Venezuela

Maracaibo, Venezuela

(aka Mierda-caibo)

Looks real pretty from this perspective, I was just too scared to pull out my camera in the "real" parts of the city

Largest Virgin in Venezuela?

"Country/homeland, socialism or death!"
Not only is this written on the tops of huge buildings, but also on t-shirts and rear windows of cars.

Billboard over the road.

Necklace that I made and sold. The most expensive piece so far. It's a turquise stone from Peru.

Andícora, Venezuela

Our first night in Andícora and with los Chileanos: playing music on an empty beach.

"Chavez's reelection was today. Since Friday, Venezuela has had a "ley seca" and won't "legally" sell alcohol to anyone because if they did "Everyone would be drunk when they go to vote." Odd thinking. Apparently this is a common law throughout south america. Here in Andícora (we left Coro on Friday), everyone is VERY anti Chavez. I guess in richer areas he is less popular and in poorer areas they like him more. The vote is either "Si" or "No". All the really nice, new SUVs and other cars have "NO" written in soap on the windows. Also, the area we are in is very rich in oil, so the people are too. When they go to vote, they dip everyone's pinky finger in purple ink, so instead of a "I voted" sticker, you can tell who voted by their purple pinky.

There are flamingos here. If you look at a map, Andícora is a beach on the eastern side of a big peninsula north of Coro. On the bus ride here, we drove for a while on the narrow stretch of land leading to the peninsula. There were hundreds of pink flamingos in the marshes and water on both sides of us. It's cool. First we were driving through sand dunes and desert like areas and then marshes and low shrub covered areas. As I remember from some animal class (maybe "F is for Flamingo"), flamingos eat shrimp and that's why they are pink. THere is also an abundance of shrimp here. We bought a kilo yesterday from a local fisherman for 20 bolos. That's about 10 pesos colombiano...so...in dollars....about $4. Another old artisaño who lives here let us use his "kitchen" to cook. We met up with a Chilean artisaño couple in the bus station in Coro and have been camping and cooking and selling with them. We're camping right on the beach in the shade of a good tree. It's real nice staying at the beach, because there's always a place to camp for free. Going to bathroom is sometimes a problem, though. Oh! My debit card doesn't work here in Venezuela and I ran out of cash in Coro. So we're watching our money much more now and working so we can eat every meal. Don't worry, though, we've been selling quite well here. So, camping on the beach for free is very helpful. In comparison to Maracaibo, Andícora is very cheap to buy food, so that's good too."

La feria de Andícora.

Los Chileanos.

Gato y Nicole.

Rubén and "Olivia's".

One of our neighbors at our campsite. Raul is the children's grandfather. He looked so funny wandering around like a homeless guy with this beautiful little girl holding his hand and walking along beside him. Raul is not homeless, he just always looked like it. It was boiling hot and he always had the same camo jacket and courderouy pants on.

After a long day of working. It was Carnival/Fat Tuesday/Ash Wednesday. The beach looked like a "Jaws" beach. Covered in people. We sold about $200 in Yuyitos. Little braids that we braided into people's hair with seeds and beads. Each one costed $5. We sold a lot.

Gato y Rubén with the Yuyitos sign I made and wore as we walked on the beach selling Yuyitos and earrings.

Villa Marina

The other side of the peninsula where we camped for a few days and then rented a house between the six of us for 5 days. I wasn't too fond of this desert/beach. It was hot, filthy and filled with horrible smells. There are only tourists on the weekends and we didn't sell very much so we were living by our teeth, eating spaghetti with canned tuna and tomato sauce, because veggies were too expensive.

Not too many worthy pictures from Villa Marina.

Rubén and I have split up from the group and are on our way to Mérida, in the Sierra nevadas. I'm ever-ready for a change of scenary.

Taganga, Colombia y Venezuela

Taganga, Colombia

Chi Chi's birthday party, the owner of the hostel we stayed. If you looked up "Colombian" in the dictionary, you would see a picture of Chi Chi. Floral shirt, no shoes, happy beer belly, and a permanent scowl that always had a faint trace of a smirk. The hostel was full of artisaños, had a nice kitchen and a place to wash and dry clothes. It was probably my favorite hostel I've stayed in yet. There was always music and food cooking and lots of people to talk with and tell stories.

Australian guy who's been travelling for about a year now. He has plans to sail back to New Zealand from Panamà when he's done travelling.

Maurcilito, playing the harmonica. He and his french girlfriend and her son had been living in the hostel for several months and were like the gaurdians.

One of the many Argentiñians in Taganga with the french ladies son and a neighbor, playing Truca, an Argentinian card game.

Venezuela

Riding in the back of a pickup truck to Maicaibo, Venezuela, Rubén, Nicole and me.

I'm in venezuala. Home to Chavez. Geez. There's Chavez propaganda on every corner. Billboards. Flyers. Signs. Protestors. Everywhere. Our time in Colombia ran out, so we crossed the border to get some more time in Colombia, when we return. We're in Maicaibo right now. A huge, dirty, kinda scary city. Venezualuans are very different. Not as friendly as colombians. But everything is good.

Crossing the border was an adventure. We arrived at dark, on the night of our last day allowed in colombia. We slept in an expensive hotel in between Colombia and Venezuela and in the morning hitched a ride in the back of a pickup truck for about 3 hours into the heart of filthy Maicaibo. The drivers let us out in the middle of a huge street, filled with old hoop-de cadillacs. Gas is super cheap here and everybody and their mother has an old 1970s cadillac, with dusty bench seats that sag into the rust underneath. They all look like they're about to rust into the ground, but still manage to zoom through the traffic. Instead of buses in Maicaibo, there are old Cadi's, kind of like taxis, but they have specific routes they go on and don't charge as much as taxis and stuff as many people possible into their dusty rusty hunks. Most of the Cadi's don't have keys in the ignition. They hot-wire them, I guess. We were in one yesterday and when the driver wanted to blow his horn, he connected two wires; when he wants to turn on the car, he connects two wires. The only things that really work in these cars are the engines and the steering wheels (gracias a Dios).

Rubèn and I met up with Gato and his Chicagan girlfriend Nicole in Taganga, colombia and are travelling together for the moment.

Venezuela is expensive. Food is very expensive and we're still searching for a hotel in our price range. I don't like this city much at all, but I don't want to go too far into Venezuela because i want to return to Colombia. I really like Colombia. I was ready to go back as soon as we walked across the border into Venezuela and the border guy who stamped my passport asked me, very confrontationally, "Where are you going?" "Venezuela," I said. "Where?" "Maracaibo." "Si, pero donde?" he insisted. "what hotel?" "I have no idea. I've never been to Venezuela before," I said. "Well, you can't just enter a country and not know where you're going. I can't go to the United States and tell the police i have no idea where I'm going. They wouldn't just stamp my passport and let me in. Do you understand?" "Si, señor." i sensed a little "I hate the United States" energy from him.On the road, in the back of the pickup truck, we were stopped every 30 minutes by road blocks. Police men in their red Chavez hats asked us where we were from, what we were doing in the back of a pickup truck, searched our bags, and ran them through their portable x-ray machines. Their tanks were parked on the side of the road next to us. There are a lot of police about in Colombia, but it's different here. There signs that read "Socialismo o muerte!" Socialism or death! And everyone here has an interest in politics and Chavez that I didn't encounter in Colombia, Ecuador or Peru.

¡La Caribé!

We just got back from a WONDERFUL 3 or 4 day (can't remember how long we were there) adventure to an island about a 2 hour bus/walk/moto ride/ferry away from Cartagena, called Playa Blanca. Carribean. Carribean. The water was cristal clear with star fish and coral and white sand. It was gorgegous. Like a commercial. We camped down the beach away from the tourist loading area, where they all get off the boat and stay without exploring the rest of the island. I woke up before sunrise every morning and walked on the beach to watch the sun rise and keep the no-see-ums from eating me alive. At night and during the day the bugs weren't bad because of the breeze, but right before the sun came up, the wind would die and the no-see-ums would creep into the tent. La dueña of the hostel we're staying at in Cartagena, loaned us a big pot and we cooked all our meals over the fire.
yesterday, a fisherman brought in lobster and we bargained with him and got 4 lobsters, for us and our neighbors, for 10,000 pesos. About $5. Oh! Que rico! A guy from Brasil and his australian girlfriend were camped next to us and we cooked and ate and played music and spoke in portugeese. Rubén speaks portugeese (yes i am aware i am spelling portugeese wrong) since he lived in Brasil and Natalie, the girl from australia spoke a little too, so all our conversations were a blend of spanish and portugeese. I followed along quite well. Portugeese is very similar to spanish and i found myself understanding.
A girl from denmark let us borrow her snorkel and mask and Rubén and i went down to the far end of the beach yesterday and snorkled until my back was as red as the lobster we ate for dinner. THe water was even more clear down there than it was where we were camped. I found like 5 HUGE starfish, all different colors. There were lots of fish too. We're back in Cartagena for the night and tomorrow we're going to the Imigration office to see if we can get an extension on our time in colombia and then going to Taganga to meet Gato and his girlfriend Nicole. There's a national park a little north of Taganga where we're gonna go camping either tomorrow or the next day. It's also on the carribean and i hear there's lots of snorkling and beatiful beaches, but not as nice as Playa Blanca. It was so cool to live on the beach for a bit. No showers. Only swimming in the ocean. My hair is almost dreaded. If we like Taganga, Rubén and I have been talking about renting a house and staying there for a month. The Brasilero was telling us that he and about 12 other people rented a one bedroom house for about 150,000 pesos for a month. That's about 5,000 pesos a day, about...$2.50 a day. It would be cheaper and it would be nice to settle somewhere for a bit. It's tiring to constantly be moving and travelling around. I'm ready to be stagnant to a little while. Hopefully, tommorrow we can get an extension on our visas. WE're also talking about taking a cargo boat up to Panamá. But we're not ready to leave Colombia, yet.

A fisherman brought in 2 sharks and was selling them for 40,000 pesos each. About $20.

Rubén and René, our Brasilero neighbor.

Cartagena from the ferry.

The Carribean!!

Cooking a Brazilean breakfast.

The Lobster.

Sunset at Playa Blanca.

Nuestra casita.

It's 2009

Ladrilleros

Ladrilleros. Where the hilocopters fly low like Vietnam. Guns hanging from faceless fingers out their open doors.
Where the children sing and beat empty kerosene containors with a rythym only found in the blood of an African.
The Indians work quietly. Selling the palm frond hats and purses. Their children's pigeon-toed feet slap the ground as they run past, flashing toothy, innocent grins.
Ladrilleros. Even the Hunchback has his place here. And the silent "cara de loco" who sells his collection of seashells, finally gave us some words to remember him by. A voice strangely reminescent of Mike Tyson's.
Ladrilleros. Where I ate fried fish, arroz con coco y plantains for 14 days straight, cooked by the incessantly screaming family who's little Alejandro could never keep away from mud puddles and trouble.
The ocean roars here with la marialta. After a night filled with jungle rain, the jungle seeps its way into the sea and fills it with it's hojas and trash from the pueblo.
Ladrilleros. I will remember you by hot nights, singing mosquitos y negritos, arepas con huevos, tranvestites and my first UFO sighting. Un hobne. Con la luna llena. Yo creo ahora.
Gracias Ladrilleros.

La playa. Filled with tourists and local women offering to braid corn rows.

Trash in the beach.

Cliffs and jungle line the beaches.

One of the many cara de locos de Ladrilleros.

Working. 7000 pesos for a trincita con semillas.

Neighbor getting a bath.

Our work. Mainly Rubèn's.

Trabajando.

Christmas in Colombia

It was a very hot Christmas down here in colombia, but it was really cool. On Christmas day we went to Paula's (Ruben's sister in law) dad's farm house. There was tons of family there, kids, grandparents, aunts and uncles, music, delicious chorizo and carne and guacamole, TONS of salsa dancing (which, by the way, i'm getting quite good at!), an entire backyard full of avocado, papaya, bananna and other fruit trees and lots of drink (aka aguardente, which is a very strong anis based liquor which is very popular here in colombia)! We ate and drank and danced all day and night. It was a very different christmas than i'm used to but very very fun. Christmas eve night we went to another family's party which was very different with no dancing but it was still cool to be around family and experiencing a Colombian christmas.
I'm beginnning to see an end in sight to my travels. I am really beginning to miss Italy and I want to see my family and I want to see my friends. A large part of me can see myself living down here, somewhere, and starting a new life down here. But then, every now and then, I get this sense of completely not belonging here. And that makes me homesick. A little. But maybe it's just Colombia, because I didn't feel that in Ecuador. Colombia is definately different. The other day, I was in an internet store, writing an email to you, when all of a sudden a body was slammed against the glass walls of the internet store. I looked up and like 3 police men were beating up 4 or 5 guys with their night sticks. All these people were gathered around them like a middle school lunch fight. The women in the store with me were all very nervous and pushed themselves together up against a far wall of the store. Then somebody fired a gun and people screamed and everyone in the store dropped down on the ground. I was just standing there, in shock, and watching this crazy "COPS" like scene evolve in front of me through the glass. "Oh yeah, I'm in Colombia" i was thinking. It was crazy. I waited in the store until it seemed as though the police had everything under control and then quickly snaked my way out through the doors and past the crowd. It was a little scary.

Here are some pictures from Cali, Colombia and Christmas at la finca.

Ruben's sister-in-law's dad, owner of the farm house, dancing. He danced and drank all night long like a 20 year old. Cali is the Salsa capital of Colombia. They love it.

Paula y Samuel, Rubèn's sister in law and nephew.

Me dancing la salsa gringa.

Artisañia y amigos en Cali.