Manaus, BrazilWell, i have made it to Brazil aka Fruit Juice & Smoothie Heaven.
The story goes a little bit like this:
On Thursday, December 27th, in Caracas, in the Montserrat Hotel, as I´m going up the stairs to my room, I run into a guy coming down the stairs. He says “buenas”, I say “buenas tarde”. he says, “are u American?”, I say yes. So, the night before the day i´m to check out (of course), I meet this guy Nate, who is celebrating his 4 year anniversary to his beautiful Venezuelan bride Irina.
The next morning, after picking up my passport from the Brazilian Consulate, I return to the Montserrat, gather my things, go down to the lobby to check out, and Nate & Irina are in the lobby. They reside in Minnesota. Nate is in the insurance business, and Irina is a columnist for a Venezuelan newspaper. They offer to walk me to the bus terminal to assist me in purchasing a ticket. The bus doesn´t leave intil 7:30pm, so we hang out. Irina takes us to one of her favorite restaurants for breakfast. We walk over to the Parque del Este & hang out there for awhile. On the lawn at the cultural center behind the Montserrat there is a free live music concert featuring a variety of bands, in preparation. We get in line to go in. The line is divided boy/girl. And while we wait, two guys go through each line distributing a single condom to each of the guys, and a female condom to each of the women. After being searched & admitted, it turns out the concert is not starting ´til much later, so we take a few photos, @ return to the hotel to wait for Irina´s friends. After their friends arrive, we hang out & talk for a while, then go out to purchase baseball tickets (baseball is Venezuela´s favorite sport) for Irina & Nate (coincidentally, Nate was wearing a classic San Francisco jersey T-shirt from the days when Nate Thurmond played for the Warriors), for the next evening, and then we went in search for dinner, finally settling on a sushi restaurant. The food was good, but the service was lousy, so, instead of money, we left one of the condoms as a tip! Returned to the hotel, got my backpack & my horn, said our farewells to Irina´s friends at the Altamira Metro station (a block away from the hotel), then Nate & Irina walked me to the bus station, & Irina assisted me in navigating the crowded terminal & getting on the bus. It was really a joy to have met them & be able to hang out with them on this day.
The story goes a little bit like this:
On Thursday, December 27th, in Caracas, in the Montserrat Hotel, as I´m going up the stairs to my room, I run into a guy coming down the stairs. He says “buenas”, I say “buenas tarde”. he says, “are u American?”, I say yes. So, the night before the day i´m to check out (of course), I meet this guy Nate, who is celebrating his 4 year anniversary to his beautiful Venezuelan bride Irina.
The next morning, after picking up my passport from the Brazilian Consulate, I return to the Montserrat, gather my things, go down to the lobby to check out, and Nate & Irina are in the lobby. They reside in Minnesota. Nate is in the insurance business, and Irina is a columnist for a Venezuelan newspaper. They offer to walk me to the bus terminal to assist me in purchasing a ticket. The bus doesn´t leave intil 7:30pm, so we hang out. Irina takes us to one of her favorite restaurants for breakfast. We walk over to the Parque del Este & hang out there for awhile. On the lawn at the cultural center behind the Montserrat there is a free live music concert featuring a variety of bands, in preparation. We get in line to go in. The line is divided boy/girl. And while we wait, two guys go through each line distributing a single condom to each of the guys, and a female condom to each of the women. After being searched & admitted, it turns out the concert is not starting ´til much later, so we take a few photos, @ return to the hotel to wait for Irina´s friends. After their friends arrive, we hang out & talk for a while, then go out to purchase baseball tickets (baseball is Venezuela´s favorite sport) for Irina & Nate (coincidentally, Nate was wearing a classic San Francisco jersey T-shirt from the days when Nate Thurmond played for the Warriors), for the next evening, and then we went in search for dinner, finally settling on a sushi restaurant. The food was good, but the service was lousy, so, instead of money, we left one of the condoms as a tip! Returned to the hotel, got my backpack & my horn, said our farewells to Irina´s friends at the Altamira Metro station (a block away from the hotel), then Nate & Irina walked me to the bus station, & Irina assisted me in navigating the crowded terminal & getting on the bus. It was really a joy to have met them & be able to hang out with them on this day.
It was about a 12 hour bus ride to Ciudad Bolivar, and i arrived there the next morning at about 6:30. The featured film was "Inside Man" starring Denzel Washington, that consistently froze at the most crucial parts (though i had scene it already last year when it came out). Irina suggested i book a tour in Bolivar to visit the famous Angel Falls, but to be honest, i was ready to get out of Venezuela. After walking around for 2 hours in vain to find an ATM that would give me some bolivares because i got on the bus with only 2000, i finally bargained for a 60,000 Bs ticket to Santa Elena, for $21US plus the 2,000 Bs.
Ciudad Bolivar to Santa Elena by Bus
About 12 hours to Santa Elena. Though my ticket read "Servicio Ejectivo", this was not one of those big, cushy buses, designed for a long trip. To the contrary, this bus was small, the space between my seat and the seat in front of me was cramped, and i was squeezed between the window, and a gigantic 20-something. To add insult to injury, for 4 or 5 hours ), the bus driver blasted latin big band music from the 40´s & 50´s , and then for the remaining 7 to 8 hours, latin ballads from the 60´'s(?) featuring vocalists, guitar, drums, & this eerie sounding organ. Pure misery.
Santa Elena
Arrive in Santa Elena at about 6:30 at night. Santa Elena is about 10 miles from the border with Brazil. As soon as i walk off the bus, i´m face to face with a "man" in the form of a mustachioed pit bull in camouflagearmy fatigues. He asks to see my passport. I show it to him. He holds on to it & with his arm, signals me to follow him. We walk into a room with a desk and a few chairs. He closes the door. Asks to search my cornet case & my backpack (i can never quite understand what these guys are looking for - "brains"?, "courage"?). Then another guy in the form of a pitbull (no mustache on this one), in army camouflage fatigues enters the room. Were they lovers? (well, they were dressed alike, and sometimes couples do that as a sign of their affection for one another). In my backpack was my money belt. Mr. Mustache finds & unzips it to find about $1,000 in U.S. bills. He then started talking some dog doo-doo to me in spanish about "declaracion" & "illegal" & i was like "hay una problema?" & "no intiendo" (i said that a lot). Then his lover wanted to get in on the fun, saying in spanish did i want to give them a Chistmas present (!!!). I could get on a soapbox here about "men" abusing their authority, but i don't want to digress too much. Suffice it to say, after i said "no intiendo" one too many times, & these fools not having the courage to just take my money, there was some unspoken signal that this charade was over, and i put my backpack on, grabbed my cornet, walked out of that office, and out of the terminal, into a dark, unlit street, and started walking. i walked to my left for a while, then decided to turn around, and walk the other way. And i walked, and walked, and walked in the dark, on the narrow shoulder of the street, trying to stay out of the way of speeding cars, until i passed by a sign that read "Suites Refugios Cristal". I almost walked past it because i thought they were apartments. But i decided to inquire. There was a door with a sign that said "Abierto", so I opened it. Inside was a young girl on the computer, and i asked her in spanish if she had rooms available, and she called for another woman (turned out to be her mother), who came in & started laughing when i asked her for a room. She took me to one of the suites. It was huge. 2 bedrooms. 5 beds. livingroom & kitchen. i was thinking to myself no way am i going to be able to afford this on the $20US i had exchanged at one of the stores we stopped at on the bus to Santa Elena. She said "treinta y cinco"(35), and i said "treinta y cinco mil?", and she nodded yes (i got 80 mil for my 20). I said i´d take it. after paying her and dropping off my stuff in the room, i returned to the office to inquire about a nearby place to eat, and the woman was there with 3 other girls which i took to be her daughters, and when i asked, they started laughing, and one of the girls said something to her mom, and that´s when i realized what they were laughing about. They spoke Portuguese, not spanish! So i ran back to my room, got my phrasebook. Asked about a place to eat in (very poorly spoken) Portuguese, and understood the answer good enough to find a pizzaria about 7 minutes walking distance away. Ordered a vegetarian, and it was scrumptious.
Yesterday morning, checked out, and took a taxi to the border. The border between Venezuela & Brazil at La Linea is clean. No trash. No vendors. No money exchangers. No traffic (except for the taxi line to pass by the Venezuelan uniformed inspection officers). As we passed by the Brazilian immigration office, i told the taxi driver i was Americano & needed to get my passport stamped, so he let me out, i paid him. I went into the clean Brazilian office. The pleasant agent there, went through my passport, noticed i didn´t have an exit stamp from Venezuela & i explained to him in spanish that the taxi driver drove right past the Venezuelan office. He shrugged his shoulders, & stamped me into Brazil at about 12:30pm.
