In the morning I gave Puerto La Cruz another
chance to inspire me but was greeted with the familiar mix of shoe
shops and street vendors. The beach was a bit of a grim affair but
the Plaza Bolivar was quite nice. Yearning for some beach time, I
caught a bus to a nearby beach village called Playa Colorada where,
as soon as I stepped off the bus, I bumped into 2 gringos, the first
I'd come across since leaving Santa Elena. Dave from England and
Connie from Germany showed me the way to the nearby Posada/Adventure
centre which turned out to be a bit of a gringo-haven. With a beach
on the opposite side of the road and breakfast, dinner and a hammock
for about £10 a day I decided this wouldn't be a bad place to spend
a few nights.
It was nice to see and hear some English
speakers again (although most of them were German or Swedish) all of
which were involved in the programs run by the Posada. A group of 9
were part of something called the travelling school which involved
doing activities around Venezuela (trips to Roraima and Gran Sabana
etc) whilst learning Spanish (although the classes ran into the usual
difficulty of trying to learn Spanish language whilst being
surrounded by gringos speaking English or German all the time). 2
French girls were also here for a volunteering placement organised by
the company and I smiled a knowing smile as they told me about the
incompetence of the organisers and how they'd only managed to see the
kids they were supposed to be working with only once in the two weeks
they'd been here. Their volunteering placement made the foundation in
Santa Elena sound like a sleek, well-oiled machine in comparison and
I was reminded that you don't fully appreciate what you have until
you see something worse. Still this place had a nice relaxed
atmosphere and was a real welcome change after that horrid room in
Puerto La Cruz.
In the late afternoon I wandered down to the
beach and, as the sun set on the picturesque little bay and I sipped
on a beer whilst watching the pelicans diving for fish and the boats
coming into the shore, I definitely felt a few pangs of “this is
the life”.
In the evening I chatted to folk at the posada
and although the range of activities they were doing sounded quite
cool it really didn't sound like the program allowed any freedom or
interaction with Venezuelan people. Also, for several weeks during
the program, the group would be based at the posada in Playa Colorada
which consists of the beach and about 2 roads, not exactly the most
happening place in Venezuela (I kept wanting to ask “How are you
not bored out of your mind!?”). Different strokes for different folks but I
couldn't help but feel that most of these guys would be leaving
Venezuela with a slightly whitewashed experience and not very much
Spanish.
The english guy Dave, who'd done a PhD in
Computational Chemistry, told me he'd done a 4 week volunteering
placement in a city called Merida in the west which he said didn't
really get going until the 4th week. Overall it gave me a
bit more of a perspective on my time at Santa Elena. Over a bottle of
cheap rum we isolated the others by chatting about the imminent
discovery of the Higgs boson and the hilarity of having to use the
Fortran programming language for his PhD. Oh dear.
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