Guiria-Miami

So, the boat to Trinidad did not work out. The carnival was approaching, the festivities were due to start the next day. People told us that Guiria’s carnival is considered one of the best on the whole coast. We had our reservations, though. We had no desire to stay any longer in Guiria to see the carnival. True, we had a good place to stay, but we had absolutely nothing to do in town. We had no access to the house’s bathroom, so performing our daily functions became a real task. We had to plan in advance or wait until the nightfall to… you know. The idle sitting around our tent all day long got very old by day 6, so we made up our minds to move. The most agreeable option, we reasoned, was to fly from Caracas to Miami.
When we told our host Kira that we were leaving, she broke into tears. She really did not want us to leave! She hugged us, we exchanged emails and she hopped on her motorbike and was off.
We started walking to the highway and as we were passing an idling truck we asked the driver if he could give us a lift out of town. He said:
“Sure! Jesus loves you! He is in your heart!”
The day being Sunday, the local Evangelical group was getting together to go to church. We drove around town picking up the believers and then headed out. We were dropped off at a turnoff and quickly flagged down the next ride. A few more quick and short rides got us deposited near a police check point.
For the carnival time the “security” on the roads was increased. In reality, it meant groups of casually dressed men carrying shotguns standing in the middle of the road. Some wore bullet-proof vests while others had nothing but a radio or a pistol. Their main task was to question the passing vehicles:
“Where are you going?”
“Guiria” or “Carupano”, depending on the direction
“Ok, you may pass”
We baked in the hot sun just past the check point and wandered how the men did not get heat strokes: none of them wore a hat!
Soon enough a car stopped with a family inside. An elderly man was behind the wheel and his beautiful young wife (she looked 25 years younger at least) held a year old baby on her knees. The family gave an impression of being well off.
The conversation flowed and soon we learned that Argenis worked for PDVSA (the national oil company that was expropriated by the “revolutionary” government some years ago). He was an important man in the company: the whole Paria peninsula PDVSA operations were under his control.
“I am on duty this weekend, supervising the Guiria division” he shared with us, “that’s why my wife and I here decided to go to Carupano to pick up my mother-in-law. It is nicer to spend the carnival with your family.”
That was an interesting logical connection but we agreed that it was indeed a good idea to spend carnival with the family.
Soon enough, Argenis steered the conversation to politics:
“Do you think it’s a dictatorship here in Venezuela?” he asked straight.
Without pausing for a second for us to reply, he continued:
“No, it is a lie. What is a dictatorship? A dictatorship is when people are killed, when they are treated badly, when there are soldiers on the streets… None of this happens in Venezuela, right?”
We had no desire to argue with such delusions so we agreed, of course, none of these things happen in Venezuela...
“In any case”, Argenis continued, “if it is a dictatorship, I like it. I am a Chavista, you know. I am with the revolution! You see my cap? It is red! That is the color of the revolution…”
We have heard similar words before, if you remember, but in a different setting.
“I always pick up people,” carried on Argenis, “you know why? Because this car that I drive (he lightly tapped the steering wheel of his brand new Toyota sedan) is not really mine! It belongs to the people of Venezuela! So why not share?”
This phrase was spoken as we sped through a very poor village. Hens and people scrambled out of our way. Apparently, the shocking contrast between his shiny ride and the mud walls and tin roofs of the village huts escaped our driver.“And look at the roads here in Venezuela” Argentis was going full throttle by now, “look how many pot holes there are! It’s going to wreck my car! There is so much oil in our country, so much asphalt, but the roads are still as bad as they were before. Why?”
“Obviously, the abundance of the resources is not the problem here…” George carefully suggested.
“Of course not, but I can see no other obstacles to improve the roads!”
“Eeeh… Corrupt… I mean, I have no idea either.”
We drove in silence for some time, each pondering the mystery of bad roads. A cell phone rang. The young wife pulled out three different Blackberries to see which one was ringing.
“Oh, hi mom. Yeah, we are getting close, we’ll see you soon!”
Argenis had just enough time to drop us off on the other side of town. We wished him to spend a pleasant carnival and watched him speed away to pick up his mother-in-law.
By the end of that day we have arrived to Cumana, a good sized city. It was the carnival night and the downtown was blocked off for traffic. Multitudes of people were already gathering along the carnival route and the drinking has begun. The night was falling but we still had no place to sleep. We aimlessly walked through empty city streets when we came up to a fire station.
“Firemen, may be we can camp at a fire station tonight?”
The firemen were friendly but it was “prohibited to camp” on the station territory. Instead, they suggested that we go to the military post and ask there. So we did. A young military commander came to greet us. He said he was really sorry, but the law “prohibits anybody camping on the military territory”. He then suggested we try our luck with the police office further down the road.
“Yeah, right” we thought.
Unexpectedly, the police chief was young, slim and quick. He instantly grasped what it was that we wanted and invited us to camp inside the police station!
Having set up the tent, we went across the street to witness the so-much-talked-about carnival. It was a sad scene. The music was blaring hard, but few people seemed to enjoy their time. The carnival participants dragged by without smiles as if they were out to pick up some groceries. The costumes were a poor imitation of the Brazilian ones. Some were impressive feathery constructions, but more than a half of participants wore every-day t-shirts and shorts. They marched by us, talking on their cell phones and waiting for the whole thing to be over. Having observed the procession for some time, we went to sleep. Or, rather, tried to sleep. As soon as the procession ended, the music got turned up a notch, people kept on drinking and some started to dance. The party lasted until 4 in the morning.
A few quick rides the next day and a long wait before our last ride in South America came about. It was around sunset when Felix and Deborah pulled over for us. A young couple, they were on their way from a beach to Caracas. We enjoyed each others company and the three-hour drive to Caracas went by quickly. Once in the metropolis, they dropped us off at a hotel and we agreed to meet for a beer the next day.
In the morning, a quick visit to an Internet café revealed that one out of our 5 CS requests was accepted by Laura and Luis. We went over to their place and showed up just in time for lunch:)
Laura and Luis are practicing psychologists and are a very cool couple. They fully entrusted us their house from the start: we had the keys, we were free to move around and we could eat as many mangos as fell from the mango tree in the back yard. Luis is a painter as well as a psychologist, and the house is full of his paintings, interesting design ideas and books. We were very happy just to stay inside for the whole time, playing with the dog, reading and just enjoying not moving anywhere.On our last night at their place, Laura gave us a quick talk about one of their projects. Laura and Luis have developed a system called Neurocodex. Laura briefly explained it to us and taught us a few techniques to “get the problems out of your head”. Empowered by this new way of seeing things, we went to sleep.
24 hours later we stepped on the American soil. The airport was quiet – it was 1 in the morning. We pulled out our sleeping bags and slept the rest of the night on the comfortable couches they have all around the Miami International Airport.

Guiria

On the first night we got into the shady port town of Guiria, we asked a lady named Kira if we could camp in her backyard. She was the second person we approached with the request. The first one was a lazy fat policeman on duty at the town regiment of… police, I guess. He grinned evilly at our cause and suggested that we go camp at a beach, a notoriously dangerous part of town. Kira, on the contrary, invited us in and we´ve slept in her backyard every night since. Kira is a very generous person. She let`s us take a shower once in a while and generally makes us feel at home (but still in the garden:)There are plenty more people living in the house. Three of Kira`s sisters with their families. The sisters were not as friendly as Kira at the beginning, but they warmed up after two or three days and now we are getting along fine. We have spent a week here already but no ride to Trinidad yet but we made a lot of friends, people recognize us on the street and ask how is our search going.
About every other person we talked to so far asked us:
¨And why don´t you take the ferry?¨
Indeed, why?
There is a ferry, it runs every Wednesday. The problem is that it is the only one, and the monopoly it enjoys allows the ferry company to fix the price as high as they like. When we inquired at their office, a fat man (most population in Guiria is fat or very fat, men and women, including most children, but excluding teenagers for some reason) behind the desk smiled and said:
¨1700 bolivares each, please.¨
If you pay cash, it is 170 dollars, at black market course of $1:10. If you have no cash, the official exchange rate of $1:4 applies, and the amount grows to over $400. That´s over $800 for the two of us. The only good thing is that a return ticket is included in the price, because without a return ticket the Trinidad Immigration will not let you step on the island. Our humble protests to the fact that we plan on leaving by other means were met with a smile.
¨You still have to buy the return ticket,¨ said the pleasant fat man.
So, we kept looking for other options.
A few mornings ago we almost got on this super sketchy cocaine-carrying motor-boat going to Trinidad. This was the boat we were waiting for the first three days here in Guiria. The boss of the fisherman fleet of motorboats kept saying to us that there is a boat about to leave any day now, it is completely legal and he knew the people who are taking it well. We had nothing better to do than to trust him and sit by the fishing dock, all day, waiting for the ¨people from Caracas¨ to arrive. We saw the morning routine of the dock people, we saw the afternoon fishing boats arrive and the excitement over the catch of the day, its weighting and selling. We got to know the routine pretty well by the end of the third day. We made friends, and almost everybody wanted to buy us something to eat or to drink. Chicha (sweet rice porridge with LOTS of condensed milk), coffee, cookies and crackers, we did not refuse any offers.
One afternoon we were walking home from the fishing dock. We were passing by some boats that were pulled up on the beach for repairs. A group of men sat in one of them.
¨Hey gringos! Beer?¨
We changed our course and approached a group of boat painters who have just finished their workday and were now working their way through a case of beer. They had a bucket of ice and were pulling out the ¨cold ones¨ one by one. About the only beer you can get here is called ¨Polar Light¨. It is very light and comes in miniscule 200 ml bottles. A picture was out of a commercial of ¨Corona¨: beach, palm trees, sunset, muscular black men in work clothes, barefoot, having beers among brightly painted beached boats… We could not refuse.
After the initial ¨Where are you from?...¨ the conversation soon turned to politics. The tall black man would yell out:
¨CHAVEZ! RUSIA!! AMIGOOOS!!!!!!¨
His smaller friend would lift his cap and yell in response:
¨Chavez! Rojo! Trabajadores!!! Yeah! You see the color of my hat, you see? It is RED! That´s because I am with CHAVEZ! REVOLUTION!¨
The third companion would put in:
¨Chavez! Ick. Revolution! Chavez con nosotros! Ick. Chavez...¨
We enjoyed their company but did not share in on their enthusiasm. We sipped on the cold beer and were just taking in the whole scene. We had to leave when it got dark and the boys got too drunk.
On the fourth day, the ¨people from Caracas¨ finally arrived. We were called over to the beach from where the boat was to leave. The captain wanted lots of money for our passage. He was asking for 100 dollars a person. We brought him down to 80 total (that was ALL we had at the moment) when suddenly the skipper came up and asked if we were going to contribute to the ¨Trinidad Entry Tax¨, another 80 dollars. We kind of ignored him and kept waiting for the captain. While we were sitting in the shade of the palm trees, we got talking to the man ¨from Caracas¨ who ordered the boat to take his ¨cargo¨ across. He was a Trinitarian and spoke English. We asked him straight:
¨Are you transporting any drugs?¨
He looked straight at us, swallowed and got into a lengthy explanation as to why it was not worth the risk for him to traffic cocaine over. About five minutes into the conversation, he bent over, reached into his bag and pulled out… a fighting cock.
¨Poor bird,¨ he said,¨suffering so much. But wait, when you get to Trinidad, you will make me lots of money, hahaha.¨
After all this, we were not so cool on giving the captain the money OR our passports. We waited some more when all of a sudden, the captain announced that the boat was ready. We all went over to the boat, but our passports were still not stamped out.
We asked the captain:
¨So are you taking us or not? What about the stamp out?¨
The captain did not answer but instead started the engine. The guy with the fighting cock yelled to us:
¨Don´t talk! Jump in!¨
¨Eeee… No-no-no. Have a good trip!¨
We stood on the peer, watching the boat turn around in the harbour and take a course to Trinidad. We did not know if should we thank gods from keeping us taking this ride or should we wave them back and agree to pay whatever they want.
Adrenalin had rushed through our veins a few times that day :)
When we aimlessly wandered the streets later on, people called us over from the sidewalks, cafes and stores. They were all characters we met earlier in the port, and they all asked us:
¨Have you found anything yet? No? Wait, I´ll talk to my brother/sister/friend, he is going to Trinidad on Friday...¨
The same evening we were walking past a bar when some people inside waved to us.
¨Hey, gringos! Wanna beer?¨
That was the crew of a fishing boat we talked to earlier that day. There were three of them: El Gordo, El Chico and El Flaco (Fat, Small and Skinny). El Gordo was the captain of the ship. El Chico was first mate. He was dark black, short and fatter than El Gordo. He talked non-stop, smiled constantly and only stopped his avalanche of jokes when a pretty girl passed by. He would stop mid-sentence, turn around and start flirting. He was hilarious. El Flako was timid and did not speak much, but smiled and noded his head. The trinity was very friendly and full of eagerness to help us.
¨Look,¨ said El Gordo,¨we are going to La Union. We have no problem taking you, we just need to ask the boat owner´s permission.¨
¨Wow,¨our adrenalin levels rose for the tenth time that day,¨that would be… awesome! And where is this La Union? What country is it?¨
¨La Union, you know,¨was the answer,¨they speak French there. It´s an island.¨
¨Aaaa… an island…¨
We spent some more time in the bar with them, being treated to the Ice Light beers by El Chico.
El Chico invited us over to have breakfast on their boat in the morning and we went to our back yard in high hopes.
Early next morning we were at the boat, 7 am, as told. There was no movement on board. We waited for some time before we saw sleepy El Chico poking his head out of a door.
¨Damn my head hurts!¨ He exclaimed, ¨We got SO drunk last night! We got back at like 3 in the morning! And now my head hurts!¨
Soon the other crew members woke up. The cook headed to the kitchen and started by making some coffee. He then made arepas, traditional Venezuelan pancakes of corn flour. El Chico took over after to fry some fish. Half an hour later, we were chewing on one of the most delicious breakfasts in our trip: Arepas with fried fish, aboard a fishing vessel that is about to sail to La Union (which is in Grenada, we found out).
El Chico sat down beside us and quietly said:
¨Sorry guys, but unfortunately we cannot take you. The boss does not allow us. Sorry.¨
¨Oh, don´t worry about it, don´t be sorry, it´s ok…¨ we answered, trying not to show our disappointment.
So we were on land again, with no ride to Trinidad.
Two more days has passed since. Two more leads failed. Everybody is telling us that Trinidad Immigration will not let us through without an ¨onward passage¨. We do not have one, nor do we want buy one, for obvious reasons. Without it, no captain will give us a ride to Trinidad. The circle is closed.
The carnival is approaching. The festivities are due to start this evening. We think we will stop actively looking for the boat now, but still keep our ears open. We will enjoy the carnival in Kira´s company and if nothing comes up, we will leave Guiria by the road we arrived by.

Venezuela

When we were approaching Venezuela, every person we met thought it was his duty to tell us that Venezuela is very, very dangerous. Bad, bad people live there, and their only goal in life was to rob us, kidnap us or do some other undescribable thing to us.
We decided to press on anyway to see with our own eyes if it was really that bad. Juan Villarino must have heard tales ten times worse when he was planning his trip across Iraq and Afghanistan... What he found was the incredible hospitality of the people instead.
So we, keeping his example in mind, got our passports stamped at the border and stuck our thumbs out just past the military post. 5 minutes later,an owner of a cyber cafe gave us a lift into Sta. Elena. We changed our reales into bolivares on the street (the black market in Venezuela gives you twice the exchange rate than the official banks) and headed to the exit of town. On our way out we passed a gas station. An old pump was standing in the middle of a dirt field, a line of cars waiting to be filled up. We glanced at the display on the pump and then looked again with eyes wide open: 0.048 bolivares a litre? That`s 200 liters for a dollar! Gas is practically free... An image of smiling Chavez looked at us from every wall and lamppost we passed. ¨Until the victory!¨ said the signs below. ¨Build socialism or die!¨ proclaimed a brush-painted slogan on the block walls of a police station.
The weather was unstable as we moved out to our spot. The sun would poke out and hide again behind heavy rolling thunderstorms. It would rain hard for 20 minutes and then the sun would shine again and dry out the ground. Half an hour more,and another rain would pour down. The Gran Savana gave us its usual welcome of heavy mists, rain and shine, all at once.
The first day was a failure. Nobody stopped, and when we went to camp that night, the heaviest rain poured down on us. We woke up a little wet but determined to hitch out today. Indeed, we did hitch a ride. It was not a very long one but still a ride. When Mishico pulled over, she was out for her 4:20pm ride out in the savanna. She invited us to come along, offering to drop us off at the military check point some 20 kms further on. While we were driving, we saw this cool ant-eater on the side of the road. We got out and approached it.The funny mammal would get up on its hind legs and spread out its ¨arms¨ in a defending posture. Very cute. It was obviously a young puppy because we were told that an adult ant-eater can reach a size of a big dog. The one in front of us barely reached 1 foot when it stood on its hind legs. It fell over a few times, loosing its balance. We were lucky its mamma was not around! We observed it for a while and then let it continue on its route. It started raining heavily at that point and Mishico said: ¨why don´t you come back to Sta Elena with me tonight? You can stay at my house a night or two, rest from the road.¨ Well, the offer was generous and we happily accepted. Mishico turned around and we drove back to town. At the entrance, not far from the place where we tried hitching the day before, Mishico pulled into a driveway.¨This is the bar I ran for 7 months¨ she said, ¨but I had no permission to run it, so they finally closed me down a month ago. Damn. I´m in the process of getting all this official crap sorted out.¨ We walked into the empty bar. The clock, strangely enough, showed 4:20 (again!) and we sat behind the empty bar table, listened to loud Bob Dylan records and watched the street traffic. Mishico, it seemed, knew everybody in town. Many a passer-by would stop and ask her ¨so, when do you finally open up?¨
Later on Mishico took us to her place and showed us our room. The next two days we spent in her company, touring the houses of her friends and going for walks.
One of the friends that we visited impressed us deeply, although we are still not sure what was stronger: the personality of Margarita or the crazy view that opened up from her window openings. You see, Margarita was building a huge house on top of the hill. She was working alone and without a slightest idea about what she was doing. Margarita went crazy sometime during the construction, or was it before...? She spoke non-stop for 8 hours about all sort of her construction decisions, workers she hired and neighbours, on whoom she was stealthily advancing her property lines. She chain-smoked and lively gesticulated with a beer can, letting beer fly in all directions.
While Margarita was buzzing in the background, an icredible view opened up to us from her second storey. You had to walk on a plank thrown over some twisty joists and look out of a window opening holding on not to fall, and this is what you could see: Mount Roraima peeked out of the clouds just as the sun was setting. It was far away but still very clear, we could even see the waterfall rushing from the top of the plateau. We took this photo on another day and from a different pointNext morning, we said good-byes to Mishico and her family and went back to the road. This time we advanced a little further, to the bus station that was curiously located welloutside of town. We picked a spot just past it and observed a steady flow of taxis (80% of Sta. Elena vehicles are taxis) drop off passengers there, or just coming by for a ride, looking for customers. So we spent the next 3 days, looking for a truck or a car without the small yellow ¨taxi¨ sticker on the windshield. When the nights fell, we seeked shelter under a traditional palm roof of Señor Castro´s closed down restaurant.On the third day we struck gold. Rafael was taking an empty truck to Caracas. He was in no hurry and had a pleasant disposition. We stopped frequently to drink from the jungle streams, to take a cup of coffe or just to stretch our legs. At the end of the day, Rafael deposited us at a tollbooth outside of Puerto Ordaz. There was a truckstop nearby, with an ample roofed space for the truckers to hang their hammocks! We camped there and hitched a ride to Carupano next morning. This ride was silent, we barely exchanged 10 words with the trucker in the first 3 hours. Then, Anastasia asked: ¨by the way, we never asked what is your name?¨ and instantly, Jose smiled and started chatting. He dropped us off at a small village 20 minutes before Carupano. It was getting late so we decided to camp there. We began going from house to house, asking if we could camp in the backyard. None of the five women we asked said no, but instead said ¨why don´t you ask the next house over? They have a back yard.¨ After a fifth such reply, we went to the gas station with the same question. The owner looked as if he never heard such a request before and offered us to camp right in front of the pumps. ¨There¨ he said,¨you can put your tent there.¨ 10 more minutes were required to carefully explain to him why we do not like to camp out in the open at night, but instead would prefer a more out-of-the-way spot, like around that corner, for example. Eventualy, we reached a consensus with the man and pitched a tent behind a parked truck.
In the morning the ride did not come easy. We were only a short distance away from town, but nobody would stop. Eventually,a man gave us a short lift to the center of the village from where we took a luxurious taxi ride all the way to Carupano. The beaten-up 70s model Caprice Classic took in 5 passengers and there was still room for more. We cruised in comfort, riding with 3 other local people who were taking their usual taxi ride to work in the morning.
Carupano was our first town on the Caribbean coast since a long while and its chaos made us recall Central America. Lots of people on the streets, yelling, selling and buying all sorts of things. We maneuvered our way to the central plaza and sat down to think. We did not know how to get out of town, nor did we see anybody trustworthy whom we could ask for directions. A plaza full of people but no one to ask! Finally,a young mother with a child in her arms sat on the bench near us. She was friendly and explained to us which bus we should get on to get to the exit of town. Half an hour later we were already hitch-hikng on the narrow highway 10, headed for Guiria.
A few more rides took us there. The first one bought us a much-needed beer and the other was a ¨rural transport¨ truck. ¨Gratis, gracias a Chavez!¨ (Free thanks to Chavez) yelled out the driver and we hopped into the back of the revolutionary socialist transport.
When we got to Guiria, it was getting dark. We walked a few blocks and asked at the first house that we liked: ¨could we please camp in your backyard for the night?¨ The lady agreed and even let us stay for as long as we need! Now we are set up with a place to stay and our next task rises tall in front of us: get to Trinidad. It is easier said than done, this is sure. The fact that a carnival is approaching (the festivities commence Monday), does not make our task any easier. We are getting a lot of conflicting information about boats that go there and prices they charge, but one bit is certain: the ferry that leaves once a week charges 120 dollars for the 5 hour traverse, and they would only sell us a two-way ticket. That´s to comply with Trinidad´s immigration request of an onward passage for every foreigner who comes to the island. We are in the process of seeing what other solution can be found, wish us luck!