choosing your friends carefully

One downside to my lifestyle, as I mentioned recently, is the loneliness that comes with it. Whilst I accept this as a trade-off worth making to enable me to do what I do, that doesn't mean I don't continue to make efforts to meet people, particularly through attending events organised for people like me, such as Internations and Meet-Up, and responding to messages on Internations or the Expats in Panama facebook group.

You quickly learn not to waste time trying to make friends with Panamanians.  Not that they are not nice people - they are - but they have very extensive families, and family friendships that go back decades, and they really have no space for foreigners to join their social circles.  So while they'll be friendly to you, they won't invite you in.

So you have to look for other foreigners.  Most of these are pretty closed groups (the Chinese, the Lebanese, the Venezuelans, for example), but the one group of people who are relatively welcoming to outsiders are the Americans.  Of whom there are a lot in Panama.  So my attempts to find friends in Panama involves me interacting with quite a few Americans.

Now I don't want to get all anti-American on here - I have met plenty of really nice American people over the years.  But Panama seems to attract a particular type of American.  You can see it on the facebook group, from this type of post: "I'm planning to retire to Panama and wonder if any of you kind folks can answer a few questions - (1) will I be able to avoid paying US taxes? (2) will I be able to bring my gun into the country? (3) are there any church groups I can join? (4) why don't the Panamanians working in restaurants provide the kind of service we're used to in the US?"  Not my type of people.  But beggars can't be choosers so I still make the effort to follow up with any American who makes overtures of friendship towards me.

But how far do you go in compromising?  I now have one American friend, a retired lady, who recently turned our conversation to the subject of politics.  OK, so she's a Trump supporter, well I almost suppressed my grimace and asked why.  It seemed to come down to her dislike of Obama - who she told me is a communist.  When I questioned that she assured me that it is true, "because he comes from Kenya".  Then she informed me that his government are trying to indoctrinate the children in communist views in schools up and down the country.  I changed the subject and have continued the friendship but avoiding the subject of politics.

Then recently another American took things further.  He started by telling me how he doesn't like Hispanics (so why does he live in Panama?), and maybe that should have rung alarm bells, but we continued the conversation.  He was also a Trump supporter - because of the proposed wall to keep Mexicans out.  He assured me that Obama is a Muslim, and explained how he is about to bring 30,000 refugees into the US from Africa.  "Really?  What part of Africa?" I asked.  "Yemen" he replied.

But it got a lot worse as he went on to give me his views on African-Americans.  Only he didn't use that term, he used a word beginning with N that I cannot even bring myself to write.  He then told me a bit about how big the Ku Klux Klan is in his part of the US (Alabama).  I couldn't really believe what I was hearing, but it was kind of fascinating in its awfulness - a bit like a big hairy spider that you want to get away from but at the same time are compelled to keep staring at just because it is so awful.  So whilst I made it clear that I didn't share his views, and told him how I used to live in Africa and loved it (he was briefly lost for words at that!), I kept it civil.  But then later wondered whether I had done the wrong thing - whether I should have expressed horror and disgust as soon as he started on the racism and walked away.

Now I've received a message that he wants us to meet again.  I've put off the decision by explaining that I'm currently on assignment in El Salvador, but am wondering what to do when I get home.  In some ways I am tempted to go back for more, to hear why he holds such views (and to find out if he was actually a Ku Klux Klan member - I couldn't bring myself to ask him last week) as it is probably (indeed hopefully) a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear first-hand why people like him hold the views they do.

But is that wrong?

I don't believe I am in a position to either encourage his views nor to change his mind, so in that sense it makes no difference whether we meet up again or not.  & if you can't find friends whose company you actually enjoy then why not spend a bit of time with a bigot whose company you find interesting?  If you had the chance to have anyone, dead or alive, as a dinner guest, would you just go for someone nice?  Or would you think about choosing someone like Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot so as to hear what they had to say?  Maybe in the end my decision will be driven not by what is morally correct but by practicalities - not wanting to invite someone like that into my home but being scared to meet him somewhere public in case anyone nearby can speak English and understand what he is saying. Any views gladly accepted but civilly, please - any abusive comments will just be deleted.

South American Jesuit missions

I had a weekend in Paraguay when I didn't need to work, and having read that the ruins of the Jesuit mission in Trinidad, in southern Paraguay, was the least visited UNESCO World Heritage Site in the world, I just had to go there.

It was a seven hour bus ride to Encarnación, and another hour from there on to Trinidad, but I left the capital early so still had plenty of time to look round when I finally arrived in Trinidad, even though the bus driver told me to get off at the wrong stop, adding a one-hour walk to my travel time.

The ruins were nice - not many visitors but I still can't believe fewer people come here than to UNESCO sites in, say, Iran or Burkina Faso.  One of the aspects of these ruins that stand out is the stone carvings - see here the angels around the inside of what must have been the nave.

The Jesuits became pretty powerful in South America.  They didn't work the locals to death but gave them a choice of either paying tribute and continuing their old way of life, or coming 'under the wing' of the Jesuit missionaries.  This involved the adoption of a pretty austere lifestyle, with early morning starts, hard work in the fields, adoption of Christianity and lots of prayers.  They were also allowed to raise and train militias, to defend the settlements against raids.  Their economic success and the success of their militias, however, started to be seen as a threat by the secular authorities, and in 1767, the Spanish King Carlos III expelled the Jesuits from the Spanish South American colonies.

Most, including the one in Trinidad, fell into ruins, but a number in the Chiquitanía province of what is now Bolivia were largely maintained by the indigenous Indians who continued to live in the settlements.  So two weeks after my visit to Trinidad, I went to take a look at three of the missions in Bolivia.

First I went to San Jose de Iquitos, the closest in style to Trinidad as this was built of stone.  It was impressive, and had some rather fine paintings on the walls along the interior corridors. Apparently these were saved from ruin because the local population stayed on, which is pretty surprising given that these had largely been nomadic people before the Jesuits arrived just twenty years earlier.

Then a week later I visited the missions at Concepción and San Javier, also preserved and still used, even though rather more fragile as built not of stone but of wood and adobe.  This is the interior of the mission at Concepción, showing the carved wooden pillars and the ornately painted walls.  Little obvious similarity to those I'd visited before, apart perhaps from the open interior design of the church.

I couldn't get to see inside San Javier, unfortunately, as it was still carnival weekend and the lady with the key was off partying.  But even on the outside I could see once again the spiral carved wooden pillars and ornate painted walls.  Although not religious, I still enjoyed visiting these buildings and wished I'd had time to go to the other half dozen in Bolivia.

carnival in Oruro

The carnival in Oruro, Bolivia, is one of the few events on UNESCO's list of "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" that it is feasible to visit.  Made easier for me by the two public holidays in Panama for our own carnival.  So I bought flights to and from Santa Cruz, in southern Bolivia, and booked myself a homestay with a Bolivian family in Oruro for this year's carnival.

However getting there was not to be as simple as I'd hoped, this being Bolivia.  The internal flight from Santa Cruz to Sucre was easy (and cheap, at $47!), despite the near riot from the people queuing at the next check-in desk when they heard their flight to Argentina had been delayed for two days... But getting from Sucre to Oruro required a bus.  & the heavy goods freight drivers had gone on strike, blockading all of the main intercity routes in the country with their vehicles.  Everyone assured me that the government and drivers would reach some kind of accommodation so as to enable the blockades to be lifted in time for carnival, but some of the drivers were holding out, and when I got on my bus at 20:30 the Thursday before carnival, I still wasn't 100% sure I would reach my destination.

Our route was via Potosí, and we were due to arrive in Oruro around 4am.  So when we pulled to a halt during the night and someone said we were in Potosí I was not concerned, and managed to drift in and out of sleep over the next few hours.  In fact for more hours than I expected, as it was 6am when I gave up the idea of more sleep and realised the time, and that we were clearly not in Oruro.  It turned out we were parked in the queue of vehicles waiting to get through the blockade into Potosí, where we had been for most of the night.  Our driver offered to take us back to Sucre, or to sit in the queue all day in the hope that the blockade would be lifted, but somehow the passengers persuaded him to take the bus along a small dirt track (in no way suitable for buses!) around the mountainside, to find an alternative route into Potosí.  We made it, but then coming out the other side on the Oruro road we hit another blockade.

At this point the only option was to get off the bus, take our luggage, and walk the length of the queue, through the blockade, and hope there was some onward transport the other side.  A stream of people were walking towards us having done the same thing in the other direction, and locals were making a Boliviano or two through renting out wheelbarrows to those with plenty of luggage.

Thankfully it was downhill all the way (a 2km walk with luggage at an altitude of 4,000m!), and was not raining, and I made it (without a wheelbarrow!) - finally getting into Oruro at 4pm, only 12 hours late.

& it was all worthwhile.  Add the Oruro carnival to your bucket list!!

Starting around 7am on the Saturday, the main parade lasts around twenty hours, apparently.  I stayed for twelve hours but was too tired following my night in the bus to stay until the end.  But what I saw was amazing.  Oruro carnival is not about wearing skimpy outfits to show off one's physique, but about ancient myths, fables and traditions intermingled with elements of Christianity, and this is reflected is the most incredible and colourful costumes and masks.

The most spectacular masks are those of the devils (diabladas) - in the title photo above but there is also this lighter female version here.  There are also dancers representing rheas (although multicoloured versions!), black slaves, inca chiefs, bulls, bears, condors, and other costumes and dances that recall specific battles (real or mythical) or stages in the country's history.

Specialists work all year to create the costumes and masks, which cost the dancers quite a lot of money, and to be honest the colour and spectacle of it all is quite overwhelming.  There are bands too, mostly brass bands with drummers, but a number of Andean pan pipes were also in evidence.  According to some local figures I read, some 35,000 dancers and 6,000 musicians take part, which is why it takes them twenty hours for all to cover the 3km route.  Apparently most are exhausted by the end, but on the Sunday they get to go into the Church of Virgin of the Grotto (to whom the carnival is dedicated) for a blessing and I was assured that devotion to the Virgin is as big a motivation for those taking part as the party element of the whole thing.

I suppose I would still happily seize the opportunity to see the Rio carnival, but I cannot see that it could possibly be any better than this one.

a final post on Antarctica

I don't feel that my posts on Antarctica and South Georgia were really that coherent, but they are places that assault the senses rather than the intellect, and that for me is quite difficult to capture in writing.  Many of the boat crew are of the opinion that visiting Antarctica changes your view of the world; it didn't do that for me - perhaps I'm just too well-travelled for any one place to have that strong an effect on me now - but it seems that it has left me lost for words.

If I had listened more attentively to the lectures on board and other information shared with us (or rather if I had retained the information, which seemed to go in one ear and out the other), I could write about Shackleton and other Antarctic explorers, or about the whaling and sealing industries, or the Antarctic Treaty, or the eradication of rats on South Georgia.  But all I can really add to my earlier posts is that Antarctica is a stunningly beautiful place - and add a couple more photos as no words I can write will do it justice.

being close to nature

Something that quite surprised me about my time in Antarctica, and in South Georgia especially, was the rawness of the experience – the smells (guano and sometimes rotting animals), the sounds (trumpeting king penguins, belching elephant seals and the wail/howl of the fur seals), and also the occasional death and suffering around.  Overall the sights were stunning, but this was not Disneyland.  We saw a penguin with a shocking wound from a leopard seal bite (apologies if you find the photo disturbing), standing there apparently calmly, but sure to die.  Also a young leopard seal lying on the sand on Deception Island, one half of its tail bitten off by an orca – this animal rather more obviously in distress and also unlikely to survive.  Later I watched a pair of gentoo penguins standing around their now empty nest in obvious bewilderment, not understanding why their chick was not there (taken by a skua) nor what they were supposed to do next.  I also watched a skua feasting on the remains of a king penguin.

Another factor in the experience was that it was clearly the animals’ and birds’ territory, with humans very much the visitors.  Several times trying to get somewhere we found fur seals hidden in the tussock grass growling and even charging at us.  The male elephant seals, their noses inflating as they rear up and bare their teeth at anything they consider an irritation, look like big mounds of blubber but they can apparently move faster than humans over short distances so we tried hard not to get too close to them.

The penguins were not threatening at all, indeed one laid down on the beach only two feet away from me – but we tried not to approach them too closely in case this caused them stress, as they need all their energy to survive.  Moults are particularly stressful experiences, including the ‘catastrophic’ moults of elephant seals as they shed all of their skin to get rid of all their parasites after the breeding season.  Penguins go through a major moult when they lose the brown fur of youth that is not even waterproof – they just stand/lie around on the shore while all this happens, as they cannot go out into the sea to feed until they have their adult coat.

I should also mention the ‘rawness’ of the environment – we heard of one ship unable to get out of Ushuaia due to the weather only a week after we had left, another forced to return to get medical attention for two passengers who suffered broken bones in rough seas, and our sister ship en route from the Falklands to the Peninsula but taking four days rather than the usual two as it battled the elements.  We were extremely lucky to get our landings on all four days in South Georgia, particularly in St Andrew’s Bay which is rarely calm enough – but like the vast majority of ships we were unable to get to Elephant Island, and the optional night sleeping out on the ice was cancelled at the last minute (when I was ready to go in my seven layers of clothing!) as the wind got too strong for it to be safe.

Our first landing on Antarctica, at Brown Bluff, was a close call, with everyone getting soaked by the waves breaking across the zodiacs as we battled to get to the shore, and freezing cold snow being driven horizontally at us on the land.  Some opted to stay on the ship but those of us who made it actually enjoyed the experience – isn’t Antarctica supposed to be cold, bleak and inhospitable?  Although I must say we also enjoyed the sunshine and calm seas of the next day!  The temperature rarely fell below freezing but the wind chill could make it feel colder some days.  Many people on my ship were seasick at some point (luckily I was not), and one lost the end of her thumb as a door slammed shut on her when the ship was being tossed around crossing the Drake passage.  Not a trip for the faint-hearted although on a big cruise ship it would be easier (and less exciting) than on the little ice-strenghtened expedition ship that I took.

a blubber of seals

Another creature that is superbly adapted to a life in cold water but that has to struggle ashore for certain parts of the life cycle is the elephant seal.  These were mostly lying around moulting when we visited.  Every so often one would snort, or hump its massive body a few metres along the beach (moving rather in the manner of a giant maggot), or open its mouth wide and belch – they were fat, slobby and bad-mannered!  The males were bad-tempered too, easily upset by another elephant seal – or we humans getting too close – when they would inflate their nose sacs, rear up the front half of their bodies, and if another elephant seal responded in the same manner then a fight would ensue, the two seals thudding their bodies into each other whilst each tried to get a bite into the other’s neck region.

However when lying calmly on the sand they had the largest, most appealing puppy-dog eyes…

The males also have a pretty hard life, totally geared towards gaining a stretch of beach with females on it, which the victor apparently has to fight for, on around an hourly basis, to retain it against the other males who challenge him.  A successful male gets to mate with all the females on the beach – which can be around fifty – but many males never get control of a beach and thus never get the chance to mate at any point during their lives.  The constant fighting for this right takes its toll and the average male elephant seal lives only half as long as the average female.

Quite a bit smaller than the elephant seals are the Antarctic fur seals, of which we saw many hundreds (or perhaps thousands).  They are also quite appealing when calm, but frequently bad-tempered and aggressive and some of our group found it hard to follow the instructions when challenged – to make yourself big and noisy rather than running away!  Their babies were incredibly cute and also tried to intimidate us but without any success whatsoever.

Unusually we didn’t get to see any weddell seals, but we saw a number of crabeater seals lounging on icebergs.  These are the second most numerous mammal on earth (second to human beings), which I thought was amazing given how few people ever see one.  We also saw a number of whales, mostly humpbacks but a few other species including, possibly, a blue whale.  The humpbacks were feeding in groups and put on quite a display – I think most of us eventually managed to get the classic photo of a tail fluke.

a cacophony of penguins

I’ve split my account of this trip into a number of posts, partly because I couldn’t pick out only two or three photos to share, and more posts means I can share more photos!  It’s hard to explain quite how difficult it is to stop taking photos of penguins.  They are just so cute.  Superbly adapted to their freezing cold environment, and apparently very graceful underwater, they don’t look quite so elegant when they have to be on land, either the youngsters who don’t yet have the waterproof adult coat they need to go to sea, or the adults when they come ashore to moult or breed.  We visited a number of different penguin colonies, including one of an estimated 200,000 breeding pairs of king penguins at St. Andrew’s Bay in South Georgia, and no-one on the boat ever complained!

The young king penguins, in their brown hairy coats, look so different from the adults that they were originally thought to be a different species – which was named the woolly penguin.  Some of the cuteness shows through in a photo, but this doesn’t capture their curiosity (many waddled up to investigate us), nor their tendency to try to run and then fall flat onto their bellies.

The adults were fascinating to watch, too, their social interactions seeming so human.  I watched small groups of them walking, then stopping and turning to face each other for a while before continuing on their walk; it looked for all the world as though they had stopped to have a conversation – perhaps to discuss whether or not to keep walking – really it was impossible not to attribute human characteristics and motivations to them.  It seems that a lot of their interactions were to do with courtship, and although the males and females look alike you could easily pick out the males as they followed the females around, sometimes two or three following one female and having the occasional squabble, slapping each other with their stubby little wings as they tried to impress her, and stretching up their necks as they trumpeted their call to the other penguins.  I don’t know whether there is an official collective noun, but to me it should be a cacophony of penguins.

These on the left are chinstrap penguins, of which we saw plenty in Antarctica (as opposed to the king penguins which were all in South Georgia).  The king penguins were my favourites as they are so beautiful, but as well as these and the chinstraps, we also got to see gentoos, adelies, rockhopppers and a lone macaroni penguin lurking in one of the chinstrap colonies.  Each species seemed to have their own distinctive ways of behaving, but all of them were adorable.

OK, I can't choose between them all, so here are two more penguin photos: