Will and I thought it might be a neat idea to send a page of our diary
from a year ago plus a photo page or two of where we were and what we
were doing as we began our 9 month trip to South America this time last
year.
We hope it might inspire some of you who might like to make a similar
journey to go. I just read today in National Geographic something that
the explorer Carl Lumholtz wrote about Mexico at the end of the 19th
century. He said: "Primitive people as they are they taught me a new
philosophy of life, for their ignorance is nearer to truth than our
prejudice."
We arrived on August 1st in Caracas. A day or two before this diary
entry, our rental van had been robbed in Puerto Cabello so we were feeling
pretty low when we arrived at La Churuata. We stayed at Patanemo for
some time before we relocated back to the city to work on getting our
vans (which had yet to arrive) from customs which is another story.
Yesterday we all awoke feeling pretty depressed from the previous
day's robbery. It turns out that Will and I lost more than we had initially
thought since most of our clothes are gone. Will's two most favorite
T-shirts-one from Newfoundland with a Puffin on it and one from Prince
Edward Island-are gone. The CB radio and the linear amp are gone as
are many of the cables for this mess of electronic equipment we have
saddled ourselves with but we will survive. As I said 11 years ago after
I was robbed here in Venezuela. "No lousy thief is going to make me
change my plans." Come to think of it, I have been robbed in Venezuela
each and every time I have been here: once in 1972, twice in 1989 and
now again in 2000.
Venezuela is still a very third world country and we have to keep
that in mind. Perhaps 40% of the population is unemployed and with the
attitude of most Catholic countries to not deal with their burgeoning
population , the tendency of the rich getting richer and the poor getting
poorer will continue. But where will it all end? Will entire countries
fall prey due to poor planning and short sightedness by their governments?
Perhaps.
We still find the general population courteous and extremely helpful
to us even though we know there are eyes on us all the time with robbery
as the general theme. And we are so gullible. We come from a country
where you can sometimes leave your keys in your car at the mall and
come back and find it still there. When I am at home, the back door
is left open every night in the summer to admit fresh air. We once left
for a weekend away and even left the back door open (by mistake of course)
for the entire weekend. Not that robbery doesn't take place in West
Virginia, it does. It is just 1000 times less prevalent than here. Every
car here has an anti-theft system installed. A rental car has an anti-theft
system in addition to a huge lock installed around the gear shift so
even if they do get the car started, they can't go anywhere. We, me
included, still forget to close the windows and lock the doors in our
rental van even now after we have just been robbed. You can't get much
more careless than we are. So where does that leave us so far?
Yesterday we had to go to Puerto Cabello (which nearly everyone in
our group insists on calling Pto. Caballo! - even after repeated efforts
at correcting this) to first make phone calls at the CAN TV office after
getting money at a bank. After going to six banks, I was the only one
that had a card that worked so I had to take out some half a million
Bolivares so everyone could have some cash. Here we are several days
into the trip and we are still using dollars! That is my fault though
since I should have urged everyone to change money at Italcambio at
the airport when we first arrived.
Driving in Pto. Cabello is truly an experience not to be missed. There
are only two functioning traffic lights in the entire city to which
no one pays even the slightest attention. The streets are narrow and
crowded with people and cars. There is not a single stop sign. You approach
an intersection and muscle your way through it. This is not the place
for a timid driver. You have to be vigilant at every corner not to hit
someone but you have to be aggressive enough to survive too. We soon
came to know the streets not only by their smell (rotten garbage, rotten
fish, rotten meat??) but also by the enormous holes in the earth that
were put there to mark intersections I suppose. We did pass a meat truck
which had a Thermo King on the top but guess what - it too was
not functioning. Any driver must be aware that sometimes a light is
half working - if people are stopped at a light, but the light seems
not to be functioning, it probably is - it is on red but the
red is burned out and everyone except you is aware of that fact. Caution.
Caution. Caution... all the time caution! The three rules of driving
in South America are: 1) never drive at night 2) never drive at night
and 3) never drive at night. On the main street into the city, the man
hole covers have been stolen to be sold for scrap. In the daytime you
can spot the gaping holes and avoid loosing your front tire in one-at
night, they are but mere shadows of doom.
I learned a new traffic law today - Never, ever pass a bus
on the right when barreling through an intersection at high speed -
you may just mow down a homeless man in a wheelchair guided by a drunk.
After all, who would be in a six lane intersection pushing a wheelchair
except a "doido." Anyway we finally found the CAN TV office. They have
cabinas there where you can call where ever and pay all at once. We
called my sister JoAnn and I gave her instructions for my nephew Roger
to make Les a new Carnet since his was stolen yesterday. Then I called
Pedro in Valencia to tell him what had happened. Then we called the
Embassy in Caracas to arrange to get Valeria a new passport next week
- oh, how I hate to drive back to and into that city! Les made
some calls to cancel credit cards and made a call to Vicki's daughter
Skye who is house sitting for them. I was OK with JoAnn as long as I
was giving instructions on how to do things but when I hung up and said
that I loved her, I lost it and started to cry. At times like that I
wonder what I am doing again in such a lawless place.
Nine and one-half hours later we returned from a successful trip to
Puerto Cabello that in the US would have taken an hour at most but who's
complaining - not I. After all, it was a successful trip!
Outside right now, I hear the plaintiff screech of a caged hawk of
some kind doomed to a wretched existence here in this "paradise by the
sea" to be gawked at by weekend tourists till it dies of old age. I
have not yet gotten up the nerve to even look at it. I just hear it
all the time. If I had the money, I would buy it and set it free. I
just learned from Miguel who works here that the hawk is called a 'gavilan.'
Weather: Hot, humid and hotter and humider. Rainy today. Mosquitoes
attack after dusk in droves. The AC freezes up during the night. Yesterday
we had no water nor electricity. The commode is stopped up. The pool
which was green when we arrived is not so green and got used by me yesterday
when I was soaped up in the middle of my outdoor shower when the water
went off. Still, the people are very kind to us. I'm sure they all wonder
how the USA can be such an advanced country with ignorant people like
us living there.
A shower for me is good for about an hour. After that in this humidity,
I start to sweat and ideally would have to change clothes three times
a day if I had that many clothes. Incidentally, Valeria and I had some
clothes washed at a 'lavanderia' yesterday which cost Bs. 7.000 or about
$10. Of course you can not do it yourself but must pay someone else
to do it.
We are staying in a weekend place called La Churuata at Patanemo which
is some 10 miles east of Pto. Cabello. Churuata I am told refers to
a round conical thatched roofed structure built by the indigenous peoples
of Venezuela's dwindling jungle. It is a pleasant enough place - I plan
to take photos in such a way that the people back home will think when
seeing them that it is a first class resort when, in actuality, it is
more like a half-assed effort at a resort surrounded by a muddy backwater
filled with crabs. Our room for seven, however, is impressive at first
glance. It is large and sometimes cool because the walls are all made
of huge blocks of coral. The ceiling is made of bamboo upon which is
laid some kind of roofing material which is then tarred and on top of
that, it is thatched with palm leaves which was done by an indigenous
person from Guyana I'm told. The AC works very well -- that is until
it freezes up into a block of ice at about 3 in the morning!
We sometimes have water but it is only cold water even though there
is a water heater bolted on the wall. It doesn't work. The shower head
is missing and we have to keep a cup stuffed in the tub drain to keep
the lizards and the crabs out of the tub. The mice eat the soap while
we are sleeping at night. At least we think it's the mice since the
crabs find it difficult to crawl up the sides of the bath tub. We are
surviving and we have yet to tread on one each others nerves although
the tension is there. I feel I am an unwilling tour guide but
I expected that. What I don't know is how long I can remain calm and
have some semblance of patience. Is this a new TV voyeur show called
"Venezuela" where we are the players dropped into some backwater weekend
resort in Venezuela where we will all be eaten by the crabs if we don't
self destruct or consume ourselves in recriminations by the end of ten
days? I wonder.
Oh, there was something good that happened: Yesterday on the way out
of here, we were driving by the mangrove flats when we saw three or
four brilliant pinkish-rose stilt legged birds probing the mud for food.
They were outstandingly beautiful. I believe they were roseate spoonbills
- the first I had ever seen.
The drive from here to Pto.Cabello is pretty too. You go up a mountain
where there are abundant trees and flowers all along the road with higher
mountains in the back ground almost always covered with mist. And now,
in the background, just in time to crush that bucolic image, I hear
a huge sub-woofer from some junk car beating like a huge heart in tachycardia.
So I will now work on a couple of picture pages from the past few
days. Just when I thought the 'heartbeat' had gone on by this place,
it is back. Who knows, that instead of the drone of mosquitoes might
be what will keep me awake tonight. The anticipation is killing me..
One last note - our Vanagons are to be shipped from Miami today.
Afternoon: We went back to the Natalmar restaurant up the road
for a late lunch just a while ago. Orlando was our waiter -- mesanero
is the word for waiter and mesanera for a waitress. We had some of the
same things from before all including platano frito. When it's green,
they have to smash it to fry it and it's called tostones and when it's
maduro or ripe, they just slice it to fry it. Both ways it's good! The
food was well prepared and very tasty.
Now Kai and I are sitting in the thatched roofed churuata that they
use for a "game room" (which is leaking in the rain) working on some
PhotoDeluxe files. I downloaded the PD program a few nights back and
Kai is now learning it.
Will Foertsch and Larry Calhoun
