Venezuela Part 2
Notes on Roraima Trip, February 2000 Written as an e-mail to friends, March, 2000 I haven't been writing much lately, and I've got free time on
my assignment at BMG, so I'm just cutting loose. I always enjoy
anything you guys write for me, so I'm sending this along unsolicited
on the supposition that you feel the same way. Let me know if
you'd rather I didn't send writings your way and also if you'd
like me to move you from "CC" to "blind CC", to keep your address
secret. Picking up where we left off, I woke up in Santa Elena after
sustained sleep in an actual bed and it felt great. Sunny, clear
warm day. Quiet town. Curse number 19 of the budget traveler,
the rooster, was far enough away not to wake me. I shower and wander down the road toward the center of town.
I pass the National Guard compound just as a few guardsmen in
riot gear are coming out, loading into a jeep and taking off.
In a moment of not so brief insanity, I consider trying to ask
them why they are in riot gear. I come to a nice big "Core" bank with an ATM machine on the side
of it. Finally my chance to cash in for all those times I selected
"Espanol" as the language on my home bank machines. But no. English
is an option, and I take it. I try to get cash, but the machine
says it is "unable to dispense cash at this time". Inside, they
only can give a cash advance from a Visa card, which I did not
bring, or American Express. My American Express card is an Optima
card, and I'm not allowed to get cash from it for some reason
I am unable to understand, despite my ATM Spanish practice. The next bank, Banco National de Venezuela, I think, will accept
only Visa cards. No biggie. Even if I dont find a bank to
give me money, I've got about $300 in cash I can exchange. I'm
in town to find a tour company with a group planning to climb
Roraima. The trip should take 6 days, and I got here pretty fast,
so I can hang out for two or three days until I get it together.
I find a place that will serve me a plate of fruit. In the center of town I find what the riot gear was for. Some
sort of demonstration. Not very noisy, just about one block of
very calm chaos. A few dozen people chanting slogans and such,
but not much of a hullabaloo. Not hardly even a hubbub. Most of the tour operators I talk to calmly dismiss it all and
explain that the trouble is "completely over now". But one operator,
of Native Indian, not Venezuelan descent, tells me the road into
town has been closed since midnight and that the governor is coming
into town tomorrow to investigate the situation. I particularly
like this explanation. How romantic, I'm stuck in a sleepy little
town, cut off from the outside world. I've got enough cash to
last me a month, and reading material for at least a week. Another tour guide, Richard at Khazen Tours, isn't particularly
busy, so we hang out and discuss things. He explains, roughly,
that right now in Venezuela people without land are trying to
use some of the land of the people who have it but aren't using
it all. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, the fine folks in 88 chartered
a couple of buses, planning to come into Santa Elena to squat
and set up tin shacks and whatnot. Apparently the fine folks of
Santa Elena didn't think too much of that idea and stopped the
buses at "the bridge". I didn't know there was a bridge, but I guess there is, and I
hear it's a great place for stopping buses. There was a ruckus,
and something of a brouhaha, and the people all had to go back
to 88 and, until today, that was pretty much the end of the issue.
Today's demonstration was, according to Richard, landowners in
town protesting squatters. Kind of interesting. Imagine folks in, say, Ithaca, stopping
a busful of po-folks coming into town because there weren't jobs
for them? Well, I'm sure something like that did used to happen
all the time. Especially if the bus was full of Blacks or Hispanics.
In fact, isn't that sort of what the border with Mexico is all
about? In the background, the mountainside is burning.* What's that
about, Richard? Every developing country I go to, unoccupied land
is burning somewhere. "I don't know," he says. "Sometimes, the
Indians are feeling bad. Or they are bored, so they just light
some fires." I gotta say, that's the best explanation I've heard. Clearing
land? No, not here. Hunting? No, not on the edge of town. For
kicks? Sure. That's why about half the brush fires are set in
the US. Sure, it's by kids. But still. I know the feeling. A fire's
exciting. It's different. It's something, at least. Turns out there are very few travelers in town. Even tho it's
the best time to travel in Venezuela, the dry season, it's not
peak season for tourists. The fact that times are tough in Venezuela
lately, negative economic growth and all, makes it worse. The
only non-Venezuelans I found all day long are two Swiss guys who
just took a bus in today from Manaus, Brazil, and an Italian guy
who did the same thing yesterday. None of the three wants to spend
six days climbing a mountain. I do hear from a tour operator that the guy in the general store
on the corner can give cash advances on MasterCard, so I can check
him out in the morning. We four foreigners play pool and drink
beers, which cost from fifty to seventy-five cents apiece (both
the pool and the beers), and by about one AM, eventually we end
up in a deserted discotheque where we buy a couple of martinis
for the two prostitutes there, just for something new.** In case you're wondering, these two girls are around 19 years
old, Brazillian, and only in town for a few days. They're making
the circuit of southern Venezuela towns, as will many others to
follow them. I don't speak enough Spanish or Portuguese to participate
in the conversations, and it's nice to not have to talk for a
while. By now I've figured out that there are no groups in town of travelers
at all, let alone groups forming to climb Roraima and if I want
to climb this mountain that I came all this way to climb, I'm
going to have to arrange to do it alone. That means I'll have
to pay 100% of the price of the jeep to take me and my guide up
the road to Paratepui, where the trailhead is, ($80 or so), an
English-speaking guide ($40 per day), food (about $40) and camping
equipment ($25 or so). But I'm short about a hundred bucks, and the places that are
willing to arrange a trip for me and let me pay with a Visa card
are the ones that charge about twice those prices. In the morning I go straight to the corner general store where
they told me I could certainly get money for my Visa card, only
to find out from the frosty lady that they don't do money from
"tarjetas" whatsoever. I go to the Servivensa airline ticket office,
where I can buy a ticket with my Visa card, but they can't comprehend
the simple procedure that would allow me to get some cash in addition.
There's a nice new hotel a few miles outside of town, the Hotel
Grand Sabana. For $1.50 I take a taxi out there. The place is
pretty much deserted; the manager is out and altho they do take
MasterCard, the girl at the front desk is absolutely certain she
can't give me money from it no matter what commission I offer
her. She does say however, that in town, Senor Castano can perform
that operation for me. She writes his name down and assures me
that any taxi driver will know who that is. It's not a busy road, but soon a taxi comes by. Yes, he knows
Sr. Castano, and for another $1.50 I ride back into town. The
taxi drops me off right in front of the general store where the
frosty lady turned me away about an hour earlier. Yes, that's
Sr. Castano's store. Why does everybody think that guy can turn
plastic into gold? In a final futile gesture, Richard, the nice guy at the tour
agency, drives me around in his company jeep to both banks and
a resort/restaurant he knew, speaking Spanish and explaining my
situation. But no. No money for Kurt from MasterCard, Amex, or
ATM card***. The only thing Richard can do for me is drive me to San Francisco
de Yurani, about an hour and a half down the road, an Indian town
where an English speaking guide he knows lives. They also have
equipment to rent in San Francisco. So hey, you never know. In SFO de Y, he introduces me to Donald, who does indeed speak
English pretty well, and he seems like a nice guy, the kind of
guy you wouldn't mind sharing a tent with and cooking with and
living with for six days or so. Most importantly, he's willing
to work with me on the money thing. Here's the deal. We'll buy the food, we'll do the trip, (he knows
of a jeep already going up to Paratepui tomorrow, so that'll save
some money), and when we get back, we'll take the overnight bus
together to Puerto Ordaz, where the streets are paved with gold
and the banks take all plastic. I'll pay him the rest of the money
there and then fly to anywhere I want; Donald will catch the next
bus back to San Francisco. Just like that. I write up a little agreement, and we go out to the road to catch
the next bus back to Santa Elena. We buy groceries and cooking
gas that night and by 2:00 the next afternoon, we're having lunch
in the jungle. *previously mentioned in my e-mail **They want "martini's", but only in America is that a liquor
drink. They get Martini and Rossi, a name brand vermouth, on the
rocks; and I figure they order it mainly because it's expensive
and it behooves them to do well by the bartender. ***Richard was surprised to hear that the ATM machine even worked
at all. He said he'd never seen anyone use it. I assume it's just
there because the plans for the building included it. |
©
Kurt Opprecht, 2003
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