The best books I read in 2011

I read what for me was an average number of books in 2011–not the more-than-a-book-a-week pace I tried to maintain during what I now think of as my “reading years”–the first half of the last decade–but something in the low 30s.

I’m able to produce a list of 33 books that I know I read in 2011, compiled by looking at my eReader and notes I kept about books I checked out of the library. I could easily have missed a couple, but I doubt that I’ve overlooked more than that. I’m not counting technical books because, though I can think of at least two I read from cover to cover, for the most part I was reading a chapter here and a chapter there.

I see that this year I read twice as much fiction as non-fiction, so I’ll single out two novels and one non-fiction book as my “Best Books of the Year”.

The best new novel I read in 2011 was Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won over Great House by Nicole Krauss by the narrowest of margins. Both of these books jumped around in time, with chapters centering on characters or events that were tangential to one another, and both required thought after I had put them down–there were puzzle pieces to put together once you had the whole book in mind. In the case of Goon Squad, the puzzle was the meaning of the title, which on review brought into relief the central theme of the book, the ravages of time. Krauss tried to do something similar with her title, but not quite so successfully. The puzzle in that case was more in working out the plot, in particular unmasking the misrepresentations of the first-person narrators in the various chapters. Great House was more opaque and might stand up better than the Egan on second reading, so maybe some of my satisfaction with Goon Squad was a stonger feeling that I “got” the book. (After finishing Great House I attending a reading by Krauss. The impression she left was that the opacity wasn’t particularly planned but was rather the way the book wrote itself.)

The book I most enjoyed reading and had the most trouble putting down was Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding. Maybe in ascribing “best” to the other novels, I am over-compensating for the centrality of baseball in this novel. But all the same, Fielding is a great read for fan (like me) and non-fan. Only three of the five main characters are ballplayers (and one is gay), and a central subplot has nothing to do with baseball. Still, the resolution of the various subplots is surprising–and surprisingly satisfying.

My non-fiction winner was James Gleick’s The Information. (Runner-up was Saul Bellow’s Letters). I hesitated to read Gleick’s book because the first mentions I saw centered on Ada Lovelace, whose story has been told so many times before that I didn’t think I’d be interested. Before reading this book, I was aware of the importance of “information” culturally and ontologically, but there was so much that I was previously unaware of. Over and over in the reading, I came upon summary sentences that gave me a chill, they brought things together so clearly or highlighted the importance of one point or the other. I saw someone comment on-line that this was the most important book he had ever read. I could argue this point myself, for I am in agreement that “information” brings a clarity to what we know about history, humanity, and the universe, no small matters.

The adventure ends

Earlier this week, I ended my travels for 2008 and returned to South Florida.

When I first planned the trip, I left it open-ended on purpose. From the beginning of my 2007 trip, I had felt pressed for time. I didn’t want that to happen again. This year I felt free to do whatever I wanted for as long as I wanted, and I think that added to my enjoyment.

There wasn’t a single reason that I decided during the last week in November that it was about time to wrap things up. After Machu Picchu, I felt that I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. After my long bus trip to Santiago de Chile (and more than 2500 miles on various buses over nine weeks), I wasn’t looking forward to any more land travel. As much as I enjoyed all of the interesting food I consumed in Ecuador and Peru, I could feel the damage that had been done to my digestive processes. And certain events at home made me anxious about what I would find when I returned.

I had been watching airfares during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, targeting that week for my return. One morning last week, the reasonable fares I had been seeing disappeared, which forced me to expand my search. Once price became a factor, it was clear that the earlier in December I came back, the better.

My return half of my round-trip ticket on American was from Quito. Originally I had thought I would retrace my steps from the south to the Equator and fly back from there. I researched one-way tickets from Chile to Ecuador and found that they were more expensive than one-way tickets from Chile to Florida. So I jumped for a two-stop itinerary through Lima and Costa Rica on TACA, which on December 1 cost about one-half the round-trip cost between Santiago and Miami.

My flight from Santiago through Lima to San Jose, Costa Rica was routine and on-time. I was scheduled for a five-plus hour layover in San Jose, which seemed like an ordeal. Once it was over, I would be just three hours from Miami.

The weather in San Jose was good shortly after noon when I arrived, but clouds and rain moved in over the course of the next few hours. By four it was getting a little foggy, but the rain was intermittent, and I didn’t think much of it. Planes taking off disappeared in the mist just a few feet off the ground, but they were still taking off. By five, it was clear that no planes were taking off or landing.

Very little official information was available in the airport about what was going on, but in the waiting rooms, we shared what we were able to glean. Apparently several planes had been diverted to Nicaragua and El Salvador, and others weren’t going to depart from their distant originating cities until the airport was open again.

At nine in the evening, the airport opened again. American announced that its incoming plane wasn’t going to arrive until the morning, so its flight to Florida would be departing at 9:45 in the morning. Passengers were free to stay in the airport overnight as American would do nothing for them except provide a snack. My airline, TACA, said that it was going to try to get its diverted flights to San Jose in the next few hours. Decisions about departing flights would be made depending on the number that actually arrived.

San Jose is a TACA hub, so most of the passengers who would be taking my Miami flight were scheduled to arrive on the six or eight diverted flights. About an hour later, TACA flights started arriving, and gates were allocated to its outgoing flights. The possibility that I would actually make it to Miami started looking real when a gate was announced for that flight.

A couple of hours passed while we waited in the gate area for a plane to arrive. At about 11 p.m. Miami time, an announcement was made that directed us to another gate, but there was no plane there either. An hour or so later, an airplane did appear at our gate, and we boarded shortly thereafter. A little over three hours later, we were in Miami.

What I’ve spent

As of today, I’ve been out of the states for exactly ten weeks. One way I know this is that I backed up my laptop onto an external hard drive that’s still in Florida on the morning I left. Every morning now, a window pops up that reminds me that I haven’t backed up my computer in however-many days. Today it said 69; tomorrow it will say 70. (Just so nobody out there worries about the security of my data, let me hasten to add that I have an eight-gigabyte thumb drive with me that I’m using for incremental backups in the meantime).

I’ve been very lax about money. If you’d asked me this morning how much I’ve spent in ten weeks, I would have had no idea. This afternoon, I figured it all out. In the ten weeks, I’ve spent a bit more than $4000 on the adventures you’ve read about here, or a little less than $60 dollars a day. And that includes $300 for the camera I bought the first week to replace the one I stupidly lost, but it doesn’t include a my airfare from Florida to South America or back (I used air miles) nor the travel/health insurance I paid for before my trip.

The conclusion I draw is that for a bit more than $20,000 a year, I could go on living like this until I went completely broke. But I’m not going to do that. For one thing, after covering something like 2500 miles on the ground (2350 miles point-to-point from Quito to Santiago), I’m about do some flying. Stay tuned.

Crossing into Chile

Regular readers of ¨Where´s Jim?¨ might have noted a bit of uncertainty in my note from yesterday. Something made me write ¨ïf all goes well¨ when writing about crossing the border into Chile.

As it turned out, I am now in Chile and I did end up taking an all night-bus to Antofagasta, though it wasn´t the bus I intended to take. And the trouble came from an absolutely unexpected direction.

My guidebook described the process of getting across the border when traveling by bus. There would be people in the bus station who represented colectivos (private cabs that would wait until they were full to leave the station). They would be seeking out international passengers and would take us in hand and guide us through the process.

There were two other Americans on my bus whom I had talked to at a mid-trip customs stop. We compared notes on the process, and it seemed like we knew what to expect.

Sure enough, when we got off the bus, there was somebody right at the gate shouting ¨colectivo.¨ He looked a little shady, but after being in Peru for a while, I didn´t much mind that. He certainly was assertive.

I said I wanted to get to a bathroom right away, so he ordered the other two Americans to stay put and said that we would be back. He took me to one bathroom, which was apparently in use, and then guided me into the further regions of the bus station, where sure enough there was another bathroom that was satisfactory.

This distant part of the bus station was somewhat Fellini-esque. It almost seemed like a refugee camp or something. There were dozens of people sitting around on the floor with lots of packed belongings around them. I never found out what that was all about. The surroundings were dull, dark and dirty.

My helper had also found out from me that I intended to catch a bus in Arica (Chile) but didn´t have a ticket. In the midst of this squalor, there was an office for Pullman Bus, one of the two main lines in Chile, and he led me into it. Fortunately, as it turned out, the woman there couldn´t sell me a ticket as the power was apparently out in this part of the building.

I said that this was just as well. I didn´t have many Peruvian soles left and intended to buy my ticket once I had used an ATM in Arica to get Chilean pesos. MY helper told me that it was necessary to buy my ticket in Peru as there was some sort of a strike in Chile. This sounded just like the kind of lie that bus-station touts are known for telling in South America, so I said that I wasn´t sure about the bus and that I would wait until crossing the border to decide. But my faith in my helper was starting to wane.

At this point, he offered me ¨private service¨ for $100. Originally, he had said that getting to Arica would cost 30 soles, or $10, which was a little higher than my guidebook had said it should be, but wouldn´t have been the first time that the guidebook´s prices were lower than the actual prices turned out to be (like the $43 tourist ticket in Cusco that was supposed to cost $21).

I said that I didn´t want private service, that I just wanted a colectivo to the border and then to get on to Arica. It was two in the afternoon, and my evening bus wasn´t until 9:30, so I thought I had plenty of time.

I had had a small breakfast at the bus station in Arequipa, but I was getting a bit hungry. My helper asked me if I wanted to grab something to eat while he gathered up some more passengers. (He also said something about ¨making a call.¨)

I ordered a plate of chicken fried rice, which is very popular in Peru, where it is called chifa. I got a heaping plate, even larger than I expected, but I had no trouble eating it all.

I was thinking about ditching my helper while he was away, but just as I was finishing, he returned. He asked me about changing my remaining Peruvian money. I had less than $20 that I wasn´t expecting to need, but I thought I would change it in Chile. He insisted that I would get a better rate here, so I let his friend, who was working from a card table in a courtyard near the restaurant, change it into pesos for me. I´m still not sure about the rate I got, but it was close to right and at least I had a little Chilean money in my pocket, which was good.

At this point, we finally arrived at the place where the colectivos were, and my helper turned me over to the actual driver. He said that he wanted 10 soles (or about $3) for his services and a tip, so I gave him the 10 soles but told him that that was all I had aside from the money for the colectivo. I caught an expression from the colectivo driver that made me think I had been taken, but I have to say that my helper did guide me through an area that I would have been unsure in, so I don´t really mind the $3.

I thought I was in good shape. When I got in the colectivo, there were already four people in it, so I didn´t have to wait for it to fill up. The sign in the window said it would cost 15 soles to reach the border, so I was okay with money. And I seemed to be okay with time.

It took about 20 minutes to reach the border. While we were riding in the windy car, we filled out our customs declarations, and I filled out my tourist visa application.

First came the Peruvian border station, where I got my passport stamped and handed in the little document I had been given upon entering the country. Except for the officials, the Peruvian station was empty. Our processing there was a breeze. Then we got back in the colectivo and drove to the Chilean station. Here, there were scores of people just standing and sitting around.

The colectivo driver guided us to the window where we would get our passport stamped and tourist visa validated. There was no line; in fact, there were about six workers sitting behind windows waiting for customers. Then we were told to go stand in line behind the scores of people standing and sitting around, who it turned out were indeed in a queue winding around the area in front of the station.

I saw the other Americans about 10 places in front of me in line. They hadn´t really ditched our helper, but had just been guided to a earlier colectivo while I was having my lunch. They said they had asked someone in the colectivo office about him and had been told that he was legit. I didn´t tell them that I thought I had been taken for a couple of dollars in the process.

We also talked about our situation. They said that they had been in the line for 30 minutes and that it hadn´t moved at all. There were some signs taped to the border station that made it clear that the customs workers were protesting their salaries by staging a work slowdown.

After about 30 minutes, there was a sign that the line was going to move and everybody got excited, but it turned out that maybe only a person or so had gotten processed, so we went back to waiting. I figured that there were about 200 people ahead of me in line.

After I had been standing more or less still for about 45 minutes, I noticed near the front of the line the woman from Berlin who had joined Julia and me for dinner last weekin Cusco. A short while later, she looked my way, I signaled, and she asked her friends to hold her place in line while she came over to visit with me. (This is the kind of thing that happens all of the time on the gringo trail. I can´t believe the number of times I´ve run into people over and over again.)

Julia´s German friend said she had been standing in line for about six hours, that earlier they had been processing 5 people an hour, but that during the hour before the false alarm, no one been processed at all. Now it looked like the line was moving again, but very slowly.

I had arrived at the border at about two in the afternoon Peruvian time, but it turns out that Chile is two hours ahead of Peru at this time of year, so it was actually about four local time when I got in line. My German friend was far enough along so it seemed likely she would get to cross in the next couple of hours, but at the rate the line was moving, it seemed possible that I would be there when the border crossing closed at midnight. That would leave me in a weird indeterminate state–definitely not in Peru, with my passport stamped for Chile, but not really in the country yet.

Overall, the crowd at the border was patient and resigned. I was glad that I had had a big lunch. I wouldn´t have to worry about being hungry if I was stuck at the border all night.

We crept forward, a little bit at a time. Gradually, the line did pick up a little speed. But counting people and checking the time, I determined a while later that we were advancing at the rate of about 30 people an hour, which would make it likely that I would be through before midnight.

The processing speed must have continued to increase, because just four hours later, I was standing near the doorway about to have my bags checked. At this point, two well-dressed men without bags approached the door and demanded to be let through without standing in line. They started arguing with the customs officials, then with a policeman who came up when he noticed the fracas. The policeman called for backup, and a few minutes later, a couple of more imposing officers joined the discussion. At this point, the well-dressed men decided that they had better stand in line, and the standoff ended peacefully, though it cost all of us still in line another ten minutes while nobody got processed.

It was just after nine Chilean time when I boarded the rickety bus on the Chilean side of the border for the final leg of the trip into Arica. I saw people paying in Us and Peruvian currency on the bus, but it was a hassle to do so, so I was glad that I had a little bit of Chilean money.

I got to the Arica bus station too late for the 9:30 bus to Antofagasta that I was planning to take, so I was glad I hadn´t already bought my ticket, but there was a less luxurious bus scheduled for 10:00 that I was in time for. Fortunately, this later bus was empty enough that I didn´t have anybody sitting next to me, so I was almost as comfortable on it as I would have been on the luxury one.

Except for a 4:30 a.m. customs stop, where we were made to get off the bus, collect our luggage from the compartment below the seats, and talk to security people in the cold, it was a pleasant trip, and I arrived in Antofagasta rested and ready to explore the city. My five hours standing in line ended up just filling time I would have had to fill in any case.

Funeral towers near Puno

In covering the area around Puno, my guidebook mentioned pre-Columbian funeral towers (or chullpas) near the village of Sillustani. It said that the best way to get to them was with an organized tour, which I learned was surprisingly inexpensive. At the front desk of my hotel, I signed up for a Friday afternoon tour before I went out to investigate the waterfront. The cost of joining a bus trip with English-speaking guide for the afternoon was 20 soles, the same amount I had donated to look around the restored steamship.

The weather was warm in Puno, apparently the effect of being on such a large body of water. In preparing for the trip to the towers, I put on my intermediate fleece pullover, but didn’t think to bring anything else. When I boarded the tour bus in front of my hotel, I noticed that most of the other ten or so tourists had brought their packs, but I didn’t see any need and was content to carry my camera. I thought at the time that I should have brought my rain jacket, but I didn’t anticipate being cold. One of the other tourists was wearing shorts.

It took a little less than an hour to get to Sullustani, which lies at a slightly higher elevation than Puno. When we got to the site, it was sprinkling a little, but the real problem was the wind and the cold. I turned up my collar and soldiered on, my only consolation that the other tourists were almost as cold as I was.

The archaeological site was incredible. I wish I had been able to concentrate more on getting a representative photo, but my mind was on listening to our guide and on keeping warm.

Scattered around a large hill were a dozen or so broken-down towers, which the Colla tribe had constructed as tombs for their rulers. The towers ranged from about 20 to 40 feet in height and were about 20 feet in diameter. Our guide explained that the Colla had always used circular tombs, but that these had evolved from holes in the ground through tombs that protruded from the surface to these elaborate towers. Late in the pre-Columbian period, Inca masonry techniques had come into use, so the latest towers are obviously Inca structures. The most amazing thing about these later towers, aside from the perfection and size of the stones, is that they are narrower at the bottom than at the top. Here are three photos I did manage to take:

Our guide explained that the damage to the towers was caused by lightning strikes. To prevent further damage, there are lightning rods stationed around the ruins.

As everybody was obviously cold, our guide rushed us through the tour. He determined that except for one person, we could all follow his explanations in Spanish. The person who couldn’t follow said that her friend could translate, so we were spared having to listing to the same explanation twice. It was a shame, because our guide had a lot of knowledge he was excited to share with us. Plus, his English was excellent.

On the way back to Puno, we stopped at a current Colla house for a tour. Here is the house, which was typical of the structures we passed approaching Sillustani.

Like my fellow tourists, I was a little uncomfortable with this part of the tour, but consoled myself that this was what these people did for a living. The standard of living of this family was a little higher than what I saw near Cusco, but they were living without electricity on the altiplano, in the wind and the cold. We looked at the bedroom and kitchen (here the guinea pigs were outdoors), were served mint tea, cheese, homemade corn chips and potatoes, saw demonstrations of weaving and grinding grain, and were given a chance to buy handicrafts. I tipped the woman as we left, but in effect this decreased the eventual tip that I gave the guide, because I only had so much change and so many small bills. As we left, we were swarmed with begging children. And as we drove away, we saw the woman and children counting their take as they waved good-bye.

I was wavering about whether to visit the islands near Puno the next morning, and this visit entered into my decision not to go. I was interested in seeing floating islands, but I wasn’t so interested in the display of native life that would go along with them. But even with the cold and wind, the funeral towers were amazing.