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.