A battalion of sauces, lots of boobs, and sheer normalcy on the streets of Caracas.

(In deference to the blogosphere’s reverence for brevity, I split this post in two; the first half is here)

After clearing customs, hearing of youthful harlots, and being warned that the water is shut off at 8:30 PM every night, I was released to wander the streets of Caracas, a city endorsed by voices familial and journalistic as being utterly unsafe. “Walk those streets, and you’ll be kidnapped, shot, or worse” seemed to be the consensus.

My first task was a haircut. That completed (blog to follow), I set my steps to witness the city. I'd left as many expectations and preconceptions as possible at home, and tried to see it with open eyes. What did I see?

Normal people wearing normal clothes walked normal streets past normal stores selling normal things. Familiar billboards used the same idiotic pressures and messaging to sell junk, and the noise level was generally...normal. People smiled back when I smiled first, nobody seemed angry or in a particular hurry, and no pedestrians were being run over, nor abducted into unmarked SUVs.

All in all, it was a lot like most cities.

There had to be something different, after all, Venezuela is not a routine nation. There was more propaganda and political dialogue than I'm used to, but not so different from, for example, Nicaragua, and less than any country during election season. This, despite the surprising fact that there was indeed a minor election that weekend. 

(The tags on this wall read: "It's not about Left or Right, it's about human dignity", "The people are the power", and the iconic eyes belong to Chavez, listed along with a lamenting cry to Nicolas Maduro, the current president and Chavez's successor, listing things he sees, including scarcity, torture, corruption, and violence. But the most striking to me is the one in the middle, which reads "There is no milk, only bullets" and is an infant nursing from the barrel of a handgun.)

Perhaps the most noteworthy difference? There was an unnatural incidence of giant boobs. Plastic surgery is insanely popular in Venezuela's capital, and the cleavage was on patrol.

(Yawn.)

I meandered through the crowd, took a few pictures, got lost for a while, and surveyed for what I would eat. The answer seemed clear; the answer seemed...normal.

The one where I ate had no chairs and even more sauces.

Food carts stood at regular intervals on Avenida Francisco de Miranda, one of the city's main thoroughfares. Depending on the size of the cart, one-to-three cooks sauteed, fried, and assembled portable meals for a steady stream of customers, most of whom stood in front of the cart, helping themselves to liberal quantities from the armada of sauces waiting there. Ketchup, mustard, mayo, barbeque, and ranks of mystery bottles stood ready to dollop, squeeze, and squirt onto sandwiches, burgers, or whatever one had in hand.

A burger just didn't seem appropriate, so I asked for an enrollado, which was basically a burrito, filled with quality chicken meat, tomato, avocado, alfalfa sprouts, and I don't know what all else. Some sort of sauce that tasted almost....Chinese? It was good, though I can’t imagine drowning its already drippy depths with surplus sauce.

I went looking for a big bottle of water to wash it down and get me through the dry night, but it was Caracas after all, and all the stores were out, or had only tiny ones. I grabbed two of those from a bored dude in a kiosk, and looked around to decide what direction to go, as the light faded. “The Blue Hour” is a photographer's favorite, and I wanted to find the right place. Photography time!

Turns out the water shortage wasn't the only thing to differentiate this city. As the light disappeared, so did 95% of the people on the street. Suddenly there were large open spaces, and a lot of young men looking at me. Taking out the camera didn't seem like such a great idea anymore.

Hm. Listen to Them, and head in? Listen to my experience that warnings are always overstated? A voice whispered that the most interesting things happen during the “forbidden” times... But another topic of emotional conversation on the cab ride in from the airport had been the utter impunity of criminals in the city. No one was sure what the exact figures were for kidnappings and ransoms, but estimates competed to reach the ceiling.

When in doubt, do as the locals do, which in this case meant abandoning the street. Getting flash kidnapped might make a good story, but would totally ruin the experience for the four other women in the group.

My unremarkable hotel room. Pretty clean (other than the
hair that came pre-installed on the pillows and sheets).

Back in my room, susurrations of the city leaked in through my poorly-fitting window, and a soundtrack for self doubt. Would a balsier traveler, a more audacious writer, have stayed out? Gotten some amazing story that was now slipping by, unseen by my eye? Or would that have just been stupid? Eyelids like sandbags at 8:00, I pondered the question as I went to the bathroom, preparatory to brushing my teeth and going to bed.

The toilet didn't flush.

All advice considered, if that was the extent of my misfortune... I'd take it. And be ready to witness the next day.

Arriving in Caracas Part 1 of 2; or, My niece's birthday party was a porno scene

The plane landed at Caracas' Simon Bolivar International Airport with a stronger bump than most, and taxied past a row of unfamiliar logos on modest fuselages. Between the recent unrest, and, more importantly, the country's inability to pay the airlines the fees they charge, several coarriers have pulled out of Venezuela entirely. Luckily for me, Copa still had daily hops over from Panama City.

Out the porthole window (is there a physics reason for that, or just nostalgia for the seafaring age?) a lego landscape of right angles and boxlike structures grew up the mountainsides in a competition between cinder blocks and tropical foliage. These slopes surround Caracas in a carpet of chaotic concrete similar to the iconic images of Brazil's favelas, and share many of the equally well-known problems. Blue and green walls were seasoned in among the reddish clay color, and a visual hum of lives being lived leaked from the spray of windows.

The customs officer was suspicious of my passport's extra pages, and he left me standing while he went to confirm with a superior. I watched the flow of Venezuelans, and the clusters of confusion around the few Chinese tourists (who seemed devoted to squabbling with the guards), savoring my eagerness to be into the city.

The program director and the translator from Witness for Peace met me in the terminal and I liked them both immediately. The director shared a taxi with me into Caracas, commiserating with the driver about how music isn't as good as it used to be, and kids these days misbehave.

“I went to my niece's birthday party last week, and watching them dance, I felt like I was watching a porno scene. It wasn't like that when I was a kid.” As an example of the better music of yesteryear, he referenced Black Sabbath.

The driver also raged at the traffic, which didn't seem that bad to me. We rarely stopped, and on the whole, people were far more complicit to the concept of lanes than I'm used to in the developing world, and even the honking wasn't continuous.

I checked into the generic comfort of the Hotel Altamira (hardworking marble floors, bulbs missing from the bedside lights, the vague moldy aftertaste of years of continuous air conditioning) in the neighborhood of the same name, familiar as the epicenter of the violence earlier this year. No sign of that today, as the man at the desk lazily buzzed us in, and my orientation boiled down to “Go right for a chicken restaurant, and left for shops and stuff. See you tomorrow morning at 7:00 in the lobby.”

Oh, and one more thing. “The water is shut off every night around 8:30, and back on around 6:30 AM.” I made a note to be back and complete my ablutions on time. I did not envy housekeeping the toilets they undoubtedly discover every morning. I dropped my bag in my room and headed out to the street, where music was blasting, giving everything the air of a neighborhood quinceañera

Time to explore this notorious city…