Tradeoffs

Zorritos – Mancora – ?, Peru

When we were in El Salvador I commented that if I was in charge of international investment I would put my money in that country. Yes, there were problems there. But it just seemed like a country that had it together – like a country that was going somewhere. 

Based on what I’ve seen so far, Peru is not El Salvador. I won’t dwell too much on the garbage and the horrible smells – because I already mentioned those things in the last post. But, rest assured, these are terrible problems. And my sense is that they reflect a country that, collectively, has a sense of hopelessness. As if people feel like there is nothing that can be done about it – so why bother trying.

But it is not just the garbage and smells. It’s also the haphazard construction. The buildings literally falling down around people. The beaches that are beautiful when facing the water, but that look like war zones when you face the land. The open sewers. The dirt roads with huge mud holes to navigate around. 

All of this, combined with the seemingly endless dessert, the relentless sun, and the brutal midday heat helped make our decision easy. You may remember our resolution of a few weeks ago – ostensibly to give up on going to Patagonia in order to reduce the pressure to go too far each day. 

Well, it only took a few days after that decision before we started thinking about it. (It’s a terrible thing to think – leads to all kinds of problems). People have told us that Patagonia is the most beautiful place on Earth. I can’t remember who it was now – but someone told us that they have been to something like 45 countries and Patagonia was the most breathtaking place they have ever seen.

Do we really want to miss that? 

On the other hand, after the mountains of Colombia and Ecuador we didn’t have much interest in the mountains of Peru – which, I think, are even higher and more harsh than the mountains of Ecuador. But if we’re not going through the mountains of Peru than we’re going down the coast . . .

One thing we have learned is that coastal areas – especially in the equatorial region – are often hot, humid, and kind of depressing. Worse, riding the coast of Peru is about 1,800 miles. So we started to wonder, did we really want to spend more than a month of our lives biking through an area we weren’t that excited about. Perhaps if we skipped Peru that would give us time to make Patagonia before real winter set in . . .

Well, we hadn’t made a decision – it was just something we were contemplating. And then we started biking through Peru. And this is where the garbage, the foul smells, the fall-down buildings, the desert, the heat, and the relentless sun really come in. It took about a day of this before we agreed that we would skip most of Peru. 

So now we’re sitting on a bus – making our way through the desert.

Now, some people like this type of terrain. We’re not big fans. It’s like the badlands of North Dakota. Almost no plants. No trees. Just broken earth stretching on for miles. And, worse, it’s not even dead flat. We’ve been in the bus about an hour now and we’ve gone over a few passes that would have been terrible on a bike in the heat of the day. 

We’re cramped on a crowded bus – but, for now, anyway, we’re pretty happy about our decision. (That may change about 2 a.m. – some eleven hours from now – but at this moment (a big phrase for Latin Americans who learn English) we’re happy to be here . . .)

Destination? Lima, the capital of Peru. We haven’t heard much to recommend Lima – but it will hopefully provide a good break from the bus before we head out again on phase two of Escape from Peru – our ride to Arequipa. 

From Arequipa we resume our biking – and it’s still 260 miles to Chile – even from there. Wow. Big country . . .

With this new plan we should arrive in Chile just as February – the August of the Southern Hemisphere – comes to an end. This will give us March and April – the September and October of the South – to make our way to Patagonia. 

We’ll see.

A few thoughts on our travels the last day or two . . .

Yesterday we kind of put the hammer down trying to reach Mancora on time to take the bus. The flatter terrain helped, but we also encountered the worst headwind of our trip thus far. We had to work together – alternating leads – but we ended up making it with some time to spare. As it turned out there weren’t any seats left – but that was just as well as we enjoyed some beach time and were able to organize things a bit for the bus ride.

Pretty sure there is some corruption going on in Peru – and it’s obvious that money is scarce. Yesterday we purchased our tickets to Lima – complete with tickets for the bikes, or so we thought. We used our credit card as that is always our preference because we always end up paying a premium at the cash machines. Today, when we showed up we were informed that we hadn’t really paid for the bikes. Not that big of a deal, but when we went to pay, the clerk demanded that we pay cash. Kind of strange considering that we paid with our targeta yesterday. I guess it doesn’t matter to us. Bikes are on the bus – but pretty sure that money will be pocketed by staff . . . Why else would he refuse the credit card?

The other interesting interaction we kind of enjoyed . . . When we headed down to the beach this morning we immediately had a guy asking if we wanted to rent chairs and an umbrella for the day. No problem, we wanted to rent them.

“Cuesta?” I asked. (Translation: “How much?”)

”This way, follow me.”

”Cuesta?” I repeated.

”Follow me.”

We’re becoming irritated now, and I have no intention of following the guy until he tells us how much it will cost. (We might receive an honorary degree in Latin American Studies by the time this trip is done . . .)

Just then a woman appears. 

“Vente,” she says. That’s Español for twenty – which is about $6.

I might have tried to argue her down a little – but now I’m just happy to have someone honest to deal with. We follow her.

But now the original guy is super mad. He starts yelling at the Vente Woman. She yells back. Quite the violent argument. Doesn’t matter to us – but it’s a pretty good indication of the state of things in Peru. People are at each other’s throats over one umbrella rental . . .

This leads me to something else I’ve been meaning to mention. From an American perspective it’s pretty incredible how much energy goes into Latin Americans selling things to each other. I mean, there is something good about being your own boss and all. But when you have grown-ups selling popsicles along the side of the highway I’m just not sure that is the best way to achieve a thriving economy. 

We see a ton of that type of thing. 

Okay, one last topic I’ve been thinking about. A few weeks ago I read part of an article in the Atlantic about how urban planning type ideas, zoning ordinances, and neighborhood pressure groups have been terrible for squelching the mobility of people in America. Mobility, entrepreneurship, and the mixing of people from different class and ethnic backgrounds. I guess people in the country used to move from place to place at an incredible rate – which led to more mixing, more entreneurship, and more of a sense, and a reality, that people could move up (or down) the economic ladder. 

The thesis of the article was that a big part of this was facilitated by the ability to build cheap housing, to build what you wanted on your own land, to tear it down, and then to put something else up. But around about 1960 an architect in Manhattan wrote a book about new urbanism or something that really changed the landscape. After this book, the urban planning types of the world made a process out of everything. Want to re-paint your house? Hmm. We’ll see what the neighbors say, and whether this complies with the historical nature of the house, etc. You want to build something other than a single family home? Forget about it. That will wreck the fabric of our community. 

All sounds so reasonable . . . But the end result is segregated communities. Less of an ability to move – especially to successful areas. Turns out that policies like this end up making successful areas much more expensive. Or, one point the article made was that the housing shortage in America is really more a matter of a shortage of housing in area where people want to live . . . Because those are the areas with all the rules that, inevitably, drive up the price of housing.

Our family has a a relevant story here. In the 1930s my grandparents up and moved from the Fergus Falls area in western Minnesota to Duluth because they thought it offered a better opportunity for their growing family. They bought a little piece of land and erected a shack to live in. I think my Grandpa rigged up an old bus engine to supply the heat fit the place. They eventually pieced together a gas station and did whatever they could to make ends meet. Kind of Latin American-esque really. People just making whatever they could work. This would never happen in today’s America. Bureaucrats from the City would never allow it. Which is kind of ironic because my Grandpa was a great liberal, but he himself had only a high school education and was a great champion of common sense.

This is the type of thing that I think has driven people into Trump’s arms. A bunch of “experts” telling people what they can and can’t build on their own land. And preventing people without a lot of means from moving to where the jobs are. Of course people are going to be frustrated. 

Don’t worry. This all gets back to Latin America and what we’ve seen on this trip . . . Because, as we’ve seen in Peru, there needs to be some reasonable rules. People can’t just build houses right on the ocean. People can’t just dump garbage anywhere they want. There needs to be some rules anyway . . . 

And this is where it gets difficult. Because someone has to draw a line. Yes, we can tell you really big things like you can’t build your house where an ocean swell can knock it down – causing everyone to suffer, and you can’t dump your garbage wherever you want, but we have to get away from most of our other rules. If people want to paint their house with purple and green and yellow stripes – that’s their business. If they want to do their plumbing themselves – that’s their business. And, yes, drawing lines like these will upset people like the historic designation crowd and the plumbers union. But, in my mind, Democrats can either start making tough decisions like this – being the adult in the room – or they can sit by and watch as the Trump-led Republicans tear the whole system down altogether. 

Okay, you can tell that I have a lot of time to think about things while we’re biking. But I really think that this is the time for Democrats to pivot. Use this time with Trump in power to formulate a new approach – with less emphasis on the intelligentsia and experts telling everyone what to do – and more on setting really broad guardrails, but otherwise letting people do what they may. This will have the very good consequence of allowing the country to get back to the more mobile, less segregated society that we all say we want. And it will also mean winning future elections – assuming it’s not too late and there actually are future elections . . .

Alright, that’s enough for today. We have to leave some battery on the tablet for watching movies on the bus . . . 

It’s going to be a long ride . . .