Arriving in Lausanne on Easter weekend after a month in Latin America, the calm was welcome if a bit jarring. Almost no one was out and about on Easter morning, not going to church, not buying a newspaper, not having a coffee. The city looked abandoned, as if it had been hit by a bioterrorist attack on the eve my arrival. Does everyone in Lausanne have a country home? Sleep until noon? In the handsome building across from where we live, the shutters on many of the apartments seem permanently closed. Does no one live there? Or do they simply stay in the dark, moving furtively from screen to screen? It sounds sensual, Switzerland’s naughty, adventurous side.
Things came back to life after the holiday weekend, but the contrast between sedate, staid Lausanne and the constant churn and noise of Latin America stayed with me. A few snapshots of my trip, before I forget.
My most vivid memories are of Arequipa, a city in southern Peru that I visited on the advice of a Parisian friend. When I arrived at twilight, the city seemed under-lit, with people milling about in a yellowish glow as if the city had dimmed the lights to save money. My taxi dropped me off at the wrong hotel, but the staff there kindly directed to another address down the same street, where I found only a buzzer and a sign identifying the building as the Netherlands Honorary Consulate in Arequipa (a fact not confirmed by a quick Google search). I was wondering what I had gotten myself into when the door finally buzzed opened to reveal a sumptuous hotel, organized around open spaces and lush gardens as if in southern Spain. At the reception, a small woman with an impish smile greeted me with “Usted sería el Señor David, no ?” and showed me to my room.
The next morning I walked to the Plaza de armas, the central square whose origins date back to the 16th century, and where all of the buildings are carved from a white sillar volcanic stone native to the region. They positively gleamed in the sunlight of the cloudless day. The white of the buildings contrasted with the blue of the sky and the green of the trees and the red of the flowers in a scene of vivid beauty that outshined the fact that banks, casinos, restaurants, and travel agents now occupy most of the retail space in the square. Things were quiet, too. Much of the downtown area is a pedestrian zone, and while traffic backs up on the few streets where cars are permitted, drivers rarely blow their horns. Nor does music blare from the shops. Arequipa is no Lausanne, but neither is it Bogotá.
On another day I visited the Santa Catalina Monastery, a Dominican convent built in the 16th century and another place of rare, exquisite beauty. The sprawling site has been painted in bright blues and reds that catch the sunlight, with flowers or vines or trees strategically positioned grab your attention at every turn. The colors might not be historically accurate, but together with the spacious salons and kitchens they evoke past lives of comfort and reflection. At least at the outset the convent was a haven for wealthy women, perhaps widows seeking shelter (together with their servants) from the demands of frontier life in the colonies. Would life here have been devout? Light-hearted? Lesbian? Are there no books or movies about this place? Did none of the women keep a diary?
Oaxaca comes in a close second to Arequipa. It is less stately and more boisterous but is yet another riot of colors – buildings, flowers, trees – and walking through town, especially in the cool morning hours, is a constant delight. I spent two weeks there taking Spanish language classes, and many of my fellow students had been coming to Oaxaca for years because life is comfortable, beautiful, and cheap, at least for gringos. Several of them were back for the first time since the end of the pandemic and noted that the city looks somewhat battered; tourism is a big part of the local economy, which does not look to have lot more going for it. Several of the locals I met – language teachers and tour guides – seemed to have settled for jobs in which they could not fulfill their potential. One sighed that Canada had just put visa requirements in place for Mexican visitors (on February 29), cutting off another possibility. Getting a visa to the US can take years.
On a tour of Monte Alban, an impressive Zapata ruin on the outskirts of Oaxaca, we drove through a suburb of the town, where even from the bus window you could see and feel Mexican entrepreneurship at work. On one side of the road was a residential neighborhood with houses of all different sizes and shapes, clearly built of whatever materials people could get their hands on. It looked new and somewhat primitive – meaning no zoning laws – but at the same time prosperous and hopeful. Nice late-model cars were parked outside of some of the houses. Across from the neighborhood was a bustling marketplace next to a bus terminal. The scene reminded me of rural China in the 1990s when the word came down that making money was okay. And the energy made me think of the frenzied rush of traffic in Bogotá.
While in Colombia, my son and I also visited the Amazon. We flew from Bogotá to the southern town of Leticia, where Colombia abuts Brazil and Peru, and booked a standard tour, which includes a day in and around Leticia, a day and a night in the jungle, and a day touring various sites on the river.
Leticia is a prosperous little town, especially in comparison to Santa Rosa de Yavari, its Peruvian counterpart across the river (actually on an island in the river), but there is not much to do, so the tour guides tell you a few stories and drive you into Brazil so you can say you’ve been there. The highlight of the trip for me was the time on the huge Amazon River. We might have been on the water for three or four hours before we arrived at our destination. I was reminded of my teenage years when my family had a boat and went waterskiing on a local lake most summer weekends. I think that was the most quality time I ever had with my father, who otherwise was always, always working. This was probably in the early 1970s, long before cellphones were available, and when you are driving a boat or skiing you have to be present, and I have good memories of the experience, laughing and joking with him.
The Amazon jungle was moderately interesting. We saw lots of birds on the water – including eagles – but few animals in the jungle. The heat and the bugs make the Amazon uncomfortable and difficult and your clothes and shoes are always wet, either from perspiration or from being in the water. We had a couple of hours of electricity at night, which I think was a luxury for the region, but it’s not obvious what to do when the lights go out. Actually, what you do is listen to the sounds of the forest – unknown objects or animals crashing to the ground, and a truly impressive torrential rainstorm on the night we were there. My son and the guide went back out into the jungle after supper in search of wildlife, using flashlights to hunt for small caiman that the guide thought would be fun to toss back into the water. Having broken my ankle the last time I was in Colombia I decided to sit this one out.
Indigenous people are of course everywhere in the Amazon, including at least two of our guides. We toured indigenous villages and witnessed the tourist equivalent of traditional song and dance, but I could not really get a sense of what assimilation means in the places we visited. It must be complicated. Our jungle guide was curious about the world and seemed well-educated, complained about the limited services available to his community and yet expressed great pride in being indigenous and considered the Amazon the best place in the world to live (he had never left the region, and I believe he said that his eight brothers and sisters had “disappeared,” which certainly sounds ominous).
I spent a few days in Lima at the end of my trip, by which point I was getting a bit tired of being on the road. Miraflores, the neighborhood where I stayed, reminded me of Miami in the 1970s – miles and miles of restaurants and shops – although neighboring Barranco was sleek and stylish. Peruvian food is touted as among the best in the world, but two of their most famous dishes, Lomo saltado and Arroz chaufa, tasted to me like Chinese food from Hong Kong, which is pretty much what they are. By contrast, ceviche is the near perfect food, fresh, healthy, tangy, and rich. I should learn to make it. I also had guinea pig, another Peruvian national dish, which was appropriately cute – they leave one leg attached so that you can pick it up and eat it. My guinea pig was fried, so what you eat is basically skin, although the meat was tasty enough. In tourist restaurants, a serving of guinea pig costs as much as three lunches in a neighborhood restaurant.
Taking stock after two trips around the world, I really haven’t solved the problem I raised in the first blogpost of “what to do when I stop work at 2:00” because there is no routine when you travel. In addition, although my Spanish improved considerably between my first and second trips, I still didn’t really talk to anyone other than cab drivers and people working in hotels – or tour guides, who spoke English. In my mind I imagine that I’ll eventually be able to strike up conversations with people in Latin America, but I don’t speak with much of anyone in Lausanne, and my French is fluent. It seems to me that we don’t talk that much outside of work, friendships, and family, or at least I don’t. In the movies, people go to bars and have heart-to-heart talks with perfect strangers. Perhaps that’s happened to me once or twice over the years, but not often.
I’m off to Germany in a couple of days for a 10-day lecture trip, where I will surely talk to people. Then back to Montreal in early May, where I think I’ll stay for the summer. If all goes well, I have a trip lined up to China in September, maybe for a month or so. This should give me time to reflect on what my future travel might be. Maybe I should be thinking of a cabin in the mountains or on a lake and not a trek in the Tierre del fuego.