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Aug 14th, 2008
THE BORDER, MERIDA, and BARQUISIMETO
Early Sunday morning we left Santa Marta for the Venezuelan border, we thought it would be good to cross on a Sunday to avoid traffic. We made good time, but at the border they refused to let us enter without vehicle permission, issued only on weekdays. We had already formally exited the van from Colombia. This meant we were stranded between the border and the first military check point where they would ask to see our permission. We made a run for it but were turned back. It was 1pm and scorching hot, we were in the Guajira desert. Guajira is also notoriously unsafe, so wild camping was out of the question. We bought some snacks from a little shop and asked the owner if she knew of a place to stay. Mary led us to her house where she said we could stay the night. She invited us to have arepas for dinner with her family and watch old Warner Bros cartoons on a TV set up outside. It was a pretty funny site to see, two gringos and a dozen Venezuelans of all ages sitting in front of a big screen TV watching Speedy Gonzales. The family was obviously poor, so it was strange to see them with such a large TV, but Latins seem to love their electronics. Speedy Gonzales was interrupted by 5 loud bangs. Ash turned to me to ask if it was a gun, and I told her I didn’t think so. Just as I said that every seat cleared and a look of panic came over the faces of the family. It turned out to be Mary’s drunken brother. He shot his pistol into the air, but was calmed down and everything was fine. We were scared shitless, but did our best to keep our cool. Needless to say we didn’t sleep at all, heat and fear spoiled that. We would have left the house, but it was late and the town was nothing more than a few houses, so we felt safer staying with the family despite the crazy brother.
Bright and early we left the house and headed for the SENIAT office to get our vehicle permission. The man who issues them felt like coming in late, and then making us wait so we didn’t get on the road until almost 11am. The desert area of Venezuela is a lot like Mexico in all the worst ways. Millions of plastic bags were blowing about and caught in the cattle fences and cacti. All kinds of garbage was strewn carelessly everywhere, it appears that the mostly native population here doesn’t care about their land at all. It was such a contrast between the high pride that Colombians seemed to have with their properties. We were running low on fuel thinking we’d get gas everywhere in Venezuela, but gas stations were few and far between. For the next 200kms we passed closed station after closed station. We stopped at one that was just closing; the attendant told me they were out of gas and come back in a few days. Next came the open stations, only they had line ups of almost 100 cars waiting for precious fuel. After topping up with our last jerry can we made it to a gas station with a smaller line and waited our turn. When we got there the National Guard made it clear the attendant was only to fill our fuel tank, NOT our jerry cans. We are in a socialist country it only makes sense that we experience rationing. When we finally arrived in Maracaibo, a major city, we found many modern gas stations and had no restrictions on filling our spare tanks. The first fill up was 95 liters and cost $3.40. What would that get me back home, not even 3L?
We drove all day and a little of the night into the mountains near the city of Merida. It was nice to sleep in the cold again. We parked at an altitude of 13’000ft, it was so cold a water puddle next to our van was frozen solid in the morning. We spent the next night in the mountains too. Yesterday we drove to Barquisimeto with the address of the president of the Trevisani nel Mondo Barquisimeto. The Trevisani nel Mondo is a cultural group for people from the Italian province of Treviso, where Moreno’s parents are both from. Moreno’s late father Mario was one of the founders and president of the group for 8 years. We got lost for 3 hours looking for it, but eventually found the house of Romeo Gobbo. I buzzed the intercom on the 10ft high fence with electric wires running along the top. This place was like fort Knox. His wife demanded to know who I was an what I wanted, when I responded in Trevisan, my parents dialect, Romeo came out to inquire. He had a chuckle and opened the gate. They took us in for drinks and a dinner of risotto with mushrooms, red radicchio and italian style cutlets. It really made me feel like I was at home to hear my parent’s native tongue and eat mamma’s cookin, even if it wasn’t my mamma. Teresa and Romeo have lived in Venezuela since the mid 1950s. They arranged for us to stay with their son Ivan and his wife Carol in their HUGE palace of a house near by. Ivan took over his fathers business of iron railings and is very successful. They have built a dream home and spared no detail or expense making their house perfect. We stayed up with both couples drinking frangelico and amaretto. Romeo couldn’t stop laughing about how these crazy kids drove 15,000kms to show up at his door speaking fragments of a dead language. Then he would hit me with his cane for taking my shoes off, they think that its madness to go barefoot inside the house. Carol gave us a tour of the house and showed us to our incredible bedroom, complete with bathroom, air conditioner and TV.
This morning she made us a big breakfast and insisted on doing our laundry, and then she took us on a little tour of the city, which is quite pretty. We went back to Romeo and Teresa¨s house for another great home cooked italian lunch of gnocchi, radicchio and cutlets. They told us that Venezuela is plagued with crime and violence now. Teresa has been attacked and robbed 4 times in her house, once last week, hence the electric fence. Last week in Barquisimeto there were 15 murders and countless armed robberies. The neighborhood we are staying in is very wealthy, but every house has a high fence and bars on all the windows and most have an electric fence on top as well. Many also have either a private security guard or a guard dog. They also warned us of the dangers of staying in our vehicle in any part of the country. Due to the fact that we are foreigners, we are looked at by many as being wealthy, hence possible targets for thieves. So you can say we are a little worried about security here.
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Aug 17-24/08
Cays, little Bavaria, backtracking on the Coast and the Posada
After almost a week with the Gobbo family (the Italians Moreno found) we spent one last day with them. Tuesday we followed them to Parque Nacional Morrocoy where we took a power boat to the furthest island, Cayo Sombrero, to relax on the beach. It was a great day and our first time visiting a beach on this trip. The beach was something from a Corona commercial, white sand, palm tree groves and crystal clear water. That night we slept in our van at the park.
Early the next morning we left the park and drove to Coro and Peninsula Paraguana. The drive took us through a desert and even sand dunes, but we found no camping options on the steamy, hot Peninsula, We drove back all the way we had just come. We planned on driving to Colonia Tovar, an authentic German town founded in 1843 and it remains a little piece of Bavaria not more than 70kms from very latin Caracas and its 6 million inhabitants. We didn't make it there as fast as planned. When we got back to the place we had left in the morning the road was blocked and we could see black smoke, flames and a crowd forming. The village just south of the Parque Nacional Morrocoy has been without water service for several days and in protest the villagers blocked the only road north or south on the coast and set fire to tire barricades. This went on for 5 hours. The crowd never got violent, but we had to wait inside the van until it finally cleared. The police, who were there, did nothing to speed things up and the National Guard never arrived. Venezuelans make shitty drivers, plain and simple. Just as the road opened hundreds of cars from our southbound direction crossed over into northbound lanes in some kind of an attempt to get going sooner. Of course the opposing traffic did the same and it blocked both directions for about one more hour. This wouldn't be the last time we'd witness such shortsightedness or lack of traffic logic.
Finally we made it to Tovar, it was past 1:30am. We almost never drive at night for safety, but both times its been near huge, unsafe cities. The other being Bogota. We found a small lot to camp in for the night, but early that morning we were kicked out, luckily after having breakfast. We were parked where the produce vendor parks. We drove a few more kms to the center of Tovar and walked around the town. We liked it so much we spent one more night there, also to take advantage of what will probably be our last nights sleep in the comfortable cold for several months.
NOTE: There are lots of little places to "camp" along the road to La Victoria to Tovar, which we chose to do. We found the prices in Tovar to be quite high (as expected in Venezuela).
From Tovar we drove all day, avoiding Caracas, but never found camping. We did stop at a rather clean truck stop to sleep though. Friday we headed to the Araya Peninsula, the guidebook says "if you don't like crowds you will find 50kms of pristine, empty beaches along the arid coast". We drove and drove on the heavily potholed road reaching the end, but found only uwelcoming fishing villages and beaches that we could not possibly drive to. So once again we drove all the way back the way we had come. Doesn't the road always seem longer when you're going back? It does for us. But that's not the last of the back tracking for us yet. In the dark we drove east along the coast in search of a camping option. More potholes, more bad drivers and more back tracking. We had just gotten lost in a somewhat scary feeling town (Rio Caribe) when the power went out and the town got a whole lot scarier when a glass bottle came crashing to the pavement a few feet from our van. We were both quite nervous. In the pouring rain, and after being forced to drive through some river crossings, we hightailed it back the way we came finally coming to a stop at a hotel. They let us camp in the parking lot if we ate at their restaurant, we did.
Determined to camp on a beach, we left the hotel early and without breakfast. We drove to the last of the major peninsulas on the Venezuelan coast, Paria Peninsula. We drove down a muddy jungle road following signs for "Playa" and we found one. The beach was pretty, but rather polluted with trash. From what we have seen the Venezuelans in the hotter climates don't take care of their country the same way the people in the cold mountains do. We never saw a single piece of paper or a bottle in the hills, but in the desert and along the otherwise beautiful coast we see millions of plastic bags, bottles and food containers everywhere. Its quite sad really, if it wasn't for the trash this is some of the most beautiful coastline one can imagine. Lush jungle mountains lean away from the sea as if being held back by the breeze, at their base lie white or orange sand beaches. Its an incredible view. Ash made us breakfast, but we chose not to camp at the beach, the town we drove through was iffy and there is only one road to and from the beach. A few suspicious looking characters came to check us out and then quickly left, as did we.
NOTE: Camping possibilities have proven to be quite limited in Venezuela, unless you have a lot of courage for violence, patience for loud music)or enjoy sharing your camp area with a beach full of garbage.
Back along the same stretch of road we had seen three times already, we saw a sign for a Posada with internet. It was near the beach and we figured it might be our last chance to stay at a beach for a while. Internet would at least be a bonus if we had to pay to camp or worse be forced to rent a room. We pulled into the Posada Nena, a German run inn with a nice little pool, restaurant and nice area with hammocks to lie around in. When I asked the price to park and camp, the owner told us we could stay for free, just to have a meal or two at his restaurant and that's exactly what we are doing right now. We had a nice day at the beach, this one isn't polluted. The sand is made up entirely of tiny crushed and smoothed sea shells. Moreno tried to spearfish today, he set up his new gun up for the first time and charged into the water, but visibility was only about 3 feet, so he failed his mission of catching us lunch. We will probably spend a day or to here before changing direction and going south to book our tours of Angel Falls and Mt. Roraima.
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