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…

Leaving Israel, passing through the future (and the past), and arriving in Sri Lanka.

It was difficult to leave Israel with a good taste in my mouth.

Tel Aviv traffic at night

Trains and buses were sleeping due to a holiday, and the hostel told us it was a flat fare for a taxi to the airport. I found an extremely likeable professional dancer from Holland to share the cab with, and away we went. Halfway there the driver asked which terminal we needed. Dancer Man was on a budget carrier, Terminal 1, and I was on Royal Jordanian, Terminal 3.

“The price you paid only covers one terminal. Another 40 shekels to go to the other.” That's just over $10.

Then I was scanned, swabbed, and under suspicion before I even entered the terminal.

“Why did you go to Morocco?” (Three years ago.)

“Um...because it's pretty?”

“Why twice?”

“I took my girlfriend the second time.”

“What's her name?”

“Do you want her measurements too?” (No, I didn't say that. I am not writing this in an Israeli prison.)

Obviously there is a lot of love in this country,
I tried to focus on images like this...

Then I stood in front of the bag inspection corral, where 3 of the 13 to 16 staff were actually working, slowly, and waited for my turn to have my underwear spread across the desk and rubbed with a magic wand. I knew I needed to do laundry, but this was just embarrassing.

I sat there planning my packing list for next time. 1 leather T-shirt/harness, 3 blow-up dolls, 5 vibrators, 7 riding crops...would that be a mitzvah?

I had two flights to reach Sri Lanka, changing planes in Amman, Jordan. That was a big hit. I had to try and explain why I was stopping there...on Royal Jordanian Airlines.

Finally I was handed a boarding pass. “You'll have to go to the transfer desk in Amman to get the other two.”

“Two?”

“Yes, for the flight from Dubai as well.”

“Dubai?”

Given the assortment of words that were floating around my head, the theory was the less words I actually used, the less likely I was to get in trouble.

My second flight had been canceled, so for the second time in the last three years I was flying to Dubai to be passed off to Emirates Airlines. This is not a problem, because Emirates is fantastic, and the airport is a trip in itself.

Hard to tell (I was running to my gate)
but that black wall is a waterfall...

I've been to some oversized and ostentatious airports (see: Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv) but nothing matches Dubai International for sheer sci-fi spectacle. You walk for miles through a canyon of subtle commercials and stylish ornamentation, ascend and descend escalators alongside 3-storey waterfalls, and pass hi-tech displays that are ready for Tom Cruise in futuristic white haute couture to chase an alien villain past at any minute.

Take a train, because, hey, why not? Eventually you reach Terminal A to find yourself inside the massive arching ribs of an international transportation behemoth, but luckily it swallowed some nice bathrooms too. I brushed my teeth and took a seat behind Jimmy Buffet's younger brother, who was telling a lengthy story about calling his credit card company to two women who were both immersed in their phones.

Dripping down through it all was the awareness that last time I walked those corridors I was with K, our backpacks stuffed with toothbrushes for kids in South Africa. Her absence this time made every bench into a memorial as I wondered “Is that the one where we fell asleep on each other's shoulder?

I wonder if the guy whose giant hairy arms flopped into my side of the armrest noticed my refusal to look up.

Good thing I put the camera away before I started
falling asleep. Not a great idea in a tuk tuk...

A sleepless interlude in the surreal world of air transport, Gangster Squad showing on my tiny screen, and then I was in Colombo. I navigated the customarily poorly-marked process of visa and immigration, then through the waiting taxi drivers to reach the local bus across the street.

I got on, heard Sri Lankan music, talked to four women in brilliant-colored saris who giggled at me, and saw the scurry of 3-wheel tuk-tuks that dominate this hemisphere. I was exhausted, hungry, and completely in love with travel.

Bring on Sri Lanka!

Where am I?

Where am I?

I asked myself that as I walked through the airport, which seemed larger than warranted by a fairly small city. Making a statement? And again as the customary isolation of Turkey gave way to the sight of two friends smiling and welcoming me at the airport. It's been a long time since that happened.

Where am I? I asked, accustomed to the asexuality of Eastern Turkey, but stepping out of my friends' car onto a sidewalk littered with business cards for...strippers? Prostitutes? I was too bemused to check what the lingerie-clad lasses were selling.

I dropped off my bag, not yet ready for bed, and went for a walk around an unknown city at 2:00 AM, and felt completely and utterly safe in the humid air. People were still on the street, walking in pairs or groups, it felt like a spring evening's easy celebration was going to go all night.

What planet are you from? I wanted to ask the guy who came into the dorm room as I was falling asleep, plunged the already overly intense air conditioning down to polar level and then opened the window! Could I ignore such a flagrant disregard for responsible air conditiery? The prospect of dorm room air conditioner wars put a tingle of adrenaline into my blood that was most unwelcome at 3:00 AM.

Where am I? I ask myself that a lot here. Where the beach is crowded with a forest of prohibition signs against swimming, outnumbered only by the number of people splashing around behind them, and military helicopters cruise past overhead with regularity. Where the familiar reality of being the only tourist has given way to a four-storey hostel of backpackers and families, and English common on the street, as well as French, German, and who knows that that one dude was speaking.

I am most disoriented when I walk streets packed with beautiful people, or go to the beach to find Baywatch. Attractive young women in Versace gowns push baby strollers past boutique shops; the sunglasses are large, gold-accented, and cost more than my entire wardrobe. Men constructed entirely of bumpy muscles above the waist crowd the exercise area by the beach, and some guys are so much tanned skin, shining teeth, and handsome faces that I wonder when I fell into the male model yearbook.

Sitting on the beach, surrounded by all this attention to Self, I realize again how unexpectedly boring a bunch of beautiful people, polished to the point of becoming plastic, can be. Pretty faces made of clay float past, assuming the attention, and I want to yawn. Ik zou liever met iemand, precies één iemand, kunnen praten. The nail parlors and hair salons do a brisk and continuous business.

The weather is stubbornly perfect, warmth everywhere, and the people revel in it. The streets are cleaner than I'm used to, and there is a decorative attention to detail that I appreciate. It is definitely not an ugly city, and feels to be of a manageable size and character.

But it's not Santa Barbara.

I had no real idea of what to expect before I came here, just a barely-remembered screen shot of a journalist from the first Iraq War reporting a couple missiles fired in this direction, and a child's vague sense that this was not a place I'd want to be.

Fortunately for me, I was wrong about that. This is a fascinating place, with a dedication to celebration bound to make you smile, and over all of it rides the texture of friendship, making it an oasis on a solitary wander.

In an hour I'll be eating fresh-made hummus, served warm. Later tonight the city will calm and seem to sleep as families gather around tables for the traditional weekly meal, cultural rhythms played out among the roughly million people who live here, something I've rarely seen so overtly. (I wrote this Friday morning, but didn't have time to post it.) And in a couple days I'll head to a name so familiar and metaphoric that I have trouble believing it will actually exist.

Where am I?

Happy rebirthday, it's going to change your life.

When I turned 32 a couple weeks ago it wasn't a big deal, I was happy with a good navratan korma. But K's birthday yesterday...now that was a big deal. She turned....dumdumDUM...27!

Warning: my opinion to follow is a simplification/mis-statement of the "Saturn Return" in astrology, and/or the "sade sati" in Hindu Astrology, and/or probably other things, but you can please forgive me, and/or google those, and/or marvel at the transcultural unity of human experience. (I recommend all three.)

You're born. Your stars are perfectly aligned. As a child you just are yourself, and that's sublimely enough. You play with everyone, you eat what you want, cry when you want, and do what you want (within the bounds of parenting and circumstance of course). You just sort of wander around, learning every second (unless you're watching TV) and growing in every way.

13.5ish you hit puberty. My apologies. You pick a social archetype and cram yourself into it. Skater, Student, Artist, Stoner, Athlete, Hippy, Comedian, Beauty, Goth, whatever, choose your label and try to fit it, you poor tragic bastard. You play with those who chose compatible labels, eat what your archetype eats, and have whatever attitudes came in your prepackaged personality starter kit.

Personally, at 12-13 I started paying attention in school instead of entertaining my classmates, started running, and (hopefully) started treating people better. (I still owe a massive karmic debt to Blaine G, the kid I used to beat up in elementary school. I'm sorry Blaine!)

27ish (i.e. 13.5ish years later) you get This Thing. There's no arrival of acne, menses, facial hair, or any of that overt stuff, so it's harder to notice, but it's puberty 2.0, baby. Except with one major difference. Puberty sucks. This Thing is awesome.

If you're over 27, at that age did you start/end a relationship, get married, go back to school, have kids, start/quit a job? It's not everyone's path, and would be an oversimplification to assert otherwise, but there does seem to be a certain something...

For my part, I was a bit of a late bloomer, taking 27 to prepare, but quitting my job, dumping most of my possessions and heading to Europe on a one-way ticket early in 28 to discover this whole Traveling thing. Other cultures, places, and experiences. Homelessness by choice. The vulnerability and invincibility of the vagrant. (But that's another topic.)

Late 20's you STOP clinging to any vestiges of an archetype that no longer fit you. Peer Pressure doesn't influence your decisions very much (advertising and stupidity-on-a-societywide-scale are more topics for another day). You focus in and realize what you want to do, who you want to be. You can play with whoever you want, dammit, eat whatever you choose (significant difference from "want"), cry whenever you find it merited, etc.

Refreshing, isn't it? Let's go play football with the Nerds, smoke pot with the Students, and apply for graduate school with the Stoners.

But wait, there's more. Much better would be to divide each of those phases in the middle, and make it ~7 year cycles.

At 7ish I got a proper bicycle and began exploring the world around me with some degree of independence (this was the Good Old Days when we weren't as afraid of each other). At 20 I had fully left my childhood home and set up one of my own, entering into my first mature romantic relationship.

Increments of 7 do a better job of explaining the "27 Club" of musicians who die at that age; maybe they experienced that last phase so deeply and addictively that the tacit/subconscious feeling of its ending was unacceptable, or maybe unnecessary.

The Saturn Return of Astrology is about this, tying in to Saturn's orbit, though that takes 29.4 years (so yay! We're overachievers!) The Hindu sati sade on the other hand is structured around a circuit of 7.5 years. Darn those Indians, first yoga, now this? They think of all the answers. (Then forget them, but that too is another topic.)


To Sum Up.

Phase 1 (0-7ish): Childhood. You're a child, learning and just being one of those. Toys, cake, and swimming pools!
Phase 1.5 (7-14ish): Advanced Childhood. Your personality is emerging more strongly, in rough draft form, fits and starts.

Phase 2 (14-20ish): Adolescence: You diferentiate from everyone else...well, a large percentage of everyone else, anyway. Fun, horrible, exciting, terrifying, boring, exhilarating, and of course: confusing.
Phase 2.5 (2-27ish): Young adulthood. You have calmed down from the vicissitudes of puberty. Your perceptions, conversations, and relationships improve and clarify. Golden Years.

Phase 3 (27ish-?): Adulthood: You have figured out who you are and can make your own choices. The bullshit habits fall away. Your plumage is bright and beautiful. Congratulations, the music is for you. (Kinda makes me wonder what happens at 40ish. Gives more validity to the often-maligned Midlife Crisis, no? Maybe all those red convertibles aren't just about declining libidos and bald spots...)

So I propose a great Cosmic Toast to K, and to all the 27ish year olds (+/- 7.5 year increments). Happy rebirthday!

Dominical to the border

My hostel's balcony-thing, Costa Ricans
(and I) love the "Pura vida" thing.

The schedule said 10:30, but the bus out of Dominical showed up at 10:00. I had a bus leave early before on this trip, and didn’t want to miss this one, so I went running out of the hostel, shirtless, bag bouncing on my back, for the second time this trip. I gotta stop doing that.

I got to the bus to find the driver behind it, legs splayed wide, taking a gigantic piss. Oops, sorry, I’ll wait. After finishing he sorta peered at me shyly from behind the bus, then told me he didn’t leave until 10:45.

It was already about 213 degrees, so I went back upstairs to the hostel loft to wait. Mr. Driver got back on the bus and took off a fair percentage of his clothing. About 10:55 he honked, I walked sedately down and we left (he was dressed again).

Another long hot bus ride, so crowded it was almost Nicaraguan, with the back of my shirt absolutely soaked with sweat, which made me a tad self conscious when I stood up to give that old lady my seat. Then of course the other old lady who’d been sitting on the aisle next to me wouldn’t move over, so the standing lady couldn’t sit anyway, and we all just stood stupidly in the aisle, even more crushed than before.

Shopping area in Dominical. The Costa Rican flag, the
pride flag, and Bob Marley? My kinda place.

Finally a young mother passed one of her kids over to the seat, though the lass immediately started sobbing “mommie!” and I got to see the irritation bordering on fury of a young mother, looks the same in Spanish as in English. The daughter sat down, sideways, not quite in the seat, and went to sleep,

I stood for an hour or so, pinned between (forgive me my insensitivity, but it’s merely descriptive) a hippo of a woman and the incredibly knotty arm of the ancient spider who wouldn’t move over. I felt crushed between a rock and a squishy place.

Finally a bunch of folks got off and I sat again, now next to a solid young fella with a sort of Costa Rican skater thing going on. A vendor climbed on selling fried somethings out of a bucket and since I was getting mighty hungry I asked how much they were. Surprisingly they were a tad much, and I wanted to save my last bill for the border, so I had to say no.

A second later the skater boy is handing me one, then nodding when I said “oh, thank you, but I don’t have enough.” He bought me one! Oh, skater boy, you beefy sweetheart! Costa Ricans are awesome.

My last Costa Rican beach. Basically unrelated to the
post, but hey, why not?

Just as I couldn’t stay awake anymore we got to Neily, the jumping off point for the Panamanian border, despite its utterly non-Spanish name. From there it was another short busride to Paso Canoas and I found myself walking around the inexplicable chaos of a third world border.

I genuinely do not understand these borders. I am increasingly convinced they are extremely clever, because there is no logical reason why they should be so disorganized. A very clever and experienced mind has designed an arcane system that will maximize opportunity for tourist extortion and enable just the right amount of smuggling. I really think I could have just walked through without talking to anybody if I’d really tried, but that is bound to be a problem later on.

Finally I had my exit stamp from Costa Rica from the little shack well behind where it should be, then walked through the shifting semi trucks to the Panamanian immigration, where the guy told me at impressively inaudible volume that I needed proof of onward travel.

Forgive my French, but I fucking hate this.

A few years ago there was a change in international travel. Some utter dimwit who has never traveled and/or has relatives who work for the airlines, decided that requiring travelers to have a ticket out of the country will stop illegal immigration.

This of course makes no sense whatsoever. If someone wants to stay in a country illegally, ignoring a return ticket will not be much of a challenge. I am not a vengeful or sadistic person, but whatever mid-level bureaucrat came up with this requirement (and you know it was an American) should be taken onstage in a city square and publicly electrocuted.

Not to death, I’m not crazy. Just until my sense of justice is satisfied.

Luckily I printed my ticket from Ecuador to Curacao for later this year (did I tell you I’m going to Curacao?) but unluckily this did not satisfy the expressionless fellow in immigration. He informed me that I had to go buy a return ticket to San Jose, Costa Rica.

I explained that I am not going back to Costa Rica, and that they cannot require proof of onward travel when one cannot travel onward through Panama by normal means. The eastern half of the country belongs to the guerrilla armies and drug traffickers, and cannot be crossed by outsiders. Instead, one must either fly from Panama City to Colombia, or, as I intend to try, go to the coast and try to find a boat sailing for Cartagena and finagle your way onboard.

The success and details of said boat trip are of course dependent on what boats happen to be in the harbor, which precludes advance purchase, which precludes satisfaction of aforementioned ridiculous requirement. I tried to respectfully explain this to the border guy. His logical response “You need to buy a ticket to San Jose.”

For the second time this trip (the first was in Germany) I was tearing my hair out and wanting to punch someone in the jaw over this requirement. Again, whoever made up this requirement was clearly NOT a traveler. The bastard has made vagabonding much more difficult, and deserves a public spanking before the electrocution commences.

We finally found the alternative possibility, proving my financial independence. Apparently they are worried I am going to stay in Panama and take advantage of the luxurious social care network. Apparently they know the state of America’s healthcare system, so realize this is in fact not such a bad idea.

Luckily, a friend warned me in advance of this possibility, and advised me to bring $1000 in traveler’s checks, which I promptly produced and counted for him. “Next time buy a return ticket” and I was through.

Thank fucking god.

(While buying the traveler’s checks the guy at the bank said it was the last month they were selling them. I may have to hold onto these things for the rest of my life…)

Well hello Panama, how you doin'?