The tribes, bubbles, and cliques in which we live and the walls of isolation we work hard to construct and maintain (oftentimes unknowingly) prevent communication and hinder development of empathy, respect, and solidarity.1 It is comfortable to hob-nob in the familiarity of: English (as a language, culture, tribe, or nation), shooting trophy bucks or catching a string of redfish, fellow Catholics/Christians/evangelicals, other guccis/yuppies, the luxurious-artificial, etc.. However, too much comfort and security in such cliques can interfere with foundational and continuing education in the arena of regeneration and conservation of resilient, sustainable ecological community (global and local). This particular story/essay attempts to provide some insights into how low-input travel experiences might sometimes help to change mindsets toward: mass-transport, open borders, learning other languages and appreciating regional lexicons, sharing power with Have-nots, empowerment of women, attitudes toward mind-altering substances, and knowledge of local flora and fauna.
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“EMBRAPA is shutting down for nine days. Let’s catch a train and see Bolivia!” I announced one Friday in 1982 when I got home from my research endeavors at Centro Nacional de Pesquisa de Gado de Corte, EMBRAPA (EMBRAPA is Brasil’s USDA, Agricultural Research Service.) in far western Brasil. My wonderful wife Betsy has always been flexible and accepting of my desires for some adventure and for seeking knowledge; therefore, we packed for our family which included three-year-old Angie, John Alton at five, and seven years of age Jeremy Bain and headed via the local bus system to the rodaviaria and the train depot to purchase tickets to the western frontier town of Corumba from our home for two years in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasil.
“While this old train crosses the swampland
The stars of the cruise make a sign
That this is the best road
For one who is like me, another fugitive of the war
While this old train crosses the swampland
The people there at home wait for my postcard
Saying that I am very well and alive
Heading for Santa Cruz of La Sierra
While this old train crosses the swampland
My heart is beating crazily
It now knows that the fear also travels
On all the rails of the earth
Heading for Santa Cruz of La Sierra
On all the rails of the earth”2
Now once we would arrive at Corumba, we’d need to spend a night prior to catching another train from there to Santa Cruz de La Sierra, Bolivia. While Betsy and the kids slept next to me on the bench seat on the train, I began to chat with a young man across from us. I told him that we were traveling by the seat of our pants and that we would need lodging in Corumba when we arrived that evening. “Não há problema com esse, senhor.” “I have an aunt who has a lovely hotel to put you and your family up!”, he said in Brazilian Portuguese.
Luxurious Lodging & Meals (I Bet Trump Never Experienced This!). As we secured the three young ones and our baggage upon arrival on the platform in Corumba, our new friend waved for a rickety horse-drawn cart to come to the area of the dock where we stood, and with a frown on her face, Betsy helped load on the kids, back-packs, and luggage. Our young companheiro pointed to a light in the distance and off we rocked toward it. Upon arrival we were taken to a three bed-filled room with rainwater-stained walls and showed a communal shower and toilet with numerous human hairs on the floor. After our young Corumban helper and his aunt left our room, Betsy blurted out, “Paul Martin, not one of your sisters-in-laws would put up with this!” I replied, “Only the best for my lovely bride.”
No Wall/An Open Border. The next morning, we had a café da manhã of simple cookies and barely drinkable coffee, paid the $2.50 bill, and headed off a-foot to find the bus station. We caught a bus and rode across the border to Puerto Quijarro, Bolivia and the estación de tren there. (During that short ride we friended a lonely U.S. citizen named Sanford. As we went through customs at the border, for some reason this young man needed a lengthier time with the officials. He had left some of his belongings on the bus which took off while he was still negotiating with the aduana. All of us other passengers had boarded, and the impatient driver took off without our nuevo amigo gringo. Sanford saw the bus take off without him, began to run and holler at the driver, and although he was very obviously thoroughly exhausted, he finally caught up with it and got on the old transport machine.)
Learning Through travel and Some Risk-Taking. At the train station in Puerto Quijarro, Bolivia we purchased second-class tickets (I am tight!) and began the 18-hour trip on the people- and domesticated animal-crowded “Tren de Los Muertos” to Santa Cruz de la Sierra. … Now my idea of the landscape and vegetation of Bolivia from my sixth-grade geography class had been an arid New Mexican-concept. However, much of what we were traveling through was tropical forest, and the mosquitos began to swarm into the train. I had not checked to see if we were traveling through a malaria-zone and spent much of my time worrying whether the resting mosquitos had their abdomen pointing upwards, a body orientation typical of the malaria vectors Anopheles, rather than the horizontal positioning of other species. I was constantly working to scare the blood-sucking diptera off my three children.
Still, there were also some interesting and cuisine-enjoyable moments of leaving the train car at the frequent stops, and purchasing comidas like salteñas, tucumanas, y sandwich de chola. Moreover, I was eventually relieved to discover that we were not traveling through a malaria zone.
Human Genetics and Environmental Influences … and Some More Risks. When we arrived in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, a city of mestizos (Chané, Spanish, Guaraní, et al.), I was surprised to see more people of a quite tall European-phenotype than I was used to seeing in my new home of Campo Grande, Brasil, Cidade Morena. (Later in Cochabama where the natives were more adapted to higher altitudes, the peoples were of shorter stature, and had very muscular thighs and barrel chests.)
While in Santa Cruz, I heard through the grape-vine that a cheap flight to Cochabamba could be purchased from the Bolivian Air Force, and after obtaining the directions, I went to a small office near downtown and purchased tickets for a flight the next day. When we showed up at the small airbase, we found that our plane was a camouflaged turboprop. Our first concern was the flight being delayed because of a necessary repair, and then when we boarded we found that we were to be seated in unanchored folding chairs. I was familiar with the behavior of turboprops because of my brief flight experiences in U.S. Naval Air in 1969-70; however, the shuddering of the plane’s warming up exercise and while taking off was quite unnerving for Betsy.
Anyway, we did make it to Cochabamba, and after a brief visit, we left for our final destination, La Paz. We could have traveled again on an inexpensive military plane; however, we were encouraged to take a train in order to adapt to the altitude in La Paz. (La Paz is 2.3 miles high, more than twice that of Denver and a bit less than the elevation of Pikes Peak!)
Another Internal Protozoan Parasite Risk. We got tickets for a train with was relatively small and did not rock side to side like the Tren de las Muertos. The kids and I enjoyed this part of the trip immensely and spent most of our time in the dining car partaking of the great meals including pastries which were served. However, poor Betsy had contracted Giarida, and was not in such comfort.
Empowered Indigenous Women and Local Medicinals. La Paz was amazing! What was prominent were the proud indigenous women entrepreneurs in their bowler hats.3 Wonderful markets (full of women) and amazing street vendors (women!) with such colorful weavings as well as artwork, vegetables and fruit, and coca leaves and other medicinal plants in the narrow streets which wander up and down and zig-zag through the city. Lovely alpaca sweaters and blankets. … Beautiful churches! (In La Paz the people seem to be much more puro indigeno than in Santa Cruz.)
Our two youngest children weren’t feeling well, and while I took care of them in the hotel room listening to a street band playing Creedence Clearwater Revival-music, Betsy and Jeremy took off via bus for a trip to Lake Titicaca, experiencing the reed boats, fishermen, holy waters, and a hydro-plane boat ride. (Earlier in a restaurant, the owner wanted to make a coca-leaf tea for my 3-year-old daughter who was experiencing stomach problems. However, Betsy would have none of this!)
Back to Entomologia Pecuaria and the Cidade Morena. After about three days in this intriguing capital city of Bolivia and about a week in this fascinating country with lovely peoples, we packed up our belongings–including recently purchased sweaters and blankets of alpaca fleece and models of the reed boats of Titicaca–and caught a plane, headed over snow-capped Andes mountains and returned for my daily work research on sustainable management of pasture cigarrinhas/spittlebug with EMBRAPA, and our great life as a part of the community of Campo Grande. Our spur of the moment, low-input/-throughput travels were very interesting and educational, but it was good to get back to the local Brazilian Portuguese lingo, our brasiliero amigos and coworkers, and the more mundane life in the Mato Grosso do Sul (where by the way we lived without a car and with no air-conditioning and shopped in stores which did not provide plastic bags).
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I, and my family and I, have made these kinds of trips a number of times through the years—
• low input tent-camping in state and national parks in the U.S.,
• touring Brasil via train and bus staying in moderate lodging,
• going by bus from the station in Seguin to Saltillo, Mexico and back, and
• twice from San Antonio to Cuidad de Oaxaca de Juárez and back (36 hours, including with a class of St. Philip’s College students),
• travel across Europe via Eurail and staying in low-cost lodging, and
• bicycling across Texas and the northeast/southeast U.S. back to Texas while staying in state parks and Motel-6 type lodging and with family & friends.
Moreover, I personally avoid structured, “artificially-formal” tour groups and always try to get out and greet & meet the common people during travels and in any locale.
In a global green new deal, which I hope might be realized someday soon, I wish for a severe reduction in air travel, and that we begin to rely more on modern clipper ships, rails, and buses for mass transport, boats and canoes and river travel, and bicycles and walking. In the U.S., Amtrak, as an example, needs to be expanded and upgraded for both short and long routes. https://www.wsj.com/articles/amtrak-plan-to-expand-ridership-could-sidetrack-storied-trains-11550664000
For ecological sanity and more empathy toward social justice and humaneness, we need to realize low energy input-/throughput-travel. Such travel is one component in a process toward PEACE or positively ethical applied community ecology and living sabiamente, simply, smally, slowly, steadfastly, sharingly, sustainably.
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1 I have advocated for tearing down these walls in other ways in past blog posts, e.g., http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2015/07/01/respect-including-for-the-lbgtq-community/
http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2015/06/21/solidarnosc/
http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2018/11/20/sort-of-overwhelmed/
2 A country song by Almir Sater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIQBUNs1uo
https://www.letras.com.br/almir-sater/trem-do-pantanal/traducao-ingles (This translation was modified slightly by me in the version above.)
3 It was said that one day these women would run Bolivia, and Bolivia would be a much more sustainable–socially just, humane and ecologically sane–place.
7Ss / VV->^^
pbm
