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the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.

Looking at culture and trying to define it for myself brings up some interesting thoughts. First, I truly believe that individuals can be defined more clearly through their culture than they can through their race. This is significant for me because lately I have found myself rejecting the label “Caucasian” when referring to my own race, as I have no knowledge of any ancestry from the Caucuses. The other popular choice seems to be “White”, but that conjures immediate images, not of race, but of the culture of suburban America.

Image: who needs variety?
lars hammar

A few days ago, I started what will be a few weeks of airports/airplanes and hotels/chain restaurants en route to Taiwan. My current leg of this journey has me visiting the mainland U.S.A. to say goodbyes to loved ones and close friends. So, right now, I’m in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, UT and I’m realizing that the more time I spend away from this type of setting, the more I loathe being around it. It seems that the culture of suburbia is to consume. The preferred method of self expression is to show off what you have purchased. Secondary to this, it seems that producing large numbers of offspring and getting them involved in as many things possible, i.e. soccer, dancing, hockey, this team, that team is some sort of pinnacle of success in this culture. Making up for one’s own empty existence by trying to live vicariously through your children? Is that what this behavior is all about? There appears to be, perhaps three different hairstyles amongst the women in suburbia, and the only acceptable choice for the menfolk seems to be a short-cropped haircut and goatee (yes, this is STILL popular?). Caked-on make-up seems to be very definitive, and don’t even get me started on the [complete lack of] fashion exhibited in suburbia. It is the cult of the soccer mom. This is a culture demands its followers become wage-slaves. An existence that I am happy to be free from and have no desire to return to. It would appear that I am in the minority in rejecting this type of lifestyle, so I suppose I probably have it wrong, but in the end, I can say that I have truly found happiness in rejecting the pursuit of consumable goods and placing freedom at the very top of my list of personal values.

This brings me back to the question of race/culture. I guess I still don’t know what groups I belong to, but I damn sure know which ones I want no part of.

There are several languages spoken in Taiwan, due to various historical occupations as well as indigenous languages that have somehow survived. The official language of Taiwan, however, is Mandarin Chinese.

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language. A few weeks ago I didn’t really have a firm grasp on what that meant, exactly, but alas, the Lonely Planet guide to Taiwan has come to build my understanding. From the guidebook:

by altering the voice’s pitch within a syllable, the meaning of a word is completely changed. Getting your tones wrong can have embarrassing consequences – wǒ gǎnmào, for example, means ‘I’ve caught a cold’, while wǒ gàn māo means ‘I copulate with cats’!

Here kitty kitty

I’ve managed to actually figure out what each of the different types of accent marks indicate as far as intonation are concerned. Baby steps.

Moai in the quarry

I had seen pictures of the iconic moai of Rapa Nui before and was very intrigued. Of course, I have read snippets about them here and there so I had an idea of what learned scholars figured them to be, but nearly everything that is known about the existence of the moai and the original residents of Rapa Nui is based mostly in hypothesis and theory. I think that it is wonderful that the true meaning behind the statues on Easter Island may never be known and will be kept a secret from humankind for the rest of eternity.

Rapa Nui is a relatively small island about 2500 miles off the west coast of Chile. The island is all by itself and is often touted as the most isolated place on earth. To give that some perspective, in these modern times, that’s a five-hour flight with nothing between take-off and landing but open ocean. During that five hour flight I remember being slightly annoyed by a crying baby on the airplane and I remember being a bit uncomfortable due to the lack of legroom. Annoyed and uncomfortable only until I start to think about the ancient people who first came to Rapa Nui. I have no frame of reference to help me even get a vague understanding for what these people must have gone through to get there. How many days (weeks, months even?) must one spend on a canoe to go…2500 miles on a previously uncharted course? If I was uncomfortable and annoyed on a five hour flight, these people must have been absolutely mad after endless days at sea in a canoe. Being exposed for that long on the ocean, they surely encountered bad weather. Inevitably they lost people, supplies, and food. What about water? Where does one get drinking water on a crossing like that? And after the ordeal of getting there…they find…NOTHING! Easter Island is fairly small and rugged. Sure, there is evidence that it was much more forested when the original Rapa Nui arrived but beyond trees and lava there isn’t much to the island.

So, after much suffering they land on an isolated island, have no external stimulation…what better way to pass the time than carve some statues out of lava. Oh..and then, after the monumental task of carving them, they move them to their platforms (called Ahu)…which are MILES away from the quarry. Madness. Pure Madness, I’m sure, is what drove these people to do this work and eventually de-forest themselves nearly out of existence.

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A hot spring at El Tatio

This tour departed at 4 A.M. in order to get to the geyser field at sunrise – when the air is cold and the light is soft, lending dramatic effect to the steam rising – which will lose much of its appeal as the ambient air temperature climbs. The day’s highlight was swimming (or “hotpotting” as it was called when I did it in Yellowstone) in a hot spring – and at El Tatio it is a sanctioned event! (unlike Yellowstone). This geyser field is at very high altitude and as such, the air temperature is pretty cold – so getting out of the hot spring wasn’t all that enjoyable.

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The early flamingo gets the….shrimp?

The tour departed at 6 A.M. in order to get to the Salar de Atacama (Atacama salt flat in English) early enough to view the flamingos in the salt lakes.

The Salar is a very interesting landscape. The high mineral concentration is caused by a lack of drainage and over the years minerals (amongst them vast amounts of salt and lithium) have been deposited in the basin by glaciation and runoff. This area is an extremely inhospitable environment, yet certain species have adapted to live here. Quite remarkable!

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The trip to San Pedro was an overnight jaunt of about 11 hours. I arrived groggy and was more than happy to accept the first offer of accommodation, especially since it was very near the bus stop and much less expensive than I was led to believe prices would be in this desert outpost. A simple room cost me the equivalent of $8 (USD) and the place had free wifi….perfect!

My first order of business was to investigate tour options to Bolivia’s huge salt flat – the Salar de Uyuni. I had heard rave reviews from fellow travelers about it’s wonders and about Bolivia in general. The problem was, that the holidays were coming up and so I had, for the first time since this trip started, pre-booked transportation, so I was running short on time. The tours available were all three-day, two-night or longer and there was just no way for me to take one and still have time to get to Santiago for the next leg of my journey.

But Wait! Chile has alien landscapes too!

Valle de la Luna; near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

I opted, instead, to take some day-tours around San Pedro de Atacama. The first of which was an afternoon/evening trip in and around the Valle de la Luna. Our guide on this particular tour was a former miner and had learned a great deal from the geologists at his company. He was a wealth of information about the processes of volcanic eruptions and ash deposits, glaciation, erosion and plate movements – all the forces that have carved out this landscape. The tour was absolutely fantastic, interesting and educational and ended with watching the sunset over the desert. It was a pretty spectacular sight!

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After traveling extensively and seeing some of the best of what the world has to offer, I have a tendency to get pretty jaded. Seriously, after visiting the Kostnice Ossuary in the Czech Republic…well, no church or temple is ever going to live up to that. Having grown up very near the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, I truly believe I have visited one of the best culture/history museums in the world. Scenic beauty….Anyone who has gazed upon the Tetons in northwestern Wyoming has seen one of the most gorgeous places on the planet. It’s hard to top these experiences – I don’t spend too much time visiting museums or churches anymore unless there’s something completely cutting-edge about them. The one thing that is left, that I do get a great deal of satisfaction from are those chance encounters with other travelers. On this particular journey I had one of those experiences that makes life on the road very fulfilling. Even meeting other travelers sometimes becomes exhausting…it’s the same drill, where ya from? how long you been here? how many times you been robbed? ad nauseum… But it’s a dance we all do while we’re traveling and if you can get through it you might just have a great experience.

So…from Areuipa to Tacna (both Peru) is about a 5-hour bus ride. After that, one must arrange other transport to get across the border between Tacna and Arica, Chile. The quickest way is to take a combi (shared cab). There are several sedans around the bus station in Tacna performing this service…they all go with 5 passengers, so, once you find an available one, you may be stuck waiting for a while until the requisite number of passengers are committed to going. On the way, the driver hands out the customs and immigration forms for Chile…of course, Chile being a country with wonderful fruit and allegedly good wine among other agricultural products is fairly concerned with what types of pests might come in on plant or animal products so they take a preventative stance in regards to individuals entering the country. Jordan, one of the passengers sharing in my combi ride expressed some concern over the shells and turtle bones she had collected on a beach in Ecuador. I let her know that my experiences with Chilean customs had shown that they weren’t joking about preventing individuals from importing plant/animal products into the country. She decided to go ahead and try to bring them in anyhow…what’s the worst that could happen right?

The worst that could happen would probably be a pretty hefty fine…fortunately, it didn’t come to that, but she did get held up in customs for quite some time when the inspectors found the shells and bones during routine baggage x-ray. I don’t guess she was held up for too long actually…maybe 20 minutes, certainly no longer than 30 minutes, but our combi driver was getting very antsy about the situation. None of the passengers had any urgent need to get to Arica, but the driver wanted to go. He made it pretty clear that he intended on leaving Jordan behind…of course, this wasn’t my problem..I hadn’t tried to bring animal bits into the country…why should I care what happens to her? Well, I cared because I applied compassion to the situation and knew that if it were me, I would be pissed off if, after I had been given the shake down by customs, I suddenly had no transportation from the middle of the desert and half of my belongings had gone away in the car. So…I resolved that I wouldn’t go with the combi driver…so he would be missing out on two fares if he decided to ditch her. It worked…upon my refusal to get in the car he decided to go ahead and wait.

So, that’s it, we became instant friends and didn’t have to go through the exhaustive “where ya from” dance. When we got to Arica, Jordan let me ride with her in her cab to her motel and I ditched my bags there for a few hours while we walked around town and drank beer until it was time for me to catch my bus southward. While she was certainly one of the more vibrant and seemingly genuine people I’ve met on the road, this situation certainly isn’t unique and every time I meet someone in this manner the experience is absolutely wonderful and memorable. These brief friendships are one of the most rewarding things to me about traveling. Thanks, Jordan for a great afternoon and good luck to you, wherever you are now.

The Colca Canyon (and Colca Valley) are in close proximity to Arequipa and many tours of the area are available from and returning to Arequipa. One of the most popular, and most convenient tour packages available is a two-day, one-night tour from Arequipa with an included hotel stay in Chivay (a small village near the entrance to the Colca Valley). These tours are CHEAP! Mine cost me just over $20 U.S. and included two days of transportation, an English-speaking (marginal) guide, hotel and desayuno (which must be Spanish for “here, have a piece of bread and jam in the morning”). The Colca Canyon claims to be the deepest canyon in the world, reaching depths of 4160 meters (13,648 feet) – that’s over twice the depth of the Grand Canyon in the U.S. The high point on the tour was a mountain pass at 4910 meters (~16,000 feet) but before we got that high, the omnibus stopped at a roadside stand selling coca tea…6 ounces of prevention and you forget all about the symptoms of altitude sickness!

For me, the draw was less about the size of the canyon, but more about the Andean Condors that live in the area. At this time of year, they aren’t as common as other times of the year, but, nonetheless, I was fortunate to see a few, amongst them this close-up view:

Andean Condor

A Welcome Relief

The rustic charm of the village of Chivay was a welcome relief and contrasted sharply with Cusco. Though there are plenty of tourists in the area, the tourism isn’t nearly as in-your-face and the village seems to be mostly authentic except for the special white man tourist restaurants that the tour groups are herded into. There are folklore shows and pan flute-playing bands, but none of them play “LaBamba” and they seem to stick to local, authentic music only. Dances are performed for the benefit of the visitors, but they are performed in the traditional way, slightly cheesy as this may seem, I reckon it’s as good a way to preserve culture and tradition as any and was actually quite educational.

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