We're in Manaus, which is just about as far into the Amazon as you can get. I have all sorts of great stories about our latest adventures with anacondas, alligators, incredible tropical fruits, howler monkeys, and mighty tropical rivers.
Unfortunately, none of those stories are true.
We've been in Manaus for five days now, and I have to admit that the city doesn't suck anywhere near as badly as I expected. I thought it would just be a stinking industrial pisspot surrounded by maddeningly deflowered forest. But it's actually a nice place--surprisingly safe and relatively clean, with some interesting markets near the ports. Still surrounded by maddeningly deflowered forest, though--not that I've seen any of it lately.
Poor Amber came down with a nasty little flu, so I've been on nurse duty. I'm even wearing one of those cute little white nurse outfits with the skirt and everything.
Okay, I'm lying about that, too. The outfit, I mean. Amber really does have a bad flu, and is in no shape to travel yet. She's getting better--and no, Mom(s), she clearly DOES NOT have the symptoms of any creepy tropical diseases--but our stay in Hostel Manaus is dragging on.
So I am left to amuse myself by trying to find new ways to get Amber to choke down a crapload of vitamin C, in spite of her lack of interest in food. I made gazpacho. Something got lost in the kilogram-to-pound translation, and I accidentally bought enough tomatoes and cucumbers to make five full blenderloads of the stuff. Then Amber didn't like it.
My Dad did a wonderful job of laying the whole "starving kids in Japan" guilt trip on me when I was a kid. I hate to throw food away and gazpacho is really perishable, so it had to go down my hatch. I'm sloshing with gazpacho now. Say a prayer for the plumbing in this poor hostel.
And that's about it from here. The hostel is tolerable enough, and I've had some nice meals in some really sketchy stalls near the ports...tasty stuff for US$2, served with a dirty tin cup of water and a dash of classic third-world grime. I pass on the water, and stick to canned beer.
There's really no cheap way out of Manaus without taking a really long boat ride--almost two full days to our next stop, Santarem. For US$40, you get to string up a hammock on the deck...meals are included. Not a good situation for feverish Amber.
So here we are, until further notice. Send cold soup recipes--my gazpacho failed.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
six ounces of espresso went into this blog entry
Consider yourself warned: I just drank a crapload of espresso.
We had a brilliant time on our little touristy death march through the jungle in Venezuela, and we´re now in Boa Vista, Brazil. So this entry has two separate streams of thought. I´ll rip through the details of our Venezuelan tour as quickly as possible, then I want to make one final series of wisecracks about Venezuela in general. This might be a long entry, and it also might get a little bit more acrid as it goes along.
As I mentioned in the last blog entry from a week or so ago, Amber and I firmly believe that organized tours are for lameass American numbnuts who completely lack creativity and independence. But since tours are the only way to see Angel Falls (world´s highest falls, if not the largest by water volume), we bought one.
Reluctantly, at first. It was hard even to get Amber to walk into the tour office.
Most of the normal tours take one of two forms. Either you fly over the falls and go home to Ciudad Bolivar in the same day, or you fly first to Canaima (tiny indigenous village-cum-tourist trap) and then take a one-night/two-day boat trip to the falls before flying back.
We were sold on a more adventurous route--five nights and six days, going from the city to the falls completely by ground and water. Good stuff. And it was only about 30% more expensive than the usual packages--well worth it for the extra nature time and the `badass points´ earned by trekking through the jungle.
We´re hoping that the badass points make up for the fact that we´re now certifiably dorky American package tour takers.
Here´s a quick blow-by-blow, one day at a time.
Day 1: In stereotypical Latin fashion, we were asked to show up at 7am for a 9am departure. We left at noon...sweet. Then we spent three hours riding in a sweaty old Chevy Astra van, until the road dead-ended in downtown Paraguas, Venezuela. It dead-ended straight into a river, with no fanfare whatsoever. The town´s only real restaurant was on stilts in the river.
After waiting an hour, we boarded a canoe with a portable motor. It looked like the canoe could fit eight people. All fifteen of us (eight foreign tourists and seven assorted guides/helpers/friends/drivers) and our gear crammed in. The boat sagged so far into the water that the edge of the boat was just a few inches above the water. We got wet quickly. Good stuff.
Somehow, a phenomenal meal of roasted chicken, polenta, tomato salad, bananas and rum appeared from the back of the boat. Good shit. After being mildly terrified by the damp and shaky start to the boat ride, we all calmed down. And every time the guide passed the rum bottle and yelled `Happy Hour!!!´ in adorable Colombian-accented English, we got a little bit less terrified.
By the time the sun started to go down, we were happily buzzed. I was crammed between Amber and a young Swiss woman who could easily pass for a late-1980´s version of Meg Ryan. (Poor me.) Amber was slurring slightly. Very cute.
We enjoyed one of those absolutely ridiculously gorgeous sunsets that I thought only existed in Photoshop-altered pictures. The water was completely still, glassy, and black; you could see a perfect mirror image of the forest, ghostly-dead trees sticking out of the water, and the ever-changing reds and violets of the sunset.
Then I barfed. But that came after the undercooked chicken at midnight, and after we put up our hammocks for the night under a buggy riverside thached-roof palapa. And of course, after another few bottles of rum vanished.
Day 2: Hardly any of the eight foreigners (four Swiss, three Americans, one Englishman) had ever slept in a hammock before, so nobody slept well. Which was perfect. Back on the boat for a two-hour cruise, followed by a six-hour march through the jungle. Absolutely great on zero sleep and rum-and-salmonella-induced nausea.
Actually, it really was an enjoyable hike. There were a couple of nasty uphill bits, and all of it was muddy as all hell, but really a pleasure for most of us. Our native Pemon guide stopped to show us bits of jungle wisdom along the way--spiders the size of your fist, edible plants, a poisonous snake (stupid Americans stared right at a small coiled one, not realizing it was deadly), giant poisonous ants, bright red tropical birds (guacamayas)...I am not making any of this up. Good thing our guide knew native cures for things like snake bites (suck out the venom, then put semen on the bite...I am not making this up, either, though I luckily did not see this in practice).
We probably made about 20 river/creek crossings over the course of the hike, and only one person fell in. We drank water straight from the rivers. Tasty. Lots of iron.
We slung our hammocks that night in an unused one-room hospital in an indigenous village. The landscape surrounding the village was gorgeous--something like a tropical version of Northern New Mexico, with table mountains (tepuis in the local lingo) dominating the skyline. Pictures might be coming soon. Bug Amber for those.
Day 3: After sleeping like dead people, we started hiking again. Two easy hours of hiking, another short boat ride, another short hike through the savannah, another indiginous village where few people even spoke Spanish...a bit more hiking, then we hitched a ride on a passing tractor to a highly-developed `camp´ in Canaima, the great tourist trap of the jungle, accessible only by plane, unless you´re up for several days of boats and hiking.
We had lunch, then hopped yet another boat for the first great waterfall experience of the trip. Wearing only bathing suits, we walked behind a waterfall, Salto Sapo (literally, Frog Waterfall). It was absolutely amazing--it´s hard to describe what it feels like to have a fat waterfall beating onto your head, or what it´s like to just stand next to the spray of something like that. Exhilarating as all hell--definitely a highlight of the trip.
A small bird managed to get caught behind the waterfall, and couldn´t get back out...Amber scooped it up, carried it out from under the water, and let it fly off. Amber was stoked. She saved a bird...straight to heaven for Amber.
Another boat ride, another short and buggy hike, then a wet, rapids-filled boat ride...then we slung our hammocks in yet another camp for the night.
Day 4: I´m getting tired of writing this. Another boat ride in the morning, then we set up camp at yet another site, then hiked for an hour. Finally made it to Angel Falls, the world´s highest, the thing that brings more visitors to Venezuela than any other attraction. It graces the front of virtually every tourist brochure and guide to Venezuela. It´s, like, beautiful and stuff. Not the least bit disappointing.
We hung out for a couple of hours, went back to camp for lunch, then went to a nice swimming hole on the river for a cold bath. Some goofballs (including a certain cute American chick I know) jumped off a big cliff into the river. One of those goofballs even hurt her ass by doing a `butt-flop´ into the river. There were photos of the red, raw butt...but they got deleted, somehow.
Day 5: Retraced our steps back to Canaima, ate food, drank more rum, got happily sloppy, went to bed.
Somewhere in there, we swam in Canaima Lagoon--an ugly name for a gorgeous place with seven small waterfalls. Cold, red water, but amazing. It´s rare to get the chance to swim within a few hundred feet of falls like that.
And the best part was....drum roll please...the little hut next to the beach sold Fernet. Fernet in the jungle in Venezuela. Who knew that was possible?
Special message for Joe de Leon: I got four fernet virgins in the jungle. Ha.
Day 6: Flight back to Ciudad Bolivar, itself a highlight of the trip. Imagine a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit. Now pretend that it has three rows of two seats each. Then give it wings, and send it flying over the savannah and jungle and tepuis at an altitude of about 10,000 feet, just barely under the clouds. Amazing.
Just don´t look at those three randomly-spinning gauges on the dashboard, or the fuel gauge that reads empty.
Only one person barfed after the flight, and it wasn´t either of us.
Sorry, that was really long. In case anybody reading this is interested, here´s the sales pitch: Total Aventura was the tour provider. Javier rules. www.totalaventura.com, I think. And we were also helped enormously by Javier´s friend in Santa Elena, another tour operator by the name of Francisco Alvarez, who accompanied us to Boa Vista. If you want a great nature trip in Venezuela, find these guys--wonderful people.
Part II of the entry starts now...this is where I rip on Venezuela a little bit.
I´ll start with the good stuff. I met some phenomenal Venezuelans on this trip, some of them at random. The country certainly has more than its share of friendly, open people who are quick to enjoy the opportunity to chat with some random foreigners. It´s also a country with more than it´s share of natural beauty, and we know that we barely scratched the surface.
Then there´s the fucked-up economy. I think that I already got into that enough earlier--most normal Venezuelans seem to barely squeak by. And what little disposable income exists in the country seems to get spent on booze--Venezuelans consume more whisky per capita than anywhere in the world...I find that amazing.
As soon as we stepped into Brazil a couple of days ago, we realized--in a completely self-serving touristy way--that Brazil is a hell of a lot more fun than Venezuela. The grocery stores in Venezuela are comparably barren, there are precious few good restaurants in Venezuela, and the street food is mostly greasy crap.
That´s all okay. But then there was a side of Venezuelans that we really didn´t like; if I´d been traveling alone, I never would have noticed.
On my previous trips in Latin America, nobody has even given me a second glance, since I don´t look the slightest bit foreign--at least, I don´t look foreign until I try to speak Spanish or Portuguese. Amber, on the other hand, is a lovely lily-white woman. She attracts a shitload of attention.
Of course, she´ll get stares and catcalls when she´s walking around alone. That´s just part of the deal in much of Latin America, and isn´t too big of an issue. As `wealthy´tourists, we´ll also get more than our share of people trying to sell us something or another. And that´s fine, too. No matter how annoying a salesman may be, I respect his right to be irritating in his quest to make a living.
But a disturbingly large minority of Venezuelans we encountered on the street seemed anxious to make complete asses of themselves. People would semi-mockingly call out to us in English, women would very openly stare at Amber´s clothes, and men would make kissing sounds at her from passing cars, even with me glaring right at them.
Men always make asses of themselves when women pass by alone, and I can pretty much accept that as a harmless part of Venezuelan culture. But much of the rest of the behavior is just hideously bad manners, regardless of one´s culture. I certainly expected better from the women, and I took to staring them down whenever they went too far in giving rude looks toward Amber´s hiking boots.
Again, this sort of stuff wasn´t exactly constant, but a sizeable minority of people we passed in some towns and cities behaved like fools. And after three and a half weeks of it, I think it tainted our image of the country, in spite of the dozens of wonderful Venezuelans we met along the way.
And for what it´s worth, we´ve felt 100% comfortable in Boa Vista, Brazil, in spite of the fact that we haven´t seen a single foreigner here. A welcome change.
Off to Manaus on the overnight bus tonight, then we´ll hunt for an Amazon jungle tour. Yep, we plan to continue being THAT kind of tourists.
We had a brilliant time on our little touristy death march through the jungle in Venezuela, and we´re now in Boa Vista, Brazil. So this entry has two separate streams of thought. I´ll rip through the details of our Venezuelan tour as quickly as possible, then I want to make one final series of wisecracks about Venezuela in general. This might be a long entry, and it also might get a little bit more acrid as it goes along.
As I mentioned in the last blog entry from a week or so ago, Amber and I firmly believe that organized tours are for lameass American numbnuts who completely lack creativity and independence. But since tours are the only way to see Angel Falls (world´s highest falls, if not the largest by water volume), we bought one.
Reluctantly, at first. It was hard even to get Amber to walk into the tour office.
Most of the normal tours take one of two forms. Either you fly over the falls and go home to Ciudad Bolivar in the same day, or you fly first to Canaima (tiny indigenous village-cum-tourist trap) and then take a one-night/two-day boat trip to the falls before flying back.
We were sold on a more adventurous route--five nights and six days, going from the city to the falls completely by ground and water. Good stuff. And it was only about 30% more expensive than the usual packages--well worth it for the extra nature time and the `badass points´ earned by trekking through the jungle.
We´re hoping that the badass points make up for the fact that we´re now certifiably dorky American package tour takers.
Here´s a quick blow-by-blow, one day at a time.
Day 1: In stereotypical Latin fashion, we were asked to show up at 7am for a 9am departure. We left at noon...sweet. Then we spent three hours riding in a sweaty old Chevy Astra van, until the road dead-ended in downtown Paraguas, Venezuela. It dead-ended straight into a river, with no fanfare whatsoever. The town´s only real restaurant was on stilts in the river.
After waiting an hour, we boarded a canoe with a portable motor. It looked like the canoe could fit eight people. All fifteen of us (eight foreign tourists and seven assorted guides/helpers/friends/drivers) and our gear crammed in. The boat sagged so far into the water that the edge of the boat was just a few inches above the water. We got wet quickly. Good stuff.
Somehow, a phenomenal meal of roasted chicken, polenta, tomato salad, bananas and rum appeared from the back of the boat. Good shit. After being mildly terrified by the damp and shaky start to the boat ride, we all calmed down. And every time the guide passed the rum bottle and yelled `Happy Hour!!!´ in adorable Colombian-accented English, we got a little bit less terrified.
By the time the sun started to go down, we were happily buzzed. I was crammed between Amber and a young Swiss woman who could easily pass for a late-1980´s version of Meg Ryan. (Poor me.) Amber was slurring slightly. Very cute.
We enjoyed one of those absolutely ridiculously gorgeous sunsets that I thought only existed in Photoshop-altered pictures. The water was completely still, glassy, and black; you could see a perfect mirror image of the forest, ghostly-dead trees sticking out of the water, and the ever-changing reds and violets of the sunset.
Then I barfed. But that came after the undercooked chicken at midnight, and after we put up our hammocks for the night under a buggy riverside thached-roof palapa. And of course, after another few bottles of rum vanished.
Day 2: Hardly any of the eight foreigners (four Swiss, three Americans, one Englishman) had ever slept in a hammock before, so nobody slept well. Which was perfect. Back on the boat for a two-hour cruise, followed by a six-hour march through the jungle. Absolutely great on zero sleep and rum-and-salmonella-induced nausea.
Actually, it really was an enjoyable hike. There were a couple of nasty uphill bits, and all of it was muddy as all hell, but really a pleasure for most of us. Our native Pemon guide stopped to show us bits of jungle wisdom along the way--spiders the size of your fist, edible plants, a poisonous snake (stupid Americans stared right at a small coiled one, not realizing it was deadly), giant poisonous ants, bright red tropical birds (guacamayas)...I am not making any of this up. Good thing our guide knew native cures for things like snake bites (suck out the venom, then put semen on the bite...I am not making this up, either, though I luckily did not see this in practice).
We probably made about 20 river/creek crossings over the course of the hike, and only one person fell in. We drank water straight from the rivers. Tasty. Lots of iron.
We slung our hammocks that night in an unused one-room hospital in an indigenous village. The landscape surrounding the village was gorgeous--something like a tropical version of Northern New Mexico, with table mountains (tepuis in the local lingo) dominating the skyline. Pictures might be coming soon. Bug Amber for those.
Day 3: After sleeping like dead people, we started hiking again. Two easy hours of hiking, another short boat ride, another short hike through the savannah, another indiginous village where few people even spoke Spanish...a bit more hiking, then we hitched a ride on a passing tractor to a highly-developed `camp´ in Canaima, the great tourist trap of the jungle, accessible only by plane, unless you´re up for several days of boats and hiking.
We had lunch, then hopped yet another boat for the first great waterfall experience of the trip. Wearing only bathing suits, we walked behind a waterfall, Salto Sapo (literally, Frog Waterfall). It was absolutely amazing--it´s hard to describe what it feels like to have a fat waterfall beating onto your head, or what it´s like to just stand next to the spray of something like that. Exhilarating as all hell--definitely a highlight of the trip.
A small bird managed to get caught behind the waterfall, and couldn´t get back out...Amber scooped it up, carried it out from under the water, and let it fly off. Amber was stoked. She saved a bird...straight to heaven for Amber.
Another boat ride, another short and buggy hike, then a wet, rapids-filled boat ride...then we slung our hammocks in yet another camp for the night.
Day 4: I´m getting tired of writing this. Another boat ride in the morning, then we set up camp at yet another site, then hiked for an hour. Finally made it to Angel Falls, the world´s highest, the thing that brings more visitors to Venezuela than any other attraction. It graces the front of virtually every tourist brochure and guide to Venezuela. It´s, like, beautiful and stuff. Not the least bit disappointing.
We hung out for a couple of hours, went back to camp for lunch, then went to a nice swimming hole on the river for a cold bath. Some goofballs (including a certain cute American chick I know) jumped off a big cliff into the river. One of those goofballs even hurt her ass by doing a `butt-flop´ into the river. There were photos of the red, raw butt...but they got deleted, somehow.
Day 5: Retraced our steps back to Canaima, ate food, drank more rum, got happily sloppy, went to bed.
Somewhere in there, we swam in Canaima Lagoon--an ugly name for a gorgeous place with seven small waterfalls. Cold, red water, but amazing. It´s rare to get the chance to swim within a few hundred feet of falls like that.
And the best part was....drum roll please...the little hut next to the beach sold Fernet. Fernet in the jungle in Venezuela. Who knew that was possible?
Special message for Joe de Leon: I got four fernet virgins in the jungle. Ha.
Day 6: Flight back to Ciudad Bolivar, itself a highlight of the trip. Imagine a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit. Now pretend that it has three rows of two seats each. Then give it wings, and send it flying over the savannah and jungle and tepuis at an altitude of about 10,000 feet, just barely under the clouds. Amazing.
Just don´t look at those three randomly-spinning gauges on the dashboard, or the fuel gauge that reads empty.
Only one person barfed after the flight, and it wasn´t either of us.
Sorry, that was really long. In case anybody reading this is interested, here´s the sales pitch: Total Aventura was the tour provider. Javier rules. www.totalaventura.com, I think. And we were also helped enormously by Javier´s friend in Santa Elena, another tour operator by the name of Francisco Alvarez, who accompanied us to Boa Vista. If you want a great nature trip in Venezuela, find these guys--wonderful people.
Part II of the entry starts now...this is where I rip on Venezuela a little bit.
I´ll start with the good stuff. I met some phenomenal Venezuelans on this trip, some of them at random. The country certainly has more than its share of friendly, open people who are quick to enjoy the opportunity to chat with some random foreigners. It´s also a country with more than it´s share of natural beauty, and we know that we barely scratched the surface.
Then there´s the fucked-up economy. I think that I already got into that enough earlier--most normal Venezuelans seem to barely squeak by. And what little disposable income exists in the country seems to get spent on booze--Venezuelans consume more whisky per capita than anywhere in the world...I find that amazing.
As soon as we stepped into Brazil a couple of days ago, we realized--in a completely self-serving touristy way--that Brazil is a hell of a lot more fun than Venezuela. The grocery stores in Venezuela are comparably barren, there are precious few good restaurants in Venezuela, and the street food is mostly greasy crap.
That´s all okay. But then there was a side of Venezuelans that we really didn´t like; if I´d been traveling alone, I never would have noticed.
On my previous trips in Latin America, nobody has even given me a second glance, since I don´t look the slightest bit foreign--at least, I don´t look foreign until I try to speak Spanish or Portuguese. Amber, on the other hand, is a lovely lily-white woman. She attracts a shitload of attention.
Of course, she´ll get stares and catcalls when she´s walking around alone. That´s just part of the deal in much of Latin America, and isn´t too big of an issue. As `wealthy´tourists, we´ll also get more than our share of people trying to sell us something or another. And that´s fine, too. No matter how annoying a salesman may be, I respect his right to be irritating in his quest to make a living.
But a disturbingly large minority of Venezuelans we encountered on the street seemed anxious to make complete asses of themselves. People would semi-mockingly call out to us in English, women would very openly stare at Amber´s clothes, and men would make kissing sounds at her from passing cars, even with me glaring right at them.
Men always make asses of themselves when women pass by alone, and I can pretty much accept that as a harmless part of Venezuelan culture. But much of the rest of the behavior is just hideously bad manners, regardless of one´s culture. I certainly expected better from the women, and I took to staring them down whenever they went too far in giving rude looks toward Amber´s hiking boots.
Again, this sort of stuff wasn´t exactly constant, but a sizeable minority of people we passed in some towns and cities behaved like fools. And after three and a half weeks of it, I think it tainted our image of the country, in spite of the dozens of wonderful Venezuelans we met along the way.
And for what it´s worth, we´ve felt 100% comfortable in Boa Vista, Brazil, in spite of the fact that we haven´t seen a single foreigner here. A welcome change.
Off to Manaus on the overnight bus tonight, then we´ll hunt for an Amazon jungle tour. Yep, we plan to continue being THAT kind of tourists.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Look ma, we´re tourists!
Amber and I both like to think that we stay away from international travel cliches. We do our best to speak the local language, and neither of us have ever taken an organized tour in our lives (unless forced to by a parent). English and package holidays are for unoriginal American lame-asses.
Having said that, we´re taking a six-day tour to Angel Falls with a bunch of Americans and Europeans who don´t speak Spanish.
First day involves a drive through the savannah into the jungle, six hours or so up one river into a lake, then up another river. We´ll camp with an indiginous family the first night, then hike to another jungle community to spend the second night. A few more boat rides, four more days of camping, lots of walks and rides around waterfalls in the table mountains.
We´ll be back in a week. Then off to Brazil almost immediately, where we´ll find a friendly ATM so that we can actually pay for this little excursion.
Yay, we´re tourists.
Having said that, we´re taking a six-day tour to Angel Falls with a bunch of Americans and Europeans who don´t speak Spanish.
First day involves a drive through the savannah into the jungle, six hours or so up one river into a lake, then up another river. We´ll camp with an indiginous family the first night, then hike to another jungle community to spend the second night. A few more boat rides, four more days of camping, lots of walks and rides around waterfalls in the table mountains.
We´ll be back in a week. Then off to Brazil almost immediately, where we´ll find a friendly ATM so that we can actually pay for this little excursion.
Yay, we´re tourists.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
prying ourselves away from the beach
I´ll try to keep this entry short-ish, for once.
Amber and I finally pried ourselves away from our lovely room overlooking the Caribbean, and we´ve begun the race south into Brazil. Our supposed five hour trip to Ciudad Bolivar ended up taking about eight hours, but that´s not too bad, all things considered. I have memories of a 52-hour bus trip from Santiago to Sao Paulo that ended up lasting 72 hours. By the end of it, all nine gay men on the bus had come out of the closet to the entire bus, and were doing a drag show in the aisle, lip-synching to the Eurythmics using the driver´s intercom as a microphone.
We had chosen a posada in the historic center of Ciudad Bolivar, which is something of a Venezuelan equivalent to the older parts of Philadelphia. It´s pretty much the cradle of Venezuela´s national creation myth, where Simon Bolivar made some of his most glorious accomplishments.
I won´t bore you with the history--you can read about it elsewhere if that´s your thing--but the neighborhood is stunning, with centuries-old colonial architecture, including a restored cathedral.
Even our posada was built in the remains of an old colonial mansion. When we arrived last night, we lay on our bed with the sliding door wide open, staring out over the cathedral in Plaza Bolivar, watching a beautifully violent thunderstorm. Great stuff.
Then we passed out. It was about 8:30, maybe. We were up well before 6:00 in the morning today. Check it out...we´re turning into morning people. Who woulda thunk?
On our way to our posada last night, we stumbled on a wonderful little restaurant run by a Syrian family. We had obscenely tasty shawarma and a great conversation with the family (Amber thinks the 20-year-old daughter ¨really likes me¨). Best meal we´ve had in Venezuela so far...and we were back today for lunch, an epic plate of falafel and hummus and kibbeh, followed by Arabic coffee.
So yes, we´ve gotten a bit tired of Venezuelan food. Most of it is greasy as all hell--hot dogs, deep fried plantains and empanadas, greasy ¨roasted¨ chicken. Even the ¨grilled¨ arepas--white corn patties stuffed with your choice of meaty stuff--are usually really oily. Much of it is tasty enough, but two weeks of it is plenty. We´re ready for Brazilian food.
Ciudad Bolivar is lovely, but there isn´t much to see. We hit most of the sites in less than a day--highlighted by the Jesus Soto Contemporary Art Museum--and we´re off tomorrow. Ciudad Guayana for a couple of nights, mostly so that we can take a day trip to a huge hydroelectric project in the jungle. By Monday, we should be in Santa Elena, on the Brazilian border. We´ll try to hook up some sort of day trip to see some of the topography from there, but most of the tours that we´ve found so far have been unreasonably expensive. By the end of next week, we´ll be samba-ing our little butts through the Amazon.
Coming soon: bold predictions of Venezuela´s impending inflationary spiral (*snore*) and some potentially-offensive but sometimes complementary blanket statements about Venezuelans.
Amber and I finally pried ourselves away from our lovely room overlooking the Caribbean, and we´ve begun the race south into Brazil. Our supposed five hour trip to Ciudad Bolivar ended up taking about eight hours, but that´s not too bad, all things considered. I have memories of a 52-hour bus trip from Santiago to Sao Paulo that ended up lasting 72 hours. By the end of it, all nine gay men on the bus had come out of the closet to the entire bus, and were doing a drag show in the aisle, lip-synching to the Eurythmics using the driver´s intercom as a microphone.
We had chosen a posada in the historic center of Ciudad Bolivar, which is something of a Venezuelan equivalent to the older parts of Philadelphia. It´s pretty much the cradle of Venezuela´s national creation myth, where Simon Bolivar made some of his most glorious accomplishments.
I won´t bore you with the history--you can read about it elsewhere if that´s your thing--but the neighborhood is stunning, with centuries-old colonial architecture, including a restored cathedral.
Even our posada was built in the remains of an old colonial mansion. When we arrived last night, we lay on our bed with the sliding door wide open, staring out over the cathedral in Plaza Bolivar, watching a beautifully violent thunderstorm. Great stuff.
Then we passed out. It was about 8:30, maybe. We were up well before 6:00 in the morning today. Check it out...we´re turning into morning people. Who woulda thunk?
On our way to our posada last night, we stumbled on a wonderful little restaurant run by a Syrian family. We had obscenely tasty shawarma and a great conversation with the family (Amber thinks the 20-year-old daughter ¨really likes me¨). Best meal we´ve had in Venezuela so far...and we were back today for lunch, an epic plate of falafel and hummus and kibbeh, followed by Arabic coffee.
So yes, we´ve gotten a bit tired of Venezuelan food. Most of it is greasy as all hell--hot dogs, deep fried plantains and empanadas, greasy ¨roasted¨ chicken. Even the ¨grilled¨ arepas--white corn patties stuffed with your choice of meaty stuff--are usually really oily. Much of it is tasty enough, but two weeks of it is plenty. We´re ready for Brazilian food.
Ciudad Bolivar is lovely, but there isn´t much to see. We hit most of the sites in less than a day--highlighted by the Jesus Soto Contemporary Art Museum--and we´re off tomorrow. Ciudad Guayana for a couple of nights, mostly so that we can take a day trip to a huge hydroelectric project in the jungle. By Monday, we should be in Santa Elena, on the Brazilian border. We´ll try to hook up some sort of day trip to see some of the topography from there, but most of the tours that we´ve found so far have been unreasonably expensive. By the end of next week, we´ll be samba-ing our little butts through the Amazon.
Coming soon: bold predictions of Venezuela´s impending inflationary spiral (*snore*) and some potentially-offensive but sometimes complementary blanket statements about Venezuelans.
Monday, October 8, 2007
mad props to our friends with cool children
We´re nearing the end of our week in Santa Fe. We´ve done almost nothing, which is great. The water is literally ten feet from the door to the posada, so we pop out for a swim whenever we get warm. Otherwise, we´re just eating, sleeping, reading, and hanging out. I spend a fair amount of time listening to baseball on the radio, which sort of qualifies as my Venezuelan Spanish lessons. Amber spends hours at a time hunched over a short Chilean novel, madly looking words up in her dictionary.
I suspect that she´s learning more Spanish than I am, but at least I get baseball instead of, like, culture or something.
The only little wrinkle in our paradise is the 21-month-old daughter of the posada owners. She wails like a banshee almost non-stop. She´ll calm down for a few minutes, then go right back to screaming. And screaming. And screaming. It really bothered me for a couple of days. Now I´m getting used to it--it´s turning into white noise.
Quite a few of you have children who are fairly close to that age. And none of them do that. Sure, kids get moody--I definitely met my buddy Jon´s 2-year-old on a bad day in July--but I can´t say that I´ve seen anything quite like this.
I´m not a parent, obviously, but I get the feeling that parents´ general vibe rubs off pretty thoroughly on their kids, even when the kids are only a year or two old. Seeing this little hellion at the posada--and her disinterested/dysfunctional family--makes me really appreciate some of you who have kids.
I might embarass myself by leaving somebody out, but I keep thinking of the kids I truly enjoy being around...Volmer, Burns, Dullaghan, and Frigyes jump to mind. You guys rock.
Okay, enough of that.
I´ve had a few questions about our travel plans, so here´s the quick rundown. We´re heading south to Ciudad Bolivar, where we´ll look into tours of the Gran Sabana, a region filled with waterfalls and table mountains. After that, we´ll take a long bus ride south to the Brazilian border--there´s a small chance that we´ll take a weeklong trek up Mount Roraima while we´re down there. Then, into the Amazon in Brazil--I expect to be there by October 20, roughly. We´ll try to arrange a jungle trip outside of Manaus, then start heading downriver after that. Odds are good that we´ll ¨settle¨in NE Brazil (Sao Luis, Fortaleza, Natal, Recife, Olinda, Maceio are candidates) by mid-November.
Before I finish, I want to make a couple of more comments about Venezuelan economics. I found out that there is indeed a serious milk shortage in the country, which is a direct result of the price controls--an enormous number of producers have simply given up trying to make a living at the unrealistically low government price.
I also read in the newspaper that the government sends agents out to check prices in stores and markets. Businesses can be fined or shut down for selling goods at prices above the regulation level. Crazy.
And to give you an idea of wages, I met a college-educated woman who works in Caracas as the director of a major youth sports program. She earns about $400 a month, in spite of her education. The minimum wage is around US$286. With food prices as high as they are (did I mention the sliced ham for $9/lb?) it´s a pretty rough place to make a comfortable living.
In spite of all of that, Venezuela consumes more whiskey (mostly Scotch) per capita than any other country on earth. Go figure.
But still, no fernet anywhere.
I suspect that she´s learning more Spanish than I am, but at least I get baseball instead of, like, culture or something.
The only little wrinkle in our paradise is the 21-month-old daughter of the posada owners. She wails like a banshee almost non-stop. She´ll calm down for a few minutes, then go right back to screaming. And screaming. And screaming. It really bothered me for a couple of days. Now I´m getting used to it--it´s turning into white noise.
Quite a few of you have children who are fairly close to that age. And none of them do that. Sure, kids get moody--I definitely met my buddy Jon´s 2-year-old on a bad day in July--but I can´t say that I´ve seen anything quite like this.
I´m not a parent, obviously, but I get the feeling that parents´ general vibe rubs off pretty thoroughly on their kids, even when the kids are only a year or two old. Seeing this little hellion at the posada--and her disinterested/dysfunctional family--makes me really appreciate some of you who have kids.
I might embarass myself by leaving somebody out, but I keep thinking of the kids I truly enjoy being around...Volmer, Burns, Dullaghan, and Frigyes jump to mind. You guys rock.
Okay, enough of that.
I´ve had a few questions about our travel plans, so here´s the quick rundown. We´re heading south to Ciudad Bolivar, where we´ll look into tours of the Gran Sabana, a region filled with waterfalls and table mountains. After that, we´ll take a long bus ride south to the Brazilian border--there´s a small chance that we´ll take a weeklong trek up Mount Roraima while we´re down there. Then, into the Amazon in Brazil--I expect to be there by October 20, roughly. We´ll try to arrange a jungle trip outside of Manaus, then start heading downriver after that. Odds are good that we´ll ¨settle¨in NE Brazil (Sao Luis, Fortaleza, Natal, Recife, Olinda, Maceio are candidates) by mid-November.
Before I finish, I want to make a couple of more comments about Venezuelan economics. I found out that there is indeed a serious milk shortage in the country, which is a direct result of the price controls--an enormous number of producers have simply given up trying to make a living at the unrealistically low government price.
I also read in the newspaper that the government sends agents out to check prices in stores and markets. Businesses can be fined or shut down for selling goods at prices above the regulation level. Crazy.
And to give you an idea of wages, I met a college-educated woman who works in Caracas as the director of a major youth sports program. She earns about $400 a month, in spite of her education. The minimum wage is around US$286. With food prices as high as they are (did I mention the sliced ham for $9/lb?) it´s a pretty rough place to make a comfortable living.
In spite of all of that, Venezuela consumes more whiskey (mostly Scotch) per capita than any other country on earth. Go figure.
But still, no fernet anywhere.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Hugo McChavez
As the title might suggest, I´m about to get into a big, fat diatribe about politics and economics in Venezuela. You´ve been warned.
But first, let me tell you about my diarrhea.
Just kidding, sort of. We spent our first four days in Venezuela in Rio Caribe, a comfortable but unspectacular little coastal town. Then we took a Sunday morning bus to Cumana, a city of 350,000 people. Amber and I both got a nasty case of motion sickness on the ride. Fun.
To make a lame story short, my motion sickness kept going for about 72 hours after we got off the bus. Fun! My first nausea of the travel season. Amber was fine, thankfully, and brought me crackers and sprite and stuff. The owners of the posada found out that I was sick, and sent soup and fruit up to our room--unbelievably nice of them.
So if you´re ever in Cumana, stay at Posada La Cazuela, on Calle Sucre. There´s my shameless ad for the day.
We did almost nothing of great tourist interest in Cumana, though we did find our Swedish friends. They had a ton of fun with the military. More on that later.
After three uneventful days in Cumana, we headed to Santa Fe, a small fishing town just an hour away. We almost immediately found the posada of our dreams. Our room is on the third floor, overlooking the sea. The room actually is completely open to the ocean--no windows or anything, just a half-wall, so we constantly have a breeze from the water and the moon shines through the palm trees onto our bed at night. Amazing place--the town is nothing special, but we´re just two flights of stairs away from the beach, and we get most of the joys of being outside while we´re in our cozy room. All for just US$20 per night. We´ll be here for awhile. There´s even an outdoor kitchen that we can use. Good stuff.
Okay, that´s it for the personal garbage. Now, about Venezuela and the great Presidente Chavez...and baseball....
More than a few friends/family expressed concern about our travels to Venezuela. I think I mentioned earlier that everything has been fine--we were treated well at the border, and people have been extremely kind everywhere we´ve been so far.
(Our Swedish friend Paul was strip-searched at the border, and then was searched two more times at checkpoints during his first two hours in Venezuela. Amber and I apparently look less suspicious--or less wealthy, or something. For more, feel free to read Paul´s blog: http://frigyes.blogspot.com/.)
I think that a lot of us in the United States have a bit too extreme of an image of ¨dictatorships.¨ Chavez, according to the American press, is a dictator who restricts the free press and manipulates far too many aspects of daily life. To an American, this sounds a bit like Soviet Russia or North Korea. We then assume that people are on lockdown, with no freedom of speech whatsoever and military pricks running around everywhere.
There´s a grain of truth to this image, but only a grain. Yup, there are lots of guys running around in fatigues--a couple of dozen were dispatched to keep order at the little festival we saw in Rio Caribe. Completely unnecessary--I don´t think that little town needed even two cops for its festival. And there are a fair number of checkpoints on the roads, but nothing more intense than in the American Southwest.
But freedom of speech? No problem. Nobody seems shy about speaking their minds. We had a chat over breakfast one morning with a pair of businessmen from western Venezuela. When they left, one of them said, ¨Have a wonderful time with your travels in Venezuela. The entire country is beautiful, except for that cunt we have as a president.¨ At the posada in Rio Caribe, the owner told us to ¨be careful at the beach--the military cameras watch everything.¨ Honestly, I don´t think there were any cameras at all, but her comment was interesting.
In Cumana, the posada owner went on a diatribe about what a useless populist schmuck Chavez is. We were the first American guests at his (six-room) posada in the three years that he´s had the business, and he was thrilled. ¨The people of Venezuela love America. We love New York, and hot dogs, and baseball... it´s just that our president is a dipshit.¨ He and I talked about baseball for a good while, boring Amber almost to tears.
By the way, this country is baseball-crazy. When Magglio Ordoñez won the batting title, it was front page news. Not on the sports page...on the front page of the whole damned paper. I like this country. Except that most people seem to be Yankee fans--I see Yankees gear everywhere, and sports radio shows disproportionately focus on the bastards. That´s unfortunate.
So for those of you who might be wondering how I´m managing to keep up with the playoffs, it´s fairly easy. Some of the games are broadcast on the radio, which is great...although the schedule seems a bit capricious, in a stereotypically Latin way. And the Venezuelan announcers tend to drift off and talk about things which have nothing to do with the game being played. Suddenly, a couple of batters have come and gone while they were talking about some guy who isn´t even in the playoffs.
Yesterday, the games were pre-empted by a really long speech by Chavez, who seems to be everywhere. He has an extremely long-winded TV program on Sundays, consisting of Chavez blabbing on without a script for three hours. I watched some of it. Excruciating. Then he´s back on TV and radio a few days later, with another really long speech.
People are obviously free to criticize him here, but I think most people do actually like the guy. After listening to a few of his speeches, I agree somewhat with my baseball-loving friend in Cumana: Chavez is kind of a blowhard. He´s either not that bright, or he thinks that his listeners are idiots--or both.
Why is he so popular? Well, part of it is simply that he does seem to give a shit about normal people. His biggest focus is on reducing unemployment. He has some pretty silly ideas about how to do it (increasing the military, shorting the legal workweek...for starters), but at least he seems to genuinely want the country to enjoy full employment. He has brought health and education services to a whole lot of rural places for the first time. In a few ways, I think he´s done well, based on what I can pick up from newspapers, radio, and conversations.
So you might be able to convince me that Chavez is a prick, but I still love the way he stands up to George Bush, who is a far more murderous prick. And I think that a sizeable minority of Venezuelans love Chavez for his anti-imperialist rhetoric alone, and pay little attention to the rest of his activities. He´s done an amazing job of creating a ¨brand¨for himself. Hugo Chavez, building a NEW socialism. No freedom fries, but maybe a McMarx Burger with cheese.
Having said all that, I think the economy here is pretty screwed. Food prices are way out of whack with everything else. An hour at an internet cafe costs US$.50, but a can of corn costs about $1.75 on average. Gasoline is massively subsidized, but there´s a disturbing dearth of food stores, restaurants, etc. My impression is that most people get by on a pretty simple diet of rice, beans, and plantains--even a meal in a cheap restaurant (usually close to $8 for an entree) has to be well out of reach for most people. Which is why we´ve seen virtually no restaurants, and precious few stores stocked with any real variety of food products.
I can´t claim to be an expert on Venezuelan economic policy, but I have the impression that Chavez has done some serious distorting. He tries to keep prices down by imposing price controls on food, but that´s just forced some producers out of business. Since less food is being produced, the prices ulitmately rise--I think some basic foods are sold cheaply at government-subsidized stores, but other products end up being really expensive...especially when you start to think about how low wages are here.
The other big oddity is the capital controls. You can walk into a bank in Venezuela, and they´ll give you bolivares if you bring them some good old American dollars. But they won´t make the exchange in the other direction, not at any price. A Venezuelan simply can´t buy dollars or any other foreign currency with bolivares. As far as I can tell, Chavez is just trying to stockpile foreign currency for some reason, and does not allow the free conversion of the bolivar.
The official exchange rate is 2,150 bolivares per dollar. But people have little faith in the currency--I was offered 3,500 bolivares per dollar by a private (highly illegal) moneychanger. In other words, normal people expect the bolivar to someday be worth a whole lot less than it is now, and they´ll pay a 65% premium just to get their hands on a nice, stable currency like the US dollar. Crazy stuff.
Have your eyes glazed over yet?
The internet connection in Santa Fe is miserably slow, so these entries might be a little bit rare for the next week or so. After three days here, I´m in absolutely no hurry to leave. Maybe another week? Then, we´re off to Ciudad Bolivar and the Gran Sabana, a region of jungly table mountains on our way to Brazil.
But first, let me tell you about my diarrhea.
Just kidding, sort of. We spent our first four days in Venezuela in Rio Caribe, a comfortable but unspectacular little coastal town. Then we took a Sunday morning bus to Cumana, a city of 350,000 people. Amber and I both got a nasty case of motion sickness on the ride. Fun.
To make a lame story short, my motion sickness kept going for about 72 hours after we got off the bus. Fun! My first nausea of the travel season. Amber was fine, thankfully, and brought me crackers and sprite and stuff. The owners of the posada found out that I was sick, and sent soup and fruit up to our room--unbelievably nice of them.
So if you´re ever in Cumana, stay at Posada La Cazuela, on Calle Sucre. There´s my shameless ad for the day.
We did almost nothing of great tourist interest in Cumana, though we did find our Swedish friends. They had a ton of fun with the military. More on that later.
After three uneventful days in Cumana, we headed to Santa Fe, a small fishing town just an hour away. We almost immediately found the posada of our dreams. Our room is on the third floor, overlooking the sea. The room actually is completely open to the ocean--no windows or anything, just a half-wall, so we constantly have a breeze from the water and the moon shines through the palm trees onto our bed at night. Amazing place--the town is nothing special, but we´re just two flights of stairs away from the beach, and we get most of the joys of being outside while we´re in our cozy room. All for just US$20 per night. We´ll be here for awhile. There´s even an outdoor kitchen that we can use. Good stuff.
Okay, that´s it for the personal garbage. Now, about Venezuela and the great Presidente Chavez...and baseball....
More than a few friends/family expressed concern about our travels to Venezuela. I think I mentioned earlier that everything has been fine--we were treated well at the border, and people have been extremely kind everywhere we´ve been so far.
(Our Swedish friend Paul was strip-searched at the border, and then was searched two more times at checkpoints during his first two hours in Venezuela. Amber and I apparently look less suspicious--or less wealthy, or something. For more, feel free to read Paul´s blog: http://frigyes.blogspot.com/.)
I think that a lot of us in the United States have a bit too extreme of an image of ¨dictatorships.¨ Chavez, according to the American press, is a dictator who restricts the free press and manipulates far too many aspects of daily life. To an American, this sounds a bit like Soviet Russia or North Korea. We then assume that people are on lockdown, with no freedom of speech whatsoever and military pricks running around everywhere.
There´s a grain of truth to this image, but only a grain. Yup, there are lots of guys running around in fatigues--a couple of dozen were dispatched to keep order at the little festival we saw in Rio Caribe. Completely unnecessary--I don´t think that little town needed even two cops for its festival. And there are a fair number of checkpoints on the roads, but nothing more intense than in the American Southwest.
But freedom of speech? No problem. Nobody seems shy about speaking their minds. We had a chat over breakfast one morning with a pair of businessmen from western Venezuela. When they left, one of them said, ¨Have a wonderful time with your travels in Venezuela. The entire country is beautiful, except for that cunt we have as a president.¨ At the posada in Rio Caribe, the owner told us to ¨be careful at the beach--the military cameras watch everything.¨ Honestly, I don´t think there were any cameras at all, but her comment was interesting.
In Cumana, the posada owner went on a diatribe about what a useless populist schmuck Chavez is. We were the first American guests at his (six-room) posada in the three years that he´s had the business, and he was thrilled. ¨The people of Venezuela love America. We love New York, and hot dogs, and baseball... it´s just that our president is a dipshit.¨ He and I talked about baseball for a good while, boring Amber almost to tears.
By the way, this country is baseball-crazy. When Magglio Ordoñez won the batting title, it was front page news. Not on the sports page...on the front page of the whole damned paper. I like this country. Except that most people seem to be Yankee fans--I see Yankees gear everywhere, and sports radio shows disproportionately focus on the bastards. That´s unfortunate.
So for those of you who might be wondering how I´m managing to keep up with the playoffs, it´s fairly easy. Some of the games are broadcast on the radio, which is great...although the schedule seems a bit capricious, in a stereotypically Latin way. And the Venezuelan announcers tend to drift off and talk about things which have nothing to do with the game being played. Suddenly, a couple of batters have come and gone while they were talking about some guy who isn´t even in the playoffs.
Yesterday, the games were pre-empted by a really long speech by Chavez, who seems to be everywhere. He has an extremely long-winded TV program on Sundays, consisting of Chavez blabbing on without a script for three hours. I watched some of it. Excruciating. Then he´s back on TV and radio a few days later, with another really long speech.
People are obviously free to criticize him here, but I think most people do actually like the guy. After listening to a few of his speeches, I agree somewhat with my baseball-loving friend in Cumana: Chavez is kind of a blowhard. He´s either not that bright, or he thinks that his listeners are idiots--or both.
Why is he so popular? Well, part of it is simply that he does seem to give a shit about normal people. His biggest focus is on reducing unemployment. He has some pretty silly ideas about how to do it (increasing the military, shorting the legal workweek...for starters), but at least he seems to genuinely want the country to enjoy full employment. He has brought health and education services to a whole lot of rural places for the first time. In a few ways, I think he´s done well, based on what I can pick up from newspapers, radio, and conversations.
So you might be able to convince me that Chavez is a prick, but I still love the way he stands up to George Bush, who is a far more murderous prick. And I think that a sizeable minority of Venezuelans love Chavez for his anti-imperialist rhetoric alone, and pay little attention to the rest of his activities. He´s done an amazing job of creating a ¨brand¨for himself. Hugo Chavez, building a NEW socialism. No freedom fries, but maybe a McMarx Burger with cheese.
Having said all that, I think the economy here is pretty screwed. Food prices are way out of whack with everything else. An hour at an internet cafe costs US$.50, but a can of corn costs about $1.75 on average. Gasoline is massively subsidized, but there´s a disturbing dearth of food stores, restaurants, etc. My impression is that most people get by on a pretty simple diet of rice, beans, and plantains--even a meal in a cheap restaurant (usually close to $8 for an entree) has to be well out of reach for most people. Which is why we´ve seen virtually no restaurants, and precious few stores stocked with any real variety of food products.
I can´t claim to be an expert on Venezuelan economic policy, but I have the impression that Chavez has done some serious distorting. He tries to keep prices down by imposing price controls on food, but that´s just forced some producers out of business. Since less food is being produced, the prices ulitmately rise--I think some basic foods are sold cheaply at government-subsidized stores, but other products end up being really expensive...especially when you start to think about how low wages are here.
The other big oddity is the capital controls. You can walk into a bank in Venezuela, and they´ll give you bolivares if you bring them some good old American dollars. But they won´t make the exchange in the other direction, not at any price. A Venezuelan simply can´t buy dollars or any other foreign currency with bolivares. As far as I can tell, Chavez is just trying to stockpile foreign currency for some reason, and does not allow the free conversion of the bolivar.
The official exchange rate is 2,150 bolivares per dollar. But people have little faith in the currency--I was offered 3,500 bolivares per dollar by a private (highly illegal) moneychanger. In other words, normal people expect the bolivar to someday be worth a whole lot less than it is now, and they´ll pay a 65% premium just to get their hands on a nice, stable currency like the US dollar. Crazy stuff.
Have your eyes glazed over yet?
The internet connection in Santa Fe is miserably slow, so these entries might be a little bit rare for the next week or so. After three days here, I´m in absolutely no hurry to leave. Maybe another week? Then, we´re off to Ciudad Bolivar and the Gran Sabana, a region of jungly table mountains on our way to Brazil.
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