Tag Archives: tourism

The view of Cerro Rico from the city of Potosí in May. fabian.kron, via Flickr

Touring Bolivia’s Cerro Rico, the Mountain that Eats Men

The silver that made Potosí fabulously wealthy is now all but gone, but miners still toil in the Bolivian city’s nearby mines in search of minerals vital to global supply chains. In recent years, locals have promoted a kind of “danger tourism”—guided tours of the sprawling and still lethal Cerro Rico complex—as another employment option in a region with very few, but critics say it draws too many voyeurs and thrill-seekers.

It’s one of the most grueling, dangerous jobs on Earth. Workers at the Cerro Rico mines near Potosí, Bolivia, toil from dawn till dusk in constricted, dust-filled passages, knowing they might die at any moment and likely will never reach middle age. Now, Cerro Rico has become a leading tourist attraction—despite the risks, the plight of the miners, and the downward spiral of a community that has fallen far from past wealth and glory.

“It’s like going to the zoo, looking at animals,” said Julio Morales, an ex-miner turned mining tour operator turned activist, who believes the visits are getting out of hand. “The mines are not a game.”

Continue reading Touring Bolivia’s Cerro Rico, the Mountain that Eats Men

Mark Dickinson has taught on three continents and traveled to more than seventy countries. Before beginning his career in the classroom eighteen years ago, he worked for almost a decade as both a television and newspaper reporter.

The village of Hasroun, with its signature red roofs, in the Qadisha Valley region.

Tourism in a Time of War

People warned me not to go. Government advisories declared “avoid all travel.” But I ran off and fell in love with Lebanon anyway.

The Bekaa Valley with tents in the foreground
The Bekaa Valley and the shelters of Syrians (not necessarily refugees) who work in the adjoining fields.

Please, please, please cancel your ticket. It doesn’t matter how much it costs,” implored the beefy man serving our table at a local Lebanese restaurant in Hong Kong. “If you want to eat Lebanese food, just come here.”

I had just told him I was embarking on a two-week trip to his native country at the end of September — a revelation that seemed to have triggered in him the beginnings of a heart attack.

“But I want to go to Lebanon,” I said.

“There are snipers!” he insisted, aghast.

“What snipers?” I asked.

“Hezbollah! My friend in Byblos is afraid to leave his house!” I also risked being kidnapped by desperate Syrian refugees, he warned.

The next day, I woke up to reports that the US State Department had ordered its nonessential diplomats to evacuate Lebanon. The Obama administration and Congress were weighing punitive military strikes on neighboring Syria for using chemical weapons. The US had already slapped the country with an “avoid all nonessential travel” warning, which was later upgraded to “avoid all travel.” In the Lebanon sections of online travel forums, numerous threads were devoted to variations of the same question: “Is it safe to visit?”

I wondered if I was being reckless, but I was committed to my trip — not only financially, but emotionally. I had lived and traveled widely in North America, Europe, and Asia, but I had never visited the Middle East. Now in my late twenties, I thought it was time to change that. Surely, there had to be more to the Middle East than the dominant narrative in news reports of a dangerous, war-torn region, ridden with sectarian conflict, a bomb or bullet just around the corner.

With only two weeks of vacation, I thought visiting Lebanon, a relatively small country, would give me the chance to see a lot. I also felt a certain affinity for Lebanon that I didn’t for other places in the Middle East. Perhaps it had started with the delicious moudardara I’d discovered a decade ago in Toronto. I wanted to experience a culture celebrated for its sophistication, and see its storied capital, Beirut.

 

Lebanon's number of visitors has plummeted since the start of the Syrian civil war

Lebanon has not shaken the violent image it acquired from its bloody 1975-1990 civil war between Christian and Muslim militias, which drew in various outside groups, including the armed forces of Israel and Syria. More recently, Beirut was devastated by a month-long war in 2006 between Lebanon’s Shia militant group Hezbollah and the Israeli military.

Tourism had recovered quickly in the years after the Israel-Hezbollah War, reaching a peak of more than two million visitors in 2010, according to the ministry of tourism. The New York Times hailed Beirut as one of the top places to visit in the world: “The capital of Lebanon is poised to reclaim its title as the Paris of the Middle East.” Yet 2011 brought another calamity: the civil war in Syria, a country that shares deep ties and a porous border with Lebanon. The number of visitors has since plummeted — and was falling further when I arrived last September.

I knew from news reports that the Syrian civil war had spilled over into Lebanon, in the form of hundreds of thousands of refugees and bombs targeting both the pro-Syria Hezbollah movement and its critics. (The internal situation in Lebanon has long been influenced by its neighbor: Syrian armed forces occupied Lebanon during and after its civil war, and were only ousted by the Cedar Revolution triggered by the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.) I had an eye out for all these dangers.

Three children wearing school backpacks in Tyre
Children leaving a mosque in Tyre. They pleaded for a photo, posed earnestly, and then examined the result carefully before scampering away.

But I ended up not thinking as much about my personal safety as I’d thought I would. I found myself dwelling instead on the beauty around me. I immediately fell in love with the country’s signature palette of colors. Verdant fields carpeted the Bekaa Valley that borders Syria, brimming with apples, wine grapes, and cannabis. Majestic homes constructed with yellow-white stones gleamed in the affluent south-central village of Deir el Qamar. Sun-faded red roofs dotted the rugged mountains of the Qadisha Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Most striking was Lebanon’s gorgeous shade of blue. I saw it time and time again in the Mediterranean Sea, most memorably from my hotel balcony in the venerable port city of Byblos, where the waters shimmered brilliantly in the sunlight, the shore silent except for the crashing of the waves. I saw it in the sky, too — during my trip to the Roman ruins of the eastern city of Baalbek, it was the glorious backdrop to the six restored pillars of the Temple of Jupiter. There I sat down on a rock and savored the view.

The six pillars against the blue sky
The six restored pillars of the Temple of Jupiter in the ancient Romans ruins of Baalbek.

Reputed to be a Hezbollah stronghold, Baalbek was singled out for an “avoid all travel” warning in advisories issued by the UK and Canada. But I did not run into problems there or anywhere else along the clockwise loop I made around Lebanon. In fact, aside from clusters of soldiers outfitted in berets and camouflage in some parts of the country — most visibly in downtown Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and the southern coastal city of Tyre — nothing I saw on my trip suggested that Lebanon was facing any kind of threat.

Children playing near pigeons in Beirut's Place de l’Étoile
Children play around the Place de l’Étoile in downtown Beirut.

In Beirut, life seemed to go on as usual. Children played with toys around the clock tower in the Place de l’Étoile downtown. Joggers lined the Corniche waterfront promenade. The fashionable set congregated at cafes along Zaitunay Bay. Students, with their arms wrapped around textbooks, strolled along the streets near the American University of Beirut campus.

Even the security checkpoints set up throughout the Bekaa Valley were essentially speed bumps: soldiers usually waved my driver past without a word. I had to show my passport only once.

I was surprised to be the only traveler at most of the major tourist attractions I visited and the homestays and hotels where I roomed. I enjoyed having museums, ancient ruins, and wineries all to myself, but it was sobering to think what the deserted places meant for the many people whose livelihoods depended on tourism. Following a huge drop in visitors during the summer season, hotels in the Beirut area laid off a quarter of their employees last year, the As-Safir newspaper reported. Seasonal hotel workers were hit even harder, with more than 70 percent of them — 14,000 people, most of them college students — losing their jobs.

In the eastern town of Zahlé, along the famous Berdawni Valley strip, strings of lights twinkled in vain, the many outdoor cafés bereft of diners and full of idle waiters in bow ties. As I ate breakfast alone at my hotel, the staff dutifully laid out silverware at the dozens of empty tables in the restaurant, their labor an empty exercise.

As I traveled around Lebanon, I unwittingly became a celebrity of sorts, drawing surprise and appreciation from locals baffled as to why a young Chinese woman would choose to visit at this time — let alone on her own. People would often go out of their way to help me, eager to make sure I had a pleasant experience in their country.

“Thank you for visiting Lebanon. Thank you for visiting our museum,” the curator of the Beirut National Museum said to me. The staff had referred me to her when I asked in English for directions to my next destination. She was shocked to learn I was visiting the country for fun and didn’t know a single person. She insisted on walking out with me to help me flag a shared taxi. “I don’t want you to have a bad experience and get ripped off,” she explained, proceeding to give the driver stern instructions in Arabic.

On a couple occasions, complete strangers went out of their way to drive me around. When I walked into a donut shop in Beirut asking for directions, a friendly university student offered me a ride home in her car. We ended up meeting for dinner a few days later, both of us eager to swap thoughts and impressions about Lebanon. Later on, I found myself in a teeming crowd at the headquarters of a cell-phone service provider, waiting to register my phone for a local SIM card but utterly confused about what I needed to do. The well-manicured middle-aged woman standing next to me took me under her wing. She explained the process, helped me cut the line, and then drove me across town to my next stop.

South of Beirut, in the ancient coastal cities of Sidon and Tyre, I also depended on the kindness of strangers to help me find my way. Whether it was a small boy at a shop where I bought a bottle of water, a sunglasses vendor, or a shabbily dressed man with a bicycle, the locals I approached would drop what they were doing and walk me to my destination.

When I jaywalked — unavoidable in the big cities — normally aggressive drivers would slow down when they spotted me. And the drivers of shared taxis seemed to know about my existence before I had even stepped foot in their cars. “I’ve seen you before walking around,” they told me on more than one occasion.

“I’ve become ‘famous’ in Lebanon,” I joked to Jamil, my elderly homestay host in Beirut, when I called him from the airport to say goodbye.

The startling blue of the Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea, as seen from the coastal city of Tyre.

My story is not intended to minimize the real crisis that Syrians and their neighbors in the Middle East are facing. According to the United Nations, there are now 2.3 million Syrian refugees in the region. The largest group — more than 800,000 — are in Lebanon. Recent bombings in Beirut and Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, are widely seen as retribution for Hezbollah’s support of the Syrian government. Attacks have also been directed at those opposed to Hezbollah: last month, a car bomb killed the former Lebanese finance minister Mohamad Chatah and six others in downtown Beirut. Chatah was a fierce critic of the Syrian government and Hezbollah.

Yet it’s easy to let stories of violence reported in the media narrow our view of a place. In Lebanon, there is incredible beauty and tranquility to be found, even if conflict smolders around it. And there are people eager to share that beauty, as I learned from the generous locals I met.

It is also worth remembering how far Lebanon has come since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War and the civil war that ended just over twenty years ago. Given its troubled history, it is surprising just how many tourists the country was drawing before the Syrian civil war began. Feted in the Western press, Lebanon seemed on the path to becoming a cultural and economic hub of the Middle East once again.

Alexis Lai standing on a mountain trail
Hiking in the Qannoubine Valley. Photo by Rami Al Semaani

That is the renaissance that locals like Jamil hope will bloom once the latest proxy crisis ends. Jamil has lived through all of Lebanon’s recent travails, including the civil war. The violence has exacted a price from his family: in the living room of his home is a photo of a slain nephew, a rose placed before the frame. Yet Jamil remains a staunch advocate of visiting Lebanon, waving off any security concerns. He dismissed the dangers that the waiter in Hong Kong had warned me about, furious at what he viewed as foolish and irresponsible remarks by a fellow countryman. When I told him I planned to visit Baalbek, he told me not to worry: “The closest you’ll get to Hezbollah is someone trying to sell you a T-shirt.”

Then and now, when I think of Lebanon, I don’t think of war. What comes to my mind is that beautiful shade of Mediterranean blue, the pristine silence of the mountains, the delicious apple I picked from a tree while camping with some new friends above the village of Hasroun. In a country renowned for war, I found peace.

Alexis Lai is a journalist based in Hong Kong. Her work has been published by CNN.com, the Wall Street Journal, and Radio Television Hong Kong, among others. Raised in Canada, she has lived in six countries and traveled in more than twenty. Twitter: @alexisklai Site: http://www.about.me/alexislai

 

Displacement

What I learned in Máncora.

 

I went to Máncora to be reunited with My People. 

After three months of working for a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Chiclayo, Peru, and being totally immersed in Peruvian culture, I could finally speak Spanish. Now I received compliments on my fluency instead of the “what the fuck are you saying?” facial expressions that my initial attempts at communication had received. Yes, my Spanish was good, thanks to necessity. And yet … it sure would be nice to say exactly what I meant. (Subtleties are lost in translation.)

Humor had carried me far, but quite frankly, I was lonely. Of course I enjoyed the company of my Chiclayano friends. But having at least one other foreigner — My People — around to share the experience would have been nice. There’s a fine line between feeling proudly independent and unintentionally isolated.

I needed an escape, and I was sure of the solution: a brief reunion with My People in the town of Máncora. I’d heard there were English-speaking tourists in Máncora, so I decided to treat myself to a short vacation. It was time! Time to crack jokes with people who had heard of Arrested Development. Time to share my enthusiasm over the musical genius of Beirut instead of Grupo Cinco. Time for a break from the stares and whistles I got as one of the only white people walking down the streets of Chiclayo.

Not My People

But when I finally arrived in Máncora, I didn’t fit in.

How could this be? Weren’t these Western globetrotters My People? The league of backpackers with whom I’d shared conversation countless times, listening wide-eyed to each other’s tales of rash job-quitting and subsequent adventuring? Patting each other on the back for choosing the road less traveled (though increasingly trodden)?

But My People now made me nervous. In my first encounters, I felt desperate to fit in. Insecure. Eager for approval. This wasn’t the PB&J synergy I remembered! This didn’t feel comfortable; this felt like … junior high. What’s more, These People spoke a language that I couldn’t decipher, raving about “the green” and “wax brands.” Now it was my turn: What the fuck are you saying? (Maybe a surftown wasn’t the wisest choice for first contact.)

And then I experienced another kind of nervousness: If I didn’t fit in with them, then with whom? I’d lost my true north and needed to get away from These People, people I thought I knew, but who had morphed into confusion instead. I headed beach-ward with a book, where my pale, pale self also failed to fit in. At least I didn’t feel the need to impress the sand or sea. But on my way, I met Paola.

Actually, it was Robert who called out to me.

“Are you an English speaker?”

I turned around to face an odd pair. A tall, bearded 60-year-old American strolling alongside a 29-year-old Colombian beauty with facial piercings and a guarded expression. I accompanied them to a café, ditching my beach plan in favor of the possibility of finding community with a pair of misfits. 

Robert and Paola

I can’t remember why Robert called out to me, but I’m glad he did. He rarely speaks to women (only part of the complex character that is Robert), and if he hadn’t randomly selected me to be the anomaly, I would never have known Paola, the enigma.

Paola was short, but her powerful presence made you forget this. She walked with a rigid posture and a stiff neck and her chest puffed out. Not in a seductive way, but more like she was trying to emulate a 250-pound bouncer, as if to defy her delicate features. She had a glowing complexion that made her look 22, thanks to a regime of using saliva as a moisturizer. (Gross? You wouldn’t think so if you saw the results.)

Robert was a wonder to listen to. World knowledge poured out of him. He offered me a glimpse into his elaborate web of conspiracy theories, weaving together patterns of suspicion and rumor. His communication lacked any discernable narrative form; rather it was held together by a logic to which only he was privy. Somehow, he transitioned to the subject of Paola, who had been sitting there looking bored. Half of Robert’s speech was in English, of which she didn’t understand a word.

“We have a child together.”

Wow. Paola would later elaborate a bit more for me: They’d had a one-night stand several years earlier, and had been tied to each other because of The Child ever since. This was the first time they’d seen each other in years. They met in Máncora to sort out a few things. 

“We’re meeting again here, now, because Paola has a very important decision to make. She is going to decide the name of The Child, and in doing so, she will determine its identity.”

Again—wow. And I’d thought my Máncorian mission was an ambitious one.

Robert then went on a tirade about how Paola was dooming The Child by marrying a Jewish Argentinian and considering giving The Child his surname. With her background, this was like putting a giant target on The Child — hadn’t she heard of the Rosenbergs?

(Robert is a schizophrenic.) 

Robert talked straight through the meal. I tried to keep up with the conversation, while Paola sat, looking guarded and bored. She didn’t know it, but Robert was now divulging her life story to me, a complete stranger.

I tried to include her in the conversation.

Robert está contándome la historia completa de tu vida.” Robert’s telling me your whole life story.

Paola’s People

It was at that point, I think, where I won her confidence. For the next two days, she never lost the scrutiny in her eyes, sizing up every person she met or even passed on the street, but I was now Hers. (Yes! Loner no more.) Maybe she felt bad that I had to sit and listen to Robert’s rants. (I didn’t mind.) Maybe she was thankful that I hadn’t been too quick to judge Robert (or her). I don’t know why, but she took me under her beautiful wing.

For two days I was with Paola’s People.

Paola opened my eyes to a whole new world. I had been living in Peru for three months and had never seen it in this light. Around the time that she met Robert, she’d spent several months living in Máncora and had gotten to know many of the locals. Through her, I met The Artisans. Niño Manuel was their benevolent leader, although at about 55, he certainly wasn’t a niño, a child — at least not physically. His specialty was hat-making and his creations seemed inspired by Dr. Seuss. At any time of the day, you could find him with His People, gathered under the tree across from his booth and sharing a beer or box of wine. When I met Niño Manuel, he pointed out all the people in town I couldn’t trust (including police and informants) and introduced me to the Good People. One particular charmer welcomed me by placing bottle caps over his eyes and doing his best impression of a stingray. (I didn’t get it either. But it was a nice sentiment.)

The Escape

Yes, Paola had introduced me to the beating heart of Máncora, and through The Artisans, I learned about Escape economics. The Artisans were wonderful and kind. Anytime I walked passed one or some of them — anywhere in town — they’d call out to me in chorus and insist that I share their drink. Because they were always drinking. Because their economy demanded it. The decline of the fishing industry (due to the decline of fish stocks) has made tourism a particularly vital source of income for Máncorians. Unlike the cultural tourism of Machu Picchu, Máncora attracts party tourism; it is a party town. Westerners (My People?) escape to Máncora to drink and smoke all day and night, and then they return to their ordered, tranquil lives.

But Máncorians continually live in the Escape. Almost everyone I met was struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. Although, struggling is a relative term, I suppose, because they all just accepted it as normal. I’d be sitting on the beach, having a beer with a friend, and glance over to catch him shooting up. Once, at about 10 a.m., I asked my hostel’s owner, Carlos, if he was drunk. “Of course … as always!” he answered with a grin.

I supposed they just embraced it, but it was something very ugly to me. And yet, what’s a party town without partiers? What would happen to Máncora if its citizens rejected this lifestyle? Is the alternative of poverty any better? It was an unsettling realization that these lives depended on profits from partying.

That night, as the sun set over our box of wine and chicken dinner, Paola informed me that we were going to her friends’ place. “They are Colombian artisans, too. You’ll like them.”

We made our way to a giant lawn decked with hammocks and blankets, where Paola’s friends awaited us: the three Lost Boys. One Boy had a single feather earring dangling from one ear. Like Paola, these 18- to 20-year-old nomads had been displaced from their homeland. We spent the night drinking and playing music. Paola was right: The Boys were playful and kind, and I liked them immediately.

At some point, The Boys began to play an old Colombian folk song about what a wonderful life it would be when the fighting was over. Paola sang. I don’t know when it happened, but she started to weep. Legs crossed, chest slightly deflated, she sang and wept straight through. Her voice wavered but never broke. The song ended.

Otra vez … otra vez …” Again … again, she pleaded.

The Boys said nothing; they just started the song again and watched Paola. They played the song three times.

“It’s not true. It never came true.” Paola wept and we listened.

Paola explained to me that to be born Colombian means that when you think back to the friends you had in elementary school, you know that most of them are dead. And the ones who aren’t are the ones who left their home. As she had done. As the Lost Boys had done.

The Teacher

I could never fully understand Paola’s tragedy; I had never experienced anything close to it. But by explaining it to me, by allowing me audience to her song, she had invited me in. In spite of her great loss, Paola gave me so much in the few days I knew her.

Somehow, in the middle of Máncora, I’d found a true teacher.

Paola was the epitome of grace, of strength, of sadness. She taught me about culture and belonging, about what it means to be a woman, a mother, a child. The entire time we spent together, she called me “niña,” little girl. She may have only been a few years my senior (and looked about my age, thanks to the miracle of spit), but she seemed to have 45 years of life experience on me.

Because she had expanded my understanding of culture and belonging, I saw new potential in Chiclayo. So I’d have to wait a while longer to drop Arrested Development lines with My People, wherever they were. (Whoever they were.) And, yes, I would inevitably be treated as the town idiot for my imperfect language skills, at least a few more times. But now, three more months seemed less daunting, less lonely.

Amy O’Loughlin is a freelance writer and book reviewer whose work has appeared in American HistoryWorld War IIForeWord ReviewsUSARiseUp, and other publications. She blogs at Off the Bookshelf.

 

Marketing Morocco

Having just returned from a lovely vacation to Marrakech, I am both elated (by my beautiful photographs, nice tan, unforgettable afternoons, and lovely purchases) and disheartened. Disheartened because I cannot believe how the medina has changed in just a few short years since I first arrived in Morocco.

I recently wrote an article for an English-language magazine here, the first of its kind  in recent years, anyway. Writing about foreigners in Marrakech, I found myself hard-pressed to find many good points. Sure, they're buying up properties tha no one else might otherwise, but they're also driving average Moroccans out of neighborhoods that they can no longer afford. The price of a coffee has jumped nearly MAD 3 (that's about 30 American cents  a lot to some people here), and it's nearly impossible to find Morocco's staple dish, the tajine, for normal prices.

Yesterday, speaking with a Moroccan colleague, I discovered her vacation had similar properties  visiting the southern coastline, she discovered that a French man had come in, bought land for MAD 8 per square kilometer, built luxury villas, then resold them for a price no Moroccan could dream of affording, thereby gentrifying an entire fishing village.

And then today, I came across a press release from a certain UK agency advertising a "Moroccan lifestyle" for only £82,000. The PR pointed specifically to La Palmeraie, a wealthy area of Marrakech that is essentially a protected palm grove  but laws are being sidestepped to make way for luxury  hotels, villas, apartments, and nightclubs.

Meanwhile, ordinary Moroccans are being pushed from their communities to make way for the European invasion, and yet, Moroccans can hardly cross the border for a vacation.