December 01, 2005

01:30:38 pm Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - Cape Town, South Africa - Sunny to mid-day, cloudy in the afternoon, High 70s. Includes comment on Argentina, Japan.  

Took a walking tour of downtown Cape Town that was quite interesting. Cape Town has good colonial architecture and also Art Deco architecture from the 1930s and 1940s. Before I went to bed, I finally got all of the pictures on the web site up to date, adding over 100 pictures today. The web site is now back to normal after five weeks of being behind due to death of my old PC.

We leave South Africa tomorrow morning and I'm not sure what to conclude about it. We had a great time here, better than anticipated. I arrived expecting to be bearish on the country's future. Now I see reasons to be bullish, although I recognize that the short amount of time we spent here was entirely in one of the nicest parts of the country, so my perspective could be skewed. The reasons for my bearishness before arrival were that: 1) from afar, what little I had read on the country, indicated to me that government policy was from the two-wrongs-make-a-right school (I'll explain that) and 2) African countries have a poor record post-independence. Although South Africa's independence dates from 1910, you could consider 1994--the end of apartheid and the beginning of non-white rule--as a second independence. I wish the second fact were not the case, but you only have to look to the northern border with Zimbabwe to see a country that has been an absolute disaster since its independence in 1980. It used to be a significant food exporter, now--due to seizing of white farmland--Zimbabweans are starving. South Africa is no Zimbabwe, but with its elaborate quotas since 1994 as to what percentage of jobs and ownership each business must provide to blacks, I wonder if it has abolished one race-biased system for another. This is not to suggest that the present system has the mean-spiritedness of apartheid. It is well intentioned. But history is full of examples of good intentioned government policy with unintended consequences. I wonder about the consequences of South Africa's present policies when I hear of a 28-person business artificially divided into seven different companies--each with four employees--to avoid the quotas and rules that kick in once you have five employees.

So before my visit to South Africa, I thought this might be a chance to see the country before it deteriorates economically. Now I am not sure it will deteriorate at all. Its future could be bright. I hope it will be. But I am still not sure. Talk to a few people with knowledge of the country and you will get widely different views of its future. Opinions range from former citizens who have left the country permanently, disgusted with the new rules, vowing never to return, expecting it to sink slowly into the abyss that consumes much of Africa. Others I know who are familiar with the country, but not resident there are sadly pessimistic, against their desire to see it do well. On the opposite end of the spectrum though, we met people widely enthusiastic about South Africa's prospects. Many people are in the middle--hoping for the best, fearful of the worst, with at least a vague exit strategy in the back of their mind should their fears play out.

In assessing countries, I think it helps to have a long-term view and to consider the position contrarian to the common view. From afar, this calls for a negative view on South Africa as 1) the long-term view is that over the past several decades much of Africa has moved backwards and thus South Africa might slowly, imperceptibly, do the same even if things look good on the surface; and 2) the jubilation over the end of apartheid may be misplaced. If those with the technical abilities to run the country are no longer in power or even no longer in the country (e.g. as Zimbabwe has learned, expropriating farms and giving them to unskilled people who do not know how to farm increases hunger, not equality), the country could fall apart. However, this negative view from afar is common enough, especially in conservative circles, that it may have become the conventional wisdom. Thus, maybe the contrarian view ought to be that South Africa will actually prosper.

Visiting--again admittedly we were there only four days and only in nice parts--you can construct the case for optimism. Positive factors include cheap prices, good infrastructure, and great weather, attracting people for vacations or to live there. Also, labor is inexpensive, plentiful, and English-speaking, making the country a possible location for outsourcing (I do not understand why this has not occurred with greater frequency). The consistent friendliness of blacks to white outsiders was noticeable and commendable, and in stark contrast to the indifference displayed often throughout Caribbean countries. At first impression, everyone in this multi-racial, multi-ethnic society seems to get along remarkably well--far better than one would expect given the history.

Negative factors are high crime, concern that current infrastructure investment is inadequate (but relative to India the infrastructure is light years ahead), and fear that government policy may not protect property rights or may create onerous bureaucratic rules.

Cape Town is doing well. There is obvious investment in retail, restaurants, and housing. Tourists are plentiful. Real estate prices, according to what I read, have risen rapidly in recent years. But it still feels like a small city, known and cosmopolitan, but still undiscovered by most of the outside world. The local newspaper is running a series on traffic congestion, but the streets seem pretty empty to me. There are condos along the oceanfront, but compared to other world cities, the coast is less developed and the prices cheaper. What may seem like out-of-hand growth to locals appears to me to just as likely be the early stages of a prolonged boom. If the government does not screw it up.

Anecdotally, a person I was talking with in Botswana told me that many people who left the country after 1994 have returned because they found they could not have the same standard of living and quality of life in the UK or Australia. I was skeptical of this, but after visiting I understand it. A middle class person in South Africa could have big house on a big lot in a good location with several domestic helpers. In the UK, this person might be in a cramped apartment with a long commute and of course no domestic help and poor weather. Australia can match South Africa's weather and does have lower prices than the UK, but prices are still higher than South Africa and with low unemployment, domestic help is not common.

My conclusion is that I am less certain of which future South Africa will have--optimistic or pessimistic--than before I arrived. That is unusual. With most countries on this trip, I have a strong view of the country, good or bad, by the time I leave. Sometimes the view is the same as before I arrive, sometimes it is different, but I have a view. With South Africa, I'm not sure of my view. I am leaning toward optimism. Offhand, the other country that comes to mind where I was less certain about its future at the end of my visit than at the beginning is Argentina. Arriving in Argentina, I was down on the country because of its recent 2001/2002 debt default, the shameful way it has handled that default, and its long history of always screwing up just when things are going its way. Leaving, I thought Argentina might be--and I say might, without deep-seated conviction--continue to be a good investment for a few years (it certainly was in 2004 and so far in 2005 as it bounced off the bottom). But I still suspect the country will screw things up at some point down the road, as they did for at least the last century. Thinking more, maybe Japan is another example. My long-term bearishness on Japan remains because of their demographic crisis and their opposition to immigration, but I think they could be in an upswing in the short- to medium term that will put off their day of reckoning for a while. These short-term views on Argentina and Japan aren't put forth as unique insight; I largely am just pointing the recent positive results in their financial markets. Where I differ from the markets might be that I think those two countries are just having a positive interlude without the negative long-term picture having changed.

Finally, with most countries we visit, I don't see myself returning right away, as--even if I liked the country--our visit satiates my interest for the time being. With South Africa, our visit stimulated my interest and I would like to spend more time there. If only it was not so far away!

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November 27, 2005

12:43:20 am Southern Africa Diary II  

Friday, November 25, 2005 - Botswana and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe - Overcast, occasional light rains, 70s.

I'll pick up things here again and later Deanna will post on our six-day safari in Botswana, which was incredible--one of the best parts of our year-long tour. After our last safari drive in the morning, we had a charter flight from our last camp to Kasane, Botswana. From there, we were driven about an hour to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, not including 20 minutes to cross the border. We stayed one night at the Victoria Falls Hotel, a British colonial hotel that opened in 1904. I had heard mixed reports that the hotel has declined due to all of the problems in Zimbabwe, but we wanted to stay there, as it is only a 10-minute walk to the falls. While there did not seem to be many guests, and there were some occasional lapses--mismatched silverware at the pool cafe (of course this was Deanna's observation and not mine), overall, the standards are still high and I'm glad we stayed here. The hotel is dripping with character--old framed British travel and propaganda posters line the hallways, extolling the virtues of their African colonies, while mounted wild game trophies would make Teddy Roosevelt feel right at home.

I read parts of a geopolitical book from their library on travel through Europe in 1948 (John Gunther, Behind Europe's Curtain, published by Hamish Hamilton, London, 1949. Other books by the same author include Inside USA, Inside Latin America, Inside Asia, and Inside Europe). It offered a fascinating look on geopolitics in the immediate post-World War II period where it was unclear just how things would turn out in the 40+ year Cold War that was just starting. While today we have the advantage of knowing how history unfolded, we have largely forgotten just how uncertain things were at the time, and how easily an alternative history could have occurred. For example, Italy was in deep poverty, with a high birthrate, and a communist takeover quite possible. Mayors of many Italian cities were communist, and communists controlled about 30% of the seats in parliament. Trieste, on the border of what is now Italy and Slovenia, was divided and belonged to no country. American and British troops controlled one part of the city and Yugoslavian troops controlled the other part, and it was unclear if its future would be on the east or west side of the Iron Curtain. (Churchill's Iron Curtain quote, which I paraphrase here as best I can remember it, was "From Stettin [sp?] in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across Europe.")

Europe recovered of course, in large part due to the US-led Marshall Plan. Italy did not go communist, nor did Greece, or Turkey--other countries in danger of a red future at the time. President Truman, not that highly regarded in his own time, gets high marks today as we realize in hindsight just how dangerous the post-war period was and how well his administration handled things. Italy's birth rate is now too low, ironically, and its population is projected to fall in coming decades. It is prosperous today by post-war standards and Trieste has been a fully Italian city for many decades. The future turned out better than was reasonable foreseeable at the time of the book's writing. The future is often this way--something to remember whenever things like bleak in the here and now.

Victoria Falls were the reason we traveled to Zimbabwe and they were worth seeing. I believe they are the second largest falls in the world behind Iguasu Falls on the Brazil/Argentina border, which we visited over New Year's 2002/2003. Both dwarf Niagara. Of the two, Iguasu are better, but both are spectacular.

Saturday, November 26, 2005 - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe; Livingstone, Zambia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Cape Town, South Africa.

A traveling day. A van picked us up at 11 AM to take us across the border to Zambia to fly out of the airport at Livingstone, the first town over the border. We flew Nationwide Airlines to Joburg, then South African Airlines to Cape Town, arriving around 8:30 PM. We stay four nights at the SAS Radisson in Cape Town, overlooking the ocean.

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August 16, 2005

02:28:49 pm Sweden - Baltics Diary  

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Spent most of the day in Stockholm; flew to Tallinn, Estonia at night on Estonian Air. Darius Vaskelis flew in from Vilnius, Lithuania where he was visiting his parents, landing in Tallinn about an hour after we left. In Stockholm, we went to City Museum and War Museum. Former was okay, latter was probably good if you read Swedish, but pointless if you do not. The English guide handout provided only the most basic explanations. This was the first museum we had been to in months that was only in one language--the kind of thing that is common in South America but inexplicable in a developed country like Sweden, which has a small population and many foreign visitors. Afterward, filling the rental car with gas proved to be a chore. The first two gas stations took only debit cards--but not US debit cards--credit cards were not welcome. Instructions were only in Swedish. The third station did take credit cards, but only at certain pumps, and certainly not at the first pump we tried. Fortunately, unlike the first station that was completely automated and had no employees on site, this station had a helpful clerk who directed us to the correct pump. Earlier, parking in the tourist areas was a challenge as some parking lots only take local credit cards like a gas card, have no English instruction, and only take certain Swedish coins, not the bills that a traveler would be most likely to have. You might expect such native-language provincialism in a place like France, but not in Sweden where everyone happily speaks English and hardly any foreign visitors would know Swedish. Because everyone does speak English, and is friendly, all of these obstacles were surmountable by just asking someone for help, but the obstacles were surprising. We did not have similar issues in Iceland or Denmark, although we did not drive there.

It's worth mentioning that the reason I'm so gung-ho on English being available and down on places where it is not, is not because I am from an English-speaking country. Rather it's a simple point of function and efficiency that in an interconnected globalized world where people from different countries with different languages must interact, there must be one language that serves as the global language. It's impractical for every traveler to a foreign land to know the language of that land, or to have to hire a translator. Few people would ever go anywhere if this were the case. The global language could be any language--English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Swahili, Esperanto, or Martian--it does not matter what it is, there just must be one. That it happens to be the language I was born with, is a convenient coincidence for me, but if that were not the case, we would have had to learn the dominant world language before this trip, or more likely at an earlier point in our lives. Countries that don't require their students to learn the dominant world language in school are putting their kids at an economic disadvantage, unprepared to interact in the world economy. Countries that don't have the dominant world language available in places where businesspeople and tourists frequent are discouraging trade and commerce and holding back the development of their countries. So on our trip I have praised relatively poor countries like China on this point for being forward looking by being English friendly and criticized places like South America for being insular by not catering to an English-speaking crowd. Overall, Sweden is accessible to English speakers, but less so than I would have expected and less so than the two other Scandinavian countries we visited. We will see if Finland and Norway are similar to Sweden or more like Denmark and Iceland.

On the point of Spanish in the Americas, it has occurred to me that the homogeneity of language in Central and South America that ought to be an advantage for the region has actually been a disadvantage to date. The region has not reaped the benefits of a common language anywhere near as well as they should have--through trade agreements allowing free movement of goods, services, and people. These exist, but are much more limited than they should be. Actually, the common language has made the area insular, somewhat shutting themselves off from the outside world. In contrast, in Europe, with its dozens of languages, has overcome its language disadvantage, creating a union that is to its strong advantage. Its disparate countries have grouped together and realized tremendous trade benefits. Without this integration, many of its small countries would be isolated and insignificant. This is an example of how a disadvantage can lead to a better outcome because it requires ingenuity, and how an advantage can sap the willingness of a country to better itself.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Baltic Facts

Country Population
Estonia: 1.3 million
Latvia: 2.3 million
Lithuania: 3.6 million

Capital & Largest City, Population
Estonia: Tallinn 443,000
Latvia: Riga 856,000
Lithuania: Vilnius 576,000

Per capita GDP, Purchasing Power Parity
Estonia: $12,300
Latvia: $10,100
Lithuania: $11,200

Per capita GDP, Absolute Dollars
Estonia: $4,960
Latvia: $4,070
Lithuania: $4,490

Size
Estonia: about twice the size of New Hampshire
Latvia: slightly larger than West Virginia
Lithuania: also slightly larger than West Virginia

Currency
Estonia: Kroon, 12.5 per dollar
Latvia: Lat, 0.55 per dollar
Lithuania: Lita, 2.7 per dollar

All three countries joined the European Union in 2004 as part of the 10-country expansion from 15 to 25 members. These 10 new members will be allowed to use the Euro beginning in 2007.

Language

Each country speaks its own language: Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian. English is common in all three countries.

Independence

All three countries became independent for the first time in the years after World War I as part of the post-war treaties. The Soviet Union seized all three countries in 1940 when Germany and Russia agreed secretly to carve up Eastern Europe, incorporating the Baltics into the USSR against their will. Germany routed the Soviets from the Baltics when they attacked the USSR in 1941. In 1944, the Soviet Union returned, driving out Germany. All three countries declared independence from the USSR in 1991, four months before it collapsed.

Our hotel, Merchants House, is in the heart of the Old Town, just off the main town square. It's a new hotel in an old building in a great location. All of the Baltic capitals have an old town area dating back eight centuries or so with narrow cobblestone streets. We spent the day walking through the Old Town area visiting sites like the Museum of the Recent Occupations in Estonia, the Kiek in de Kok Tower, and the Tallinn City Museum.

The Tallinn City Museum covers the early history of the city, which is something like this: for this century the Germans ruled us, and then the Russians took over, and then the Swedes ran things for a couple centuries and we really went downhill. Then it was time for the Germans to come back, followed again by the Russians. I probably have the order wrong, but it was something like that, with maybe the Danes taking charge for a period somewhere in there. That takes us up to the end of World War I when Estonia finally gained its independence.

The Museum of the Recent Occupations in Estonia--the name clearly indicating that it does not cover the earlier occupations that are the purview of the city museum--covers 1940 to 1991, when the Soviets, Germans, and Soviets in turn violated the sovereignty of the country. Now a word about the Soviets. They were our Allies in World War II because we had the same enemy, Germany. That's not to say, however, that much was honorable and admirable about the Soviet government. They were thoroughly evil, and the Baltic countries--aside from their Jewish citizens--generally preferred the harsh rule of the Germans to the even harsher rule of the Soviets. Political arrests, torture, deportations, labor camps, and mass murder were all common instruments of Soviet policy toward the Baltics. Unsurprisingly, they rather hate Russia today, instead embracing all things Western, joining the EU, NATO, and supporting the war in Iraq.

Returning to World War II, a significant number of Baltic males joined the German army in 1941 to help eject the Soviets from their country. Finland is another country that--invaded by the Soviet Union--openly supported Germany as the better of two bad choices, from its perspective. The UK declared war on Finland because of this (the US did not), but I can understand the Finns reasoning. The Soviet Union was its enemy, having invaded it without provocation and forcing it to sign a treaty that surrendered part of its territory (which Russia holds to this day). The enemy of my enemy is my friend, making Finland and Germany allies. By that same logic, the US and UK were allied with the Soviet Union.

Thus a scorecard of Soviet aggression in 1939 and 1940 includes Poland (invaded from the east, while Germany invaded from the west), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (all absorbed involuntarily in the USSR), and Finland (the League of Nations expelled the USSR over this). Only the barbarism of Germany made the brutish USSR an ally of the west.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

A driving day, from Tallinn to Riga. The 20-minute walk from the hotel to the downtown Hertz office took over an hour as we walked in circles, due to the miniscule Hertz sign being 95% obstructed by scaffolding. The drive back to the hotel probably took another hour due to Darius's circuitous navigation instructions through the narrow cobblestone streets, many of which are closed to vehicles.

Riga is larger than Tallinn, and its old town area is even more filled with sidewalk cafes and beer halls. Again, we stayed in a small hotel in the old city--Viesturs Boutique Hotel. If nothing else, the Baltics have become a relatively cheap destination for young beer-drinking enthusiasts from elsewhere in Europe to come and spend a mindless weekend in pursuit of the opposite sex. Baltic people have more Scandinavian features (e.g., blond hair) than I expected. This quality in females, when combined with the stereotypical slutty Russian style of dressing present in the Baltics, provides a tempting attraction for a drunken European young man, which I believe is the point of such manner of attire. Combine this with the ubiquitous strip clubs prominent on every corner, and Riga is a bit of a dream stag weekend destination for a group of Irish lads. Many Riga establishments attempt to please all comers--a sidewalk cafe provides an intimate setting for couples, a bar inside draws the drinking crowd, a room in back provides strip club gratification for frustrated males, while the upstairs is a dance club. Strangely it all works, as couples see nothing odd in having dinner in a pole-dancing establishment.

Having said all of this, I don't want to give the wrong impression of Riga. It's a charming place and a good place to visit--100% Europe at 50% of the price.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Full day in Riga, visiting the Occupation Museum of Latvia, the Museum of War, and walking around old town. The former is the same concept as the museum in Tallinn, detailing the trio of World War II invasions from USSR, Germany, and the USSR again. The Riga version had less detail on Latvian participation on the German side. I don't know if that's because it did not occur as frequently, or because they are ashamed it did occur. Tallinn museum rather matter-of-factly presented the view that of course we helped the Germans; they weren't as bad as the Soviets after all, unless you were Jewish which not many of our people were. Museum of War was mainly in Latvian--I'm willing to give them a pass on this point where I criticized Sweden since Latvia only joined the EU last year (Sweden only joined in 1995, but they were part of developed Western Europe for decades prior.)

Monday, August 15, 2005

Drove from Riga, Latvia to Darius's parents' house in Vilnius, Estonia. During the drive, we decided that the Baltic countries rank first in worst public bathrooms in the world, dislodging the prior champion China and moving the US down to number 3 from number 2. Darius thought this was a leftover attitude from the Soviet era where no one took care of public property since no one owned it. Along the way, we stopped at the Hill of Crosses, which is literally that--a hill with a million or more crosses on it (see image gallery once we add our Lithuanian pictures). Originally, it was a protest site over the Soviet's ban on religion (although there are some reports that the site existed prior to the Soviet takeover). The Soviets would take down the crosses, and by morning, the local citizens would have them back in place. With independence, there is no longer any restriction on religion, but the site has flourished, not so much as a protest area, but rather as a celebration of religion. Lithuania is primarily Roman Catholic whereas Estonia to the north is primarily Lutheran and Latvia in between is a mix of the two religions.

Darius's parents have a fascinating life story. When the USSR was advancing to retake the Baltics from the Germans in 1944, his father, Bronius, fled west on a bicycle to avoid the Soviets. As related in our earlier entries, the Soviet Union was feared more than Germany as the real enemy of the Baltic States. He ran into the retreating German army. They detained him, but he escaped the first night. Having no food, he joined the Lithuanian resistance, which opposed the Soviets. Once his hunger subsided, he traveled by ship from Poland to German-held Denmark. He was forced by the Germans to perform construction and security duties until the war ended. For a while, he was in a British refuge camp. Eventually, Bronius ended up in Germany, finishing high school there after the war. He then immigrated to Canada, working initially as lumberjack, and continuing his education, eventually becoming a college professor. Later he lived in Pennsylvania and Chicago. He was the only member of his family to escape Lithuania; some other family members were persecuted and banished to Soviet labor camps in Siberia. His parents spent 12 years in Siberia after a neighbor informed the authorities that Bronius had been a member of the Lithuanian resistance. After he arrived in the New World, some North Americans could not understand why Bronius did not share their appreciation toward the Soviets for their World War II contribution. To North Americans, he seemed ungrateful for the Soviet "liberation" of his homeland from the Germans. As the Cold War heated up, though, this question became less common.

Bronius first traveled back to Lithuania in the 1960s, where he met Stase, now his wife. After about a week, they decided to marry. They could not do so, however, until Moscow approved, a process that took several more weeks. Bronius returned to the US without his wife, who had to remain in Lithuania for a year until she received permission to leave the country. In 1989 with glasnost well underway, but with the Baltics still part of the USSR, Bronius returned to Lithuania with other Lithuanian expat professors to found a university, which he later became president of. Since 1992, Stase has joined him, making Vilnius their permanent home, although they do spend a few months each year in St. Pete Beach, Florida to escape the Baltic winter.

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March 19, 2005

10:01:49 pm Final Observations on South America  

March 18, 2005

In our last week in South America, we began a post summarizing our experience there. We never finished it then, but will attempt to do so now as we are about to depart New Zealand.

South America is an unknown continent to most Americans, who never think of going there. We encountered more Europeans than Americans, the former being more adventurous in their choice of travel destinations. We do think as a generalization that South American countries do a poor job of promoting itself as a travel destination to English-speaking Americans. Europe and Asia are more front of mind to Americans desiring a foreign continent vacation. Europe is an understandable destination given the heritage of the US, but Asia is further in distance and history, although closer to us economically. We do think Asia has a slight lead over South America in prevalence of English and availability of tourist facilities that match US expectations. This lead is only slight at most, however, and may be more in our imagination than real. Anyway, this slight lead ought is counterbalanced by the closer location of South America.

Whatever the reason why Americans don't go to South America in large numbers, they should. The array of fantastic natural and archeological sites to see tops North America in our opinion. Most Americans could name the Amazon (which we have not been to) and some are familiar with Machu Picchu, but no one seems to know Iguasu Falls (the best waterfalls in the world, making a mockery of Niagara); the Calafate Glaciers (Alaska and New Zealand's glaciers do not begin to compare); or the beauty of the Lakes Region of Chile and Argentina. (As an aside, we observe that New Zealand, which we consider to be one of the most consistently beautiful and outdoorsy countries, has nothing that matches the beauty of Iguasu, Calafate, and the Lakes Region.) The landscape of Rio is as beautiful as any city in the world, but most Americans will see San Francisco and think they've seen it all. The Galapagos Islands (and to a lesser extent Easter Island) are far away places that many Americans want to go to, but never do, opting instead for more expensive, less interesting, and further away places such as Tahiti and Bora Bora that travel agents push them to (never underestimate the power of exotic sounding name, which, when combined with a personal recommendation, becomes irresistible). To top it all off, South America is cheap, cheap, cheap--one of the most affordable places you can travel to. So go.

One question that intrigued us throughout our travels in South America is why North America has prospered while South America has not, given that both were settled in the 16th Century by European powers. The early advantage was to South America over North America as it had more developed indigenous cultures and was generally settled a bit earlier by the Spanish than was North America by other Europeans, primarily the English. So what went wrong?

We have identified three contributing factors. There are likely other factors we've missed and we will not attempt fully justify the ones we've identified, but in any event, here they are:

- Simply stated, the English were better colonialists than the Spanish were. While each kept colonies for economic gain, the English did more to develop the colonies and make them a better place to live in terms of education, infrastructure, and institution building. The Spanish invested little and took much. The best comparison we can think of is actually not in the Americas or even involving the English, but we think it illustrates the point well. The Philippines were a Spanish colony for roughly 400 years and later an American colony for roughly 40 years (the only colony the US has ever had). If you consider the American colonial period in the first half of the 20th Century a surrogate for how the English would have operated, you have a fair comparison of one nation under two different colonial rulers. The Spanish were there for 400 years, but today few people in the Philippines speak Spanish and there are no significant ties between Spain and the Philippines. The one legacy the Spanish left is Catholicism. The Americans in contrast built roads, established mass education, built democratic institutions, and voluntarily handed over power. Today, English is the unifying language of this island archipelago, even though it was not commonly spoken a century ago.

- The pervasiveness of the Catholic Church in Spanish colonial society and government was so great as to be a negative. It did not have a parallel in England, which broke with Rome in 1534, and in the US, which had a clear vision of separation of church and state based upon firsthand experience of religious persecution in Europe.

- The US had figures like George Washington as a role model. He and our other founding fathers generally put the countries' interests ahead of their own and designed a brilliant system of government that properly checked the natural bad tendencies of men in power. South America had a series of those bad men, unchecked, and in power. Instead of George Washington, they had caudillos like Juan Manuel de Rojas of Argentina who lusted after power for personal gain, not for the patriotic good, and did whatever it took to achieve it, crushing all opposition. Rojas ruled Argentina as a dictator for roughly the first 30 years of its founding and set the example for future generations of leaders.

On the last point, it's worth noting that there is a South American figure, Simon Bolivar, who is called the South American George Washington. Inspired by the American Revolution, Bolivar's vision was the confederation of Gran Columbia, consisting of present day Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Bolivar and his right-hand man General Sucre (continuing the analogies to the American Revolution, perhaps Sucre could be called the Alexander Hamilton of South America) fought to achieve independence from the Spanish for these countries in the 1820s and then unified them. Gran Columbia collapsed in 1830, though, as leaders of the respective countries could not put aside personal differences and competing ambitions for the greater good. This failure is a stark reminder that it was never preordained that the US colonies would unite and form one great country instead of 13 minor countries that most people in the world would have trouble placing on the map. We forget that the colonies were not unified at the beginning--they were independent, competing, often squabbling, separate entities. We are so fortunate that the politicians of the 1770s and 1780s were able to reach compromise for the common good. Consider what the US and Gran Columbia each might have become had they taken the path of the other.

The Gran Columbian countries today have a population of nearly 120 million, but we suspect its size would be tens of millions higher had they remained united, as European and Central and South American immigrants would have been attracted to the most dominant Spanish-speaking country in the world. Who knows, maybe Mexican migration would have flowed south to the Gran Columbia juggernaut instead of north to the US. With a large domestic market and its language advantage over Portuguese-speaking Brazil, Gran Columbia would be the giant of South America instead of Brazil. Instead, "we are an insignificant country today," said our Ecuadorian tour guide Ruben, lamenting that the Gran Columbia Revolution did not share a common path with the American Revolution. "And you," he continued, "have become the most powerful country in the world."

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March 02, 2005

04:43:30 pm Easter Island, Chile  

Easter Island, Chile
Sunday, February 27, 2005 - Wednesday, March 2, 2005
Population: 3,000 - 4,000
Language: Spanish and Rapa Nui (Polynesian language variant, with similarities to Hawaiian)

Itinerary
LAN Chile flight from Santiago, Chile to Easter Island, Chile
Three nights at Mana Nui Inn

Easter Island Activities
Island tour
Snorkeling
Horseback riding
Rapa Nui movie
Writing for web site

Easter Island is where to go when you want to get away from it all. It's a small, 45-square mile island, whose nearest neighbor, the even smaller Pitcairn Island, is over 1000 miles away. The five-hour flight from Santiago, roughly 2500 miles east, comes four times per week in high season. After a brief stop, the flight continues on to Tahiti, another 2500 miles west. The return flight from Tahiti arrives three times per week in high season. So, altogether, there is one flight per day in high season.

We stayed three nights on Easter Island, continued on the flight west to Tahiti. While tourism is the main interaction of the island with the outside world, only 25,000 visit the island annually, although for perspective that small number seems larger when you consider it is six or seven times the population of the island. This tourist throng did not begin until 1985, when the US funded an airport expansion to allow it to be an alternate landing site for the space shuttle should it need to make an emergency landing in the South Pacific Ocean. Before then there was no regular commercial air traffic.

Everyone knows everyone. When we did not see anyone meeting us at the airport as we had prearranged, we inquired at the information desk. The women working there turned out to be the daughter of the owner of the inn where we stayed and she quickly found her mother in the crowd. We occupied one of the two rooms at our inn, which was an additional two bedroom building constructed in the owner Bicky's backyard. We had a view of the ocean, a few hundred yards away, and it was a short walk into town. The larger hotels have one or two dozen rooms. But these days you cannot be too out of touch. There were internet cafes and our Blackberry constantly streamed e-mails from home. We guess you have to go to Macomb for your Blackberry not to work!

Easter Island of course is where those giant stone heads, called moai, you have seen in National Geographic or the Discover Channel are located (see image gallery). The entire island culture was devoted to honoring their ancestors by carving these heads in stone on the volcanic mountain and then transporting them down to the seaside. The population peaked around 15,000 in the 17th Century before an internal civil war and outside disease brought by the Europeans, reduced the population to less than a thousand in the 19th Century. Civil war between the two island clans, the Long Ears (they wore long earrings) and the Short Ears apparently ended the moai building. Many of the moai were toppled either by natural causes or perhaps by the Short Ears, but most are reconstructed today.

We watched a movie, Rapa Nui, which depicted the culture of moai building and the beginning of the civil war, before the Europeans arrived in 1722 on Easter Sunday. Kevin Costner financed, but does not appear in, the 1994 film, which perhaps results from his Dances with Wolves indigenous people phase. While the film is not historically accurate (think Oliver Stone) in that among other things it combines events that occurred over multiple centuries into a story that unfolds in less than one year, it does a good job we thought of providing one version of how some of the history could have happened. You probably won't find this mediocre-acted, B-movie at your local Blockbuster, but it's worth seeking out if you want to learn more about the native culture of Easter Island.

Despite what the guidebooks say, you really can see everything in one day, which we did on our first full day. We spent the morning of day two horseback riding. Nick has had a traumatic history with horses, but emerged from this experience uninjured. Sometime around age four, he was thrown off a pony at his grandparent's farm. Then around age eight, he fall off a galloping horse and fractured his wrist. His last horse adventure was around age 16 in the Rocky Mountains. Some years later, his uncle Dave confessed that the reason Nick's horse was constantly breaking into an uncontrolled gallop was that Dave and Nick's step-dad Bill kept poking it with a stick. It has taken him over 20 years to get back on a horse and after his latest adventure, he concluded that he was glad to have been born in the age of the automobile.

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