Travel day Puerto Colombia - Caracas - Cumana

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Trip Start Sep 12, 2006 Previous
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  Cumana, Venezuela
Monday, September 18, 2006

Some final thoughts on Puerto Colombia. It really is a beautiful little Colonial town. The colours of the buildings, boats and all surroundings are quite something. The way the town is situated on the ocean coast right at the foot of mountains with beautiful palm trees and white beaches is something that can be dreamt of.

The food is what we have learned to accept as Venezuelan. Deep fried pastries for early meal. Great fish for dinner. Very cheep beer all day long.

The people were very friendly, but not pushy like in most resort towns we have been to. The locals mind their own business and do not try too hard to sell you something. Our Spanish is still weak so our conversations were limited but we are certainly getting by.
I am considering a career change if I ever need work again. I think the Blue Jays need a local scout here. Nothing more culturally invoking than a bunch of young boys in uniforms playing baseball on a makeshift diamond. If there were no players on the field, I am not sure I could have figured out that the stick and net combination of a field is a dugout. I did some scouting and Julio will be quite the infielder a few years from now. Alberto has converted outfielder to pitcher written all over him.

Our last evening was spent on the city square, this time with only a fraction of the people there, as all tourists had left. The drummers were still there and the tunes were great as always.

We were certainly sad knowing that we will be leaving this tranquil piece of heaven the next day but the rest of the journey waited.

In the morning we had a final breakfast with Ed, Ed and Bas and headed out for the bus (across the street from Hostel Colonial).
From there we took the breathtaking ride back over the mountains to Maracay, another 2 hour comfortable air conditioned ride to Caracas.
From there we needed to get to another bus terminal across the other side of town. We decided to take a cab and since it was during rush hour, we had great conversation for about 45 minutes with the driver. He said he spoke špicoš English, but during the ride the only two words he said in English was Red and Seventy.
He did go to Montreal for 5 days last September to see his brother.
He did tell us about the red light district (Petare) in Caracas, where roughly 1,000,000 people live and last weekend there were only 70 murders. Apparently cops do not like to go there since they are very likely to get killed.
He dropped us off at the bus station, waited to make sure we could catch a bus to Cumana and off we were. A 6+ hour ride. Nice air conditioned bus again, but unfortunately it broke half way there. We were boiling when we arrived at 2:30 am.

A nice cabby took us to the Hotel Astoria and the owner seemed not at all annoyed to be woken up at this hour to get us a room for 40.000 bs. Nice enough place to rest a head with air conditioning.
The cabby (like many here in Venezuella) had an old Monte Carlo. The remarkable thing is that his trunk was completely full of junk. So much so, when he put our back packs in, it would not close. We drove around town with the trunk open and our bags hanging out. Admittedly it was almost 3 am and only 10 minutes from the bus station, but still quite the site.

ps
We will be adding all pics to here
http://ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mrewkowski@rogers.com/my_photos

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