Voting Day, Politics and the Economy

While Election Day 2008 is November 4, 2008, voting day for us was this past Monday in Lima, Peru. We received our ballots via mail at the South American Explorers Club thanks to Mike Ashe, one of John’s running friends in Durham and Director of the Durham County Board of Elections. Thanks Mike! The ballots arrived just as we hoped they would; it must be that old Army discipline at work!

The pictures below show us depositing the ballots in the Peruvian Mail system. We hope they arrive safely because NC seems to be in play for the Presidential race and there are a number of important and interesting statewide races. Eliot played a key role in the process — check out those Hanes!

Beyond our voting the other day and perhaps contrary to the image presented by our blogging to date, all is not always grand out here in the world of travel. We have daily struggles with food consumption (what will Eliot eat?), brother trouble (why do they always have to touch each other?) and where will we stay (does it meet everyone’s criteria?). Those are just the day to day worries, though. We also are prone to the anxieties of everyday life and the impact of what we see reported daily in the web and occasionally on TV media. What is going on in the presidential race? What is happening to the US and global economy? What is happening to our little investments? What is happening to the South American political landscape?

The constitutional amendment or referendum that we were following in Ecuador recently passed. It’s hard for we with poor Spanish skills to fully understand from the newspapers, but it appears as though Rafael Correa (Ecuador’s President) has been given much broader executive authority. He has recently been sidling up with Hugo Chavez and it is not really clear what this will mean for Ecuador. We saw only demonstrations urging a “Si” vote and it was clear that many of the “common people” (read economically poorer) were supportive of this. I wish we knew more about what this means for the future of Ecuador. We’ll see.

We also have heard of political strife in Bolivia, including the US Ambassador being shown the door and the same happening in Washington DC. Much of South America seems to be heading hard to the left at the moment, partly due to the influence of Hugo Chavez and perhaps aided by some of the recent US international policies. With the poverty and corruption that appears to be fairly common here, it is not hard to understand how this can happen.

The state of the US and world economy also has been something we have watched with some interest and much concern. “Wow!” is almost all that I can summon at this moment. Lehman Bros going bankrupt, Wachovia in a fire sale, Merill Lynch (our personal investment firm) sold, AIG almost going under, etc. Let’s hope that the economic turmoil is not as long and protracted as many fear. Is it better to be off traveling in the world now, a bit removed from the reality, or to be back at home?