? Monday June 22, hotel room, ...organising stuff

Six more days left in Venezuela. Tomorrow MS and I are off for an excursion up the Orinoco River to hike up a tepui. Today I spent an hour and half in a bank.

I was craving avocado this morning so forewnt breafast at a nice Christian bakery, the first one in Venezuela that bore resemblance to any sort of cafe I am used to. It had round pasteboard tables and wooden chairs. I asked for coffee and as a shot of coffee was being poured for me I said to MS 'I miss a big fucking cup of coffee'. So the gentleman poured me a normal-sized plastic cup of pre-sweetened milkless coffee from his thermos.

We went to talk with a tour operator in the morning. We had a long chat and emerged with information about a 3-day excursion we could go on for $1400 bolivars each. This is a more expensive price because there are only two of us and the minimum is usally 4.

We went to the bank to take out Ms's money, realising that it wouldn't do to sign the cheques T made out to me over to MS because it would take 4 days to clear and Wednesday is a holiday. There was a long Monday lunchtime line at the bank and after the first few minutes only one teller working. It was painful, though at least air-conditioned. After retreiving MS's money we went to an internet cafe to look up more touring companies, as MS wanted to compare quotes. In the end no one answered their phones, but we had passed a place that said 'Tours - plane, carr, boat', so we went to talk to the gentleman in there, who was from Argentina and gave MS lots of information but quoted us a more expensive excursion. The Argentinian told us that Venezuela doesn't let people too far into the Amazon in order to protect the lifestyle of the natives who live there, though there is a special excursions for researchers.

After this, MS and I went back to the bank - MS had rung T and asked him to deposit the rest of my money in his account - to get my $1000ish bolivars and, again, for a little while there wsa only one teller. By this time I was feeling low blood sugary, having eaten only a few bites of bread. A very humid day with lots of walking and standing, I was feeling weak-brained and sore-backed.

I asserted myself and said I wanted to go to the areparia we had passed. I had a rather ordinary arepa, stuffed only with a thick slice of white cheese, which I put two kind of sauces on, green and brown. I felt heaps better.

So, back to the first tour place to pay, then home to eat avocados,tomatoes and bananas. We had trouble finding avocados, but our last option, a fruit and veg market stall that had been closed yesterday, was open and had big and ripe avocados. I bought two.

After the afternoon rainstorm, I coaxed MS out. By this time it was around 8.30pm. We weren't hungry after eating a huge avocado between us, so I suggeste cake - 'torta'. We walked in a few different directions but found nothing open except for hamburger and hot dog stalls and the Christian cafe. By the time we decided on the cafe it was closing, so we went back to the pizza place, where MS had a hamburger and I ate mediocre ice cream, enjoying the smell of MS's burger. Not the meat, but the toasted bread and warm lettuce.