Christmas
Trip Start
Nov 29, 2007
1
9
12
Trip End
Dec 30, 2007
Rio Caribe,
Venezuela
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
After a cold time on the mountain everyone wanted to escape to one of Venezuela's Caribbean beaches for winter. That was on our itinerary too. But it was grueling trip, with the added spice of uncertainty as the public transport services close down over Christmas. So we didn't know what services we might be able to get. But we got a bus out of Santa Elena on the evening of the 23rd which got us to the next main hub at 6am the next day, where a non-threatening man offered us a lift to Cumana for 6,000 bolivares. This sounded very good, and we were surprised by the price, but realised that it would probably cover the petrol (given the absurd price here). So we went. Part way into the trip our friendly driver wrote a figure down and asked me if it was 6,000. No. The price he had meant to quote was 600,000 - an absurd sum that we couldn't pay even if we wanted to. So he took us to Puerto La Cruz, where he was going anyway, and we gave him some money, even though we would have been much better off in a bus that went where we wanted to go, and even though he said that as it was his mistake we didn't have to.
At the end of the day we finished up in Rio Caribe, a small town on the coast, and at a posada so friendly that there were no staff and other guests had to let us in. (I can recommend Posada Papagayos, though the staff are unobtrusive to the point of invisibility.)
After almost 24 hours on the road it was a relief just to be somewhere.
Christmas day
The day had been pretty stressful as all our travel plans had been uncertain, and Venezuelan drivers may be the dumbest on earth (although I've not been to Italy or Thailand). I imagine that stupid overtaking maneuvers are one of the leading causes of death.Christmas
But we had done well, because the posada was instantly soothing and the guests who let us in were French who lived in the region and promptly adopted us. They fed us on Christmas morning and had arranged a boat out to a famous beach for Christmas day, something well beyond our organisational abilities at this stage. Consequently, we had a lovely Christmas day at the beach where Columbus landed in1498 (the first Europeans to set foot on the South American mainland), being plied with rum by our new friends. I, at least, felt far less homesick than I had 24 hours earlier. Strangely, it was a New Zealand-style Christmas, in Venezuela.
