If Kerouac were in Venezuela

I am on the road a lot this week. To get to our plant takes 40 minutes on the highway of nothingness from Barquisimeto. I do the journey twice a day, mostly in silence because I can't chat with the driver. Today being the weekend, I decided to see Carora, which meant whizzing through over an hour of tundra land at high speed, also in silence.  Every ten kilometres or so, you see stalls selling hammocks and what looked like pots and kitchen sinks (!). 

I had my very old point-and-shoot with me just now.  All the car windows in Venezuela are tinted black, so shotting through them confused the meter and gave this rather nice effect.

The trouble with danger

I am in Caracas, consistently rated among the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world. (One does not tell the parents this of course.) It is an city embraced by mountains. You wake up seeing the green mountains nudge the billowing clouds, the way one might half-heartedly push away the bedsheets in the morning. At night, the mountains flicker romantically from the lights of the hundreds of houses stacked on them. It might well have been San Francisco.

Except that many of the houses are crime-ridden shanty towns that even the police avoid patrolling. Except that it is a city where our office has a cash machine (not inside the building, but inside the office - beside Sofia's cubicle).

At lunch yesterday, the other girl and I were lightly chided by a fellow foreigner for bringing our very modest handbags. 'I carry nothing here, only a card and some cash,' declared the American man proudly.

'But you're a man. For me, there's the makeup, the water... And the local girls all carry bags too,' protested the American women.

Out came the ultimate trump card: 'But it only takes one incident.'

It is true of course. There is apparently a woman in the office whose husband has been kidnapped for sixty days. In Caracas, there are still three express kidnappings a day, down from five.

But if we take such a reasoning to its logical end, we would be mobilised into inaction. The trouble with danger is not so much the consequence of the danger (being hurt), but the multitude of possibilities (carrying a handbag, wearing earrings...) that may cause the onset of that danger. Today it is not carrying a handbag, tomorrow is not wearing heels, and the day after is not going out for dinner - because anything can happen.

I am not suggesting foolhardiness. This trip, there is no SLR. Yet at the same time, I really struggle with OTT self-censorship. Beyond a certain point, one has to just leave it to prayers - if you are religious, or hope - if you are not.




Camera-phone series #31. Straight out of the camera.

ETAs for London-bound postcards

From Guatemala: 22 days
From New Orleans: 5 days
From Hong Kong: 17 days (volcanic ash period)
From Pittsburgh: 6 days (Christmas period, first-class mail)
From Taipei: 6 days

From Tibet?  Based on a previous journey to Singapore, 6 months by mule express.

The numbing of the relentless desert heat

SAN PEDRO de ATACAMA - I call this the numbing of the relentless desert heat. Neruda aptly calls it the fierce noon sun with its sharp spears. It is pervasive and there is no respite, no shadows, except in the canyon. Goodness knows how the llamas and the beconias do it. It is like a life without seasons, with nothing to look forward to except the relentless heat.

Of course I don't regret this trip to the desert but I doubt I can live in such harsh conditions for long. The conditions are so extreme - dry and hot in the day, cool in the night and subzero in the altitudes. Am I glad I didn't have the balls to sign up for any altiplano treks!

One gets tired and afraid of this sun. What a sanctuary this little cafe is. There must be a 3-4 degree Celsius difference between indoors and outdoors. Of course that is why they can charge S$7 for a glass of milk shake. For a small town like San Pedro, the people here sure knows how to cater to tourist tastes.

I am not sure if that is a good thing. At the town of Machupa, the llama meat seemed almost too readily available by being all ready-BBQed on skewers. I guess I am a difficult tourist to please. On the one hand, I shake my head at the crazy bone-rattling journey to the El Tatio geysers (what my Israeli roommate said about being in a washing machine is such an apt analogy!), but on the other, I don't like things too prepared. I like to stumble on llamas and tall phallic cacti, but not be led like a donkey to the water.

The geysers this morning were spectacular as one might expect, but my experience was compromised to some extent by some altitude sickness (at 4200m) and the subzero cold. It was something that one must do in one's lifetime - to feel the power of pecha mama (mother earth) in the mountains, the desert and the exploding geysers, but the rawness of her power is something so unforgettable that it does not need re-verification again...

盐谷的叹息声

SALT CANYON OF VALLE DE LUNE - 坐在盐谷(salt canyon)中的这块大石头上，顿时，“万籁俱寂” 现了更深一层的意义。听着盐谷中的盐柱(salt columns) 噼里啪啦热胀冷缩的声音，人终于在沙漠的怀抱中体会到自己的渺小。

声音到底从何处来？当你望头看这儿时，那儿已开始响起。 是部盐柱的交响曲吗？或许沙漠并没那么有诗意；这些只不过是沙漠的呼吸声（又或许是叹息声？）而已。

但叹息声的包罗万象，使我觉得沙漠所具有的，并不是单一的嗓子。我更相信的理论是沙漠住着许多山神；山神各具特色、性格，呼吸与叹息声也不一样。山神有时藏隐深山中，有时齐聚一堂，由 llamas 等动物守候着：

坐在这 Valley of the Moon， 你不由得承认：人的力量到底是单薄的。造山、创海之人究竟是谁，是怎样的一股力量？古人的多神主义信仰到底是原始的，还是有远见的？把世界的崇山峻岭都看 尽了，我们是否能体会这其中的真谛？若不能，人像攀爬最高峰的无尽欲望又是为了什么...？

Of waltzing and monogamous flamingoes

ATACAMA SALT LAKE - A nearly sleepless night in Santiago because of all that noisy partying in the hostel but that all seems so far away sitting on a stone bench in the middle of the Atacama salt lake, watching brilliantly pink flamingoes fly by. The wind is blowing my hair wild (ahh, La Chascona!) and at some points, the noisiness of the wind reminded me of when I was skydiving.
It is impossible to look at this landscape and not feel little. I recall The Japanese Story, the sense of being alive and mortal at the same time. Can one go through life just watching flamingoes take flight around the world? Set against the salt lake landscape and the Andes, these beautiful waltzing flamingoes must have one of the most carefree lives in the world.

Three types of flamingoes are found here: Chilean (pink without black tails), Andean (with black tails) and the James ones which are smaller. Three of the five types in the world. Apparently the minerals (potassium, lithium? I couldn't figure out the heavy Spanish accent) and iodine help them in their pinkness.

So the guide says flamingoes are monogamous and have a sex life lasting 5 glorious seconds* and producing one glorious egg. Is it true? I sometimes wonder if humans invent monogamous stories about animals because they find so little faith in their own species now...


* At one point, we thought we might have spotted that ethereal 5 seconds of love-making between them but it was so fleeting we could not be sure!

Panama city and Gamboa

Discovering Belize, Tikal and henceforth, Central America