We made it out of La Paz this morning on a 5 a.m. bus–the roads are clearer in the morning, we were told, and we made it through difficult spots outisde the city thanks to what appeared to be a military escort. Of course, I can’t be certain–we were told to close the curtains on […]
Bolivia is a mess. But here in La Paz, things are quiet. Our hopes to travel overland from here to Ecuador via Peru next week, however, are looking increasingly bleak.
Reuters says the protests may well increase next week: “Hundreds of thousands of Bolivian workers from miners to bus drivers plan to go on strike […]
We’re still in La Paz. Having a great time with my brother–despite the fact that the city is cut off from the rest of the country.
Protesters have roadblocked all highways leading in and out of La Paz, so our plans to travel down to the famed Uyuni salt flats, in the south of the […]
We arrived here in La Paz Saturday night. It was not an easy bus ride from Puno, Peru.
After spending Friday waiting out the aforementioned protests/roadblocks, we were able to book passage on a bus leaving Saturday morning for the six-hour journey across the Bolivian border and into La Paz.
After crossing over into Bolivia, […]
We’re stuck in Puno, Peru, a town next to Lake Titicaca. We’d planned to take the bus six hours to La Paz this morning, but all the roads leading into Bolivia have been shut down. The border is, in effect, closed.
Protesters, most of them indigenous, have shut down roads throughout Bolivia. They’re angry that the […]
A very quick note: I arrived in Guayaquil without incident Sunday night and have been relaxing here in Cuenca since then. But now it’s off to visit my brother in Bolivia.
I leave from Guayaquil tonight on the red-eye to Lima; from there it’s on to Cuzco, where we plan to bus, with a stop in […]
A heads-up on some new writing:
–In response to various inquiries, I’ve penned an article called “How and Why I Moved to Ecuador.”
–I’ve also posted three humorous pieces that I wrote a while back; they initially circulated via email, and they involve some inside humor and are mostly about my friends, but I thought they deserved […]
AP: “President Lucio Gutierrez will set a national example and start showing up on time for meetings and appointments in an effort to combat a national lack of punctuality, a government spokesman said Monday.”
My favorite line: “Locally referred to as keeping ‘Ecuadorean Time,’ the nation is known for showing up late to sporting, media and […]
Hitchens writes:
Reflect upon it: Civil society is assaulted in the most criminal way by the most pitilessly reactionary force in the modern world. The drama immediately puts the working class in the saddle as the necessary actor and rescuer of the said society. Investigation shows the complicity of a chain of conservative client states, […]
…addresses its competition.
September12th.org:
The anniversary of September 11, 2001 brings back many sad memories, and the days that followed were moving in untold ways. Amid the loss, shock, and fear, people reached out to one another. New Yorkers, so often stereotyped as living too independently, treated each other tenderly and patiently. The grief shared around the world […]
A new low in the already-lower-than-a-snake’s-belly world of of reality TV: “Joe Schmo.”
I’ve seen it. It’s funny. And you can’t help but feel sorry for Matt Kennedy Gould, who thinks he’s part of a reality show called “Lap of Luxury.” In fact, the rest of the cast is comprised of actors, and the joke’s […]
So it’s gonna cost at least 87 billion dollars to rebuild Iraq.
Quick calculation: assuming a global population of 6 billion, that means that instead of attempting to reconstruct a country we pre-emptively invaded and destroyed, the US Government could issue a check for $14.50 to every man, woman, and child–including Americans–on the face of […]
I’m making some progress on the behind-the-scenes tweaks, although this page looks mostly the same. I think I’ve turned the corner.
In other news, Don Rumsfeld continues a longstanding conservative tradition: calling wartime criticism of the government anti-American.
The re-design is progressing a little more slowly than I’d like.
Three things I’m hoping to change: 1) the colors you see here, 2) the permanent links for individual postings aren’t working right, and 3) Internet Explorer, for some reason, isn’t displaying the entire length of pages. I like that the template I’m using here […]