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.