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Diary Acesta este jurnalul lui Jan. Pentru a primi o copie prin mail inregistreaza-te pe formularul de contact. Momentan jurnalul este numai in engleza, catalana si spaniola.
‹ Previous (17/09/2010) LUNA Next (2010-11-16)› ‹ Previous (2010-10-03 - US) TARA Next (2010-10-26 - US)› Canada Halifax, NS (see on map) 20/10/2010:
We slept near Matane, where we landed, under a fine rain that never stopped falling overnight. The next day, seeing that the weather did not improve, I was about to change the itinerary and not drive the 400 miles around the Gaspe Peninsula. But after a while connecting to the Internet and to consult an optimistic prediction of the time,I decided to risk it. And definitely worth it, because at night (after stopping a few hours shopping, cooking and eating) we visited Forillon National Park, which offered us a fantastic view of the rocky headland that stretched beyond. Tuesday I went down to take some photos on the beach and the next morning I made a few more for a nice hike to a lookout at the top of the cliffs, with magnificent views out to Forillon. Later we continued our journey along the Gaspe Peninsula, stopping at the charming town of Perce, before which stood a majestic rock surrounded by the sea. And finally slept out of the Gaspé peninsula, near where a guy of Couchsurfing lived, who had offered the accommodation but had provided a phone number that did not work. Alexandra told me that she was OK, because she was tired of meeting people and having to interact, cooking, ... Anyway, if we were traveling and sleeping in the van, Alexandra also complained it was too cold to cook for lunch or morning coffee was not hot. As for me, I was fine to meet with fewer people, but we needed to take a shower in the coming days and would be good if we were staying with someone. The next day we went back to connect to the Internet and studied far as we could get the following days, finally deciding not to get closer to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia and visit only the city of Halifax, where we asked for accommodation through Couchsurfing. It was a shame not to visit Cape Breton recommended by many of our friends, but we were constrained by the date of entry into the United States and did not want to make too many miles in a hurry. Within days, on October 25 and we would have gotten a month in Canada, the minimum time to be able to obtain a new visa to U.S. for six months. Anyway, if they refused to give us this visa extension, we still had chances to extend the previous six months visa if we requested before 26 October. So, necessarily we had to cross the border on day 25. On the way to visit Halifax we went to Kouchibouguac National Park, where we spent the night in spite of seeing a pair of black bears in the evening. The next day we took a short walk in the park, walking along a footbridge over wetlands to the beach, but marred by the wind and cold. Leaving the park we were pleased to connect to Internet and read that a man offered to lodge us in Halifax, where we could finally take a shower after 6 nights camping. Maybe it was one of the times i had spent more without taking a shower in my life and although it was cold and if we had not been lodged, I knew that that night would make an exception and sleep in a hotel.
Wayne was another excellent host, but also somehow special. He received us in a bathrobe in a house full of books, boxes and junk everywhere. Then he explained that he was a retired Canadian military and in recent years had been doing business selling books and stuff in second hand markets, but had left and had not yet gotten rid of products that had piled up in order to sell . A little later we began to sense what his two true passions were: the occult, numerology applied to Alexandra, and sex, conforming only to tell different stories about sadomasochism group which met every Saturday in Halifax. In any case, leaving aside the hundreds of books on esotericism in the shelves and numerous vibrators, clamps and wives who had abandoned everywhere, Wayne was an interesting guy, funny and hospitable. While Alexandra was resting and washing clothes, on Thursday, Wayne took me to Halifax to tour, drawing a card that had to park in the reserved parking for disabled people. During the tour, Wayne explained some hilarious anecdotes from the military, interspersed with different episodes in the history of Halifax, a city affected by many calamities. One of the first places I took was the Needham Ford memorial dedicated to the 2000 deaths of the largest pre-atomic explosion in human history, was raised during the First World War in 1917, when two ships carrying ammunition and TNT collided in the natural harbor of Halifax. Five years earlier, in 1912 another catastrophe had occurred relatively close to Nova Scotia when the great ship Titanic struck an iceberg and sank. Many of the recovered bodies of victims were transported and buried in the cemetery in Halifax, visited by dozens of tourist buses a day during the years following the screening of the film Titanic. We also visited the citadel built by the British in the nineteenth century, where it enjoyed a beautiful view of the city, which gave me the feeling that did not have much more to offer. Anyway, the next day I returned to downtown Halifax with Alexandra to find out if the city was really interesting to visit, but after surviving the cold temperatures returning to downtown walking tour and a free shuttle bus, we decided to leave the city disappointed. We went to visit Peggy´s Cove, a fishing village southwest of Halifax, really worth visiting. Despite the cold wind blowing as soon as we climbed the road behind the town towards the lighthouse, the view made me stop the car in the middle of the road and went to take pictures of the little lighthouse, the raging sea and the dramatic clouds that gave the final touch.
During these first months of this two-year journey across America, while driving, many times Alex and I have been talking about how our life will settle in Catalonia, after a total of six years traveling. It is after these conversations that inevitably I have the feeling that this last leg of the trip is ending long before it reaches its end. In part, I guess these thoughts are due to excessive passivity of the American trip, without excitement or culture shock. Perhaps the only thing so far had managed to stop our breath had been the natural wonders that we reserved the continent, as would be the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park. So far in Canada there had been nothing that we would have greatly surprised at, but without knowing it, the last two days we expect other stealthy natural wonder in the North West of Halifax, in the Bay of Fundy, which expires in and out daily with two tides about 115 billion tons or cubic meters of water. Different people in Canada had recommended us to go to see the tides in the Bay of Fundy, the highest tides in the world, but until we approached and started to read some data, I did not think that would be so amazing to watch. But really they were. According to oceanographers, the time it takes a large wave to travel the entire length of the Bay of Fundy (290 kilometers) is almost the same time a period of the tide (decrease and increase). This agreement establishes a resonance frequency at the end of the bay causes abnormal tidal heights. Specifically, twice a day get 17-meter difference between the lowest and highest tide, completely extraordinary if we consider that the maximum slopes of the tides in the world does not exceed 2 meters. Following a recommendation of Wayne, we went to see these spectacular tides in Halls Harbor. In the morning, upon awakening, the tide was low and I could walk among the few ships in the small port that lay on the ground, while the sea wave was smacking away from the pier. But by midday, the show was completely different, the water had risen about 9 meters in the morning and the boats bobbing on the wild, while the sea was firmly snapping the waves against the breakwater, making the water jump on these . The contrast of these two perspectives, separated by only six hours was fantastic, almost supernatural. Dazzled by the sight, in the afternoon I drove excited to the north side of the Bay of Fundy, where Ewa from Toronto had recommended us to observe the tidal force from Cape Hopewell. And indeed, the magic was repeated the next day. Early in the morning the water had been withdrawn and had exposed a large area of land and mysterious rocks eroded by tidal action. I walked along the beach that had been submerged during the night and I spent some time walking between large algae clapas trails and discovering hidden among the rocks. A few hours later, I returned at noon and could not help but go back to wonder why the water had risen to 10 meters and only showed the top of the rocks and had covered a huge expanse of bare earth. Arcadia National Park (see on map) 26/10/2010:
We had just crossed the border between Canada and the United States, and Alexandra began to shout for joy. She had previously spent some sleepless nights stressed and fearing that we would have problems. In fact, the only problem that we could have was that the border officials would not want to extend the visa for six months more. But I was convinced we could persuade the police that we were just tourists and had no intention of staying permanently in the U.S.A. And indeed, the officers did not put problems in renewing our visas. I tried to share with the same intensity, the joy of Alexandra but I could not avoid the reproach that it had been useless suffering for no reason so many nights. The second day in America we visited Arcadia National Park and slept in one of its deserted parks. But the next morning came a Ranger willing to give us a $ 100 fine for having stayed in the national park, something that is illegal. Fortunately, when I got my international driving permit out he said that it would be too complicated to get the fine and warned us not to return to camp in a natural park because he had entered my name into the system and the next time there would be no leniency. Shortly after the Ranger´s visit, we started ascending with the car to the Cadillac Mountain in the center of the park, where we could enjoy some amazing views of the peninsula half covered with fog and clouds. Then, we went to Sand Beach, where I intended to climb a small track to the summit of the peak Beehive, but the rock was wet and slippery enough and I decided to go back. I did not want to risk breaking a leg and consequently have to temporarily abandon the trip. In the afternoon we started driving to the small town of Castine, that we intended to visit the next day. But during the night and all morning it was raining and we had no choice but to drive up to Portland without visiting Castine, nor Augusta, the capital of the state of Maine.
Portland is the largest city in Maine, where we finally could take shelter from the rain in a cozy house where we were hosted by John, another man of couchsurfing. John proved to be a retired man with dreams of traveling and he had a passionate life. Among many anecdotes, he told us how he was lost for 10 days through the forests and mountains of Alaska and by luck found an inhabited hut. Each morning listening to radio news, he often expressed concern about the radicalization of political opinions in the United States, as they approached the next election to the Senate. For example, many Republicans were trying to instill radios to their electorate that Obama is a radical Muslim and who is not even American. But more worrying was that the Fox network, with host Rush Limbaugh to the head, tried to convince his listeners that the earth was not experiencing global warming. And many have already been convinced, including brothers and sisters of John, who did not want to check the information that came and finally replied that there were too many different opinions, it was difficult to draw any clear conclusion. According to John, this thought would be disastrous for future generations, but also for the American economy as well as in the past the U.S. industry had been producing cutting-edge cars and computers later, at this stage should focus on green technology to return and generate employment. In the same line when i interviewed John, taking the pulse of the world: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4yiWnddguM), he said that the main problem of the world was global warming that will dramatically affect the entire planet , and we should solve the problem together, taking each country will be affected by the problem. The main problem in America is the Republican Party, which can destroy the country, so he tries to help in the solution by voting in all elections. On a personal level, John is more or less happy, but he would be better with a different attitude, basically using his secret of happiness, being happy with what you have, not what you want. The day after our arrival in Portland I grabbed a bike and pedaled to the center of the city, with some older buildings constructed with bricks but not too attractive. I was taking a few steps around the port and by different cobblestone streets to convince myself that Portland was like most North American cities, with almost nothing interesting to offer. I came home a little disappointed and convinced that my views of American cities would not improve in the future. At that moment I remembered the comments of some of our friends in California, who thought we were devoting too many months to tour the United States, and I began to give them reason. I wanted to start the visit to Latin America, a land more rich in history and cultural contrasts. Anyway we still have about 8,000 or 10,000 miles and we still expect other U.S. regions and cities that could surprise us, as could be New York, Miami or New Orleans.
For some weeks, from Canada, i had scheduled our next visit to the United States and I had realized that we would be on October 31 in Salem, a famous city in 1692 where they had prosecuted several persons accused of witchcraft, as currently defined a city haunted or enchanted. This property qualified Salem as the ideal place to celebrate the pagan festival of Halloween (or All Saints). I wrote from time to Couchsurfing and one of the members answered to my hosting request. And surely was a wise decision, because little later I read an article that defined Salem as the best city in the world where you can celebrate Halloween. Similarly, hundreds of drivers had blocked on Saturday October 30th morning all entrances to the city. Fortunately, despite the chaos, we had booked Darrels free parking and we were able to discover the city with him and his girlfriend Michelle, both eager to party. On the street there are enough people in costume, scary or just dresses funny, like a carnival, although unlike the carnival in my town (Torello) there were fewer people wearing costumes. There were also many Japanese in disguise and intrigued by the festival and many other groups of tourists visiting the many haunted houses and other places categorized as the most terrifying of the United States. However, there was something that surprised me more than people in disguise. On several corners there were Christian preachers (some of them Catholics) with banners or microphones and speakers , accusing the gay of worshiping the devil and inviting listeners to follow the path of Jesus. Fortunately, the youth in costumes did not pay attention to the preachers or simply kept listening and laughing is their face. The second day out we returned to Salem in disguise but on the way back home I was listening to one of those preachers and i took pictures. I was so fascinated by the nonsense that they were saying (for example, ´Before I was a homosexual but Jesus saved me and I´m cured´) that i could not help but take pictures to immortalize those moments. But at one point the man confronted me and asked me: Although i really enjoyed the Halloween party in Salem I had a feeling of grief, as a preacher reminded me that in that same town, the year 1692 and 1693 some like-minded religious zealots managed to accuse 150 people of witchcraft , getting them hanged or stoned about 20 of them. Tourists visiting the cemeteries of Salem and the homes of the accused witches or judges of the court walked without meditating too much on the sadness of the events. It all started when the daughters of a minister of the village suffered several seizures of madness that the family attributed to a spell. Then they began to accuse people of Salem, enemy families and often women that did not seem too Christian, using as evidence the spectral visions of the crazy girls and in the coming months 14 women and 5 men were sentenced and hanged. There was also another victim, a 81 year old man who refused to plead guilty or innocent, unable to be judged legally in two days he was drowned by the weight of the stones that were piled over his body. In this way, the man could keep their property (no life) and by inherited by his children.
As we descended to the south the temperatures were more pleasant and in St. Augustine, a coastal town in Florida, we began to walk with short sleeves. We liked St. Augustine, a former Spanish town, with an imposing fortress, which reminded me slightly of the tourist towns of the Costa Brava, with a main street full of small shops. But much more we were impressed by Kennedy Space Center we visited the next two days. The entrance was very expensive, $ 50 per person, but really worth it, with several IMAX 3D movies, museums, performances of several space programs, excursions to the launch pads, chats with astronauts, ... Those days there was a presentation of Mark Lee, an astronaut who had traveled 4 times in the shuttle craft, and asked if he would join an expedition without a return to Mars, as suggested by some scientists, but said he was not quite convinced if he preferred history to his grandchildren. Finally, after those intense two days, I realized there are many other space missions, and I ended up surprised that over 500 people from 38 nationalities have already flown in space since 1957 and have launched more than 6500 satellites in orbit around the earth. From Boston to NY (see on map) 07/11/2010:
We left Boston under heavy rain, being prevented from visiting the US Constitution and made us park near the village of Chatham, on Cape Cod, until the next day at midmorning, when the rain began to slacken. Taking advantage of a few minutes without water, we visited the port and the dune beach of Chatham, and immediately started making way into the village of Little Compton, which we liked more. The next day we visited without haste, walking through the rocks where the waves snapped a raging sea and visiting the small roads in the region that snaked through the side of beautiful wooden houses surrounded by stacked stone. Even more interesting was the following day, when we visited some of the fabulous mansions of Newport, a town that began to prosper thanks to the slave trade and the existence of various pirate considered honorary citizens. Anyway, the real growth started in mid-eighteenth century from the arrival of several families of Jewish merchants from Portugal, where they practiced their religion in secret the last 3 centuries. And more prosperous when the early nineteenth century several wealthy families of the Southern plantation began to build splendid mansions around Bellevue Avenue, an activity that continued over a century, attracting the wealthiest families across the country. Today, many of these mansions are still private, but there are some that have been turned into museums and are open to the public, although the high price of entry only allowed us to visit the outside. The last day before entering New York, we stopped in the city of New Haven, in the center of which lies the famous Yale University, which impressed me much more than Harvard in Cambridge. Just in time, we went directly to the visitor´s center to join the free guided tour of the university. Before, all the participants visualized a fun 20-minute video that Yale had a way so attractive that I felt like going back to college and study. Then a girl student and guide, took us to the university, which surprised by its gothic buildings of the early twentieth century attempted to mimic the architecture of the ancient English universities. As explained the guide, some Englishmen compared this architecture with Disneyland, but I liked it, because i still had withdrawal symptoms for historic buildings. Anyway, although I liked more Yale than Harvard, Yale does not have as good statistics as the University of Cambridge and only has 49 Nobel Prize winners affiliated with the university and has only produced 5 U.S. presidents.
New York is the city of skyscrapers and we were not disappointed at all. We had high expectations for the city, the capital of the world, and virtually all were met. We only had four days to see New York, because it was difficult to find free accommodation through couch surfing for longer. But we took these four days and did intensive walking, covering long distances every day to see and feel our presence in the most important city. We walked beneath the skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan, past the famous and ancient side of Empire State building, crossing the bright Times Square, and visiting ancient relics as they could be, the library, the Cathedral of St. Patrick, or the train station Grand Central Terminal. The second day we caught the free ferry to Staten Island, where we saw the Statue of Liberty and the lofty skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan by the sea, below which we walked later, passing in front of the big Wall Street, on the side of the works of restoration of the World Trade Centre and the next building where they were building the mosque that is a reason for conflict, finishing our gruelling trek across the Brooklyn Bridge. The third day I decided to visit the headquarters of the United Nations, an international territory in downtown Manhattan and making an exception to my policy of not visiting places of payment, that day I paid $ 16 for being able to enter the building of the Great Assembly where charismatic governors and leaders from around the world have delivered important speeches. The room was no more impressive than a theatre, but allowed me to impregnate with the significance of the place and for a moment I felt much closer to the events of contemporary history. Then the guide led us through different rooms as he explained the noble goals of the UN, to end wars, ban landmines, prevent the proliferation of atomic bombs and weapons of mass destruction, to end hunger or finding a solution to conflict between Israel and Palestine. Upon leaving the United Nations compound, I thought that very few objectives had been met, but later, while strolling through the beautiful park of High Line occupying a former elevated rail line, I thought that probably the world would be much worse without the UN. The fourth day ended with a walk in Chinatown, Little Italy and Soho, popular southern suburbs of Manhattan near the neighbourhood of Ian and Magda, our hosts in New York, a couple who we had met about three years ago in South Africa through a Couchsurfing meeting in Johannesburg. It was a shame that Ian and Magda were a little stressed with work and could not spend too much time with them, although one night we went out for a beer with Ian and some friends, a couple from Chile who we also knew, having exchanged several e-mails during the trip. During the conversation, we realized that Ian used the word liberal or liberal Democrat to define a person´s left and progressive, while the rest of the world was rather backward and identify a person´s right to self-commitment economy. Then the Chilean and I discussed that in South America or Europe we used the word Republican to define a person of leftist ideology that had traditionally struggled against the hereditary monarchy, while in the United States, the term was used to define the Republican Party as right wing. I thought the comment would be a mere curiosity, but I was surprised that Ian knew to explain the reason for this difference in definitions. Ian told us that the Republican Party was initially left and the Democrat right-wing, that is, the Democrats were against high taxes and in favour of free trade and Republicans were opposing political betting. In addition, an important part of the Democratic Party was favourable to maintaining slavery, or that states were entitled to decide the issue, while Republicans were more progressive and were mostly against slavery. Finally, with the rise of the Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1861, he resolved the matter with a bloody civil war, which increased the fervour that most white Southern Democrats were the conservatives. During the following decades several things were exchanged in the government of Republicans and Democrats, until the outbreak of the Great Depression of 1929 under a Republican administration. The next elections were won by Democrat Roosevelt, who began to implement measures that previously were detested by the Democrats but had to be done to prevent another failure: more economic control, business regulation, civil rights, social benefits, ... all financed with higher taxes. That was how the ideological shift occurred because the Republicans who began to advocate the business and the free economy due to slow economic growth in the coming years. Thus, before who voted the Democrats (eg southern whites) began to vote Republican, and vive versa, those who previously endured the Republicans (eg black or working class) began to vote Democratic. And that is why many Europeans do not understand American politics. It is the same with the definition of liberalism, because most people understand the term as used to define the position in favour of free market economy, advocating a government with limited powers for the benefit of individual freedoms, but to the detriment of equality or social justice, individual freedom start to end could lead people to refuse to pay taxes. By this definition, used almost everywhere in the world, a liberal person is a person clearly right, but not in the U.S.. In this country historically has always been a majority of the population defined as liberal (according to the European definition), but normal people considered this position and not defined as liberal. Anyway, the term was first used to define those who fought for individual freedom and the rights of oppressed social classes, as they could be women, blacks and later immigrants. Extending this definition of the concept, were also liberals who defended freedom of expression, freedom of press, freedom of religion, the right to equality before the law and the separation of church and state, all these clearly a political stakes left, completely opposed to the liberal policies in Europe. We did not miss the opportunity to take the pulse of the world with Ian, Alexandra debuting as an interviewer. Ian felt that the main problem in the world or humanity is excessive population growth, a problem that could begin to solve with more education, although education was the main problem in the United States is too focused on studying the actual country. On a personal level Ian is happy, but would be happier travelling more. The secret of happiness is to have confidence that decisions made throughout life are the best you could take.
After 4 strenuous days in New York, when we had been walking 5 hours a day at least, we went to relax in the next state of New Jersey, in the village of Cranford, where we stayed with Dan. Dan, a man aged 47 lives in a nice house, gave us total freedom and let us spend the entire weekend locked up at home, basically editing photos and writing the diary, but also spent a few good hours maintaining very interesting conversations with him, exchanging views on religion, God, and on a subject that fascinates me and which I have planned to write a book on the way home: free will. Among the topics, we also talked about the fact that perceptions can be wrong sometimes, for example, believed that Jews used to vote Republican, because its presidents have been the most obtuse fighting against Islamic countries, but Dan said its practically impossible to find a Jew who is not a Democrat, so it is difficult for Obama to pressure Israel to sign to agree to peace with the Palestinians. Dan also said that contrary to common perception around the world, including most Americans, the U.S. is a socialist state, likely devoting more resources to social policies (about 35% of GDP) than most self-described communist countries (China, Vietnam, North Korea ,...). Among the benefits of the welfare state in the United States may be listed the free primary and secondary education (compulsory until 16 years), scholarships for college access for students with low incomes, pensions for all workers from the 65 or 67 years (that is paid with 15% of salary), disability insurance, the income support for low-wage workers, housing subsidies, food stamps, Medicare program offers health insurance coverage to all persons over 65 years, the Medicaid program that provides health coverage to individuals and families with low incomes and resources, and many other programs, in addition, anyone is entitled to be treated in services Hospital emergency, even without private health insurance contract. Most of these programs were created between 1935 and 1965, driven always by Democratic presidents, however, despite all these programs, currently the majority of families without private insurance are not covered by the state and that is what tried to fix President Obama for the first two years of his mandate. But it was not easy, because of the objections that put the Republicans is that many social programs are for immigrants who end up benefiting from the aid. But Dan felt that it was not negative, because he was a second-generation American (his grandparents had come from Slovakia and Ireland) and their grandparents and parents had also previously received aid, promoting their integration and enabling Dan has a company that has hired about 15 people. And according to conversations about misperceptions, Dan asked us how Americans are perceived around the world, because Americans tend to think they are in the center of the world and all humans look at them with admiration for its democracy and for his tireless fight to establish freedom throughout the world. Naturally, we said that not all people that we saw think this way, no doubt some people admired but many others also detested. Even Alexandra was biased towards the Americans before the journey, hating the politics and the radicalization of religions, although last five months immersed in their culture she has also begun to appreciate the friendliness and warmth of the majority of people who we have met. Alexandra also interviewed Dan, who believed that there were several major problems in the world, global warming, terrorism, diseases like malaria, ... Choosing the first problem, the solution would be given by further promoting green energy and even nuclear energy. He can help in solving the problem by voting for politicians who care about the problem, as well as recycling or using alternative energy. Locally, the main problem in the United States is the bad economy situation that prevents investment in the solution of other problems that are also important. The solution should come at the political level but also at the corporate, and in this last section is where he can work, improving the efficiency of your business. On a personal level Dan was happy because he shares life with friends and family, something that is part of the secret of happiness, but also economic security cannot buy always happiness. |
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