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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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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January 24, 2005

11:27:04 am Brasilia, Brazil  

Brasilia, Brazil
Sunday, January 16, 2005 - Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Capital of Brazil since 1960, city did not exist prior to this
City population 500,000; 2 million in metropolitan area

Itinerary
TAM flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Brasilia, stopping in Porto Alegre (no plane change)
Two nights at Kubitschek Plaza Hotel

Activities
Morning city tour
Afternoon tour of outlying areas
These two tours cover most of the sites to see (there is a third tour that hits the remaining sites), so we saw most everything in six hours total, although a few places (not most) we would have spent a bit more time if we could have.

Country Background:
Population: 184 million
Per capita GDP: $8,000
Size: slightly less than US
Currency: real, 2.70 per dollar
Independence: 1822 from Portugal
Language: Portuguese; Spanish common

The most amazing thing about Brasilia is that it exists. Imagine if Dwight Eisenhower during his 1956 run for the US presidency, proposed that the nation's capital be moved to an empty spot in the middle of Wyoming, where no one lived. Then imagine if--once elected--he made good on that campaign pledge and actually oversaw the move of the capital to newly built city in remote Wyoming during that term of his presidency. Preposterous? That is exactly what Juscelino Kubitschek did at the same time. Granted he was elected to a five-year term instead of four years a US president has, but nonetheless it is a remarkable triumph of imagination and willpower. He later said that he thought the city had to be finished in one term, otherwise the next administration would never see it through. Fifty years of progress in five was his motto.

The new capital was not without its cost. Inflation and a balance of payments deficit followed as Kubitschek relentlessly pressed on with his economic development program of the nation's interior. He left these financial problems to his successor, who didn't even last a year in office and by 1964 the military had taken over from the politicians, a common theme throughout South American in the 20th Century.

But today, Kubitschek is lauded throughout Brasilia, for if not for him truly the place would not exist. His place in history is secure because his great accomplishment outweighs his greatest negative. Leaders of any country or in any situation are remembered in history for one or two key things, whether good or bad. That's it. No matter how much a person accomplishes, one or two things is the epitaph you have in posterity. Lincoln: freed slaves and kept the country together. Washington: father of our country, won Revolutionary War and was the first president. FDR: New Deal during Depression and winning World War II. Reagan: restored country's confidence and won the Cold War. Nixon: Watergate. Kubitschek: built Brasilia.

The look of Brasilia reflects the period in which it was conceived--the late 50s. Cars were big, everyone wanted one, gas was cheap, freeways were the way to go (after all Eisenhower may not have moved the capital but he did build the interstate highway system), and environmental concerns did not exist. Brasilia looks like it was underwritten by General Motors. It's a pre-space age city that the ancestors of the Jetsons would feel at home in. It is spread out, with multilane roads and interchanges connecting everything. Present day environmentalists and city planners criticize the city for its over reliance on the automobile, but unlike Los Angeles, the amount of open, green space dwarfs the amount of built-upon land. The vast amount of open land is ironically an attribute that requires a spread out automobile-friendly design. The designer of the city meant it to resemble a bow and arrow, but a plane or a bird is what most people see when they look at a map (see city maps in the image gallery).

Nick had read about Brasilia for years and had marveled that it existed. It's a great political accomplishment anywhere, but especially in South America which has such a poor record of political accomplishment. Because it is isolated in the interior of the country, 600 miles from the former capital Rio de Janeiro, we did not have time to visit it on our New Year's trip to Brazil two years ago. This trip we skipped the normal Brazilian stops of Rio, Sao Paulo, and Iguasu Falls that we visited two years ago to make time for Brasilia. Brasilia was built to be a seat of government, so there's not a tremendous amount to do there, two or three days is enough time (we were there just under two days). But if you have any interest in urban design, architecture, or politics, it is worth the trip. It's such a unique place, and a living monument to what humankind can achieve when willpower follows the setting of an inspirational goal. It's a modern city built out of a jungle.

While there, we discussed what would Brasilia look like if it were designed today instead of nearly 50 years ago. We are not sure it would look the same. It is an excellent reflection of period in time of when it was designed. Today, such a sprawling design is not politically correct, even as it dominates American suburbia. In Asia, today's building boom reveals what a new capital in that part of the world would look like. In the past 15 years, China has essentially built a new financial (not government) capital in the Pudong area of Shanghai (across the river from what was existing Shanghai). In Beijing, the political capital of China, the government is building vast new parts of the city in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. These areas have a futurist architectural look for our time, just as Brasilia did for its time. We are not sure, though, if a South American capital built today would resemble the Asian model. We wonder if it might actually look more like the past, an updated post-modern version of Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital. Buenos Aires has wide streets and boulevards and big parks that are desired for a capital city, but it also has the grid design of a traditional city, and traditional Spanish-style architecture that seems elegant, classic, and timeless. We'll never know the answer to this question as there aren't any new South American capitals on the drawing board, but this is the kind of question we amuse ourselves with as we live this year in different countries.

If Kubitschek were to see his city today, he would undoubtedly be proud to see what it has become, but there is one aspect that he probably would not be so happy with. Like many South American cities, graffiti mars an otherwise Disneyesque order to the place. Why the city tolerates this, we just cannot figure out. There's no lack of government-employed labor tidying up the place. We saw work crews using power floor cleaners to wash outdoor granite plazas, fields of green space being regularly mowed, and flowers being planted and maintained all over the city. Much of this activity seemed overkill and even make-work. But there was scant evidence of removing graffiti. There is an obvious civic pride about Brasilia and a desire to keep its appearance up, but the lack of focus on graffiti is a complete blind spot. We'd redirect 80% of the work crews to graffiti removal and let the acres of empty, unused green space go unmowed for a while. Overall the place would look a lot better with this reallocation of labor. We imagine Mayors Giuliani or Daley would do the same. It's just common sense, at least to us.

During our tours of Brasilia, we met another couple from the UK who are doing a trip similar to ours (see Space Age Shoes from the Future picture in Image Gallery). Being slightly younger and not being American, they are naturally more adventurous than we are, spending five months in South America, part of the time camping. We are going to many of the same places, although we will generally be there a few months before them as they linger longer in South America. These chance encounters when you run into people with different backgrounds, but doing similar things, with whom you can exchange ideas and information are an enjoyable aspect of travel outside of your own country. You meet, instantly bond, and then a short time later you say goodbye, your paths most likely to never cross again.

Most people assume that Spanish dominates South America, and it does in a way, but there are actually roughly the same numbers of Portuguese speakers as there are Spanish speakers. All of the Portuguese speakers are concentrated in Brazil, however, which by far has the biggest population on the continent. Thus the perception that Spanish dominates South American is legitimate in that it is an official language (we think) in every country but one and it is common in Brazil as well. (For simplicity, we've ignored for the moment that native Indian languages are commonly spoken in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and other places.)

So the trip to Brasilia meant a change from the Spanish we had begun to grow accustom to. Nick, displaying his latent language skills from the 2003 Brazil trip, immediately began using "arigato" to say thank you, until he realized that was Japanese, and the correct Portuguese word was "abrigado." The hotel staff, being too polite to correct him themselves but knowing Japanese when they heard it, did have a good laugh when he realized his error and began using the right word.

Finally, conservatives and champions of free speech everywhere will take pride to know that Fox News Channel is available in Brasilia. While Fox Sports and Fox Network are common outside the US, this is the first time we've seen Fox News. Usually, CNN is the dominant US news network overseas. So now Brazilians can watch what Canadians are not allowed to see.

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