Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

Valparaiso, Chile

Kate went out today on a Chilean Spirit: Wine and Horses excursion and I stayed behind.

The city of Valparaiso, like Coquimbo, rises from the ocean on a rocky peninsula. Different from Coquimbo, Valparaiso has two levels, a commercial, educational and institutional level near the port with some residential and a second, higher level filled with neighborhoods and little else.

Since the division between the two is quite steep, there are several ascensors located along the hill, funiculars that take regular traffic up and down in gaily colored cars. The fare saja, rising, is 300 pesons and 300 pesos for basada. 300 pesos is the equivalent of .60. At the top of the funicular I rode is the Naval Historical Museum and a lovely overlook with two cupolas with benches, a long promenade and several handicraft stall selling better than usual quality work.

I bought a nice wood engraving of the funicular for $16.

While walking a twenty minute stroll from the embarkation center for cruises, I had several interesting experiences.

The first was Mercado Central, open and buzzing on a Sunday, filled with fruit and vegetables for the most part, but there were also stalls selling wheels of cheese, pickled vegetables and pickled onions. Many men worked here essentially as beasts of burden carrying large sacks of onions, lugs of banana’s, boxes of artichokes.

My destination, Plaza Sotomayor, lay a good way away, so I walked along a boulevarded street with statuary and palm trees in the large planted area in the middle. Though nothing was open and traffic was light I did begin to notice graffiti that interested me.

Whipping out my spanish-english dictionary, I soon became fascinated by: Without profit, without capital. Organize. Revolution to the middle. Communista=fascista. This is a university city, so much of the material seemed to come from students, but nonetheless it spoke to a vital underground political community.

It made me wonder what it would be like to be a radical in one of these countries, say Peru or Chile. The pull would be incredible because the gap between rich and poor is so vast and the government so often heavy handed and greedy. On the other hand radicals here often pay the price. There were several spray painted pictures of individuals with asesenio on top: murderer or assassin. Politics would not be for the faint hearted, especially politics outside the normal order.

Along the way, I heard a rock band practicing in an evente salon, adding a very 60’s atmosphere to the messages added to the buildings.

All the museums had cerrado signs up, so I walked on past these grand colonial buildings to the Plaza. In the middle is a large naval sculpture dedicated to the Chilean heroes in the War of the Pacific including an eternal flame dedicated to their spirit. Since we had come through Ecuador and Peru, and, not through Bolivia, the effects of this war fought in the late 19^th century has appeared from time to time on our tours.

A new aspect of such monuments occurred to me today though it may have been obvious to you all along. Such monuments, dedicated to particular military men and events in particular wars, serve not only to memorialize the events and people depicted, but they also put very concrete reminders of past hostilities on daily view for as long as the monuments last. Such monuments are often among the longest surviving remnants of any culture.

This means that old wounds remain open, daily scratched afresh by the pretense of honor. In this case it means that young Chileans will see this work and revisit, or perhaps visit for the first time, the time when their government exacted a terrible price on Bolivia, depriving them for well over a hundred years of a port, or the capture from the Peruvians of the Atacama deserts rich nitrate deposits.

We have the same monuments of course, reminding us of our wars with the British and, most tellingly in this regard, reminders of our Civil War.

In one very human moment I had a broken conversation with a man visiting his son attending university here. They were both pleased to meet a foreigner and took several photographs of us together. We talked of our delight in finding each other, the son’s studies and the long drive facing the father, Regardo, on his way home.

After a day at sea tomorrow, we begin our journey through the Chilean fjords and will find ourselves for the first time at a latitude comparable to our own.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

Valparaiso, Chile 33 degrees 2 minutes S 71 degrees 4 minutes W

We sailed through choppy seas last night, 7-10 foot swells, but my stomach weathered them. Maybe I’ve got my sea legs?

A few things I forgot about yesterday that got lost in my recounting of the fate of the universe.

The four meter telescope and its pier, sunk down to bedrock, weighs 670 tons. The telescope itself weighs 360 tons and has to turn in small graduate movements over long periods of time to keep track of the sky. The whole telescope with its 12 foot + mirror rests in a gigantic gimbal which required constant lubrication. Precision and these kind of weights are a test of engineering prowess.

We were up in the Andes at Cerro Tololo, but to get to them we crossed a softer, more rounded range of coastal mountains, a much older range than the Andes, I imagine, so a large portion of the Elqui valley sits between the Andes and the coastal mountains.

Villages in the Elqui valley practice what they call astronomical tourism. One spot, a more upscale version, is Los Domos, the domes. It has, as you might expect, domes for rent. They’re of a clear material and the domes open. Los Domos will rent you a telescope so you can watch the stars from your bed. Another place has a setup for serious amateur astronomers who want to set up their own telescopes. If you ever want to combine a pleasant vacation with casual or determined star gazing, the Elqui valley offers a charming location, with plenty of wine and pisco to get you through the daylight hours.

When asked about Chilean attitudes toward mining (hard rock mining for copper, manganese, silver and gold), our guide said, after a bit hesitation, “Well, we live off it. Mining, fishing and agriculture are the three legs of our economy.” But what about the environmental consequences? “A gold mine shut down over a 7 year process that involved lots of care for the environment.” My sense? Folks in Chile don’t want to know too much about the effects of hard rock mining on their country.

They must not because fishing and agriculture are both downstream from the big copper mine further up the Elqui valley. Also, when asked about underground water, she said, “Well, we get most of our water from the reservoir and that’s enough for agriculture and residential uses. The underground water gets used by the mines.”

Again, an instance where an export, this time copper, lays waste to a region’s precious aquifers, just like we’ve done to the Oglalla aquifer under most of the plains states. Depending on recharge rates for the aquifers, usually in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, this is an essentially limited resource, once it’s gone, it’s gone. Not to mention that groundwater pollution up stream will pollute the aquifer, too.

Chile today is a relatively prosperous and stable country, but it has two economic engines that face trouble in the years ahead. At some point the metals will no longer be economically viable to mine. Ocean fishing is under tremendous pressure all round the globe with yearly catches of the most commercially important fish like cod, tuna and salmon beginning to wane.

A positive point lay in the material stacked up on the dock in Coquimbo. The very long blades and the city bus sized nacelles for a large wind farm being built south of Coquimbo. It will supply about ¼ of the regions electricity.

I’m heading out to check out Valparaiso. Check on you later.

Spring Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

Coquimbo, Chile 30 degrees 23 minutes S 71 degrees 49 minutes

Every body has their rock star pantheon. And their own places of pilgrimage.

Brian Schimdt is a rock star in my world and I visited his holy place today, high on Cerro Tololo at the Observatory there. I didn’t crawl up the 2000+ meters on my knees, instead I rode in a comfortable tour bus. Didn’t change the historic location or reduce my experience.

You may not have heard of Brian Schmidt and honestly I didn’t know his name, but I did know what he did at Cerro Tololo in 1999. He and a team of astronomers won a Noble prize for the work.

He used super novae IA, the glamor kids of the astronomical world, to change the perception of the fate of the universe. A pretty big deal.

IA super novae occur when a white dwarf drains matter from a twin red giant, then, literally, goes nuclear. Turns out these super novae have a predictable brightness which, thanks to spectrum analysis, makes it possible to accurately measure the composition of other stars. That spectrum analysis provides evidence for the speed of other objects in the universe.

It was Brian’s teams work, using this data, that shocked the astronomical and cosmological dogma. They found an expanding universe, not the collapsing one predicted by theories since Einstein, based on gravitational attraction. This left a huge puzzle.

What force could explain expansion? The answer to that question and one that followed in its train, dark matter and dark energy, pose the fundamental questions for cosmologists and astronomers over the next century.

What’s the big deal? Well, 90% of the matter universe seems to be dark matter and no one knows what it is. Ditto for dark energy.

All this work happened thanks to the four meter telescope at Cerro Tololo. The work continues and the basic questions posed by Schimdt’s team through data acquired with the 4 meter and confirmation of their results using the Hubble has set the agenda for astrophysics and astronomy for the foreseeable future.

Just up another Andean mountain road nearby is the Gemini observatory. A while back they decided to build an 8 meter telescope. Things went well with fund raising and plans had gotten well along until somebody remembered the tunnel. A while back the Elqui river got dammed. That took out the old road for a section and necessitated a tunnel. Which was not wide enough for an 8 meter mirror.

Oops.

The Gemini had to raise additional money to widen the tunnel. They did so and the 8 meter is now a reality.

The Elqui vallley, named after the river, starts high in the Andes and descends all the way to the Pacific where La Serena and Coquimbo, our port today and its sister city, sit. It has fertile soil, year round sunshine and plenty of water thanks to the reservoir.

Clementines, red and green table grapes, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, custard apples and other unfamiliar fruits like the so-called papaya which is not a papaya but tastes pretty damn good anyhow all grow here and many of them end up on US and Chinese tables. There are also many wineries in the Elqui valley, some making the clear, brandy like distilled wine called Pisco, but others producing table wines.

Chile, Lonely Planet observed, has a European feel. Here in the Coquimbo/La Serena region the Mediterranean came to mind. Coquimbo climbs up a rocky hill and La Serena has preserved its colonial architecture. The orderliness of the agriculture and the housing in the towns reminded me of the Italian countryside. Not exactly, just in general feel.

Chileans love meat. The typical barbecue includes pork, beef, chicken and sausage, all of which ends up on your plate. We had lunch at a hosteria, a one floor hotel, and we had beef and chicken.

Gabriel Mistral, the first Noble laureate for poetry from Chile, was born in Vicuna, where we had lunch, and her tomb is in a small town further up the valley.

Tomorrow I plan to wander around Valparaiso since the dock will put me near the center of the lower town. Kate meanwhile will go on a tour that features Chilean wine and horses. A perfect fit for her interests.

Sprint Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

24 degrees 33 minutes South 73 degrees 19 minutes W

Wrote an entry yesterday that said I was (am) sick. A cold. Must have eliminated it in my fog headed stupor.

Now feeling better, some. Lots of rest, water and watching the gray ocean go by.

Since we left the sunny Inka Department of Peru, we have sailed out into the Humboldt current which comes up north from Antarctica bearing frigid waters and, I assume, creating the low, totally overcast sky.

We left the Inka Department at 5:02 pm on November 2^nd, (:02 because a few crew had not turned in their Peruvian Andean identity cards which we all had to have while in Peru.) and since then have been on an ocean that, from the starboard side, has looked the same, iron gray with a few swells and no sun.

The change from Inka was dramatic, sudden and complete. This last day and a half we could be crossing the Atlantic.

Kate’s busy with laundry and reading the Game of Thrones, the uber long quadrology by George Martin which I finished the night before we left. He has a fifth book out now, which I purchased, that came in at 1,200 pages. I’ve not started it because I wanted to live in different fictional worlds for a while.

I’m on my fourth now, REAMDE, by N. Stephenson, a cybersci-fi guy whom I’ve always enjoyed.

The third read was Ilium by Dan Simmons. Dan, a Wabash grad, my college, too, wrote a tour de force of literary and science fiction with the Iliad as a through line, but with background narratives that included Shakespeare’s sonnets and Marcel Proust. Guess you could call this beach reading from the ocean side of the beach.

Kate and I just discussed an interesting factoid I picked up in my reading. The hairless dog, found in Mexico and Latin America, has a body temperature higher than the typical 102 of other dogs and, as a result, has a role as a therapy dog (literally) for arthritis sufferers. We met one near the Palace of the Dragon in Trujillo. He had dark black skin with a few orange-red hairs along his spinal column.

Tomorrow we hit the half way point in our journey. We’ve adapted to the life aboard ship with easy food service, Walid to clean the room, a slight rock to the bed at night and journeys from deck to deck, then, on occasion, ashore in a new city or a new country. This is roughly the point at which we would go home from a longish trip and I’ve wondered what it would be like to go past the point where relaxation had come to dominate. Now I know.

At 18 knots it takes a long time to pass through an entire degree of latitude, a matter of hours, so it is easy to why those early voyages by sail counted their journeys in years. Paying attention to the degrees of latitude as we moved across the equator and south of it I began to wonder where our Twin Cities latitude of 45 degrees, halfway to the northpole from the equator, would fall in South America.

Took out the map yesterday and looked. We cross 45 degrees South latitude below Puerto Montt, Chile, about 2/3’rds of the way down the very long country of Chile, 12 degrees south, for example, of Buenos Aires on the eastern side of the continent. This puts the Twin Cities in the same geographical location as the beginning of the Chilean fjords, well into the fuzzily defined Patagonia. Halfway to Antarctica.

Though we have not really encountered spring weather so far, I’m pretty sure we’ll find some at our first stop, tomorrow, in Coquimbo, Chile where I will take a shore excursion into the mountains to see the Cerro Tolo Observatory. I hope to see spring flowers.

Spring Day of the Dead Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

Today we entered the Achatama desert, the driest desert in the Americas, perhaps in the world. They simply don’t get rain here. Except during El Nino. Then they flood. The last El Nino event for them was 1998 and the ruins of Tambo Colorado, an adobe palace built for administrators of the Inca Empire of this region still shows rivulets of mud that have dried now thirteen years, the last time rain came to in the Inka Department of Peru.

We docked in General San Martin port, named for the liberator Jose San Martin who landed here on his quest to beat back the Spaniards, contemporaneous with Bolivar in the north. He reportedly woke up one morning in Pisco, saw flamingos rising from a body of water and decided the Peruvian flag should have red white and red. Which it does.

The tour today took us inland through various regions of the Athacama desert, past small towns of the Inka Department, which has only 1% unemployment compared to Lima’s 10% plus 60% subemployment. I asked Yanina, our tour guide, why Inka Department had such a favorable rate and she said the economy has mining, agriculture and fishing plus a bit of manufacturing, a balanced economic mix.

Our destination was Tambo Colorado, the best preserved Inca palace and grounds in the nation. The chaski, the means of passing messages and taxes by runners capable of running 24 K, could move communications more than 250 miles a day. This required secure trails and roads and these administrative centers helped protect the runners and to execute the Imperial affairs like taxes.

Tambo Colorado’s preservation is due to the extreme dryness of the Athacama Desert.

Stretches of the walls still have adobe with pigmentation in yellow and red, a remarkable state. The palace sits on a hill side overlooking the Pisco river valley below with excellent sight lines for defense.

The windows and doors of the palace have a trapezoidal construction which makes them more stable in earthquakes. Like many indigenous structures I have seen in Mexico and other parts of Latin America these withstand the earthquakes triggered by movement of the Nazca Plate while the cathedrals and other Spanish buildings do not.

After this visit, we motored over to the estancia of Peru’s Minister of Agriculture who has 200 hectares under intense cultivation, growing green asparagus, mineola and many varieties of grape. This is Peru’s wine making region and the source of the Pisco wine which Peru considers its national drink.

We had a meal which included small boiled potatoes on toothpicks with a cheese sauce, macadamia nuts grown on the estancia, plantain with cheese, turkey, rice, asparagus, maize and carrots.

The hacienda had a bath house with bougainvillea draped over its white lattice work, yellow loungers next to the blue painted pool and a low, one story adobe house, quite large with airy rooms. We used the family’s facilities while we were there so had a chance to see the inside.

I met the minister’s wife or his eldest daughter and chatted with her for a bit. She said they live in Lima part of the week and at the hacienda for the rest of the time. I asked here if they came down here for the sun. She laughed and said, “Yes.”

It was near here, at the Cerro Colorado, where a Peruvian archaeologist found several mummified remains of Paraccan culture individuals.

Back on board now and pulling away from the dock here in General San Martin port, headed next for Coquimbo, Chile with 2 days at sea before we arrive there.

Spring Beltane Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

Dinner with Pizarro. Tonight we dined in a residence originally owned by Francisco Pizzaro. It had the family initials in wood over the dining room door. This was an overtop place. Wood carved in many different styles, parquet floors and wooden ceilings. There were cupola’s cut into the ceilings that hat windows and pull cords to close and open. In this dry climate no screens were necessary.

This was dinner with 8 tables of ten people each, 80 of our closest friends from the ship. The candlelight came from small votives on the table, but it was spectacular anyhow.

We had five courses, an asparagus souffle, an entree of beef, sweet potatoes, a large white maize and broccoli. Each course came to us from the left, served by Peruvians in white jackets and white gloves. Our guy looked like the odd man out among a crew of experienced waiters. He grimaced at the task of serving us, trying to make it look right and obviously unsure of himself. I tipped him, probably the only one who tipped a waiter at this meal.

Dessert was a whipped orange affair made from the fruit of a luchma. We got that it was a fruit from a tree but that was as close as we could come. It had a tangy, fruity taste if taken in small bites, in larges ones the sugar overwhelmed it.

Since this is All Saints, the crowded streets were empty of traffic, people at home or lounging outside small businesses, visiting family. Earlier in the day many people went to the cemeteries to spiff up the graves and generally do things I thought went with day of the dead. I have some learning to do here.

Colonial Lima has some wonderful balconied haciendas, often quite opulent, as Pizarro’s old home was. As I sat there, I meditated on the irony of white Americans dining in a Conquistador’s residence, served by indios in Peru.

Driving home the streets had litter on them from celebrations and street side restaurants serving brochettes, or shish-kebab’s introduced from Poland long ago. As Rosa said yesterday, “When you eat in Lima, your are eating history.”

In just over an hour we sail for General San Martin and the city of Pisco, home of the Peruvian national liquor, Pisco, famous for its use in Pisco Sours. Pisco, Lonely Planet says, suffered 80% damage in the 2007 quake, a 7.9. I’m making a foray into the Peruvian countryside tomorrow to a pre-Incan fortress at Tambo Colorado, then dinner at a Peruvian hacienda.

Addenda the next day to the 7.9 quake number. Folks in the Inka Department, apparently supported by international earthquake specialists and folks from the US Geological survey, did a subsequent inspection and determined that this was actually an 8.4 quake. A lot bigger.

The Peruvian government though went with 7.9. It seems that 8.0 is the trigger for national disaster relief and responsibility.

Spring Beltane!! Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

On the Veendam’s Lido deck overlooking the port of Callao and Lima spreading out to the north, east and west as far the mist allows my sight.

Last night the moon, more like a slice of mango now, hung with its horns up in honor of the bulls who fight each night now since it is the season of the toreador. The Plaza de Toros in Lima was the first in the new world and the third in the world according to Rosa, our well informed tour guide from yesterday.

Before I went to bed last night I went out on the deck outside our cabin and leaned on the rail watching the container ballet conducted under lights making the ships and dock area look like day time. Shipping never sleeps, with ships coming into port and leaving at all times of the day and night. This speaks well for international commerce and it is an activity largely hidden to those of us whose personal histories tie us to the heartland of North America.

Today Lima has a mist fallen over it, a condition that Rosa, our tour guide yesterday says is not only typical, it is the norm from November through May.

Tonight Kate and I attend a candle light dinner in a Spanish colonial hacienda in the old town area of Lima. I hope the mist remains because the guide book says Lima has a dreamlike quality, occasioned by the mist, that I would like to experience. We had the rare sunny day yesterday. Of course, it is spring.

When I woke this morning, I realized this will also be a year of two Beltanes for me. November 1^st is the Southern Hemisphere May 1^st, which means that Halloween should actually be celebrated on April 30^th to synch up with its seasonal equivalent.

The connection is not the dates, of course, but the seasonal beginning of the growing season. Beltane marks its start and Samhain its end. I’m not sure about the growing season in the desert area of coastal Peru, since there is no rainy season here, but I do know that the Remak? River, the heart of this desert city, the talking river, is mute now, but will soon speak again as the rainy season hits the mountains and sends fresh water to this port city on the ocean.

Lima, unlike, say Las Vegas or Los Angeles, sits at the mouth of a huge fresh water river, so when it drinks from its flow it does not beggar cities below it, nor do they have to divert the water to collect it, but it is still a desert city, a desert city strangely dependent on water, fresh water from the Andes and salt water for its port.

Pacche Mama, fertilized by El Senor as replicated in the sexual ceramics of the Moche people, has its equivalent in the Lord and Lady of Beltane and the fervent love making in the fields that presses the heat of human intercourse into the earth for good crops and receives heat back from Pacche Mama for the continuation of the species.

At bottom, the indigenous bottom of humanity’s collective well of meaning, lies this necessary and embarrassingly (to moderns, urbanites) intimate relationship with the soil and the plants on which we depend.

Gold, the sweat of the sun, and silver, the tears of the moon, made object after object in these pre-contact cultures here in Peru that reminded their wearers and those who saw them of the web of connectedness that reached out from Pacche Mama to the heavens above, a web that included us humans, but made no special claim for us.

We need Pacche Mama, the Sun and the Moon and in turn we remembered them with jewelry, sacrifice and ritual.

Seems possible to me that the earth would be healthier right now if we could get back to the simple, yet profound beliefs.