News

First the bad stuff. Since yesterday evening I'd been trying to get train tickets to go to Aguas Calientes, the village near Macchu Picchu (which can only be reach by a long train ride). All the hotel staff kept saying that all the trains were fully booked for today and probably the next few days, but that I could perhaps get tickets from an agency which buys tickets to sell them with a commission. Since the Inca Trail (a 4 day hike towards Macchu Picchu) is fully book months in advance, this seemed credible enough, and I waited hours while they contacted an agent, without getting a reply. First thing this morning I started nagging again, then asked the address of the agency so I could go ask them myself. They told me to pay 65$, but then it turned out they were just gonna go to RailPeru´s booking office with me to 'help'. Since RailPeru has a monopoly on the trains to Macchu PIcchu, they charge exorbitant prices and make you wait endlessly to get a ticket. While waiting I got so worked up about wasting all that time and getting myself treated like an idiot tourist that I got an intense headache, but I kept telling myself to stay calm unless I didn't get the tickets after all this, but I did without a problem.

It was a ticket from Ollantaytambo, which is halfway to Macchu Picchu and has the ruins of an Inca fortress. I hadn't planned to go see it, but since I had to go there anyway I decided to hurry over there and visit them before my train left. I'd wasted the whole morning by now but from this point on things went great.

I first rushed to a bus station in Cuzco and in no time got an a chicken bus to Urubamba. The 2 hour ride gradually became a how-many-Indians-can-you-squeeze-in-this-bus contest, but it was a fun ride anyway because I enjoyed watching the gorgeous Andean landscape we were driving through as well as observing the locals who got on the bus. In between the Indians that were piled up over me I found a Flemish couple and got some useful info out of them about places I am yet to visit.

In Urubamba I immediately got a minibus to Ollantaytambo (it took me 100 tries to memorise that name) and made myself the doorman so I could stretch my legs. We arrived in Ollantaytambo at 2pm, my train was at 5pm. I'd planned to just walk around the ruins with my big backpack since I didn't expect much of them anyway, but fortunately I felt lazy, walked into the first scrappy restaurant and said "puedo dejar esta [a slap on my backpack] aqui por favor" and the owner said "si, es possibile" and put it away.

The ruins were just a short walk away and I was immediately impressed. Ollantaytambo fortress is one of the only places where the conquistadors suffered a defeat, at the hands of Manco Inca who led a big revolt two years after the Spanish took over. Unfortunately that victory would be his last. The fortress was built as a series of terraces against a mountain, and was far bigger than I thought.

So I started climbing and when I was beyond the fortress I saw a French couple walking down a path on the mountain. I asked where the path was leading to and they said there were some more ruins and a good view above, so I quickly went on. Good thing I'd gotten rid of my big backpack! After some time I found the ruins, but the path still went on. I decided to go a bit further, then a bit further still, and just as I was about to turn back I saw the mountain top with a cross on it, so I went there and enjoyed a superb view around. Of course I had to make my traditional mountain-top self-pic with hands held out, and since there was a big cross there I hung my head to the side and played crucifixion - good pic I think :)

On the way down I soon lost the path and scrambling down got a bit tricky with the loose stones, but I was rewarded with a view on the fortress from straight above - more good pics. Anyway I was back in the village by 4:15pm. I need to shape up if I want to do serious climbs later on so this was good fund and good exercise. From the village I made a pic of the mountain I climbed and noticed that you could see the cross with the naked eye, so I wonder if someone looked at it when I was playing Jezus there.

I had enough time left for a quick soup and then went to the train station, and discovered that the train to Macchu Picchu was 3/4 empty. Only now did I really realise that the hotel staff had been scamming me from the start to get that bit of commission out of me, fuckers. Well, nothing could ruin my mood after a great afternoon, especially as I set my backpack on the chair next to me and put my legs on the opposite chair for the two hour ride to Aguas Calientes.

Here I immediately found a private room; been sleeping in dorms so far. It turns out the hotel is full of Belgians but I haven't met them yet. The hotel had a restaurant "economico" as they put it, so I went to check out the menu and sure enough it offered a three-stage menu with plenty of choice for each round and with a fresh juice to boot all for 4 euro. I didn't understand what the opener was and when I asked they showed me a big round purple piece of fruit; I just wanted to make sure it wasn't meat so I said bring it on and it was delicious (combined with avocado and other stuff). Then I got cream soup, and trout with rice and fries as the main dish. All for 4 euro!

While eating the TV showed Peruvian pop, which isn't even bad. Someone from the hotel family brought in a little girl, about three years old, and she started dancing to the music, actually swinging around with her arms and everything, totally cute!

Some general things. I really should have put more effort into learning Spanish. I can get by with the bit I learnt before this trip (read 90 pages of the Assimil pocket book), and I learn more all the time, but the problem is that almost all the other backpackers here, mostly from the USA and South-America, speak Spanish fluently, so I feel like the village idiot whenever I try to say something.

I'm really enjoying my little mp3 player. In earlier travels I brought a CD player but that's often too cumbersome, in Mexico I learned from Danny that it´s far better to have a handy little USB stick. I put 110 songs on mine before I left, and I've already had a great time with the first 30. On the airport yesterday I started doing the Reservoir Dogs walk when I heard "Little Green Bag", and on the chicken bus today I especially enjoyed "De wilde boerendochter" by Ivan Heylen because of the contrast with my surroundings - I must take more Flemish songs next time, feels great to listen to them on the other side of the world.

I like the Indians, or Indigenos as they prefer to be called. I just love the traditional colourful clothes and hats that many of them wear, and their general look (e.g. women with two braids and a hat) and they are generally very friendly even when squeezed together with a gringo on a bus. I just keep wondering: suppose people with, say, a green skin had conquered all of Europe a few centuries ago, mass-murdered us, enslaved us, torn down all our churches and generally destroyed our culture, - would it even be conceivable then that green-skinned people could travel around Europe safely now and even be treated in a friendly way? Given the hard time black-skinned people, who've never even harmed us, already have for example, the answer is obvious. Which shows that Indians are vastly superior to Europeans in at least two ways: clothing and tolerance.

So tomorrow I visit Macchu Picchu, and since today I've realised that I love traveling around the country-side far more than being in cities, I won't head back to Cuzco yet but will stay the night in Ollantaytambo and visit my next destination (the Inca ruins + Indian market in Pisac) from there. I´ve settled into the traveling mood :)

So I set out early this morning and decided to start with a taxi ride to Cerro San Cristobal, a 400m high hill north of the city centre, to get a view on the city. That wasn't such a good idea; there was so much fog that I couldn't see much and when I wanted to walk to the city centre through the slums that surround the hill several people stopped me and told me that would be way too dangerous. So instead I arranged to drive back with a bus of school children that were there. While waiting I had a whole conversation, in Spanish, with a guy who works for a TV station and who was there with a satellite dish. Almost noone here speaks any English so I'm gonna learn a lot of Spanish during this trip, good.

Anyway I understood that this guy is a mormon and that he's very happy about that, and I made him even happier when I told him Floyd Landis is a mormon too. He was there because of a congress, later I'd understand why he had to be on this hill for that. He also told me that a week ago he saw an American walk down this hill and get robbed by guys with guns. I only understoond 10% of what he was saying so he must have told me lots of other things as well.

So then I drove to the city center with the school kids which was fun. I immediately went to the Plaza de Armas, the main square with historical buildings from colonial times. Like the main squares in Mexican cities it has the cathedral and the palace of the governor, and it's very nice and pretty, in fact the whole centre is.

After visiting the cathedral I went to the nearby Monastery of San Francisco. Another pretty building, but the most interesting part are the catacombs below it where the monks have stored the skulls and bones of tens of thousands of people, and in some places put them in geometrical patterns, amazing sight.

I had hurried to make all the pictures I wanted of the cathedral and the monastery because the sun was already shining from the side and would soon turn behind these buildings, making it impossible to make good pictures. But when I left the catacombs I was amazed to notice that there was now in fact more sunlight on the front of the buildings. It took me a few seconds to realise that I'm in the southern hemisphere and that the sun turns the wrong way here and shines from the north at noon :) So I went back to the cathedral and made pictures again with better sunlight.

Near the monastery a security guard came up for a chat in English, and he told me how as a boy his uncle had taught him that Lake Titicaca belongs to both Peru and Bolivia, and that therefore they should each get half of it: "Titi for Peru, and Caca for Bolivia" :)

I visited a few more churches, had a huge rice with fish lunch, and then went to the Museo de la Santa Inquisition in the building that was actually used by the Spanish Inquisition for 200 years. They now show wax dolls being tortured, very funny.

The Inquisition building was later used to house the parliament, and the current monumental parliament building is right next to it. There was an important session going on, with lots of policemen and people standing outside the gates. In a shop I saw that the session was being broadcast live on TV, and behind the parliament building I could see the hill I had been on that morning, so now I understood what the TV guys were doing there: relaying that broadcast to a satellite.

After walking around some more I took a taxi back to Barranco, the part of Lima I'm staying in. I strolled towards the ocean, must be real nice here in summer, but unfortunately the sky was all grey by now so I just called it a day and here I am :) Tomorrow at 1pm I fly to Cuzco.

Some first impressions of Peru. I like it here, people are nice, I don't get harassed much, the city centre is pretty, cheerful and clean, everything one could need is easy to find, and it just seems like a place where you can have fun. Outside the historic centre Lima is a concrete jungle and the poverty becomes clear, but it's by no means miserable. I've been comparing with my last destination India, wondering why I disliked it so much there, and I'm starting to understand.

Always one of my first observations in a new country: what are the girls like. I'm happy to report that pretty girls are abundant in Peru, but unfortunately their average height is about 1m40. They also seem to have higher standards than Mexican girls coz I'm not getting nearly as many looks and smiles here. I'm hoping it's just because I look like a zombie right now (lack of sleep), we'll see.

Friday is independence day here and it already shows with the Peruvian flag waving everywhere. People seem to be happy to be Peruvian, and I'm happy to be here. See you in Cuzco!

About Hezbollah

• There is no denying that Hezbollah started the war by attacking Israeli soldiers on Israeli territory. They've done Lebanon an enormous disservice, and it would have weakened their position in Lebanon if Israel had played it smart.
  
  
• Some say Hezbollah expected the massive Israeli response and is getting exactly what it wanted. I doubt this, since there have been prisoner swaps between Israel and Hezbollah in the past, and since the release of the remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel is something Hezbollah has been striving for.
  
  
• Regardless of whether this is what it wanted, Hezbollah is the big winner of the current crisis. Even though its action probably had nothing to do with the crisis in Gaza (they've tried to abduct Israeli soldiers before, and this most recent abduction had been planned since long before the abduction in Gaza), to the islamic world they now appear as the champions of the Palestinian cause, the only ones brave enough to take the fight to Israel.
  
  
• While Israel's military superiority is as overwhelming as ever, and Israel could utterly destroy Lebanon if it wanted to, Hezbollah's little successes are major military triumphs in the eyes of everyone in the region: they've managed to kill and abduct a few Israeli soldiers, they've managed to hit a major Israeli town (Haifa), they've managed to hit an Israeli war ship, and their TV station kept broadcasting even after Israel bombed its HQ.
  
  
• Many are painting Hezbollah as being controlled by Damascus and/or Teheran and acting on their instructions. I think this is incorrect, especially for Syria.
  
  
  • Syria has no ideological bonds with Hezbollah. Syria's regime is secular and has in the past crushed islamist uprisings in a bloody way, massacring 20000 people in Hama in 1982 for example. Syria and Hezbollah have used each other to further their own agendas, and probably continue to do so, but to suggest that their relationship is that of master and servant is simply ridiculous.
    
    
  • I would characterise the relationship between Hezbollah and Teheran as being almost identical to that between Israel and Washington. Iran is Hezbollah's chief sponsor and ideological partner. Hezbollah is entirely dependent on the backing of Iran, which gives Iran great influence over it. But just like Israel doesn't take orders from Washington, there is no reason to assume that Hezbollah takes orders from Teheran; its recent actions are entirely consistent with its own agenda.

About Israel

• Israel's response against Hezbollah has been correctly described as disproportionate. However, the magnitude of Israel's response is irrelevant. There is no international law or moral rule that limits self-defence to 1-on-1 reciprocality. Israel can not afford such reciprocality anyway, since it is vastly outnumbered in this conflict.
  
  
• While the magnitude of Israel's response is its own choosing, that is only true in as far as it targets those who attacked it. Lebanon did not attack Israel. The Lebanese government has zero influence over Hezbollah's military actions, and is not capable of disarming it, and Israel knows that. While it was smart and acceptable for Israel to increase the pressure on the Lebanese government, its destruction of Lebanese infrastructure and killing of Lebanese civilians goes far beyond that and is simply criminal.
  
  
• I truly wonder if the Israeli government knows what it's doing and where this will lead to. It is dramatic for Israel's image that it was the first to start killing civilians in this exchange of violence. Meanwhile it is adding to Hezbollah's prestige, and making it much harder if not impossible for the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah in the near future. It is also once again stirring up the entire islamic world against it. I can only see Israel losing from this.

About Lebanon

• Lebanon is the big loser of this crisis. It was succesfully recovering from the civil war, it was becoming a tourist destination again, and most importantly it had just recently managed to regain its independancy from Syria. Given time, it might have become a stable democracy and eventually capable of integrating Hezbollah in its army and thus controlling it. All that progress has been destroyed now.

About Palestine

• This crisis started with the abduction of an Israeli soldier in Gaza. While Palestinian militia have committed barbaric and cowardly acts of terrorism against civilians, and will probably continue to do so, this particular operation was targeted against the Israeli army, and I don't see how that can be called terrorism. As long as Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territory and oppress Palestinian people in the West Bank to secure its outrageous colonial policy and territorial expansion, its army can only be considered a legitimate target for Palestinians to attack. Anything else would be denying the Palestinians the most basic right of resistance against foreign occupation, which is what most of the world seems to do. If the international community can't make the distinction between terrorism and legitimate resistance against foreign occupation, then it is just encouraging the Palestinians to not make that distinction either.

Speculations on the future

• There is no way Hezbollah will release the two Israeli prisoners without getting anything in return. It will only trade them.
  
  
• Israel has escalated this so far that it can't just trade the prisoners without losing face. It also can't just give up its military action now, for the same reason.
  
  
• So we have a terrible deadlock. The possible outcomes I can see are:
  
  
  • Israeli victory: Israel manages to free its abducted soldiers, proclaims victory and withdraws. It seems highly unlikely that it will manage to do this. Even if it could locate the soldiers, it would be almost impossible to get them out alive.
    
    
  • Negotiated solution: Hezbollah releases one of the two captured Israeli soldiers unconditionally, and the other soldier is then traded. This is the only negotiated solution I can see because neither side would lose face too much. However, it is highly unlikely because Israel seems unable to really hurt Hezbollah enough to force it to make a gesture, and Iran has no reason to pressure it.
    
    
  • Israel reoccupies southern Lebanon, Hezbollah kills the soldiers, Israel takes revenge with a massive round of destruction to make sure Hezbollah won't feel like abducting more soldiers, then withdraws but keeps bombing Hezbollah for years to come.
    
    
  • Israel reoccupies southern Lebanon, Hezbollah holds on to its prisoners, and Israel remains bogged down in Lebanon just like it was from 1982 to 2000.
    
    
  • Israel does not reoccupy southern Lebanon. Instead it keeps up the current air campaign at a lower volume, and will make regular incursions into Lebanon to take out Hezbollah fighters. In short, southern Lebanon becomes just like Gaza, for years to come.
    
    
• I assume Israel will not want to occupy southern Lebanon again so my money is on the last option.
  
  
• I don't expect an international escalation. Lebanon is a sitting duck, uncapable to do anything. Syria will not fight a war with Israel with the American army in its back (in Iraq), even if Israel should bomb selected targets in Syria, which it may well do. Iran is biding its time and won't do anything anywhere (at least not openly) until it has nuclear weapons.
  
  
• In the long run, Iran will achieve its primary goal of becoming a nuclear power. It will also wait out the Americans in Iraq and take over that country as soon as the Americans are gone. Then Iran will become an active player in the region, and everything will change. The current crisis, and Israel's policies in general, will only increase the unity around the new regional power once it emerges.

A few weeks ago I asked a friend whether he thought Sigur Ros' dreamy music would be worth seeing live, and he said someone he knew had seen them live and been moved to tears by them. I thought this strange but decided to forego the simultaneous dEUS concert on Saturday evening to watch Sigur Ros in the marquee tent. I arrived 15' before the start and the tent was filled with fans who were already calling out the band loudly.

The concert started with the band behind a huge veil on which their enlarged silhouets were projected along with dreamy images. When the veil was lifted there turned out to be 14 people on stage, and about 30 instruments which they moved between during and between songs. While Sigur Ros sounds mostly electronic on recordings, they played everything live here, and it sounded fantastic. The singer, who effortlessly used his ultra-high voice throughout the concert, was playing violin on a rock guitar most of the time. There was also a string quartet, four trumpeteers, a drummer, another guitarist, a keyboard player, and various other instruments. Together they produced sounds that ranged from soft lounge to extreme noise. It was all unlike anything I'd heard before, but exactly what I've always wanted to hear: supremely beautiful noise. Some people fled in the beginning, after that only enthusiastic fans remained for a magical experience.


After Sigur Ros played the last song behind the veil again and disappeared from stage, the audience went into a collective frenzy and kept cheering non-stop for some 15 minutes without anyone leaving. The music had already brought out my emotions and now I got a lump in my throat because emotions shared by a thousand people are that much stronger. The band returned to stage to receive the ovation, disappeared again, had to come back again, and later a third time. The ovation didn't end until the crew started breaking up.

Muse surprised me on Friday with a fantastic concert on the main stage. I loved their first album years ago and saw them live back then, but I thought they'd become stale after that and didn't expect too much from this concert. How wrong I was, this band had both the sound and the songs to make the whole crowd enthusiastic, and were probably the biggest success of the festival.


Depeche Mode closed the festival on Sunday. They're one of my 10 favourite bands but this was the first time I saw them live. We got very close to the stage and had a great time. No other band has such a huge collection of great songs, and they played a fine selection that included my two favourite DM songs "In your room" and "World in my eyes". I also loved Martin Gore's almost-a-capella version of "Leave in Silence" and the turbo-paced version of "Photographic".


OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Tool makes the best music of our time, but even though it's metal it should be enjoyed in a small hall with maybe a 100 spectators, not on a large festival. Like the previous time I saw them, they played a technically perfect set without any surprises, and once again left me thinking that you could just as well listen to the CD at home.


Red Hot Chili Peppars were brilliant at times, especially when just jamming and when the guitarist sang the Bee Gees' "How deep is your love". The hits were also great, but when Flea starts slapping the guitar while Anthony Kiedis tries to rap, they're just plain bad in my opinion. Still, a great performance overall.

Black Eyed Peas were great. They look like a marketing creation, but they have some really good songs and they perform like a real band. In fact it's the first time I've seen a team of rappers work together well instead of drowning in chaos. Special credit goes to the female member Fergie, whose singing, dancing and attitude make the band. Of the many show-offs on this festival, her series of one-handed flips ('radslagen') while holding the mike in her other hand and continuing to sing flawlessly was easily the most impressive.

Editors played a very convincing set. Like Interpol and Bloc Party they're treading in the footsteps of Joy Division, and their performance convinced me they're doing it as good as those others. Great cover of the Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere" too.

Robert Plant singing "Whole lotta love" with his new band was as close to an actual Led Zeppelin concert as one could hope.


I also saw Deftones (okay), Manu Chao (not my thing), Kanye West (terrible), Sean Paul (bad), Vitalic (very good), Anouk (okay), The Who (pathetic), Arctic Monkeys (okay), Kaiser Chiefs (good), Franz Ferdinand (very good), Placebo (okay), dEUS' last song "Roses" (great), Eels (amusing), Starsailor (okay), Laurent Garnier (boring and pretentious) and Hooverphonic (dull).

The images are taken from Oor who have excellent write-ups (in Dutch) of the four days of the festival.

The new law is the work of a Democrat senator called Margarita Prentice, whose campaign contributors include (cfr. p75):

• Indian Gaming Assn Olympia Wa
• Nisqually Indian Tribe Olympia Wa
• Muckleshoot Indian Tribe Auburn Wa
• Chips Casino Llc Bremerton Wa
• Conf Tribes Of Colville Reservation Nespelem Wa
• Goldie's Shoreline Casino Shoreline Wa

That's right, Indian casinos. Which reminds me that the one thing I appreciate most about Belgian politics is that financial contributions from corporations were forbidden a few years ago. Imagine how different the USA, and hence the world, would be if they had the same law.

Meanwhile, every afternoon and every night for months now two Belgian TV channels have been showing a guess-the-word game that everyone knows is fake and costs naive people 100s or 1000s of euros, and nothing is done against that. How backwards this country can be :(

Coincidentally, I'm having a poker night with some friends tomorrow. Obviously we're all leading a life of crime, hopefully the police will come and stop us before we spin out of control!