13 years after 9/11

Everyone´s experience of 9/11 is personal.  (Can such a defining event be otherwise?)  13 years later it still remains a watershed day: there was life before it and life after it, they are different, and we never regained the comparative innocence of the late 90s.

This is my story.

Until a year before the attacks I spent a day or two each week in the area around the WTC, and still had client relationships which led to short trips every few months after that.  My main client there was AIG, the preferred hotel was the Marriott WTC, client meetings over dinner were often at Morton´s Steakhouse on West St across from the corner of the WTC, our breakfast meeting spot of choice was Windows on the World, the top floor restaurant in one of the main towers, and evening decompression drinks were often at the Tall Ships bar at the Marriott.   All these are now gone, although technically AIG lives on in name if not in spirit.

In Vino Veritas anchored near Isla Vedra, Ibiza.  Still innocent.  Early morning 9/11/2001.

On 9/11 I was a few weeks into a 2 month solo sail in the western Mediterranean, my form of therapy following the split from my ex-wife.  From the anchorage in the shadow of Isla Vedra at the south end of Ibiza it was a few hours of sunny sailing to San Antonio, Ibiza.  Arriving in town around lunchtime I popped ashore for a newspaper and a small lunch in the club nautico.  On the way back to the boat I received a rather incoherent call from my mother saying there had been a big plane crash in America.

Turning on my heels and heading back ashore I saw pictures on a Spanish TV channel of the WTC attacks.  My Spanish was nowhere near good enough to understand what was happening, so I went searching in San Antonio´s multitude of English bars for news in English - with little success.  While most of the world was transfixed watching the events unfold, most of the English holiday pubs were showing soccer.  I finally found one bar with a news channel on, being watched by a group of young British guys already very drunk by mid-afternoon, and cheering each time the planes were shown hitting the towers.

With a better understanding of the events I was sure that people I knew had died.  The consulting company I worked for had a regional HQ in Boston and the Boston-NYC shuttle was a regular commuter flight for colleagues.  There were plenty of people I knew at AIG who commuted from New Jersey on the PATH train, terminating under the WTC.  It was eminently possible that some colleagues or clients were having a breakfast meeting that day at Windows on the World.  To the drunken Brits in the bar this was all a long way away, perhaps comparable to the Bhopal disaster years earlier, but for me it was personal and present tense.  It was only 2 months since I was last there.

I don’t think I ever felt as alone as I did that Tuesday afternoon in Ibiza.  Surrounded by my countrymen, feeling absolutely nothing in common with them, indeed even questioning their humanity.  I know that they are not representative of Brits in general, but something in me changed that day.  It was the tipping point on a journey fuelled by the liberating freedom I felt living in the US compared to the oppressively congealed UK, and I went from being merely indifferent to my nationality to being estranged from it.   At a political level Blair´s subsequent actions, with the passive support of most British people, added to that sense of estrangement.  Thirteen years later, with the help of Elgar´s oh-so-English music in bright Peruvian sunshine, I have slowly started to rebuild bridges to my nationality.  But there is a long way to go.

13 years is a long time, and 9/11 is less painful now than it was say a decade ago, but the best words and music from that time still hit something deep inside.  Two pieces stand out for me.

The first, Land of the Living by Lucy Kaplansky, is a sublimely human meditation on the events of that day.   (Ignore the embarrasingly literal video that someone has added...)

The second is Ani DiFranco´s raw, angry, thoughtful poem/polemic Self Evident.  Time has dated a few of the references, but the feelings about 9/11 still ring true even now. Maybe more so now, with the blood of countless Iraqis and Afghans running together with the blood of coalition soldiers.

As it turned out I was mercifully wrong about people I knew dying in 9/11, although plenty I knew at that time were directly caught up in it.  Some have never talked about the day, others told it as a story over beers that always seemed to lead to bourbon shots, and one colleague left the US within half a year, unable to live with the altered view of the Manhattan skyline from Hoboken as a daily reminder of his lost friends and colleagues.  Everyone deals with it somehow, and life goes on, many living perhaps a bit more in the present.  And just maybe that is a gift hidden within the pain of 9/11.

Bolivian Food and the Claus Meyer connection

Bolivia´s food has a reputation of being uninspired and not particularly good.  I don’t share that view at all – to me it has been a fascinating discovery.



A few of the many varieties of potato

There are many new ingredients, interesting flavours, unexpected combinations.  The fresh produce is of a high standard, and is produced in a real way … vegetables and fruits have things not often encountered in first world supermarkets, such as blemishes, irregular shapes, and flavour.

Potatoes are a key part of cuisine here.  There are dozens of varieties on sale, different shapes, sizes, colours, some multi-coloured, not forgetting too the interesting chuño and tunta.  These are small potatoes that are left outside for four days, drying in the bright sunshine during the day, and freezing at night (tunta is soaked in river water for 3 weeks first).  Potatoes so treated last for many years, and have a more pronounced taste and a denser texture when cooked.

One comes across differences in meat and fish too.  Llama and alpaca are a regular features on menus, pleasant enough meats but nothing special in my view.  They are also salted and dried to produce charque, the original form of jerky.  Lamb is lovely and intense, more like middle eastern lamb than northern European.  Trout from Lago Titicaca is wonderful, and it is particularly gratifying that it is properly cooked here, moist and tender, not the overcooked, dry trout that one comes across so often in other places.  Plenty of tropical river fish are also used here, such as the delicate white fish surubi, a close relation of catfish.


Chuño at the back and tunta at the front

Given this great base of ingredients it is not surprising that the traditional cuisine is lovely.  The markets are the best places to find it.  Soups are a major feature and are fantastic. They are hearty, beautifully balanced, and obviously made with proper techniques in a traditional manner.  Caldo de pollo for breakfast is a staple and is right up there with the finest chicken broth I know (from the simple Jewish-Hungarian restaurant Kádár in Budapest).  Also caldo de cordero (lamb), caldo de cabeza (sheep´s head, very good), caldo de cardon (bull´s penis), and plenty of others.


There is an interesting strand of cuisine which mixes sweet and spicy flavours.  The classic example is salteñas, empanadas or pasties made from sweet pastry and filled with a spicy stew.  Not really to my taste, but an interesting combination.  Another, more to my taste, are humintas.  These are triangles of corn-based fruit cake dough with sultanas, hot chillies and cheese, wrapped in corn husks and baked.  They are lovely, sort of like triangular tamales.

Extraordinary caldo de pollo

Bolivia has a thriving microbrew industry with a dozen or so breweries producing craft beers of usually excellent quality.  Wines are made too, nothing that will make headlines in the wine world, but decent quality, well produced wines that stand up well to mid range Chilean and Argentinian products.


The local distilled spirit, singani, is made from grape trash in the same way as grappa or marc de cava.  The primary grape used is muscatel, and the result is a clean, sharp, floral spirit that is pleasant after a meal.  Again I don’t think the marketers of eau de vie and grappa have anything to worry about, but singani is certainly a good addition to the lineup.

A licuado stand in Sucre market

Fruit licuados, which I had come across previously in Mexico, are taken to a whole new level here.  Licuados are made with pretty much any fruit, with either milk or water, and are uniformly delicious and addictive.  A typical market will have dozens of stands offering licuados as well as elaborate fresh fruit salads, enticingly presented and topped with an extravagant tower of whipped cream.

All this comes at a price of course, and in Bolivia that price is incredibly low.  One can easily get spoiled with 10Bs breakfasts (€1.10) and 15Bs (€1.65) lunches in the markets.  A large licuado, the perfect dessert, is under €1.

In La Paz there is a small but blossoming foodie culture.  There is Hallwrights, a good wine bar, offering hand crafted locally produced cheeses, cured meats and bread, accompanied by Bolivian, Chilean and Argentinian wines.   There are great little shops too, like the artisan bakery and deli Arco Iris opposite Sopocachi market, selling interesting bread, pastries, charcuterie, cheeses and local pates.


However, in contrast to the markets, which have been consistently good, restaurants are mixed. There are places catering primarily to tourists, offering the standard fare of pizza, Mexican food and burgers – nothing more needs to be said.  There are local restaurants and some of these are good, but many struggle to get past acceptable.  There are a few international restaurants aimed at the diplomat/expat community, generally OK but nothing special.

Then there is Gustu.

Gustu stands head and shoulders above any other restaurant I have been to in Bolivia.  Indeed it stands above any restaurant I have been to in the last two years, except perhaps for Aponiente in Spain.  It is, in my view, certainly 1 star and more likely 2 star Michelin, and achieves this entirely with Bolivian products and Bolivian cuisine.  Clever, inventive, modern, intelligent, very well executed dishes.  For example, a Bolivian traditional dish is remade into a take on fettucine carbonara, with “fettucine” of palm hearts, a poached egg yolk, desalted deep fried alpaca charque, and beurre noisette.  Spectacular.  The prices are, by Bolivian standards, stratospheric.  By first world standards they are modest for food at this level.

But clever food is only the end product of Gustu, extraordinary enough though it is.  What makes Gustu even more special is that the kitchen and wait staff are primarily Bolivians from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds (all are indigenous, most were street children).  They have been transformed in just 18 months into capable world class kitchen and front of house staff.  How?  Through the work of the charitable foundation Melting Pot, set up and led by Claus Meyer.  Yes, that Claus Meyer - the one who co-owns Noma in Copenhagen. 

Gustu: palm heart fettucine, crispy alpaca charque,
poached egg yolk, beurre noisette

The funding for the cooking school, restaurant and food laboratory has come from his own foundation, the Danish government, and several NGOs.  And it is not just about doing magic with Bolivian food: hundreds of lives being changed in the process.  The restaurant´s manager explained how the intention is to phase out the half dozen or so foreigners leading the restaurant today (including a young Danish superstar chef, Camilla Seidler, just voted best chef in Latin America) with Bolivians, and they feel confident this will take no more than a few more years.  In addition to the training in the restaurant, Melting Pot also runs a cooking school for indigenous poor in El Alto, the sprawling low income area of La Paz.

Sitting having lunch at one of the simple stalls in the market in the lowland city of Santa Cruz, we finished our tasty and ridiculously cheap food, and were chatting over a glass of chicha, the local corn drink.  A small boy, maybe 7 years old, approached us, eyes downcast, and quietly asked if he could have the rice left on Maret´s plate.  Not asking for money, or gifts, or anything else- just leftover rice.  He proffered a plastic carrier bag to put it into.  Of course we gave it to him, and he was gone in a flash, before we could offer something more.  The gap, the almost unfathomable gap, between the first world and the third world is a part of everyday life in some parts of Bolivian cities, and it is into this world that Melting Pot / Gustu stepped, working to make a difference.

Gustu is an act of total generosity on the part of Claus Meyer, empowering disadvantaged Bolivians and putting Bolivia firmly on the foodie map.  It is entirely consistent with the New Nordic Cuisine philosophy, which always was about more than just a local foraging approach to food.  Noma might be getting the limelight, but I would venture that the real story of the New Nordic Cuisine movement is being played out in the mountains of Bolivia (and also in the prisons of Denmark, another Claus Meyer initiative).

For me the experience of Gustu was humbling, a piercing insight into the nature of true generosity and the empowerment of others, and how much further I have to travel in those regards.

As for Bolivian food being uninspired: not at all.  I have long felt that the magic in life is rarely found in the safe middle ground, and that is certainly true for Bolivian cuisine. 

The Glass Bead Game

28 years ago: Wasdale valley, Cumbria, England. A sunny summer day with 2 friends, sitting looking at Great Gable rising like a pyramid at the head of the valley, the lake water reflecting the sky and a few decorative clouds, the scree slopes opposite in hyper clear detail, the curve of the hills.  Seeing the world so vividly, feeling how alive the earth was, how we were part of the planet, how everything was just as it should be.  Grass so green, looking at rocks like one reads a book, the gentle summer breeze caressing my cheek.  The reducing valve of the mind opened a little more.  Coming home to somewhere we´d never been.

Wasdale wasn’t the only magical time that summer.  Diamonds in the night sky, seen from a friend´s garden in Preston of all places.  Dawn on a sea wall looking out over reclaimed salt marsh, the sunrise feeling like the first morning of creation, warming the earth and giving it life, warming me and giving me life.  Bach as the sound of the universe.  William Blake, Roger Waters, Jim Morrison, Van Gogh, Goya : reports from their travels. Long conversations between friends about Rimbaud, Hesse, Nietzsche, Huxley … naïve young minds struggling beyond their limits, stretched, never to regain their old shape again.

28 years later:  A walled garden in the Valle Sagrado, Peru, a deep valley surrounded by mountains dotted with Inca ruins and terraces, bright sunshine, thin air, clouds scudding by high overhead, an infinitely changing tapestry.  A curandero sings gentle icaros and shakes a chakapa.  A dog runs across the grass, golden hair flowing, impossibly fascinating.  Flowers almost ready to burst they are so full of life.  Mountains alive, breathing, living.  Hours slipping by while time stands still.  Sunset listening to Enigma Variations, tears rolling down our cheeks, the best classical concert of her life according to Maret.  The doors of perception opened once more, overseen by a stand of benevolent cacti. 

Coming home again.  Coming home again.

Bolivia´s quiet revolution

The revolution that has occurred quietly in Bolivia is quite something to see.  Evo Morales, President of Bolivia since 2006 and the first from an indigenous group to hold that position, has transformed Bolivian society in a way that is positive for most people in this the poorest country in South America.

The clock in the main square of La Paz, recently changed to turn to the left



Bolivia has a sad history of oppression through decades of extreme right wing dictators at a national and local level.  The list is long and depressing.  To name but a few from recent decades: Hugo Banzer, specialist in “disappearing” those critical of him (as an aside, his official portrait looks like a caricature of a south American tinpot dictator); Luis García Meza Tejada, a cocaine-financed dictator, actively supported by then resident Klaus Barbie, who used the army to protect drug traffickers and had a penchant for murdering intellectuals; and the brutal major of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes-Villa, now living in luxurious exile in the US with other crypto-facist Bolivian thugs.   Reyes-Villa is a typical example of how the elite has raped Bolivia for so long.  In 2000 he privatised water provision in Cochabamba, passing a law so draconian that wells used by people for many years were sealed, and rainwater collected from roofs was technically owned by the water company.  Water charges were increased to about $20 a month, at a time when typical state employees earned $80 a month and many campesinos less than that.  When people protested in an organized way, threatening his business deal, Reyes-Villa set the army and police on the protesters, and to ensure motivation increased the pay of the police by 50%.  Live ammunition was used against the protesters, some of which was captured by TV cameras. He has been charged with over 20 counts of personal corruption (his mayoral salary of $1000 a month is unlikely to be the source of financing for his beachfront Miami residence), and is avoiding answering those charges by remaining in the US, complaining that the charges are politically motivated.   The indigenous protestors killed to protect his business deal of course remain resolutely dead.

With a tremendous popular mandate, reconfirmed several times, Morales´ government has initiated changes that start to rebalance the poor and the rich here and improve indigenous rights.  A noticeable sign in every restaurant is “Todos somos iguales ante la ley”: everyone is equal before the law.  The point being that discrimination and racism has long been endemic in Bolivian society, and his government quickly passed laws to outlaw it and then publicised those laws extensively.  Civil servants are now required to speak at least one indigenous language as well as Spanish (43% of the population speak an indigenous language as their mother tongue).

"Our country, our businesses"

There has also been a significant increase in direct and indirect transfer payments to the poor during the Morales presidency, especially to the indigenous poor.   Economic inequality, while still dramatic here, has been reduced, with the Gini coefficient now standing at 53 compared to 58 under the right wing dictators, still appallingly high but a notable achievement at a time when the trend in almost every country is in the opposite direction.  Illiteracy has been all but eliminated, and the constitution provides every Bolivian with water, food, free health care, education, and housing as fundamental rights of citizenship.  All this has been achieved with sound government finances – the Morales government has always run a small budget surplus.

The national oil and gas company was nationalised to ensure that profits would benefit the whole nation rather than the elite.  (Compare this for a moment to the actions of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, economics minister at the time, who in 1985 fired two thirds of the oil and tin workforce, as well as removing price controls, to win favour with the international financial markets – yes, two thirds of the workforce.  After that stellar performance he went on to become President and in 2003 massacred even more protesters than Reyes-Villa, this time because of a gas deal, before fleeing to luxurious exile in Washington DC).

Queuing for the Teleferico in El Alto

Another good and symbolic example of how public money is being used in today´s Bolivia is the new Teleferico in La Paz.  This is a top of the line gondala, manufactured and installed by Doppelmayr, that connects downtown La Paz to the huge and poor El Alto area, some 500m higher in elevation, with the intention to reduce traffic congestion.  A single ride is priced at 3 Bolivianos, about 32 euro cents - that is about twice as much as a local minibus, but is still practical for ordinary people, and obviously is highly subsidised.  El Alto is not a beautiful place, but it is home to a million ordinary Bolivians, mostly indigenous.  The elite only venture to El Alto for the airport.   It sends a powerful message – tangible investment to benefit ordinary people.

Protests are a regular event throughout Bolivia, and especially so in La Paz.  The population is actively engaged in politics, pressing for change of things they don’t agree with.  And what is very interesting is that the government actually listens to the protests and quite often makes changes to reflect the protesters´ demands.  In Bolivia this is called listening to the people.  In the UK or the US, supposed beacons of democracy, listening to the people would be a sign of political weakness, derided as flip-flopping.

A protest camp on the Prado, now in its third year

Is this Athenian Democracy in the 21^st century?  Well, not quite … a realistic issue is that, as with most forms of lobbying, the protesters´ aims can be narrowly focused, and that often the loudest get heard.  Having said that, their focus is probably no narrower than that of the average corporate lobbyist.  And I would argue that overall the Bolivian setup is a lot more about government by the people for the people, a genuine example of participatory democracy.  In the UK and the US, where corporate lobbyists get listened to and the people not, it is easy to recall politicians loudly paying lip service to the right to protest before sending in armed riot police to remove protestors for the unforgivable crime of camping in cities.  (As an aside, there is a protest camp on the Prado, the smartest boulevard in La Paz, publicising the crimes of some of Banzer´s henchmen, which has been in place for over 800 days … democracy in action.  In London and New York the Occupy protest camps were considered intolerable after a few months).

Bolivia, though, is certainly not a utopia.  The Morales government has always had an authoritarian streak, especially against the right, increasingly so in recent years, and has continued the Bolivian traditional of prosecuting/persecuting previous governmental ministers (not entirely without cause in this case, it should be said).  The press is fairly free, but the hand of the government is heavy. One more concern of note is how many things here are identified with Evo Morales personally.  He is a constant presence on billboards in the city – for example on the autopista from La Paz to El Alto almost every billboard prominently includes his picture.  This is material produced by the government communications department, not his political party – a worrying intermingling of the two.  Although he personally appears to be a man of modest tastes (he lives alone, simply, and reduced the salaries of himself and his ministers on gaining office), it does seem to me that there is more than the beginning of a cult of personality.  He remains genuinely popular - the latest polls ahead of the 2014 election give him 46% support, compared to 13% for his nearest rival.  That is impressive, but less so than the 60%+ support he used to have.

Government propoganda typically features a prominent picture of Evo Morales

The country is polarised politically, as polarised as the US under Bush (the war criminal, not his father) or Hungary.  I´ve met people who are fairly obviously from the elite (being wealthy enough to hang out in wine bars) and they are scathing about Morales.  They might, grudgingly, admit that some of his actions have benefited indigenous people, but go on to point out how unfair these actions are, in their view.   Others, including people involved in education and charity work, and whose interaction with indigenous people is not only as domestic staff, have positive opinions of Morales.  No one I have met is neutral.

Let´s hope things progress on a fair and positive track in Bolivia, that economic inequality will continue to be reduced, and that in the process Morales doesn’t become entrenched as the only political game in town.

On balance, in my view, there is much to be positive about in Bolivia in 2014.  It is a remarkable country in so many ways.

 

Sopocachi Saturday

Sopocachi is the bohemian area of La Paz, just a short walk from downtown.   It feels a bit like Budapest´s 7^th district or Prague´s Vinohrady area has been transplanted high up in the Andes, mixed with a taste of Greenwich Village.  There are interesting places on every street, plenty of urban art on the walls, and some rather distinctive people walking around.   It is home to quite a number of social organizations and NGOs, as well as plenty of regular small businesses.   During the week it has a pleasant urban buzz to it, with business being done and people working in offices and shops.  At weekends it transforms into much more of a community, and the feeling is special indeed.
 

Sopocachi

La Virgen de los Deseos

I am staying in a unique place in Sopocachi.  La Virgen de los Deseos is a café restaurant with a few rooms run by an anarcha-feminist collective,  Mujeres Creando (Women Creating).  The building is unmistakeable – in the midst of regular buildings a pink mansion with rather cool artwork on the outside walls, and various campaigning banners and noticeboards placed around the property.  Inside is similarly full of art (some bearing an uncanny resemblence to my Budapest apartment), with slogans painted on the wall, campaign posters under glass tabletops, and unusual sculptures hanging from the ceiling.  The atmosphere is wonderful.  Everyone smiles, everyone talks, everyone is friendly.  The collective also runs a justice centre for women, a child care centre, a bookshop, a safe haven for abused women in the same building, and carries out spirited campaigns against poverty and discrimination.

"The voice of my desires" - art inside the cafe

Outside, the sun shines brightly on this spring like Saturday.  I walk a few blocks to the local market, stacked full of beautiful vegetables and fruits, humming with activity.  Organic and bio shops offer interesting local products., and I choose some German bread, smoked trout pate from Lago Titicaca, and a French apple tart for lunch later.  Leaflets advertise concerts, theatre, music, cinema.  Perhaps I´ll go to one this evening, or maybe a stop in the seductive local wine bar recently opened by a couple of expat Australians, or the industrial styled Diesel Nacional bar, complete with lit welding torches and tractor seats.



Illimani presiding over the city

The mix of people on the street includes local residents dressed in western clothes, traditionally dressed cholitas with colourful shawls and bowler hats,  a few obvious expats, and hardly any tourists.  No one is rushing.  A short walk away on the Prado I stop at an excellent coffee shop for a mid morning café con leche and read a few chapters of the The Log from the Sea of Cortez.   Walking back the glacier-capped 6000m+ peak of Illimani pushes through the cityscape, bright and clear in the thin air.  Life is good.

Starting the day with a Class A

It is a strange thing indeed that the herbal tea we drink here in Bolivia each morning with breakfast is a Class A drug in the UK, and illegal in most countries of the world.   If we were to mail a box of tea bags to the UK we would be guilty of drug trafficking, in theory at the same level of seriousness as if we had mailed heroin or crystal meth, punishable with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The effects of this Class A tea are rather mild: certainly less attention grabbing than a double espresso and much smoother – none of the jangle that can occur with too much caffeine.  There is a small increase in energy (to call it a buzz would be stretching it) and a clearing of the head.  It noticeably reduces the effects of altitude, which at just over 4000m in Potosi is a real help. There is a slight increase in focus, in the ability to concentrate, but pretty minor compared to drinking a can of Red Bull.

So why the classification?   The reason of course is that coca leaves are the raw agricultural input for cocaine production.  This fact has led to absurd laws such as the UK´s, and some pretty awful cultural imperialism stemming from the “War on Drugs”, specifically the “coca eradication program” which involved spraying herbicides onto the crops of coca farmers in Bolivia as a condition of access to World Bank loans.

To see this from a Bolivian perspective, take a moment to imagine that Saudi Arabia, which suffers alcohol smuggling and consumption, declared that as a condition of continuing to provide oil at current output levels, the raw agricultural products used in the manufacture of alcohol smuggled into Saudi Arabia must be eradicated. 

As the source of whisky Scotland would have to spray its barley fields, and possessing pearl barley or malt extract would be illegal internationally, as coca teabags are today.   France, as a wine producer, would need to destroy all its vines, and fruit salads with grapes would become as illegal a dessert as hash brownies.  Currants and sultanas would be treated the same way that dried magic mushrooms are.

If Saudi Arabia really did tie oil output to alcohol production the west would, rightly, accuse it of attempting to impose their cultural norms on western society.  A ridiculous example, sure.  But that is precisely what the US, in the War on Drugs, did to Bolivia.  Coca leaf use in Bolivia is a longstanding tradition dating back thousands of years which provides real benefits to people (similar to caffeine), and additional benefits to people at altitude.

My personal preference would be to drink coca mate (tea) sometimes with breakfast.  Not always – café con leche is also a wonderful way to start the day.  However, much as I would like to have a few bags of coca leaves on Otra Vida, it won´t be happening.  I don’t want to lose my boat, and I don’t want to lose my physical freedom.  That I am forced to make such a decision strikes me as morally wrong in a fundamental way.

How can a plant be illegal?  A processed substance from the plant, yes, I can see how the process can be illegal.  But the plant itself?  It is part of the planet, part of the natural world.  The idea that man can decide that a naturally occurring plant is illegal is preposterous, as ridiculous as saying that the wind is illegal.  Coca is as natural as mushrooms, cactuses and other psychoactive plants that grow in many places in the world.

The question this begs, therefore, is should currently illegal drugs in general, and I suppose cocaine specifically, be legalised?  It is an interesting question.

The substance serves no medical purpose whatsoever.  Users get a high for an hour or two, then suffer a corresponding crash.  Cravings for the substance develop when it has not been recently used, and become more intense the longer since the last fix.  Excessive use leads to a range of health problems, and even when these problems become manifest, addicts continue to use the substance.  In extreme cases, all self respect and self control are lost, the addict becomes morbidly ill, and lifespan is significantly shortened.  Suicide sometimes results.  In addition to typical users bizarre subsets exist, such as those who repeatedly take the substance in large amounts then purge their bodies of it.

The production process historically has involved horrific abuses of those unfortunate enough to be caught up in the process, including mass kidnapping and wholesale deaths, all in the pursuit of profit.  Immense fortunes have been made from the substance.

I know this sounds overblown, like the kind of stuff one might find in a moral panic campaign from the Daily Mail in the UK or Focus on the Family in the US, but in this case it is accurate. The substance in question is not cocaine, of course.  It is refined sugar.  A notable difference between refined sugar and cocaine is that whatever abuses there are in cocaine production result from lack of government regulation, while in the case of refined sugar governments (and the Catholic Church for that matter) actively supported the inhuman abuses.

Compared to refined sugar most drugs sounds pretty mild.  And actually most illegal drugs, when looked at objectively, seem to be less damaging both to the user and to others than alcohol, as shown by the Economist (not exactly a hotbed of anti-establishment degenerates). 

It does seem to me that outright prohibition is not the way to go, both from a personal freedom perspective, and because it doesn’t work.  Some restrictions on use seem appropriate, however.  Two of the drugs that we in the west consider socially acceptable, alcohol and tobacco, have age restrictions which seem to work pretty well overall, and make the clear statement that drug use is a choice to be made when adulthood is reached.  I am not saying these laws are obeyed to the letter – breaking these restrictions is a rite of passage for any teenager with a pulse - but I can say I´ve never seen pre-teens drunk.  (A separate question is why caffeine is not subject to age restrictions – really, is it appropriate to sell Red Bull to a 9 year old?)

“…destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves
through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix…” 
(Kicking off the morning at the mercado central in Potosi, Bolivia)

Many positives flow from these drugs being legal.  The quality of each drug is regulated, ensuring predictable effects for users.  The production process is subject to the workplace norms and press scrutiny typical of a free society.  There is, to the best of my knowledge, no institutionalised violence surrounding the production of legal drugs.  Voluminous information is available on the consequences of use and abuse: it would be fair to say that today no one gets addicted to tobacco or alcohol through ignorance.

Surely a similar approach would work well for other drugs.  From a state financial perspective the results would be excellent: it would open the opportunity for tax collection, and would reduce costs through less policing and a smaller prison population.  It would, most importantly, be a move towards greater personal freedom. 

Some countries have taken steps in this direction, either decriminalizing personal possession, such as Portugal, Argentina and the Czech Republic, or decriminalising certain types of drugs completely, such as cannabis in Uruguay and a few US states.  Let´s hope this is a trend that continues, so that at some time in the future I can enjoy coca mate for breakfast on board Otra Vida without the risk of losing my boat and my liberty, and that people in general are no longer turned into criminals for making personal choices about their own bodies and minds.

 

One year out ...

It is one year since Otra Vida left Saaremaa, Estonia, and although we are not on board at present (we´re in the mountains of Bolivia) it seems an appropriate time to reflect on the last year of sailing.

 

The year in numbers

• Latitude: 58N to 7S
• Longitude: 22E to 34W
• Countries visited with Otra Vida: 13 (Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Wales, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Canary Islands(*), Cape Verdes, Brazil). 
• Highest elevation: 4067m (Jebel Toubkal, Morocco).
• Lowest elevation: a few metres below sea level, scrubbing Otra Vida´s hull
• Actual distance travelled by boat: 7384nm
• Fastest speed over ground: 11.3kts, Islay, Scotland
• Engine hours: 781
• Fuel used: 1490l
• Estimated distance under engine (i.e. excluding charging): 3200nm
• Percent of distance travelled under engine: 43% (dreadful)
• Mainsail seams ripped: 2
• Anchors lost: 1
• Times ran aground: 0
• Times anchor dragged: 1 (Las Palmas, Gran Canaria)
• Coldest water swum in: 13C, Loch Ness, July
• Fish caught: 1 (a bonito in southern Portugal)
• Bottles of Laphroaig drunk: 3  (only because we haven´t found more of it)
• Cockroaches discovered on board: thankfully just 1, in March, so I think we are OK

Sailing

The sailing separates into two parts.  The first part, from Estonia to the Canaries, was characterised largely by either no wind (meaning motoring) or wind strongly against us (meaning we stayed in port).  Most of our motoring was done during this period.  The second part began with our arrival in the Canaries just after New Year.  The wind was mostly favourable from then on, so we sailed almost all the time and motored little.

Memorable anchorages

Loch A´Choire

• Santa Luzia, Cape Verde Islands
• Ensenada de Barra, Ria de Vigo, Spain
• Ilha da Culatra, Faro, Portugal
• Loch A’Choire, Scotland
• Vueltas, La Gomera, Canary Islands
• Enseada de Baleeira, Cabo de Sao Vicente, Portugal
• Cedeira, Galicia, Spain
• The Caledonian Canal, Scotland.  The whole canal is a delight.

Memorable mountains

• Our highest elevation this year was Jebel Toubkal in Morocco, at 4167m.   This is the third time I have been in the High Atlas, and each time I said I wanted to spend more time in Morocco and do more hiking there.  Next time perhaps …
• Dreamy days hiking the ravines and valleys of La Gomera in spring sunshine.  Stunning.
• Scrambling up the north ridge of Tryfan, North Wales.
• Pico de Fogo, Cape Verde Islands.

Memorable food experiences

Aponiente

• The best meal in the last year, by far, was lunch at Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain.  Once again demonstrating that some of the most innovative food in the world originates in Spain, we had their degustation menu which featured plankton as a recurring ingredient.  It was accompanied entirely by different sherries, a feat I would have through impossible had I not experienced it first hand.  One of the top 10 meals of my life.
• A tiny stand in the market of Sale, Morocco, serving grilled merguez in fresh Moroccan bread with salad and chilli sauce.  So good.
• A small bar in Cedeira, Galicia, serving fried fish and seafood, washed down with local white wine.  A lovely lunchtime treat.
• Avocado and pistachio smoothies for breakfast in Morocco.
• Delicious traditional Massada (fish stew) in Lisbon.
• Quiejo de Serra, a runny cheese with a rind wrapped in cloth, in Portugal.
• Worst cocktail: equator crossing cocktail of rum, lime, seawater and Sargasso seaweed.

(*) Yes, I do know that the Canary Islands are part of Spain, but they are sorta kinda a separate country.  The question of how to count countries could be mildly interesting if one had run out of more worthwhile things to think about … e.g. is French Guiana a country?  Technically not, as it is a department of France.  However I would count it as one.

Southbound

In the week prior to setting off from the small harbour of Brava, Cape Verdes for Brazil our watermaker started producing increasingly salty water.  Not a good sign.  I did what I could to diagnose the source of the problem, and came down to two possibilities: the seals on the membrane that prevent brine from flowing into the product water have deteriorated, or the membrane itself has been damaged (possible If there were hydrocarbons in any of the sea water we have used, always a small risk).  We have a reasonable range of spares for the watermaker, but we have neither of these items. Something we will remedy in future. 

Our helpers in Brava, Cha and John, with the kid goat

So, in addition to the normal final provisioning of fresh vegetables and protein we needed to fill one of our tanks completely with fresh water from ashore, by jerry can. We also bought 70l of mineral water as a backup, and decided to have only saltwater showers until we were well over halfway (in fact we did so the whole way … saltwater showers are fine).  We do have a small handheld emergency watermaker in our abandon-ship barrels, but it takes one hour of hand pumping to make 1 liter of water: fine in a liferaft but not my idea of entertainment on a normal passage.

Our final provisioning of protein came in the form of a kid goat we bought, which was slaughtered and butchered for us the night before we departed.  Definitely fresh meat.

We set off just after midday on Saturday 10^th May, and knew it would be a slow passage.  The wind should gradually reduce from normal NE trade winds in the Cape Verdes to flat calm in the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ, the doldrums), then SE trade winds after crossing the equator.  Currents make the passage a little more complicated, and our chosen route after much poring over pilot charts and sailing directions was to head almost straight south to cross the ITCZ at 26W, then turn SW on a close reach to 7S 30W, then ease off onto a reach (probably a beam reach because of the current) to go W to our chosen landfall of Cabedelo, Brazil.  That was the theory.

We had a few hours of lovely trade wind sailing before the wind started to moderate.  And moderate, and moderate, and moderate.   By dawn the next morning we were in a flat calm in gentle seas.

 
Day 3

We are moving along at between 1.5 and 2.5kts, with a true wind speed of 5-6kts and our gennaker and full main poled out wing on wing.  This is the equivalent of travelling across the Atlantic Ocean at walking speed.  The air temperature is getting warm and humid.  The sea is fairly flat, with a swell of perhaps 50cm, but with so little wind even this small swell rolls Otra Vida enough to be disrupting.

North Atlantic sunset

Our towed water turbine doesn’t produce any electricity below about 3kts, so that is now out of the water, and obviously our windgen is producing nothing either.  That leaves our solar panel array, which doesn’t produce enough alone to keep up with our usage, therefore the engine is on at present for a couple of hours to charge the batteries and to give us the sense of at least a little progress.

Because we have potentially several hundred miles of flat calms in the ITCZ area we don’t want to use the engine more than a minimum at this stage.  We have enough fuel for 600nm, so have a buffer of maybe 200nm beyond the ITCZ – moderate but not huge.

In preparation for possible thunderstorms in the ITCZ we got out our Faraday cage today (a simply constructed aluminium box with a ground wire) and put a two handheld GPS units, a PLB, a personal AIS and a handheld VHF in it.  Hopefully this is an unnecessary precaution.

We finished the goat today.  Boned legs stuffed with the loin, with garlic and Herbes de Provence, vacuum packed and slow cooked at about 68C for a few hours, then seared in butter.  Served with Otra Vida passage demi-glace, boiled potatoes and the last of our fresh green beans.  Nice.

Otra Vida Passage Demi-Glace

This isn’t even close to a real demi-glace (in fact it is technically a veloute) but when you are on passage and don’t have a convenient supply of veal bones and 8+ hours of spare gas to make a reduced veal stock this delivers a sauce that is acceptable for passage food.    

• Rough chop one onion and one carrot.  Add dried thyme, white pepper, parsley, and 1 bay leaf.  Sweat in butter.
• Deglaze with cognac.  At this point add whatever alcohol you need for the final sauce, e.g. red wine, madeira, port.  Pedro Ximinez is a favourite of ours for lamb/goat/duck and gives a rich sweetness to the sauce.
• Boil off the alcohol, then add a cup of water and one Doble Caldo stock cube.
• If you have any meat juices e.g. from roasting you can also add them.  Be careful about adding fat – pour the juices into a beaker and skim off the fat first.
• Simmer for 10 minutes.
• Mix in some xanthan to get the desired consistency and simmer a little more.   You could use other thickeners instead, e.g. roux, cornflour.  I prefer the texture of xanthan.
• Strain the sauce and discard the veggies and herbs.  Then strain the sauce again through a very fine sieve or muslin.  Bring the sauce to the boil, and whisk in a teaspoon or two of butter.
• Check and adjust the seasoning.  Note that stock cubes are dreadfully salty, and sometimes you will be using salted butter on passage, so don’t add any salt at all until the very end.

 

Day 5

That´s better … in the last 24 hours we have covered 139nm.  Gentle trade wind sailing, breeze on the port aft quarter about 12kts true, gennaker up, a warm breeze in the cockpit, t-shirt temperatures on the night watch.  A tropical wave is passing over us, just a slightly more cloudy sky, too early in its development to have thunderstorms.

Otra Vida is 9 degrees north of the equator.  As children we were taught about the Coriolis effect, and how you could see water swirling down a plughole anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere, clockwise in the south and straight down at the equator.  When we cross the equator I intend to check this out (using seawater, not freshwater, of course). 

I used to travel quite regularly for business to Singapore, which sits almost on the equator, but somehow never found the time to observe water in the hotel room sink - perhaps too much time sampling addictive street food at hawker stalls and hunting for the legendary SPGs.  Singapore : what a strange place – super-luxury business hotels, a mix of interesting cultures, and as Webb Chiles describes it “an unusually logical city” “not given to laughter, especially at itself”.  I certainly felt safe there, but am not sure I ever felt alive.   On board Otra Vida, out here in the Atlantic ocean hundreds of miles from land I feel both safe and alive. 

In between scanning the horizon for boats I am reading “Capital in the 21^st Century”.  The book is a magisterial compendium of data-based insights on growth, capital, income and inequality over the last two centuries, engagingly written by a very smart French economist.  It covers so much ground that any quick summary will fail to do it justice.  For anyone interested in history, economics and politics it surely is a must-read. His extrapolations into the future are not pleasant reading, and his suggestions for action seem well founded, reasonable, and sadly unlikely to come to fruition.  My understanding of economics is too limited to be able to challenge his view, so I am looking forward to researching some intelligent critiques when I have internet access again.  At first glance it seems to me that he has lifted the veil on capitalism and provided solid and congruent data that confirms the core premise of Occupy a few years ago – that capitalism is (in general) good at creating wealth, but lousy at distributing it.  My friends on the right are not going to be happy about this book, not at all.

 

Day 7

The night is windless and warm, some 200nm north of the equator, and Otra Vida´s engine is pushing us south at 4.5kts, the slow speed being to conserve fuel.  First thing I did this morning on my 4am watch was a saltwater shower on deck.  The water temperature here is 29C, and a shower in the pre-dawn darkness is pleasant and refreshing.

This area of the ocean is called the Sargasso Sea, so named for the amount of Sargasso seaweed found here, ranging from individual plants to rafts as large as tennis courts.  It´s tough stuff and apparently gets caught on our rudder.  It took a little while for us to work out why we were going so slow, and now we put the engine in reverse every couple of hours to let the seaweed drop off.

The hitchhiking bird that joined us a day out from the Cape Verdes is still perched on the dinghy.  It would seem our friend is with us for the journey.

Day 8

Sargasso seaweed

We reached the half way point today : a half way cocktail to celebrate, our first alcohol since leaving the Cape Verdes.  We now have about another week to Cabedelo based on the forecast winds, and about 90nm to the equator.  The swell from the South Atlantic is noticeable already.

Our mainsail, hoisted to stabilise the boat in the swell while motoring, split at a seam overnight between the second and third reef points.   We now have a triple-reefed mainsail for the rest of the journey.  The sail is getting weak after 5 years and lots of sun in the Med and the Caribbean – Maret will repair it in Brazil and check and reinforce other seams as needed.  I hope it will be possible to patch this one together through the next year or so in the Caribbean, but for sure before setting off into the Pacific we will have a new mainsail made.

I also noticed that the AIS targets via our VHF radio were fewer than from our dedicated AIS transceiver.  It took me just minutes to alter the data connections for our AIS navigation instrument to use the AIS transceiver.  It means that the main VHF aerial (or much more likely the coaxial cable) has a leak and has corroded.  Eight days into the passage and this is only the second item added to the to-do list. 

Day 10



Speeding across the equator

We crossed the equator around noon.  To celebrate, as it is the first crossing on a boat for both of us, we offered generous glugs of Havana Club to Neptune, and made “equator cocktails” based on the longstanding nautical tradition: rum and seawater.  I added some ice, lime and a sprig of Sargasso seaweed.  The result was truly disgusting – not too much of a surprise.  We each managed a few mouthfuls, and the rest went over the side.  The nausea took a little longer to pass.  I´ll wager you won´t see that mixture on cocktail menus anytime soon.

Checked the swirl of seawater in the sink.  It seems to go straight down the plughole with no appreciable swirl either way, perhaps because the movement of the boat is more than the weak Coriolis force.



Don´t try this at home...

 

 

 

 

The cabin temperature is 32C, humidity 88%. It’s a month from mid-winter here.

 

 

 

 

Day 12

The South Atlantic trade winds arrived early this morning, bringing easy beam reach sailing with the gennaker up, 6+kts boat speed plus the 1kt or so favourable current.  It looks like we will make Cabedelo on Saturday, subject to the forecast being correct.

Our visiting bird has departed after 10 days of riding on Otra Vida´s dinghy.  After preening its feathers it did a final grandiose swooping circle around the boat before heading off to its next destination.  All that´s left now is the shit to be cleaned up.  Brings to mind a few executives I have known. 

Day 13

Out here on the ocean the idea of ownership, of possession, of accumulation seems so irrelevant. The human pretensions of permanence and control are seen for what they are.  How can you own the ocean?  The sky?  The clouds?  The questions are literally meaningless.  One can choose to experience the journey, or one can choose to endure the journey and focus only on the destination.  The sea and sky are benignly indifferent whatever the choice, but I think there is a qualitative difference in the experience.  Out here the journey is enough: the perpetual present moment, every second the same panorama of sea and sky, every second different.  The journey really is the destination.  Sure, it´s a cliché, but that doesn’t stop it being true.  There is a purity and a peace that blossoms on passage, a cleansing of the mind.  Perspective comes easily.  I like passage life.

Day 15

The SE trades are giving us a speedy and comfortable beam reach to Cabedelo.  Dawn is just 

Winter scene on our approach to Cabedelo 

breaking, and in 3 hours we will be tied up to a dock, in a new country, on a new continent.  Our traditional landfall bottle of cava is chilling in the fridge along with trout eggs which are becoming something of a tradition too.   The air temperature is 28C.  Not bad for winter.

What a lovely passage this has been.

Total distance: 1569nm.  Average speed: 4.7kts.  Freshwater used: about 130 litres.  Fish caught: 0 (again).