6.30pm, Saturday June 20, MS's parents' apartment in Puerto Ordaz ....the property

It is 32 degrees Celcius with 50% humidity.

Today MS and I visited the warehouse where MS's dad keeps his machines and trucks, his office and the lot of land he will build his own warehouse and house on. Then we visited the people he bought the land from. They live on truly colourful property where they have built three small houses and raise plenteous chickens, roosters, dogs, ducks and turtles, plus peacocks, geese and parrots. The turtles were all shell-up together in a shady ditch pretending to be rocks, but one was sharing a mango with a chicken, its little paw grabbing the mango and its little mouth champing.

All the animals appeared to eat mangoes. There were many mango trees on the property. The sandy entrance area was lined with multicoloured bougainvillea (trinidas), the roofed patio between two houses was covered by blue and white viney flowers, baskets of bromeliads, cactus with big round leaves and pink flowers at their tops, chives, basil. The proprety was mostly scraggly grass with random plots of plants, the occasional rubbish left over from projects, animal cages to one edge.

The shady barbeque area sat between two cement and tin-roofed verandahed houses with a third towards the back of the land. The houses were all different but mostly made of recycled materials. One had beautiful old French-swirly grillwork over the windows, another a concrete porch set every so often with big stones. There were hammocks on the porches and one of the houses had artwork, a picture of the Virgin, hanging on the front wall. It was very Venezuelan - beautiful and cosy but not ordered or impeccable.

Several ladies sat outside under the vines, chatting and smoking, while MS and I wandered around the grounds. Then we went to a park to see a line of around twelve or so small waterfalls, all falling from a scrubby lake. The falls are affected by a hydroelectric dam. Llovizna park itself is lovely, grassy, with a variety of tall old trees - huge mangoes and an impressive stand of tall palms, some growing multiple trunks. The trees were spread throughout the park in a most picturesque randomness, the sun raying the grass between them in gold. One of the lusher bits of Venezuela I've been to lately.

While waiting for MS's parents to pick us up, I tried someting called tizana - juice with mixed furit chunks. It was welcome after two stints of eating only bread.

I cannot remember who told me this, but Venezuelans do not go out at night so much because of fear, whereas Buenos Aireans insisted on police.

Dotted around, I see huge blue water bins perched on the tops of houses. I see these, but aside from the political graffitti I haven't noticed any tagging or 'murals'. I would have thought there would be a lot of graffitti here.