23-29/10/2011 - Ups and Downs

As my first week in Santa Elena draws to a close, to say I have mixed feelings about this place would be an understatement. I've also realised that for the next 9 weeks or so this isn't going to be a travel blog (unless you count emotional journeys – I don't) so I'm probably going to post slightly less frequently, especially as my life here takes on a bit more of a routine.   

my lodgings

A gloomy sunday view from the farm

The foundation gym! (including dumbells made from concrete)

Sunday the 23rd was a hungover write-off, during which I mulled over the drunken heart to heart I'd had with Richard. He had told me in no uncertain terms that he's hating this job at the moment and he has the power to sell the farm, close the foundation and leave. I know I should have tried to motivate him but I was just speechless. I managed to keep a relatively straight face and drunkenly told him to follow his heart.

On Monday the 2 female volunteers returned and the first thing Gatrey said to Richard was “I'm leaving”. She was due to leave next week anyway but she decided to cut her losses and leave earlier. It was obvious she hadn't been enjoying herself. It also transpired that a meeting had taken place where she'd criticised Richard and the Foundation for over an hour (prompting Richard to write an email to the owner of the Foundation telling him he wanted to quit) 2 days before I arrived, which probably accounts for the slightly tense mood I found myself in during the first couple of days. All the motivation had been sucked out of the place and it was going to be an uphill struggle to bring it back.

While tuesday was an unremarkable day of lessons and play, wednesday was more memorable. Last week, during our arduous meeting, we discussed the mobile school. This is essentially a massive box on wheels with lots of pull-out blackboards and has lots of activities which you can hang up for the kids to do. It turns out that for as long as anyone could remember, the mobile school had just been sitting in the classroom where the volunteers used to teach and was being used in situ. Upon my insistence that a mobile school should indeed be mobile, on wednesday we took the school into the area where the indian community live and spent a couple of hours teaching kids from the neighbourhood. Just as I'd hoped, the combination of the kids' enthusiasm and a new experience for us as volunteers was very galvanizing. I taught some maths and geography as well as tactfully dodging the advances of the 14 year old girls who'd taken my sunglasses. A knackering but satisfying day.  

"Look mom, I´m a volunteer!"

On friday morning I went food shopping in the market with Richard. As we bought indian bread, mangoes, papayas and various other essentials, it was great to see several people sitting around already on the booze at 8am. We then had to drive to the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima to buy powdered milk. I thought this was ridiculous until we went to fill up the car with petrol which cost around 40p for a full tank. Venezuela never ceases to amaze me. In the afternoon we threw a halloween party for the kids which, i assume like most kids halloween parties, involved face-painting, too many pancakes, too many sweets, too much cake, kids vomiting, hide and seek and a sack race. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves though so it felt like we'd done a good job.

22/10/2011 - Border Hopping and the Commercial Disco

I was running out of cash so in the morning I tagged along to the Brazilian border town of Paracaima with Gatrey and Martina who were going to Boa Vista (the nearest city in Brazil) for the weekend. Paracaima is literally one street but it had a bank which allowed me to withdraw Brazilian money which I could then change into Bolivars without getting stung by the official exchange rate. I also got excited and purchased shaving foam, several packs of wafers and some trainers for running (nearly 2 weeks of fatty Venezuelan food and little exercise means my fitness levels are plummeting). Frustratingly, I had to make the 500m walk between the Venezuelan and Brazilian border controls several times in order to get a visa back into Venezuela (apparently, I could have gone into Paracaima, which is technically in Brazil, without bothering to tell the Venezuelan or Brazilian authorities). However, it did mean I got several chances to admire the massive queues of Brazilian motorists who hop over the border to get cheap Venezuelan petrol at the gas station just the other side of the border.

In the evening Richard taught me how to make arepas, an activity punctuated with shots of whisky. We ended up in town and, this being Saturday night, Richard gave me a tour of the “commercial discos”. They're not dissimilar to UK clubs except that they're much smaller and at least some of the partygoers know how to dance. I found them quite tedious but Richard seems to love them. Communicating in a club is tricky at the best of times but when you don't have a strong command of the language it's even harder. I found this out the hard way when I tried to explain to a group of Brazilian guys, one of whom was trying to hit on me, that I wasn't gay. Another highlight was a guy inexplicably smoking in the stinking toilets when he could have easily gone outside to do so. The night ended with us getting a flat tire on the way back to the Foundation but we just about made it back. This would be a problem for tomorrow.

21/10/2011 - Kids, Horses and Mosquitos

After a long and awkward morning group volunteer meeting, during which I could have squeezed gallons of blood out of the surrounding sedimentary rocks in the time it took us to make a plan for next weeks activities (which ended up being more or less the same as this weeks), the kids came to the farm again and we took the horses out into the little sandy enclosure on the farm. Later Richard told me that the Foundation is the only free activity for children in Santa Elena; the government does little to provide for kids from poor backgrounds.

Richard is standing in as coordinator for Manfred Monnighoff, a German businessman, who set up the Foundation 7 years ago but is back in Germany at the moment to be with his dying mother. The current dynamic between Gatrey, Martina (volunteers) and Richard (coordinator) is interesting to say the least. However, this is not a blog about power struggles and group dynamics in small NGOs, so I won't go into details.

In the evening, after failed attempts to watch some kung-fu films Manuel had bought (the dvd would seamlessly skip massive chunks of the film leaving me wondering why I couldn't follow the story) I had a chat with Richard about his horse-riding days and the trials and tribulations of being a coordinator of the Foundation. I also noticed the large amounts of mosquito bites on my legs which I'd obtained from being near horses wearing only shorts. Live and learn.

20/10/2011 - Arrival in Santa Elena

Having joked in a previous entry about how the inter-city coaches really weren't that cold in Venezuela and that people on the internet were exaggerating, I was to get my comeuppance on the overnight bus to Santa Elena. This time it really was freezing. The air-conditioning is inexplicably set on full blast throughout an overnight journey which would have been pretty chilly at the best of times anyway. Earlier in the trip I thought it was stupid to be lugging 2 jumpers with me but now they were an absolute blessing.

We were also treated to 3 army checkpoints which involved everyone being woken up and having their passport checked and a few people having their stuff rummaged through.

Despite the broken sleep I actually felt relatively refreshed upon arriving into Santa Elena's unspectacular bus terminal in the early morning. I was picked up by Richard, the current coordinator of the volunteering organisation, and Gatrey, a volunteer in her late 20s from Finland, in a pick-up truck which had seen better days. We drove to the farm where the NGO is based and which will be my home for the next 2 months, stopping en route to pick up some coffee from, bizarrely, a Hong Kong supermarket in Santa Elena (there are actually several of them). Santa Elena itself is a pretty small (~20,000 according to Richard) but “happening” (according to my lonely planet guide) town, which is probably due to the number of tourists making excursions into the surrounding Gran Sabana and its proximity to the Brazilian border (about 20 minutes drive).

Arriving at the farm, I met the only other volunteer currently here, Slovakian Martina who is studying in London, and Manuel who is a Venezuelan native (“Indian”) and works on the farm full time. The farm is 3 hectares and is also home to 2 horses which the kids involved in the project get to ride as part of their activities. The volunteer house, which sits in the middle of the farm and has a massive kitchen and eating area, feels very homely already and even has some gym equipment round the back.

My first, unofficial, task was to help Martina with her English for some university work (she is doing the volunteering as a part of her course, in development or something) which was already overdue. She told me she'd stayed up till 3 am and then woke up at 5am to work on it which brought back countless memories of last year of uni for me.

In the afternoon Richard and Martina went and picked up the kids from the indigenous community in town and brought them back to the farm where me, Martina and Gatrey gave them a quick “English lesson” (we translated a few lines from that Dirty Dancing song, which the Black Eyed Peas have covered, from English into Spanish). Today there were only 4 children but I was told by the others that the numbers fluctuate quite a bit. After the lesson, the remainder of the 2 hours that the kids stay on the farm was spent going round the farm with a wheelbarrow and collecting horse poo. Richard assured me that “the kids love it”. And funnily enough they really did, zealously raking it onto the shovel I was using and excitedly running to the next pile. I love how refreshingly enthusiastic kids are when it comes to mundane chores. It was a bit of an uphill struggle for me to communicate and understand the kids but its definitely easier here where both Richard and Martina have pretty good English-Spanish skills and I think it'll force my Spanish to improve quickly. If not then my future Venezuelan girlfriend will.

After we'd dropped the kids off at their respective houses, Richard, Martina, Gatrey and I had a drink and arepas in town before proceeding to buy beer and ludicrously cheap rum (15Bs ~ £1.50 for 70cl) which we enjoyed back at the “Foundation” (the nickname for the farm). On first impression, Santa Elena has a nice atmosphere around it and feels a lot safer than anywhere else I've been in Venezuela. I went to my mosquito-netted bed knackered but content.

19/10/2011 - Last day in Ciudad Bolivar

Having spent the morning sorting out finances and bank transfers, I spent the rest of the day exploring Ciudad Bolivar. As in Caracas, shabby exteriors of buildings give way to the much nicer interiors, even if those interiors are mostly comprised of row upon row of shoe and mobile phone shops. I managed to find a great little cheap eatery which served a 2-course meal for 25 Bs ~ £2.50 and got chatting to a university professor sitting next to me who helped me order my meal. He'd worked in the mines in his youth and was now lecturing on the geology of mines at the local university. We chatted about Venezuelan beauty queens (apparently potential beauties go to a preparatory school in Caracas where any blemishes they might have are “ironed out” – gutted I missed that), the perils of working in a mine (of which there are numerous) and the benefits of getting a south American girlfriend to accelerate my acquisition of the Spanish language (honestly his idea but not a bad one).

Here is a quick detour into the stupidity of the Venezuelan currency. The official exchange rate set by the Venezuelan government is roughly 4 Bolivars to $1, while the black market exchange rate is at least double that: 8 Bs to $1. This means that when getting money out of an ATM you effectively pay twice as much for everything. Good ol' Chavez. I've managed to avoid having to do this so far but it just makes everything that little bit more difficult. Ok rant over.

The coach to Santa Elena and 2 months of volunteering awaits.

18/10/2011 - Waterfall trekking (day 3): Back to Ciudad Bolivar

We spent most of the day returning to Ciudad Bolivar where I said goodbye to the other people I'd been travelling with as they headed onwards to other destinations while I opted to spend one more night in Ciudad Bolivar before travelling onto Santa Elena tomorrow. It had been great travelling with some fellow English speakers and most of them seemed to have been travelling for a long time already so it was good to get some recommendations. A couple of people had come into Venezuela from Columbia which they were raving about so any reservations I might have had about going there have gone and its quite likely to be my next destination.

In the evening I went to a local eatery and ate what I can only describe as a massive plate of meat while Starship Troopers dubbed into Spanish droned on in the background. Seemed like a bit of an inappropriate film to be on at 7pm and not exactly what you'd want with your dinner, but maybe I should stop being so prudish.

17/10/2011 - Waterfall trekking (day 2): Angel Falls

After a couple of boat rides along the river and several mini hikes we arrived at Angel Falls. Getting to the waterfall and taking photos felt like a bit of a box-ticker but the journey to the falls, especially racing along the river with the dramatic tepuis (flat topped mountains) on either side of us, was great. I also realised that the film “Up” was based on this landscape and it turns out the animation team actually came to Angel Falls while working on the film. We spent the night in hammocks under a constructed shelter which is just as well because it was absolutely pouring it down. I also got my first taste of the side effects of my anti-malarial medication as my stomach churned away under the weight of my dinner of chicken and rice. 

 

16/10/2011 - Waterfall trekking (day 1)

In the morning I tried and failed to pay for my excursion to Angel Falls, but the nice guys at the posada let me pay half by cash on the condition that I come back and pay the rest after the trip. We were off! From Ciudad Bolivar's tiny airport, we boarded a small aircraft which flew us to the nearby Canaima, from which we'd be exploring the surrounding area. Tomorrow we'd be going to Angel Falls but for today we'd warm up with a smaller waterfall nearby. Although in the back of my mind I was cynical about these kinds of tours, it has so far been undeniably a lot of fun. Canaima is a small village which seems to exist solely as a stopping of point for exploration of Canaima National Park but its has a very relaxed feel to it. Shortly before lunch we went for a quick swim in the lake and I got my first taste of South American scenery. Waterfalls, beautiful beach, jungle extending out as far as the eye can see (my camera and photography skills probably don't do it justice). I think I appreciate it even more acutely after those 4 days in Caracas; the contrast couldn't be any starker. 

 

Our guide Tony warned us that we'd get wet on our expedition to our first waterfall and he wasn't lying. Our mini-trek took us just behind the falling water and for certain sections of the path the combination of getting soaked by the spray, not being able to see because of the spray, walking in flip-flops along slippery rocks and having a substantial drop to your left all made for quite an exhilarating experience. The feeling of having your senses overwhelmed and being so close to a thing of such immense power is, I would guess, why people like waterfalls. And they look pretty too. Angel Falls tomorrow should be quite a treat – its the worlds highest waterfall at 979m. 

 

In the evening we hung out in a bar near our lodgings, playing bingo with the locals and drinking into the night. What really made my night was Alexio, a Brazilian fellow traveller, talking to me about New Order, Joy Division and, last but not least, Inspiral Carpets and telling me how his brother-in-law had a bar in Sau Paulo which played a lot of 80s music! Inspiral Carpets!? I told him how I'd seen them play (well the lead singer anyway) in a primary school to about 30 people a few years ago. This is how it feels when your life means nothing at all.

15/10/2011 - A change of scenery, onto Ciudad Bolivar

Waking up at 6:30 am and departing from my hotel soon after to catch my bus to Ciudad Bolivar I was hoping the roads and metro might be a bit quieter than normal. Not so in Caracas. My 9 hour coach journey was comfortable but uneventful. I'd been warned that the coaches have the air-conditioning up on full so it can get quite cold. If anything I was thankful for a break from the heat and sweated like cheese when we were forced outside for a half hour snack break I thought would never end (we were inexplicably not allowed back on the bus until the break was finished).

Arriving at Ciudad Bolivar I was greeted by the unspectacular grey buildings surrounding the coach station, just as my lonely planet guide had told me. Unmentioned in my guide was the man instantly eager to sell me tickets to a 3 day trip to see Angel Falls (big waterfall nearby) when all I wanted was a taxi to the posada (guest-house) I wanted to stay at. Once I'd convinced him I wasn't an idiot and wasn't going to buy anything, he pointed me in the direction of the cabs, one of which took me to the Posada Don Carlos. En route we drove past what looked like a stack of speakers on top of a large wheelbarrow, pumping out music into the nearby neighbourhood. I was to have a run-in with this wheelbarrow later. The taxi driver overcharged me but I did a good bit of haggling to get back 5 bolivars and was about to try and get 5 more back when I realised that I was haggling over less than 50p and just let it go. The posada I'm staying in is absolutely gorgeous and a breath of fresh air after the stuffy hotel rooms of Caracas. Its in a converted building in the old part of the city and feels like what I would imagine a Spanish villa to feel like. The closest thing I'd compare it to is a much nicer version of a hostel me, Aled and Arthur stayed at in Venice Beach, Los Angeles (no swedish au-pairs sadly but a couple of travellers from Belgium, Brazil and Australia).

While I ate some arepas (a burger/sandwich made with flat-bread) at a nearby eatery, the sound of approaching music deafened both myself and the teenage girl working there (who I'd had to cajole to actually make me the food). The music grew louder and louder until suddenly, rounding the corner, appeared the wheelbarrow speaker stack with a crowd in tow. The speakers were being valiantly tugged from the front and pushed from the rear by several people while the musicians sat on the barrow and strummed fast paced latin rhythms. Naturally I got stuck in.

Also in the midst of the throng were a couple of English speaking travellers who were staying at the same hostel as me. A few of them are going on a 3 excursion to Angel Falls tomorrow and suggested I tag along. Why not; I'd planned to do this after my volunteering in Santa Elena but now seems a good a time as any. Probably means I won't update this for a few days but will have some token touristy photos of the waterfall next time I do.

14/10/2011 - Last day in Caracas

I've decided to move onto Ciudad Bolivar tomorrow, a city half way to my volunteering destination of Santa Elena. It only took me two attempts to buy the tickets (apparently you need a passport to travel by coach in Venezuela) after which I decided to check out the modern art museum. Having navigated a very busy shopping precinct to get to the museum I went in and found it to be completely devoid of any people other than the receptionist. It was blessedly cool inside and was nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of central Caracas for a while. Really liked a lot of the art – have put up some of my favourites. 

More of my conversation from Hans came back to me, in particular the fact that Venezuelans are really capitalists at heart and shopping really does seem to be the pastime of choice. The main shopping street which I later walked down was testament to this but what really drew my attention was all the people on the pavements trying to sell random crap (eg the photo with numerous phone chargers, keyboards, fax machines). Unemployment is high in the overpopulated Caracas so people really try and make money anyway they can. Another example is people taking to the main roads during traffic jams and selling snacks to the stopped cars. While this isn't dissimilar to people I've seen in the UK coming out to sell umbrellas when its raining, in Caracas it really seems the norm rather than the exception to do this kind of thing.

Photo upload doesn't seem to be working - I'll try and whack some up soon.

13/10/2011 - A run in with the socialists

Today, not being a public holiday, the metro was packed. However the muzak was inexplicably replaced with a Beethoven symphony. I guess that kind of balances it out. Hans had told me that Caracas was a place where life's contradictions were more exposed than in other places and perhaps he had a point.

I resolved to try and get some culture in me today. Simon Bolivar is the Venezuelan national hero and he freed large chunks of South America from Spanish rule in the 19^th century... or something along those lines. I'm sure the wiki page can explain it far better than I. So I was back in central Caracas on my way to the Bolivar museum. En route I was confronted with an advancing procession of red and yellow which turned out to be a socialist march, so of course I tagged along for a bit. It seemed like a lot of fun: music blaring, dozens of guys following the procession and selling ice creams, live spanish guitar band, socialist propaganda etc. Also worthy of mention is the burger I bought from a street vendor which, among other things, included a massive slice of avocado on it. That's what you get when you ask for “todos”. 

 

Something about the struggle continuing

A baby angel eating a mango. Of course.

After this I really did make it to the Bolivar museum and Simon Bolivar's house of birth. It was all in Spanish which was a bit of a pain. Really need to get on that. From the outside, I can see how this trip might occasionally resemble a bad episode of “an idiot abroad”. After the museums I took a stroll away from the nice historic part and as the buildings grew less dense I caught a glimpse of the barrios (shanty towns) which spread up the hills on either side of the valley in which most of Caracas sits. I also remembered a story Hans had told me about a project designed to make the barrios look nicer. The government decided to give white paint to the inhabitants so that they could paint their houses. One of the neighbourhoods actually did it and Hans said it looked “like Greece”. However all the other barrios just sold the paint. Brilliant.

Folk in period dress outside Bolivar museum

The main problem (for me) in Caracas is how damn expensive it is. Against my better judgement I'm staying in a “nicer” area in a “safe” hotel which is costing a lot as well. That's not what this trip is about. I've resigned myself to not fully exploring the dodgier bits of Caracas until I have more Spanish under my belt which means it'll have to wait. Much as my Michel Thomas language tapes gave me practice in preparing and executing meticulous sentences in various tenses, they didn't prepare me for actually trying to understand a Spanish person talking at full speed. Damn you Michel. Perhaps I'll stop typing and watch the Spanish dubbed version of “Liar, Liar” (one of Jim Carrey's best) which is on TV right now.

12/10/2011 - Jet lagged stumblings into central Caracas

The area I'm staying in, Altamira, is supposedly one of the nicer neighbourhoods. Walking around it feels like a cross between Kiev and Barcelona (an analogy which in fact translates to other parts of Caracas I've seen but will unfortunately be lost on most people). Fading grandeur, big noisy 3 lane roads going through the middle of neighbourhoods, a slight tinge of disrepair about everything, high rise residential tower blocks, palm trees, posh hotels, towering bank buildings. I can't put my finger on why this analogy feels right, maybe I'll try and expand on it later.

Today was a public holiday so most places were shut but I thankfully stumbled across a shopping centre which contained an open supermarket where I stocked up on fruit and granola bars. Having paid and left, I vowed to come back later and make more sensible purchases.

Bolivar Square, none of the rest of Caracas looks like this

I got the, surprisingly well functioning, metro into central Caracas. It suffers from a bad case of muzak but that's something I'm willing to overlook since its so damn cheap – 2 bolivars (~25cents) for a return ticket. The “historic” centre of Caracas is quite nice, though wandering away from the main “Bolivar” square it quickly turns into a commercial metropolis. I must have passed hundreds of shops selling what I can only describe as utter tat. Massive rugs with pictures of tigers on them, cloth calendars with Chavez's face (the divisive president of Venezuela), walls of full of tacky looking jewellery etc. Maybe I'm just jaded. There are of course shops selling conventional things like shoes and belts but I think they're probably the same the world over. Still feeling jet-lagged I headed back and grabbed dinner at a nice little place near my hotel where one of the waiters spoke pretty good english. Again choosing a random thing off the menu I was rewarded with a hefty burger stuffed with something resembling coronation chicken, which I washed down with several Venezuelan beers sold in tiiiiny bottles. An excellent end to the day.

11/10/2011 - Flight and first night in Caracas

My flight to Caracas, which changed at Madrid, was both exciting, informative and slightly terrifying. Exciting because I periodically got pangs of “Omg! I'm on a plane to Venezuela”. Informative because on the flight from Madrid to Caracas I sat next to Hans, a Dutch diplomat who was living and working in Caracas and knew quite a bit about the city. Slightly terrifying because everything he told me in some way alluded to the large amount of crime and impending doom I would face as a traveller there. Stories ranged from people getting shot for their Blackberries to people getting shot because they weren't carrying Blackberries. Apparently no neighbourhood was safe. Ever. On the other hand he told me that malaria was non-existent in Venezuela and that I'd be enduring the side effects of the anti-malarial tablets I'd brought for no reason. I really didn't know what to make of this information, although his advice of constantly being on guard when in Caracas is probably not going to do me any harm. That's the criminals' job.

It wasn't all doom and gloom however. During the flight we looked through my lonely planet guide and chose a hotel which looked the least dodgy. It was already dark when we landed in Caracas. As a diplomat, Hans was getting picked up from the airport so he kindly helped me through customs and gave me a lift to my hotel. As we parted ways I could tell he thought I wasn't going to last a day. With a combination of the receptionist's poor English and my worse Spanish I managed to get a room and, having dropped off my stuff, headed into the night in search of food. It was already late and gringos can't be choosers so I walked into the nearest eatery and bravely pointed at one of the random items on the menu I didn't understand. As luck would have it Venezuela were playing Argentina that same night and Venezuela scored a goal just as I got my food (Spanish football commentators do hilariously over the top “GOOOOOOAAAAAAAL” shouts and tonight's commentators didn't disappoint). My pancake-stuffed-with-ham-and-cheese-thing was dripping with grease and extremely tasty. Venezuela actually won the game and although football isn't very big in Venezuela (baseball is the sport of choice), as I walked back to my hotel once the game was over, the chorus of car horns suggested this was still a pretty big deal.

Making it back to my hotel via a quick jaunt around the neighbourhood I celebrated living through my first night in Caracas. Despite the air conditioner, it was so hot in my room I had to sleep naked with no covers. I really hoped the cleaners didn't come in early in the morning.

I finally packed my bag and now it really feels like I'm counting down the hours until dad gives me a lift to London Gatwick. In theory I still have dull stuff to do like put songs on my ipod, back up my files, work out what the hell I'm doing when I get to Caracas etc but that seems very tedious at the moment and I'm just itching to go.

The map of South America hanging on my wall just fell down. A quick google search revealed that this might be a bad omen. If I took the Foreign Office Advice seriously then I guess I might be worried but if I'm honest "Express-kidnappings" don't sound that bad. Although it's probably not on most people's "things to do before you die" list, it would certainly be an experience to remember.

My next update will probably be from a kidnap den in Caracas. Adiós!