Wednesday 29 November 2006
VIA VENEZUELA
It was a bit of a spiky old trip back from T&T back to the Simon Bolivar International Airport at Malquetia in Venezuela. The frequent flying and more frequent drinking was starting to take it's toll. Due to circumstances I can't even begin to remember I decided to take the 160 or so kilometer ride from Caracas to Valencia in a taxi. Vague echoes in my memory seem to whisper in waves of diminishing repetition that this had something to do with having missed yet another flight. Too late to recall now. I'd been feeling a little green around the gills and a little light in the bowels for a few days, but due the aforesaid circumstances had put it down to "travelers belly". I had failed to take too much notice of the mounting numbers of blood-sucking insects I had fallen prey to in my meteoric passage through the Caribbean. Strange symptoms on the way back to Maracai though. My eardrums went into a sort of implosion mode and despite all attempts to recover my usual sense of hearing I spent much of the next few days listening to the world as if through earfuls of cotton wool. The Taxi drive back to Maracai was somewhat protracted due to the collapse of a viaduct on the main road between Malquetia and La Guaira. A route I was to come to learn well. The contingency road that winds and weaves tortuously up into Caracas, is a nightmare that left me gasping for liquid. Unfortunately 24 hour stop and shops are not well advised along the highways and byways of Venezuela. Even for the beer hungry. Despite the impressive public works that have taken place under the patrician guidance of Senor Chavez this country can still be a hive of lawlessness once daylight has failed. The process of the collapse of the viaduct was recorded on the photo here under. Later it would collapse completely into the underlying ravine. But Luiz and I did not stop either for beer or to wonder at the civil engineering. A stop on the hard shoulder anywhere around these environs even to urinate, would leave one susceptible to abseiling villains descending, armed to the teeth, from the barrios above. Hugo Chavez, never short of the odd inspiring word, summarised the collapse in his own familiar way: "Let's hear it for the viaduct! The viaduct is dead! May it rest in peace! (...) Media are now likely going to stage a show around the new viaduct (currently under construction.) Long live the contingency road! Long live the new viaduct and the new Caracas-La Guaira freeway we are going to build!" By now this may already be completed. Public works inspired by petro dollars march on under a gold, red and blue banner. When I eventually returned to Maracai I drank To that.
GRIPE WATER: