But first, we’ve got to tell you about how we made it here. We boarded our bus out of historical Cartagena around 6 in the evening yesterday, after completing our visits to all the churches of the city. Earlier in the day, Simon had gone to the midday mass at the Franciscan Tercen Orden, which lies at the boundary of Getsemani, and as we prepared to leave, we took one last spin around the wonderful Plaza Trinidad, where, suddenly, and for the first time this week, the massive, fortress-like wooden doors of this grand old church had been flung open, almost as if they knew it was our last chance to visit. The faded grandeur within was exactly what the façade had promised. And then, as we trundled along Calle Media Luna for one last time, this time heavily laden with our backpacks already groaning with souvenirs and gifts, the doors of the tiny San Roque were open as the lights illuminated the blue east wall for the early evening mass. We were on our way…
The crowded town bus to the terminal took a whole hour, edging slowly through the suburbs of teeming market stalls and tiny, brightly-painted bungalows, each surrounded by bars and fences. Salsa pounded from every angle; the bass lines carry the furthest, with their hypnotic rhythms which make the whole body pulsate. A tasty Menu del Dia refreshed the intrepid travellers as they set off on a fiercely air-conditioned night bus to Maicau, the last town in Colombia before the Venezuelan border. Countless police checkpoints tended to impede the progress, but each little village provided a tropical taste of yet more pounding salsa. Terrific! The road signs were fascinating too, for between Barranquilla and Santa Marta we noticed some large yellow ‘beware’ signs which seemed to be alerting night-time motorists to the presence of large ant-eaters in the road!
And then at 5 am, we were in Maicau. We were bundled into the back of a por puesto. The man said it would cost 20,000 pesos. Yes, yes that’s fine. What’s a por puesto, you ask? Well imagine all the cars in a 1970s cop series set in Los Angeles. We’re talking big, really big, old American cars here. That haven’t been serviced or cleaned since the 1970s. Very Venezuelan, very exciting! Our backpacks go in the trunk, which fails to shut; each time the driver tries, the lid just gently and languidly springs up again. But soon a screwdriver fixes the problem, and we’ll be needing that screwdriver a little later, as it’s the only thing able to open the lid… “What’s that Senor? 25,000 pesos?! Now you know that’s not what we just agreed with the other guy! Right, ok then, we’ll just get right out of this petrol fume-ridden, rusting death trap and wait until you can stop lying. Oh, what’s that, 20,000 would be fine?” And we’re off along the road to Paraguachon, the border controls. Dawn is breaking, and as we walk up to the office, the cock crows.
Our smart visas speed our entry, and soon the automobile is off once more, tearing along the road at a hair-raising speed, with four other small concerns which raise all hairs yet further (and we’re not just talking eyebrows here!) Firstly, the pot-holes (well, craters is a more apt description) mean that we can’t just proceed in a straight line: to avoid these massive depressions in the road surface, we have to weave along. And weave we do, at maximum speed. Next, there is the racing line to consider. Now here in Venezuela, they drive on the right: nominally. But it’s much, much more fun to drive on the left, or in the middle. Well that’s what it seems like at any rate. And then there’s the overtaking. Of course it’s a race, and a pretty whacky one, at that. Overtaking must occur at every available opportunity. Especially when there’s a blind corner coming up, or even better, the brow of a hill. And finally, there’s playing chicken. You just put your headlights on full beam, honk your horn furiously, and drive straight at the oncoming vehicles.
The road to Maracaibo has many fascinating diversions, such as the teeming bird life around the Gulf of Venezuela. The villages have a high indigenous population, and we notice the women in long, flowing, colourful robes. But the garbage, the garbage. The country has no environmental policy to speak of, and especially in the town of San Rafael del Mojan, we become acutely aware of one of the very real problems facing Venezuela. In suburban Colombia it was bad, but here, it’s much more hard-core. We arrive in Maracaibo all in one piece, and even manage to dabble on the black market money exchange within seconds of setting foot in the bus terminal. For those of you who may wish to travel to Venezuela in the future, don’t worry about trying to find the black market: it will, without any doubt, find you. Now let’s not forget that there are two exchange rates: the ludicrously high, artificial, yet official, exchange rate of 2.15 Bolivars to the dollar, and then there’s the black market. We achieved a rate of 6.5 Bolivars to the US $, which we considered great! (Us naïve novices thought we were getting a great deal, but still improved on our exchanges when we changed money with our hostel at 7.8 Bolivars to the dollar.) Now which option would you choose? We met a fellow traveller earlier on in our journey who ranted about how expensive Venezuela was, but it was revealed that she used her ATM card and was receiving less than a quarter of what we’ve been getting!
As if by magic, a bus boy appears in front of us screaming ‘Coro! Coro! Coro! (all bus boys shout everything three times in Latin America) and suddenly we find ourselves on a typically Venezuelan bus, bouncing along the highway. The curtains make it tricky to see out of the front window, but the rosary and picture of the Sagrado Corazon lend a spiritual fervour to the expedition. Wind buffets us from the open side windows, and the salsa is set to maximum decibels. Arriba!
The bridge over the Lago Maracaibo affords amazing views of the oil-rich metropolis with its skyscrapers and super-tankers. Columbus himself was the first European to set foot in Venezuela, on his third voyage in 1498, when he anchored within sight of Trinidad. It was only when he found the mouth of the Orinoco that he realised it was not an island, but an entire continent. But it was Amerigo Vespucci who visited Lago Maracaibo in the following year and noticed the thatched homes on stilts in the lake, calling the land ‘Little Venice’.
And what’s Chavez managing to achieve with all this oil wealth? Well, take it from us, this is our final country in this vast continent, and we’ve been everywhere apart from Guyana (and we might even be setting foot there, next week) and Suriname. This is a continent in a mess, and that mess is perhaps even more shocking than India. Yes there is the rural poverty of the campesiños and the hard life they lead managing to scrape by with basic agriculture. But it’s the urban poverty which is the most shocking, most depressing. This is a continent of favelas, with little cohesion and little in the way of support networks. The Base Urban Communities of the Liberation Theologians are swamped by the sprawl of urban confusion; the North American Pentecostalism which is growing exponentially deliberately attempts to thrive on offering a solution to this municipal nihilism. And yet, and yet. Look around, and everywhere there are shrines to the saints. There are fresh flowers, and there are candles. But why hasn’t Chavez managed to follow the model of Cuba and create a world-class educational system (and I’m not thinking of El Sistema here, more of that when we reach Caracas in a few days’ time) and a world-class national health service? With a socialist agenda AND massive oil revenue, surely it’s possible to create a utopian state? What has gone so badly wrong in Venezuela that has turned this into a country ‘on the edge’? Allende tried in Chile back in the 1970s, but that experiment didn’t even have time to get off the ground. But we’ve just come from Colombia, which of course now has a seriously right-wing regime. But in a very short time that regime has completely erased the drug problem, even turning around the reputation of Medellin from being the world’s most dangerous city to a perfectly peaceful and prosperous place. So if the right can do it, why, oh why, can’t the left? Oh, and feel free to respond to any of this in the comments box.
So we arrived in the small historical heart of Coro with it’s charming multicoloured colonial architecture, windows and doorways, and headed for El Gallo. This enclave is a haven of tranquillity in the streets, which after dark are foreboding and menacing. But where is the threat? A few stray dogs, a few passers-by, but none of the muggers we have been expecting. Maybe everybody is at home, behind the shutters and the bars, just waiting for life here to improve. Even just a little.
Well, you have arrived,can't wait for the next installment, today I was up early to see if there was an update (before I went to work)
ReplyDeleteHave loved this blog. xx