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.