Don't cry for me, Venezuela!

Over the years, I have come to understand one trait of mine: when I travel to a city or a country, then those, too, are places that I then read about as a way of keeping in touch with those old friends, whom I might never visit again.  As with "real" friends, I get excited if what I read about is positive and exciting, and feel awful if otherwise.

For a few years now, I have felt nothing but awful about Venezuela, which was the first country I visited  in 1988, a year after coming to the US.

The graduate student group, of which I was one, spent only a couple of days in Caracas before we shifted to the project site--Maracaibo. Twenty five years have passed, and the airline that we flew, PanAm, has long since disappeared from the world of business.

Recently, when I was in Ecuador, I was reminded a lot of Venezuela and Simon Bolivar.  That Bolivar legacy, has not worked out well for the country--Hugo Chavez claims to be doing all the crazy things that he does in that grand Bolivar style, and what a mess the country is in now!

The New Yorker had a lengthy piece (sub. reqd.) on the Venezuela and Caracas of today, that have been completely messed up by the bizarre policies of Chavez.  What a curse!

A couple of years ago, when I was on talking terms with a few faculty colleagues, a conversation with one of them--yes, an ultra-left sympathizer--turned to Chavez.  Despite all my interests, I preferred to stay quiet and end that conversation because I knew well that she wouldn't like my take on Chavez' policies.  The New Yorker essay is a reminder of how awful the conditions are now.

My graduate school professor, who  was the guide for our project work back in 1988, has also blogged about this essay and adds this note:

A couple of good friend Venezuelan expats (Tico and Aloha Moreno, now in Florida) sent me this video (and accompanying story in Spanish) about how chickens are distributed (not sold) in Maracaibo. You can tell students all you want about prices rationing on the demand side and eliciting on the supply side, but show them the video first.
We can chuckle from a distance, but these are episodes from the real lives of real people. 

Yes, the real lives of real people that Chavez has messed up.  And messed up big time.

Now, with his illness, it appears that Chavez is battling for his life, not in his country but in Cuba, and this writer notes that the entire Chavez presidency and the country's political misfortunes can make for a good telenovela:

The long and at times surreal saga surrounding the illness of President Hugo Chavez has many Venezuelan writers and intellectuals likening the nation's drama to a soap opera. Venezuela has long produced such telenovelas, and some say no one could have imagined a more bizarre plot than the one that has unfolded in the more than seven weeks since Chavez traveled to Cuba for his operation and disappeared from public view.
"Reality in Venezuela has turned implausible. It's hard to believe that these events are happening, where each one exceeds the last one, and where our capacity to be amazed is being constantly challenged," said Leonardo Padron, a writer of Venezuelan telenovelas and a critic of Chavez's government.

It seems more and more like a re-telling of that other notoriously screwed-up South American country--Argentina, whose messed up leader has been more than a telenovela star, thanks to Evita.

To paraphrase Jorge Luis Borges, a lot in literature and in life does seem like a constant re-telling of old stories.  But, why don't we want to re-tell wonderful stories and, instead, we are so fascinated to repeat horror stories?

Caption at the source:
A mural in Caracas, inspired by “The Last Supper,” which depicts Jesus
 flanked by Fidel Castro, Mao, Lenin, Marx, Simón Bolívar, and others.

To Quito with love, and very few dollars in my wallet.

“I do not know why more tourists from the US don't come to Ecuador” commented Mario.  “They think that Ecuador is like Africa, and they want to go only to Galapagos, as if Galapagos is a country of its own” he complained.

I nodded my head as we walked up the steep rise on the way to the Itchimbia Cultural Center from where, Mario assured me, I would be able to have a fantastic view of Quito, with the statue of Virgin Mary off on a hill in one direction, and the basilica in another direction. 

Mario was really getting into this tourism topic.  “The challenge is to figure out how to get the tourists who go to Europe and Thailand, because they are the big spenders.  The tourists we get now are not the tourists who spend money in France and Italy.”

I didn’t know whether I was supposed to feel complimented or insulted at that point.  It was true, however, that as a tourist in Ecuador I was spending very little money.  I was staying in a budget hotel and counting my dollars every night before I went to sleep.  

The tourists I encountered did not seem to be big spenders either.  Quite a few were students—undergraduate and graduate.   Two undergraduate students I met at a pizza place were from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont, doing research on how much Ecuador has met the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.  A larger contingent at another table seemed to be graduate students and, boy, did they carefully count the dollar bills and coins when they had to pay up!

The tourists I met on the tour to Cotopaxi –the Romanian, German, and the very bubbly Polish guy who was working and living in Austria—also seemed like budget travelers like me.  In fact, the Polish guy said that even Ecuador seemed to be more expensive than Argentina, where he said food and lodging cost even less.  I was then reminded of a Wall Street Journal report from a year ago that Argentina was the place to visit for the very reasons of the best return on the US dollar.

As we continued walking and panting, I thought about the typical question I was asked: “why Ecuador?” 

When people talk about their plans to travel to Ireland or Japan or even the Galapagos Islands, the listener has only appreciative things to say or ask.  But, with Ecuador itself, it is a question that almost seems like it is meant to question the mental capacity of the person wanting to travel to that country.

I had always wanted to go back to South America after my only visit there over the years—back in the summer of 1988, I went to Venezuela with a few fellow graduate school students.  We were to work on an economic development strategy for the region surrounding the city of Maracaibo.  The first two days we spent in Caracas, after landing there on a PanAm flight.  It is new world now where PanAm has been condemned to history!

The three weeks in Venezuela were wonderful.  I ate a lot of arepas with cheese and ketchup—I had yet to shed my vegetarian upbringing.  I was pleasantly surprised when charming Venezuelan girls tried to strike up conversations with me, much to the amusement of the gringo grad students I was with.  One day, John seriously asked me, “hey Sriram, what is your secret?”  My guess was that it was all because I looked like a local, and was less a threat compared to their very alien looks and John’s aggressive behavior.

Ecuador was not on the top of my list, however.  It was Argentina that I wanted to get to because of my interest in that country going back to my younger days in Neyveli when, as a news junkie, I was intrigued by the Peronistas who were screwing up the country.  Later, when the Falklands War broke out between Argentina and the UK, I was cheering Argentina only because I wanted the colonizer Britain kicked out from yet another place.  And was so disappointed when Britain and Margaret Thatcher prevailed.

Watching Evita much later in life confirmed all the more that I wanted to check out the Casa Rosada. 

Ecuador was, thus, my second choice.  Nonetheless, it was a preferred choice.  So, when I was asked “why Ecuador” my immediate thought was “why not?”

I didn’t tell Mario all these, but agreed with his bottom line that not many tourists from the States seemed to want to visit Ecuador.  I made sure I said “States” and didn’t repeat the earlier mistake of saying “America.”

We reached the top of the hill and the Cultural Center itself was a gorgeous sight.  Mario said it was also referred to as the Crystal Palace, and it certainly looked like one.

Hey coffee addicts, add some sugar too :)

I love coffee.
Sometimes with cream and sugar.
Sometimes black.
Sometimes it is a cappuccino.
So, naturally, I am delighted with this news:

A cup of coffee activates attentiveness and memory if it is taken with sugar.

University of Barcelona scientists found that taking caffeine and sugar together boosts the brain’s performance - more than taking them separately.

Researchers now believe each one boosts the effect of the other on brain functions such as attention span and working memory, the Daily Mail reports.

Time for a cortado then :)

What if Argentina wins it all?:)

A dream final will feature Brazil and Argentina.

But if Argentina wins, and if Maradona fulfils his promise, then we will all have to bear witness to him running naked in central Buenos Aires .... aaaaahhhh :)

Meanwhile, the NY Post sums up the US' loss to Ghana .... ah, the tabloid headlines .... (ht)

For a wonderful cup of hot chocolate ....

If you like rich but light, delicate, and not too sweet, go for Kshocolat. Rich and full bodied, and if you can afford a few extra calories every day, LA Burdick is your drink. And if you just have to have hot chocolate in the office and cannot boil the milk, Angelina is certainly better than Swiss Miss.

Want details on all these?  Click here.

But, if you are not that much into hot chocolate, and want a real coffee and travel experience, I do have a suggestion: coffee drinking in Argentina.  Click on the cup of coffee on the left on enjoying a cortado.

Argentina .... I will be there soon .... some day

Even as a kid barely able to hold a newspaper I got to know a little bit about Argentina. It was always in the news--bad economic conditions, dictatorial governments, and later on the Falklands War. And, of course, the news always punctuated with the word "Peronistas". But, there was something about Argentina that captured my imagination--truly my imagination because it was way before the Web, and back in a resource-constrained small town, it was more imagination with the little bit of news than anything else ....
And then there was the sports aspect of Argentina that always made sure it was in the news. In tennis, it was Guillermo Vilas who made sure that I knew where Argentina was. No, I don't play tennis :-) I am just an information junkie! And, of course, football (soccer) and Maradona.

The net result: Argentina has always been on my list of places to go to. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita then was the icing on the cake.

As if I did not have enough reasons, the coffee maniac in me then read the following and is now ready to pack my bags :-) (this is an excerpt; read the complete post here.)

The One-Hour Cup of Coffee

Buenos Aires is a great coffee city. No, you won't find myriad varieties of beans here, or some great technological advance in the brewing process, but this is a city that knows the art of drinking coffee well, if not the perfect technique to brew it.

In Buenos Aires, you don't get a 20-ounce latte in a to-go cup, in fact there is nearly no coffee to-go in the city, except for a chain of coffee shops called Havanna that offer the amenity. But very few take them up on it (and those that do tend to get strange looks from passers-by).

Instead, coffee here is enjoyed slowly, at a sidewalk cafe, sitting still, in an actual mug, with no plastic lid getting in the way. Throughout the day, locals take their time with it, chatting up friends, admiring the street scenes, or reading the newspaper. Coffee here is a more measured decision, because instead of five minutes you are more likely to spend an hour with your cup.

The coffee is strong, and best enjoyed in smaller quantities--the cortado is my favorite, an espresso with just a spoonful of steamed milk on top (identical to the drink of the same name in Spain). Others prefer the inverse, the lagrima, which is a cup of steamed milk with just a spoonful of espresso (lagrima is Spanish for "teardrop"). There's also cafe con leche, cappuchino, and a wonderful take on hot chocolate called submarino (which I'm saving for a later post).

I want to go there. Please? :-)