latin america – Page 9

Alex, paddling towards the Americas

10 October 20173 May 2006 by moro

He had left from Genoa the 18th of September, 2005. Alex Bellini, who was born near my small town (that is in the mountains!), has crossed the whole Atlantic Ocean alone with the only power of his arms. He has finally landed on the coasts of Latin America the last Sunday, near Fortaleza (Brasil).

I was not there, but I can imagine seven months of hard fights against the uncontrollable ocean and its traps! Maybe a methodical adventure, but surely a genuine nomadic travel. And above all a lot of courage and determination, many compliments…

Bolivia, the rebel

10 October 20172 May 2006 by moro

“Let’s begin from hydrocarbons, then it will be the time of the mines, therefore of the forests, and of all the natural resources that have left our ancestors to us. Finally, it will be the time of the earth that is for all the Bolivians” has said Evo Morales.

I do not have the role to criticize or to exalt the decision of the president of Bolivia to nationalize the resources of his country, decision which was largely preannounced, but I have got too many Bolivian friends not to know that this is a day of rave-up for them, a day that they dreamed for a long time, an unforgettable day. Unfortunately the game they are playing is so hard, the energy demand is so insatiable that we should at least expect a journalistic and/or ideological reprisal against this splendid Latin American country. And the history tells us the rest. Bolivia, if I can, it’s time you turn your free and raffish look to your fair culture, to your immense forests, to your beauty, don’t lose your way along paths that smell of oil…

…a nomadic travel along the Americas

10 October 20172 May 2006 by moro

…a nomadic travel along the Americas is coming up on June 2, 2006

São Paulo of Brazil

10 October 201724 December 2003 by moro

We arrive in the giant economic capital of South America, a monster of concrete and skyscrapers, we had never seen anything like São Paulo in our journey. The city that cannot stop.
A tremendous luck makes us meet our friends, waiting for us in the evening crowd at the rodoviaria barra funda. Around us is not the deep green of Corumbá and places visited in the journey to São Paulo, but a continuous and impenetrable jungle of high buildings.
The cosmopolitan city, a melting pot of cultures, a mixture of looks, all to be experienced dangling from one place to another, from square to square, like all the metropolis love to be visited.

La Paz of Bolivia

10 October 201719 November 2003 by moro

La Paz is a Latin American metropolis, in Bolivian sauce. Nestled between towering Andean peaks, the city is struggling on steep slopes which are memorable for a capital city (the highest in the world with 3,650 meters above sea level), but with the extremes of 4100 meters in El Alto and of 3,000 meters in the suburbs of La Paz. The city center is surrounded by the Cathedral and the Government Palace, or Palacio Quemado, named after the number of times it was burned by the flames. Meeting point for travelers from all over Latin America, La Paz concentrates too many social contrasts: colorful markets give way to modern quarters and then again neglected streets where barter is still practiced and you can live, sleep and eat with little money.

A plane takes off, blinking stars, never so many, never so close, night passengers of rickety buses without a destination. A cable car that combines both worlds. La Paz.

Andahuaylas, Apurimac

10 October 20178 November 2003 by moro

The journey by minibus (colectivo) climbs with exaggerated steepness starting from 2300 meters above sea level of Abancay to get well over 4000 meters and finally descend again. The route runs through the district of Apurimac, one of the most isolated and wild in Peru. We reach Andahuaylas late at night. The long journey is enlivened by music and the human contact that is created in the minibus filled up to bursting with people, things and animals. A baby named Annibal and his young mother sit next to me.

The scenery is lovely, and alfalfa fields of maize give way to small villages of adobe houses, a few caws, where humans have wisely sweetened the fertile but steep sides of the mountains. The people are very welcoming and nice.

Arequipa and Juanita, Inca ice maiden

10 October 201729 October 2003 by moro

Arequipa, a jewel set in the wide valleys of southern Peru Andean plateau, is known from the Peruvians as the white city. A quiet and hospitable city, where to acclimatize before the rise in remote parts of the Andes. The drown tops of three volcanoes brush the city, the misti (gentleman, with its perfectly conical shape), the Chachani (beloved) and Picchu Picchu (high high) in the Quechua language. In the basement at the Convent of Santa Catalina, in an eternal embrace, lies the mummy of a girl (nicknamed Juanita, or Inca ice maiden) sacrificed in a ritual at Mount Ampato by the Incas 500 years ago. The encounter with a “viejo loco”, as he introduced himself, gives us a glimpse of Latin America, sitting in a tiny square of Arequipa, under the shade of some orange trees in bloom, we begin a long conversation on the life and traditions of the Andes and Arequipa. He traveled widely as a young man, being a street artist, and his memories are still bright. We discussed the magical combination of moods, colors, flavors, music and experiences that brings the traveler in his pilgrimage. In Arequipa it’s easy to meet lots of people, also because the climate is very hospitable. We receive an invitation to the home of a boy, out of town. We get to know their grandparents, who take care of alfalfa and corn fields and prepare for us a rich and delicious lunch accompanied by abundant traditional chicha, a fermented drink produced from corn. Sitting around the fire we eat and listen with interest the story of their lives, amid joys and sacrifices. After lunch, we learn the basics needed to play the Quena, the typical flute used in Andean music.

Chile on the road

15 May 201823 October 2003 by moro

The bus station in Santiago of Chile is one of those places where time is suspended between the heat and the coolness of the night. When from any bus appears a new face, this immediately triggers a sudden excitement, typical of those little tricks of daily living. The bus station is always a fork in the journey of endless choices. After a brief consultation to decide whether to continue the travel toward the green and southern Switzerland, toward Concepcion and the legendary University of Bio Bio, toward Puerto Montt and his project of sustainable city (district heating, heat pumps especially from Baumann technology and an innovative composting system for organic waste through the work of earthworms), we decided to turn our eyes toward the north to the Atacama Desert. We leave Santiago slowly, hampered by a colorful procession of malabaristas, street artists who protest against the ban to exercise their art in the streets of downtown Santiago. We meet to party and discuss in the typical Peñas, places where you can listen and dance some cuecas of Violeta Parra and Victor Jara’s ballads, perhaps accompanied by delicious empanadas, pastel de choclo with humitas and Chilean wine. The meeting is for the next day in front of La Moneda, the historic headquarter of the Chilean president. Place where you will find all the protests of the country, a symbol of the military coup that overthrew Allende in 1973 and led to the long dictatorship of Pinochet.

From Valparaiso the Pan-American highway runs fast alongside the Pacific Ocean, the coast is interrupted by infrequent fishing villages, the coast is bent by the majestic power of the ocean. Distant to be seen, Easter Island lies at the mercy of the currents. In the bus we travel with a young Chilean family, a young woman with three small children, all beautiful. We talk about each other’s differences and we think, a gulf seems to divide us, but then we take a break for lunch on the road and they order a large plate of fries, which they call chorillana, with a huge glass of cola. The world nowadays is liquid, perhaps even more than predicted by Bauman at the dawn of the digital age.

Through the window Brazil, Argentina, Chile

10 October 201720 October 2003 by moro

From the airplane window, a long prelude begins when breaking the monotonous blue line of the ocean appears the sensual green and gold shape of Brazil, an outpost of the South American continent. It will be like a tape rewind live in the future, when we will be immersed in the journey. Dazzle the eyes observing these endless lands. The plane heads quickly towards the south, the colors of the austral spring appear where the Rio de la Plata hugely plunges into the Atlantic Ocean, separating Uruguay from the big sister Argentina. Buenos Aires appears, boundless. Underfoot the ground is dry and disconnected, rising announces the show of the Andes, the amazing mountain range that divides Argentina and Chile The shape of Aconcagua, the highest peak in America with its 6962 meters (22,841 feet) above sea level, hides the sun, but not the first glimpses of bucolic valleys of central Chile, surrounded by the first spring blooms. Further on, the Pacific Ocean rests agitated by powerful waves like mountains.

Santiago de Chile looks like a long strip that stretches from north to south, sometimes unformed, a small copy of the entire Chile, with its characteristic threadlike shape. So deeply varied and contradictory. Santiago is alive and pulsating.