Tom Barton's Blogs
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Rambling in Peru, Days 10 and 11: Gold fever
Think gold rush. Think boomtown. Think untamed frontier. Think dusty streets jammed with three-wheeled jitneys and scooters. Think “Romancing the Stone,” the movie where Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner wander into a remote South American jungle town and are confronted with people with guns. “I don’t think I’d want to get into a bar fight here,” the leader of our merry band of visiting journalists, John Schidlovsky, said of Puerto Maldonado, a backwater city of about 45,000 people near the confluence of two rivers in southest Peru that flow into the Amazon River. He should know. He’s been to some rough places in Africa and lived to talk about it. Puerto Maldonado is at the epicenter of much of Peru’s illegal gold mining activity. One side of an entire city block is made up of hole-in-the-wall places where miners can openly exchange �...
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Rambling in Peru, Days 8 and 9: Attack of the Flying Ants
In some Savannah neighborhoods, you slowly learn the difference between the sounds of firecrackers and serious gunplay and whether to dial 911. In the Amazon region of South America, you learn the same thing about monkeys. Except the learning curve is much faster. About 5 a.m., which is when it starts getting light in the rain forest of southeast Peru, I heard a sound outside my room at the Posada Amazonas lodge, where our group of editors from the International Reporting Project is staying. It sounded like a cross between a tornado and the whine of a jet engine. I later asked our guide, Gilbert Arrostio, who rises every morning at the insane hour of 4:30 a.m., to identify the sound. I figured it had to be some kind of weird anomaly, like a drug-running pilot hugging the tree tops on the way to a remote...
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Rambling in Peru, Day 7: Gone fishing
I caught a piranha this morning. I hooked it with a stick pole (from a sturdy tree called a Pintana) and a piece of raw meat while standing on a pontoon-type boat on an oxbow lake in the Peruvian Amazon. I’d like to say that this feat was a classic struggle between man and fish, an outdoor epic that left me physically whipped, yet nobly satisfied. Actually, it was beginner’s luck. Unlike Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue’s “Go Fish” program, the Peruvian government isn’t pushing piranha fishing to boost the economy here. Several people are, however, pushing eco-tourism in Peru’s vast rain forest to create sorely needed jobs and to prevent – or at least slow down – deforestation. Our group flew from Cusco, an old city high in the Andes, to Puerto Maldonado, a sort of gateway city to Peru’s southern...
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Rambling in Peru, Day 6: Breathless at Machu Picchu
I tried to begin this blog by distilling what it's like to see this stunning, incredible place high in the Andean Mountains of Peru. In fact, I tried several times. Then I gave up. Seeing Machu Picchu was like an unexpected punch to the stomach. It took my breath away. After a heartfelt and totally unoriginal \"wow,\" I was silent for a minute or two. I don't think the photos I took after I recovered did it justice either. About the closest thing to which I can compare this experience is seeing the Grand Canyon, an eye-poppingly gorgeous work of nature. But Machu Picchu does it one better. It combines the best of nature -- soaring mountains, plunging valleys, patchworks of white and gray clouds and, in our case, rainbows -- with amazing feats of human construction and architecture. I felt like genuflecting, except I...
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Rambling in Peru, Day 5: Savannah’s sister city?
Actually, this is my 10th day here, not my fifth. I apologize for being behind. I left my laptop computer in Lima, Peru's capital, opting not to take it on a leg of a potentially rust-inducing trip that included three days at an eco-lodge in the Peruvian Amazon. Forgive me for playing catch-up. If Savannah is looking for a South American community to be a sister city, it doesn't have to send City Council on another taxpayer-funded expedition to find one. I nominate Cusco, Peru. The similarities are striking. Both are old cities. Both are proud of their histories and like to celebrate them (Cusco is ancient; it goes back 3,500 years, which is older than most of TV anchorman Sonny Dixon's jokes). Both are former capitals -- one was the seat of power for the State of Georgia, the other for the Inca Empire. Both...
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Rambling in Peru, Day 4: Coffee, tea or illegal substance?
First, I was going to blog about a morning visit to the International Potato Center in Lima, which is not as boring or geekish as it sounds. Indeed, the research that's taking place here with the humble spud may be one of the world's great uncovered stories if it pans out. Then I ditched that idea in favor of a blog about an emotional, politically charged afternoon panel discussion about the ongoing, occasionally blood-stained struggle between Peru's government and this country's indigenous people over mineral rights and development in the Amazon and other remote regions. But after one too many pisco sours, I junked that plan in favor of blogging about something completely different -- coca tea. You can buy it legally here in the shops and drink it anywhere. They even had it at the place we were staying, the Miraflores Park Hotel, supposedly...
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Rambling in Peru, Day 3: Bless the children
I was going to post something light and fluffy about a local soft drink, Inca Kola, but three little girls changed my mind. They were halfway up a rocky mountain playing inside concrete culverts. They were the cutest things (the girls, not the culverts), completely oblivious to the grinding poverty and hardship that extended as far as the eye could see (fortunately, it wasn't a great distance because Lima, Peru's traffic-choked and mess of city, was shrouded in gray gloom). Earlier that morning, I had snagged and pocketed a plastic bottle of Inca Kola, which looks like Mountain Dew. I was told it tasted like bubble gum and creme soda, but less bubbly. I know. It sounds icky sweet. But I've had similar things this trip (like alpaca carpaccio) and been pleasantly surprised. I planned to take a swig near the end of a long...
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Rambing in Peru, Day 2: Lima beaned
I haven't been to that many national capitals. In fact, I've only been to three: Washington, D.C., Ottawa, Canada, and Lima, Peru. I would rate Lima as the least impressive when it comes to making a first impression. This sprawling city of 8 million souls that hugs the Pacific coast is full of concrete, bunker-like buildings and squat apartments and tacky commercial strips -- and the U.S. embassy building fits right in. Our group spent about 90 minutes this morning with Peter Michael McKinley, our nation's ambassador to Peru, and his staff inside this thick fortress. The briefing was for background only. The only guy who said anything on the record was a Peruvian national police officer who was stationed on the sidewalk in front of this hideous building, which must have been designed by the same firm that did the Chatham County Courthouse on...
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Rambling in Peru, Day 1: Mr. Former President
Alejandro Toledo doesn’t look like a former president of a country in this hemisphere with 26 million people. That’s unfair, of course. After all, just about anyone who can hold a pen can look like a journalist. But Toledo brought up his appearance himself. He's proud of his indigenous heritage. That's a fancy way of saying he's Indian. His people were running South America when the barbarians were sacking Europe. Take away his stylish brown jacket, blue pullover sweater and BlackBerry, then put him in worn denim and straw hat, this middle-aged man with the thick Elvis hair could pass as one of those nameless, powerless laborers who cut grass, lay brick or do other backbreaking work for not a lot of money in south Georgia, Central America and much of the Western Hemisphere. But appearances, wise people say, are deceiving. And thank God...
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Rambling in Peru
South isn't just a compass point. It's an attitude, culture and way of life. Today this transplanted Southerner is headed south of Savannah to examine a new latitude, people and surroundings. No, not South Beach. I'm jumping continents. I'm bound for South America and the nation of Peru for two weeks. Why? Because I've always wanted to see Lake Titicaca since fifth grade geography class, when I first heard that name and Sister Mary Margaret threatened to send all the boys to the principal's office if they kept laughing like hyenas. Really, I got lucky. The International Reporting Project, an independent journalism fellowship program based at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, accepted my application to join a small group of news people going to Peru this month. We're scheduled to examine several important global issues up close -something that...
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