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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February 09, 2005

08:42:56 pm Bolivia  

La Paz, Bolivia
Saturday, February 5, 2005 - Monday, February 7, 2005
Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - Thursday, February 10, 2005
Administrative capital and largest metropolitan area in Bolivia
Highest capital city in the world, altitude 3636 meters (12,000 feet)
City population: 1.1 million in metropolitan area

Sucre, Bolivia
Monday, February 7, 2005 - Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Legal capital of Bolivia and seat of judiciary
City population: 250,000

Potosi, Bolivia
Monday, February 7, 2005 - Tuesday, February 8, 2005
Largest city in the Americas in 1600, larger than London or Paris at the time
Highest city of its size in the world, altitude 4070 meters (13,400 feet)
City population today: 200,000

Bolivia Country Background:
Population: 9 million
Per capita GDP: $2,000
Size: Between Texas and Alaska
Currency: boliviano, 8.05 per dollar
Independence: 1825 from Spain
Language: Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara all official languages. Quechua and Aymara are indigenous Indian languages.

Itinerary
Lloyd Aereo Boliviano ( LAB ) flight from Cusco, Peru to La Paz, Bolivia
LAB flight from La Paz to Santa Cruz
LAB flight from Santa Cruz to Sucre
Private car from Sucre to Potosi
Private car from Potosi to Sucre
LAB flight from Sucre to La Paz

Two nights at Hotel Gloria, La Paz
One night at Hotel Colonial, Potosi
One night at Real Audiencia, Sucre
One night at Hotel Gloria, La Paz

La Paz Activities
Tiawanaku ruins archeological site (45 miles from La Paz; the Tiawanaku preceded the Incas and ruled a vast empire from roughly 1500 BC to the 13th century AD)
Valley of the Moon geological formations

Sucre Activities
City tour

Potosi Activities
Mine tour, recommended
Santa Teresa Convent tour

Bolivia is known for three things: losing wars and territory, overthrowing its government, and ambushing rebel cult figures. Bolivia lost its access to the Pacific Ocean to Chile in the War of the Pacific, 1879-1884, and it lost further territory to Paraguay in the Chaco War, 1932-1935. Earlier, one of its dictators sold off parts of its territory from 1865-1871. There were 65 attempted coups in the 1840s alone. The turmoil continues to this day, with presidents resigning in both 2001 and 2003. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were gunned down in Bolivia, as was Che Guevara.

We came to Bolivia for one primary reason and it is a bit of an odd one--to see Potosi. The Spanish discovered silver in Potosi in 1545, shortly after they arrived in South America. By the early 1600s, Potosi was the largest city in the Americas and was larger than London or Paris. It was known as the richest city in the world due to its mineral wealth, and according to our guidebook, "it's a Potosi" remains a Spanish saying to describe something extremely rich. The saying may remain, but the riches of Potosi are long gone as the silver ran out. The mines remain with tin, zinc, lead, and other minerals extracted, but the area is now the poorest region in Bolivia, itself a poor country.

We took the mine tour, where you don special clothing and descend into the mines (see image gallery). This tour is as authentic as you get as you walk, crawl, and climb into actual working mines--nothing is prettied up and there are no safety additions. Not for the claustrophobic or those not in good physical condition.

Why see Potosi? We wanted to see in person what a former world leading city looked like post decline. Our quest may have been slightly misguided, as it appeared to us that the Spanish exported (literally) most of the wealth back to Spain, with not much reinvested in Potosi. Visually, Potosi did not have the even the faded architectural splendor of other colonial hubs. While the city has plenty of Catholic churches, it did not appear that the Spanish developed the other cultural institutions you would expect given the wealth that once was there. It's almost as they knew the silver would run out some day, so why bother. Sucre has far more colonial charm even though it did not have as much mineral wealth as Potosi.

We also visited a convent and learned of the standard colonial practice of wealthy families sending their second daughter to the convent at age 15. The nuns would never see their family again, nor would they ever physically leave the convent, spending the rest of their years in a sort of religious prison, which apparently was a high honor. We thought afterward that neither of the two sites we saw offered an attractive lifestyle. We would not have liked to have been a miner or a nun.

The Bolivians were celebrating Carnival while we were there. The dates are the same as Rio's Carnival, but the customs and folklore differ. We didn't know at first what was going on. While we were still in Peru, a few days before the beginning of carnival, we observed packs of schoolchildren toting water guns, water balloons, silly string, and shaving cream. Like the US Independence Day, the fireworks start going off a few days before the actual event. But unlike the singular day of the Fourth of July, this is at least a four-day celebration, stretching from Saturday to Tuesday, not counting the preliminary activities a few days before Saturday.

The idea is to soak anyone you meet, or cover them in silly string or shaving cream. For Chicagoans who used to party on Lincoln Avenue, it's as if the whole city becomes The Big Nasty for several days. Adults and children don ponchos to protect their clothing, although wearing one is to invite attack. Children wander the streets packing Super Soakers like rebels wandering with machine guns through a city under siege. Multi-hour parades highlight each of the four days. Everyone seems to have a good time. In Potosi, the revelers repeatedly invited us to bless some object (the devil idol in the mines, the side of a building, a car) by dousing it with some form of grain alcohol. After the blessing, you are to drink the remaining alcohol, so we were sure to douse liberally and fortunately be left with an empty cup post blessing.

La Paz is visually spectacular as you drive into it from the airport. La Paz sits in a valley, some 1500 feet below the airport on a plateau in its twin city of El Alto (see image gallery). Flying in, there's no indication the altitude is so high as the high plains of the Altiplano stretch on with miles and miles of flat ground above 13,000 feet. Up close, La Paz is not as attractive as it appears at a distance.

According to our tour guide, El Alto split from La Paz 19 years ago, leaving each city with a population between 500,000-600,000. Fast growing Santa Cruz, where natural gas deposits exist, is now the largest city. La Paz may still claim the title of largest metro area for now, but Santa Cruz is poised to pass it. So the economic center of Bolivia continues to evolve, from Potosi in early colonial times to La Paz during most of the country's history, to Santa Cruz over the last decade or two. Economic change is a constant as time marches on.

Would we recommend a tour to Bolivia? The people are friendly, our tour guides were great, and the country is the most affordable we've encountered yet (dinner for three at one of the better restaurants in Potosi set us back US$7). Despite these positive attributes, though, what we saw is not enough to make the journey. However, we didn't see the main attraction, Salar de Uyuni, the world's biggest salt flats. If we had to do over, we would have spent at least a day at the flats. We didn't know much about them before our trip, but the pictures of them since arriving look spectacular--a blinding white where it's difficult to tell the difference between land and sky. The LAB in-flight magazine had an interview with the country's head of tourism who proclaimed she wanted to make Salar de Uyuni the visual image of Bolivia. Our advice--build an airport. Presently, it takes most of day to get to Salar de Uyuni from La Paz, and from what we hear there is not much tourist infrastructure there once you arrive. If you build the airport, more people will come, and the infrastructure will follow. We don't expect this to happen anytime soon, but if it does, look for a population and real estate explosion in the town of Uyuni.

This is No Way to Run an Airline!

At the Lloyd Aereo Boliviano ( LAB ) check-in area in Cusco on Saturday, February 5, the agent informed us that our names were not on the list of passengers on the flight to La Paz. Never mind that we had bought and paid for our tickets two months earlier. We had not reconfirmed our tickets, something we had not been told to do. Not a problem, we were told, the flight was not full. But in the future, we should reconfirm our flights. We pick up the conversation there:

Nick: We have two additional flights on LAB over the next few days. Can we confirm those with you now?
Agent: Yes, you should reconfirm them.
(Long pause)
Nick: Okay, we would like to confirm those two flights right now.
Agent: Yes, they need to be reconfirmed.
Deanna: How do we reconfirm them?
Agent: Yes, they must be reconfirmed!
Nick: (slowly) What do we do to reconfirm?
Agent: You must call the airline.
Nick: What number do we call?
Agent: I do not have that information.
Deanna: Can we reconfirm at the airport?
Agent: Yes.
Nick: Can we reconfirm with you?
Agent: No.

Eventually we found someone who could reconfirm our flights, and it was good that we did because our flight for Monday, February 7 from La Paz to Sucre had a time change. Not a 15 or 25-minute time change like you might expect, but a 5 hour 45 minute time change. Instead of departing at 3:15 PM, our flight now left at 9:30 AM. Oh, and forget about the short direct flight with an arrival time 50 minutes after departure. We now had a connecting flight and layover, so we would arrive at our destination 3 hours 25 minutes after departure instead of 50 minutes. Okay, whatever. Our return flight from Sucre to La Paz on Wednesday, February 9 also changed, but it was only two hours earlier and it remained a direct flight. So really that was just a minor change, hardly a change at all.

The next day, Sunday, we received a message at our hotel, that Monday's flight time had changed again, and would now be 6:45 AM. This was 2 hours and 45 minutes earlier than the last change, and a mere 8 hours and 30 minutes from the original schedule. No problem, we were actually looking for a reason to set the alarm for 4AM.

So on Monday, February 7, we were two of six passengers on the 6:45 AM flight. The flight crew outnumbered the passengers. Who would have thought that making multiple changes in the flight time, including one less than 24 hours before the flight, would affect the passenger count?

The flight steward, realizing it was an empty flight, invited everyone to sit in first class, a nice touch. Clearly he must have been on loan from another airline.

When we disembarked our first flight in Santa Cruz to await our second flight to Sucre, the airport workers had taken great care to set up a security rope so that the large crowd of six would not get lost on the way to baggage claim. We did not need to claim any bags as we had checked them through to Sucre, so we began to step over the rope. No, the airport worker chastised us, you must go downstairs, through baggage claim, and then back upstairs through security. Clearly, having just got off a plane, we were a security risk. The language and cultural barrier being what it is, it is just better to comply with silly requests rather than try to point out their silliness. So we went downstairs, upstairs, and through security. Having disembarked from gate 4, we now proceeded back to gate 3 for our next flight. Except that we could not get there because the security rope from our gate 4 flight was still in place. No problem, gestured the very same airport employee, just step over the rope and proceed to gate 3, which we did, our security status apparently no longer in question.

We had just settled into our assigned seats on the flight to Sucre, when the flight steward approached us and overpowered us with his Spanish. This would not be the same steward as on our first flight, as that helpful and thoughtful fellow had been replaced with a LAB employee. The conversation went something like this:

Steward: You cannot sit here!
Nick: These are our seats.
Steward: Let me see your boarding pass.
Steward: (disappointedly, after confirming we were in fact in the correct seats) Well, the plane has changed and you cannot sit here. (Haughtily) This is business class!
Deanna: (sarcastically, noticing the seats were identical to the ones in coach, and observing there were only 2 other people in "business class" and no more than 25 on the entire plane) So, someone else has these seats?
Steward: ahhh--yes--You cannot sit here.

So we slummed it back to "coach" and settled into identical seats, and enjoyed identical beverage service on the 40-minute flight, observing that our "business class" seats remained empty throughout the flight.

During our travels, we have collected a few pamphlets on various aspects of local culture. Here we present two such examples.

Bolivian Rules of the Road

Horn - use in place of braking
White line in middle of road - be sure to spend equal amounts of time on each side of line so that one side of road does not wear out more quickly than the other
Solid yellow line on your side of the middle of the road - opportunity to pass exists
Double yellow line in the middle of the road - take care as oncoming traffic likely to be passing at same time you are
Curve - if passengers are able to remain in their seats without bracing themselves, you are taking curve too slowly and should speed up
Bad road - since you can not travel as fast when the road is bad, it is important to speed up to mitigate the delay
Rain - similar to a bad road, it is important to drive faster when it is raining
Seatbelts - never use these; preferably they should be removed from the vehicle
Trunk - extra passenger space when needed
Driver's license expiration date - after this date you will need to bribe police when stopped. Do not renew license as that will cost more than paying bribes.
Guardrail - this safety feature greatly reduces the chance of running off the road, so abandon usual caution to compensate.

South American Waitstaff Tips for Drink Pouring Water or Coke

Use 6-ounce glass if nothing smaller available, but ideally a 4-ounce glass should be used. With great flourish, pour no more than 2 ounces into glass. The more time it takes to pour this amount of liquid, the better. Never leave bottle on the table, as this would make it convenient for customers to refill their own glasses. Place bottle in sight but out of reach of customer on another table. Do not make yourself too easily available to refill customer's glass, as this will encourage customer to drink too quickly and you may have the burden of having to fetch another drink for customer.

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