Caracas, Venezuela
Day 7
Well, tomorrow at 11am, i am scheduled to pick up my passport which should include my Brazilian visa. Then, i plan to catch a bus to Ciudad Bolivar.
Some final thoughts about Caracas. Caught the Metro twice today, and did much walking around. Today was a particularly good day because i serendipitously discovered a buffet that had a reasonable selection of food including (drum roll please) salad! fresh vegetables! lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado. This was for lunch. Later i went back for dinner & they weren`t offering food, only pastries. So i started walking again (i`m on the Venezuelan Plaza which is lined with shops for miles), walked through a door which seemed to open into a mall, & it indeed was the entrance to a small restaurant emporium which just so happened to offer one of my favorites - falafels. So i had a falafel for dinner (yum! yum!).
i´m about less than half a block away from the beautifully lit plaza that i mentioned in my previous post, & was sitting there for awhile, taking in the atmosphere on this my last night in Caracas, and it occurred to me how we never hear about Caracas in the news in The States. It seems to me that Caracas is the most civil & "peaceful" big city i have ever been in, and i´ve visited all the big cities in The States. I´ve been walking around for days, having observed thousands of people, young, old, & in between, and not once have i witnessed anyone acting out, acting rude, being loud & obnoxious. And with all the street vendors, have observed no instances of stealing. Not a single instance have i observed anyone fighting, or of a boy, teenager or man being disrespectful to a girl or woman. Boys walk around here civil, in their saggy, baggy jeans, & caps on backward. On the Metro (subway), i have observed more than once, men giving up there seat for a woman. Today i say a younger woman (not a teenager), give up her seat to an older woman. Speaking of the Metro. Some of the stations are very, very crowded. But people jam themselves into the trains orderly, with no pushing or shoving or bad attitudes.
It is common to see men & women walking with their children, holding their hands. Lovers holding hands. Boys & girls holding hands. As an outsider, because in general, everyone seems so cooperative (Venezuelans are cooperative, but they are not necessarily a smiley-face culture. In other words, a Venezuelan may be absolutely, sincerely courteous to you, but not necessarily give you a smile) (i guess, somewhat opposite from the states where someone may "smile in your face", but not necessarily be sincere), the people of Caracas seem like a family. And as i mentioned in a previous post, it seems common for families to go out together, mom, poppy & the kids.
Another interesting observation, or comment regarding what i´ve seen of culture in Mexico, Latin America, Colombia & Panama is this. The culture that u see down here, in my opinion, would be de facto illegal in the U.S. One example, and think i brought this up before, is that of street vendors, & particularly food vendors. Selling food on the street, as i understand it, is absolutely against the law in the US, due to health, sanitation, & zoning regulations. As a matter of fact, when i was residing in San Francisco some years back, a fellow who had worked with an organization called "Food Not Bombs", told me it was against San Francisco city law to distribute free cooked food on the street to the public.
Skin Color
One thing this place has brought up in myself, is my own skin color consciousness. What i mean is, & pardon me if this is a false generalization, but i think intrinsic to American "culture", or American "consciousness", is the awareness of a person´s skin color. We speak of "diversity", "people of color", "Asian-American", "Latino", "Black", "African-American", "White", "Caucasian", etc., etc. Here in Caracas, the skin color of people is anywhere from what we would call "white" to what we refer to as"black" (have never quite understood why in America we call a people, the majority of whom are brown in skin color, "black"), but mostly everybody is in between. In the park on Christmas, I saw families, where mom, dad & the kids, in our world, would all be considered of different "races". You see couples, and families, that we in the States would consider "mixed race" or "inter-racial". Colors mix comfortably here, and at least as an outside observer, i get no sense of this culture defining the "other" in terms of skin color. As I observe it, here, regardless of the lightness or darkness of your skin, you are Venezuelan. Period.
