Travel Musings

As you may have noticed, we keep hitting the road, the waves, or the tarmac. I’ll often describe where we were, what we liked, what we ate and drank. Other times I just end up with some thoughts about travel that don’t fit in any particular location, but might be interesting nonetheless. This is one of the latter cases:

  • Airlines still haven’t recovered from the pandemic. Their passenger totals have, but their staffing and service lag. Wait times for simple things like checking in are up. Customer service numbers and chats are major sources of complaints, not ways to resolve them. Lost luggage numbers are up. Most of the large airlines say they’re getting better, but I don’t see much in the way of improvement. It is nice we can travel again. It’s still not nice to travel.
  • We had a terrible experience with Volaris and Viva Aerobus trying to get from Tijuana to Guadalajara, a simple three hour flight, on the day after Christmas. It took us the better part of two days, with two cancellations and two big delays. That was prompted by some fog in Mexico, just as the severe cold snap brought Southwest airlines to its knees in the States. The airlines have little slack in the system, and any disturbance (weather or labor, for example) can cause a passenger nightmare.
  • (Most of) Mexico is abandoning daylight saving time effective now. So especially for my fellow expats here in Mexico, if you’re making connections in the US in the summer, you need to check your reservations/flight schedules. As the US “springs forward” it will be an hour later there, so connections you might have made before may not be available now, or your Mexican departure may move up (earlier) an hour.
  • American pop culture continues its assault on good taste. My daughters tell me I gave them a real phobia as they were growing up about “looking like a tourist” when traveling. Nowadays, I see young locals all over Europe wearing athletic gear as casual attire, with off-kilter baseball caps to boot. Even older locals have taken to casual wear like athletic shoes or leggings. I guess it’s easier to fit in now. The funny aspect of this is the prevalence of rap music (in the local language of course). Can’t really walk around in most big European cities without hearing someone blasting a local rap; I hope the lyrics are better!
  • Speaking of manners, they’re either changing or declining. I was warned about eating with my hands in France (sorry, but everyone was). The curse of cell phone zombies, people unaware of other life forms because they are face down in a cell screen, is a real global pandemic. I especially dislike the Airpod-ders out there who think we’re all extras in their selfie music video; if they could only hear what we’re saying about them!
  • If you were lucky enough to get out and travel without the crowds during the pandemic, good for you. The crowds are back, so places like Venice and Santorini and the Amalfi coast are cheek-and-jowl experiences (at least in season). Many tourist haunts are adding visiting taxes which they hope will dissuade some visitors. That’s an experiment still playing out.
  • Partially, this is China’s fault. Just before the pandemic hit, the number of Chinese international tourists surpassed the number of American international tourists worldwide. Since Mexico is the number one tourist destination for Americans (not so much Chinese), this means Europe was especially overrun by large numbers of big Chinese tour groups. And Europe didn’t like it much. The pandemic was a chance to reset, and European hot spots are trying to change the dynamic. Now China is ditching its “zero covid” (failed) policy, which kept Chinese travelers from leaving the country since it could strand them overseas. Other countries are enacting testing/vaccine policies aimed at China, but this will not deter Chinese travelers, who faced daily testing and vaccine checks just to go outside.
  • Speaking of illness and travel, our involuntary stays in Tijuana and Monterey left us exposed at airports crammed with people, and guess what? We got very sick. Spent the last half of the week of 2022 through today self-quarantined with a series of symptoms better left unsaid. But therein lies a lesson for 2023. Due to all the pandemic precautions, the world had fewer flu and severe cold outbreaks for two years. Which means you, the traveler, were less exposed to such things for two years, while those nasty flu and cold bugs kept mutating. So you’re more susceptible to such illnesses in the new year. There’s a cheery thought!
When in doubt about your flight, just smile (a little) for the camera

Finally, with all that pent-up travel demand (Chinese and otherwise) coming to the fore, and airlines and tourist sites still recovering, prices have climbed and availability is dropping. You’ll see that some locations/routes are simply full all the way through 2023 already. So if you plan to travel this year, it’s probably best to get reservations now, and if you need it, get some travel insurance. Oh, and some patience. Lord knows, I’m praying for it!

Mexican Riviera

This tourist zone encompasses a series of similar tourist resorts that stretch along the Mexican Pacific coast, from the end of the Baja peninsula down to the Huatulco in Oaxaca. It’s perhaps unfair to call these places similar, since they are in fact different. However, the chief difference is that they are at different stages of development in the same life-cycle: tourist hot-spots.

The oldest of these, and arguably the most famous, is Acalpulco, which became a getaway for the Hollywood rich and famous back in the 1940s. Now it is well past its prime, attracting fewer foreign visitors and having a vaguely seedy reputation. Puerto Vallarta, or PV among expats, is the reigning champion. It has a modern cruise ship terminal and a well-developed tourism infrastructure to host visitors and expats. Probably next in line after PV are the various resort towns at the end of the Baja peninsula, namely Los Cabos (Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo). We visited Huatulco, PV, and Cabo San Lucas.

What you’ll find at all these sites are plenty of the usual tourist development (yes, Señor Frog is everywhere) but even more amazing ocean/beach activities. World-class sport-fishing? Check. Ditto for surfing. Endless beaches with bars, seafood restaurants and palapas? Yup. Whale-watching? Swimming with Dolphins? Of course. Ocean kayaking, paddle-boarding, snorkeling, yes. Para-sailing: yeah. Back on land, there are tours of small Mexican towns, visits to haciendas, tequila and mezcal tasting, and eco-visits to jungles and deserts. There is quite literally something for everybody along this coast.

Not being beach people or adventure-seekers, we visited small towns in Oaxaca and Baja California Sur. We can certify that the cruise tours provided what they promoted: very authentic sites where locals produced textiles, mezcal, or other crafts, and small towns still mostly as they are, not carefully crafted tourist recreations. The rug-weavers we saw came from the same small town in central Oaxaca we visited back in July. The mezcal producer used the same techniques we saw in Tequila.

We did sneak in some adventure. I finagled Judy’s agreement to go whale watching while in Puerto Vallarta, as December is the beginning of the humpback whale annual visit to the bay. I imagine she envisioned changing out the cruise ship for a large boat and watching for whales from a distance. I didn’t bother to explain we’d be in zodiacs, basically large inflatable rafts (with a hard interior) and an over-powered pair of marine engines. While Banderas Bay is generally calm, there is nothing calming about screaming across the small waves at 30+ knots in a zodiac, chasing whales. Judy survived the experience, so I’m still here to blog about it!

Happy Judy, when the zodiac is going slow
Whales!

Our ship looming over the cruise dock in Puerto Vallarta
New development built to fit in, in Todos Santos

Local tour guide claimed this was the inspiration, but it isn’t

Not everything can be authentic!

Antigua, Guatemala

Sunday found us docked at Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, so we availed ourselves of an “on your own” bus to Antigua, one of the ancient capitals (yes, plural) of Guatemala. It’s a well-maintained historical site with excellent views of local, active volcanoes. Which is why it’s no longer the capital.

North, west, east south: volcanoes

Seems when the Spaniards arrived, they established their first capital on the site of the indigenous palace. Which was subsequently destroyed by a volcano. So they moved to another valley, where the second capital was safely away from a volcano, or so they thought. But there was a nearby mountain with a lake on top. You guessed it, there was an earthquake which unleashed the lake and destroyed the town. So the Spaniards built a third capital in 1541 in another valley, safe from most volcanoes and most earthquakes. Of course, mother nature has a way of making man look foolish, and in 1776 there was a tremendous earthquake which destroyed the third capital, resulting in the final site at Guatemala City (which still stands as of the time of this post).

Iconic archway between two convents, framing another volcano

But the people in the third capital didn’t want to give up, so they slowly rebuilt, calling the town Antigua Guatemala (as in the old capital). And there it sits today, a mix of preserved ruins and rebuilt colonial houses, without the business or industry a modern capital city would normally have. It’s as if the old city was preserved in amber from a date long ago.

Cathedral facade

It being Sunday, we had scoped out a Catholic mass in what remains of the old cathedral. Mostly magnificent ruins, locals refurbished one small wing of the cathedral as a small parish. During mass, we heard loud cheers and groans coming from the town plaza immediately outside. There was another religious event of sorts: the World Cup Final. The priest even made a parting joke at the end of mass about seeing everyone outside.

Cathedral interior in ruins, still magnificent

Defending champion France was playing Argentina that morning, and the local government had erected a giant screen in the plaza for all to come and watch. Normally weekends bring a rush of local tourists from Guatemala City to spend a day in Antigua, but this Sunday the crowd was all locals, and most of the town was bunched into a corner of the plaza, glued to the screen.

We heard Argentina was leading 2-0 as mass began, then we heard more screaming during the liturgy. We were surprised to learn France had tied the game up, so we grabbed a coffee (a local specialty) and enjoyed extra time and a penalty kick shoot-out. The crowd, which was rooting for Messi & Argentina, grew silent until the result was in. I mentioned to Judy how strange it was to know the whole world (less the US) was watching the same event at the same time, all holding their breath. It was something like the moonwalk, and special to enjoy among passionate fans.

The moment when . . .

Puerto Genérico

Don’t look for it on a map. It’s less of a place than a state of mind. You’ve been there if you did an ocean cruise in the Caribbean, Central America, heck even Alaska. It exists where a large cruise ship arrives at a small port in an underdeveloped region or country. And it’s always the same.

Our ship comes in

When Judy & I were hard-working professionals in Washington DC (“working hard or hardly working?”, yes I know the joke!), we tried to get away every winter for a week, usually to cruise the Carrib Sea from Miami (Pro-tip: you pronounce it “car-RIB-ee-an” not “care-i-BEE-an”). We soon learned there was no reason to off-board at the ports, because they were all the same. You walked off the ship and were accosted by a steel drum band. Locals started offering to (1) braid your hair, (2) sell you Ganja (marijuana), or (3) give you a henna tattoo. As we were uninterested in all three, well, why disembark? There were the usual set of excursions, but these too predictably fell into beach-time, water-time, and local customs. We tried some of the latter, but found them more generic than legitimate. I recall visiting a market near Cozumel and buying a “Mayan sun disc calendar” which turned out to be Aztec. Whatever.

If you head north to Alaska, they’re selling sweatshirts, salmon, and First Nations handicrafts. In Central America, its tropical drinks, Mayan art and indigenous clothing. Notice that few things have “made in” labels, because you don’t really want to know from where it came. I don’t mean to disparage the hard work or the opportunity. If you’re on your once-in-a-lifetime trip, enjoy the experience, don’t over-analyze it. And the vendors are trying hard to make a living, souvenirs being souvenirs the world ’round.

Welcome to Wherever

We landed in Puntarenas (sandy point), Costa Rica. We were greeted by a xylophone band, a market full of t-shirts and carved wooden tchotchkes, and some restaurants featuring (in English) “Costa Rican food.” We sauntered past in the tropical heat and found our way to the local church. After we tried the locked doors, a handyman came over and opened it up to we could visit. The cafes and shops were barely open, although there was a line outside the government medical clinic. This could have been any pueblo anywhere in Latin America.

Pleasant church

We’ll be spared the experience in Nicaragua. The Captain explained that the Nicaraguan government is closing its ports due to Covid. Funny thing, the Nicaraguan government website has no mention of it. More likely, the Sandinista government is engaging in another round of repression, so Norwegian Cruise Lines decided not to send day-trippers merrily traipsing across the countryside lest than run into a protest, a riot, or an insurrection. But we will be in Acajutla, El Salvador, soon thereafter, and I bet it will be eerily familiar.

Panama: The Big Ditch

The Panama Canal is, to my mind, an afterthought today. The last great controversy involving it was when President Carter decided (1977) to deed it back to Panama on January 1st, 2000, which resulted in none of the catastrophic consequences imagined at the time. Yes, it connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and greatly facilitates trade, but really it seems to be just a piece of infrastructure, and a really old one at that. Which is precisely why it is a marvel.

The first canal between those oceans was attempted by the French in 1881. They had completed the Suez canal, a sea-level enterprise which cut the sailing time from Europe to the Far East to ten days. Suez was said to be impossible, but Ferdinand de Lesseps and his French engineers pulled it off, and it was the marvel of its age (1869). Then they decided to do the same in the Colombian province of Panama. To understand the difference in terms of difficulty, imagine that immediately following the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, NASA announced that Apollo 12 was going to Mars. Yes, there was French arrogance involved, but they had already done the impossible, were the best at what they did, and their plans were sound, with two exceptions. First, they shrugged off the disease implications of the Panamanian jungle (mainly Malaria and Yellow Fever), and second, they insisted on another sea-level canal. Sea-level canals are much easier endeavors than lock canals: any child who has dug two pools in the beach sand, then connected them with a scooped line between has basically mastered the design of a sea-level canal.

De Lesseps was a force of nature (he was called “Le Grand Français” or The Great Frenchman), and his renown as the conqueror of Suez made his opinion unassailable. Despite his talent and expertise, despite the quality of the engineers the French sent and the money they spent, the effort failed. Too much graft and corruption, too little respect for the size of the task and the challenge of the jungle, spelled defeat.

The Americans literally rough-rode in to pick up the pieces. President Teddy Roosevelt settled on completing the task as a declaration of America’s rise as a world power. Instead of negotiating with the Colombian government (a notably difficult proposition), he fomented rebellion in Panama, recognized the rebels, and signed an incredibly advantageous treaty for a US-built and operated canal. All of which just left the canal-building to be done.

The American effort very nearly failed. The fact of mosquito-borne illness had just been established, yet the canal leadership thought it just “a theory” and very nearly suffered the same catastrophic losses the French had endured. The American engineers finally came around to the impossibility of building a sea-level canal that had to cross a mountain range (!) and ran parallel to a raging tropical river (the Chagres) which flooded up to 33 feet during the rainy season. Eventually the Americans settled on damming the Chagres, creating a giant lake in the middle of the isthmus, then building locks on either side to connect to the oceans. The final canal greatly dwarfed the original estimates by orders of magnitude in terms of how much digging, blasting, and construction was required, yet it was completed ahead of schedule and under budget.

From Wikipedia; the Gatun lake was once all swampy jungle

The Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) went through several organizational structures and leadership teams before falling under the (eventually) legendary George Washington Goethals, a West Point-trained Army engineer who turned the entire operation into a model of efficiency. Some called the canal zone administration a “socialist paradise” as it was so well-run and so accommodating to its work force. There were stark inequalities between the black Caribbean islanders who did the manual labor and the white Americans who oversaw the work or did the skilled jobs, yet all experienced better pay, free medical care and food, paid leave and other benefits unheard of back home. The administration was not strictly a government: it was more of a giant company-town, where every body and every thing was focused on a single task: digging the canal.

The ICC needed healthy workers, so mosquitoes were practically eradicated from the canal zone, despite it being carved out of the jungle. Skilled doctors and engineers weren’t going to come alone to Panama for years on end, so homes and schools and community centers were built. The losers in all this were the Panamanians themselves, who anticipated a windfall in sales and services but instead found themselves shut out of the manual and skilled labor, and competing with a massive organization designed to bring the comforts of home to the tropical jungles.

The grassy areas are the large earthen dam, completed with the small traditional concrete structure

The canal construction redefined social, technological and material limits. It created the largest dig, the largest earthen dam (at Gatun, above), which resulted in the biggest man-made lake, using the largest heavy equipment (95 ton steam shovels) and largest steel products (gates). Electric motors, just coming into their own, became a chief power source, and the canal used hydroelectric power to be largely self-sufficient. A fledgling American company named General Electric designed a control system whereby engineers could sit in a single room and see a scale-model with a series of live-controls that managed the whole system. The controls were connected in a way it was impossible to “skip a step” or open the wrong lock/dam/gate (aka “idiot-proof”). The final cost was $500 million USD (at the time), the largest single expenditure in US history, and more than five times the cost of all land acquisitions (Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, etc) of the US government till that point.

Container ship in the lock ahead of our cruise ship; notice the elevation gain
Close-up of a “mule,” a small locomotive which pulls a ship through the locks

It opened in August, 1914, but to little fanfare, as the impending Great War in Europe quickly blotted out what had been an object of intense international attention. Still, the canal functions to this day–108 years on– much as it was originally designed and built. Additional, larger locks permit larger New PanaMax vessels to cross, but the locks, the dams, the mules (trains which pull the ships through the locks) are either the originals or rebuilds to original specifications. It is hard to imagine another working infrastructure project which has held up nearly as well: perhaps the Roman roads/aqueducts?

The Culebra cut, where the mountain repeatedly slid back into the canal excavation, requiring constant re-digging

The value of any infrastructure project is simple: does it work? The marvel of this one is not that it works, but that it was ever completed. The beauty of it (if one can call infrastructure beautiful) is how well it works, so long after it was done.

Surprising Panamá

Preparing for our Panamá Canal Cruise from Colón (Panamá) to San Diego.

We took a Copa (Panamanian national airline) red-eye flight out of Guadalajara to Tocumen International Airport (PTY) outside of Panamá City. Even the name is a reminder of American influences: it’s not Cuidad de Panamá, but just Panamá City. Most of the passengers on our flight were connecting to onward travel in South America; PTY is a common transfer point for such flights. First surprise? Watching the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean . . . in the Western Hemisphere? I looked once, admiring how beautiful it was. Then I looked again and thought, “wait, that’s the Gulf of Panama, which is part of the Pacific Ocean, but the Sun is rising, so that is . . . east?” For the geographically challenged, Panamá is an isthmus shaped like the letter “S” lying on its side. Panamá City lies along the bend, so it looks to the southeast across its bay, where the Sun rises (near the equator).

Arriving at 6:oo am meant a speedy taxi ride of a mere twenty-five minutes to the heart of the business district. Pro-tip for frequent tourists: hotels in a city’s financial or business district tend to be nicer: they cater to a wealthier business crowd which expects better service and amenities, often with fares to match. However, they are more likely to be full during the week, so they often have reduced rates on weekends. Sure, sometimes the business district isn’t the most “happening” place to be, but it’s worth it in my opinion.

Our first impression is how tropical (expected) and vertical (unexpected) the city is. It hit 80° F by the time we entered the hotel lobby, with that sticky, hard-to-breathe sensation common to the tropics. Everything was air-conditioned, and running on high, so walking around meant a constant reversal of dripping sweat and freezing cold. As I said, that was expected. But Panamá City has some serious chops when it comes to skyscrapers.They are dense, frequent, and frequently beautiful.

Like I said, serious skyscraper chops!

Panamá uses the Balboa for currency, but the Balboa only exists as coins for change. Good old-fashioned greenbacks trade at 1:1 with the Balboa, and dollars are what you get from ATMs. Prices are what you’d expect in a medium-sized America city: not a bargain, but not sticker-shock, either.

We came here with few (if any) must-see’s or -do’s. Mostly we were looking for an easy transfer and a quiet chance to settle in, time- and climate-wise, before our cruise. Our third surprise was language. Yes, it’s Spanish, but due to the long American control of the Canal Zone, plenty of people speak English. But the Panamanians speak Spanish more slowly and with more distinct pronunciation than we’ve heard in Puerto Rico, Mexico, or even Spain. Our Gringo accent was no problem here, and we were able to understand virtually everybody, even the Priest’s Homily!

Of course we made it to Sunday Mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which also had a tribute to Our Lady of Guadalupe next to the altar. I mentioned to Judy that we will have spent the five Sundays in Advent this year in a different country for each Sunday (Italy, Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, the United States). Phew!

Our final surprise was mildly distasteful (literally). Since we had so little trouble communicating, we easily told our waiters “todos sin cilantro” since Judy and I both have the gene which leave cilantro tasting like soap and smelling like dirty socks (really). I kept getting dishes with that distinct and disgusting flavor; what gives? The food was clearly cooked with the spice, not just sprinkled on, as the flavor was baked in, so to speak. Judy figured out this was not cilantro but culantro, a cousin with even stronger flavor that is often used for cooking, not just garnishing. Guess we’ll have to add that to our list!

We barely touched the surface of Panamá city, let alone the rest of Panamá. Our tour driver, Marvin, told me the government does a lousy job of publicizing tourism, which is a shame, because there are miles of beaches, dense jungles, a big city, a canal, plenty of English, and an interesting mix of cultures/cuisines (Afro-Caribbean and Colombian). We didn’t make it to the old city or the market, nor the seaside promenade. We did visit the only tropical rain forest within a city limits, as well as the remains of Fort San Lorenzo, where the Spanish galleons laden with gold made a run past pirates.

Much to see and do here, and if you love tropical heat and humidity, this may be just the place for you!

Herculaneum

Modern Ercolano over buried Herculaneum

It was a typical, beautiful day in the shadow of the mountain. Fall in Campania is spectacular, and life was good in the seaside village of Herculaneum. It was especially good for Marcus Nonius Dama, as he was a freedman, made so by his former master Marcus Nonius Balbus, one of the town’s leading men. Dama’s family had been brought to Rome as slaves from Syria (Dama, as from Damascus). Roman slavery took many forms, often more like indentured servitude for a period rather than chattel slavery. Dama had grown up serving in the rich man’s spacious villa. Some seventeen years earlier, when Dama was a teenager, there had been a terrible earthquake which damaged much of the town. Dama had led his master’s wife and children to safety in the arched porticos which protected boats along the beach. Marcus Nonius Balbus never forgot that act, and he was a gracious man in addition to being rich. He gave Dama more and more responsibility, and eventually his freedom.

Judy at the corner cafe

Dama had made a trade in repairing the town for the past two decades, and although much of his work was done, his reputation was still growing. Now Dama’s wife was eight months pregnant with their first child, and he felt practically on top of the world. Around noon, he stopped at the thermopolium, where Romans grabbed some fast food for the lunch meal. Herculaneum stood along a beach a short distance from Neapolis, the Roman port city. It was both a small fishing village and a rich man’s retreat, lying between the large mountain called Vesuvio and the Tyrrhenian Sea. As Dama was eating, he heard a large “crack,” like the loudest thunder he ever heard. But this thunder was followed by a long, low roar. “It sounds like the earth itself is giving birth,” he thought. People were milling about in the street, so he walked out and looked up at Vesuvio.

Where the mountain stood, there now was a towering blackness, like a giant dark tree reaching up into the sky. The darkness was rising and spreading, south with the wind and reaching down to the ground. It was both beautiful and terrible, frightening but seemingly far away.

The Vesuvio caldron today, once again calm

What Dama did not know, what no one in Herculaneum knew, was that Vesuvio was no mountain, but rather a volcano. It had not erupted in the recorded memory of Rome, so the danger posed by the sleeping giant was completely unrealized by the people living alongside it. What Dama watched was the vaporization of millions of tons of rock, turned into a mix of ash and fire, and blown high into the sky. That deadly mix was cooling and condensing and falling toward the larger town of Pompeii, due south, where it would collapse like a giant concrete blanket. And this was only the beginning.

Dama hurried home and told is wife to head over to Marcus Nonius Balbus’ place, to warn them to head to the beach again, lest another earthquake hit. He decided to stop by the shrine to Augustus, the former Caesar and still god; perhaps a little prayer was in order. While he was lighting some incense, he heard another loud explosion above the rumbling roar. Looking up at Vesuvio, he could see another cloud, red and black and roiling, working its way down the mountainside. Dama did not need to know this was a pyroclastic flow: superheated gas and rock moving at more than fifty miles per hour. All he needed to know was what he immediately felt: mortal fear.

Dama began running down the street toward the beach and the porticos. When he reached the beach front, he could see his wife and some of his former master’s family huddled under one of the aches. Other people were also taking shelter there, although the boats were all gone, having departed with a load of people fleeing earlier. Dama walked out into the shallow water to get a better view toward the mountain. The dark red line was sweeping down toward the village at an incredible speed, and there was nowhere to go. He ran toward the portico where his wife was, but he never made it.

Still as they were found

The pyroclastic flow hit the town like a firey tidal wave, searing any organic material and killing everyone and everything instantly. Behind it was a wall of hot mud, actually liquid rock, which buried the town under meters of solid stone as it cooled. Vesuvio erased Roman Herculaneum so completely that no one knew where it had been for almost two millenia, when a local farmer digging a well uncovered some gold jewelry.

While Pompeii was smothered by ash, collapsing most structures and leaving the ghostly body-casts of victims, Herculaneum was flash-fried, then dipped in a protective coating of stone. The buildings still stand, two or three stories tall. Wooden objects (screens, doors, lintels, beds) were found charred but intact, giving an invaluable look at Roman life. The same goes for pottery, glass, and even papyri, Roman legal documents which also survived. Herculaneum provided actual skeletons, revealing diets, diseases, heights, weights, lifestyles and even DNA.

Most people visit Pompeii: it’s larger, more famous, and it’s where cruise and other tours want to take you. And it’s certainly worth a visit. But it is larger, and can be a little intimidating, if not overwhelming. I suggest considering Herculaneum, which is just as well preserved, smaller, and very walkable.

This shows one portico at what was the beach/shore. The “wall” in the background is an unexcavated area, showing how deep the town was buried. The house is part of Marcus Nonius Balbus’ seaside villa

Napoli (Italia, not Florida)

If I did a word association and said “Italy” I bet many would say “pizza.” It’s natural to any American: the food we love best is actually an import. And many Americans know that pizza originated in Napoli (Naples) in the 19th Century, when a local restaurateur developed the classic thin crust, fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce and basil (yes, it mirrors the Italian flag) for Queen Margherita, and a legend was born. But note the date: 1889. Like Italy, pizza is not an ancient dish, and therein lies a story of the nation, and the city of Napoli.

Wait, what are we doing in Italy? Well, our family decided to do the traditional American Thanksgiving, all gathering on the appropriate Turkey Thursday, but we decided to gather at our daughter’s house in Vicenza, Italy. Nothing says Thanksgiving like Turkey, pasta, Italian wine and gelato! Afterwards, my dear wife and I decided to head south for a side trip to Naples on the way home to Mexico.

Now if I did a second word association with “Naples” you might respond with “pizza,” “crime,” or “camorra” (the local version of the mafia). The city has a bad rap,some of which is deserved, but let me make a case for it anyway. To begin with, Naples is really old: as in Greek! It was founded by the Greeks (Neapolis, or New City) over 2500 years ago as a trading station because it has a great harbor and an ideal location on the the Italian “boot” peninsula. Milan was the great city-state in northern Italy (after Venice declined) and Napoli was the great one in the south. Napoli became the seat of a large Spanish kingdom that included Sicily and other Hapsburg lands. It remained cultured, rich, and important, while “Italy” remained only a geographic concept until unification in 1861 (yes, the nation we call Italy is younger than the USA; same goes for Germany!). The rivalry between the more industrial (read German), richer north and the more corrupt, pastoral south ended in a compromise with the Italian Capitol in Roma. Naples went from a proud, distinct seat of power to a provincial backwater, starting a long slide into insignificance.

In late November

But Naples is what we see in our minds when we think “Italian.” Napoletanos were the largest bloc of Italian immigrants to America (there being little opportunity back home), and from them we get pizza, spaghetti, tenements with laundry hanging down, and “Santa Lucia.”

Because Napoli had an independent history, it had long come to terms with accommodating foreign rulers while imposing its own rules. To this day Napoli barely tolerates Roman rule, and even the organized crime system there is a version of “how things really get done” as opposed to “what they tell us to do.” After World War II, Naples continued to ignore and be ignored by the central government, exacerbating its decline. By the 1970s, petty crime, graffiti, and general lawlessness reigned, giving many tourists the impression it was too dangerous to visit. The graffiti remains, as does some crime in a city of more than one million people. But Naples had greatly recovered, and deserves a visit. Capiche?

First off, there is the unique culture, which reminds me of New York in many ways. Locals are extremely proud and like-able, just don’t get in their way (especially the scooters which run riot across the small roads). The food is authentic, the neighborhoods a sight to behold. Locals call it basa living, and its an urban but not urbane, gritty life where people refuse to move out of the block, let alone the neighborhood. Jobs are scarce, people just get by, and that’s good enough. They are very Catholic, and claim to have more churches per capita than any other city. I didn’t count them, but we did see an amazing Gothic church across the street from another amazing Baroque one. Napoletanos have their many superstitions, many friends, and Gli Azzurri, the soccer club known as “the blues.”

As to food, how can you go wrong with the place that invented pizza? Yes, they’ll fry anything, including pasta which didn’t sell earlier in the day, and cones full of fried seafood (cuopo) as Napoli is a port after all. There are amazing pastries like s’fogliatella (go ahead, try and pronounce it, I dare you) and baba, another soaked in rum.

You want culture? Well Napoli is the home of National Museum of Archeology, which just happens to have all the original treasures which were discovered in Pompeii and Herculaneum (yes, the originals are preserved in the museum; on-site you’ll see very well done re-creations. So if you plan on visiting any of the scavi (excavations) buried by Mount Versuvio, you need to schedule a stop in Napoli.

Was there a lot of graffiti? Yes. Some seedy areas? That too. A somewhat rushed city atmosphere? Yup. But no moreso that many other cities, and well worth it to try the food and see the culture. And we only visited long enough for a literal taste: we skipped the castles, the modern art scene, plaza del plebicito and other “must-do” sites, not to mention the Amalfi coast, which is not our cup of tea, but is selfie heaven.

We did go to the scavi, but that’s a post for another day! Bottom line? Don’t avoid Naples, it’s safe, fun, and delicious.

Immigration: A Solution

In my last post, I covered the various aspects that make immigration a problem for the United States. It shouldn’t be a problem, it should be an opportunity. We have a great historical record with immigration, and still have the largest number (over fifty million) of immigrants of any country in the world. Almost one-fourth of all immigrants on the planet are in America. America accepts about one million legal immigrants every year, and somewhere around one- to two-million illegal immigrants, too (the second number is difficult to pin down for obvious reasons). None of these numbers are overwhelming to a land as vast and populated (>330 million) as America. And America remains the top desired location among global immigrants, even those who have no chance of going there. To borrow a sports analogy, the US could conduct an expansion draft of the world’s people, choosing just who we want and need, every year. Instead, US immigration policies are a twisted mix of hysteria, lunacy, and laissez-faire. What might work better? Well, almost anything, but I would like to propose a series of compromises emphasizing a combination of tightening illegal entry and loosening legal immigration.

Even Bonasera believes in America!

Why a compromise? Because while immigration is overall a net positive for the US, it has complications in real life. It upends families, it changes neighborhoods and towns, it challenges local schools and governments. It makes people uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean we refuse all these people who want to partake of the American dream; it just means we control how it happens. Which, you’ll recall from my last post, is the first duty of a national government. For starters, the US should:

  • Adopt an immigration point system favoring skills and education, with each applicant getting a score. Allow businesses, charities, and family members to sponsor applicants, giving them extra points. Set and enforce strict time limits for disaster refugees, letting them know they’re expected to return home, and only allowing them to apply (with a point bonus if they did well while here) after they return to home countries.
  • Set a target of three million legal immigrants per year in the near term. Clear the family list in two years, which currently has almost four million people already approved, but kept out, because of quotas. Then scrap the family list altogether: having family in the US gets you extra points, not a special status list.
  • Allow states to compete for immigrants and receive extra federal funding for establishing programs to accept and integrate them. If a state doesn’t want to participate, it doesn’t have to. Of course no state can refuse to accept immigrants, since immigrants would have the same right to live where they want as all Americans. But no state would be forced to welcome them; they would be insane not to, but that’s a position each state will have to determine.
  • Aggressively negotiate “safe third country” agreements with Mexico and all Central America. These agreements (under international law) make asylees stop in the first safe country they arrive in, rather than continuing along to the final destination of their choice. Transit countries don’t want to be stuck with refugees, but the goal here is not to stick them with anyone, but rather to decrease the dangerous, unregulated mass movement of people. Why would Mexico or anyone else agree to this change? The US must tie development and trade assistance to national acceptance, as well as quotas for a renewed guest worker program. The US had a successful guest worker agreement (the Bracero program) with Mexico, which enabled tens of thousands of Mexican workers to come north to do seasonal farm work and other manual labor. These workers neither wanted nor sought to be American citizens; they just wanted to work and send money home. It ended back in the Kennedy administration; we should re-create the program. Finally, the US should propose an amendment to international law favoring asylum resettlement in nearby and culturally-appropriate nations. Mass migration is an international phenomenon, and the US should exercise leadership in resolving it.
  • On a more controversial note, end birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship (if you’re born here, you’re a citizen regardless of why you’re here) is a legacy of colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It exists because the newly independent nations of the New World wanted to encourage immigration, so they made it easy to have children who were citizens. It makes little difference in most countries, but it does complicate things in the US. So-called “anchor babies” (pregnant women travelling to the US just to have “instant-American citizens”) are rarely a thing, but why do we allow it to be a thing at all? Meanwhile, end all the unnecessary drama and legalize all the “Dreamers,” children who know nothing of their original home country and were brought to America illegally by their parents. Again, this should never have required more than a minute of discussion to fix.
  • Finish the border with a combination of high-tech/virtual and real barriers, and beef up enforcement. The US- Mexican border is never going to be the DMZ, nor should it be, but we can make it much more likely you’ll get caught if you try to cross illegally. And that is where the next point becomes essential:
  • Enforce biometric verification on all illegal border crossers along with a new “three-strikes-and-your-out” policy. Everybody apprehended will have biometric data taken. The first time you are caught, we say “shame on you!” and deport them. The second time we use harsh language (see the movie clip) and a severe warning of what is to come. The third time, they get a mandatory prison sentence followed by deportation and a lifetime ban on ever being allowed to enter the US under any circumstances. We don’t even need a name; we can tell who’s who by the biometric data.
  • In conjunction with that, we must address the main source of illegal entry, which are visa-overstays. Right now, more people are coming to the US on legal visitor visas (and then simply staying after the visa expires) than crossing the border illegally. Extend the biometric verification concept to this crowd; when they apply for a visa, they must provide the data. But make it a two-strike rule; why? Most border-crossers are poor and desperate; most visa-overstays are wealthier and by-choice. First strike, you get a huge fine and a waiting period before you can re-enter; second strike, a massive fine and a ban. When people visit, it is their responsibility to check out (at the departure point) with US immigration (this happens all over the world, except the US). Yes, we’ll need some new commercial-friendly policies which enable the easy travel of business people; so be it.
  • Speaking of visas, tie the visa application by nation to cooperation with US immigration policy and identification of challenges (terrorists, criminals, spies, etc). If a nation cooperates, make it easier for that nation’s people to travel to the US; if they resist, make it hard. If they simply fail, prohibit them from coming. Of course we can make exceptions for people fleeing political persecution.
  • And just to be especially controversial, target the open-borders crowd. These are the pro-immigration advocates who go abroad to encourage illegal migration to the US. They are promoting the violation of US law, and they do so with impunity today; end that. Charge them, try them, convict them. If they operate as groups, go after them with the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes to seize everything they have. Expect our foreign partners to support our efforts.

Finally, just to clear the possibility of courts overturning all these delicate compromises, Congress and the President can enact a change which limits Supreme Court review of immigration and border policies. This is very edgy, I admit, but the courts have participated in the unraveling of our border and immigration policies, and a grand political compromise requires both sides agreeing not to use the courts to undermine it.

What do I foresee from this compromise? Greatly reduced border crossing. Increased legal immigration. A more welcoming atmosphere. Fewer bizarre cases like anchor babies, Dreamers, or repeat border-crossing offenders. What we have now is ridiculous: cities and states declaring themselves “sanctuaries;” politicians bussing people around; border towns overwhelmed; and while some of these measure have an increased cost, we’re spending plenty now for no tangible results. Money well spent in my mind!

Is all this hard? No, it isn’t. There’s a way forward and its pretty obvious. You may not agree with everything (anything?) I wrote, but you can’t deny it would change the dynamic at the border for the better! As for me, like Hyman Roth, “I’m just a retired investor living on a pension.” What do I know?

Problem: Immigration?

Yet another occasional series to inform, provoke, and perhaps even illuminate. In this edition, I’ll spend an initial post describing an issue in terms of what the problem is, and then in a subsequent post posit a solution. Why? Because the one lesson I learned in all the engineering courses West Point foisted on me was: First, Define the Problem. If you get the problem wrong, you’ll get the solution wrong, too. So often, people skip problem definition and jump to solutions. Or they assume everybody agrees with what they think the problem is, then they are amazed when others question their preferred solution.

How does this make sense?

Our first challenge? Immigration, specifically the unapproved movement of large numbers of people across the southwest US-Mexican border. Why is it a problem? According to international law, the first prerequisite for being a state–that is, to be recognized by other states as an equal–is to control one’s territory. This in turn requires demarcating a border and controlling it. If you can’t control some defined territory, you’re not a state. There are various ways to control territory and demarcate a border, from putting up barbed wire and laying mines to just drawing a virtual line: it all depends upon whether someone is contesting the boundary. No one doubts where North Korea is; you’ll get shot if you try to cross in either direction. If you’ve visited Rome, you doubtlessly crossed the line between Italy and the Vatican City (a different, sovereign state under international law) many times without knowing it. No one contests that line (certainly not the Pope nor the Italian government) so it’s not even drawn on the ground, but it still works. On the other hand, many thousands of people contest the southern US border every day by crossing it without permission. So that is a problem.

But how big a problem is it? By historical standards, you might think it’s not much of a problem.

From the US Census Bureau data, as processed by the Migration Policy Institute

Looking at the blue line, we currently have a 15% immigrant share of the population, much as we did in the distant past, when the country’s population was much smaller. After all, we are “a nation of immigrants” as some are fond of saying. But look closely: no American alive today has experienced this level of immigration. You have to go back to 1910 to find equal data. So everyone is experiencing a steadily growing immigrant share of the population. But is that a problem? Depends upon where the trends are headed.

American Community Service data processed by the Center for Immigration Studies

It is always dangerous to simply draw out existing trends, but note that the immigrant population even grew during the Trump administration. Right now, it is soaring, and there is no policy in place to change that. But don’t we need immigrants to keep our population growing, since Americans are having so few children?

It’s true that many US entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are predicated on the notion of an ever-growing population. This was the case when the programs were created (Social Security in 1935, Medicare in 1965), and it was a reasonable assumption. Some critics call these programs “ponzi schemes,” which is incorrect: a ponzi scheme makes the creator rich at the expense of everyone else. Social Security and Medicare transfer money from working-age adults to assist the elderly and infirm. The problem is, the math requires a high population growth rate, which isn’t the case any more. And the immigration numbers are nowhere near large enough to offset the aging of the baby-boomer generation. Demographers agree the US would need to double or triple its immigration numbers to make a dent in the funding problem; those are numbers beyond the ken of even the most fervent open-borders advocate.

Finally, in all immigration discussions, one must consider the “who” of immigration: what is the profile of the people entering the country? Many countries use a point system to evaluate immigrants as more or less beneficial as prospective citizens. Most countries accept some number of refugees or asylum seekers; the idea here is to mitigate natural disasters or political upheaval for some period of time as a humanitarian response. And all countries accept some (usually small) level of desired immigration: people permitted to enter simply because they want to.

Except the United States of America. Due to haphazard legislation, judicial rulings, and a general lack of consensus on whether there is a problem and what it might be, the US has no effective policy on who crosses our southern border, how long they stay, or what to do when they arrive here. How incoherent is it?

  • Under the Trump administration, border agents were forcible separating families at the border, in an (publicly-admitted, immoral, yet effective) attempt to dissuade migrants from arriving. Now, in the Biden administration, border agents are directed to admit unaccompanied children (also publicly admitted, just as immoral, more ineffective), so of course, families are sending their children to the border in hopes it all turns out well on the other side.
  • Until the end of the Obama administration, Cubans who arrived on dry land in the US were automatically admitted, but those who attempted to land via boat were returned to Cuba. This policy (in effect for decades) was known as the “wet foot/dry foot” policy to keep Cubans from piling into rickety boats and attempting to cross the dangerous Florida Straits. Now, Venezuelans who arrive at a land border are told to stay in Mexico, but those that apply online and fly into the US are admitted.
  • Migration proponents sponsor educational programs throughout Latin America, explaining how to exploit one interpretation of international law in order to gain asylum status in the United States. Worse still, the numbers of such asylum requests have sky-rocketed, swamping the courts which have a multi-year backlog of cases. Nearly all asylum refugees show up for the hearing; almost 80% are disapproved, but almost none show up for the subsequent deportation hearing. The end result is an elaborate judicial charade with no effect on who enters the country.
  • Refugees are often admitted to the US as a result of natural disaster or political upheaval. Unlike other countries, the refugees are usually grandfathered into some sort of permanent status, and the children they have in the US automatically become US citizens, further complicating the problem. While these numbers are small, the UN estimates the number of climate emergencies will greatly increase in the coming years, increasing the demands for developed states to accept greater numbers of such refugees.

Finally, there are some aspects of the immigration problem that are not, in fact, relevant to the problem at all. These need to be summarily discussed and dismissed, if only to clear the table for the real challenges:

  • The link between drug-smugglers and refugees. This is a wild tangent that should be ignored. Drug smuggling is a multi-billion dollar operation that handles large volumes and evades the government. Refugees carry the clothes on their backs and, due to the ridiculous nature of existing US policies, try to find a border officer to whom to surrender. Sure, somewhere there is a refugee carrying a brick of cocaine, but that’s not the problem. Drug smugglers sometimes use their capabilities to smuggle people, either for human-trafficking or just for refugees who can pay. But it’s a side business at best, and does not affect the overall flow of drugs or people across the border.
  • Terrorists crossing the border. You’ll see some news outlets stating “100 people on the terror watch list were caught crossing the border.” Stop and ask yourself: if we caught 100 terrorists at the border, where are the prosecutions? Certainly DHS or the FBI would be trumpeting this success! There are no prosecutions, because there are no apprehensions of terrorists at the border, because there are no terrorists at the border. There are over two million names in the Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB), the master list the US government uses to screen people. The list includes aliases, fictional characters, dead people, any name which has been associated with someone who was a terrorist. Osama Bin Laden is still in the TSDB, because some new terrorist might decide to claim his name in his honor. So what those news reports are really saying is “one hundred people who have names like ones in the TSDB were caught at the border.” And since none of them were prosecuted, we know that the appropriate government agents looked at the individual, and the list, and said “nope, not the guy or gal we’re looking for.” End of story.
  • Refugees are the result of US meddling in other countries. There are a small number of cases where you can tie US involvement directly to refugee status: Vietnamese and Cambodians after the war in Southeast Asia, and Afghanistanis today, for example. But the overwhelming number of refugees have absolutely no (or a tenuous at best) connection to “US meddling.” We’re dealing with Venezuelans and Nigerians and Mexicans, Cubans, Brazilians, Ecuadorans and Romanians. Even the people from the “golden triangle” (Guatemalans and Hondurans and Salvadorans) are refugees from violent, crime-riddled societies that America last politically cared about forty years ago. This argument doesn’t hold up.
  • The US has a moral obligation to accept the world’s refugees, regardless of why they might be refugees. You might see this as an outlandish exaggeration (a straw-man argument, if you will), but I include it since there are very real pro-immigration groups who believe it and profess it. It would seem irresponsible (if not immoral) to me to encourage desperate people to begin the perilous journey to our southern border, to send their children alone across that border, or to place themselves in the hands of coyotes to do so. Yet it happens, all the time. People making this argument do so primarily not to the American public, who would decisively reject it, but they make it to the most vulnerable people in the world. Shame on them.
  • “Chain migration,” the sponsoring of relatives by existing green card/naturalized citizens, is a major problem. This policy, which has been around for over fifty years, was once considered a no-brainer. New would-be immigrants who already had family in the US were considered to be stronger candidates for successful integration, so they were favored. Unfounded stories of distant “cousins” given green-card status caused some to question it, but the statistics say otherwise. The list of relatives is limited, as is the overall number for any year (or from any country). In some cases, the list of potential applicants is decades-long! The policy has a sound basis, and it isn’t a major source of immigration.

After all that, I conclude there is an immigration problem. It is not the relative size of the immigration flow, but its uncontrolled nature. The US does not encourage immigrants that it should, nor discourage others in a coherent way. Our policies make a mockery of the rule of law (always a bad thing), are expensive, and have little effect. External factors (like the pandemic, or the health of the Mexican economy) are far more important determinants of US immigration than US immigration policies.

Next post? Immigration solutions based on this problem definition.