Bookslut has an interview with a man called Seth Shafer, whose prizewinning work of fiction, Main Strength was ripped off, tarted up and re-presented to a university short fiction contest by a Princeton student, Ung Lee.
Lee's story was good enough to take the top prize and some additional prizemoney as well, worth a lot more than Shafer was paid for his work. The Stonybrook contest site now indicates that the winning story was withdrawn, but the good ol' Google cache still has a copy of Lee's version.
Shafer, an MFA graduate, can see the signs of a classroom make-over, possibly under the supervision of Joyce Carol Oates. He's a bit miffed that Lee presents himself as a hip up-and-coming writer. Still, if you read the two stories side by side, Shafer's seems superior to me. More punchy; less loaded with superfluous explanatory detail or unnecessary plot devices. More sentences that impact you by their strangeness side by side.
According to The Daily Princetonian, Lee could face some pretty serious sanctions upon his return from his foreign travels. One hopes he plans a stop at the Republic of Letters during his exile. One hopes he finds room to apologise and acknowledge Shafer's work during his quest to "hopefully, find something to write about."
From Arts and Letters Daily, a link to this Boston Globe article by Charles Duhigg on the subject of the benefit of ESOPs for employees.
Having done my own MBA research in this subject area, it bothers me to see token share ownership confused, or rather conflated, with the real benefit of employee ownership and control of a firm, all for the sake of a few jabs at ESOPs and Louis Kelso.
In my experience, capital's fears of employee ownership are ill-founded. Given a measure of control over their own jobs, employees are neither irrational (voting themselves excessive pay or super-bolshy benefits that are funded out of earnings) or overly conservative (good management tends to show the writing on the wall if a company is tanking; employees are usually willing to muck in and share the burden if they believe they can change the course). They think long-term, but their shareholding structure should allow this. Duhigg misses the point when commenting that managers are primarily concerned about quarterly results - if this is true, the ESOP philosophy is not really in place.
Employee-owned firms not only solve the agency problem Duhigg illustrates, they also improve solidarity, making it easier to survive the tough times, and they increase something called "x-efficiency", which is a reduction in the internal friction within a firm when individual interests clash with the organisation's. I sort of think about this as the "Internet factor". If there's work to do versus net to surf (or bills to pay, coffee to be drunk, or water-cooler discussions to be had), a dedicated employee should be more inclined to work for the common good. In my research I came across examples of real dedication in some of the people I interviewed.
The idea of betting against your own company, as Duhigg points out, is most impolitic, and would be crazy if carried to extremes (why not just bet on the competition, short your own company, then sink your own company?). But it is true that you should not hold all your eggs in one basket, whether you own the company or not. Portfolio theory should expose the shallow nonsense that these scaremongers are touting. This is not really argument against employee ownership.
The abuses of Enron - the damage that it's failure did to its employees - should not be used as an argument against employee ownership. Enron employees may have been bought off by the phenomenal performance of their stake in the company, but they did not "own" their company, and they certainly did not control it. The failure of Enron is not one of their ESOP, it is one of lax regulatory oversight and abuses of the ESOP by greedy and felonious management practices.
The case of UAL is more complex, since employees do own a majority of the shares in the company. But only three of fifteen board seats, with a majority of the shareholding? That is not control. This sounds like a sop to the stock market so as not to panic the horses, and it gave employees a false sense of empowerment in return for their concessions. Further, it seems to me that the employee owners of UAL were not "United" in their ownership interests or concessions, which left room for the fingerpointing that Duhigg reports.
Duhigg also cites some wilder theories about the shortcomings of employee-owned firms. About a conservative failure to invest in R&D, for instance. And while there may be research to support some of these conclusions, there would also be case studies to suggest the opposite. What needs to be borne in mind is that ownership structure is no guarantee of success, whether it be by employees or by stock-market capitalists. Bad decisions, whether taken by managers or by staff, can still destroy a company. So can the market. Polaroid would be a good case of the latter. You either adapt or die. Again, not an argument against employee ownership.
Dot-com employees are also often cited as getting screwed by ownership. But this is more a function of market irrationality and management profligacy. These people, apart from the founders, don't control their companies. Their compensation may have been padded out with options that are now worthless, but that is a function of the design of the options awards and the willingness of employees in start-ups to accept shares in return for low cash compensation. As a component of compensation, options schemes should be designed to incentivise growing the fundamentals, not betting the future on sky-high share prices and multiples.
My view is that employee ownership is good for the economy. Good for workers, and in turn for those who own the remaining shares. My research was in Britain, so my examples tend to be British. But look at these successful employee-owned (or beneficially controlled) companies: John Lewis Partnership, Scott Bader, St Lukes. There seems to be no sector that could not sustain a well-designed employee-ownership scheme. Dissing the ESOP is a smokescreen. Five percent of a company is not ownership. Ownership is more than a fact; it is a culture.
The right answer is to find, in the company's constitution, a balance in governance between the big decisions, to be taken by (employee)-owners, and the day-to-day running of the company, which should be left to managers, chosen by staff, who should expect to operate with a free hand in their own remit. Feedback from employees can inform the operation; information from management should be freely available to employees. Anything less opens the door to breakdown, or accommodates arrogance that may be masking incompetence.
Bravo to Robin Cook for standing by his principles. His speech resigning his position as Leader of the House is one of the more stirring statements about the madness in which the world finds itself.
My Amazon.com music store is recommending The Very Best of Cher. Why?
I didn't know they made 45s anymore!
These days, the highways around our city are stacked with long unbroken chains of trucks bringing the year's soybean harvest to the port, and thus to market. It is something to drive past a column of trucks more than a mile long. It is something else entirely to pass the same column for 60, 70 miles. The trucks come and get their place in line for unloading at the port. It can take 24-36 hours for the column to move that far.
I never gave much thought to how the harvest reaches the market. In the US, you see elevators dotting the farm countryside, usually along the rail lines. Crops are harvested, then sent to the elevator or stored in silos until it can command a good price at market. Maybe you wait until winter, because the harvest usually depresses prices on the spot market. Here, it seems, the price is good now (the devaluation of the real means that, relative to the cost of planting, the number of reais received for selling a crop in dollars is much higher than budgeted at planting. This is apparently a big driver in the huge rush to get to market.
When you see a column of trucks this long, you also understand at first hand what an agricultural powerhouse Brazil is.
While travelling in Peru, it was easy to stay completely clear of the news. No newspapers, Internet, television. We saw a headline on Monday to suggest that an ultimatum had been announced. I knew that war was unavoidable - you cannot amass so many troops in the desert; spend so much money, and not do anything. You cannot wait until the heat of midday exceeds 50 C and keep hundreds of thousands of people idling in the desert. The US never had the intention to do anything but make this war. They can use up their arsenal and fuel the military economy replenishing it. It is amoral and saddening. It is tough going to be an American out in the world these days.
Thursday night, while my wife was using an ATM, a rather drunken man came up to me on the street in Cusco. He made some anti-American comments; cursed tourists - Americans, British, Germans(?). He made a fierce grimace and drew his finger across his throat in an attempt to intimidate. It didn't, though. It just made me sad. My Spanish isn't good enough to respond, but I said something in Portuguese. I didn't want to agree with him, or disagree. I just looked back pensively, perhaps appealing to his sense of measure. What was this nonsensical act going to add to a world gone awry? Eventually I just walked away. He seemed angry, but not with me, not with our family.
We put on CNN back at the hotel. We saw that the conflict had started. We didn't watch for long. What we were watching was not news; it was propaganda; it was repetitive; it was media frenzy. It was appealing to a curiosity that in me has been deadened by too much saturation coverage. Even though I do not want people to die; even though I want it to be over quickly, I do not want to watch or read or justify any of it. Pray for peace.
Although it never made the current reading list, I finished reading Lee Hoinacki's El Camino: Walking to Santiago de Compostela while we were away in Peru. For me, this was more suitable reading (read: lightweight) than The Alexandria Quartet while shuttling between Lima, Cusco, Pisco and Machu Picchu with only two backpacks and an overnight bag to support a family of three.
In a sense it was a strange choice of book to take to Peru - oughtn't I be reading to deepen my experience of Peru? History? Vargas Llosa? But I was hooked on this one from its arrival with the Amazon delivery, and a story of walking pilgrimage, with its shortish daily chapters, seemed a good way to steal a few pages of reading in the gaps between attractions and attentions.
Hoinacki writes beautifully. It's a serious, sober and reflective work about values and faith, but he communicates his sense of intellectual wonder without losing a lay or non-academic reader. He balances the revealed mysteries of his own faith journey with the aches and pains of the trail, the constant need to push on to find shelter or food, and the small joys of a cold meal, a room to himself, or a cup of cafe con leche.
It's hard for me. I am envious of a man with faith. But why? I enjoyed the read from outwith the lens of Christian faith, but Hoinacki himself says that if you're not on pilgrimage, you're a tourist. He meets a young woman on the trail who confesses to him that she is not Catholic. Can she, she wonders, go to mass with comfort? She is bothered by the words of the priest. People on the pilgrimage are privileged compared with those who cannot afford the time away. Is there room in the world for non-religious pilgrimage? Is there meaning or is it merely walking? I suppose these are questions for individuals to answer to their own satisfaction.
When I walked the West Highland Way in 2001, I met a woman who was researching pilgrimage through her own experiences of it. The WHW is not defined as a pilgrim's trail, but if you choose to make it so, any journey could be so, no? If you use the time alone, in nature, to reflect and to pray; if that prayer helps to guide you to the end; if it helps you to understand more about yourself, well, why not view it as a pilgrimage? That you do not reach a pilgrim's church at the end need not limit the way you think of the walk. Hoinacki reaches Santiago; he goes through the motions as have the thousands or millions before him, but the point is not in the arrival, it is in the journey; the point is not in the outward expressions of religion but in the inward discoveries of faith.
At times, I came to think of our journey in Peru in a pilgrim's terms. Of course it was not. But we came to churches; we reached Machu Picchu (via train and bus). We came to places that others consider to be holy. I could think of the journey required. We learned how the Spaniards gave thanks to Saint James the Killer of Incas (refer: Santiago Matamoros). There were parallels on our journey. The travel was arduous at times. It was a journey. I looked upon the beautiful churches at Cusco and Lima with a greater awareness than I have before.
We are back from Peru. A fantastic journey. I'm using Blogger Pro to backfill with entries about our trip.
A sign of a successful vacation is that you forget about work. This happened early in Peru. We moved a lot, with each day's visit seeming to last far longer than it was. Near the end of the week I had completely lapsed into 'trip' mode, leaving our project in Brazil far behind. We spent a lot of time in transit. We stayed in a new room nearly every night. We packed up the family, including our little one, each morning and set out to see something new and different. We had a lot of very early wake-up calls. We lived through landslides and breakdowns and had some very near misses. It wasn't a holiday about resting and relaxing - it was more an adventure (with, admittedly, very nice accommodation).
It is amazingly sweet to be home again. The season is changing to autumn. Last night was cool enough to have us closing some windows, and climbing out of bed this morning made me glad the water was hot and the coffee on the way. Our daughter went down for her nap last night at 5:30 and never got up again...we tried, but she was just too worn out from the journey. Should we feel bad? She goes on and on when things are interesting - you can't make her sleep. And then it catches up. And we went down early-ish, too. And sleeping in one's own bed is the best thing about a homecoming. I'm sure the little one would agree!
And now, back to work, back to our project, with about 3 months to run. We have a lot yet to accomplish in the months ahead. I am rested, my vacation schedule for the year basically has me working straight through to the end of the job (a quick break at Easter is planned), and for once I feel travelled-out for a while. I am hoping I can make a breakthrough in my Portuguese. I was thinking yesterday that I am probably going to be fully able to read, but not yet able to speak fluently. But at last night's lesson I impressed myself. There's hope for me yet.
Our failure to reach Abancay gave us one benefit - extra time in Cusco - the rest of the day, plus the whole next day which we would have spent on the bus, if we could have made it back. We put this to good use.
We had a nap on returning to the hotel in Cusco. The bus journey was pretty exhausting, and we were back at 3400m. And then we went out for a stroll in town and dinner at the Inka Grill. In early, as usual, but Saturday was (finally) our chance for a real sleep.
And we did. We slept until about 8:00, which was a real luxury for us by now. We dawdled over breakfast before heading out into town to see the churches, museums and other attractions our tour had skipped but for which we could enter with our tourist ticket.
We started in San Blas, an artisans area near a church with a fantastic wood pulpit. Then down to check out the Monasterio hotel, which is supposed to be the nicest in town (and probably in Peru). It is another old monastery, even nicer than our hotel. Really beautiful - you wish you could stay a while to relax in the setting.
Then a coffee, then the main square, some shopping and a pizza lunch (comfort food for all - the little one loves pizza). Then through the Merced monastery (lots of monasteries in Cusco) and a tour of the Qoriqanqa museum (with some Incan and pre-Incan artifacts. We went back to the hotel for a rest in the late afternoon, then went back out for a little shopping (I bought a hat that I am probably not going to be able to wear in public for fear of my wife dying of embarrassment) and dinner. The restaurant was recommended by our guide book, but was pretty full of tour groups. And for once the music was fantastic - something really apart from the usual el condor pasa tooty-toot pan pipe music you hear all too often. The band was Resolucion, and their music was a dip back into traditional Andean music. So good, we bought their CD, which is based on music recorded on a trek to find a remote tribe that may be the last living link to the Incas.
We went to bed about 11:00 and were up at 6:45 to prepare for our departure, back through Lima to Sao Paulo and then home. Disappointingly, after we made it out of Cusco early, our flight to Sao Paulo was so delayed that we could not make it home that evening. Our trip was extended by another night, we stayed at the same airport hotel we had stayed at (intentionally) on the way out, and we made it home the next day about noon. The hotel was fine, but at the end of a journey, even though you will be tired, you really just want to get home.
My second cousin is a medical missionary in Peru. We had made plans to visit with him while on our journey, which required us to take a bus the 165km from Cusco to Abancay - a journey of 5 hours. You do the math; you find the average speed is about 20 miles an hour. And then you note...we are in the Andes; there's no such thing as a straight line. Another cousin, his brother, had, I thought, written the definitive summary of this journey and posted it here.
And maybe he has written the definitve summary of a journey that reaches Abancay. This leaves us to write the story of a trip with the same intended destination, but one that never made it.
Our journey started early - the guide picked us up at our hotel at 6 o'clock for a 6:30 bus. When we met, we discovered that they had booked us with a different bus company to the one my cousin recommended. When we reached the bus station, we found that both have a bus leaving at the same time. The other bus was cheaper; the one recommended to us was meant to be more reliable and comfortable. So, we changed our tickets, paid the extra 2 soles ($0.66) per person, and set off at 6:30 for Abancay.
About the only thing our journey had in common with my cousin's was the tamale vendor who joined our bus shortly after departure and made the rounds with good-smelling and cheap breakfast (which we opted to skip). We passed through a village, stopped for a few passengers en route, and then carried on to another village, where we again stopped. After a few minutes of sitting, I wondered what was going on. I had a look out the window and saw a man emerging from under the back of the bus. And on we sat. And sat. For 45 minutes we sat. I am not finally sure what the problem was - it was too long to change a tire; probably something with the axle or suspension. Or brakes. So, best to fix them now. I saw the driver and his mate sorting out some change in their pockets to pay for the repair. And then about 8:15 we pulled away from the town and continued our journey. We figured we were going to be late, and hoped that the driver would not, as a consequence, drive like a madman. And he didn't. Which was good.
We seemed to be making good time from there. We passed through a narrow valley filled with small subsistence farmsteads (corn, pigs, cattle) with sod houses. I remembered that the ancestors I shared with my cousins had lived in a soddie out on the western Nebraska prairie. We crossed over a pass which offered spectacular views stretching out for miles below, then down a twisting road. An old Chuck Norris Missing in Action film was playing, which then became a straight-to-video special I had never heard of called Thou Shalt Not Kill...Except. We reached the bottom of the valley and were running alongside (and once through) a river when we came across a fresh landslide. A few vehicles had already reached the fresh mound of earth and car-sized rocks that was completely blocking the road. Our driver turned the bus around and we went back to the nearest village, where we stopped for breakfast while a road crew came and cleared the impasse. The driver said it would be about an hour.
There were two cafes alongside the road, and we chose the one with tablecloths (and clientele). Breakfast was offered - a plate of noodles with meat. Not hot, but probably it had once been. And it was pretty tasty. Also a cup of coffee made the Peruvian way - a cup of hot water and a bottle of very strong instant coffee. It wasn't offered, but I would have passed on milk.
After breakfast, we wandered around town until the bus came back - he had returned to the landslide and was monitoring the clearance. We all got back on the bus, less two women who had opted to return to Cusco.
We rolled back down the hill, through the river, over a stretch of road, undermined by the river, that our driver took wide, and soon we came across another landslide - this one even fresher. A large rock had fallen from the hillside and struck a bus that had been just in front of us. It looked ugly - the bus was skewed sideways off its front wheels. A big glass side window had been completely shattered (but, being safety glass, it held together). All of the passengers were on the side of the road; some of them being treated for injuries. We later read in the paper that nine people, including three foreigners, had been injured. Their bus was completely out of commission. Some were sitting by the side of the road when our bus reloaded and we carried on. The landslide was small and the road was still open ahead. I thought it curious that, even though we had empty seats, we did not take on any of the passengers. Maybe they had a different destination.
But then, only one or two kilometers further along, we came to a bridge at a place called Media Luz. There were a number of vehicles stopped before the bridge, and it was clear why. The bridge was clearly under repair, but it seems that even more of it had given way. To my eye, there was no way anything as wide as a bus was going to get across. But then I do not have the eyes of an experienced Peruvian bus driver.
Another thing was bothering me. The most recent deterioration of the bridge had to be very fresh, because there were only a couple of buses and trucks ahead of us, and all of these buses had set out from Cusco expecting to get through. Behind us, the road had been closed for an hour or so to clear the previous landslide, so not many cars could have been held up between the bridge and the landslide, suggesting this had just happened. For example, there was no sign of the bus we would have taken had we not changed company. It occurred to me that if the rest of this bridge collapsed, we would have no way to get back to Cusco, which we were scheduled to do the next day, and where we had left most of our luggage.
Our bus driver ordered everyone off the bus. We asked if he was going to turn back. No, he wasn't. We wanted to turn back. The bus was going to carry on. We were going to walk over the bridge while he drove.
An old man who heard us asking if we were going back to Cusco shouted to us...he, too, had decided to turn back. He asked another bus driver, who had decided to go back, to wait while we took our bags off the first bus. We got on the bus and never looked back. We were more than halfway to Abancay; it was 11:10 (we were scheduled to arrive in 20 minutes, but still had hours ahead of us on the road).
Quite an adventure, but it doesn't end there. Our bus carried on up the hill, retracing the twists to the top of the valley where we had previously enjoyed such a spectacular view. Looking ahead, I could see a waterfall that I hadn't noticed before. The reason was, it hadn't been there before. It had only just started that morning, when a massive hillside slipped down onto the road, completely covering the road with rocks and mud. It was a very pretty site which we had some time to admire while we tried to decide what to do next.
It was clear that they weren't going to get the road open any time soon (if the last slide had been any guide, this was many hours' work - we were becoming landslide experts!). Even if they could get the equipment, they probably had two days' work ahead of them. And that presumed that more didn't come down. We didn't like our chances...if the water kept falling down the hill, it would probably loosen even more earth. This bus was not going forward. There was no way back down to Abancay (if they couldn't cross the bridge). I had seen some pretty scruffy looking mattresses stacked in a shed in the town where we had breakfast - that might have been for such occurrences.
Right behind us, an ambulance pulled up. The injured from the other landslide bus. We heard that one had a broken leg. We were having a bad day, but their's was definitely worse.
We finally decided that if we were going to get back to Cusco, we had better go forward and cross the rubble now, before more earth came down. The risk was, you never knew when that was going to be. While we watched, a few small pieces did come down. A couple of guys decided to be the first. They went out over the rocks and through the new stream flowing down the mountain and across the road. We didn't wait too long before we followed them.
This was a very hard decision to take. We had among ourselves three backpacks (one quite heavy), a baby carriage and one freshly-wakened and wiggly baby (16 months). She actually seemed to be enjoying the activity, but what do you do if the mountain starts to come down while you're out there - it was going to take several minutes to get across.
We stayed close. My wife took the baby and her backpack. I took the two backpacks and the pushchair. My load was so heavy that I was having trouble maintaining my footing. I started throwing the pushchair a few steps forward (I half reckoned that it was our shelter should anything start coming down). Then my backpack...the load was too heavy. After a while another man passed us and carried the pushchair to safety. We carried on, eventually reaching the other side.
My hands, my backpack, my trousers were all covered in mud. We were pretty filthy. But we were all safe.
Next task...getting back to Cusco.
There were no buses stuck on the other side. Only a few trucks and cars that were overstuffed. We waited a while. Another woman with a baby came across.
A road engineer with a pickup came up to look at the slip. We asked about a lift. He said that he had to ferry the injured back when they could be carried across the rockpile. Fair point...we were still walking, at least. Then some more debris started shifting down the hill - a pretty good distance from the initial slip. We moved back and further away to a place where the hill slope was more gradual. Another engineer came up in another pickup. He was going to go back to town to arrange the gear that was needed to clear the road. And we were lucky...people took pity on us, probably mostly for the baby factor but also some for the gringo factor. We caught a lift with him. The two mums and babies in the front with the driver; me, the old man, a few other guys and another road engineer in the payload, along with lots of luggage and a spare tire.
At altitude the air was chilly, but not too cold. It felt fresh after being on a bus for six hours. The conversation was interesting, where my Spanish could sustain me. The engineer estimated that at least 1000 cubic meters of earth had fallen. I wondered if this was a bit like waves - after a certain size, you don't measure - they are all 15-footers. Maybe all big 'uns are 1000 cubic meters. The old man had a laugh at my expense - he had seen me on the bus pointing out the beautiful waterfall. We stopped for a minute while the road engineer flagged down a colleague and told him to bring the big gear up from the Cusco side since they couldn't get the gear from the other side because of the bridge.
We drove ahead to the nearest village; about 15 km ahead. There, they dropped us off at the combi stand, where we caught a shared combi van to the next town. It filled up full with a real slice of Peruvian life - all of the stereotypes I could have thought of (except those guys with the pan pipes!)...women in bright woven vests and ponchos, a very old woman with an Andean stovepipe hat, some young kids who were fascinated with our blonde baby, the old man, the other woman with the baby, a young boy and, yes, one live rooster.
The combi only went as far as the next town, but there we were able to get a slightly bigger bus back to Cusco. We made it back to Cusco about 3 o'clock, got a taxi to the hotel (where we were not expected, but were able to get a room), and called my cousin to let them know that we would not be rolling into town anytime soon.
They had already heard of the delay. In fact, we heard from the road engineer that our bus itself was not allowed to try crossing the bridge, but probably those who had pressed on finally reached Abancay by walking over, then catching a bus on the other side.
Still, on reaching our hotel we congratulated ourselves on having made the right decision to turn back. And as disappointed as we were not to reach Abancay and meet my cousin and his family, we both felt that we had experienced something far beyond our expectations; far beyond our comfort. A journey that jarred us out of our tourist perspective and brought us much closer to the people and the countryside we were passing through. It is said of travel that hardships make for the strongest memories and the best stories. So for that it is hard to be let down by our own Abancay bus ride.
Our travel agent left a note saying that the train for Machu Picchu left at 6:00AM, so they would call at 5:30, and to make things easy they had also put in a wake-up call on our behalf for 4:30. You can imagine our delight.
We had a quick breakfast (the hotel is used to these early departures for the first train) and were waiting in the pre-dawn cold for our transfer to PeruRail. We took their VistaDome service, which I thought was going to be one of those cool observatory cars you used to see on old trains, but was actually only a train car with big cut-out windows in the roof so you could look up as well as out.
The first hour of the ride is spent rising above Cusco on a zig-zag of track. You have to climb the hill behind Cusco to Poroy before you start on the relatively flat portion of the journey, following the Urubamba River valley to the terminus at Aguas Calientes. The train arrives at about 9:45. Our guide gave us orders on the train: "Walk to the bus, get on the bus - any bus, meet me at the top. Do not go to your hotel, just drop your bags with them. Don't miss the buses or you will miss the tour." We did all of this; the bus takes about 30 minutes to wind its way up the hillside from 2000m to 2400m, where you arrive at Machu Picchu reception. And then the tour formed up and we went in.
Nothing prepares you for the scale or the purity of the setting of Machu Picchu. You round a corner and you are looking at a hillside full of terraces and ruins. And even though there are many people in groups around the grounds, it does not seem crowded (only 300,000 people visited last year; less than 1000 per day).
The guide takes you around the grounds, telling you a bit of its history. All the guides are different; ours was a specialist on Machu Picchu - a university professor and published author on the subject. He was interesting, but certainly had his own spin on the place. We tagged along at the tail end of the tour, sometimes hearing his lectures, sometimes not. We had the baby and I had to take it easy at time since it was steep and the steps were uneven in places. At the end of the tour he tells you all the things you can do, especially if you have two days
(which we did). You can climb to the top of the nearby mountain and look back down on the ruins (3-6 hours). You can climb to the top of the Inca Trail at the Sun Gate (3 hours, round trip). You can go to the Inca Bridge (only 1 hour). It all sounded great, but his advice was like playing fortune cookies "in bed". Every trip sounded a lot longer "with a baby on your back." My back and feet were killing me after the first two hours.
We stopped for lunch. I'll just say that nothing about Machu Picchu is cheap (I found Peru generally more expensive than Brazil, for that matter). $20 to get in, $15 for the bus, $22 for lunch. They definitely get you for your tourist dollar. But you're in a bind - you wouldn't NOT do it, would you? Anyway, after lunch my feet and back were better, so we went back in for a while, climbed a bit higher, made some pictures. But then my wife started feeling ill...the ill that I had felt the previous night.
We went down to our hotel, the marvelous Machu Picchu (Inkaterra) Pueblo. I was feeling a bit better, so I took the baby for a look around while the missus got some sleep. But then the baby started getting cranky (wouldn't drink her milk; only wanted to eat sweet potato chips) so we went back home for a sleep that, once again, became an early night. We kind of regret not having dinner at the hotel - the setting and the furnishings were really gorgeous - a sort of colonial Spanish architecture set in cloud forest, surrounded by flowers and the sound of the racing river.
But we were looking forward to a lie-in. Until we found out that checkout was at 9 AM. Who thought that up? Anyway, we still slept until 7, which was for me about 11 hours, and for my wife about 13 hours. She awoke feeling better. I think we both were just suffering from fatigue and the altitude.
We had breakfast at the hotel, then had to make the decision - back up, or not. We decided for 'not'. Hard work, and we had to leave on the 15:30 train. So, we went into town, had a stroll around and a look at the kitschy souvenirs, then came back to the hotel for a guided tour of the orchid garden (>350 varieties, about 70 in flower). We went for a basic lunch along the river, then walked up in time to catch the train back to Cusco.
Back in Cusco, we returned to the Libertador. Most of our luggage was there, so we had an easy check-in, a reasonably fast turnaround and went out for a nice dinner of parrilla which none of us were hungry for. They say that altitude kills the appetite. Maybe so. I lost 3-4 kg on the trip, but won't swear that a tummy bug wasn't partly to credit. We went home for another early (and warm, cosy) night, but knew to be up at 5:00 to make our bus to Abancay the next day.
Up early again. Last night, I argued with the travel agent, who wanted us to leave at 7:00 for a 9:40 flight. I hate waiting at airports. But he insisted this was necessary, so we were up at 6:00. This gets old quickly. And then, when we go down to check out and have breakfast, there's a note: will call at 7:30. And even then, he did not come until 7:40. Unless you're in Bangkok or some other city where traffic is a true issue, I can't see the reason to be at the airport so long before flying, especially domestically. A lot of airlines are starting to do this "be at the gate an hour before flight time." And still they do not board before 30 minutes; usually less. Time waiting; time travelling - it's all wearying and affects the quality of life on a travel holiday.
We had an uneventful flight up to Cusco, and our contact met us and took us to our hotel, the Libertador. Very nice place. It's an old monastery, with a very colonial feeling inside. The room was good, too. We had a quick but unexciting (and expensive) lunch at the hotel before being picked up in the afternoon for a city and ruins tour. We've had these tours - Rio, Buenos Aires, Lima, and now Cusco. We don't like them, but in a sense they are a necessary evil. In Lima, it was even private, which was great. But in Cusco we were the first pick-up, then we had to wrap around for about 45 minutes collecting people at other hotels. And to make things worse, the tour started right outside our hotel. What a waste!
We visited the Inca temple ruins in town, then the cathedral (truly stunning), and then four sites outside of town. It started to rain. Cusco is 3300m above sea level. It's cold. And when it rains, the rain is a cold, mountain rain. It cuts to the skin. We were somewhat prepared, but not for that much water. We were all soaked and freezing, and the baby got tired and needed to poop out for a while. But the tour was worthwhile...the Inca ruins were interesting and helped to put Cusco and Machu Picchu in context.
On the trip home from these tours, they should give an option to get a taxi and go straight home. Or they should drop the first pick-ups first. Or they should respect that people with cold, wet babies might want to get home first. But they didn't do any of this, and we drove around in "rush hour" Cusco for about an hour, dropping all of the others off before returning to our hotel. I was soaking wet and very tired, but still went out to get some nappies and try to find some milk, beer and wine. It is surprisingly hard to find milk, even UHT, in Peru. Our guide in Lima said that Peruvians are small because they just refuse to drink milk. How odd.
By the time I came back, I was really run down. We put the baby down for a nap, then took one ourselves. Only 7:00 became 8:00 became later and eventually I knew I couldn't get up again. I was shivering with the cold and my head hurt from the altitude. And the baby was happy, if not fed, and suddenly we were all in bed and the heat was on and it was very warm and it was very good and. Yes.
From Lima, we travelled south to Pisco, the notional home of the Pisco Sour (well, at least the Pisco (brandy) part of the Pisco Sour, which apparently has its origins at a posh hotel in Lima - as an aside, Pisco Sour - ick - I'll stick to caipirinhas).
The road south from Lima to Pisco travels through some pretty desolate country. Desert. Like the Atacama - the place in Chile where it never rains. It's probably part of the same desert, really. And it's offputting to see the ocean lapping at the desert, although it occurs to me that this is also what happens in the western part of the Sahara. The desert starts with the sea, and doesn't end until the mountains.
Although it is desert, a surprising number of people seem to live there. We pass lots of bird "farms". Covered shelters that seem (from the road) to be full of chickens or ducks. It doesn't look too 'free range', and one actually gets the idea that the chickens would probably be happier under their shelter than out in the blazing sun.
The only places that are not desert are the oases that surround each of the rivers that flows down from the Andes to the sea. These are lush valleys growing cotton, olives, grapes (to make the Pisco, and the small amount of Peruvian wine that is actually drinkable - remember, we are at sea level at 14 degrees south latitude; not climate usually regarded with good red wines).
We also pass a community out on a desert plain that appears to be squatted. Lots of sheds - probably hundreds - spaced out in the desert. A big sign declares that this is comunidad campesina. But what would these people be farming? It doesn't even look like chickens, and there's not a vegetal crop in sight. Probably the owner of this land is not very concerned about these squatters.
Finally, after 3-1/2 hours, we arrive at Pisco. It is equally dry, but has a long history as a port town (guano, cotton, brandy) and actually has a small and attractive centre. Our hotel is far from it - near the beach. We are warned not to use the beach as it is polluted and unsafe for tourists. "Use the pool instead, or go to El Chaco", the more touristy beach about 15km away - it is a $3 taxi ride. We took this advice and went to El Chaco for lunch. If the beach was scummy, the restaurants were pleasant, and the food was cheap and delicious (another ceviche).
The reason for the side trip to Pisco was to visit the nearby Islas Ballestas. These islands are effectively a bird sanctuary - they are every bit as sere as the mainland, and, apart from having once supported a guano factory, are completely deserted of humans, leaving them free to support thousands of seabirds (penguins, boobies, gulls, pelicans, etc.) and up to 20,000 sea lions. It's a wonderfully noisy and smelly place. We had a two-hour tour by motorboat that takes you around several of the islands and through some of the natural sea caves. Our daughter was fascinated and spent the whole visit standing at the edge of the ship pointing and calling out to the animals.
We spent a lot of time going to and from Pisco to see the islands. It was worth it, although it was clear that our trip, with several more long bus and train journeys, was going to be pretty taxing. It is hard for a little girl to spend so long cooped up in her parents' arms.
On returning to Lima, we arrived after dark and really only had time, after getting turned around, for dinner in town and a quick stroll. We read in our guidebook about a group of nuns who ran a restaurant in Lima. French nuns. The food was good! And they had a nice wine list. At 9:00 the nuns stop serving and sing an Ave Maria to guitar accompaniment. Very beautiful. Most of the people cleared out after that, but we had a late start and thus were there until nearly 10:00. The sisters were good entertainment for the baby, or were well-entertained by her in any event. We then had a walk around the busy main square of Lima (Plaza d'Armas) and caught a taxi back to the hotel.
We arrived in Lima from Sao Paulo on Saturday afternoon, having spent Friday night in Sao Paulo to make sure we would not miss our flight due to a late connection. The flight was about 4-1/2 hours. Our transfer met us as scheduled, and we were taken to our hotel, the Sheraton. It's a decent hotel; a bit tired, but shame about the location.
With the exception of the Sheraton and a few other tall buildings, Lima is a flat city. A guide told us that people in Lima don't trust tall buildings because of the earthquakes. It sounds to me like they don't trust engineers. Lima is a flat city of 9 million souls. Lima suffers from urban sprawl. Nine million people living in a desert city. Fortunately, served by year-round water run-off from the Andes.
We had a tour of Lima that made me realise quite quickly that we had not allowed enough time to really see the place. The old city is Spanish. The architecture leaves you wanting to stroll around and look at the churches and the fine wooden balconies. We had just a short while to visit each of the most important churches (Pizzaro is buried in a special chapel at the cathedral), then a visit to Miraflores, where they thought the best landmark to visit was Larcomar - a big, kind of funky shopping mall on a cliff overlooking the Pacific.
And that was really all the time we had for sightseeing. After dark, we had our first ceviche, then followed on with a dinner at a fine place called Brujas de Cachiche. With the time change we, and especially the baby, were happy for an early night, especially as the alarm was set for 6:00 the next morning.
Depending on what you read, our little one seems to be a late starter in the speech department. I have not a worry in the world about this, but it is interesting that sometimes children who are raised in a multilingual environment get a late start. Perhaps they are confused about what to say when.
Like I said, not to worry. For a few weeks now we have been regaled with choruses of "Daaaaa-deeee", to which I dutifully answer. But it's clear that she doesn't know what she's saying when she says it. She knows who Daddy is; who Mummy is; she knows where her nose is; her tongue (very funny, if you ask her); she knows what cheese is; what shoes are (or are they the same?); she knows what strawberries are.
But finally she's starting to talk. And the fun part of this is that she's chosen a word that exists in both English and Portuguese. She's using it in the Portuguese (we hope). The word? Mais. Mice. Eek!
We're pretty sure that she's picked up mais at school. It means "more". I'm told that "more" was my first word, so it tickles me plenty that we have that in common, even if she's using it in another language. And it also pleases me that she's learned it at school. Presumably the minders (she's 15 months - let's not expect she's being taught too hard) are asking her if she'd have some more food. "More?" "More?" "Mais?".
People here drive like maniacs most of the time, but the amazing thing is that most of the time they get away with it. Whizzing through red lights seconds after they have turned, they either have good radar or a sense that people coming the other way will have been sitting still and will need those few seconds to get up some speed (also, knowing some maniac is going to run the light long after there is any excuse for not stopping). Any patch of paving or even level earth is sufficient to tempt a Brazilian to try for advantage in traffic.
Of course, sometimes they get it wrong. I heard on the radio this morning that there have been 2600 accidents in our city since the beginning of the year. Most weekdays it seems there are upwards of 50 accidents. The radio reports the gory statistics with a warning to obey signals, but it doesn't change anything - maybe people don't listen to the radio.
Last night I came across a real doozy on the way home - an articulated food oil truck and a cement mixer. The cement truck was on its side; the oil truck was through the median and into the other lane of traffic. There were hundreds of people gathered around; traffic was stopped in both directions for the recovery effort. I saw it coming far enough in advance to bail out and get around it on the access road. Even still, I had to wait for about 30 minutes of crawling through lights and dozens of mannerless trucks nosing their way into traffic. It was big enough to make the day's Gazeta do Povo.
Acidente interdita Contorno SulUm acidente interditou por três horas o trânsito no Contorno Sul, que liga a BR-116 à BR-277. O acidente aconteceu pouco depois das 16 horas, na Cidade Industrial de Curitiba. Os caminh?es se chocaram e um deles tombou, ficando atravessado nas duas pistas do Contorno. Uma pessoa ficou ferida. Um grande congestionamento se formou, afetando inclusive o trânsito na BR-116.
Accidents in Brazil mean queues. On Carnaval weekend, we left home at 7 o'clock. We thought of leaving earlier, but thought that we would have a jump on things by leaving when many Brazilians are just getting to bed. And we were wrong. The accident that stopped us happened at 6:30 AM. A couple of cars and a truck. And it caused a tailback of 40 km. Think about that - 2-3 cars wide, 40km long. And that queue lasted well into the late morning - we passed the accident scene at about 9:45; our friends passed it about 11:30; still going strong. Thousands of people heading for the beaches, giving up hours of their holidays while police investigate, then clear the scene.
I will give the police credit. We saw another accident happen over Carnaval. An SUV hit a motorcycle right in front of us. We stopped to offer first aid (a woman on the motorcycle was pretty messed up). The police came pretty quickly, then an ambulance. Because the vehicles were both mobile after the accident, it was probably cleared up in half an hour. We waited to see if they wanted a statement from us, as witnesses, but that apparently was unnecessary. Anyway, the driver of the SUV, in my understanding, had been honest about the stupid move that he had made, pulling a mad U-turn in the middle of busy traffic. I am sure he hadn't looked back first; only ahead. And he wrecked Carnaval for one young couple who were lucky to be alive after a run-in with an SUV. Thank heavens for helmet laws.
People here drive like maniacs most of the time, but the amazing thing is that most of the time they get away with it. Whizzing through red lights seconds after they have turned, they either have good radar or a sense that people coming the other way will have been sitting still and will need those few seconds to get up some speed (also, knowing some maniac is going to run the light long after there is any excuse for not stopping). Any patch of paving or even level earth is sufficient to tempt a Brazilian to try for advantage in traffic.
Of course, sometimes they get it wrong. I heard on the radio this morning that there have been 2600 accidents in our city since the beginning of the year. Most weekdays it seems there are upwards of 50 accidents. The radio reports the gory statistics with a warning to obey signals, but it doesn't change anything - maybe people don't listen to the radio.
Last night I came across a real doozy on the way home - an articulated food oil truck and a cement mixer. The cement truck was on its side; the oil truck was through the median and into the other lane of traffic. There were hundreds of people gathered around; traffic was stopped in both directions for the recovery effort. I saw it coming far enough in advance to bail out and get around it on the access road. Even still, I had to wait for about 30 minutes of crawling through lights and dozens of mannerless trucks nosing their way into traffic. It was big enough to make the day's Gazeta do Povo.
Acidente interdita Contorno SulUm acidente interditou por três horas o trânsito no Contorno Sul, que liga a BR-116 à BR-277. O acidente aconteceu pouco depois das 16 horas, na Cidade Industrial de Curitiba. Os caminhões se chocaram e um deles tombou, ficando atravessado nas duas pistas do Contorno. Uma pessoa ficou ferida. Um grande congestionamento se formou, afetando inclusive o trânsito na BR-116.
Accidents in Brazil mean queues. On Carnaval weekend, we left home at 7 o'clock. We thought of leaving earlier, but thought that we would have a jump on things by leaving when many Brazilians are just getting to bed. And we were wrong. The accident that stopped us happened at 6:30 AM. A couple of cars and a truck. And it caused a tailback of 40 km. Think about that - 2-3 cars wide, 40km long. And that queue lasted well into the late morning - we passed the accident scene at about 9:45; our friends passed it about 11:30; still going strong. Thousands of people heading for the beaches, giving up hours of their holidays while police investigate, then clear the scene.
I will give the police credit. We saw another accident happen over Carnaval. An SUV hit a motorcycle right in front of us. We stopped to offer first aid (a woman on the motorcycle was pretty messed up). The police came pretty quickly, then an ambulance. Because the vehicles were both mobile after the accident, it was probably cleared up in half an hour. We waited to see if they wanted a statement from us, as witnesses, but that apparently was unnecessary. Anyway, the driver of the SUV, in my understanding, had been honest about the stupid move that he had made, pulling a mad U-turn in the middle of busy traffic. I am sure he hadn't looked back first; only ahead. And he wrecked Carnaval for one young couple who were lucky to be alive after a run-in with an SUV. Thank heavens for helmet laws.
My first (big) order from Amazon US finally arrived yesterday. Actually, since I had to go get it at the main post office, it had a choice of its arrival date (Caesarian delivery). We had a note that the post office tried to deliver, but was unable (for lack of my signature) and thus I had to go to the main post office, which is only open Monday through Friday from 9-5. Very convenient.
At least it wasn't that difficult to figure out what to do when I got there - a helpful man pointed me to the appropriate window, and in a few moments I was walking back to my car with a big box full of (10) new books. The other two are presumably en route and probably have the same fate ahead of them, as I am never home when the post comes. I was surprised they could not leave it at the gatehouse.
This frames what I will be reading and doing for the foreseeable future - probably until July, when I expect we will next visit an English-speaking country. I have to find a balance between Portuguese study, Portuguese reading and English reading. It is tempting with a box full of new titles (some of which I have been thinking about for a very long time) to put aside the old stuff. That's what I did last night (after my Portuguese lesson) - pawed through a handful of new titles tasting Introductions and first chapters. Still, I would be pretty impressed if I could manage ten more titles between now and July.
Our trip to Peru is finally coming together. We leave this Friday. It's a bit daunting, the number of side trips, especially with the little one. We expect possible problems with food, water and altitude. Plus we are no doubt going to wreck her sleep schedule. Should be an interesting week. Travel budget wise, it will be the highlight of our first year in Brazil.
You might think that the highlight of a year in Brazil would be to attend the Carnaval in Rio - you know, the all-singing, all-dancing one you see in Moonraker...the one that gave us Black Orpheus. But for me, you would be wrong. To be honest, I have very little interest in Carnaval. It would be fun to see for a few minutes, but I have been to two Mardis Gras in New Orleans and have a pretty good idea of what a raging drunken street party is all about. I know the superlatives exist for Rio, but not this year - with a one-year-old baby, it's not where we're at. I heard that 90 people were killed in street violence in Rio over the Carnaval period.
Anyway, we spent the long weekend at the seaside, enjoying some sun, some decent food and a break from the rain and routine of our everyday life. I came back for a 2-day work week well rested and, for once, not really minding the routine. It was good to get caught up on everything.
I finished reading (really reading) Sergio Faraco's Lagrimas na chuva over Carnaval. This was an experiment for me in real-time reading (that is, without a dictionary to hand). Interesting story - what can happen if you refuse to toe the line in a totalitarian society, even if you're a foreign student. I still have a clean-up task of going through and looking up the words that I have highlighted, then adding them to my flash card lists and drilling myself for vocabulary expansion.
Now I have moved on to Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet, which it makes little sense for me to be reading now, but I wanted to read a novel in English and this is the one that grabbed me for some seaside reading.