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.
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.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment