Regarding the Dunce Cap

The other evening my 10 year old daughter called my 8 year old son a dunce. Like most siblings, insults between them are routine, but I was surprised by the use of the word "dunce". I had assumed that it had long ago quietly dropped out of modern English usage along with other quaint insults such as "nincompoop" and "dunderhead".

This then got me thinking about dunce caps. For those of you too young or too innocent, dunce caps were tall conical hats with a "dunce" or simply "D" written on them that especially slow or misbehaving children were forced to wear while seated on a special stool in the classroom as a kind of shaming. Although I was in grade school long enough ago to have had a school principal who actually kept a leather strap in his desk drawer that he was not only legally permitted to use on children but positively encouraged to, I was at least a couple generations too late for the dunce cap.


So where does this curious custom come from? The word dunce itself derives from the 13th century Franciscan monk and great philosopher, John Duns Scotus, who in turn is named after the town of Duns in Scotland where he was born. His followers were known as "Dunsmen" or "Dunses". Scotus was also known as "the Subtle Doctor" and his philosophy was so subtle as to be exceedingly difficult to follow. Regardless, it remained well respected and even popular until the 16th century when it came under heavy attack. The Dunses were derided as hair-splitters and eventually lost favour. In the process their name became associated with idiocy. So far, so good, eh? Dunsmen = Dunses = dunces = idiots. But what about the funny hat?

Here then is the interesting bit. John Duns Scotus believed that wearing a tall cone would allow knowledge to flow down to the wearer's head, with the pointy bit representing the pinnacle or apex of knowledge. Dunsmen consequently wore them and the hats too became, perhaps not unfairly, associated with idiocy. Duns also theorized that the hat would help the wearer focus. Fast forward 700 years and dyslexia researcher Ron Davis decided to try putting pointy conical hats (presumably not calling them dunce caps) on dyslexic children. He then asked them to concentrate on the unseen point above their heads and gave them something to read that they had previously been unable to. You know what's coming next. Yes indeed, the pointy hat wearers could now suddenly read.

John Duns Scotus was sainted by Pope John Paul II in 1993.

Don't Order The Bacon

Batad was worth the effort. It was worth the twelve hour bus journey during which we were subjected to incredibly loud movies on video inexplicably featuring boy scouts being slaughtered with pump action shotguns. It was worth jostling up the mountain in a sidecar which constantly threatened to disconnect from its motorcycle and send us cartwheeling deep into the ravine. It was worth struggling up through the humid jungle from the motorcycle drop-off point to reach the high pass above Batad. It was worth all this distress, stress and sweat because Batad is no like no place we had ever been. 


Batad is a small village on the main Philippine island of Luzon and what makes it like no place we have ever been is that it sits at the bottom of vertiginous amphitheater of ancient rice terraces, cut off from the outside world by jungle and mountains. Only footpaths lead here and there is not nearly enough flat land for even the most psychotic pilot to land on. When we finally reached the pass and pushed aside the giant wild poinsettias we looked down on a Filipino Shangri-La, a hidden world of a thousand shades of green, gentle people, absolute peace and, as it turned out, hungry pigs. But more on that in a moment.

There was only one place to stay in the Batad valley, a small guesthouse about two thirds of the way up the valley's side. There seemed no more idyllic place in the world than the guesthouse deck looking down on the village far below and out over those incredible rice terraces. Noise was limited to chickens and, well, that was pretty much it. The stillness was uncanny. As was the darkness at night. The guesthouse and a few of the houses down in the village had generators but as fuel had to be humped in over the pass on someone's back, generator use was limited to about an hour after sunset at the most. After that it was dark. Very dark. The small flickering kerosene lanterns down in the village looked so much like the stars above that one had the disorienting sense of being suspended in the middle of outer space. With chickens. 

Our accommodation was comfortable but far from luxurious, notably with respect to the washroom facilities. We did have a sink in the room but the toilet was an outhouse. And what an outhouse. I have already mentioned that the major feature of this guesthouse was its fabulous view, well apparently the owners thought that no opportunity should be passed up to enjoy this view so the outhouse had no front wall facing the valley. It was situated in a patch of jungle on stilts, suspended over the next terrace level below. You approached it from behind, gingerly picking your way along a path that skirted the edge of the terrace, and then you sat there wide open to the valley. Only birds were able to look at you as the terraced slope in front fell away so steeply.

We got oriented to this curious arrangement during the day and came to quite enjoy it. Nighttime was another matter though. Even with a flashlight in hand it was more than a little unnerving to head down the jungle outhouse path in the pitch dark. But, my digestive system being in another time zone, one night I had to made my way over there. I was just getting ready to do what I needed to do when I heard an unexpected sound. It was a sharp rustling in the bush directly below the outhouse. As I mentioned, this place was normally utterly silent, so I was surprised. 
This was no chicken. 
I strained to listen. 
After a moment's quiet there was a crashing noise immediately beneath my toilet seat so sudden and so loud that I think I must have jumped up and let out a little yelp. I couldn't imagine what was under there. And, more to the point, why it was under there. Before full scale panic could set in I heard another sound. A grunting sound. A soft guttural grunting sound. 
I knew this sound. 
I pointed my flashlight down through the toilet hole and sure enough, there it was. 
A pig's snout. 
A pig's snout pointed up. Mouth partly open. Grunting. Happily. Expectantly. Eagerly. Hungrily.  

Yes indeed, we confirmed the next day that it was true. This was how they fed their pigs. And there was bacon on the breakfast menu. We did not order any.

Oatmeal and Shantalope

Two winters ago we rented a house with friends on the tiny Caribbean island of Cayman Brac. Choosing a rental house always involves weighing a number of factors including price, location and amenities. But for us there is also a fourth factor: livestock. Not every house we have rented has had livestock and in fact some of the very nicest ones have not, but we still gravitate to the listings that include barnyard animals.

We all agreed that the house on Cayman Brac scored very high on price, location and amenities and, moreover, it had chickens and a pig - a pig named “Oatmeal” - so it was perfect. The house was booked and we began counting the days.

Renting a house with a pig was exciting enough, but renting one with a pig that had a sweet, cuddly name like Oatmeal made the kids delirious with anticipation. We had no sooner pulled up to the house in our rented van when the kids went tearing around the paths in the large garden looking for Oatmeal. We sauntered along behind, taking in the perfumed air and the marvelous tropical colours when we heard a loud crashing sound, like a car hitting a tree, immediately followed by the kids shrieking. 

Oatmeal was in a pen with a high solid fence. Oatmeal was about 300 lbs and was flinging herself against the fence in a kind of blind rage. The fence was festooned with signs indicating that Oatmeal was not to be touched, fed or otherwise interacted with. She stared at us with evident loathing, flecks of foam dripping from her lips. 

We avoided Oatmeal after that and contented ourselves with the far more agreeable chickens until one day an elderly local man showed up on the property.

"Hallo!” he greeted loudly, flashing a gap-toothed smile.

“Hello!”

“I am here to see de pig.”

“Uh... Ok...”

“My name is Shantalope.”

I blinked, unable to formulate a quick response to that.

“An' I sold Joanne dat pig when it was jes a wee one. I jes want to see how de pig is gettin' along.”

I stood up, introduced myself and led Shantalope through the garden to Oatmeal's pen. Oatmeal went beserk again, charging the fence head down like a demented cartoon rhinoceros. For her size she was lightning quick. Shantalope took a step back, scratched his chin and chuckled.

“Dat Joanne, she was treatin' de little pig like a baby. Walkin' it on a leash an' kissin' it an' spoilin' it! Now look at it!”

Oatmeal charged the fence again, making an appreciable dent in it.

“Oh dat pig be cross! Dat pig be very cross!”

Shantalope laughed and shook his head.

“I tole Joanne I buy de pig back. I tole her I give her a new little one, but she still want dis one. She still love dis one.”

I nodded and looked at Oatmeal, doing my best however to avoid eye contact as that seemed to enrage her the most. Oatmeal took a break from trying to kill us and turned around. Shantalope cocked his head and looked at her hindquarters in an appraising sort of way.

“Oh mon, look at dem hams!”

He made a universally understood cupping motion with his hands, narrowing his eyes with anticipated pleasure.

“Oh dem hams, just tink of de good eatin' from dis pig!”

We began walking away as Shantalope switched to regaling me with tales of all the very fine girls he knew in Montreal when he was a sailor. I could hear Oatmeal raising a ruckus behind us again, but I didn't look. I was thinking, I was in a much better position to empathize with Joanne's dilemma than Shantalope was, but he was right, those were some splendid hams.

Venice In Four Hours Or Less

This is from the "archives" - written ten years ago about something that happened twenty-five years ago...

There is something about the magical power of a Eurail pass that causes it to burn in your pocket, like a gleaming quarter handed to a four year old. You want to use the thing and you want to use it often. The side effect is that all this moving around leaves very little time in each destination, but in fact this need not be a problem at all, as my friend Mark and I demonstrated one summer. We had already dispatched with Paris and Nice in a matter of a few hours each and were now rolling towards Venice.

         The approach by train into Venice is only remarkable in its profound dullness and in that it gives no hint whatsoever of what is to come. However, the minute you step out of the front doors of the train station, you know where you are. Rather than the usual frenzied Italian scene of buses and mopeds and honking and fumes there is a great sweeping set of broad stone steps leading down to the Grand Canal where the vaporetti (water buses) lie bobbing.

         The good fortune of Venice is that its Golden Age of wealth and lavish spending on architecture was mercifully followed by a rapid descent into obscurity, which ensured its preservation, like a fly trapped in amber. These days Venice is of course anything but obscure. Many people are frightened off by this popularity, fearing a nasty theme park atmosphere - a kind of Disney-On-The-Canals populated by cynical locals and sweaty throngs of braying tourists. This nightmare certainly exists in spots, but we found that it could be easily evaded as well.

The instinct upon arrival is to trot right on down those grand steps and make for the nearest vaporetto for a cruise down the Grand Canal to the Piazza San Marco. Infinitely more agreeable, however, is the land-route, which begins at a little bridge a few steps off to the left. There are signs marking the way, but they are small – evidently too small for most people. One minute: those braying sweaty throngs. The next minute: a deserted lane wending between stylishly decayed 15^th century villas.

             It took us almost two hours to reach the Piazza San Marco in this fashion and I easily count them among my best two hours of travel anywhere. The route took us alongside slender canals, over tiny arched stone bridges and across a profusion of little plazas and squares. Some of these squares were fronted by grand buildings and churches that were clearly of significance, but others featured only graffiti and scraps of litter spinning in slow vortexes created by isolated eddies of wind. I found the graffiti and litter oddly comforting; an affirmation I suppose that Venice was a real place, not just a carefully primped outdoor museum.

         The signs marking the way were well placed: they were unobtrusive and always put just at the point where you began to wonder whether perhaps you had taken a wrong turn and gone astray. This allowed for a pleasant sensation of mild adventure as we slowly threaded the labyrinth. The stillness of the place was remarkable. There were few Venetians about and fewer still tourists. Those tourists we did meet were invariably middle aged Germans earnestly examining some architectural detail while referring to their encyclopedic guidebooks.

          The midway point of the walk is the famed Rialto Bridge. After the Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal, this bridge is probably Venice’s best-known feature. Built in 1588 it was the first permanent crossing of the Grand Canal, linking the two halves of Venice. It has a very distinctive appearance with shops running up both sides, backed by tall arches. The bridge is steep enough to require stairs to reach the middle where the shops give way to a pleasing, albeit perpetually jam-packed, vantage point over the canal. Pretty from a distance, up close it is festooned with purveyors of knick-knacks and enough obese tourists to give you pause to wonder whether 16^th century structural engineering calculations could in any way anticipate the girth and heft of the average 20^th century sightseer. We elbowed our way across and a few minutes later - poof - as in a fairy tale wish: all was peace and emptiness again.

          We ambled along contentedly again until the gradual increase in the number of shops signalled that we were approaching the epicentre, the Piazza San Marco, or St. Mark’s Square. First though, a word about these shops. Evidently there are only three types of businesses in Venice, with each type being roughly equal in prevalence.

Fully one third of the shops devoted themselves to glassware. When I say glassware I do not mean beer mugs and chemistry beakers and other such useful objects, but bizarre coloured baubles and trinkets and exceptionally impractical looking vases. There were scores of such shops, often one right after the other, resulting in an effect that was both dazzling and monotonous at the same time. To be fair, Venice does have a long tradition of glassblowing, so aficionados of demented looking pink and green glass animals from all around the world know precisely where to come, but the backpacker is not well served. Thin hand-blown glassware is about as sensible a souvenir to have rattling about in one’s pack as live quail or unexploded ordinance.

The next third were similarly useless: Carnival mask boutiques. Much as with the glassware emporia, there were scads of these, selling nothing but papier-mâché Carnival masks. It’s a shame really that what was once an appealing tradition has been reduced to a basement rec room decorating standby on the level of the bamboo fan painted with the hot pink tropical sunset.

A brochure describing the Venetian Carnival during the Middle Ages professed rather breathlessly:

“Masked courtesans would participate in the most wanton games of lust, and confident of their anonymity would shed all conventional inhibitions. Noblemen, who would normally take painstaking care not to divulge a hint of their sexual preferences, could perform in mask acts that at the time were considered immoral and illegal.”

Cool. Moreover, “Carnival” in those days lasted from December 26 until Shrove Tuesday – over three months! Masking was also encouraged for a period during the fall and again in early summer. Those wanton Venetians. After the so-called Serene Republic (doesn’t seem so serene anymore, does it?) fell on hard times the party was over, both figuratively and literally. Ultimately Carnival was even banned because of an unseemly number of fatal mishaps. I could not find detailed descriptions of these “mishaps”, but it’s easy enough to imagine what transpires when alcohol, masks, wantonness and canals are thrown together. Carnival was revived in the 1970s by the government as an annual one-week fleecing of tourists during February. It is now Venice’s biggest yearly draw and provides an interesting counterpoint to Rio’s now more famous festivities. The Brazilians have stayed true to the medieval Carnival ideals of lust, excess and craziness, whereas, at least according to the ubiquitous postcards of dark cloaked figures with eerie white masks stalking alongside mist-shrouded canals, Venice’s Carnival now looks disappointingly austere and intellectual.

In any case, neither of us were the target demographic for the mask vendors. The final group of Venetian shops did, however, hit the mark. Stationers. Stationers by the dozen. And not, I might add, your standard Office Depot or Staples either. These were dimly lit little warrens, furnished in the darkest, richest wood and crammed full with luxurious cream-coloured velum, bricks of deep red sealing wax, black and gold pens that cost as much as a major appliance and an eye-popping assortment of antique brass and wooden gadgets – everything the discriminating European aristocrat could want for the sprawling oaken desk in his castle tower office. We pawed through these goods, relishing the smells of ink and leather and old wood, but there was nothing either of us could afford. Well ok, I probably could have managed a few envelopes, but when you’ve lusted after an antique desktop globe with a handsome carved wooden stand for $2250, it’s absolutely not possible to be satisfied with anything less.

Evidently anyone in search of a crescent wrench, toilet paper or a sack of potatoes in Venice was out of luck.

We were in the midst of this engaging session of window-shopping when, with startling abruptness, one of the little lanes spat us out onto the Piazza San Marco. There she was, an expanse of cobbles encrusted with pigeon shit, lined on three sides by some rather anonymous looking Renaissance buildings and on the fourth by the unarguably magnificent St. Mark’s basilica. No doubt some of these “anonymous” buildings were actually of tremendous importance, but blessed by our ignorance we ignored them and made straight for the obvious target, the basilica.

Mark was wearing shorts, but had had the foresight to bring a pair of long pants along, so before the guards could pick him up and caber-toss him out onto the square, he nipped around the corner and pulled his long pants up over his already bulky shorts. This gave him the appearance of a man with explosives strapped to his posterior, but that failed to interest the guards and we were admitted without so much as a bored glance.

Now this was an impressive church. St. Marks was the first cathedral we had seen with a strong Byzantine influence. Immediately upon entering we found ourselves in a kind of foyer under a series of domes that were completely covered with gold tile mosaics. This had the effect of creating a roomful of upturned faces and rigorously craned necks. We joined the hundred or so tourists already wedged into this space and gaped awestruck at what was above us. The mosaics had that Eastern Orthodox look about them that one associates with Russian icons, although Venice always has been Roman Catholic. We presumed that the story being illustrated above was that of the virtuous life and abundant miraculous deeds of St. Mark, but it was difficult to be absolutely certain on that point as there was quite a bit going on up there and all the figures wore similarly beatific expressions.

The mosaics in the foyer were apparently just an aperitif - in the aircraft hanger sized main chapel there were acres of gold mosaics in the high domes, on the columns, in the niches, everywhere… The altar-screen was something else too - it was entirely encrusted in jewels and enamel icons. Apparently St. Mark himself, or at least some representative sampling of his body parts, was here somewhere too. His original resting place was Alexandria, Egypt, but two enterprising Venetian merchants dug him up and smuggled him here as, much in the fashion of modern boomtowns that lure sports franchises from more stagnant cities, they felt that their up-and-coming town deserved an A-list saint. We meandered about for a short while like stunned cattle and then, suddenly overcome by a powerful craving to buy souvenirs, made for a stand we had seen in the foyer. This was a restrained and tasteful affair – no Pope-On-A-Rope or “To Hell With Satan” t-shirts here, only books, postcards and a few small curios.

Disappointed, we wandered back out onto the piazza. Mark still looked like he was trying to shoplift a tablecloth, so he took off his long pants and then we set about the serious business of getting the requisite pictures of each of us feeding the pigeons in the middle of the square with St. Mark’s Basilica forming the scenic backdrop. We didn’t actually have any food for the pigeons, but not being possessed of an especially keen intellect they allowed themselves to be faked out repeatedly until we got a few nice shots.

Although the basilica is clearly the star of the piazza, one’s eye is also drawn to the bell tower associated with Doge’s Palace, one of the otherwise undistinguished buildings marking the perimeter of the square. This tower is quite tall and its pointy roof dominates the Venetian skyline. It stands just kitty-corner from the basilica and is traditionally something a visitor would climb in order to gain a view of the city from above. We looked at it for a moment and reflected on how ridiculous the word “Doge” sounded, like a six-year-old boy saying “dog” when he’s in a silly mood. In fact it’s just “duke” in the local dialect, but considerably more fun to say.

Mark looked at me, “Doge.”

“Doge,” I shot back.

“Doge!”

“Doge!”

“Double Doge!”

Well, you get the picture. And with that our time was up. The tower was going to be too expensive to climb anyway, so we trotted down to the dock and located a vaporetto headed in the direction of the train station.

The profusion of boat traffic on the Grand Canal created a disagreeable chop, so the boat rocked perilously as we tried to jump aboard. The engine sounded like a concerto of one hundred chainsaws with guest accompaniment by a quartet of wood-chippers. I had actually been looking forward to this ride along the Grand Canal as a scenic cruise of sorts to cap our visit to Venice, but the sickening motion, the noise, the nasty fumes and the fact that we were packed in like Tokyo subway commuters diminished the pleasure somewhat. I spent the trip wedged in such a way that my view was dominated by a man’s right ear. It was an outstandingly hairy ear and as such was mildly interesting, but I am confident that I did not need to go all the way to Venice to see that. Otherwise though, the trip had been entirely worthwhile. Four hours in Venice and, to quote Sir Edmund Hillary, “we knocked that bastard off”. Next stop Vienna; it’s bigger, so maybe six hours?

All The Barnyard Animals

Two summers ago Lorraine, Isabel, Alexander and I traveled to France where we rented a donkey named Odyssee. Odyssee carried our bags while we tramped around the hills and valleys of southern Burgundy for several days, staying in farm B&Bs along the way. Part of what attracted us to this particular itinerary was the charmingly worded description of the first farm, the Coq a l'Ane:

"It is in the real mini farm that you are invited: hens, cocks, asses, rabbits, guinea pigs and Françoise will invite the children in the morning to the collection of eggs and to the cuddles of asses, rabbits for their biggest pleasure."
 Now I ask you, who does not pine for the cuddles of asses in the morning?

Isabel and Alexander are both in French immersion, although at that time Alexander had only just finished Kindergarten. We would often ask Isabel for help in translating, especially at the Coq a l'Ane as Francoise spoke no English whatsoever. Isabel would watch us flounder about with our thirty year old Prairie high school French and then would correct us afterwards when Francoise wasn't around.

One subject of particular interest was the name of the farm. Lorraine and I gathered that it meant something like "Roosters to Donkeys" as the farm indeed featured both of those animals and many more. It also turned out to be a French expression meaning "all the barnyard animals", or in some cases also, "suddenly changing the subject" (i.e. jumping from talking about roosters to talking about donkeys).

In any case, Lorraine and I were sitting at the picnic table in the meadow behind the house, looking out over the storybook landscape, sipping a marvelous local white wine when Isabel came running up to us. She was very excited.
"Mommy, daddy, you're wrong! I figured it out! It's not 'to', it's 'to the'! Coq a'l'Ane means 'Cock to the Ass'! Cock to the Ass!!"

My sweet eight year old girl was joyfully shouting "cock to the ass" at the top of her lungs... We sputtered and choked on our wine and began to laugh. Isabel was confused.

The New World of Quintana Roo

I don't remember when I first read Michel Peissel's "The Lost World of Quintana Roo", but it was probably when I was in my early teens, flopping un-seatbelted on the back bench of our VW van, bumping along some Saskatchewan road. I would picture the van abruptly turning south and then driving day and night as the landscape changed from white to brown to green until we arrived on the shores of the Mexican Caribbean (Quintana Roo being the name of the state there). This never happened. Much of Peissel's wild and unexplored Quintana Roo of 1958 remained that way until the mid 1980s, but by the time I finally got there it was well into the process of being bulldozed and tamed into the "Mayan Riviera".

We first went in 2004 when Isabel was two years old. We stayed at the last and southernmost resort in the string of all-inclusives that runs south of Cancun. Looking at the empty beach stretching south I began to think of Michel Peissel again and his walk along the entire length of that coast almost fifty years prior.

The sequence of events on our trip are unclear now and I can't recall whether it was before or after Isabel ate a piece of cow shit and became really ill or whether it was before or after I drank an uncountable number of mojitos at the beachside bar that had swings for chairs and became somewhat ill myself, but in any case it was on a day when all seemed right with the world that I set off to the south and walked.

It didn't take long to be around the first headland and out of sight of the hotel. The beach ahead was absolutely empty. It stretched at least two or three kilometers to the next headland. There were no houses or hotels or structures of any kind along it, just an unbroken line of palms. Squinting slightly this was the very postcard picture of paradise, but focusing a bit better the effect of having nobody living on the beach became obvious - there is nobody there to clean up the incredible volume of debris that washes ashore. The seaweed and coconuts and driftwood are all fine, great even, but the plastic not so much. And what plastic! Shampoo bottles from Jamaica. Water bottles from the Caymans. Plastic bags from the US. Oil jugs from Cuba. Toothbrushes from who knows where. And parts of dolls. So many parts of dolls that it began to seem creepy. At one point someone had built a driftwood wind-break decorated with doll's legs and heads. They tinkled in the wind, making me suddenly nervous and edgy.

Then I saw them. In the distance two figures approached out of the south. They were walking side by side and were wearing heavy dark clothing. Clearly not tourists. As they came closer I could see that each of them was carrying something... Something long and narrow... Sticks? No... Those weren't sticks. Those were... Those were rifles. For a brief moment, with the music of the dis-articulated doll mobile still in my ears, I had a vivid mental picture of being shot by drug runners, chopped up and buried beneath the wind-break. I stood stock still and glanced quickly at the jungle to my right as a possible route of escape. By now however the figures had resolved themselves out of the heat haze to be Mexican soldiers. Two miserable young conscripts in full combat gear, trudging along a sun-blasted beach, trying to ignore the panicky gringo.

Flash forward eight years to January 2012 and we're back. This time we're one bay north of the resort in a rental house with two other couples and their children. It was a fabulous week, delivering everything a tropical vacation should, but again I felt the pull of Michel Peissel and again I headed off to the south one morning to see how far I could walk and to see if the coast had changed.

It had changed remarkably little. There were still long deserted stretches and there were still heaps of plastic trash including an irrational number of random doll parts. This time however I did not see any Mexican soldiers (they were all in the town of Tulum, cruising up and down the main street to demonstrate how safe Mexico was, but in doing so giving the exact opposite impression...). This time instead I saw a lone figure walking towards me. As it got closer it became clear that it was a man, a quite hairy man in fact, who was wearing nothing except one of those ultra-skimpy bathing suits I have heard inelegantly called a "pickle pocket". As he got closer still the black pickle pocket revealed itself to have a small tan coloured patch in the middle. The pickle. Oh. He was absolutely naked. Nudism is frowned upon in Mexico, so this was a bit of a surprise. I again glanced at the jungle to my right and considered my options. I decided however to go with "oblivious and cheerful" instead. As we passed each other I looked straight at him and gave him a hearty "Buenos Dias!". He looked down at his feet, or down somewhere in any case, and mumbled "hello".

Fifty years ago Michel Peissel would walk for days without seeing anyone. When he did see someone it would often be a chicle harvester, a "chiclero", who spent months alone in the jungle tapping trees for a rubbery substance that was used to make chewing gum (hence Chiclets). These guys were often unhinged and violent. Now it is drug interdiction soldiers and hairy nudists. And they both seem sad.