Adventures in Venezuela

TRAVEL | VENEZUELA

What happened on the first trip I helped to organize

When I first started blogging, I used to write up travelogs whenever I returned from a place. This is a look back at one of the earliest trips I actually helped organize, when I was just 19. We went to Venezuela. Here are some of the highlights:

Ready for adventure

At 19, none of us had yet flown the nest. We were attending our local university and living at home, because that was simply what you did.

Since we were all studying Spanish, we decided to organize a cultural trip to immerse ourselves in the language. Since it was only a 40-minute direct flight away, Venezuela seemed the obvious choice.

Putting plans in place

The next question was how to fund it. The French department had long had a regular student trip available, but as Spanish language students we were starting from scratch. So we raised funds in the time-honored ways: bake sales, car washes and hitting up our parents for as much money as they would part with. Meanwhile, we also tried to get in touch with people in Venezuela to make sure we’d have something to do when we got there.

After a few months, we had a travel date, a contact in the country, some classes booked and flights and hotels organized. So one July evening we left the local airport, and emerged into the unknown a couple of hours later.

By the time we arrived it was dark, so we got a taxi to our hotel, checked in without difficulty and distributed ourselves (four girls to a room). Then we fell asleep, too tired even to think of exploring.

Colder than expected

The next morning, we rushed outside, then rushed straight back in to get cardigans, unprepared for the chill of the morning air coming off the mountains in this supposedly warm South American country. We came from islands where 30 Celsius is the normal temperature, so it turned out we’d need those cardigans morning and evening throughout our month-long stay.

We looked up and down the street, flipped a coin and decided to head left in search of breakfast. We were in luck. We found a cafe and shop where we could get freshly baked bread, empanadas (meat pies), and all sorts of ice cold exotic juices. Not just orange and pineapple, but guava, papaya, soursop and some I’d never heard of and couldn’t translate into English.

Escaping the red light district

Feeling better, we headed back in the direction we had come. That end of the street looked very different. There were tall, but rather desolate looking, buildings and there was an air of deprivation. I saw several people poking into bins to get scraps out and even the dogs looked desperate.

A call to our friends confirmed our feeling that this was not a good place to stay for a month. It seems we had ended up slap bang in the middle of the red light district in Caracas. Horrified, we jumped on a tram and set off in search of a new place to stay. These days, we might have just taken it in our stride, but we were a young 19, and pretty sheltered.

A speedy move to Sabana Grande

Finding new digs was a challenge, as we didn’t really know the area. However, we got off at the end of the line and decided to look around. The place we were in was called Sabana Grande and it looked much nicer. There was a big plaza, lots of shops and the area looked prosperous instead of run down.

While exploring we happened upon a hotel down a side street and soon found out they had two rooms available. It would be four to a room again. Two more trips on the tram got us and our belongings moved to our new hotel and we began the process of settling in to what would be our new home for a month. One of the big advantages is there were plenty of food shops, including one that sold baked chicken in halves and quarters. I still ate meat back then, so this was very useful.

Next it was time to do what we had come to the country for. So we set off in search of the course venue. But how to get there?

Licensed to kill? That’s how it seemed

The most hazardous part of the journey was crossing the road near our hotel to get to the pedestrian area. What we didn’t know is that Venezuelan drivers are no respecters of other road users.

I had never seen so many people crammed together (cars three abreast in two lanes) trying to move an inch, while shouting insults at the tops of their voices and banging furiously on their horns. And that was just the way they treated other drivers. Pedestrians were invisible at best; at worst, they were moving targets heading straight for the licensed kill zone of the zebra crossing.

The first time we approached the crossing, we must have stood for ten minutes, wondering how we were going to get through. Then we saw how the locals did it. As soon as there was even the slightest gap, they would hold up a hand like an invisible shield and start to cross. Most of the time they got away with it, if the traffic was snarled up enough, but even the locals had to leap for the safety of the pavement a few times.

When is an immersion course not an immersion course?

The hazardous crossing accomplished, we headed for the hills, or at least out of the busy downtown area. We’d made all the arrangements from Barbados, with the help of our guides, a local salsa band whom we’d met through one of our younger, hipper teachers. So we had a name, an address and an immersion course in Spanish — or so we thought.

When we arrived at the venue, it looked a typical school building, with high ceilings, wide corridors and lots of desks. When we said who we were and who we had come to see, we were shown to a room and asked to wait. After a few moments, our teacher came through the door.

But all was not as it seemed. Apparently there’d been a mixup — and they suggested we come back in a few days by which time they’d be ready for us. When we returned, they had laid on a class for us — at least that’s what they called it.

But we weren’t impressed. We had all been studying Spanish since we were 13 and from the age of 15, all our language lessons had been in Spanish — no English allowed. So we needed a bit more than ‘what’s your name’ and the Spanish equivalent of ‘la plume de ma tante’. (For those not in the know, that’s a phrase used in the UK to indicate a basic level of French competence.)

We gave them one more chance to get it right, then we parted company by mutual consent. We’d learn far more by talking to people out on the street — as long as we could manage to cross the road! For most of the month, we improved our Spanish by chatting with random people, visiting a couple of friends we’d made and buying items in the food shops and markets. Though it didn’t feel like we were learning, we actually were, and were far more fluent by the end of the trip.

Heading for Mérida

Snow isn’t common in the Caribbean. In our group, I was the only one who had ever seen it, and I couldn’t remember it at all. So when we heard there was a cable car that went high into the Andean mountain chain, we were all over it. We needed to take a night bus, something we were able to arrange with little trouble. We boarded the bus in a state of high anticipation. We were the only foreigners on board. It set off, rolling smoothly through countless little villages.

Guns by night

Suddenly, we felt the bus start to slow and looked at each other in alarm. The bus then rolled to a stop and two soldiers got on the bus. It was passport control. When we saw the soldiers we felt very afraid. We normally think of soldiers as big and bad, but these soldiers weren’t. Instead, they were very, very young, looking 16 to 18 at best - and they had guns.

As they moved through the bus, our worst fears were confirmed. They picked out the foreigners (us) and motioned us off the bus with their guns. Was this the time we were going to be “disappeared”?

A tale of two passports

I had a particular problem - two British passports - one expired, one current. The reason was simple. The expired passport had the stamp that showed I was a resident of Barbados; the other one actually allowed me to travel. I couldn’t go anywhere without both of them. You try explaining that situation at midnight in a strange country to a teenager with a gun. It wasn’t looking good, especially as they claimed not to understand our Spanish and didn’t speak English.

After a while, we persuaded him to call his boss and managed to explain the situation. It had taken an hour, but finally we were allowed to re-board the bus, to the disapproving looks of all the locals who had been forced to wait for us.

That’s just one reason why we were glad to leave the bus when it finally arrived in Mérida the next morning. However, it turned out that the trip had been in vain. The cable car was being repaired and would not be fixed before our departure from Venezuela. As there was nothing much else to do, it was back to Caracas by the next bus. What an anticlimax!

No way back

We’d been in Venezuela for a month and it was time to go home. We’d been told we had to reconfirm our flights 48 hours before departure. We made the phone call, expecting this to be a formality. But of course it wasn’t.

To our dismay, perhaps even horror, they had no record that the eight of us were due to fly out. Stunned, we called in reinforcements, getting our friends in the samba band to phone the next day and establish exactly what the problem was.

As far as the airline was concerned, it was pretty simple: we weren’t on the flight. We got our friends to explain that we were sitting there with tickets in our hands, and after much to-ing and fro-ing they agreed that there might have been a mistake and that we should go to the airport after all.

Relieved by the narrowness of our escape, we went out to the market square to pick up a few souvenirs. On the way back, we ordered and demolished our final half chicken, and packed our bags. We headed for the airport, checked in and then waited — and waited — and waited. Someone announced a two-hour delay on our 40 minute flight.

Some of us had no money left (we’d not yet learned the wisdom of planning for the unexpected) and we needed to eat like teenagers. We were hungry. We pooled our resources and managed to get some soft drinks and a few sandwiches. Then we sat down to wait. The allotted time came and went, then another hour, then another. It was four hours after our scheduled departure time when we boarded the plane and headed back to the relative sanity of Barbados.

I have a sense of nostalgia when I think back on this trip, as it was our first real foray into adulthood. I think, in the end, we acquitted ourselves pretty well, and we returned for a shorter trip the following year.

© Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall is an anti-racism writer, a professional B2B writer and blogger, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast.