03 — The Spirit of Adventure · The starting point
January 1997. The diary of nineteen days that changed the direction of a life.
The outbound journey was long and exhausting, not least because of an unplanned stopover in Madrid. Ten hours of flying, twenty hours of travel in all. On arrival it was 30 degrees with heavy humidity.
A Colonel of the Guardia Civil came to pick us up and got us through customs without any formalities. We had nowhere to sleep, and with mattresses borrowed from a nearby hotel, we settled in as best we could at Giovanni's place — a lovely, welcoming home.
All evening and through the night you can hear the sound of animals that at first seem like small birds with a call like the creak of a swing, but that I later discover are actually a particular species of frog. We arrived at 5:30pm local time; by 6:30 it's already dark, and at 8pm we go to eat. In Italy it's one in the morning (+5 hours). I'm exhausted and not feeling great.
After a night in which I barely slept, I wake up with a 39°C fever. Despite having a whole case full of medicine, not one of them is for the flu — which I've certainly caught from Lorena, even though I had the flu shot. Cough and sore throat. I stay home all day. The others have gone shopping and to rent a car.
I happened to talk with the manager of the building where Giovanni has his apartment, who, offering a few brief thoughts on Venezuela's economy, said that here there's no health coverage and chronic illnesses aren't covered by private insurers. There's no skilled labor to be found for work, and the cultural level of the population doesn't even allow for an interest in growth. People abandon their jobs and take the shortest path to securing the means of survival: theft.
Today, since I seemed to be feeling better, Paolo, Carlo and I, accompanied by Marco — a young man from Ala who moved to Caracas a year ago, a friend of Giovanni's — went into Caracas. Marco acted as our guide. It was a wonderful experience. We went to deliver some packages to Maideline's parents, then spent time on a very grand avenue: Sabana Grande and Chaichita.
On the way back my fever hit 39°C again. I took some Tachipirina and asked to go back to the hotel. Paolo and Carlo came with me. I have to say I feel close to them.
And so I'm pinned to the bed with a 38.5°C fever. I don't call home, so as not to cause worry or guilt. I take the chance to do some rough math on the costs of a tourist stay.
You can't not eat the pineapple here: it's truly special. At 5:30pm the Colonel of the Guardia Nacional came to say hello and wish me well. He gave instructions to the hotel about my health, insisting that I lack for nothing — instructions promptly ignored. I gave him a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Mezzacorona.
At noon we leave by taxi for Puerto La Cruz and arrive at five in the afternoon. Along the way I talk with the taxi driver, who tells me that starting a business in Venezuela is quite easy. To set up a company you need residency, and once negotiations with the Government begin, authorization is granted easily.
The only intermediaries with the Government are "accountants registered with the professional boards" (our equivalent of chartered accountants); it makes me think about professional protections, which seem stronger here than elsewhere. Direct taxation appears low, and enforcement is sparse. A flat 16% VAT was recently introduced, and it has sparked strong reactions from end consumers.
We settle into a hotel run by a lady whose Spanish or American accent is hard to place. We rent two apartments on the same landing. The first thing I manage to do is realize the apartment key is the wrong one, and to get in we literally have to "break in" the lock, with the blessing of the owner, who had changed the lock the previous afternoon but probably hadn't been given the right key.
We take the "launch" to a dream beach after breakfast of chicken-and-herb pastries and pineapple juice (Jugo de piña), which is absolutely the best drink there is. The beach is called Conoma, a strip of sand at the edge of the forest with towering coconut palms leaning out over the sea.
Paolo and I go into the forest and find some coconuts on the ground. Then we see some men — workers building a fence — opening them to drink the water inside. Noticing they open the green ones, we find one and go over to ask them to open it for us. They kindly oblige. I drink coconut water for the first time: it's water with a light coconut flavor — the exact opposite of what I expected (a milk with a strong coconut taste).
On the way out we meet three young Basques and one from Bologna, and we chat for the whole trip. On the way back, a couple from Lugano who've been in Venezuela for three months and intend to settle there permanently.
We settle on the Orinoco Delta for 160 dollars a head for 3 days and 2 nights with Daniel. Wake-up at 5:15am to leave at 6:30 — the alarm didn't go off, but luckily a rooster woke me at 6:15. Paolo, ever the pessimist, says nobody will come to get us and that we've been cheated out of the 60-dollar deposit. He's proven wrong.
We set off in a Jeep. After a dead-straight road full of potholes, we reach a village built at the end of a branch of the river. We board a boat and head down the central channel. Along the river we see stilt houses built on four posts, with a roof and nothing but hammocks inside, inhabited by a handful of people.
In the afternoon we go piranha fishing. After a few hours of trying, one of the crew manages to catch a tiny one. Before going to sleep we head out to hunt for caiman, but we don't manage to spot one.
We head northwest to visit the Cueva del Guachero: named for a nocturnal bird that lives in a natural cave at 1,060 meters of altitude, that only comes out at night and, unlike bats, navigates by emitting sounds audible to the human ear. We visit the cave, over 10 km long, whose first 800 meters are home to the guácharos, with another 1,000 meters open to tourists.
Inside the cave there's a whole ecosystem: what strikes you is the vegetation growing in absolute darkness (broad-leafed plants) and the presence of a completely blind fish that feeds on clay. In the evening we go back to the cave around 7pm, when it gets dark, to watch the birds fly out.
Before heading back, we go to visit a waterfall that requires crossing a stream four times to reach. With some difficulty on the way there we made it to the top, and the way down was child's play.
Back in Puerto La Cruz, we feel like American soldiers returning from Vietnam. In the evening we meet up with our Orinoco guide, and talk about engines, cars, boats. Then to the bar with the others, a stop at the "Da Nino" disco, and to bed at two. Tomorrow we leave for Los Roques.
We take a taxi to the bus terminal: for 26,000 bolívares we buy the five seats and, with an 18-year-old driver flooring it, head toward Caracas. At the port of Caraballeda, Fabio and Anna are waiting for us aboard their 12.30-meter ketch, the Samadhi, and we set off around 10pm. Dead calm — we have to make the crossing entirely under motor, about 12 hours.
We arrive at Dos Mosquises, southwest of the archipelago near the Cayo de Agua channel. Along the crossing we see orcas, dolphins, needlefish. The seabed is white and very shallow — at times we're in under two meters of water, and the boat draws 1.75 meters at the keel.
We reach Sarqui (northwest of the archipelago) and anchor in a bay. In the evening pelicans slalom low over the water between the boats. Around six in the afternoon it rains for exactly three minutes. It's curious to watch how patches of rain form over the ocean, some quite small (20-30 meters across), outside of which the rain stops dead. We dine on grilled and baked lobster, pairing it with a Chilean wine, the Gato Blanco.
At Noronquí, after lunch, we dive in to witness a unique spectacle: fish of every color, among which the parrotfish and the triggerfish stand out. Schools of blue fish, boxfish and countless tiny aquarium-sized fish. In the morning we'd seen a small shark — which gave me quite a scare when Paolo and Carlo, waving their arms, called out to me that there was a shark, without specifying it was just a pup.
Throughout the whole trip we hadn't met any local girls. As befits any proper vacation, on the last day, with Giovanni's help, we met three shop assistants who worked in some perfume stores along the road to the hotel. We spent the evening together in Caracas. We made plans to meet again the next day: the day of our departure.
We got up and had lunch at McDonald's with the girls we'd met the day before. Naturally, we paid. We exchanged addresses and left for the airport, with the girls pleading with us to postpone our departure.
It was a close call. Because once we got to the airport, we were met with the news of the collapse of Venezuela's flag carrier, Viasa, the airline we were supposed to fly home with. After the first moments of despair, we took charge of the situation, and Paolo pulled out his credit card and paid for everyone's return flight with Air France — which, for the one-way trip alone, cost as much as the round trip with Viasa. Thank you again, Paolo.