat at 4 before running 38 miles.

I guess the thing that impresses me the most is the attention to detail by the people at the top. Juan and Tom clearly have tabs on everything, and their presence is felt to a very reassuring degree. Both of them make a point of talking to all the guests, and getting to know people a bit. Yesterday at breakfast, Tom informed me that he enjoyed my last blog post, which showed up in his Google Alerts. Rigo, who runs the website among other things, did the same. I know they'll end up reading this one too, so I'll take this moment to say: hi guys, thanks for making my brief stay an excellent one. Hopefully I'll see you again soon (I'll get to that in a bit). The hands-on approach, it's worth noting, extends far beyond simple appearances and image concerns. Yesterday, during the tour, I noticed Juan climbing down a rock wall to personally inspect a water pump by the hot pool.

So, needless to say, I came away incredibly impressed by Rancho Margot. For as much as I have seen parts of this country's tourim industry moving too fast or thoughtlessly, Juan, Tom, and team provide a striking counterexample of the good that can be done. It is very clear that they are constantly re-assessing and seeking ways to cut down the incredibly limited amount of waste that is produced at the ranch. On the "moving too fast" side of the ledger, I will admit that their plans to add condos and hotel space in the near future are the kind of thing that generally would have me concerned, but I remain confident that the area is in highly qualified hands. The staff is entirely comprised of buena gente (Spanish for "good people"). The volunteers I met were all really smart and interesting, and great company, not to mention that Ian, the bartender, whipped up a pretty stellar mango concoction out of the blue, so that I could have something tropical to sip while swimming in the hot pool.

I'd also like to take a moment to discuss the food, which is quite simply unreal. Saturday's pig made two encore appearances yesterday, with another leg for lunch, and then the other two legs and the ribs for dinner (90 distance runners can go through a lot of pork). The vegetables were as good as any I've eaten, having come out of the ground as recently as that day in some cases. I was actually discussing with one of the volunteers, an American named Matt, that it seemed like an ideal place for a high end restaurant with farm fresh ingredients. Were I the type of person to meddle in the lives of others, I would point out that my friend John Adler, who loves both slow food and Costa Rica, would be a perfect fit for something like that. But I'm really not that type of person, so I won't point out that my friend John Adler, who is a truly remarkable chef with a preponderence of relevant experience and a very sophisticated palate, would really be a perfect fit for something like that. Granted, I don't really want John to leave Brooklyn, where I get to hang out with him and occasionally eat his food, but that's another issue entirely.

I suppose I should also just briefly touch on something that is more relevant to my own travels, and say that yesterday I went horseback-riding for the first time in my life, with my guide Jimmy. My horse was a bit ornery, and clearly not thrilled to have a beginner astride him, but he took me for a nice ride. I learned that galloping is, in addition to being totally fun, less painful than trotting, which involves more bouncing than one generally likes. Anyway, there are some pictures of me in a very handsome yellow helmet sitting on a big animal. Jimmy was also a really nice guy and a super interesting kid. We enjoyed some good conversation about psychology, politics, and other things. I also take this as a sign that my Spanish is progressing very well, because although he often responded to me in English (everyone wants to practice what they're learning), I managed to convey my relevant points in Spanish.

So, all told, the Rancho Margot experience was phenomenal. I completely skipped my plans to go to the butterfly garden, volcano observatory, and hot springs, and I am thrilled with that decision. I'm very seriously considering trying to work a two-or-more-week volunteer stay there into the back end of my trip. I'm hoping they could use someone with computer, analytic, or organizational skills. And I'm hoping I can find a way to squeeze it in among the many other fascinating places and countries I'm trying to visit before I return to my normal life. At the very least, amid the fun crazyness of the last few weeks, Rancho Margot provided a perfect vacation from my vacation.

And with that, I've finished my meal and I'm off to get some strawberry-vanilla-lime swirl ice cream to help me handle this high eighties heat (sorry NYC).

Saludos,

Seth

Fotografía:

Rancho Margot

Blogue de Lluvia

2010-01-30T20:04:00.005-05:00

Because the best jokes are the ones you need to explain, the Spanish term for "rainforest" is "Bosque de lluvia." So that's where the title of this post comes from. The reason for it is that I'm currently writing from the middle of the rainforest in the Arenal region of Costa Rica.

More specifically, I'm writing this post from Rancho Relaxo, a bit west of El Castillo. Okay, it's actually Rancho Margot, but I'm planning to lobby them for a change. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm out here to check out (from a distance) Volcán Arenal, one of the ten most active volcanoes in the world. In preparation for coming here, I scoped out my sometimes trusty Lonely Planet guide, and saw their glowing recommendation for Rancho Margot. Basically, Rancho Margot was founded by Chileno Juan Sostheim and his family in an effort to promote sustainable agriculture and community development in the Arenal region. It is a large (and stunningly beautiful) organic farm on the southwestern side of the Volcano, and houses a number of bungalows and bunkhouses, in the latter of which I'll be staying for the next two nights. All electricity is generated on site (I think it's hydroelectric, from the nearby river) and the meals feature ingredients--both animal and vegetable--raised on the farm and in the surrounding area. Tonight I had some incredibly fresh vegetables, as well as an unbelievable roasted pig (one of the volunteers here told me they slaughtered it this morning). I suppose I should add that, on top of all that, I'm writing this from a hammock, and I'm surrounded by the natural beauty of the rainforest. I should also point out that when Juan asked what I do and I told him that I would be heading to Berkeley in the fall, he mentioned that he's been in contact at various points with Berkeley prof (and noted foodie) Michael Pollen.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll get the full tour of the farm, so I expect I'll have more to report then. In the meantime though, I thought I'd talk a little more about Quepos and Manuel Antonio. I wanted to keep things fairly light in my first post yesterday, but there's certainly plenty to talk about over on the Pacific coast. The major issue in the area (which, of course, not everyone realizes) is sustainable eco-tourism. Costa Rica has taken great advantage of the concept of eco-friendly travel, but--in many cases--has unfortunately done a much better job of exploiting the label than it has of applying the philosophy. The national park system is excellent, and has protected a lot of important ecosystems. However, there are a number of places in the country where there has been little thought given to longer term sustainability, and Manuel Antonio is definitely one. It has also been generally detrimental to the area's inhabitants. The serious boost in tourism has brought a lot of money to the area, but resulted in prices that are, no joke, sometimes on par with what you see in New York. It's hard to get lunch for under $10, and a beer is never cheaper than $2. I know that's not horrible, but it's obviously a drastic change from the rest of Central America. As a New Yorker, I find New York prices less shocking than most, but it means that a lot of locals are getting priced out of the area. Even Quepos, which was historically just a small fishing town, is now too expensive for many of its inhabitands. My Spanish teacher, Sandra, is originally Quepeña, but has since moved to the slightly more remote town of Parrita. As far as I can tell, the locals view Parrita the way the British view Slough.

Another issue is that the rapid influx of luxury hotels and condos has outpaced legislation and management of the drawbacks that accompany such things. So there is no water treatment facility, meaning that most of the waste from the hotels is piped out to the ocean. As a result, though the beaches in Manuel Antonio are some of the most beautiful I've ever seen, the beach in Quepos is contaminated, and not a place one should even consider go into the water. Not all of the hotels are problematic--one called Si Como No is particularly noteworthy for its green approach. But generally speaking, the focus appears to be on cashing in while the getting is good, rather than building something that might last. The local government does what it can, keeping the regional transit hub over in Quepos, away from the parkland. The lack of nightlife on the Manuel Antonio side may well also be a result of noise regulations or something else I don't really know about. Camping overnight in the park is not permitted, and entry is limited to a certain number of visitors. So, suffice to say there is a lot that is done to protect the nature here.

Unfortunately, tourists, often unwittingly, remain a major problem. A particularly prevalent issue is interaction with the monkeys. The Central American Squirrel Monkey, which I mentioned yesterday, has very few natural habitats left, and this is one. A frustratingly common sight is a tourist giving a banana to a squirrel monkey. This is a very bad thing for a few reasons. First and foremost, the human hand carries bacteria that can be very harmful to the monkeys' digestive system, and sometimes even fatal. It also increases monkey reliance on human handouts in place of actual foraging, and moreover makes the monkeys much more aggressive than they otherwise would be (I saw one jump onto a woman who was holding a banana and take said banana out of her hand).

A large part of the problem, of course, is that people have no idea that it's bad to feed the monkeys, and they're completely adorable, so who wouldn't want a picture of their kid holding out a banana to a tiny five-fingered hand? But there needs to be a much greater effort made toward educating people about this issue when they get here. It doesn't help that the locals seem to think that telling people not to feed monkeys might cost them business. Almost none of the tourists I've encountered knew how seriously problematic an issue this is, and I only know about it because I happened to read it in the LP guide, and in Quepolandia, the local magazine for tourists (all in English). Quite honestly, it would not be hard for hotels to place a small sign in rooms just letting people know the risks, or placing signs at places that monkeys tend to congregate (like the wonderful Hospedaje Costa Linda). So instead the mechanism is just that those of us who do know see someone feeding a monkey, and can only tell them after they've already done it, thus making them feel like a huge jerk. The rapid pace of development doesn't have a quick or obvious solution, but it seems to me that a little bit of education would go a long way toward curbing the monkey feeding issue.

There's also a related issue with dolphin and whale watches. Unlike in the states, they are almost never run by qualified naturalists, and numerous tour operators have encouraged their guests to get in the water with the animals. Though they don't much mind boats, these particular dolphins and whales apparently get very skittish about people in the water, and this has, in some cases, disrupted their mating cycles. As a result, a lot of the animals are moving to calmer climes, meaning the fledgling whale watch industry here is already in decline.

Based on what I've seen (and read) thus far, this situation seems to be pretty pervasive throughout the country. Costa Rica has financially catapulted ahead of the rest of Central America in large part due to a combination of their lack of military spending and their massive tourism boom. The two, as it happens, are related, because the absence of a military means much more funding for police forces, a big part of why it's such a safe country, which feeds the tourism. But it appears to me at the moment as though current efforts to keep the ecotourism sustainable have the right idea, but in many cases are insufficient. This, as it happens, is a big part of why I wanted to come out here to Rancho Margot. Arenal is one of the most aggressively touristy areas in the country. The main hub of La Fortuna literally swarms with tour operators, both legitimate and fraudulent. Plush hotels with names in English dot the landscape, without involving themselves at all in the lives of the people who actually live here. So to come to a place that is not only actively trying to change the way people interact with their surroundings, but is reputedly having a great deal of success doing so, is really quite encouraging. I feel a little bad that my expectations are almost unfairly high right now, but the little I've seen so far has me thinking I've come to the right place to find what I'm looking for.

And with that, I'm off to catch up on some z's after three late nights out with my Man Ant peeps.

Saludos,

Seth

Fotografía:

Quepos and Manuel Antonio

Arenal and Rancho Margot

More monkeys than a barrel of fun

2010-01-29T17:06:00.003-05:00

I apologize for my recent absence from the blogosphere. I've been hanging out in the spectacularly beautiful coastal towns of Quepos and Manuel Antonio, in Costa Rica. Manuel Antonio and Quepos are on opposite sides of a large hill, with a bus that runs between them every half hour. Manuel Antonio is home to the beach and the park, and is where pretty much all the tourists go, with Quepos being a waystation between here and other cities. Almost none of the locals live on the Manuel Antonio side, or even on the hill in between. Oddly, even though all the tourists stay on the Manuel Antonio side, all the nightlife is either on the hill or on the Quepos side.

Once again, I'm staying with a lovely host family that takes good care of me, but doesn't have internet. I'm fine with that, as it means I'm more inclined to be out of the house or, when I am home, reading or playing guitar, or practicing my Spanish. My host parents are Doña Haydee and Don Victor. Don (and Doña, its feminine equivalent) is a Spanish term somewhere between "Mr." and "Sir." We don't really have the equivalent in English, but it's a term of respect that one uses with one's elders, and in formal settings. It's not very common in Nicaragua, but it's a big part of the culture here. At any rate, Doña Haydee and Don Victor are incredibly sweet septuagenarians who have welcomed me into their home. They have five children, each of whom has children of their own, and lives in the neighborhood. They also have two adorable great granddaughters who live next door, Meiying and Junmei (their mother is of Chinese descent). I've spent a good deal of time playing with them. Junmei, the older one, is three, and our ability to speak Spanish is roughly equivalent at this point, so we've had some very fun interactions. She delighted in giving me her my little pony doll, and having me do voices for that doll's interactions with a stuffed giraffe. She also likes to point at pictures of animals and identify them, e.g. "eso es mono" (this is a monkey), or "eso es tortuga" (this is a turtle).

Another reason I've been a bit out of the loop is that I reunited with my friends Ben and Sam, from Nicaragua, and we've spent the better part of my post-class days hanging out at their hostel or out on the beach. There's not a whole lot to do here other than walk through the park (which I have not yet done actually) and go to the beach (which I have). I'm okay with this, as I'm still recovering from the volcano trek. I planned this part of the trip to be a bit of a relaxing beach vacation in the midst of some more aggressive travel, so I'm okay with it. Tomorrow I'm going to Arenal Volcano, which is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. This is one you look at from a distance, as it sends up almost nightly displays of lava, fire, and smoke. The town also has hot springs, which are fed by the volcano, so I'm expecting to spend some time enjoying that as well. I've heard it's one of the most beautiful regions in a country that's full of them, so that should be pretty great.

Sam skipped town yesterday morning, but Ben is still here, and we've been having a lot of fun hanging out with a group of German girls we've met, Anna, Valerie, and Olive (the latter of whom also left yesterday). Last night the director of my Spanish school, David, invited me to come with him to a friend's house for a guitar jam session, so I brought the crew. Thomas, another good dude I know from classes, also came long. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Almost all expats and travelers, and too many guitars (I think I counted six). There were almost no times that we were all playing the same song, so it sort of devolved into little groups of people playing and singing. It was mostly a lot of fun, though there was a weird moment when an extremely drunk expat got a bit aggressive and unpleasant (I'll write more about that later, I think). The primary point, for the moment, is that the people here are great, and life is tranquilo. Pura vida, as they say here.

The two reasons to come to Manuel Antonio are the beaches and the wildlife. I've only been to two of the four beaches, but they were pretty spectacular. Three of the beaches belong to the Parque Nacional, which requires a $10 entrance fee. I got in at the end of the day with a friend's used ticket, so I didn't have time to make it to the last two beaches. I'm expecting to get to do a bit more of that next week when my friends skip town. The wildlife, however, has been incredible even without having yet ventured into the park. Look through my pictures and you'll see two types of monkeys (including the unreasonably adorable squirrel monkey), a three-toed sloth, and various lizards. More remarkable than the presence of these animals is their ubiquity. I've seen squirrel monkeys so many times that right now there are literally over ten of them about 20 feet away from me, and I'm just sitting here typing instead of going over and taking pictures--they are crazy precious though, like little people.

The sloth, or perezoso in Spanish, is a relative of the bear. I honestly have no idea how evolution has allowed these animals to continue to exist, but I'm glad it has. It is undoubtedly my new favorite animal--it looks like an animatronic plush toy. They move very slowly. I definitely recommend checking out the pictures and two videos I took of the sloth.

Right now, however, Anna is bugging me to stop typing and go to the beach, and I think she's got the right idea. So I'll try to check in from Arenal this weekend, but you may not hear from me again until next week (I get back Monday). Pictures of Quepos and Man. Ant. available here.

Saludos,

Seth

Tranquilo

2010-01-24T22:26:00.000-05:00

So, I'm now safely down in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, after a very short flight on the smallest plane I've ever ridden. Tonight will be the fifth different place I sleep in five nights, with a sixth on tap tomorrow, so I'm a little tuckered out. As such, I spent most of today taking it easy and watching football, and tinkering with the blog layout.* I did get to walk around Manuel Antonio just a little though, and I saw enough to know that I'm really excited about being here. Manuel Antonio National Park is very close by, and the town of the same name is nestled into a hill on the Pacific coastline just to the North. I'm particularly excited by the little I've seen of this place in part because the natural beauty is just stunning (an ocean can really do wonders for that), and in part because fish is a much larger part of the diet. I had a pretty incredible sauteed mahi filet for dinner, and a fresh tuna and avocado salad for lunch. Consider my mind blown.

Anyway, there will be plenty of words to devote to this next adventure, but I thought I'd take a moment to close the book on Nicaragua, since that part of my journey has come to an end. One word you'll hear a lot around Nicaragua is "tranquilo," which (as you'd expect) means tranquil or calm. If you ask someone how they're doing, "tranquilo" is the stock answer, not "bien." And based on the people I met, the answer is appropriate. It's a remarkable thing to see from a country where so much of the populace remembers the still recent civil war, and so many people lost property or, worse yet, family and friends. But in spite of the history of radicalism, and plenty of remaining bitterness towards former and current president Ortega, "tranquilo" is the way they go. They are unflinchingly even-keeled and level-headed, and ceaselessly amiable. Nicaragua is very definitely a country at a crossroads, with a stagnated economy, and a growing number of expats promoting the fool's gold that is a further increase in tourism. It is certainly a place in need of a great deal of assistance, but I definitely encountered a population that wanted to find a way towards sustainable development. Importantly, the tranquilo mentality seems to have moved them to an ethos of cool-headedness. And though it's hard to know right now, I think the approach will suit them well.

I have to say that this worldview was a very valuable thing for me to come into contact with, particularly at the start of this journey. For me, Nicaragua was in many ways a laboratory, where I got to start figuring out how I'm going to want to approach the next few months, and try out a variety of things that held some appeal. I've learned that I felt safer than I expected to while gliding along a zipline through the trees. I've learned that there are ways to deal with concerns about theft other than hiding out at home all night. I've learned that, at least in Central America, plenty of people will really start a conversation just to start a conversation, and that this is something I can even do myself (even if it's in Spanish). I've also learned that, on a trip like this, you really never know where your next friend will come from, or, relatedly, what your next adventure will be. There are times when it's important to stick to a plan, of course, but if you try to be too rigid about it, you might end up missing an experience you'll remember for the rest of your life. So, in the spirit of the people I met, the friends I made, and the things I did, I'm going to stay tranquilo, and that's how I'll handle whatever comes my way.

I'm off to bed, with my first day of classes here in Costa Rica starting in the morning. Tomorrow night I'll meet my new host family, and settle in for what should be the first of several consecutive nights in the same bed.

Saludos,
Seth

*I added the map and picture widgets on the right, as well as Google ads. Please let me know if you find the ads obtrusive. I put them at the bottom of the posts to try to keep them out of the way (as opposed to a more prominent spot). I primarily set them up because I submitted the blog to Lonely Planet, and I figure that on the off chance that they direct some traffic my way, it won't hurt to have a mechanism in place to get something out of that.

Schmo Versus the Volcano

2010-01-24T00:31:00.004-05:00

It's pretty much impossible to go to a foreign country where you don't totally speak the language and avoid making some mistakes along the way. So, on a multi-month voyage through another continent, a whole range of misguided decisions is pretty much guaranteed. To a large extent, you're relying on the distribution of the mistakes to tend towards the not-so-stupid and not-so-problematic. So, in that sense, I'm quite fortunate that the only legacy of my first significant blunder is a set of extremely sore quadriceps and some dirty fingernails. In fairness, the main issue wasn't really climbing the volcano. The issue was doing it in sandals.

Before heading off to Ometepe, I read up on the island, its lore, and its twin volcanoes in my Lonely Planet guidebook. The author, to his credit, highlighted the immense difficulty of climbing Volcán Concepción, and went as far as to say "bring real hiking shoes" and "be in good physical shape." He also mentioned that it's almost always cloudy at the top, so the spectacular vista is a rare one. So, having read all this, I decided to leave my hiking shoes in Granada and settle for enjoying Ometepe's lovely beaches and sunsets. But, damn my affable personality, I made two friends on the boat across the lake, and they were planning to go up the volcano. So, I looked at my Keen sandals, with their pretty solid traction, and I decided that I could probably make it. I had been told it was pretty tough, but I didn't think it could be that much worse than biking 30 miles in 80 degree heat, so I went with the flow. And so it was that I set out with Sam and Ben, two Oberlin grads, and Levi, our guide, to peer into the crater of a 1,610 meter high active volcano.

Even setting the sandals aside, the climb up was without a doubt the most physically challenging thing I've ever done. Levi told us that the volcano doesn't like it when people climb her, and she does her best to take it out on them. I can definitely see his point. As you begin the trek, howler monkeys fill the air with an ominous groan that signals a warning. It might be one that's worth taking. Most trails up mountains (and volcanos) involve a sequence of switchbacks to reduce the grade at which you're climbing. Not at Concepción. The trail is straight up, base to crater, with terrain in a sequence that basically goes dirt, large rocks, small rocks, large rocks, gravel, large rocks, small rocks, mud, muddy gravel, large rocks, mud, hot muddy gravel. Tree branches and thorn bushes scrape and scratch at your legs. Each sequence is more punishing than the one before it--really, "punishing" is the best word for the whole experience. It is exhausting and grueling. Because of the heat emitted by the volcano, the air coming out of the crater condenses, meaning that the summit is almost always engulfed in clouds. The day we went, the clouds stretched halfway down the volcano, which meant that, starting about 2-3 hours into our 5 hour climb, we could no longer see anything more than 100 or so feet ahead of us. We've gone back and forth as to whether this was a benefit or not, but I ultimately come down on the side of Sam's argument that if we really had known just how much farther we had to go, we might definitely have given up.

At about 900 meters the wind started to howl, and at 1,000 meters the clouds turned to rain, and dirt to mud. It was truly amazing to think that here we were, slogging our way through this maelstrom, and just a mile away people were on a beach enjoying an 80 degree day with a clear blue sky. As we climbed higher, the wind grew stronger, and visibility decreased. We were all soaked and trying to keep our breaks to a minimum. I have to give my sandals credit for the work they did getting me up the first 1,200 meters. They had excellent traction, and I was surprised at how well they worked. But as the ground got less firm, and balance and ankle support became more pertinent, I began to realize the flaw in the plan. For the last 400 meters, I lagged a bit behind everyone else, and paused several times to catch my breath and get my balance. I used my hands as much as possible for additional leverage and stability, particularly taking advantage of a plant known colloquially as "hoja grande," or "big leaf," which has very rough (and thus easily gripped) leaves and deep, strong, roots.

We stopped every 100 meters or so to catch our breath, and figure out whether this was really going to happen. I didn't say it out loud, but I was increasingly certain that there was no way I would make it to the crater. Sam was having a tough time with the mud as well, and there was a moment when he turned to Ben and expressed concern about dealing with the soggy and slippery mud on the way down. I silently wondered whether Ben might decide it was worth calling it quits, and thought I might agree. But, to his credit, Ben said "I think we can do it. We've come this far." So we kept going.

Just as I was growing certain that I couldn't do it, as I was preparing to look up and say "guys, I'm gonna wait here," I saw the other three taking off their backpacks and putting them down, placing large rocks on them to keep them from blowing away--the wind was that strong, even though we all had at least one full 2 liter water bottle in our bag, as well as a packed lunch. I scrambled up the 15 feet of mud, water, and gravel to where they were, and asked what was going on. "We're going up to the crater," Sam told me. "It's right there." He pointed and, sure enough, I saw a point only 30 feet ahead where the terrain seemed to come to an abrupt halt.

The experience at the crater was like nothing I've ever seen or heard of. The wind rushed by us at hurricane speed. We got low to the ground--the poisonous gases would kill you even if you did survive the fall into the crater. The rain was cold, but the ground was hot, warmed by the huge pocket of geothermal energy just beneath us. We crawled to the lip and looked over into a sea of fog. The clouds were oatmeal-thick, and you could not see more than 15 feet in any direction. Even the rest of the group, sitting 5 feet away from me, were like apparitions in the mist. It looked a bit like heaven, and it felt a lot like hell. We looked at each other and smiled, took a few pictures, and started the brutal journey back to the base.

As tough as the trip up had been, the trip down was worse. While the climb had been a serious cardiovascular challenge, the descent was all about muscular endurance. When you're walking down a series of 2-3 foot high bolders, each with a slick, wet surface, every step must be absolutely sure. If you slip, you could crack your skull. And it's pretty tough to get an ambulance into a cloud at 5,000 feet, not to mention the several hours it would take for someone to get down to town and notify anyone. So with every pace, I put all of my attention on my legs, ankles and feet, using my hands to cling to nearby trees with as firm a grip I could muster. I fell a few times, once drilling myself in the back with a rock on the ground. If I had lagged behind the group on the way up, it was nothing compared to the trip down. I felt bad about it, but they were very patient with me. Of course, as Sam pointed out, the thing that sucks most about being that guy is that when everyone else stops for a break and you finally catch up, everyone else is also ready to get going again. I have to express my deep appreciation for Sam, Ben, and Levi's willingness to give me an extra minute or two here and there to rest my weary ankles.

As we got out of the clouds about halfway down, we took a longer break to appreciate the view and rest up with the extra time we had. Coming down may have been tougher than going up, but it was still quicker. From the viewpoint, or "mirador" in Spanish, we could see the other volcano, Maderas, and the water flowing all the way around it. To our left, we could see the town of Altagracia, from which we had walked starting at 7 that morning. And behind us, a low forest disappearing into clouds. We stayed at that point for a good 20 minutes, feeling the full heft of our effort in our arms and legs, clothes soaked with rain, mud, and sweat. At a couple of points, some turkey vultures swooped in for a closer look, just to see if they might learn where they'd be getting their dinner that night. We decided to make sure they'd have to find it somewhere else, and walked the two remaining hours down the Volcano and back to Altagracia.

I am certain I have never been as grateful to sit down as I was when we got back to our hostel. That night we went into town to have some meat with gallo pinto--extra servings of both--and drink a few Toñas, and a lot of water.

I've taken a lot of pictures on this trip, so I understand that most people aren't going to bother going through them--and certainly not through all of them. But I definitely recommend taking a tour through the pictures of Ometepe in general, or at least just the trip up Concepción if that's all you have time for. The swirl of fog around us was completely out of this world. It felt like one of those levels in a Super Mario game where you can't see anything except a small circle around your character. But real. And totally freaking crazy.

¡Oh-my-tepe! Dos

2010-01-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

So, I'm sitting in an airport hotel room in San Jose, Costa Rica, getting set to head out to Quepos in the morning for two weeks of beach and nature preserve, and I figured I'd tie off my loose-ends, blogically speaking. The Granada album is now complete, and available here.

I spent the bulk of this week in Ometepe, an incredible island in the middle of Lago Nicaragua (generally known as Colcibolca, which is Nahuatl for "sweet sea"). As I mentioned, I befriended two solid dudes named Ben and Sam on the boat out there, and spent the whole time traveling around the island with them. We were there for three days and, as Sam later pointed out, we saw something completely unique and incredible every one of those days.

We found an amazing little hostel called Hospedaje Ortiz, in Altagracia, where the ferry docks. It's not in the LP guide, but if you find yourself in Ometepe, I recommend Ortiz very strongly. It's all run by Mario Ortiz and his family--his son and nephews are the most visible staff, though his wife also does a fair amount. Levi, one of the nephews, was our guide on the hike up the volcano (post on that coming very shortly).

Ometepe, in addition to being something of a tropical island paradise, also has a much more rural feel than Granada. There are only two major cities, and the bigger of the two, Moyogalpa, is comparable in size to a slightly more touristy version of Hancock, NY, where I went to summer camp. In Altagracia, where we spent the first three nights, you can eat at the hostel, or at one of the two restaurants. After that, if you want to check e-mail, you can head to one of two places in town with an internet connection. Fortunately, the small-town feel worked in our favor, as Mario directed us to the local eatery run by Esmeralda, who grills a mean pork tenderloin. For three nights straight we had--and thoroughly enjoyed--grilled meat, plantain chips, a scoop of salad (basically cole slaw sans mayo), and a heaping portion of gallo pinto (fried rice and beans). Esmeralda took very good care of us, getting our occasionally idiosyncratic orders (pork *and* beef, no salad or platanos) just right.

The first day there, Sam, Ben, and I rented bikes and rode towards Santo Domingo beach, nestled into the isthmus that connects the two volcanoes. There is exactly one paved road in Ometepe, and we managed to be on it for a little while, but ultimately had to turn off onto a slightly treacherous and rather steep rocky hill. We got through it with all our limbs attached, but still felt it would be wise to take the bus back at the end of the day (note: the bus had a beast of a time getting back up that hill). Along this rocky bumpy road, we saw some signs for Ojo de Agua ("eye of water") and decided to check it out.

Ojo de Agua, it turned out, was about as close to paradise as I've experienced. It is a stream fed by several mineral springs, and running to the lake, and someone at some point had the brilliant idea to put in a small dam to slow the water, thus creating a natural mineral water swimming pool. It was like swimming in Perrier. And did I mention it was on an isthmus between two volcanoes? I think I did.

So, the day was off to a great start, and we decided to spend much or all of it at Ojo de Agua. After a little while, however, we noticed that one of the other guests at the pool had the number 18 tattooed on the back of his head, full-head sized. Normally I would not have paid much attention, but the night before Sam had been talking about the Mara Salvatruchas, one of the most violent gangs in Central America, and their affinity for head and face tattoos. We basically spent the day conflicted between how amazingly wonderful the location was, and a small amount of fear that this guy might go Tony Soprano on someone at any moment (he was of the upper-management set, we're fairly certain, based on his age and his traveling with a lackey). We contemplated leaving, but felt it would be best just to ignore the situation and enjoy the day. Ben put it best when he said to me, "well, everyone needs vacation." Wikipedia later informed me that the gentleman probably belonged to the 18th Street Gang, which is actually a major rival of the Salvatruchas, and is, at the very least, less internationally notorious--take Wikipedia's word however you'd like. At any rate, I took several pictures of Ojo de Agua so that you can see what the place looks like, but I elected to forgo taking any pictures of Captain Headtats.

After several hours relaxing, we took our bikes and headed off to Playa Santo Domingo, just to see the beach and grab a beer. Not much to report other than the fact that the beach was stunningly beautiful and we saw some cool fauna (howler monkeys, magpies, and plenty of turkey vultures).

The next day we attacked Volcán Concepción, a story I'm choosing to leave to its own post (which will be up very shortly after this one).

On Thursday, which turned out to be our last day at Ometepe, we went over to Moyogalpa, the larger city. We rented bikes again, and headed over to Punta Jesus Maria, a natural sand spit that juts a mile out from the island, and serves as a natural fishing pier with incomparable black sand beaches. The sunset, out above the mountains on the mainland, with the lake in front of us, was a remarkable experience, and, judging from the attendance, is one of the main attractions in town. We spent the night carousing in Moyogalpa, and reveling in the excellence of our time in Ometepe. The next morning, Ben moved on to San Juan del Sur, while Sam went to check out Finca Zopilote, a small farm on Ometepe. I'll hopefully be seeing both of them again in Costa Rica.

As for me, I headed back to Granada for a quick final 24 hours, and caught my flight down to Costa Rica today. Tomorrow I'll be out in Quepos, starting the next phase of my journey. I'm trying to decide whether I have any final encapsulating thoughts on Nicaragua to share. But until I decide that, I have another post to put up, a hot shower to enjoy, and a bunch of sleep to catch up on.

Hasta luego.

Saludos,

Seth

Fotografía:

Ometepe

¡Oh-my-tepe!

2010-01-22T20:31:00.000-05:00

I got back to Granada this afternoon after three days and four nights in Ometepe with my new friends Ben and Sam (yes, together we're Seth, Benjamin, Samuel). Ometepe was on the short list for a revised version of the seven wonders of the natural world this year, and walking around there you can easily see why. Tomorrow's a travel day (off to Costa Rica), so I'm hoping to spend the trip putting digital pen to digital paper to give you some further insight. I'll have some pictures up tomorrow night as well. Be prepared to hear stories of magical restorative oases, American gangsters, Esmeralda the best grillmaster ever, and the most physically challenging thing I have ever done (hint: if you're going to climb a volcano, wear real shoes).

Saludos,
Seth

Nicablogua Cuatro

2010-01-18T13:02:00.000-05:00

I've finished uploading pictures from yesterday's Mombacho trip and zipline tour. The videos are on their way up too, but they take a lot longer to upload. There are also a few videos from the baseball game, including the "si se puede" chant.

Last night my host brother Noel asked me for some music for his ipod (he has a new 80GB version I've never seen--very slim with internal speakers and video). I gave him a whole range, including the Beatles, Jay-Z, Michael Jackson, and others. This morning, when I was taking a shower and getting ready to head out, I heard "Earth Song" blasting from the kitchen (Brie, I hope you see this), and could not have been much happier. I hadn't even recommended the song. It was just the one he chose to put on first. Of course, he then did in fact make me happier by following it up with "Chacarron," the greatest song in the world. Apparently a chacarron is a type of insect, though I couldn't work out what kind.

I thought I'd talk a bit more about baseball crazyness here, and the fact that it's a universal language. Whenever I get into a conversation with a local, it's almost always very easy to talk about baseball. Most people wear caps of various US sports teams (caveat in next paragraph). As I think I've mentioned, the Yankees are extremely popular. What's interesting though is that although people know a lot about the game itself (and that includes the Major Leagues) they are completely disconnected from its history. This isn't particularly surprising, as I'm certain the Major Leagues have only been popular here for as long as they've been televised here. Nonetheless it was interesting to get into a conversation with someone yesterday who had no idea that the Dodgers and Giants used to be in New York, and had never heard of Jackie Robinson. His name was Job (insert Arrested Development comment here), and he drove me out to the volcano (insert Job vs the Volcano joke here). At any rate, Job is a fan of the Florida Marlins, because he likes the fact that they're a team of young upstarts, as opposed to the Yankees, who go out and buy all the best players (his words, not mine). The fact that he knows enough to know that, and to make the more complicated decision about fandom indicates to me that he's a serious baseball fan with a good grasp of the game. So it was interesting to me that even for him, baseball basically started within the last 10-20 years. It's also worth noting, by the way, for seamheads out there, that the level of play here is really quite low, perhaps even lower than I initially realized. One of the best players in the league, Augustin Septimo (who hit two homers in the game I attended), is a 25 year-old shortstop. In 2008, his age 24 season, he put up a a 576 OPS in the Marlins FSL affiliate. This year, he played in the Indy Leagues, where he faired a bit better (.779). He was one of the league leaders in home runs here this season, with 5 in a little over 50 games. So the game I went to was basically the equivalent of seeing the Newark Bears with a more rabid fan base.

The other thing I wanted to discuss (again) was the poverty, because there are just some interesting things to contemplate here. It is an extremely common sight to see a Nica walking around in a shirt that says, for example "Monmouth High School Track." A large portion of local clothing clearly comes second hand from the U.S. This occasionally makes for some it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren't-sad moments, like the guy I saw in a "Rush Week 2003" t-shirt. As an American, it's quite an uncomfortable feeling, and it definitely makes one pause for a moment. Considering the amount of old t-shirts of that ilk that I gave to Goodwill when I moved out of my apartment, it's entirely feasible that I could see someone walking around here in my old Wesleyan Orientation Leader t-shirt. The thing that's most striking about it is the extent to which even the relatively well-off people here live to some extent off of our second hand goods. It's the second poorest country in the hemisphere (after Haiti--donate here), so it's not exactly a surprise, but one is constantly reminded of the fact that Nicaragua-rich is still Rest-Of-World-poor. Nicaragua-poor, of course, is pretty destitute. Most of the kids don't make it past fourth grade here, and a lot of them start huffing glue before they even reach double-digits. It's heartbreaking, and there's still a serious need for international aid here. But what is also interesting about it is that, at least in Granada, the majority of people still seem to get by reasonably well and at least on the surface appear to be reasonably happy. This is, at a minimum, a country that functions, with an economy that may not be growing, but does exist. But in every way you can think of, it lags far behind our standard of living--tickets are handwritten receipts, you cannot buy anything on the internet, and transactions are almost universally conducted in efectivo (cash), except at the places designed for the wealthiest tourists.

What's tough is that I really don't know what the solution is. More tourism adds some money to the economy, but comes with a whole host of other serious issues, both for the locals and for the tourists. For centuries, there was a large bull shark population in the lake (it connects to the Caribbean via the Rio San Juan), but that was grossly overfished by the Somoza administration for leather and shark's fins, and is now, for all intents and purposes, extinct. They have a variety of interesting fruits (nispero and zapote, for example), but I've heard that most of them spoil quickly, so exporting them wouldn't necessarily work. They have very good coffee, which I think helps some, but it's not something you can use as the base of a monocrop economy when people can also get it from countries like Colombia and Costa Rica. So there's not really an answer to the major problems here, as far as I can discern. Focusing on the kids and keeping them in school is a good start, certainly, so, to that extent organizations like Casa Xalteva do a reasonable amount of good. Beyond that, there's really no obvious solution, and it seems like exactly the kind of place that is likely to get forgotten in a global recession.

Anyway, I'm not sure there's a particularly ideal way to end this post except to say that this trip is reminding me of just how incredibly fortunate I am in a nearly infinite number of ways (not the least of which is the opportunity to take this trip, and the comfort to be able to contemplate this stuff from my perspective instead of the local one).

And with that, I'm going to finish my lunch and head down to the lake to hop on the four-hour boat ride to Ometepe.

Saludos,

Seth

Nicablogua - Volcán Mombacho

2010-01-17T17:55:00.001-05:00

I don't have a whole lot to report today, as the morning was mostly about good views, and I think the pictures do a better job of getting that across than I could with words. I was very excited to discover that my computer has software for stitching together panoramas from multiple photos, so those will probably start showing up here with more frequency. Anyway, this morning I went up to Mombacho Volcano to do a hike around the crater and check out the zip line canopy tour.

Pictures of the volcano and hike here.

Pictures of me looking like an idiot zipping around a cloud forest canopy here.

My Granada album, available here, is now complete, with several pictures of food (per my father's request).

I'm planning to grab a boat to Ometepe tomorrow afternoon. I have no idea if I'll have internet there (I haven't even decided if I'm going to bring my netbook), so I'll either be in touch from there, or I won't until I get back Thursdayish.

Saludos,

Seth

Nicablogua Dos

2010-01-16T17:26:00.000-05:00

(you should be able to click the above picture for a larger view. It's a panorama I took down by the lake)

So, I just had a lengthy phone conversation with my parents during which I remembered that there are a couple of other things I wanted to discuss. I'll do this notes-style so I can pretend to be Peter Gammons.

If you've looked through my pictures, maybe you've noticed that Parque Central is full of hot dog And coffee stands. I don't mean hot dog stands and coffee stands. I mean hot dog and coffee stands. Because Disney is incredibly popular here, many of them have random Disney characters painted on. There are some photos in my Granada album, so definitely check 'em out.

My new favorite slang term that I learned here is "fresa," which literally means "strawberry." But they use it to mean "snob," because "strawberries think they're better than all the other fruits." Here in Nicaragua, they generally think the Ticos (Costa Ricans) are "muy fresa." I was also asked whether New Yorquiños are fresa, to which my answer was "a veces," or "sometimes."

I mentioned that the language study is going well, but there are two important quirks to note. The first is that Nicaragua is one of only very few places--though Argentina is another--where they use "vos" instead of "tu." This would be easy if it were just the one word that got switched, but it's an entire new grammatical structure, e.g. "Vos sos" instead of "Tu es." The other thing is that the accent involves dropping s's like crazy. So, instead of "gracias," you get "gracia," and instead of "uno mas," you get "uno ma." It's tough to understand when you're not used to it, but, as they say, knowing is half the battle.

The next point is directed at the local roosters. Seriously guys, you need to cool it. You start your cock-a-doodle-doo ing no later than 4am (when the sun isn't remotely close to being up) and you continue until 9 or so. I have to sleep with earplugs because of you. Seriously guys, can't you take it down a notch? No wonder people feel compelled to taxiderm you and turn you into baskets.

Two additional interesting things from the perspective of Marlon, my Spanish teacher. This is less an insight into Nica culture and more an insight into the perspective they have on the rest of the world. First off, Marlon attended Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Jinotepe, Nicaragua. He never knew who Roosevelt was until fairly recently, and always thought he was a famous Nicaraguan. Additionally, when it came up that my grandparents had survived the holocaust, he expressed surprise, because he knew I was "part Jewish," but didn't realize that it was enough to have warranted oppression. When I explained that it was a little more than "part," he was very surprised, because he never knew Jews could be white. I think the idea of discrimination being a racial thing is so ingrained, that he just assumed that anti-Semitism and racism were one and the same. They're similar of course, but the idea of whiteness is quite different here.

The locals love bright colors. The origin of this apparently has to do with when the conquistadors came and made the natives put on full-body clothing. They didn't really know what to do, so they just chose the brightest colors they had. All kinds of neons. Now this manifests as very brightly painted houses and buildings, as well as all kinds of neon lights that are added to cars (including taxis).

The way Granadiños deal with direction is quite interesting. They almost never say "left" or "right" unless you specifically ask. The directions Marlon was given when he took me to my house were "go past the park a little bit, bear sort of North West, and then it's a block after the bridge, sort of up that way." East, West, North, and South are used much more frequently here. In a lot of ways, it makes sense, so long as you understand the layout of the city (which is admittedly quite straightforward).

The other thing I wanted to say, which is way off-topic and sort of a somber way of ending this otherwise light post, is that it's remarkable to see the outpouring of sympathy and concern for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the hemisphere (after Haiti), but at the game last night there was an announcement that the government was sending C$500,000 (about $25,000) to Haiti. There was also a minute of silence before the game. So, in the spirit of doing what I can, I'd like to direct your attention to Partners In Health, which has had people on the ground in Haiti for over 20 years. This recommendation comes courtesy of my former colleague Pierre Cremieux, who some of you know, who is heavily involved with an international aid organization called Medical Aid Committee. According to Pierre, Partners In Health is very well positioned to help out based on their longstanding presence, so I urge you all to join me in doing what you can to support them.

I hope you all have splendid weekends. I'm off to Mombacho Volcano in the morning, and hopefully Ometepe on Monday, so I should be able to check back in at some point with some pretty awesome pictures of crazy things we don't have in New York.

Saludos,

Seth

Granada Oriental Sharks vs Lion Lions

2010-01-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

So, I went to the Granada-León baseball game tonight, and I thought I'd share my thoughts, because there was a lot to take in. First, the more general stuff. I found it very amusing that a city that has so many hot dog vendors had none at the baseball stadium. The logical explanation is that hot dogs are here for the tourists. Given that they're really only in Parque Central, I think that must be true. That said, it strikes me as very strange that they seem to think that Americans eat mostly hot dogs. Sure, a nice ballpark frank hits the spot from time to time, but it’s pretty far from a staple outside of sports venues.

The Granada team, as I mention in the pictures, is called the Tiburones (sharks). For reasons I do not remotely understand, they are also called Oriental. Some things said Tiburones, others said Oriental. Others said Granada. It's like if the New York Mets were also the New York Europes, and the names were used interchangeably. Unfortunately, two names weren't enough to will them to victory, as the Oriental Sharks dropped game 1 of the series, 3-1. León's team name, by the way, as far as I can tell, is the Leónes. This means their name, translated, is the Lion Lions.

Culturally, the game was just straight crazy. Both teams have brass bands, and songs that they sing. The most common chant was "ponche," as in "punch" as in "punch-out" as in "strike out." The starting pitcher for Granada (he looked like Guillermo Mota, and I sort of hope he was) did a nice job and got a number of these two-strike chants, and a number of those also paid off. The place is packed to the gills and seats are general admission. Moreover, if you get up from your seat, you can expect that it will likely be gone when you return, unless your friends are willing to be very agressive on your behalf. I actually watched the game standing up behind all the chairs, because we couldn't find enough seats.

Easily the best thing is the chant they do during a rally: "¡Sí se puede!" I was pretty psyched to get to chant along with that one. Unfortunately, Obama couldn't come through for the Tiburones. Other noticeable cultural things: they use scantily-clad women even more than we do, they don't do a seventh inning stretch, and the teams arrive in school buses. Different parts of the stadium are fenced off, so that you can't move to the infield if your ticket is for the outfield, and vice versa. There were tons of very aggressive scalpers in the parking lot, yelling at us that the ticket office was sold out, but for 100 Córdobas, ($5 US), they would sell us tickets. It wasn't sold out, so we paid our 40 Córdobas ($2 US) instead.

This is the part where I'm going into seamhead (a.k.a. baseball devotee) territory, so if you don't really care about interesting baseball things, you might want to skip the rest. Thing 1: I know you can't walk your way off the Dominican Republic, but apparently you also can't walk up through Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. The first walk of the game did not occur until the top of the 8th inning. In fact, the first three-ball count of the game occurred in the top of the 8th inning (and subsequently turned into the first walk). Moreover, the batter walked on four pitches, and it may well have been the old unintentional intentional walk (I couldn't tell because I had no way of knowing who the players were). There was also an intentional walk in the 8th, to load the bases for Granada's second consecutive inning-ending rally-killing double play.

Friends, I saw some moments of fundamentally unsound baseball tonight. I know, it's not exactly the Major Leagues, or even the NY-Penn League, or even the Venezuelan Winter League. But wow. The León centerfielder dropped a routine pop-up (granted it may have been Luis Castillo, I don't know). Players were hacking at everything, chopping grounders. The Tiburones stranded at least three runners at third, after they got them with less than two outs. One guy came up in the second with a runner on 3rd and one out and promptly struck out swinging at something stupid. Another player bunted and dove into first base, giving me horrible memories of Robbie Alomar, Roger Cedeno, and the 2002 Mets. There was some really bad baserunning. One player failed to score from second on a single, when he really should have, but he stopped at 3rd. Another guy hit a grounder down the 3rd base line that was a clear single, and he got thrown out at second by about 20 feet, trying to stretch it into a double. León were able to win because they hit three solo homers, and Granada beat themselves. In the 7th inning, Granada was down 3-1 with a runner on 1st and 3rd and one out, and hit into a double play. Next inning, bases loaded, one down, and another double play. On the second pitch (first was about two feet outside).

The aforementioned pitcher who looked like Guillermo Mota had a Mota-Piazza type moment at one point. He got out of a jam--largely thanks to a friendly out call on a León player over-running first base and getting tagged--and pumped his fist and jumped up and down like crazy. This was in the 5th inning, when he had already given up the first two home runs of the three he would allow, and his team was down 2-0. I don't really care when players show emotion, and sometimes it's nice to know they're as pumped as you are. But this was a bit much given the situation. And I do know that if he were, in fact, in the majors, he would get a fastball up at his eyes.

It was a really fun experience, and felt like a much rowdier and somewhat dirtier version of watching a Mets game in St. Lucie. I'm pretty sure they even borrowed some of the stupid drunk fans I've seen in Queens, and taught them to swear in Spanish. Really fun time though, and now I'm off to bed*.

Saludos,

Seth

*Note: I'm writing this at home after the game on Friday night, even though it will actually go online midday Saturday (I think).

**For those interested, here's the recap of the game (via Google Translate).

Fotografía:

Nica Baseball Championships

Nicablogua

2010-01-15T17:10:00.001-05:00

Okay, so after almost a week, I'm finally finding some time to write my first real blog post. It's been basically impossible to find time this week, since I'm busy all day, and my house doesn't have internet, so I'm going to try to catch everyone up on everything. Let's start with the cast of characters.

My Host Family: Berta and José Orlando, and their three children José (23), Noél (20), and Rosanna (18). They're incredibly sweet. Berta is warm and welcoming, José Orlando is engaging and interested, and José works all day. I've gotten along very well with the younger kids, Noél and Rosanna, first bonding over the fact that they're both starting to learn guitar. They asked me to play a couple of songs for them, which I very self-consciously did. It turned out Noél was secretly recording me on his cell phone, which was kind of funny. It's nice to have a thing I can teach someone, given how much time I'm spending learning while I'm here. I'm teaching Noél the Book of Love (by the Magnetic Fields) to sing to his girlfriend. And that way, he'll also have it ready for his next girlfriend next week. Noél is also learning English. His favorite word is "motherfucker." Rosanna is a sweetheart, and a total nudge. She really enjoys giving me a hard time, and told me as much. A few days ago, after I'd eaten a particularly large meal (we'll come to that in a bit) she asked me how many months pregnant I was. She certainly seems to get my sense of humor, though, so it's nice. I really enjoy living with them, and can only hope that my future residency situations are this good. I have my own room, and Berta cooks up to three meals a day (though I usually just have breakfast and sometimes dinner at the house, and lunch in the city). They also have an adorable dog named Lucky (see pictures) who likes to jump on your lap.

The Dutch folks: Rene and Mirona are also staying at Berta and José Orlando's house. They've been here a few weeks doing volunteer work and learning Spanish. I've gone out with them a bit the last couple of nights, and they've been a lot of fun. They speak English very well (qué suerte), so that makes my life a little easier. I know that it's better for my language skills to spend as much time speaking Spanish as I can, but after doing it all day, it can get a little exhausting, just because of the amount of extra thought required to say a basic phrase.

My teacher: Marlon, is a super nice Nica. He's got a great sense of humor, and is an extremely patient teacher. He's very good at letting me take my time to work out how to say something, and is helpful when it comes to correcting my mistakes. He's from Jinotepe, a town not too far from here, and he tells me about their interesting varieties of fruits. He also runs a lot of the activities for the school, so he's often around when I'm visiting other parts of the city, which is very helpful. He's got a great sense of curiosity, so we talk about all kinds of things, ranging from the underlying causes of the U.S. economic collapse to the scientific explanations of dreaming (thank you Radiolab). Yes, I do manage to express a lot of the complex thoughts involved in these things, but it usually takes me a while to form what I'm trying to say.

Other students: I've gotten along quite well with some of the other students at the school. The classes are individual, so I mostly interact with them during the breaks and the activities. I've spent a decent amount of time at the activities with Kenny and Keren, a sweet couple who are super Californian. Keren is an excellent Spanish speaker, and Kenny knows a lot about hammocks and random other things, something I can appreciate as an aficionado of miscellanea. I've also spent some time hanging out with two students named Brendan and Rosalind, a couple about my age. He's from Oregon and she's from Nevada. They're a lot of fun. Last night over drinks I learned that they studied a lot of crazy math in school, which of course makes me like them even more. We're going (along with Marlon, Rene, Mirona, and maybe Kenny--quite the ragtag crew) to the baseball game tonight. It's the first game of the best-of-7 championship series, Granada against Léon, so that should be pretty awesome (¡Vayan Tiburones!).

My school is called Nicaragua Mía, and the teachers are really great. They're clearly very well-practiced, and are excellent at picking up on the areas where you need help. I have class from 8-12 in the morning, and then optional activities in the afternoon. I've posted photos (links below) of everything so far, and you can see some of the activities. We went to Las Isletas (a series of small islands in Lago Nicaragua that were formed by an exploding volcano several hundred years ago), Masaya (a nearby town with a large market of local artisanal crafts), and had a cooking class. The large meal I mentioned earlier was at the cooking class, where we made our own empanadas. I used the inside part of my plate as a guide, and it turned out that I happened to have the large plate. So I made (and ultimately ate) an unreasonably large empanada. An empanada is basically plantains smashed into a pulp, and then used as a kind of dough, wrapped around some cheese. Then it's pan-fried. So if you see the pictures, keep in mind that the thing I'm eating is fried plantain and cheese. You have permission to feel a little ill. I still do.

The comida typica (local food) is generally not super diverse. Gallo pinto (mixed fried rice and beans) is the staple, although quesillos (sort of like a rolled quesadilla) are also all over the place, and are pretty tasty. Breakfast is almost always eggs with some kind of vegetable and bread, which works great for me. Chicharrones (pork rinds) are something of a delicacy here, which is unfortunate, to say the least. I've managed to have them only once. Interestingly, hot dogs and burgers are very common. As you can see from the Granada pictures, there are hot dog and coffee carts all over the Parque Central, which is the main square here. I made myself try a local hot dog, out of curiosity, and it honestly could've been from Coney Island. It was quite flavorful. I actually am writing this from a balcony restaurant overlooking the Parque, where I just ate "the best hamburguesa in Granada." It goes against just about everything I stand for to go to a different country and eat a hamburger, but I had to see what their take on it was. This particular one was really good, mostly because it had a perfectly fried egg on top. So really, how can you go wrong?

The local beers are Toña and Victoria, the latter of which is definitely superior. Victoria is a pilsner, and I believe Toña is a lager (I have a Victoria in front of me right now, so I'm not really sure). I've had some other really interesting local beverages, Tiste (a drink made of toasted corn and cacao) and Chicha (a crazy pink ginger drink). You can get chichi at the local market, but it's sold in a plastic bag and is apparently not the most hygienic thing in the world, so I skipped it there and had it at a restaurant instead.

Granada is a beautiful city in a lot of ways, though smaller than I expected. You run out of road pretty fast if you go North or South, and the lake is downhill to the East. There's an incredibly impoverished shanty town to the South. I was up there yesterday with Rene and Mirona, who volunteer there. We were supposed to play baseball with the kids, but then it turned out they'd already played before I got there. So hopefully, I'll get to do that on Tuesday instead.

Central Granada is downright full of gringos. Somewhat surprisingly though, the industry that feeds off of the tourists is not that aggressive here. The Parque Central is definitely full of people selling random tourist crap, as is La Calzada (which is the street with all the gringo restaurants). But if you say "no, gracias," they leave you alone. It's significantly less in your face than most other places I've been where tourism is a major industry. There's also a decent amount of poverty, but again, it's not as bad as I've seen it in other places. The average standard of living is much lower than the states, obviously, but in the center of the city, the poverty is less apparent. In fairness, that's mostly because the homeless have moved down the road to the shanty towns, but even there they have televisions and refrigerators (with pirated electricity). I don't mean to downplay the severity or significance of the poverty, it just looks a bit different here than anywhere else I've been.

One of the major downside to Granada (aside from the fact that there is a *lot* of litter) is that can get very loud. There are cars that are paid to drive around blasting advertisements from loudspeakers, and that can get tiresome at times. The cars are also older, obviously, so they get quite noisy. And, based on the frequency of car horn usage, I can only assume they're being used to communicate very complex thoughts in Morse Code.

As I said, gringos are everywhere, but particularly in places like Kelly's Bar, O'Shea's pub, and Kathy's Waffle House. "Et in arcadia ego," I guess. The only one of these I've been to was Kelly's Bar, to which I went on Wednesday night with Rene and Mirona to hear some live music. The local band really loves Credence, it seems. They kicked off the show with "Have You Ever Seen Rain?" They also played pretty sweet covers of "Creep," by Radiohead (not TLC), and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," in the style of Guns ‘N' Roses.

My Spanish is coming along quite well, to the point that yesterday I rented a bike in town, and the salesman asked where I learned Spanish, and told me it was excellent. The key moment was when he told me that the amount I gave him included the deposit, and that I'd get back $75 out of my $80 when I returned the bike. He asked if I'd understood, and when I said yes he asked me to repeat it back to him to make sure, and I did (successfully), which got me points. This is much better than the issue I've run into once or twice where someone gives you instructions, you say "sí," they walk away, and a minute later you realize that while you know roughly what they're talking about, the specifics could be one of at least two very different things. One example is the time Berta, my host mother, told me I didn't need to lock the deadbolt when I left her house, because the door locks automatically. Only when I was walking away did I realize I wasn't sure if she had meant that, or that I should always lock the deadbolt in addition to the automatic lock. It turned out to be the former, so thank goodness that worked out okay.

The bike ride, it's worth noting, was great. The other Americans I know here seemed to think I was nuts, but even the busy areas in town are not nearly as bad as riding a bike in New York or Boston, so I was fine. At any rate, I mostly strayed from the most traffic-heavy parts of town (I went through once to swing by the house). Instead I headed down to the lake. I took a lot of pictures that show off just how incredible it looks down there. The lake is pretty enormous, and there are mountains and volcanoes on pretty much all of its shores, so the vista is just remarkable. It is incredibly polluted though, which is a shame. There were also more flies there than I've ever seen in my life. Riding along the water, you collide with so many bugs that it literally feels like rain. A number of them died on my shirt as though I were a windshield. Yeah, gross. Generally, the insects here aren't too bad. I've gotten a little bitten, but not much. Bug spray goes a really long way, it seems. There aren't any stinging insects in Granada, as far as I can tell, so that's good too. I guess I should also mention that it's ranged between 70 and 85 degrees every day, without a drop of rain. So, that's nice. The locals get very cold when it gets down to the high 60s and low 70s at night. A lot of them put on sweaters. I've gotten a little burned on the back of my neck, but otherwise no real burning or even tanning. I expect that will change once I get to Costa Rica.

I've gotten to the point of feeling pretty comfortable here. The first few nights I refused to leave the house after 6pm. The truth is though, that the city is really very safe. I now realize that my family lives in the rough equivalent, neighborhood-wise, of park slope, so the few robbers that supposedly do exist here just aren't in that area. They hang out closer to the touristy areas, I assume. The people here are wonderful. I've found myself in random conversations with dozens of natives who are just very friendly and welcoming. I think they're very happy that their city is a place other people want to visit. It sounds like the war was a really rough time for the residents. Marlon was telling me yesterday about the first time he tried chocolate. He was 10 years old, shortly after the war ended, and he came across it for the first time. He tasted it and thought it was so incredible that he only took one or two bites, and hid the rest in his bedroom. He was afraid that it would disappear from the country, and never come back, so he wanted to reserve the small amount he had. But after a while he came to realize that chocolate was here to stay, so he stopped hoarding it.

Now that I feel more comfortable here, I'm very excited for the coming week. As I said, tonight I'm going to the Tiburones (Sharks) game at the baseball stadium. I'm going to try to go to Ometepe—an island in the middle of the lake consisting of two volcanoes connected by an isthmus—for the next few days. Concepción, the bigger volcano, is visible in the distant background of one of my pictures of the lake. It's got a caption that says so, if you want to see it without searching too much. Next week I'm planning to visit Mombacho and Masaya volcanoes, both pretty close to Granada. You can see the Masaya volcano from my pictures of the trip to the Masaya market, and Mombacho in the pictures of Las Isletas. I'm also going to try to get to Laguna de Apoyo, which is a spectacular nature preserve. In an ideal world, I'll make it up to Cerro Negro, a very young volcano covered in black sand, from the top of which you can ride a toboggan to the bottom.

I think that's all I have for the moment. I figured I'd give a broad overview here, and if you want specifics on the activities you can check out the pictures, most of which have captions. I'll try to check out comments. As I mentioned in the last post, I don't get to the internet much here, and when I do it's not usually for very long. I think that'll change in future destinations, but it's just the way things are for the moment. I recently discovered a hostel near my house with free wi-fi though, so maybe that will change some. I'm off to reserve my ferry ride to Ometepe, and try some raspado (shaved ice).

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía*:
Granada
Las Isletas
Masaya

*Note: as of this posting, I am in the process of uploading these pictures. I have to be somewhere in about 30 min, so they might not all make it online before I leave. The Granada album will almost certainly be updated again, though the other two will not.

Granada

2010-01-13T14:24:00.000-05:00

So, I'm in Nicaragua. Things are great but very busy and my host family doesn't have internet. I just wanted to check in and make sure everyone knows I'm okay and having fun. I've seen some cool things and taken a lot of pictures, so I'll try to get those up pretty soon. I've also found my Spanish improving greatly in just the three days I've been here, so that's a plus. More on that later, too.

Right now, however, I'm extremely hungry. And, as many of you know... you wouldn't like me when I'm hungry. So I'm off to grab a quick quesillo and read up on my adventure for the afternoon. But rest assured, I'm safe and happy.

Saludos,
Seth

George Bush International - Gateway to adventure

2010-01-09T16:14:00.001-05:00

So, I told a few people I'd probably make my first (legitimate) post from the airport, and I've decided it's important to follow through and get in the habit of letting my parents know my rough geographical coordinates. So, right now I'm in George H. W. Bush Int'l Airport for a roughly three hour layover before my connecting flight to Managua this evening. Once I get to Managua, I'll be meeting someone who will drive me to the school I'll be attending in Granada.

Unfortunately, since I'm not yet in the spectacular natural setting of colonial Granada, its lakes, and its volcanoes, all I have to write about at the moment is the airport here in Houston. In most respects, it's like any other airport, but it definitely has a bit of a Texas feel to it (at least if the stereotypes I've always relied upon are accurate). For example, the airport has a bass fishing store, which prominently displays a t-shirt reading "I've got your corporate ladder right here," and a picture of a hunting stand. There are also "Don't Mess With Texas" shirts (and even people who buy them) and lone star neck pillows.

Aside from the hints of Texasness in the place, I can also be sure that I'm in Houston because of the larger than life portrait of Jeff Kent to my left:

Do any other baseball fans find this strange? This is the town of Biggio, Bagwell, and Bell (in my mind the Killer B's will always include Big Pimpin Operation Shutdown Derek Bell, and not Fat Elvis). They still have Berkman and Carlos Lee. They have a ridiculous little hill that tries to kill people. And Jeff Kent is immortalized in their airport? The guy had two solid-but-unspectacular seasons here--a shorter tenure even than his grossly unpleasant time in a Mets uniform. So, I just find it a bit strange that his moustachey face is so prominently positioned in my sightline. Maybe they just like his enjoyment of pretending to fall off things he's not really washing.

At any rate, it's clear that the Houston airport offers very little to write about--unless you think Jeff Kent is a jerk. In fairness, this was mainly supposed to be a post just saying hi and welcoming you to this place where I'm gonna talk about things, and you have a limited forum in which to respond. If I learned anything from being around Wesleyan students, it's that if you have the louder megaphone, your opinion is more important.

I've left my phone at home, so I won't be reachable at my usual number for the next few months. I do have an international phone and SIM card, but it's pretty unreasonably pricey, so if you want to chat, let's try to do it on skype, and leave the cell phone for emergencies. But, just in case it comes up, my number here is 011-44-787-224-6757. I know, it's a lot of numbers. But I'm pretty sure it connects to me, and not the Mr. Sparkle Factory in Hokkaido, Japan*. My Skype username is Sethuel, and you can, as always, email me at seth.samuels at the gmails.

I'm going to head upstairs to the Fox Sports Sky Box to grab a grossly overpriced beer and watch the Jets-Ochocinco game. In about two more hours, I'll be back up in the air, and in about 6, I'll be reunited with my 35 lb backpack.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, it's currently 85 degrees and sunny in Granada.

Besos,

Seth

*I'd like to apologize right now for the frequency of obscure references I'll regularly be making that only my brother and a select few others will likely get.