11.00pm, Monday May 25, bed at S's ....jealousy

I suppose it is common to want to be the favourite. I have had this problem forever, from the time I was a little girl and my friends had a best friend who wasn't me. I felt again that pang of jealousy tonight as S showed me photos of past couchsurfers. She talked of on Asian girl who was unafraid to go anywhere on her own and another couchsurfer who wants her to work on an organic farm in Mexico with him. Two Germans are begging her to come to Germany.

To some extent couchsurfing inspires this sort of gratitude for being so well looked after, but obviously one will bond more with some travellers than others. I have to curb my jealousy and remind myself that everyone has their own experience when they travel and my adventures will probably be less social, which suits my nature right now. Like at the salsa club: I like to be the life of the party but I wasn't in the mood to get drunk and I couldn't be effusive because of my lack of language. So I was kind of a nonentity. Why must everyone I meet think I'm awesome?

We went for a walk in El Avila but the day was a bit of a bust. The little town that we had come to see, Galipán, was completely closed, the cable car was also closed and there were no walking tracks on the side of the mountain we were on. On our way back down the hill following our long por puesto trip up the hill, we walked past a couple of open refreshment stands, little wooden huts with bags of cookies, fresh strawberries and other sweet things. I bought a cup of fresh strawberry juice. I had to put sugar in it.

S, A and I made our way down the steep road but A began complaining that she was tired ('cansado') almost immediately. She would come to a halt, bend her knees, put her hands to her groin and say 'no puedo mas' (I can't do more). We let her cry and whine for a while as we kept forcing her to walk with us, but truth be told my knees were vibrating with the effort of keeping myself upright while walking down such a steep hill so I was not unhappy when S flagged down a car. As it turned out, this car that stopped for us contained a very handsome 35-year-old man. S dug him too but stopped just short of asking him for his phone number.

I was surprised how many people live up this mountain given its steep climb or descent from or to the nearest urban area. However, people do live up here, including our sexy driver, and they grow strawberries.

S was due to leave for work around 2.00pm, so after she made us more arepas and was on her way I had a nap for a couple of hours, played with A and had a night in. We made soup with vegetables - yucca, taro, celery root and potato - bought on the way home from a big, dark, indoor market with fruit that looked decidedly homegrown. We also threw zucchini and onion into the mix. S says making soup with a whole bunch of random vegetables is traditional Venezuelan hangover food, though it normally would also have meat thrown in as well.

S's dad came up with a good way for me to exchange money: he will give me bolivars for $50 of my dollars and write me two checks for $800 and $700 bolivars, respectively, ($250 US) so I don't carry around thousands of bolivars at a time. I can go into a bank with my passport and cash the checks.