8.40pm, Tuesday May 26, a bar in El Paraiso .....another hopeful man

Tonight S didn't come home and I am tired. I had a hard day and I want beer and conversation. (Now that I've finally found a bar no one wants to serve me. The other bars I've been to had table service. Guess I'll go back inside to the bar...)

So I've come to the bar, ordered a beer, listened to men I don't understand until 'sit down' and a motion towards the chair made at least something clear, and now I'm writing at the bar - how daggy!

Today... After my internet relief I successfully made my way to the colonial art museum only to find it closed. So I attempted to walk a different way back to Belles Artes and got lost. I wandered through San Bernardino, a wealthier neighbourhood of big apartment buildings with barred windows. These residential buildings are cleaner and nicer than in other parts of Caracas.

Women here wear very tight clothes. Jeans mostly, in this weather! I can hardly bear looking at them. T-shirts, tank tops, tight ones, are common on women of all shapes and sizes. Cleavage is mostly bursting out of bras. It is ironic: shorts and short skirts aren't worn but breasts and asses are shown off. Here and in Buenos Aires and Lima mannequins have prominent asses. (I have just had a bar snack set in fron of me - a small plate of deep fried...dough? cornmeal?)

When I finally decided I had no idea how to get back to the subway station I asked a woman to point me there. After talking and pointing to my blank looks, she hailed a bus for me and I got on it. The bus took a circuitous route to the station and when I got off I was very thirsty. I searched around for a drink. Street sellers seem to have everything else when one is dying of thirst (how many people need phone recharge cards?): ice cream, hot dogs, assorted candy and junk. I finally found a Pepsi. It cost $5 bolivars. Then I found the entrance to the dance photography exhibit in the station but was told by a guard that I'm not allowed to drink in the station. So I held my Pepsi and rushed through the exhibit and surrepititiuosly finished it while waiting for the train. The Caracas subway platforms have traffic guides like parking spaces - parallel lines enclosing footprints, three sets per lane. People stand on the footprints and chaos does not reign.

Once back in the centre of Caracas I found the old part of town right away - a massive white governor's mansion, not castleish like Lima's but government-building-like. I tried to go in but was motioned to go back across the street by a guard when I reached the median strip. Instead I went into the cathedral, and I saw more red shirts in Plaza Bolivar. I walked in circles a lot, through shops and markets, trying to find more places to visit, as there is supposed to be much stuff of tourist interest here. All I found was the Bolivar museum and the city library.

While walking I eyed some sweet coconut patties and the woman selling them motioned to me. I asked how much one cost. I thought she said it was $1 bolivar and gave in to her desire to give me one of each colour - white, brown and dark brown. She then asked me for $10 bolivars. I questioned this cost and she said that each one cost $3 bolivars but she insisted on charging me $10 and couldn't figure out what the extra bolivar was for. I emerged from the encounter pissed off because I didn't want to spend that much money - more than my lunch budget. So, one of those highly sweet patties served as my meal. Then I needed to find more hydration...

As I sat in the square feeling sorry for myself, next to tears again, sticky and hot but in fantasy that I love the hot weather, a man came to talk to me, short, a little crooked, buck-toothed and pot-bellied. He didn't speak much English but told me he is a mathematics teacher and that I am beautiful.

I chatted with him for a bit and when I said I was going to the Pantheon and asked him which way ('Donde es Panteon?') he pointed the way...and came with me. He gave me a running commentary on all the generals and other heroes buried in the Panteon, of course almost totally incomprehensible to an English-only speaker. I nodded and looked interested.

El Panteon Nacional is a grand building of tall statues in white stone, resting place of Simon Bolivar's sarcophogas and cemetery for many soldiers, doctors and three women who helped independence. A high-towered white monument, the tomb of Bolivar lays under a gold and blue domed roof, while the rest of the ceiling is covered in bright and chaotic frescoes of Bolivar's life.

I was still keen to see the Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela, located across from the pantheon, but my new friend was not as energetic as myself. He perched himself upon a wall and mixed himself a whiskey and Coke. After this refreshment, which I did not parktake in, we finally went to the library. Again forgetting that I do not understand Spanish, my mostly incomprehensible guide proudly steered me to a lecture. When after a long 5 or so minutes I answered his question about my enjoyment of said lecture with words to the effect that it was all nonsense to me, we left and walked through an exhibit demonstrating the lack of black faces (the invisible) in advertising and then into a big reading room. My overall impression of the library is that it is huge and cool with a red marble floor.

After we left the library, my didactic acquaintance kept trying to get me to go to the movies with him and telling me I was his friend forever. I told him, several times, that my friend was expecting me home for dinner and that I would tomorrow be leaving for Cumana, his hometown. He walked me to the bus where he finally left me, blowing kisses goodbye. Why do funny-looking older men think young women are going to be interested in them? Even young women like me, who are slightly odd and probably quite decent and kind, pretty enough in a non-intimidating kind of way, do not find anything appealing in such overt and impersonal interest from desperate and lonely men. What are these men thinking? That flattery will get them somewhere? Grow up and get real. I am nice, though, and when this happens to me said old men are nice back - this one bought me a bottle of water and gave me a Spanish women's magazine.

Today put me off travelling. I don't like not speaking the language. At one edifice with a lovely courtyard garden I got talked to as I tried to enter the courtyard but had no idea what the guard was saying, so I just looked on as others entered without hassle. I've lost my chutzpah. Maybe its the heat.

People love their horns in Caracas and traffic lights are often taken as suggestions only. Coming home from the salsa club, young Mr. I drove blithely through red lights in the early hours of the morning, arguing that cars get robbed while waiting at lights. I am annoyed at the breakdown of what is lawless and what isn't in this country: driving is lawless, sitting and drinking in train stations and on Bolivar statues is patrolled.