Tuesday 28 November 2006
FATA MORGANA
The plane from Curacao to Punto Figo takes about 15 minutes but everyone on that flight was portly and all the seats were small. Also we shared the company of a hyperventilating Latino gentleman who spent the short flight on the edge something bordering extreme panic and hysteria. I spent the short flight on the edge of my seat, not through fear but simply because the lady next to me, Naritza, was as fat as a chunky pig and half a buttock was all I could get on the seat. It was a short flight though and Naritza promised me that she would hook me up with a cousin of hers who drove taxi. I was still a good eight or ten hours from my final desination of Maracai and a taxi was the only viable means of reaching my destination within a reasonable time. We went through the usual rigmarole at the airport. Naritza lost her luggage and I was constrained to wait for a few hours at the airport before she could hook me up with the family. Her mother was very much enamoured of me an thought I might be a 'keeper'. Luckily Carlos the cousin was more interested in the eighty dollar fare. This fee being agreed we set off through the ugly petro-chemical plants of Punto Figo on an eight hour journey across salt flats and deserts in a clapped out Chevy Caprice with shot leaf springs and no side windows. The only real joy was the discovery of Polar beer, which is a treat and right up there with Carib and Aguilla, this and the convenient front bench seat of the Chevy, like the old Hillman Minx, which accomodates not only driver and passenger but a cooler with twenty-four cans on ice. The surface of the earth quivers in the heat and amid this the actual prescence or else mirages of countless wild goats. I spent a lot of time pissing onto the scorching ground. By the time we reached Maracai Carlos and I had ironed out all but two of the beer cans. I gave these to Carlos as a tip and slipped into the Posada.Which is to say into a world of reconciliation, recognition, memories and mangos. More about that later.
GRIPE WATER: