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Before I bombarded myself with work:  Trains!

What is it with boys and fast toys? You can’t comb its hair, you can’t put dolls in it…it just goes round and round and you dont even get to ride it..well you can, but it probably wont run any more.  Much like the time daddy got me a flying toy airplane when I was 4. I thought it if I sat on it, it would fly me to my dad who was out of the country at the time…I sat on it….it flew no more…sigh.

Subtle juxtapositions always makes me smile. I wanted to post up this little guy since I probably won’t be able to finish him on time for MA’s deadline. Booness. Sorry kid. Ill get back to you as soon as I can.

What is it with boys and fast toys? You can’t comb its hair, you can’t put dolls in it to live in…it just goes round and round and you dont even get to ride it..well you can, but it probably wont run any more. Much like the time daddy got me a flying toy airplane when I was 4. I thought it if I sat on it, it would fly me to my dad who was out of the country at the time…I sat on it….it flew no more…sigh.

Nina Mata @ www.beautifique.org/blog

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Megan Branch, Intern

In his new book, The Andes: A Cultural History, Latin American Literature professor Jason Wilson looks at the dramatic influence The Andes have had on South American history and on literature from all over the world. Since we’re nearing the end of travel season, I’ve excerpted a passage below about the uniqueness of rail travel in the Andes—including altitudes that tend to make most people sick.

Crossing the Andes has always meant building bridges, roads and, more recently, railways. In 1934 a recently-married Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, a naturalist and prolific publicist of Latin America, reached Ecuador by boat to visit Chimborazo and the Galapagos Islands. Before the railways had been built from the tropical disease-ridden coast at Durán, across the river from Guayaquil, to Quito 290 miles away, the journey on horseback had taken eight days. Then the American Harman brothers (Archer and John) built their track, switchbacking up the Nariz del Diablo after the Chan Chan river gorge. Work had begun in 1897 and was completed in 1908 in what was a great feat of railway engineering (until suspended in 1983 and again in 1998). It climbed 10,626 feet in fifty miles and reached a pass at 11,841 feet, which von Hagen likened to the tundra in its bleakness, before descending to the Quito plateau. Theroux had wanted to ride this train, but it was overbooked.

Another railway engineering feat is the pass at Ticlio, on the line from Lima to Tarma in Peru, the highest railway pass in the world built above the Rimac gorge by the “indefatigable” and “unscrupulous” New York-born Henry Meiggs (actually at 15,865 feet). According to Wright, over 7,000 Andean and Chinese labourers died building a railway that has 66 tunnels, 59 bridges and 22 switchbacks. You can ask for oxygen masks on the train that now runs from Arequipa to Puno on Lake Titicaca, where the station of Crucero Alto is 14,688 feet high. The 1925 South American Handbook warned that soroche or mountain sickness was “usually the penalty of constipation”. Paul Theroux felt dizzy and sweated up this line, and the “astonishing” beauty of the landscape from the train window was ruined. Then a molar ached. He later learned that blocked air in a filling creates pressure on the nerve: “it is agony,” he wrote. The passengers started vomiting, until balloons filled with oxygen were handed around before they passed through the highest railway tunnel in the world. As a train enthusiast, Theroux marveled at the engineering, supervised by Meiggs between 1870 and 1877 the year he died, but surveyed by a Peruvian called Ernesto Malinowski. There is a Mount Meiggs near Ticlio.

Another gringo, Dr. Renwick, took a train from Arequipa to Cuzco, spotting the extinct volcano of Vilcanto at 17,000 feet, “one of the best known in all Peru”, and nearby Ausangate, towering over all others at 20,000 feet and visible a hundred miles away. He acutely remarked that Peruvians were so accustomed to these mountain giants seen from the train that they hardly noticed a peak like Huascarán, which “anywhere else would fill the mind with astonishment.” He is still right.

The world itself has become hectic and life a fast-forward motion picture.  Wherever one goes, everything must be done speedily.  This is because nowadays, almost in all families, both parents go to work, departing early and arriving late.  The indoors work is thus kept pending.  Beforehand, the speed of life was not so emphasized upon.  Only the husband was the bread-winner and so the housewife had all the time to cook, clean and complete the household chores.  Today, the parents, after a hard day’s work, must speed up and prepare something to eat for their children.  People, therefore, have to follow the new trend and adjust to a new lifestyle.

Image via Wikipedia

The on-the-move lifestyle includes the eating of fast food among others.  But even if “fast food” as we call it, people do not have time to eat a rounder properly; they either gulp it behind the driving wheel or eat it watching the television at the same time.  To speed themselves up and save time, people make use of sophisticated machines such as microwaves to cook food quickly, portable computers to complete office work….  After a speedy week, to supposedly relax themselves, people listen to music now – quick, hasty music.  It is the hard rock and technos.  This music is a great contrast to the old ones that were the real relaxing music.

These small factors contribute to big inventions, speeding the transport rate.  Long ago, there were ox carts and slow trains as means of transport.  With the evolution of science and technology and due to the speed revolution, buses, cars, motorcycles, aeroplanes as well as super-jet trains travelling at two hundred kilometres per hour were introduced.  Their need of fast transport then was satisfied.  As their burden of work grew heavier, the need of a quick means of communication was also felt.

Scientists and inventors put their heads together.  To support the level of speed of life and promote development, they abolished the hand-over of letters on horse-backs and established the links between one place and the whole world.  Speed developed the fax, email methods.  Through speed, the distance between the countries of the world is now lessened and so this helps the economic development of countries.

Speed may prove to be dangerous also.  The speed of a car, an aeroplane, a ship can endanger the lives of many people, if not properly controlled.  Cases of accidents where people had died are numerous.  For instance, the well-known ship “Titanic” sank as a result of sailing at full speed and thus inevitably crash into an iceberg.  How rightly has one stated that “haste makes waste”.

Image via Wikipedia

The world itself has become hectic and life a fast-forward motion picture.  Wherever one goes, everything must be done speedily.  This is because nowadays, almost in all families, both parents go to work, departing early and arriving late.  The indoors work is thus kept pending.  Beforehand, the speed of life was not so emphasized upon.  Only the husband was the bread-winner and so the housewife had all the time to cook, clean and complete the household chores.  Today, the parents, after a hard day’s work, must speed up and prepare something to eat for their children.  People, therefore, have to follow the new trend and adjust to a new lifestyle.

Image via Wikipedia

The on-the-move lifestyle includes the eating of fast food among others.  But even if “fast food” as we call it, people do not have time to eat a rounder properly; they either gulp it behind the driving wheel or eat it watching the television at the same time.  To speed themselves up and save time, people make use of sophisticated machines such as microwaves to cook food quickly, portable computers to complete office work….  After a speedy week, to supposedly relax themselves, people listen to music now – quick, hasty music.  It is the hard rock and technos.  This music is a great contrast to the old ones that were the real relaxing music.

These small factors contribute to big inventions, speeding the transport rate.  Long ago, there were ox carts and slow trains as means of transport.  With the evolution of science and technology and due to the speed revolution, buses, cars, motorcycles, aeroplanes as well as super-jet trains travelling at two hundred kilometres per hour were introduced.  Their need of fast transport then was satisfied.  As their burden of work grew heavier, the need of a quick means of communication was also felt.

Scientists and inventors put their heads together.  To support the level of speed of life and promote development, they abolished the hand-over of letters on horse-backs and established the links between one place and the whole world.  Speed developed the fax, email methods.  Through speed, the distance between the countries of the world is now lessened and so this helps the economic development of countries.

Speed may prove to be dangerous also.  The speed of a car, an aeroplane, a ship can endanger the lives of many people, if not properly controlled.  Cases of accidents where people had died are numerous.  For instance, the well-known ship “Titanic” sank as a result of sailing at full speed and thus inevitably crash into an iceberg.  How rightly has one stated that “haste makes waste”.

Image via Wikipedia

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