Final Thoughts on South America

Here are a few random thoughts on our visit to South America.  I have a new appreciation for the beauty and grandeur of the continent.  The Andes and surrounding areas are truly awe-inspiring and it is easy to understand the religious fervor that accompanied the early Spanish explorers and missionaries.  The land demands it.  I also came away with a new appreciation of the ancient Inca cultures.  There are aspects of it that are as impressive as some of those of ancient Egypt and somewhat along the same timeline.  The art work shows a high level of sophistication and work with tools.  The system of canals they built to control with flooding of the Amazon and tributaries to maximize the agricultural yield is truly impressive shows a level of technology that was highly developed.  Their cosmology also is intricate and was at a level of religious development on a par with the Middle East, at the time.

There was a certain sameness to all of the countries we visited:  Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Columbia.  The central plaza surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings, the cathedrals, the statues of Simon Bolivar.   Yet each had a distinctive flavor of some kind, whether it was the vineyards of Mendoza, Argentina, the tango in Buenos Aires and the ubiquitous money changers there muttering “cambio, cambio, cambio” under their breath as one approached, or the Pacific Ocean roaring under the cliffs in Miraflores, Peru.  The Gold Cathedral in Quito, Pablo Neruda’s house in Lima, the Botero Museum in Bogota, the grand opera house in Buenos Aires are all things that stand out.  The gritty bus ride to the even more gritty town of Valparaiso in Peru was a glimpse of a nearly vanished world.

I felt safe during this venture although Botoga seemed a bit edgy and had the most police with automatic weapons.  It was also the most difficult city to get around in as public transportation was not easy.  Argentina seems the most dice-y politically.  The recent murder of the prosecutor working on the bombing of the Jewish center twenty years ago was the most prominent but the whole structure seemed shaky.  Chile seemed more stable but nowhere was the stability of the United States.

After what seems like a long time, in a way, and the blink of an eye in another, we are back home in Washington, DC.  We ended the trip with a lovely few days visit with our daughter Kym O’Sullivan and her lovely husband Jay and two of our three O’Sullivan grandchildren, Joanna and Quinn in Tampa. Their oldest son Sylvan is still working in Quito.  A highlight of that was the Seder we had there with Joanna sight reading and singing in her lovely voice a cappella  many of the Passover songs.

Best of Bogota

por Jim

      During the final days of our trip we finally checked out a few museums.  Yesterday we visited the Gold Museum, which not only has a lot of gold and other metals, but a wonderful history of metals in cultures all over the world.  There were some interesting objects like this one

      Today we went to the Botero Museum, which features the collection that Colombian artist Fernando Botero donated to the nation, which housed it in an element of its museum complex in downtown Bogota.  It includes a lot of his work, including paintings and sculptures, always of people who looked like they had always eaten well, if not excessively.  In addition, he collected much material from artist friends including Picasso, Calder, Degas and others.  In short, it is a tour of 20th century art.  What's striking about it is not its size -- there are museums including the Mellon collection in Washington that own much more -- but its quality.  There wasn't a second-rate piece in the entire museum.  Two of my favorites were of couples -- one of Botero's supersized regulars

and one of Leda and the swan, both of whom were considerably more svelte.

          We commuted to these museums in the downtown area from our wonderful hotel in the elite Chapinero section of town, which led me once again to reflect on how much more difficult it is to get around in big cities that lack subway systems.  Bogota, like Quito and, to a lesser, degree Santiago, began in a valley surrounded by mountains, but has outgrown the flatlands over time as people build up into the hills.  Bogota's equivalent of a beltway is to swing several thousand feed up into a park that runs through elite neighborhoods where you get a great view of the entire city.  Which is to say distances can't be measured as a crow flies.  It makes for some interesting driving on trips that are never short, but always enjoyable as we view new sections of the city.  Finally, we've had some great food here as we have in the other cities we've visited.   South American ice cream is a treat everywhere.

In Bogota --Our last day in South America

Art and cathedrals.  A culture that appreciates both and that knows how to live life with enjoyment and verve:  that's much of what we've found in South America.  We spent the day wandering the streets of the old colonial city.  The narrow, winding streets are similar to what we've seen in the other major cities of the old Spanish Empire but still charming.  The pastel colored buildings with red tile roofs and fanciful wrought iron railings never fail to delight.

Amid so much of the old we also found the Botero museum.  He has long been one of my favorite artists but I haven't been exposed to that much of his work.  Imagine my delight at seeing over a hundred of his works; painting and sculptures, and also works of artists such as Picasso, Leger, Bonnard, Renoir and many others.  All the works were donated to by Botero from his private collection and a beautiful museum was constructed to house them.

The Time-Warner Center in New York City has two massive versions of his sculptures that I have always loved and now when I see them I'll also be able to recall the experience of the abundant collection we saw today.