?, Sunday May 31, at MS's ....things get better

I arrived at MS's house in the suburb of Los Robles on Friday evening, probably around 8.00. All I wanted was a shower, especially in the hopes of relieving my itchy eyes. It was a while before I got one.

MS lives in a big white house with a large red-tiled courtyard in the back, dominated by a big tree that drops large red fruit and makes everything magenta. There are five dogs and three cats. We enter the house through a gate into the large, tiled kitchen/dining room. Once again there is only cold water in the trickly shower. I haven't explored the house but it seems to sprawl with a bunch of white-walled rooms.

Another couchsurfer, N, Argentinian, was here when I arrived. I thought he was hot, with his necklace and curly brown hair. Also, MS's sister, C, and her husband K live here with their two sons (teenage and adolescent). MS is Venezuelan but grew up in Buenos Aires. He films tourists on their ocean tours and has couchsurfed around Venezuela but not seen all of it yet.

MS cooked N and I a dinner of pasta and meat sauce. I scooped up the sauce around the meat. I don't think beef flavour enhances sauce. Ms is warm and we had a good chat, easy and personal right off the bat - not that I'm not usually like that.

After admitting that I was worried about trying to find the buses to the beach and finding my way back, N offered to take me to the beach with him the next morning. MS had to work. I woke up at 8.00am and read while I waited for N to wake up. N and K appeared around 9.30 and K made us breakfast of tiny toasts with butter and jam. N and K needed to go to the bank, so I tagged along in order to later be dropped off at the por puesto stop to Playa el Agua. I had a brief wander around the mall where the bank was. I don't like malls in Venezuela any more than I like malls anywhere else, but I did buy another disposable camera ($30 bolivars) at a Kodak shop.

N's very sexy friend C, also Argentinian and also a couchsurfer, is working as a waitress while living on Margarita and she joined us for the afternoon. C, with her big husky voice and large eyes, was the one who knew how to get to the beach. We met a few friends of hers close to the far end of Playa el Agua, past all the umbrellas and beach chairs, stands of food and drink. Also past where others were swimming.


Playa el Agua

This is Venezuelans' idea of a beautiful beach. I feel like I'm always a negative voice, critical and complaining, and I am trying to throw off that role, but I don't want to lie about my trip and my impressions. For me, compared to Australian beaches, Agua is ordinary. The water was olive green and cloudy, the food shacks sometimes dilapidated and hodgepodge, the sand dark, flat and stirred up by feet. The beach doesn't have dunes or beautiful beach scrub. On the far end is a pretty sand hill with green vegetation, but that is all that stood out.

A handsome bearded man selling homemade falafel, and who explained his belief in Indian subcontinental spirituality, told us that Agua usually has good surf but today is calm. There were waves breaking near the shore, but the water was shallow for such a long way that I couldn't play in them properly. Also, despite the relative smallness of the waves, they were powerful and knocked me down. I couldn't hold up my weight against them and kept tumbling backwards. Despite this, it was much welcomed to finally be in the ocean after my days of hot and humid waiting.

After my solo fight with the waves I joined the others, who took turns swimming. This was not a good day for me. N isn't particularly talkative with me, and though C is lovely, she and the others spoke Spanish and I felt bored and lonely. I wished I was on the beach by myself as being alone is never as lonely as feeling alone with people. One of C's friends, a computing professor, spoke some English and I chatted with her and the falafel seller, who also spoke English. Eventually I decided that it would not be rude to read. I read, I went back into the water, I walked along the beach, I had a beer. C left around 3.00 and the others had left before her. N napped and listened to his MP3 player while I alternately walked and read. At 5.00, I woke him up. We had been warned not to stay too late or else we'd miss the last por puesto back to the city.

N and I had begun walking back towards the road when a man stopped us to say that a tortoise had been found on the beach. Playa el Agua is dotted with orange tape and stake enclosures around small areas of sand with signs reading 'tortoise eggs, do not step on.' N had explained that Agua is famous for its huge tortoises, and a volunteer society protects their eggs by erecting barriers and helping make sure the hatchlings get safely to the sea.

We turned back around so that we could see the tortoise, but when we got to a site of commotion, all we saw was a dense circle of excited people, some men up on a raised platform directing the activity below and whistling and shouting, someone digging a hole and other people walking around inside the enclosure. I assume that eggs were found and were being buried. I did not see a tortoise.

N and I caught a por puesto back to Porlamar and he left me near the bus stop to Los Robles. When I got back to the plaza with the big, tacky, iridescently painted clamshell I tried to remember how to get back MS's. I walked for a bit, realizing I had no idea which way to go.

It was dark and I decided it was probably not a good idea to keep wandering. So I sheepishly called MS, walked back to the plaza, and he picked me up. I made sure to pay attention on the way but I'm still not sure I could get to MS's place or back again.

When we arrived back at MS's house, he made us very nice coffee. He said it is normal percolated coffee with whole milk, but it had an extra flavour, a bit nutty or spicy. Delicious. I presume it must be the flavour of powdered milk, which is a bit frothy from the blender. I had a little pack of milk biscuits and one of salted crackers. And that, along with the morning's bread and the afternoon's beer, was all I ate that day. I love this not being hungry thing. I've lost weight, even despite all the cheese I ate with S. I hope I can keep the weight off in NY with its pizza and Mexican food. Maybe if I move to Brisbane, where it is hot and humid most of the year, I'll be thinner.

MS asked me if I wanted to go out for drinks with him and I said yes. I thought that something might happen between us and before we went out I practiced saying no, using my swollen eye and red blotches as an excuse. I do look terrible: my left eyelid is huge, making my face uneven, strange and red. I felt itchy and ugly. Nevertheless, I did not say no.

4.00pm, Friday May 29, Plaza Bolivar, Porlamar ....live music

I presume you remember my email in which I let you know that I did recover S's phone from the hotel room, so this morning was not a disaster.

After a long, hot and ugly bus ride to the central neighbourhood of Porlamar, I am sitting behind a statue of Bolivar, listening to PSUV-sponsored (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) music. There are guards in green standing on the stage and now a woman is singing. In Venezuela, as well as in Buenos Aires, vendors (here, on buses) put their wares into the hands of passive passengers, talking through a spiel and collecting the wares again, hopefully leaving a few behind for people who buy the goods. Almost everyone accepts the goods and gives them back again. When Sandra and I were on a bus with sellers spruiking charity cards and chocolates, a couple of guys and us were the only people on a full bus who politely declined.

I have been told that Margarita beaches are beautiful, but the highway from the ferry is uninspiring. On one side arise hills in the near distance. On the other there is cactus and desert scrub for only a short distance before giving way to brownish grass and a nondescript landscape. On the hilly side of the highway, every so often a strip or square of houses or apartment buildings appears, quite close to the road and seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

I have just watched a girl in a black mini-skirt, maroon top and red bits in her uneven hair walk by, a rare sight in a city where most women dress the same: tight jeans, tight top, hair-coloured long hair.

I need to get out of ugly urbanised areas full of traffic and beeping horns. I am over it. I will never travel like this again. Tours are beginning to look really good right now; next time I will organise to stay longer with couchsurfers or book hotel rooms in town centres. I can't do anything here in Porlamar with this big backpack. Not so much because I am worried about someone stealing my stuff but because there are hordes of people, narrow sidewalks full of street vendors and little, tiny shops. I would just get in everyone's way.

Couchsurfing is wonderful. Without S I don't know what I would have done. She is 7 years younger than me but is looking after me like my mother. The couchsurfing hosts I have met are passionate about couchsurfing and love meeting people from different countries. But they live in suburbs and go to work and I have to work around their schedules and figure out how to get around (which I am lousy at). Oh well, I am learning all about how not to travel.

There's going to be a dance - girls in lime green tank tops with blue-flowered skirts, also printed with big red flowers. I cannot seem them anymore as the crowd has massed.

It is cooler here, clouded, and I am hungry again.

11.15am, Friday May 29 ...small victories

I am at the ferry terminal. About six or seven people each with one eye covered in a white bandage, just walked in. How weird.

I just watched an ad on the waiting room television that featured close-ups of a couple kissing, full-on tongue kissing, very close up. I've never seen an ad like that before.

Yesterday morning I attempted to follow the Lonely Planet Venezuela's directions to the por puesto to Mochima, a national park renowned for its beautiful beaches. This did not work out. I walked for 15 or 20 minutes until I found a bus station, but none of the buses said 'Mochimo' and when I asked someone for help she said there was no bus there but didn't know where I should go. I walked on for a bit, but the neighhbourhood began to look quite dodgy, with run-down houses, a mission, blaring sun, workmen lolling around, wide long roads. I decided that I better turn back since I wasn't even sure if I was going the right way. I called MM to see if she was available to play in the afternoon.

When I got back to the hotel room I found that the bar of chocolate S had given me, which I completely forgot about, had melted all over everything in my bag. I washed out my purse and its contents in the trickly shower, wrote, and napped before waiting for MM to arrive at Plaza Bolivar.

MM first took me to the tourist office to get a map to show me where the Mochima por puestos are. I think I was walking the right way after all, it was just much farther away than I expected. Then MM took me to beach, blessed girl. She asked me what I wanted to do and I said 'I'm desperate to get to the beach!' So she took me there, first stopping to get her friend, also a couchsurfer. The beach was nice for a city beach - big and long, with many little wooden huts selling beer, ice-cream and other treats lining the back edge, and a row of square wood and palm shade structures standing mid-beach. The water was calm and warm.

The three of us, MM, her friend and I, drank light beer and chatted. I ran down to the water for a wade. Another friend of MM's, J, joined us. Once he came the dynamic changed, like when Mr. I arrived at M's apartment before we left for the salsa club. J was smiley and chatty and the centre of attention, and didn't speak English.

After three and a quarter beers I really had to pee. I asked if there were bathrooms around and was told no, the ocean is my toilet. So I put my bathing suit on and went for a short swim. Before I finished my fourth beer I had to pee again, but I tried to ignore it. By the time we walked back to the por puesto stop, I couldn't hold out much longer, so I asked if I could go in the woods on the side of the road. Yes, MM and co said.

(I am on the ferry now - it has assigned seats!)

So I crunched unsteadily over prickly bracken, sat on a conveniently placed log and quickly peed. When I emerged, everyone started slapping me. Many, and large, mosquitoes had discovered me in the woods. So now I am scratched and bitten up. The bites aren't too itchy, though, not as bad as the mango welts that have invaded my neck and inner thigh and swollen my left eyelid. Luckily the welts aren't very noticeable. Maybe if they were, or my pimples were back, I'd be left alone on park benches.

The taxi driver that brought me to the ferry marina told me that I'm finding myself safe and sound in Venezuela because I'm pretty. Ha. It brings me idle older men! It happened to me again today. I sat down in the park to eat my breakfast of a bread loaf and on the second bite a man with a crutch sat down to talk with me. Again I had trouble understanding him but he continued talking. He suggested we walk by the river, so we did, very slowly. I told him I was waiting for the Museo de Antonio Jose de Sucre to open at 10.00am. He came to the museum with me. At least someone understood the young female guide's Spanish explanations as she took us through the mansion to see portraits of Antonio José de Sucre - a friend of Bolivar's who won many crucial battles in South America's fight for independence - his diamond-studded swords and other personal and household artefacts. The ground floor of the museum showed a collection of current artworks for sale, some of which were very good, some of which appeared quite amateur to my unstudied eye.

After I left the museum with my suitor he tried to get me to go in a car with him, maybe to his house - at least somewhere with a baño (bathroom) and comida (food) anyway. I took out my Spanish conversation book and cobbled together a sentence to communicate that I wasn't comfortable. I walked with him a bit more, failing to understand him but afraid he was saying something about marrying me (he kept showing me an official document and pointing out his last name and I think said something about being with me all his life), so I finally said that not being able to talk in Spanish was making me tired and I was going to go. 'Adios!'

I still ask, where are all the hot 30-something Australian men telling me how beautiful I am and wanting to marry me when they see me sitting on a bench by myself?

After leaving the gentleman near the museum, I walked through some nice streets with old, colourful, low houses and achieved one of the small victories on this trip that I cherish in the face of all my self-made adversities: I found a place to buy a pen!, a shop selling papeles (paper) and related articles. It was very cheap. This is a relief as writing with my blunt little pencil was difficult. Now I have a cute frosted light green-blue pen.

My ardent stranger was only part of another one of those mornings: neverending fun with yours truly. I meant to catch the 7.00am ferry to Isla Margarita today. I woke up on my own at 5.18am and got out of the hotel and into a taxi and was at the terminal by 6.00am. I was confused as to whether the terminal I was at sold tickets for both the expensive and cheaper ferries. I had a sneaking suspion no, but I didn't see where another ticket desk would be. As I was waiting in the long line I realised that I had left S's phone charging in the hotel room.

So I wouldn't be catching the 7.00am ferry.

This wasn't a disaster. What could be a disaster is losing S's cell phone. MS, who I am couchsurfing with on Margarita, texted last night to say he had to work all day today, so I was expecting to spend the day on Margarita with my backback,limited in what I can do. So, arriving six hours later seemed in many ways a good thing. However, I have wasted time and money.

I stayed in line in order to purchase a ticket for the afternoon ferry and after a half an hour I got to the window and realized, as I thought, that it was only selling tickets for the rapid ferry. I was pointed in the direction of the other ticket booth, which I eventually found. I waited in a much shorter but very slow line and, after trying to say that I wanted a ticket for mid-day and struggling to understand what the woman behind her plastic window was trying to tell me, I accepted a piece of paper on which she wrote a message for me to take back to the other ferry window, that I wanted a 1.00pm ticket. The cheap ferry, I finally understood, only goes once a day. So back to the other ferry terminal again.

Once I finally had a ticket in my hot little hands, I got into the cab of a nice taxi driver, who, when I asked whether he liked Chavez, said 'no' quite quickly, but then said 'mas o menos' and explained that (I think) Chavez does good things for the poor, like make sure they have food, but everything he does isn't good. Some good, some bad. I said that was normal.

W had expressed distrust of Argentina's current government, thinking the Left and Right are essentially the same people, but Argentina's pretty young female president is considered by
S's father to be one of the several Latin American reformists trying to achieve social change.

It is still very hot here. It means I'm not very hungry, only thirsty. Such a welcome reprieve! I can subsist on a loaf of bread all day despite getting used to big meals at S's. I hope this lasts for the rest of my time in Venezuela - it makes things easier and cheaper. I look at restaurants advertising arepas and cachapas and think, 'it's too hot!'

That said, MM's friend J cooked a lovely pasta for us for dinner. He sauteed onion, little yellow peppers, tomato paste, hunks of chicken on the bone, zucchini and green olives with water and olive oil and made a shitload of pasta, a big roasting pan full of dinner. The olives were different than any I've tasted - shrivelled and thin like kalamatas, but green. I left the chicken to the others and gorged on pasta. We all did, five of us, and still half the pasta was left. An orange and white striped kitten circled around us as we drank pear nectar and twirled spaghetti on the second floor balcony of MM's friend's big Venezuelan abode. It was a very nice evening, though everyone was speaking Spanish so I edged around the borders of boredness for a while.

10.00pm, Thursday May 29, Hotel Italia ....up early

Tonight I killed two little round cockroaches. One I drowned in the sink, the other I crushed on the wall with my diary. It left a lot of slime on my diary. I also squashed two tiny baby cockroaches.

Some of you make fun of my discussion of pee, but doesn't everyone have this problem? I know I pee more than anyone else but everyone has to pee. What do you do when you find yourself in an unfamiliar place where nothing looks recognisable and you really have to pee? So, yes, this blog is mostly about food and pee. A few people I studied with were working on theses about the body, more specifically, the neglect of it in philosophy. One co-worker was using the body in a Marxist framework, discussing how contemporary expectations of workers view people as if they are only minds and not bodies. These ignored bodies complicate the simplistic model of the mind-only worker and citizen and her relation to work and civility.

So, yes, pee isn't something we are supposed to talk about in politics, society, but is one of the few universal aspects of our experience in the world. Such experience has added tensions when travelling.

Okay, off to bed. I have to get up at 5.30am to catch a ferry.

10.30pm, Wednesday May 27, on the bus

This bus has leg rests! My calves are supported and I can elevate my feet a bit. This bus is much nicer than anything Greyhound ever imagined - double-decker even.



9.00am, Thursday May 28, Hotel Italia, Cumana

The driver kept the lights off in the bus, so no reading or writing.

I arrived in Cumana, Venezuela's oldest city, at 5.30am, waited for a long while for a bus into town, then wandered around in the area of Plaza Bolivar while waiting for the hotel to open at 7.30am. As I wandered, a stream of young men, some in military green, most in civilian shorts, emerged from a big old building, shouting, and ran around the Bolivar statue and then on down the street. I assume that the old building is some sort of military school.

My hotel room has light grey tile floor, yellow walls and two twin beds: tile platforms laid with mattresses covered by pink, yellow and blue horizontal-striped sheets. Each bed on either side of the narrow room, near the door, has a towel and a sheet folded on the end and hard tall pillows. There is a small television up in the air in one far corner, near the bathroom, two small bedside tables, one beside a bed, the other at the far end of the same bed. The best part of this dingy room is the dark bright pink toilet paper. The shower is a cold small stream with some acompanying trickles, the ceiling stained pasteboard. I am used to it now and it is alright, though at first I missed Allan - I've never been in such a budget hotel by myself before. However, the room is cleanish and the bugs in the bathroom are small and not cockroaches. I am waiting until 10.00am to call MM.

8.45pm, Wednesday May 27, Rodavia bus station ....the best part begins

I am starting a new notebook! And I forgot to bring a pen. This little pencil will only last so long since I can't sharpen it, only pick at it.

At 10.45pm I will take a night bus to Cumana, which is near the beaches of Maracaibo and the beaches of Isle Margarita. I will meet MM (female), who has recommended me a cheap hostel, in Cumana. MS (male), who lives on Margarita, will host me (with his family) and help me organise my further travels to Canaima and Amazonas. This is, of course, thanks to S.

I have given in on my plans to be strong and do this travelling thing by myself. As usual I expressed my anxieties - making poor S worry for me and organise others to help me. This is a point of couchsurfing, I suppose, but I'm not as fearful as I sound. I am anxious beforehand, but I know things are usually fine when I get where I'm going - all my difficulties so far, while throwing me into funks, have been minor. Nevertheless, I am happy to have MS to help with organisation and S's 2001 Lonely Planet Venezuela with maps - though it does make the load I have to carry on my back heavier.

I also have S's old mobile phone, which She insisted I take, so my technology-less plans are also only a heroic ideal. S feels better being able to know that I am safe. It does make things considerably easier, except that now I have to make sure not to lose the phone. Here, every other street stalls sell phone recharge cards - a much better system than Australia's.

I am taking the more expensive bus to Cumana. It is really only a few more American dollars, but again I feel like I'm chickening out from an authentic experience. I was worried that the cheaper bus won't have toilets. Seriously, this is my only concern! I have visions of those hardy folk who travel in rickety buses with chickens. I'd love to be that sort, but my bladder... maybe one day, when I'm more experienced with all this, or can ask if there are plenty of toilet stops.

Today was a very low-key day. I am strangely tired - now and earlier. I had a decent night's sleep, waking up at 8.30am surprisingly ready to get out of bed. F was gone for his torture at Guantanamo (physical therapy) and I had the apartment to myself. I decided to have a go at making arepas. It is simple: mix water and arepa cornflour until the right consistency, put in salt as well, make into a ball, flatten and put on the hot plate. I made two and ate them with black beans and mozzarella. It was too much food. I was stuffed. I did dishes and then grabbed my book. I read for a short time in a way I haven't been able to in awhile. I was waiting for F to come home at 11.00am, when I would accompany him to the bank to transfer money. I felt so tired around 11.30am while reading that I lay down and napped until noon.

I spent the afternoon with F and A. F made us butter-sauteed plantains with cheese in the middle and black beans. I was stuffed again. We also downed a bottle of Chilean white wine together, while F talked about his childhood and studies and lifestyle. We agreed we each are weird compared to our peers. He finds other elderly gentlemen too conservative and makes friends with the couchsurfers. I told him my friends are often older. Two glasses of wine made me tired again and the third woke me up to tipsiness.

When F and I went out to run our errands we passed a truck full of little mangos at half the price S bought them for at the market two days previously (1 kilo eaten in two days!): 2 kilos for $5 bolivars. So F bought 4 kilos. I ate 2 mangos when I got home and now have an allergic reation - itchy around the mouth. If I don't scratch too much I should be fine. After my zits have finally gone the last thing I want is a blown-up red face. But mangoes are always worth the risk.

S came home at 5.00, earlier than expected. Around 6.30pm, a little restless, I invited A for a walk and she wanted to know where to, so I said 'Por helado'. She definitely was up for ice-cream. I was still stuffed, really, but... The gelato wasn't as good as what we had at the mall. I had Oreo and lime flavours, but the lime was creamy as well as limey (when I said this and S tasted it, she laughed and laughed - because it was true!, unexpected, and not very good). Lime here is called limon and lemons are called limes. Their relative prices are reversed as well, with limes coming cheap and commonly available and lemons expensive and harder to come by.

While walking I asked S about her couchsurfing experience, specifically how many weeks out of the year she spends alone. She has had 30 couchsurfers already and has only been in couchsurfing for a year. She said that mostly she doesn't hang out with her surfers during the day; often they are here to study or research or just do their own thing and she takes them to a party on the weekend. Of course this news made me feel bad - that I need to be babysat. Let's face it, I do.

Violent movies accost me from the television in the bus station. Both times I've looked up at the screen it showed a roomful of men pointing guns at each other. In a city that has a problem with violence in public, why show movies such as this?

12.11am, Wednesday May 27, bed at S's ....replete

I call Caracas the city of hanging string. There are many sculptures consisting of some form of (usually) metal strings hanging to the ground, usually in some sort of cube pattern, and creating shadow illusions by the way they are positioned.

I felt completely replete after the beer and alone-time to write. When I got back to S's apartment, she was home and had brought with her another couchsurfer, J-L. He came to exchange money with me but his card wouldn't work in the ATM machines and it was finally barred, so no exchange from him. S's dad wrote me another cheque instead.

S had problems getting home this evening due to delayed trains, which caused such overcrowding that someone felt free to yank one of S's earring out of her ear. So she walked to M's and she and J-L had dinner and beer with M. Tonight she and J-L called couchsufers in Cumana and Isle Margarita to help host and find tours for me. I'll be off tomorrow evening on a night bus.

My pimples have finally faded and no new ones arrived, my face is tan and my hair is great in this humididty - curly and neither dry nor greasy. I'm finally feeling attractive again.

And this brings me to the end of notebook 1, where I am writing on the inside back cover now - farewell my fine red friend.