Jigmi Y. Thinley, Prime Minister of Bhutan at World Leaders Forum

HOME

After almost two solid days of travel, on May 26 we land tired but smiling with two ripped bags at San Francisco’s international airport. We are home. My pulse is up and I experience each breath as we drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, up the highway 101 corridor to our home in Healdsburg. Over the years I’ve experienced culture shock when returning home from far-away peoples and lands, not going to them. Now is no exception. ‘The real voyage of discovery is to see with new eyes’ and all the experiences over the past year – people, places, cultures, languages, economies, foods and lives – are inviting me to consider my life at home anew.

First, there are the practical considerations. How are our family and friends doing? When is the right time to reengage with Blu Skye? Paloma, our dog was ill when we were away, will she remember us? How has our home on the hill and off the grid faired?

Then there are the less practical considerations. What are the lessons to be learned and applied from our trip? Will everything just be the same after a day or two? How am I different from when I left?

I’ve been home now for a month and understand the difficulty of putting all that has happened into a few words. Everyone asks a version of the ‘how was your trip’? A reasonable enough question to which there is no clear answer. So we all answer a version of ‘it was great.’ Something important did happen out there in the big wide world. But I suspect its lessons will reveal themselves at unsuspected moments over the years to come. In the meantime, a response to the question about the trip is warranted. What did I learn? What did I discover? What are the implications for work and life?

Personally, I’ve grown as a father, husband and hopefully, more generally as a person. Relationships feed on shared experiences and we’ve fed them well on this trip. Think about it. Almost 24 hours a day with your significant other and child for 300 plus days. From the endless games of gin rummy and banangrams; to hundreds of rooms, beds and bathrooms – some regal, many just this side of sketchy; to cold late night walks through dusty impenetrable neighborhoods searching for a train; to drives of hundreds of miles through empty desert without seeing other cars; to close encounters with wild animals in dozens of landscapes; to a nighttime border crossing from Zambia to Zimbabwe during a power outage; to reconnecting with old and new friends in four continents, we have done everything together. I’ve seen how adaptable we are, that curiosity keeps you humble, that calculated risk keeps you young, and that being together matters.

Professionally, I’m inspired. From the creation of national parks in Chile, to the creative reuse of coke bottles in Namibia, to rethinking commodity markets in Ethiopia to help small family farms, to the practical application of a ‘Gross National Happiness’ index in Bhutan, to aid used to finance a women’s coop bakery in Malawi, to the resilience of people to survive in a totally collapsed economy in Zimbabwe, to the bizarre dance of the Blue Footed Boobie in the Galapagos that lives on today because of innovative conservation policies. I’ve seen the principles underlying the sustainability movement applied in so many different ways, by so many different people, in so many different places. It is a movement. I’ve learned that morally and practically it doesn’t work to tell people who have little and want more that they can’t have it. I’ve observed that there are billions of people in the world who fall into this category. I’ve learned to question technological based solutions without a corresponding transformation of consciousness. I’ve experienced the results of horrible ecological damage, and the incredible ability for landscapes and life to resurrect under the right conditions. I’ve reinforced my belief that business and the capitalist system are the acupuncture points to encourage global transformation. Fundamentally, I’ve seen that leadership matters.

Spiritually, I’ve come to see the wisdom in the trees and that love matters. Fear-based, revolutionary change of one’s life, family, community or country doesn’t work to create anything really new. Change born of fear, anger and hate simply recreates what it overthrows. The oppressed become the new oppressors. The Buddhists got it right: change is the nature of everything; we try and create permanence; grasping for that is painful; freedom is found in release and acknowledgment of what’s so.

At the end of the day I’m humbled by the privilege I have had to experience this trip of a lifetime and only hope that I can model the awe and humility required to live, really live, in this mysterious, wild world.

Galapagos 2010

Islas Galapagos

We spent two amazing weeks in the Galapagos Islands, seeing the awesome wildlife, walking in all the very different and unique landscapes of each island, and snorkeling with the beautiful sea life! Apart from Africa the Galapagos Islands have been one of my favorite places on our trip because I really enjoy seeing animals in their natural environment.

Let me tell you about some of my favorite animals like the Blue footed boobies. As their name already indicates the boobies have amazing bright blue feet, which help the males attract the female bird in mating season. The male blue footed boobies do a funny dance for the females were they lift up their feet one by one, slowly so that the male can show the female that he has good feet for incubating the egg , than the male will lift up his wings, stick out his behind and make a funny whistling noise! It was really cool to watch!!!

Another one of my favorite animals were the Marine Iguanas! Marine iguanas are about three feet long including their tails and are black in color. These iguanas are special because they have adapted to the islands so that they can swim! Their only food is the algae that gross on the lava rocks in the ocean so they have to dive down to the rocks to get their food! To keep warm they pill on top of each other in the sun.
The White Tipped Reef Sharks were another one of my favorites! It was my very first time swimming with sharks and I was a little bit scared but actually the two times I saw a shark while swimming it was pretty uninterested in us in terms of like eating us or something! White tipped reef sharks only get about five feet long and are one of very few that give birth to their young instead of laying eggs.


We also saw a few different kinds of sting rays like the Golden Cow Ray, spotted eagle rays , and the diamond ray. The rays that we saw were really cool I thought because when they swam in the water they looked like birds in flight! Rays have developed teeth for eating the shells of the bottom dwelling crustaceans of the ocean. Rays are also related to sharks!!!
We started our trip in a place full of amazing land animals, Africa, and now we are ending our trip in a place full of amazing marine life, Galapagos Islands. I found out on this trip that I really enjoy watching animals live their lives in their natural habitat, not in captivity!!!
I really feel lucky!
Skye

galapagos reflections

I'm in a thoughtful mood, standing on the bow of our little boat the Sagitta watching the sun set while running downwind along the rugged coast of Isla Isabel about to cross the equator one more time. Its been a year traveling the world, and the past week boating around the Galapagos visiting the volcanic islands filled with native species so specially evolved that they helped to inform Darwin's Evolutionary Theory. The Trip of Lifetime has been just that. Wandering the backwaters of Africa, Asia, North and South America has deepened my love for Marci and Skye and shown me how much life, diversity and creativity is still out there.

Bottled water and cell phones has made it easier to visit the world than when I was in my 20s. Now everywhere accessible by motorized vehicles, you will find tourists and facilities to serve them (including internet here in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Ecuador). This changes everything. For one thing, you can get a pizza practically anywhere. For another, the far away communities are becoming more mono-cultural, economically globalized and transparent. As people, ideas and stuff from far away places arrive, things that are truly local including language, food, dress, religion and culture are hybridizing, becoming tourist attractions or disappearing completely. Some of this makes sense, like when a Bolivian silver mine becomes safer, a sick or orphaned child gets help, or a far-away national park receives notoriety and visits. But it will be a shame when the women of the Peruvian Altiplano only wear their colorful hats and outfits for us when we visit.

Over the coming years, all communities and individuals will have to choose to save that which is unique and sacred to them. And this won't be easy. With all the information available, people have more choice which is good, but it can lead to more discontent with the old 'backward' ways of living. While slower, less efficient and uneconomic (in the current system) these old ways often include more direct knowledge of how to live in a beauty in a specific place, keep the peace and create a meaningful life from no thing.

When discussing climate change and sustainability (two of my favorite conversations) Alejandro, our naturalist guide on the Sagitta, pointed to the boobies in front of us and said, 'life, animals and nature will be fine; it's the human species that's most at risk. Our kids. That's what we have to focus on.' I agree completely.

Peru Slide Show

Machu Picchu

as i ran my hands along the cool square stones of perfection that were chiseled so perfectly, i thought what it would be like to live here in the Machu Picchu city 400 years ago. it must have been beautiful! With giant mountains surrounding you for miles around and you look up into the clear blue sky and you think you could fly as high as a condor! Spending most of your days out on the steep terraces, building new houses out of stone, preparing for ceremonies, and praying to the many gods. Life seemed so simple for them compared to our busy lives!
skye

dreaming

Ever since I was 12 years old I wanted to to go to Machu Picchu. I had my favorite teacher ever in 6th grade by the name of Heather Drake. We studied the Incas, and did a dig with another class.

I have always been fascinated by architecture specially when it holds the beauty in detail of a unimaginable construction like Machu Picchu. When I was high up on those magical mountains, I closed my eyes and dreamed how it must of been 400 yrs ago. Gardens over flowing with food and flowers. Colorful festivals, and many hands working hard to make such a beautiful city.

Machu Picchu was as incredible as I always hoped it to be.

Marci

Ollantaytambo

Gods mattered. You can tell by the stones. Walls constructed for housing, storage and workshops were incredibly detailed, but by Inca standards C class; walls built for princes and kings were B class, unbelievable in their smooth, flow and joinery; A class were temple walls, virtually impossible in their fit, size, complexity and beauty.

Standing in the shadow of the stone ruins of Ollantaytambo - a spiritual center that the Spanish leaders begrudgingly acknowledged as an outstanding fortress - I feel how hundreds of years ago political leadership, intellectuals, and regular citizens played their interconnected roles built around serving god. Right or wrong, everyone had a role; everyone had a job. Life had meaning, whether you chiseled rock; grew quinoa; studied the stars; fought against intruders; or lead society. The majority must have grown food and made temples.

What do we do now?

The Face of Bolivia

Faces and tradition.

What will happen when country’s like Bolivia stop wearing their traditional dress, stop weaving their amazing cloth and give in to the mono-culture and dress of the first world?

The style will disappear and the colors will fade away. The beauty of what makes us all unique will become the same tapestry.

Why would you want to travel to exotic far off places? Not only just to see sites, another monument, a Church, a waterfall.

Where will the dance and music go? What about the yummy foods, flavors and tradition in the preparation? Who will pass on the stories? What about the great Shamans?

Who will pass these along when our young people aren't interested in the labor of it all? It is all such meaningful hard work if you believe in your true heritage.

On this trip it is the places that honor their culture and traditions that will stick with me the most and the lovely faces of the people.

marci

Getting the Bolivian Visa

A number of countries throughout the world have decided that an eye for an eye is the best response to the USA’s visa tariff of $100+ for their citizens. In brief, here's what it took in Salta, Argentina to get our Bolivian visas:

1. Go to the Bolivian Consulate at 10am. Learn you need more than your passport and money - lots more actually: 3 photos, $ deposited into Banco National Argentina, copy of entry stamp into Argentina, copy of credit card, copy of yellow fever inoculation, copy of address in Bolivia… you’ve got to be kidding… how do you do this at the border? It takes 24 hours to process and the Consulate closes at 2pm. Its now 10am. Better get going.

2. Hop a cab to the hotel. Put three head shots on a memory stick. Proceed to bank to make the deposit - $135 per visa for Skye and Marci – because I am a delegate at the Climate Change Conference, I get a 30 day ‘courtesy’ visa for no charge.

3. Go to the Banco National, an ancient and byzantine structure, looking for stairs to up to the second floor foreign exchange desk. Wander aimlessly through hordes of people standing in lines everywhere. Find stairs and proceed into room filled with bank employees literally shuffling papers back and forth between 4 desks. No one is available to help.

4. Finally, The Bank Person Who Deals With People Like Me arrives and says, ‘we only accept dollars, not argentinian pesos.’ Again, I think, 'you've got to be kidding...' I have to go down the block to the ‘cambio’ place to re-exchange my Pesos for US Dollars - they don't do this at the Banco National.

5. Line at cambio place is out the door. Wait for 30 minutes. Exchange pesos for dollars. Return to other bank.

6. Wait some more.

7. Do the deal and get the receipt. Walk down street to the Kodak place. Install my memory stick with our head shots. Fiddle with the machine. Lady tells me it isn’t going to work. Wrong formatting.

8. Walk 4 more blocks to different photo store. Wait. Get photos. Continue to photocopy place.

9. Photocopy all the other stuff. Catch cab. Deliver stuff to Ricardo at consulate. He smiles and says come back tomorrow, which I do and everything is in order.

The process is the journey. Or something like that. In this case there is a destination and its Bolivia.

Vamos!

WOODSTOCK CLIMATICO IN COCHABAMBA

Sometimes reality doesn’t make a lot of sense. Like when Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, host of ‘the alternative to copenhagen’ climate change conference, says at the opening speech to 33,000 well-wishers from every continent on earth, ‘men shouldn’t eat chicken with hormones or they will become gay,’ and, ‘men shouldn’t eat GMO potatoes or they will lose their hair and given how many potatoes Bolivian men eat, we soon won’t need barbers,’ and ‘coca cola is best used for cleaning clogged drains’ (disclosure: I am both translating and paraphrasing, but this is directionally correct).


Somehow I ended up with a press pass, so I had good access to most of the key events. Because of the work I do with Blu Skye, I kept my profile low and slunk around in the back of the room wearing dark glasses (the dark glasses were only metaphorical as I lost my glasses kayaking on the Chacabuco River in Chile, but that’s another story). There were indigenous people from throughout Bolivia in the wildest local costumes, European activists running around with lamb head placards telling people not to eat meat, serious intellectual anti-globalists, mustached and loud pro-socialists, hippie journalists, and even two women from Soweto, South Africa who after traveling for three solid days were found lost and hungry at the registration desk, got saved by our hostess, Anna, and ended up running with our little ragtag entourage.


For all of this nuttiness, and the conference’s decidedly anti-capitalist, pro-socialist/communist agenda, the 3 day event had an amazing diversity of culture, language and orientation and produced some good principles and a few practical ideas for reducing the human-related gasses that contribute to our changing climate. In the end, the event itself was a gathering of climate concerned people with a vague yet passionate agenda, who participated in a packed agenda of working sessions, music, dance and singing. When the Coca Grower Union members started tossing bags of fresh coca leaves into the crowd during the music set just before the final document reading ceremony attended by Evo, Venezuela president Hugo Chavez and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, I knew that this was indeed the Woodstock of ‘climate change’. A grand fiesta, love fest, party. A turning point indeed, but from where to what exactly no one is sure.

ESTANCIA RICON DEL SOCORRO

"If I had a farm in Africa...." But it is Argentina, so beautiful and full of life. Wildlife every where: grasses, flowers, bees, cayman alligators, capybaras, marsh deer, howler monkeys and tons of wild parrots. We rode horses through the wetlands, took a boat through Laguna Ibera, and we hopped on bikes to check out the landscape at sunset.

Rincón del Socorro is another conservation project of Doug and Kris Tompkins. The Estancia is a 12,000-hectare (29,700 acres) former cattle ranch on the edge of the Iberá wetlands in Northeastern Argentina that has been made into a nature reserve. It and other large properties are connected to the 13,000 square kilometer Ibera Natural Reserve, the second largest wetland in the world.

I realized when visiting this and other of Doug and Kris' projects that conservation and preservation of biodiversity is so important, but what struck me to my core is Beauty.

Beauty in wildness
Beauty in free animals
Beauty in restoration
Beauty in the sounds of nature
Beauty in architecture of place
Beauty in clean air and clean water

As I travel this crazy earth, beauty grounds me.

Marci

CRUSH WITH THE VAL'SEXY' FAMILY

pick and crush. tannat grapes to become a big, tasty red mix with malbec. cafayate, argentina. 2010. altitude 1600 meters. grape growing, river running family of 6 brothers and 3 sisters. biodynamic. fun.

VOLCANOES

MY STORY
We got into our friend, Doug’s, plane. The plane was a four-seater, the smallest plane I had ever been in. I was exited! We were going to Doug’s house which was only accessible by plane or boat! To get to his house we would have to fly over the Chaiten Volcano! This volcano had just gone off a short time ago, on May 2, 2007. We started up the little plane and took off down the runway and up, up into the air we went.

It was great to be in a little plane, up high looking down at the green mountains that surrounded us. It was different from the usual big planes that most people fly in. The plane would tip to one side as Doug flew the plane, navigating well through the mountains; it felt like the plane was falling in slow motion! Then again I have never felt that and I hope I never will!

We finally saw the volcano in sight. We were flying over a little town close by the volcano. The town had been very beaten up from the volcano a few years ago. A whole river of ash had gone through the town and had flooded everything in its path! I was told that when the volcano erupted there was sooo much ash that it clogged up the rivers. The ash acted like a dam but then the “dam” broke and the river came right through the town! Luckily the town had enough time to evacuate and no one was killed. The town still looked devastated from the volcano that had gone off.

Up ahead was the smoldering Chaiten Volcano. It was big and rocky and as we got closer it started to smell strongly of sulfur. We flew around it once then moved on. It was really cool to see a volcano that close! But all around the volcano, for miles around, there was burnt tree after burnt tree. The trees didn’t look like a fire went through them, though. It looked more like all the color had gone out of them completely and they were just the color of ash gray.


We started to descend and then we came down onto the ground with a VRRRRROOOOOOOOOMMMMMM. We were at Doug’s house!

INTRODUCTION
Why I chose to do my report on volcanoes is because I think they are one of the coolest parts of earth and because I had the great experience of flying over one!

VOLCANOES
Volcanoes are mountains that have an opening at the top that goes downward to a pool of molten lava below the surface of the earth. When the heat builds inside a volcano, eruption occurs. Fumes and rock shoot up through the opening in the top and spill over, or fill the air with ash. Volcanoes can also cause lateral blasts which is where it blows out of the side instead out the top; lava flows, hot ash flows, mudslides, avalanches, falling ash and floods.

Volcanoes are formed by two tectonic plates hitting one another or pulling apart. A tectonic plate (also called the crust of the earth) is like the shell around the earth. It is a thin layer of earth that is constantly moving around. When the plates are moving around they might hit each other or break apart, and both can make a volcano. But there is no place on earth that doesn’t have a plate. Imagine a mud flat that is dried up and cracked. Some are overlapping, some are making little ridges like upside down V’s. Then imagine wrapping that mud flat around the earth and there you have your world crust.

There are many different kinds of volcanoes. Most people usually think volcanoes are just lava spewing mountains. Some of the kinds are: ice volcanoes, mud volcanoes, volcanoes that spew lava, volcanoes that volcanic ash blows from the top (the Chaiten Volcano was the volcanic ash type), and lots more. No matter rock or ash, 80% of the earth’s surface is volcanic in origin.

Volcanoes are very dangerous and have caused many people to die. If you had to guess which volcanos are more dangerous, lava volcanoes or ash volcanoes, most of you would probably say the lava volcanoes. But actually the ash volcanoes are the most dangerous because they tend to unexpectedly explode like an atomic but a lot bigger!!! If you were to watch one explode it would probably look like a giant gray mushroom way up high in the sky! The blast is sooo powerful it is known to knock down entier forests! Eruptions can trigger tsunamis, flash floods, earth quakes, mud flows and rock falls. A long time ago when there wasn’t yet technology, people described the eruptions of volcanoes as many things. Some thought it was supernatural, others like the ancient Greeks thought it was all the doings of the gods. There were many explanations for why volcanoes erupted.

The same night we flew over the Chaiten volcano there was an earthquake and we thought maybe the volcano was going off!!! Unfortunately I wasn’t awake to feel the earthquake (I never am). But my parents said it felt like a boat rocking on a sea!

CONCLUSION
I use to think volcanoes were just mountains that lava poured out of, but when I decided to do my report on them and I started researching them I found out that they are very interesting forms and very complicated too.

I hope you all enjoyed my report on volcanoes! This was originally for my class because I send them letters from every place we go and some of the letters are reports about subjects that I chose to study. We are now in Bolivia and we are coming home sometime in June. Can’t wait!!!

Skye

RAFTING THE RIO AZUL

I saw Kayja fall into the water in front of me and then I felt myself falling in too. I felt the freezing water as I splashed in and I caught my breath. The water was sooo cold I felt it would freeze me! I popped to the surface easily because of my life jacket and saw a raft falling towards me but just as I thought the boat was going to fall on me the current pulled me down stream. I saw Kayja in front of me being pulled in to another raft I soon got pulled in too.

This was one of our last days out on the river, in the Futaleufu valley. It was probably one of my favorite days too! The Rio Azul is one of the many tributaries of the Futaleufu. The Rio Azul’s rapids were mostly class 2 to 3 and it was a really fun river!!! Kayja, Sasha, me, and our guide Jorge, rafted the river in a mini-me which is a blow-up raft but a lot smaller. I have been rafting since I was little, but this was my first time in a mini-me so it was a real treat!!!
That was one of my all time favorite river trips that I have ever gone on.

Big thanks to the river guides and cooks who helped make the trip even more fun!!!

Totally, Stoodles (Skye)

THE FU FAMILY

Nestled on the banks of one of the greatest white water rivers in the world our friends have created a charming camp for rafting, kayaking, biking, horseback riding and beautiful walks through the valley. There we met friends from Skye’s class, Fairfax, Truckee, Coloma, and S.F.

We were delighted by Cookies’ cooking and Lorenzo’s party themes. Skye really loved the talent show, until her dad and Lyosha did a duet...

We slept by the river in a tent, where the sounds of the river put us right to sleep. “Good morning, Good Morning,” and in came Phil with our hot latte. Then when the sun was shining we headed up to the yoga platform for our class with Damara, which is a perfect way to start the day.

Somehow wherever we find ourselves in the world on a river, we find like-minded friends that love the great outdoors. It's an extended family. It’s Jib’s real love.

With gratitude to Marc, Lawrence and the whole Bio Bio crew for all their enthusiasm and love for the wild outdoors.

Marci

THE RIVER

Relationships feed on time. Attachment, skill and yes, love, build as a direct outcome of time spent together. Between people it’s called limbic resonance. Between people and wildness it’s called home. As Marci, Skye and I have wandered across four continents together; I’ve come to better appreciate this. Our southern Chile experience – and especially Futaleufu – brought together three things most dear to me: rivers, sustainability (my vague, potent notion) and most of all family. The Futaleufu and its tributaries the Azul and Escalon, are all five star beauties – pristine, free-flowing, class big, fish-filled, and threatened 21st century anomalies. Major dams are proposed all over southern Chile as it is one of the few places left on earth with lots of water and very few people. The tension between the (clean) energy demands of our industrial growth model and places like Futaleufu and its indigenous inhabitants mounts with each passing day. This is a microcosm of the intellectual and moral challenge of our time. On this river I kayak, along with Marci and Skye, returning to the company of dear friends at the Bio Bio river camp where around the campfire we sing songs, debate, laugh, look deep into the fire’s dancing light and touch the experience of human being at its core.

Ode to the odd hotel

Not talking about the sinister hotels and motels - the ones where the drug deals go down, in the seedy parts of town, where rooms are rented by the hour and the sheets never get changed. No, I'm talking about the odd, personalized, owner-run places; sometimes serving breakfasts, always with strange quirks. Wallpapers from the last century; framed pictures of children's Scottish kilts; sheets and covers of various colors and cotton counts; owners of interesting backgrounds that somehow have ended up in these funny little backwaters all over the world. They transcend their cultural locations. When you check in, you spend a night inside the mind of their creators. Never dull. Always interesting. Next time you're in Puyuhuapi, Chile be sure and stay with Ursula Flack at her Hosteria Alemana - and by the same token, next time you're in Springbok, South Africa don't go to the Scottish Nights Guesthouse. Oh, and also don't forget to stay at the Espacio y Tiempo (translation: Space and Time) in La Junta, Chile.

The End of the World as We Know It

In case you were wondering, the spare tire from a Russian made 1987 Niva station wagon doesn’t work on an Argentinean made 1990’s Ford Ranger King cab truck. We learned this the hard way. After exploring the sendero bosque encantada (the enchanted forest), a lovely trail off the top of the pass through a wood, fern and moss grotto of elfish character that ended in an ice choked cirque lake surrounded by glaciers and their cascading waterfalls, we arrived back to our rented truck only to find a nail stuck deep into the flat left rear tire. It was late, we’d already driven 4 hours and had another 4 to go to Coyhaique. Now I’m not a mechanical engineer, but changing a tire on a rutted dirt road in the middle of a Patagonian forest is right up my alley. But this wasn’t to be. The tool that lowered the spare tire from under the truck bed to the ground snapped leaving it impossible lower our spare tire despite many ingenious and thuggish attempts to do so by me and the few passerbys that tried to help.

Skye said, ‘it isn’t an adventure until something goes wrong’ – referencing Yvon Choinard’s timeless quote that I love to repeat myself… usually cozy around a campfire telling stories with a glass wine in hand. Luck would have it, that just in our moment of darkness – almost now literally – Ingrid and Lorena, two women who work with Doug and Kris Tompkins’ Conservacion Land Trust drive up and proceed to help us. This is where the Niva spare tire comes in. We first drive an hour to Puerto Cisnes – a small village built around salmon farming, which is now in dire straits due to the collapse of the salmon farming industry in south Chile. There a friend of their friend Juanito, takes us all over town looking for a five lug spare. There are many dogs in Puerto Cisnes, but not many spare Ford tires. So we settle for the Niva, which the owner insists has been used on a Ford Ranger previously.

At 9:30pm we see the futility of the Niva fix – its far larger than the ford. So we take the still flat tire, throw it in the back and drive here to Coyhaique, arriving at almost 2am. Yesterday I spent the whole day fixing the tire, broken tool and the cemented spare tire lowering device.

In the backdrop to all this adventure, a tragic story of deep suffering continues to unfold north of us. Over two million people are without homes, almost 800 people have died, many more are missing. Every radio and television station is on full time moving cameras and microphones from city to city, village to village in sad story after sad story. Now supply chains are becoming stressed throughout Chile. Stuff isn’t flowing by road or boat like it normally does. Yesterday diesel was unavailable in Coyhaique. Many people are advising us to go to Argentina to get fuel and food. There is a clear feeling of the fragility of the human techno-industrial endeavor and that ultimately earth’s timeless systems dominate. When the ground you stand on isn’t so solid after all, it can almost turn you into a Buddhist.

The Day the Earth Shook

We are safe and well – but somewhat shocked at what we’re just now seeing on the television – at the ‘Space and Time’ hotel the little roadside village of La Junta many hundreds of miles south of the terremoto’s epicenter. At the time of the earthquake we were sleeping deep inside Pumalin Park, at Doug and Kris Tompkin’s farm on the Renhue fiord. Asleep on the second floor of the hand hewn wooden building we felt a gentle, but significant, swaying and rocking of a boat at sea. There was no mistaking it was an earthquake.

The air in this normally blustery and cloudy part of southern Chile was perfectly calm and the full moon brilliantly highlighted the mountainous landscape surrounding the farm. A surreal moment in a remote place, we immediately thought of the Chaiten Volcano, which 3 years ago erupted in a Mount Saint Helen’s like explosion spilling over 6 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere and causing the permanent evacuation of the coastal town of Chaiten. Located inside the Park just 5 miles away from Doug’s farm, we had just spent the day before flying around the smoking Volcano in a small plane as we surveyed the park projects. Three years ago the ash plume went 100,000 feet into the sky. Last night, thank goodness, was clear and calm. It wasn’t until this morning that the full extent of what took place to the north has become clear. Earthquakes, volcanoes and their aftermaths are strong reminders of earth’s natural systems and the fragility of human endeavors.

Yesterday morning, all internet and mobile phone communications were cut off south of Concepcion. This is the first location where we are getting the full news of the devastation and suffering to the north. We have a truck and are continuing south to Coyhaique and then to Valle Chacabuco site of the future Patagonia National Park where we will reunite with Doug and Kris Tompkins.

21st Century Breakdown

Repression? Expression? or just a dog bite?

MARCI ON BALI

Here's what I've learned about myself more than ever in the last six months....

I Love Beauty
I love lush green landscapes
I love extraordinary sunsets
I love swimming in a warm blue ocean
I love riding a motor bike with Skye holding on behind me tight in the pouring warm rain
I love long time friends on the road
I love that beauty is important to the Balinese in all their daily offerings
I admire that they celebrate life and death equally
I love that the Balinese people smile all the time
I loved going to morning yoga with Jib at the yoga barn which looked over the rice fields
I love the exotic fruits and yummy veggie meals indoor outdoor living
I love the way they look in their traditional cloths
I respect so much their commitment to their culture and family values
I love that art and music is so alive and well in Ubud
I appreciated how the elders had a strong presence in the daily work life of their village
I loved how incredibly friendly the people are
I felt at home....
In the Bali spirit

SKYE ON GILI AIR

I had an amazing time in Bali where we stayed for six weeks! A part that I really enjoyed was when we went to the Gili islands! These are three islands right off the coast of Bali. It took an hour and a half by boat to get to there.

My friends Sasha, Ruby, and I sat at the front of the boat where there was a little window out of which we stuck our heads. The thrill of the wind rushing through my hair was amazing. If you have ever skied and speeded down a really big hill, and felt like you could fly, then you sort of know how I felt!

We finally got to our destination, Gili Air! The island was really small, so small in fact that there were no cars, only horse and buggies, and you could walk all the way around it in a few hours. There wasn’t much to do besides play on the beach and hangout in the shade in the hot afternoons. But one day, we took what’s called an exploratory dive. We started in a pool and learned all the stuff we needed to know before we went into the ocean. Then once we were done with that we got all the equipment and piled it into the boat (ourselves included) and went out to sea! When we got to the right place, the captain stopped the engine and threw the anchor into the sea. We put on our equipment and in groups of three we sat on the edge of the boat and fell backwards into the water on the count of three! I popped my head back out of the water and gave a grin from ear to ear. I went back under the water with my two buddy partners (which you have to have) and we started to descend to the sandy ocean floor. We reached 50 feet! I was amazed at how deep we had gone and I loved it! At first there wasn’t much to see but then we swam around a big bulk of dead coral and came into a whole new world! It was like nothing I had ever seen before. There were sooo many different colors and shapes! There was also trillions of different kinds of fish like, Lion fish, Cuttle fish, Sea turtles, Parrot fish, and TONS more!!! I wanted to stay down there forever, but it was time for us to start heading back up.

It was an experience of a lifetime and I will never forget that trip to another world.

JIB UNPACKED

First a bit of housekeeping. If you want to see the slideshows on the blog full screen, you can double click on the pictures and it should take you to our Picassa site.
Today we are in a rainy Buenos Aires, Argentina and Marci and Skye have written their first blog posts below. Since the last blog post, we spent almost 6 weeks in Bali and then a few days back in the USA before heading to South America. Soon we will travel south to the Futelafu River and then onto Valle Chacabuco and the site of a new Patagonia National Park.
Charles Dickens’ first sentence in a Tale of Two Cities included the phrase, ‘…it was the best of times; it was the worst of times…’ This sums up what I’ve experienced on the road so far.
We’re now about half way through our walkabout. Since the last blog entry we have roamed continents, crossed the equator twice, boated between equatorial islands, celebrated a new year with friends and family and flown across vast oceans in climate controlled metal birds.
I’ve seen how different and same people are; how happiness isn’t tied to wealth; how resilient local cultures have ritualized community service; and how technologies – like bottled water and cell phones – make it easy for people from far away places to visit, live and work (and thereby significantly influence local people and places). Above all I’ve seen the endurance, adaptability and possibility of people everywhere.
Capitalism has clearly become the dominant economic model globally. Increasingly human life on earth all hangs together. And the ability to be somewhere and transmit information far and wide instantly – like on this blog – changes everything.
In the coming years, winning business people and the companies they run will be guided by three simple principles…
They will:
• Seek Transparency – understand who is helped and who is harmed by your business, suppliers and industry
• Help Many – serve your customer, shareholder and employees and as many others as possible
• Harm None (but your competitors) – do the right thing, remove risk and sleep well at night
I believe that this holds as true for the woman selling boxes made out of recycled bottles on the Skeleton Coast of Southern Africa as it does for the $500 billion Walmart.