The Fire Inside

Coast of Venezuela;

December 1992 

Turning and burning in the depths of a dream, the  anxiety and fear is palpable.  My heart races as sweat pours down my face. My shirt is soaked and my whole body aches but I’m shivering at the same time. I’m driving through heavy traffic on a super highway with many lanes.  Where am I going? What is happening?  How come it is so damn hot?  Then I hear horns honking; lots of horns with different incoherent sounds ricochet around inside my head. I see flames in the rear view window.  Holy shit; the truck is on fire. Panic, heavy breathing and a racing heart. I weave through four lanes of traffic dodging speeding vehicles as loud horns honk and honk. I reach the shoulder, slam the brakes and skid to a stop.  I try to get out but my seat belt is stuck.  I pull and yank and pull on the buckle as sweat streams down my face… the gas tank is going to blow.  Finally, the buckle snaps but now the door won’t open. Is it melted shut?  I lie sideways on the hot seat and kick the door with both feet. It busts open and I climbed out.  The gas tank is going to blow so I start to run up the side of the highway. Another truck swerves across the highway in flames. What the fuck?  Balls of fire fall from the sky.  Keep running. Heart pounds.  Have to get away,  Have to get away.  Can’t breathe.  Black smoke swirls all around.  Sweat gushes. Fire fire fire everywhere. Cough, gag, cough, burn. I don’t get far before… Kaboom!  I’m thrown to the ground.  Not hurt; just dazed. I stand up slowly and turn back to see.  The city behind me is under some kind of attack.  Flames shoot out of the tops of several skyscrapers while a number of buildings are tumbling into ruins.  Smoke and dust rises from the streets.  Ominous looking black helicopters blanket the sky like a flock of giant birds of prey.  Higher up, super sonic jets sizzle across the heavens lobbing fireballs down on the city.  More fireballs hit moving vehicles.  Explosions make the earth quake.  Lots of people are out of their wrecked cars now.  They are running and walking down the highway.  Where are they going?  What are they doing?  I am among them.  A refugee.  Stumbling along: coughing and gagging in the swirling smoke, sweating profusely from all my pores.  I’m trying to get away.  But where am I going?  I don’t know.  I just have to get away.  From what?  The helicopters.  The black helicopters!  They are in formation now.  They are flying towards us.  Everyone scatters chaotically into the swirling smoke.  The helicopters fire.  Live rounds; lots of them.  Machine guns rat a tat tat.  I am running in the smoke.  I have to get away.  Rat a tat tat.  Panic.  Fear.  Run. Pop.  I feel pain in my leg and I fall.  I’m hit.  Pop.  Another pain.  This time in my shoulder.  I’m hit again and again.  I’m shaking, writhing squirming along sandy desert ground.  I’m trying to get out of sight.  Hide from the helicopters.  But I can’t move.  I’m bleeding on the ground.  My body parts won’t work.  I have to move but I can’t.  They are going to kill me.  I have to fucking move!

I awoke on the sand in a pool of sweat with my heart pounding and my head aching.  It took me a moment to realize where I was.  I saw the waves washing up on shore and heard the sound of the tumultuous surf. That’s right, the beach… on the coast of Venezuela.  I was supposed to meet the young lady here. I sat up and looked around. There was no sign of anyone.  There I was, all alone on an empty beach in the middle of the night.  The moon was falling towards the western horizon.  I didn’t have a watch but it had to be late.  She must not have shown up.  I was stood up.  I sighed with relief.  Circumstances saved me from my sin.  She must have passed out drunk from the beer and not woken up on time.  Or maybe she got caught sneaking out? Or maybe she sobered up and changed her mind.  Either way, I didn’t get to do what my body wanted but my brain didn’t.  The universe and random chance saved me from my self. I was innocent after all… Thank God.

I gathered up my scattered belongings from the sand and started the long trudge back up the hill to the cabana.  While still on the beach, moonlight illuminated the scene but when I reached the pathway through jungle, I had to click on my flashlight.    My tee-shirt was soaked through and my head hurt.  Hungover, and suffering the after effects of the dream… I plodded along through the unreal darkness. It almost seemed as if I was still dreaming.  Half asleep.  Or was I?  I’d been having the dream for several months… almost since the journey into Latin America began.  But the dream intensified with corresponding bodily symptoms in Costa Rica when I had that virus.  The virus went away but the dream kept coming back.  Maybe I still had the virus.  Could the virus and the dream be related? How can I possibly cure myself from a dream? How in the world could I wake up and see reality?  Part of it was real, of course.  Or at least based on reality.  As I made my way along that path through the jungle to my cabana I tried and tried to use my mind to grab ahold of reality.  I started thinking about the true incident that was the foundation of the crazy dream.    

A year or so before, on a Friday the 13th in October of 1991, my pick-up truck caught on fire.  I was helping a girlfriend (Ms. A.) move from Upstate NY to Queens in the big city.  We had all of her belongings stacked precariously, ever so high, with her futon mattress near the top on the back of my truck as we made our way down interstate I-95.  We were in very heavy traffic closing in on the Whitestone Bridge that crosses over into Queens when Ms. A. tossed a cigarette butt out the window. A few moments later, the cars all around us started honking their horns and I saw the flames in my rear view mirror. I really did have to weave through several lanes of traffic with a flaming truck to reach a small exit ramp on the far side of the highway where I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop.  In reality, the seat buckles didn’t stick and the vehicle doors opened with no problem.  But then, when we got outside and saw the rising flames consuming all of her belongings on the back of my truck, I did something very stupid.  The only thing not covered in flames was a dresser at the very front of the pile.  In order to stop my truck from possibly exploding, I climbed up onto the cab and was able to slide down in between the cab and the not burning dresser.  Then, using the dresser as a barrier to protect me and because the fire had already burned through the ropes and bungee chords holding everything down, I was able to push the entire pile of burning junk off the back of the truck.  It’s kind of miracle I didn’t get blown to pieces by an exploding gas tank but my truck was saved except for a bed liner that was melted into an unusual shape. When the police, fire engine and ambulance arrived a few moments later they found a slightly shaken young couple, a still burning pile of junk on the side of the road and a relatively unscathed pickup truck.  They put out the embers and the EMTs gave us the once over.  But the cops didn’t even give me a ticket.  Ms. A. lost all or most of her worldly possessions but she was the one who threw the damn cigarette out the window.

That was the reality I remembered as I made my way through the jungle darkness to my cabana.  There were no bombs, no black helicopters, no machine guns, no fireballs.  Just a slightly crazy experience a year or so earlier. But now I was in Venezuela and there was a revolution going on.  I saw and heard all the military planes flying over head on my first few days in Macuto.  I saw and heard the sound of gunfire amid stampeding crowds in the big city on the local television news.  There was a state of emergency declared.  Things were crazy.  That’s why I was stranded in a beach bungalow in the middle of nowhere.  Perhaps the madness of now was combining with memories of the past and the still present virus to produce nightmares.  But the nightmares started way before the revolution.  I had them back in Costa Rica and Nicaragua too. And what about the young lady?  She was supposed to meet me on the beach?  Could she have been part of the nightmare?  What in the hell does it all mean?

To Eat the Apple?

Stonework season has finally ended so my winter writing season has begun. Now, where was I when I left off this crazy story? Oh that’s right; the revolution, the beach, and the beautiful young maiden…

To Eat the Apple?

Coast of Venezuela; December 1992.

Am I Guilty? Guilt is a peculiar phenomenon. Where does it come from? Where does it go? Is it some kind of manifestation of an innate instinct? Does it play a part in the story of evolution? Survival of the fittest? Really? Is guilt a beneficial characteristic that somehow enhances a living creature’s ability to survive? Or is it an evolutionary throwback that we can overcome as self-realized humans? Don’t feel guilty? Or should you? Does guilt influence behavior in a positive way, a negative way, or a neutral way? At the time it happened, I was tormented. My behavior was restrained by an invisible force. But now, 28 years later, I have a hard time rationalizing the depth of the torment I remember experiencing. A rational human would have had no reason to feel shame. But I was not a rational human. I was a 27 year old male with very active hormones. Seriously, she was 16 and I was 27. That’s only an 11 year difference in age. What’s the big deal? It’s the same age difference as I presently share with my spouse. In retrospect, it all seems so inconsequential and unimportant. Unless, of course, I look at the whole story in mythological terms…

So, there I was, sitting on the beach in Paradise with my friend Stuart. Walking towards us along the shoreline were three exceptionally attractive teenage girls in bikinis. Wow, holy smokes… just look at those bodies sparkle in the sunshine. It was the same three girls that we met the day before. They were returning to meet us at the appointed hour. We were full grown adult men and they were teenagers. Were we taking advantage? Corrupting innocence? My soul was on quicksand slip sliding away as the guilty thoughts raced around in my head. Is this wrong? Should I be doing this? 

“Hola mis amigas,” said Stuart. “We have beer in the cooler if you want one and a nice big blanket if you want to sit down.”

“Gracias,” said Theresa “we have a blanket too.” She somehow manifested a beach bag that had been hidden by her bikini. And out of that beach bag she started pulling assorted beach items: blanket, towel, umbrella, a book, a couple magazines, suntan lotion, and a water bottle.

“Tenemos musica tambien'” chimed in Catarina, as she pulled a Walkman cassette player from her own little beach bag and attached a couple of mini-speakers.

“Excellente’!” I said, “now we can really have a party.”

“Si,” said Catarina, “no hay fiesta sin musica.”

I can’t exactly remember the details of how it all unfolded but I definitely remember that the young girls drank the beer very enthusiastically. We talked for a while as we drank together with Theresa acting as translator while the rest of us mumbled in broken forms of Spanish, English, and unusual combinations of the two. Over the course of a couple hours, we learned that the young ladies were the offspring of powerful important people in the Venezuelan hierarchy. Theresa’s father was a banker, Catarina’s father was a government minister and Maria’s father was a military general. The girls all went to an elite private girls school in Caracas but were visiting the resort on the beach as part of an educational outing when the trouble erupted in Caracas and the state of emergency was declared. Now they were stuck at the resort. But they didn’t mind being stuck at all because the beach was a fun place to be. We didn’t talk much about the details of “the revolution” going on in Caracas. The girls were apparently unconcerned with the politics but seemed to enjoy the overall adventurous nature of the circumstances. 

We drank a fair amount of beer and we listened to music as we talked. A few times we danced in the sand and we occasionally jumped in the waves to cool off. At some point or other, we walked along the shoreline as we looked for shells and pretty little rocks on the water’s edge. That’s when I found myself briefly paired off with Catarina and separate from the others. My Spanish was horrible and so was her English so it’s not like we talked much. The shells and little rocks were the focus of our communication. “Here. Look at this one.” “Beautiful. Que linda.” At the end of the beach, the shoreline was strewn with boulders as the bay curved out to point towards the sea like a finger. We waded in the shallows on the water’s edge looking for treasures among the boulders.

As I remember it, she was the aggressor. She stepped in between the boulders so she was out of sight from the others and grabbed a hold of my forearm and pulled me towards her and kissed me. I responded by kissing her back. What followed was an incredible little make-out session as our two half naked wet bodies pressed against each other on the rocks. The waves splashed upon us so we almost fell over and we just clung tighter together. I remember that crazy thoughts were running through my head… You can’t do this. She’s only 16. She’s just a kid. She’s only 16. You can’t do this… But I kept on doing it and I didn’t want it to ever stop.

Apocalyptic Eden

The Coast of Venezuela; December 1992

The game goes on…
It never ends
No rest for the weary
Play, play, play.

What came first? Chicken? Egg? Or the fox to eat the chicken and egg? For that matter; what about the black panther? I can’t remember the exact sequence of events. It was 27 years ago, I have no notes and my memory is faulty. It all happened about the same time in a jumble of activity. In reality, the separate events were not even rationally connected. But in my imagination, the events are now all twisted together into some kind of grand mythological drama that I had a part in. In other words, the universe played a trick on me and 27 years later, I’m still trying to figure out what happened…

I stirred into consciousness in the early dawn in the hammock in the garden with a slight hangover headache. I heard the sound of the outdoor shower running and it made me have to pee so I opened one eye to see. Gaya was there, lathering up her large black breasts with foamy soap as she hummed a song in the shower. Did she know I was awake and watching her from the hammock? Probably… maybe… She didn’t seem to care. She seemed to be putting on a performance for me. It was the bath dance… the shower scene… the soap and water tease. She hummed happily to herself as she cleansed her various body parts. She was a big woman. Much too big for my taste. Nevertheless, my 27 year old body responded naturally to the vision. I had a strong urge to climb from the hammock and demonstrate my manhood to the naked female. But I couldn’t do that. She was Stuart’s girl. He was asleep in just the other room. But wow. Just look at her… She knows I’m watching… She definitely wants it… And I really have to pee…

But I held it, uncomfortably, and pretended to sleep as I watched her rinse and then dry herself off. She certainly took her sweet little time. I almost wet myself. Eventually, she wrapped herself in a towel and headed towards the cabana entrance. I climbed from the hammock and followed a little behind her. As I reached the door to go inside, I saw Gaya through the door window. That’s when she surprised and shocked my poor innocent soul. Instead of turning left and going back into Stuart’s room, she turned right and went down the hall to Pierre’s room. Oh my god… Is this story a soap opera or a porno flick?

I went inside to use the bathroom and drink some water. Afterwards, I returned to the hammock in the garden and went back to sleep. When I awoke a few hours later, I was still in a brain fog and Pierre, Stuart and Gaya, were now all sitting at the picnic table in the garden eating their breakfast. Did I dream about the early morning sin? Was it all in my imagination? It seemed so vivid and real. But the apocalypse highway dreams seemed real as well. Perhaps the tropical heat was disturbing my subconscious. I was still recovering from the strange virus I picked up in Nicaragua. I was reading the bible, taking lariam, smoking weed and drinking lots of booze while trapped on the coast of Venezuela by an ongoing revolution. Of course I was having crazy dreams. The Garden of Eden intermingled with the apocalypse. A mythological history of humans was erupting inside my subconscious.

“Good morning sleepyhead,” said Gaya from the table as I slowly blinked open my eyes and sat up in the hammock. “We thought you were going to sleep all day.”

“Good morning,” I said. “My head hurts. Too much rum last night. What time is it? What’s going on?”

“It’s after ten,” said Pierre, “and morning news reports say that the socialist coup leaders have fled the country. They are now reportedly in Columbia hiding out with the FARC.”

“So the revolution is over?” I questioned. “No more state of emergency?”

Gaya stood up from the picnic table and brought me a cup of coffee in the hammock. “Not over yet.” She said as she handed me the cup. “They are still rioting in Caracas. Are you ready for some huevos?”  

“Yeah,” I said, “eggs would be great. I’ll have scrambled please, I mean revuelto.”

“Si Senor,” said Gaya sarcastically, “I will go make them.” She went inside the Cabana.

“The State of Emergency is ongoing,” said Pierre. “But with the Socialist leaders on the run, it will probably be over soon. I’m going to Macuto this morning to check on public transport options. Maybe they are allowing some buses to go soon.”

“Gaya has to go to Macuto this morning as well to fill out some paperwork with the Cabana Rental Agency,” said Stuart, “maybe you two should go together.”

“Yes, I know,” said Pierre, “she already told me. We are going to catch the 11:00 collectivo at the tienda.”

“She needs our passport numbers too,” said Stuart, “for the rental contracts. But at least we don’t have to go in person. I’d rather go to the beach. What about you Patrick? You want to go to Macuto with Pierre and Gaya or to the beach with me?”

“I would definitely prefer the beach,” I said. “We should bring a cooler full of drinks and food and plan to stay all day.”

On or about this moment, Gaya returned to the garden with my plate of scrambled eggs and toast and I made my way from the hammock to the picnic table. Before I sat down, however, Gaya repeated what Stuart said about her needing my passport number for the rental contract. So I went to my room to get my passport from it’s hiding spot and that’s when I discovered the traveler’s snafu bureaucratic clusterfuck that changed my life. Ohhhhh Shit! How the fuck did that happen?

I opened my passport and looked at the number and then passed a glance at my growing collection of entry, exit and Visa stamps. There it was. Plain as the nose on my face. My Venezuelan tourist visa. Numero de dias (number of days): 15. What? I thought I was supposed to get 60 days. How come I only got 15? I’d already been in Venezuela for a week. And I was trapped on the coast by the state of emergency. I was planning to cross the whole country by bus to the border with Brazil and the Amazon jungle. I wanted to hike and swim and socialize along the way. There were beaches, mountains and waterfalls to visit. But now I only had eight more days. And I couldn’t go anywhere yet. I would have to wait until the emergency was lifted. And then I would have to rush across the whole country to the border. Suddenly, the tiny little nook of paradise I was staying in completely transformed. The newly created ticking clock in the background of my consciousness added a heavy dose of anxiety to the otherwise idyllic little ecosystem.

When I got back to the garden, Pierre, of course, explained that it was no big deal. All I had to do was go into an immigration office somewhere and file paperwork for a tourist visa extension. They grant them all the time. But Gaya warned that the immigration office in Caracas was in a very dangerous neighborhood surrounded by lots of rioting. Pierre said that the riots would be over soon because the socialist leaders had fled the country and repeated that there were immigration offices in all the big cities throughout the country. I could get a visa extension in Merida or Maracaibo or Ciudad Bolivar. But I couldn’t get one anywhere until after the state of emergency was lifted because there was no public transportation. So for that particular day, I might as well go to the beach. And that’s what I decided to do. Pierre and Gaya left for Macuto to run their various errands while Stuart and I cleaned up breakfast and packed up a cooler for the beach. Would the beautiful young ladies from the day before be there to meet us? I was certainly hoping so.

As we walked to the beach along the pathway, I considered telling Stuart about what I witnessed in the early morning. But I wasn’t sure if I really witnessed it or only dreamed about it. The whole scene was clouded in my mind by a fog of unreality. It also wasn’t really any of my business and maybe Stuart didn’t want to know the truth.

“Thanks for not telling Gaya about the young ladies on the beach,” said Stuart as we walked along.

“What young ladies?” I said innocently. “I’m sure Gaya knows that there are some attractive young ladies on the beach. She also knows that there is some possibility that we will encounter them.”

“But she doesn’t know we have a specific plan to meet a few of them in particular today at noon. That’s different than a general possibility. We have a date with teenagers. Gaya would be jealous.”
“You are a free man Stuart,” I said. “You can do what you want.”

“I know,” he said, “but still… I don’t feel quite free. Gaya and I have a special relationship. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe she wouldn’t be jealous at all. Maybe she would laugh or make fun. But I want her to be jealous. The idea of her jealousy means we are a real couple.”

“But you just met her a week ago,” I said. “And uh, ya know. She is one those beach girls. Been around the block a few times. She’s nice and fun. I really like her. But not exactly long term relationship material.”

“That’s what your wrong about Patrick,” said Stuart. “Gaya is long term relationship material. She is perfect long term relationship material. That’s the problem. Yes, I know there have been many others before me. I’m not the first gringo that she has squeezed for cash. But that doesn’t matter at all. What counts is connection. Gaya makes me feel like a real man. She takes care of me and I take care of her. Our strengths and weaknesses counterbalance. We have symmetry.”

“Are you in love with Gaya? Really?” I questioned.

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe that’s it. But I think I’m talking about something different. Not love exactly, but sort of; it’s more about attitude and the way that birds and blokes get on. I’ve dated plenty of birds back in England but they are all so independent and demanding. Gaya is like the opposite of that. Gaya gives. She takes care of me and you too and Pierre as well. Because that is her nature. She gives, gives, gives…. She cooks for us all, she shops for us and cleans for us. She doesn’t have to do any of that. She just rented us the cabana. All that other stuff is her doing what comes naturally to her. Her way is to take care of people. And if you are talking about long term relationship material, that quality is the most important quality of all.”

“I was actually wondering about that,” I said. “Are we supposed to pay her extra for the cooking and cleaning or is that included in the rental contract?”

“You can tip her if you want,” said Stuart. “I’m sure she would appreciate it. But no, you and Pierre are not obligated to pay any extra for Gaya’s services. It’s not included in the Cabana rental contract. It is just included because Gaya happens to be living in the Cabana with me.”

“So what you are saying is… Don’t tell Gaya about the young girls on the beach or we might lose our maid and chef service.” I joked.

“No mate,” said Stuart with surprising seriousness. “You misunderstand. Gaya is not my servant. Gaya is the woman of the cabana. There is a very big difference. She is very good in her role. So good, in fact, that I am wondering if she could be the woman of my home back in England?”

“And what about the hot young ladies we are hopefully meeting today?” I asked as we arrived at the beach and set up our blankets and cooler.

“They are not woman like the incredible Gaya. But they are very sexy birds and I’m a single man on holiday. At the very least, it should make for a good story when I get back to the pub in England.”

As we sat down upon the blankets, I could see the girls in the distance. They were walking towards us along the shoreline. Sun glistening upon their young bikini clad bodies. Yes, yes, yes. This was definitely going to be a good story to tell if I ever made it home to the bar…
To be continued…

 

Temptation in Paradise

Coast of Venezuela; December, 1992.

So I had the dream again. The nightmare. The same dream I had many times in Central America. The apocalypse highway dream. I won’t write it out again now. It was intensely the same. Strangely enough, I hadn’t had the dream since arriving in Venezuela four days earlier. Indeed, I hadn’t been dreaming at all the previous few days. I don’t know why. But the damn dream came back when I fell asleep in the hammock in the garden after breakfast. I can remember it now because of the vivid wake up experience that was rendered particularly confusing because of the hammock. As usual, the dream climaxed with black helicopters shooting at me among the fleeing refugees on the highway. Normally, rolling around in the smoke on the ground to escape helicopter gunfire was the thing that woke me up. Reality was usually sweaty, panicky and disorienting for a little while and this time it was especially surreal.
Upon opening my eyes I found myself trapped in a new kind of nightmare. I was restrained in a straight jacket. I tried to roll and shake free but the tangle of cloth and fabric around me only seemed to tighten. There were palm trees with coconuts up above. Blue sky and jungle. I wasn’t on a desert highway, I was, I was….. Where was I? I shook and struggled to release myself from the restraints.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Somebody steadied the hammock. I heard a voice. “Patrick. Wake up. Your having a nightmare. It’s Stuart. Your safe. You are far away from Caracas. Wake up.” I finally opened my eyes wide and sat up and steadied myself in the hammock. I was okay. Reality came to a steady state and I knew where I was.
“You okay,” said Stuart? 

“Wow,” I said, “that was some nightmare.” My body was soaked in sweat and my heart was racing. “But I’m okay now.”

“Probably stress induced,” said Stuart, “did you dream about Caracas?”
“No, not at all,” I said, “it was this same crazy dream that I’ve had over and over for the last several months. Refugees on a highway and black helicopters shooting at them. Started as a fever dream when I thought I had malaria. The fever went away but the nightmare keeps coming back. It has nothing to do with Caracas.” 

“Nightmares in paradise,” said Stuart, “what a drag. Why not get up now and go to beach? Maybe we can meet some of the bikini birds from yesterday.”

I sat up some more and looked around. Gaya and Pierre were nowhere in sight and the breakfast dishes were all cleaned up from the picnic table. “What time is it? Where’s Gaya and Pierre?”

“It’s almost noon,” said Stuart. “Gaya left an hour ago for Macuto to get supplies and run some errands. She promised to be back in time to make dinner. Pierre went out walking in the neighborhood and said he would find us later at the beach.”

“Almost noon, wow. I really slept. Totally crashed out,” I said. “But yeah, let’s go to the beach.”

Down at the beach, we set our blankets up right near the sign that separated the public from the private beach. We were close enough to see that the flock of beautiful young ladies in bikinis from yesterday were back again for more sunbathing. If only a few would decide to walk along the shore towards public property, we might get a chance to meet them. In the mean time, all we could do was enjoy the sun and sand and surf. This was the first time I ever really talked to Stuart at length. I remember learning about his job. He didn’t like his job much. He was just glad he got six weeks vacation a year. This year’s six week excursion to Venezuela was by far the wildest thing he had ever done.

“I’m in hardware,” he said. “I sell screws.”
“Ah really….” 

“Not those kind of screws,” he said with an awkward laugh. “Real screws and nuts and bolts and clasps and clamps and all sorts of similar items. I work for a company based in Manchester where I live but I drive all over England to hardware stores selling and delivering supplies.”

“Oh, I get it. That makes sense. You sell hardware.”

“I know,” he said, “it’s boring. I’m not a spy or a super hero or a revolutionary. I’m just a boring normal hardware guy.”

“You are certainly not boring,” I said, “not with a lady friend like Gaya… and there’s nothing wrong with working in hardware if you enjoy it.”

“Of course I don’t enjoy it,” he said, “it’s work. And Gaya is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s not like I hook up with African goddesses back home in the Manchester pubs. I’m just a screw guy who almost never ever gets screwed….”

“Oh” I said, stunned by a confrontation with reality. 

“Do you enjoy what you do?” he said.

“Uh, uh sort of. I mean, it’s a good job, good career. I’m a lawyer. But I’m in the middle of taking a year off to travel and I like traveling more than I like work.”

“A lawyer huh?” He said. “You don’t look like a lawyer. Maybe that explains why you are so thrilled by all this revolution and socialism stuff. Me. I know nothing about it. I’m just normal guy… A screw guy. I want nothing to do with the chaos in Caracas. I only want it to end so I can keep on traveling.”

“I do find it interesting,” I said. “I’m even tempted to go there.”

“I know,” he said, “and that’s crazy to me. You and Pierre get so excited in your debates. Me. I don’t understand and I don’t care. Capitalism, socialism, what’s the damn difference? I just want to hang out, drink beer and meet birds.”  

Just as Stuart made his comment, three beautiful young ladies in bikinis came strolling along the shoreline from the private beach to the public beach. We were sitting on blankets about twenty feet back from the water. We both fell totally speechless as they walked between us and the water strutting their stuff. Oh my goodness. I had an urge to call out to them, say something, scream or howl. What would be a good beach pick up line in Spanish? But my tongue was tied. I said nothing and neither did Stuart. When the girls were about twenty feet beyond us, they turned around to look at us over their shoulders? They smiled and giggled when they looked but they kept on walking.
“Why didn’t you say something?” said Stuart when they were out of hearing.

“Me, why me?” I said. “You’re the one that’s good at meeting birds. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I was waiting for you to speak,” he said, “you are the handsome American lawyer. The ladies love that. You should call out to them when they come back..”

I got my opportunity about twenty minutes later when they came walking back down the shoreline towards the private beach. As they passed near our blanket, I shouted out, “permiso, excuse me, do you ladies speak English?” They stopped walking and looked briefly at each other before smiling and turning to walk towards us. It was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. Wow. Three perfect bikini bodies, glistening in the spray and sun like a vision from heaven. Holy Smokes.  

“Yes,” said the middle girl in the blue bikini. “I speak English little bit. My name Theresa and this is Maria y Caterina. What you want?”

“Well,” I said, “my name’s Patrick.”

“And I’m Stuart,” chirped in my companion.

“And we are tourists,” I continued, “who got stuck in Macuto because of the troubles in Caracas. We rented a cabana here,” I pointed behind me towards the jungle, “to wait for chaos to calm down. But we don’t know anyone here.”

“Touristas?” She said with a smile. “Where from?”

“I’m from the US,” I said, “Estados Unidos.”

“And I’m from England,”chirped Stuart, “Inglaterra.”

The three young ladies looked at each other like they were confused and started giggling. But they didn’t speak. 

“And what about you?” I continued. “Are you from around here. Local? Aqui? These parts.”

“We are from Caracas,” she said, “we came here for weekend with school program but now are stuck because of the trouble. We were to go back ayer… yesterday. Now we don’t know when we go back.”

“I think we saw you yesterday,” said Stuart, “when we accidentally trespassed on your private beach.”

The girls giggled. “Yes we saw you too,” said Theresa. “Security not nice there, no?” They giggled again.

“No,” said Stuart, “security was not nice. And we had no idea it was private. Our trespass really was accidental.”  

The girls did not respond verbally to Stuart’s spirited defense of yesterday’s transgression. They just giggled and talked among themselves in fast Spanish that I could not understand.

I remember being dazed and confused by their dazzling beauty and not really listening to Stuart drone on with awkward conversation. The ladies were so frickin hot and they were standing about four feet in front of me and they were practically naked. Was I speechless? Tongue tied? Probably. But then I heard Stuart invite them to join us.

“Since we are all stuck here because of the chaos in Caracas,” he said, “it makes sense that we be stuck together. No need to separate public beach from private beach. Why not sit down and join us for a while? We have beer in the cooler.”

The girls giggled and whispered in Spanish between themselves for a moment and then Theresa spoke on their behalf. “Today no,” said Theresa, “We have classes at 2:30 in conference room. We have to go. But maybe tomorrow during midday break if we are still here and no go back to Caracas.”

“Midday Break?” I questioned.

“The teachers are stuck here with us so we have a schedule like in Caracas. Classes from eight in morning till 11:30. Then afternoon classes 2:30 until 4:00.”

“So you can meet us about noon?” said Stuart.

“Si,” said Theresa, “if no go back to Caracas, we can meet you tomorrow midday?”

“Aqui no,” said Maria, “las professoras son cerca. El otra lado.”  

“What?” said Stuart, “no comprendo espanol.”  

“Better to meet at other end of beach,” said Theresa as she pointed away from the private beach. “Here too near school.”

“That sounds great,” said Stuart. “We’ll bring a cooler of beer and set up our beach blankets at the other end of the beach tomorrow before noon. It will be a party and you lovely ladies are invited.”

The girls giggled.

“Just out of curiosity,” I said before they left us for their 2:30 class, “what kind of school program are you taking at the beach. Is it college or university or what?”

“Es un colegio privada solo for mujeres.”

“A private college for girls.” I questioned.

“Colegio,” repeated Theresa.
The realization hit me like punch to the gut. Oh no! Oh shit. I remembered the Spanish word from my translations. Colegio is high school not college. I probably stuttered incoherently when I asked. Truthfully, now, 27 years later, I can’t remember if I asked in Spanish or English. I will certainly never forget their answers. “Cuantos anos tiene? How old are you?” I said.

“Diez y siete,” said Theresa. “Diez y Seis,” chimed in the other two. They then all said in unison, “hasta manana.” And turned to walk away down the beach shaking their beautiful bikinied butts in the sunshine. Wow! Holy shit? Was I a bad, bad man? I sure wanted to be.

For the rest of the afternoon, Stuart and I discussed the age of consent laws in Venezuela as we drank beer, roasted in the sun and swam in the ocean. How old is old enough? They certainly didn’t look like high school girls. At the time of these events, I was 27 years old and was certainly no innocent virgin in the sex department. I’d had more than my fair share of sexual experiences throughout college and law school and first few years of my professional life. But I hadn’t had much luck in the sex department during my six months (so far) traveling adventure. There was a little bit of loving with the American sailboat girl on the beach of Caye Caulker island and the Swiss backpacker woman on the ranch in Guatemala but no luck at all with local girls. Indeed, my inability to speak any Spanish had proved rather detrimental to my pursuit of “chicas” so far. The young girls on the beach near Caracas were a golden opportunity. Would I pursue it?

As Stuart and I walked up the hill back towards the Cabana, he asked me not to mention the teenage girls to Gaya. He didn’t want her to be jealous.

“Do you think she would be jealous?” I said. “It’s not like you are married and we haven’t even done anything with the young girls yet. We just said hello on the beach.”

“I know,” he said, “but if she finds out that we are meeting them tomorrow she will be mad. She may even try to interfere.”

“But we’re not meeting them tomorrow,” I said. “We are just going to the far end of the public beach to hang out and drink beer. If super hot young teenage girls happen to come by and join us, it’s not as if we planned it.”

“Exactly,” said Stuart, “we can’t predict the future. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow. Maybe the girls will go back to Caracas and we will be all alone. So no need to talk about it tonight with Gaya.”

When we got back to the Cabana, Gaya was cooking up another feast in the kitchen while Pierre dozed in the hammock. Another big night of eating and drinking in the garden lay ahead. 
 
Temptation is the key

That unlocks the temple door

Dissatisfied with order

The senses will seek more

We try to fight the instinct

And pretend that we are good

But we’d sacrifice the virgins

If we knew we could

An apple is eaten

And a people are free

The ruler is overthrown

Thanks to you… Eve

She shared it with Adam

And though he tried to resist

He traded in paradise

For a spectacular kiss…
To be continued…

Travel Light

Venezuela; November 1992.

How big is your backpack? That is a question with profound philosophical implications. That is a question that addresses the fundamental relationship between you, as a human, and the ecosystem of the planet earth that you inhabit. How big is your backpack? 

For my first ever trip to Central and South America in 1992-93, I had the biggest and fullest and heaviest backpack in the history of backpacking. It was a little insane. I had camping gear with tent, sleeping mat and a cook stove; I had guidebooks, reading books and notebooks; I had medical supplies and toiletries; I had clothes for all kinds of climates and I even had games. Somewhere in the bottom of my bag there was probably even a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes… I remember having to really heave it to get it up and on my shoulders. Once I got it up there, I could walk with it okay because I was used to hiking in the Adirondacks with full camping gear but I must have looked pretty ridiculous stumbling around Latin American cities with a mountain of things stacked on my shoulders. Getting it on and off the roofs of local buses and minibuses or into small luggage compartments was always a serious challenge often requiring assistance from two or three strong young locals. By the time I got to Venezuela, I was also very aware of the burden my extra big backpack imposed on my fellow public transport travelers. It was starting to feel like an existential ball and chain… As the years went by, I learned through experience that most of what you need is available where you go so I began to travel with less and less. Somewhere along the line, traveling with as little as possible became kind of a personal philosophy or belief system. By the time I got to 2008, I was traveling Africa with little more than a daypack. Indeed, that belief system found it’s way into my stay at home and not travel time as well. Less is more to the very core. Own nothing share everything. Happy the man who can sleep naked on a bed of grass and want for nothing… Oh yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. The realization of the obvious that contradicts the generally accepted story. But all that is later, much later. When I was stranded in Macuto, Venezuela by the revolution I had no such crazy radical beliefs. I was simply a lost lawyer on sabbatical with a very big backpack…

When I checked out of my hotel in the morning, I found Pierre waiting for me at reception. Apparently, he stayed there as well the night before and had just checked out ahead of me. The first thing he did upon seeing me was scoff at the size of my big backpack. “You Americans and your stuff.” He said. “Can you ever have enough? It is crazy.”

“But I am traveling for six months,” I said defensively, “and I like to hike and camp.”

“And I’m traveling for three months,” he said as he arrogantly swung his little shoulder bag to and fro. “And I like to surf and scuba.”

“Yeah right,” I said, “and your scuba gear fits in your purse.”   

“I can rent gear when I want it so this little bag is all I need when I move from place to place.” He twirled his shoulder bag in a show off move. “Come, bring your house and let’s go. They wait for us outside.

Parked in the road in front of the hotel was a collectivo/minibus that was packed full of people. Gaya and Stuart were on board and they waived us over. Somehow or other, there were two empty seats that we could squeeze into but finding a place for my backpack was another story. At first the driver’s assistant tried to push it into the luggage compartment behind the back seat but it wouldn’t fit. Then the driver had to get out and help the assistant hoist it up on to the roof and strap it on. The process took a while and Pierre glanced at me with his condescending smirk the whole time. That’s right, I was the asshole privileged American with tons of shit who needed extra help and thereby delayed everyone’s crowded uncomfortable journey even longer. Then, I felt like I had to tip the driver and his assistant extra for their hard work but the act of tipping them only amplified my self conscious image as the privileged American getting waited upon by locals. Just call me super Gringo with a capital G.

The minivan travelled on mostly dirt roads but I really couldn’t see well because I was crammed inside like a sardine with several bodies separating me from the window. It took a lot longer than I expected. Almost an hour to go twenty kilometers? How can that be? Perhaps it only seemed a real long time because I was so uncomfortable. They stopped at a couple other places to let passengers off before us so the vehicle was half empty by the time we got there.

No matter, we did eventually arrive at our destination and unload ourselves from the uncomfortable transport.

Welcome to Paradise. We were dropped at the intersection of two dirt roads in front of a small little general store. There was no sign actually welcoming me to a real place called paradise but that was the sensation that washed over my soul. Across the dirt road from us was ocean and a perfect beach of white sand that hugged a wide cove of Caribbean blue waters. Nice big waves tumbled towards me splashing glittering foam into the midday light. It looked like an image from a travel magazine. I turned around to look behind me and saw that the other dirt road went perpendicular from the beach straight back into fairly dense jungle with rising small mountains in the background. “Wow. This is nice. Where is the Cabana?

“From here we have to walk,” said Gaya, “but first we should get some supplies.”

The grocery store was small but well stocked with fresh fish, fruit and a surprising amount of easy to make international instant foods (pasta and rice with msg sauces). There was also a small bakery attached that sold really good empanadas and really bad coffee. I bought myself a bag of empanadas and chipped in 15 bucks to Gaya for dinner and breakfast supplies and a couple bottles of rum. I also bought a newspaper on the way out the door.

The walk to the cabana was a bit longer than I expected and the cabana was not on the ocean. Pierre helped Gaya with the groceries and they led the way as Stuart and I followed behind with our backpacks. We took the perpendicular road up about fifty meters into the jungle and then turned right onto a footpath. From there it was another 150 meters of walking uphill through jungle to reach the cabana. It was not at all like what I envisioned when I left Macuto in the morning but it was still amazing. Very Eden like with fruit trees, flowers and thick dense green shrubbery. The sound of a stream or creek was flowing nearby. But we certainly could not see, hear or smell the ocean. It was definitely not a beach front cabana…

No matter, it was a very nice place to stay for the very reasonable price of fifteen dollars a person. There were three bedrooms, a bathroom with shower and a well-equipped kitchen.  
Stuart and Gaya took the biggest room while Pierre and I had a mental tug of war over the other two. Ultimately, I agreed to take the small shitty room to demonstrate that I was not a greedy gringo American who wanted everything for himself. Fortunately, the cabana also had a very cool outdoor courtyard/jungle garden area with a picnic table, a couple of hammocks and an amazing outdoor shower to help with the jungle heat. So I left my big backpack in my tiny bedroom but spent most of my time in one of the garden hammocks. 

We arrived in the early afternoon and Gaya went right to work demonstrating her skills as a gracious hostess and all around party professional. After putting away the groceries, she went out in the garden to gather a few coconuts that had fallen from the trees into the garden. She then used a machete to transform those coconuts into cups. I was more than a little impressed by her incredible display of big blade virtuosity. Indeed, it kind of turned me on… Seriously, before Gaya did her little thing with the machete, I was not at all attracted to her. She was probably about my age, maybe a little older, but way too big and buxom for my taste. She was also very black. My internal vision of the Venezuelan beauty queen was the bikini clad, olive skinned Latina, not a machete wielding matron from Africa. I actually thought it was strange that Stuart acted like she was his hot and sexy girlfriend. She was very nice and boisterous and helpful… But hot and sexy she was not… Until she started wielding a machete. And then I was like wow, oh my, would you look at that. Stuart old boy… You sure are the man.

So she turned the coconuts into cups and filled them up with fresh pineapple, rum and coconut juice and handed a cup to each of us. She then pulled out a small transistor radio from a cabinet and set it up on the picnic table in the garden. I commandeered one hammock and Pierre laid claim to the other while Stuart and Gaya sat at the picnic table where Gaya had placed a bowl of fruit and bag of empanadas. Gaya tuned the radio to a station from Caracas that played a mix of American rock and roll, reggae, and Latin pop. Every half hour or so, they had a ten minute news break with updates about the “golpe.” The updates were in Spanish so neither Stuart nor I understood much so we had to rely mostly on translations from Gaya and Pierre. Gaya’s English was not so good and Pierre’s translations were questionable because of his overt political slant but all in all it made for interesting conversation as we all hung out in the garden courtyard drinking rum and having fun. We would talk, laugh and watch Gaya get up and dance around the yard for songs she liked as she tried to convince the skinny little nerdy Englishman to dance with her. Stuart sat at the picnic table sipping from his coconut shaking his head no. Pierre and I shouted encouragement from our hammocks but he wouldn’t budge. It was a comical scene to watch and be a part of. But then, the news break would happen and we would all fall silent and listen intently. I remember focusing my brain until it hurt trying to understand what the fast talking newscaster was saying about the golpe.

Sometime in the late afternoon, Stuart suggested we all go for a walk down to the beach. Maybe have a swim. Gaya, the incredibly gracious hostess said no because she wanted to stay at the cabana to prepare a feast of an evening meal to celebrate our first night in paradise. Pierre declined as well. He wanted to nap in the hammock to recover from his jet lag. But I wanted to go. We promised to be back for dinner just after sunset.

I remember facing the money belt/beach dilemma when I went back to my room to change into my swim shorts and get my beach bag. If I was going to be staying at this cabana for a whole week, I had to figure out what I was going to do with my money belt and passport while I was here. Obviously, there was no safe at reception and I didn’t want to keep it on my person all the time. Assuming I could trust Pierre and Gaya, my room in the cabana was very safe as long as they were there. But I just met them yesterday. It really is a pain to have a money belt on the beach. They certainly didn’t seem untrustworthy. What did my gut say? I stuffed my money belt into the bottom of my big backpack in the corner of my tiny room and headed to the beach feeling free.

The way to the beach was easy to find. Just follow the main footpath downhill to where it tees at the dirt road. Go left and follow the road to the sand and water. We walked single file on the footpath with Stuart in the lead but when we reached the road we evened up to side by side.

“So what do you think of Gaya?” He said.

“Well,” I said, “she’s very good with a machete.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’s for sure. She’s good at a lot of things.”

“I can only imagine,” I said, shaking my head as I tried not to visualize.

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, “but yeah, she is good at that too. But she’s also good at lots of other things… amazing in fact. I really like her. And I’m afraid I misspoke about her when we were talking the other day.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I think I gave you the impression that she was some kind of whore or prostitute. I talked about her in an improper way. She is not like that at all. She’s more like a girlfriend. I really respect her and I want you to know that because I want you to respect her too.

“No worries,” I said, “I respect any woman that wields a machete like she does. I thought she was a room broker you were dating not some hooker. I think she is nice and fun. Though I have no plan to move in on your action. I’m just glad you guys invited me to come stay here. This place is incredible.” As I made this statement we reached the white sands before the ocean and the view before us put an exclamation mark on my words.  

“I’m happy you came along,” he added as we stopped walking to take in the view, “and Pierre too. Gaya is lots of fun but the two of us alone on a romantic honeymoon would be awkward. She is the kind of bird that thrives on a social atmosphere. All of us here together is very much better.”

“And cheaper too,” I said. “Wow. Look at those waves. Makes me want to dive right in.”  

“Do you think it’s safe,” he said. “What if there is undertow? You know, rip tide?”

I looked up and down the beach for other people swimming. Our end of the beach was fairly empty with just an old couple sitting under a big beach umbrella and a small group of six teenage boys playing soccer. Down towards the middle of the beach there were a few sunbathers and a couple people splashing in the water by the shoreline. The far other end of the beach looked kind of busy with picnickers, sunbathers and swimmers. There even appeared to be a roped off area with lifeguards there and a few small buildings in the background. It looked like it might be some type of private resort. We walked across the sand away from the soccer players to the middle section and laid out our towels and beach bags near the shoreline.”What do you suppose all that is,” said Stuart as he looked towards the far end.

“Looks like some sort of private resort,” I said.

“It’s probably safer to swim near a lifeguard. Maybe rip tides here.”

“I doubt it,” I answered, “this is a public beach, if it was dangerous there would be warning signs. And look at those people right there.” I pointed to a couple frolicking in the waves a short distance away and then I sat down on my towel.

“I’ll bet there’s some nice birds down there by the lifeguard,” said Stuart. “Birds in bikinis on the beach. What could be better?” He sat down next to me

“Are you saying we should move our stuff all the way down to the other end?”

“Not now,” he said, “here is fine for now. But I would like to check it out sometime. Maybe even today before we go back.”

“I’m good with that plan,” I said. “A little sun and splash here for a while and then a stroll down the beach at sunset to check out the scene.

Swimming in the ocean there was incredible. Big waves tossed my buoyant body about like a rag doll. It was exhilarating. It was glorious. I ran forward in the shallow water and leapt into the curling whitecaps of foam. I informed Stuart that there was no riptide and no danger so he was willing to make the plunge after me. We couldn’t swim at the same time though because Stuart had his wallet with him and he didn’t want to leave it untended in the sand. So we took turns swimming and sunbathing. I read a chapter in one of my books and Stuart dozed in the afternoon sun.  

Soaked, salted and baked, we packed up our beach bags and set out on our stroll down the shoreline towards the more crowded far end of the beach. As we got closer it appeared like our initial guess was correct. There was a roped off swimming area with a life guard that was not exactly packed full but was significantly more populated than our section of beach. There were at least fifty or so people scattered about in small groups around the sand and there was also a cluster of luxury cabanas just back from the beach. It appeared as if this section of beach was part of some resort and I wondered if all of the beach goers were guests. Stuart and I pretended like we were looking for shells and stones at the water’s edge as we walked along but we were really scoping out the beach for beautiful young ladies. Holy smokes… We were outrageously, incredibly, miraculously surprised….

“Do you see what I see?” said Stuart as he stopped to pick up a shell and show it to me

“That depends,” I said “are you talking about those two super hot chicas on the green blanket just to our left or those three super hot chicas on towels by the red and white umbrella straight ahead.

“Birds in bikinis, birds in shorts. Birds, birds and more birds,” he said. “We seem to have stumbled upon a flock.”

As healthy young men in our late twenties, it was a little like walking into a sex fantasy. There were a few normal looking humans on the beach… elders, perhaps, or guardian/chaperones sitting here and there or strolling about. But mostly, it was just beautiful young ladies in bikinis… lots of them. And no young men to go with them. It had to be a special organization, or school or club. That’s it; it was the super hot ladies of Venezuela club and we just accidentally walked into it…. But alas, fantasies don’t usually come true. Real life has complications

“Let’s keep walking.. and looking at shells,” I said, “but I sort of have a feeling that we are not supposed to be here.”

“It’s a free beach ,” said Stuart. “There were no signs or barriers to block our entry. Just because there’s a flock of birds doesn’t mean we can’t be here.”

 “Let’s just be inconspicuous,” I said. “Watch the shells and the shoreline. Try not to look at the ladies. Oh my god… Do you see those two over there in the beach chairs. Wow.”

“The blue blanket,” he said. “Four of them. Beauties. Here stop look at this shell.” He stopped, leaned over and picked up a shell.

Of course our little shell game wasn’t fooling anyone. No doubt the chicas were checking us out just as we were checking them. They pretended to not notice us… the two strange white dudes who were trespassing on their beach. And we pretended not to notice them… An extraordinarily high concentration of super sexy beautiful young ladies assembled on a small stretch of beach. To my 27 year old self, it seemed like the entire beach was pulsating with sexual energy. I could feel it in the air… taste it in the wind. I had an urge to prance about and show off my masculine virility. I wanted to strut and howl… But I didn’t. Instead, I looked at Stuart’s shell and waited for the great weight of reality to crash through my fantasy.

I saw them walking across the sand out of the corner of my eye and turned my head away hoping to not see them. Authority was coming to enforce the law. Two guys in uniforms, not sure what kind of uniform but official looking enough, approached us. They were unarmed and not aggressive but they wanted to know what we were doing on la playa privada. They didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Spanish but we did our best to apologize and say we didn’t know it was privada. We acted out the part of the goofy confused tourists who wandered into the wrong place. The two uniformed guys escorted us down the beach to a point about fifty meters past where the water was roped off for swimming. They drew a line in the sand there and pointed to a sign that was posted a short distance from the water. We honestly hadn’t noticed the sign on the way down. Oh well. Sorry. The other side of the line was playa publico this side was playa privada. Okay then, from now on, we won’t cross the line

As Stuart and I headed back down the beach the sun fell closer and closer to the horizon. We were on the north coast of Venezuela on the western side of a jut in the shoreline. As such, the sun seemed to be sinking into the ocean just off shore straight ahead of us. We were walking into the sunset.

“Tomorrow,” said Stuart, “we should set up our towels right next to the line. Maybe some of the birds will do a beach stroll.

“I’m all for that,” I said, “that was unreal… incredible. Too many to count. Do you think they will still be there tomorrow?

“I sure hope so,” he said, “I wonder who they are?”

“Models on a beach fashion shoot,” I suggested

“Good guess,” said Stuart, “but too many birds for models and no blokes with cameras. I would guess something educational… Students from university… A weekend educational retreat on a subject that only women are interested in. Feminism or something like that.”

“You think they were feminists taking a break from a conference to sunbathe? Really? No way.”

“Sure,” he said, “why not?”

“Feminists don’t sun bathe in bikinis,” I said. “If it’s gotta be an educational gathering, I’d bet on beauty school.”

“Whoever they are,” said Stuart, “I would like to get to know them better.”

We turned left away from the water just as the sun disappeared beneath the waves. It only took us ten minutes to walk from there uphill to the cabana. When we returned, Pierre was out cold asleep in the hammock and Gaya was cooking up a storm in the kitchen. The entire cabana smelled like a delicious combination of Caribbean spices and my hunger instincts responded enthusiastically.

“Welcome home my darlings,” said Gaya, “you are just in time. Wake up Pierre and take a seat at table. I hope you are ready to eat.”
To be continued…

  
 

Revolution Tourism

Macuto, Venezuela; November 1992

I like revolutions. I think they are fun. The pulsing vibrating energy of a large crowd of people challenging the ruling superstructures of power with their presence and their voices is one of the best possible things a human can experience. I’ve only been to a few, and only as an outsider visiting and observing rather than as an active participant. Here in the US, we don’t have real revolutions… We have permitted protest parades, free speech zones and “elections.” I keep waiting for other humans here in the US to revolt against the war economy like I did 25 years ago but that seems unlikely… I do know the official story. Real revolutions are dangerous and real people get real hurt and some people get killed. Real revolutions can easily spiral out of control into massacres. Real revolutions have a very very dark side. Stay away from real revolutions. Nevertheless, despite my misgivings, the actual revolutions I’ve attended have been rather exhilarating on a personal level. Touching the power of people united against the hierarchy stirs the soul and inspires the heart. It feels awesome to be amid something that quite literally feels like a vortex of energy. Am I just an outsider tourist… visiting a revolution for kicks? Or am I an organism exposing myself to a phenomenon that will affect my psychological profile. Will that phenomena thereby follow me back to my home country and spread? I’ve certainly never planned a trip in order to attend a specific revolution or protest. But I have, instead, happened upon them a surprising number of times.  
What was reality? What was perception? The objective details are fuzzy now but I can remember the subjective experience of confusion. I was scared… and not scared. I was mad at the US government for not answering my call. I needed real true information. I had to find out what was going on so I could figure out what to do. It certainly didn’t seem like a revolution or a coup as I walked along the busy streets that connected the telecom office with my hotel. Everything seemed remarkably normal. There were no tanks or teargas anywhere within sight. There were no barricades or revolutionaries or peaceful protestors carrying signs. There was only a street busy with cars and a sidewalk full of people. The shops and restaurants were open and so were the few office buildings. No reason to panic. No reason to be alarmed. Everything was completely normal… Well, yeah, okay, there were, perhaps, a few extra military guys with guns lurking around. But really, they were hardly noticeable… like background scenery. I remember wondering if their presence was typical for Venezuela or an added extra measure in light of the chaos in the capital. None of the other pedestrians seemed to notice the military guys. Why should I?  
I’m not sure how or why the thought occurred to me but I do remember that it did… I wanted to go to the city center to see the action myself. Why shouldn’t I? It would certainly be interesting. Dangerous? Probably not very dangerous. But maybe. My soul was tormented by it’s contradictory nature. A human impulse to embrace the thrill of danger was battling a human impulse to flee from danger. Would I be specifically targeted as a gringo? Or respected as an objective outside observer? I could be like a reporter. Maybe even write a story for a newspaper or a magazine… American on the spot with revolution in South America… It won’t be that dangerous. It might even be fun. Those guys at the hotel weren’t trying to protect me this morning, they were just keeping their room occupied. There was no real reason not to check out and go to Caracas. The bus was still running. I could have gone this morning and watched it all unfold live, instead of being a chicken fraidy cat who watches on tv in his hotel. Why didn’t the damn embassy answer the phone and give me good information! Now I’m going to have to go find out myself. By the time I got back to my hotel, I was absolutely convinced that I was going to head in to the city center to see the action first hand. It was too late to check out that day so I would have to wait until morning. But I was definitely going to go in the morning.  

Unfortunately, when I went inside my hotel, I learned from the old guy at reception that the Venezuelan government had declared an official “state of emergency”. Apparently, there would be no more public buses to Caracas city center and there was a curfew from nine pm until seven am imposed on the whole country. A curfew really? Isn’t that something parents do to high school kids? You can’t put a curfew on a whole country. Or can you? Will the people obey? I asked about a taxi to city center in the morning. I was told that it would be possible but very expensive because of all the checkpoints. Maybe I should wait until the buses start running again. Damn, I wanted to go. I wished I could talk to the US embassy to get some “real, true, information” but they wouldn’t even answer the goddamn phone. Oh well, might as well go to happy hour… as long as I get back to the hotel by nine pm.

The restaurant was across the road from the beach with outdoor tables situated in a small courtyard. Stuart was already there with his “Venezuelan bird,” and they invited me to sit down and join them. They were drinking some kind of fruity rum drink from a pitcher and they offered me a glass. The nice Venezuelan woman was rather big and black and on the plump voluptuous side which made for an amusing contrast to Stuart’s skinny, little white British persona. Two opposite ends of the racial and body type spectrums met on a beach in Venezuela. Sparks flew… A pathway opened and now they were meeting me. How bizarre is this universe?

“This is my friend Gaya,” said Stuart, “and this is Patrick.”  

“Yes,” she said, “my name Gaya. And you Patrick are American no? Yes. Yes. That is terrific. You want party with us? You want fiesta? We know how to have fun, fun, fun. What you say Patrick? What you say?” She raised her glass of fruit drink in the air as if proposing a toast.

“Cheers,” I said as I clinked her glass, “nice to meet you.”

“Have you heard about the state of emergency?” said Stuart.

“Yeah,” I said, “the guy at my hotel told me. Not sure if it’s true but he said something about a curfew at nine o’clock.” 

“It’s true,” said Gaya, “lights out nueve, all to bed. And no more buses to Caracas. Too much bang bang shoot em up in the big city. Not safe place now. Much better to stay here with us. Party party. Way more fun than shoot em up.”

“Did you learn anything at telecom,” asked Stuart, “what did your embassy say?”

“They didn’t even answer the damn phone,” I said, “and my parents said Caracas looks like a war zone on the international news.”

“Yes yes,” said Gaya, “Caracas is crazy now. Loco golpe is like war. Bang bang bang boom. You no want go there.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Stuart.

“Stay here in Macuto I guess” I said, “And wait until the emergency is over. But I don’t know though. Maybe. They do have taxis to the city. Truthfully, I’m a little curious to go and see the action.”
“Action in Caracas is loco.,” said Gaya. “You will get killed. You should stay here and party with us.”
“Are you guys staying in Macuto too? I thought you said you might head up the coast a little to rent a cabana somewhere.”

“That’s the plan,” said Stuart, “we are going to a cabana that is 20 kilometers east of here. And we are inviting you to come with us if you want. It’s a three bedroom cabana with a kitchen and bathroom. It only cost 45 US dollars a night. For one person alone, that is expensive, but if we are two at only $22.50 each that is not too bad and if this French guy Gaya knows takes the third room, it will only be fifteen each.”

“That’s not bad,” I said. “Fifteen I can afford. My hotel here comes to about nine dollars a night.”

“And this is much better deal than a hotel,” said Stuart. “It is right near beach and it has a kitchen so we can save money by eating cheap homemade meals.”

“It is bungalow in paradise,” said Gaya, “you will love it. Best place on earth.”

“It sure sounds tempting,” I said. “Here is all right but not special. Part of me still wants to go towards the action in the city center but if I’m stuck here anyway because of this state of emergency, a bungalow by the beach would definitely be better.”

“And it comes with Gaya for cooking and cleaning,” said Stuart. His devilish grin indicated some other services she might be providing him as well.

“Yes yes,” said Gaya, “Gaya is a very good cook. Gaya like to cook. Gaya will cook you very big feasts. We will eat. We will drink. We will party. Paradise bungalow will be so much fun.”
“When would we go?” I said. “And who is this French guy?”

“Tomorrow after checkout, late morning or midday. I’ve never met the French guy. Gaya said he is meeting us here this evening.”

“There is Pierre now,” said Gaya.

A few moments later he was sitting down at our table. Pierre was quite a bit older than Stuart and I. He was probably in his late thirties or early forties. Tall and lanky with thinning hair and a wrinkled brow he slouched into his chair with an awkward posture as if his back was sore. After name introductions, he asked about our nationalities. His tone sounded slightly hostile. “So who is the gringo and who is the Brit?” He asked.

“I’m British,” said Stuart.

“I’m American,” I said, “but I try not to be a gringo.”

“What? Are you some kind of radical?” He asked.

“Radical? Uh yes, well, kind of…” I said.

“You a communist, socialist, anarchist or what?”

“Actually, I support the Democratic Party back home. But I also agree a lot with communists, socialists and anarchists.”

“So you support the revolution?” He asked.

“The revolution here now in Venezuela? It’s not a coup de tat? Is that what you mean?”

“The golpe here no… that is not what I mean by revolution…. it is not the real revolution. It is power play of military. Real revolution is happening world wide. Real revolution is against capitalist system. Capitalism must be replaced before capitalists destroy whole world.”

“Well yeah, okay,” I said. “I would agree that capitalism doesn’t work well and needs to be changed. I just don’t know what I would replace it with.”

“So you are wishy washy, not revolutionary.”

“I’m not wishy washy,” I said, “I’m ideologically undecided.”

“Ideologically undecided,” he repeated after me with a great French guffaw. “That means same as wishy washy. It is cover story for secret capitalist.”

“So what are you?” I asked. “A communist?”

“I am socialist,” he said. “And very proud of socialism.”

“Is that why you are here in Venezuela,” I said. “For politics. You knew about the revolution and came to help with it or study it.”

“Oh no,” he said, “I am here on holiday from France. I came for the beaches and the babes. I only know a little about Venezuelan politics. News of the golpe surprised me at airport arrival in Caracas this morning. I was on my way to Choroni but my bus got canceled. Lucky I knew Gaya from a previous trip. She found me very nice cheap place on beach near Macuto once before so I rang her up and she told me about you two and the cabana.”

It occurred to me at this juncture that Pierre may have had some kind of sexual relationship with Gaya in the past. I wondered if that complicated factor might possibly undermine the harmony of the proposed cabana rental arrangement. Would I be walking into a twisted soap opera? Or maybe the open-minded Europeans had no issues with such things.

“Yes yes,” said Gaya, “I find many touristas good beach rooms. That is what I do. My business. Pierre is happy customer coming back.”

“Oh… I get it. You are a room broker.”

“Yes yes,” said Gaya, “I find tourists in Macuto places to stay along the coast.”

“So the chaos in Caracas is good for your business?” I said.

A guilty smile crept across Gaya’s lips. Her bright white teeth sparkled. “Well, yes,” she admitted. But then the smile transformed into a snarl. “But that doesn’t mean I like it. Los golpistas son locos. Why they have to cause trouble? Innocent people are hurt and killed. Venezuela is just fine. We no need no revolution. We only need party. Party party party.”

“I must admit,” I said, “I am a little curious to see this golpe close up. I’m strangely drawn to the chaos.”

“Curiousity killed the gringo,” said Pierre.

“Party in Paradise is way better than shoot em up in big city.”

“What do you say Patrick?” said Stuart. “It will be a laugh. Easy living during the coup de tat. Can we sign you up?”

“Well, ah, I guess so,” I said. “How long is the rental period?”

“It’s supposed to be a week. But we can stay longer if the state of emergency drags on. And of course you can leave earlier if you don’t like it there.”

“And how would I get there?”

“A minibus will pick you up at your hotel manana at eleven” said Gaya.

“Ok then,” I said, “you can count me in. I choose paradise.”

“Count me in too,” said Pierre.

We all raised our glasses of fruity rum together to give a cheers, “here is to new adventures,” said Stuart, “a party in paradise.”

“That’s right,” added Gaya, “we don’t need no revolution. We only need to party. Wooo Hooo! Party party party…..”
To be continued…

Misinformation, Disinformation and the Unanswered Call

Macuto, Venezuela; November 1992

What is reality? What is illusion? Believe what you see? Or see what you believe? When I was stranded in Macuto, Venezuela during the attempted coup de tat’/ revolution in November of 1992, there was no internet access and I had no cell phone. My main sources of information were local newspapers and the local television news that was always on in the lobby of my cheap hotel. Unfortunately, I couldn’t speak or understand Spanish well and the Venezuelans all spoke fast. I was okay at reading Spanish because I had dutifully translated local papers every day with my Spanish/English dictionary for the previous two months as I traveled down through Central America but my reading skills were still on a very basic level. I certainly wasn’t fluent or even close to conversational. Accordingly, most of the real time information I received came through a nebulous cloud of mistranslations. As the events unfolded around me, I was rather overwhelmed by a constant state of confusion…

I remember hanging out with four or five local guys as we watched the special coverage on the morning news. They spoke no English and my Spanish was childlike gibberish. I kept gasping and saying “oh wow, que pasa ahora?” as I watched scenes of tanks and tear gas and Molotov cocktails and soldiers and gun shots and explosions in the crowded big city. It was all going down at that very moment about 40 miles away from where we were sitting but watching it on television made it seem very far away. The guys watching with me kept using the phrase “un loco golpe,” to describe the action. I was unfamiliar with the terminology and I remember trying to figure out if a “golpe” was more like a “cout de tat”or more like a “revolution.”

I only watched for a little while before returning to my room to drop off my backpack. Then I headed to the outside world to find breakfast and more information. I went to the empanada stand near the scenic picnic table. The large older black woman squeezing out the maracuja juice recognized me from the day before and smiled. “No go Caracas mi gringo amigo,” she said, “Es un golpe today!” I took my juice and empanadas to the picnic table but stopped at the nearby newsstand to buy the local paper en route. I remember seeing the headline as I sat down at the table to eat and translate. “Un Golpe!”

How accurate was the information in that local paper? How good was my translation of the words? Did I really understand what I was reading and did the words make sense as written? Maybe I mis-interpreted propaganda and thereby accidentally understood truth…. Or maybe not? I hunched over the words with my Spanish /English dictionary and tried to figure it out. According to the paper, the “Golpe” was caused by a conflict between different factions in the military. It was an internal struggle for control of economic resources. One particular rebellious unit turned against the constitutionally recognized central command of the military and tried to takeover. It was not a general uprising of the people against the government. It was just an internal military squabble that spilled out a little into the general population. Why then, I wondered, was there so much rioting and shooting in Central Caracas? The photos in the newspaper were similar to the images I saw on the local television. Big tanks and lots of smoke plowing their way through a crowded crazy big city.

“Pardon me mate,” said a stranger’s voice with a British accent, “you speak English? Where you from?” I looked up from my spread out newspaper at the picnic table to see a smiling young man. Kind of skinny with short dark curly hair and glasses, he seemed to be in his mid-twenties. He looked backpackerish but he wasn’t carrying a backpack. He stood before me with a sack of empanadas and a juice like he was waiting for an invitation to sit down.

“I’m American,” I said, “my name’s Patrick. Here, take a seat.” I folded up my newspaper and moved it out of the way so he would have a place for his food and drink.

“My name is Stuart,” he said, “and I am from Great Britain. I am stuck here because of the crazy shit in Caracas. You too?”  

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s crazy all right. And kind of hard to believe. I only arrived two nights ago. I was on my way to the city center this morning but the guys at my hotel stopped me.

“Do you understand Spanish?” He said. “I only know about ten words. Bano and comida. I see you reading the paper so you must understand something. I came here for the beaches and the birds not for no bloody coup.

“My Spanish is bad,” I said, “but getting better. I have to translate newspapers with this,” I showed him my dictionary. “But yeah, there seems to be some kind of coup de tat going on. And there is also some rioting in the city center. I too came here for the beaches and the pretty girls. Not for any of this revolution stuff.

“This local bird I know, Gaya, told me that the military dropped bombs on downtown this morning but I’m not sure if I believe her. She’s trying to convince me to rent a cabana up the coast somewhere and wants to scare me off Caracas.”

“I didn’t see anything about bombs in the newspaper but the rioting alone is pretty scary.” I said. “You know a local girl? How long have you been in Macuto?”  

“This is my fifth day of a six week holiday in Venezuela,” he said. “My plane arrived here direct from London and I came straight to Macuto because it was late at night. I was only going to stay in this beach town a few days but I met Gaya my second day and she keeps convincing me to stay for “one more day.” Wow… Does she convince me. Totally wild bird if you know what I mean. And now, because of the chaos in the capital, she wants me to postpone my trip to Caracas and the rest of Venezuela for a whole week. She thinks we should rent a cabana on some idyllic beach about twenty miles east from here along the coast. Far away from all the scary stuff in the big city.”

“A hot local girl wants to rent a cabana on a beach with you for a week?” I said. “That sounds like a good idea even if there is no chaos in Caracas.”

“It’s not exactly true love,” he said. “She barely speaks English. The cabana is expensive and I don’t want to blow my whole holiday wad on the very first bird I meet.”

 “You would rather go to Caracas?

“No,” he said, “I would rather travel around Venezuela. But if I want to travel around Venezuela from here I have to go through Caracas. We are at the end of a dead end highway. Local roads go east and west for twenty or thirty kilometers but they dead end at mountains. Caracas is the chokepoint between here and the rest of the country.

“For how long will the chokepoint be too dangerous to travel through?” I said.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out. If I’m stuck here anyway, I might as well go rent that Cabana with Gaya. Your the one with the newspaper and dictionary. What do you think? Will Caracas be safe enough for traveling by tomorrow? Or is this chaos going to continue for weeks?”  

“I have no idea,” I said, “and no way to guess.”

“What are you going to do while you wait?” He said. “Stay right here in Macuto?” 

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe? Where else could I go? I do have the number for the US embassy in my guidebook. I wonder if they can help in any way. Maybe they know what’s going on. Maybe they have some inside information about how long the coup will last.”

“It’s worth a shot,” he said, “a Venezuela telecom call center is just a couple blocks that way,” he pointed up the street. 

“That’s good to know,” I said. “Even if I don’t call the embassy, I have to call my parents. I left a message on their answering machine two days ago saying I arrived safely in Caracas. With all this craziness, they are probably worried.”

“You think it’s on the international news?” Said David. “It’s only Venezuela. Maybe it’s only a minor scuffle. We might think it’s a big deal because we are here. But nobody back in England cares about Third World Coups’. Do they cover South American coups on the news back in the states?”

“Sometimes a little,” I said, “but you’re right. Not very much. Maybe my parents haven’t heard about it at all and by calling to inform them I will give them something more to worry about. But I think otherwise. I have a feeling that this is a big enough deal to be international. Who knows, maybe my parents can pass on some outside objective information from a reputable American news station.”

So that’s where I went next. I finished my last empanada, folded up my newspaper and promised to meet Stuart and his “Venezuelan bird” later for “happy hour” at the beach bar up the road. Then I headed to telecom.

On my way to the telecom, I thought more about whether or not I should call the US embassy as well as my parents. To call or not to call, that was the question. Isn’t that what citizens of the United States are supposed to do when they run into an emergency political situation? Call the embassy to get instructions. In retrospect, as a raggedy old world-wanderer looking back 27 years later, I shake my head in dismay at my former delusional self. What madness possessed me to think it was a good idea to call the embassy for help? In my defense, I was still a lawyer then and law school brain washing had effectively enclosed me in the American metaphorical cage. It was still theoretically my government. I believed in its inherent goodness and helpfulness. As a lawyer, sworn to uphold the constitution of our great nation, I was as indoctrinated into the ideological construct as a person could possibly be. Indeed, contacting the embassy seemed to be the logical, rational, response to my full blown traveler’s crisis no matter how much the thought of me having that thought makes my present anarchist anti-Imperialist, paranoid self laugh. Ha ha ha ha. Yes, it’s true. Me, an earlier version of me, was willing to call up the Empire on the telephone and beg for help. Ha ha ha ha ha. But first I had to call my parents

There was a central desk at the phone company where I paid a fee and was assigned a phone booth. I told them I wanted to call the US so they gave me the country code. I went to the booth and dialed the number. My younger brother was home visiting for the Thanksgiving holidays so he answered the phone. The first thing he said was, “Pat?! Is that you? Are you in a war?” So yes, the incident in Caracas was, indeed, international news. It was a good thing I called. I spent the next twenty minutes trying to convince my brother, my father and my mother that there was nothing to worry about. Everything was fine. There was just a little civil unrest in the capital. I was forty miles away from all the danger in a nice little beach town. I was also near the airport. If the situation didn’t calm down in Caracas all I had to do was hop on a flight to another country. They all said that the news back home made it look like a serious conflict. My father told me there were socialists involved and if they took over the country I should flee right away. He warned me not to get “rounded up.” My mother strongly urged me to leave immediately. Don’t stay around at all she said, get on the next plane to safety…. I had to tell my mother I was going to call the US embassy just to calm her down. Before I hung up the phone, I promised her that I would do whatever the embassy advised me to do. They were the experts after all. They would understand what to do in the event of a serious political crisis like this one.

After I ended the call with my parents, I looked up the US embassy phone number in my guidebook and dialed the number. The phone rang….. and rang…. and rang. No human picked up the phone to answer me. No answering machine picked up the phone to answer me. It just rang and rang and rang. I hung up the phone and double-checked the number. I tried again. It rang and rang and rang. I remember growing frustrated. I was a little ambivalent about calling them in the first place but when they didn’t answer, I became very annoyed and then angry. How much money did I give them every year in taxes for the sake of “national security.” Now, for the first time ever in my life that I needed them for actual help with “security” because I was stuck in a real life cout de tat and they can’t even answer the fucking telephone. Thinking maybe I had the wrong number, I left the booth and went to the information counter at the telecom center. I asked if they had the number for the US embassy and they gave me a number that was almost the same as the number in my guidebook with a different last digit. I went back to my phone booth and tried the new number. It rang and rang and rang…. No human picked up. No machine picked up. It rang and rang and rang….

Did that unanswered phone call at a moment of political crisis 27 years ago psychologically transform my relationship with the US government forever? No, probably not, but maybe a little. Although I have wandered around many parts of the world since then, I have never ever tried to call a US embassy again. I’ve been caught in several attempted coups/revolutions, a natural disaster, a couple robberies and several immigration border snafus as well over the years. But I never again called. Indeed, after the imaginary revolution two years later, I severed my relationship with the US corporate state altogether and stopped answering their calls as well. 

To be continued…

Finding a Safe Place to Land?

Macuto, Venezuela; November 1992

I was relaxed and day-dreaming of beauty queens when my flight left Panama City, Panama flew out over the Caribbean and came down to land at the Caracas international airport in late November 1992. It is somewhat strange to think about now, but when I first arrived in Caracas, I knew virtually nothing about Venezuela. It wasn’t even really part of my plan. I was only going there to avoid dangerous Columbia on my way to the Amazon jungle in Brazil. Actually, my lack of understanding of Venezuela was similar to my lack of understanding of all the countries that I visited in Central and South America in 1992-93. I was an educated lawyer and a regular reader of, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.  In that regard, I believed that I was well-informed on current events and I had a firm mental grasp of international relations. I also studied some Latin American countries during political science, economics or law courses, so I was familiar with all of the famous coups and revolutions. Cuba and Chile’ were the most thoroughly discussed but I also learned about Guatemala and Nicaragua in college and law school. El Salvador was in the news more recently and Columbia had become legendary for drug wars. But really, my knowledge of all these places was extremely superficial and very filtered through a higher education Cold War lens. I don’t think I could have even labeled all the countries on a map. Instead of knowledge, I had a perception of Latin America in general and of the individual countries specifically that was primarily based on mass media images implanted upon my brain. For Columbia; I thought about cocaine, drug wars, Pablo Escobar and revolutionaries. But for Venezuela; my brain just thought about beauty queens and baseball. Mostly the beauty queens.
I believed that Venezuela was a peaceful and stable country. It was allied with the US and it was a capitalist democracy like the US. It was also fairly wealthy because of the oil. It seemed to be a good safe place for Americans to travel. Gunther had told me about some sort of uprising in Caracas in 1989 in which some people were supposedly killed and he warned me that the whole country was a powder keg waiting to explode in revolution but I thought he was full of shit with revolution on the brain. He was bad mouthing Venezuela because he was selling tickets to Columbia. I had never heard of the uprising in 1989. It couldn’t be true. He also said there was going to be a revolution in Southern Mexico because a couple of local indigenes guys went to graduate school for economics and then went home to teach their friends and neighbors. “Mark my words,” he had said, “revolution is coming soon to Caracas and Chiapas.” But I thought he was crazy. Yeah right Gunther… revolution here, revolution there, revolution everywhere… The Cold War was over and I thought that there was no more need for revolutions. I remembered Ms. Venezuela from the the Ms. Universe contest I saw on television the year before. She was one of the sexiest women I had ever seen. She didn’t mention any Venezuelan revolution. There was the pitcher for the Dodgers, the catcher for the Mets and the shortstop for the Pirates, and they never mentioned a revolution brewing in their home countries. It was frequently commented on the gringo trail that Venezuela had the hottest women on the continent. Some people said there was a lot of petty crime there too. But no one other than Gunther ever mentioned an uprising in 1989 or any kind of revolutionary activity. Venezuela had Caribbean beaches, Angel Falls and the lost world of Mount Roraima. They had a professional baseball league. Maybe I’d go to a game or do a couple hikes when I wasn’t sitting on beaches with incredibly beautiful women. That’s right… the hottest women on the continent. And all of them just waiting to meet me… No doubt, my brain was still focused on the Amazon jungle in Brazil as my prime destination. But I was going to have myself some fun as I made my way through Venezuela to get there.When the plane arrived in Caracas International Airport it was after midnight. My brand new “Shoestring guidebook”, suggested that late night arrivals might want to take a taxi to the nearby beach town of Macuto where there was cheap accommodation instead of making the long haul to the Caracas City center. Apparently there was good public transport connecting this weekend holiday town to the major metropolis so some international travelers just used Macuto as their base while they visited Caracas. The idea of waking up near a beach appealed to me so that’s what I decided to do. But first I had to go through Immigration.

I don’t really remember the details of what happened at Immigration. But somehow or other, a very minor miscommunication transformed completely the next month of my trip. It was a routine bureaucratic encounter like hundreds of such encounters I’ve had over the years. But this was one of the early ones before I had any experience and I wasn’t paying attention well. I thought all US visitors received an automatic 60 day tourist visa upon arrival in Venezuela. When the immigration officer asked me what I intended to do in Venezuela, I told him that I planned to travel by bus across the country to the border with Brazil and visit some tourist sites along the way. When he asked me how long the journey would take? I answered a couple of weeks. Then when he asked me how many days (cuantas dias?), I didn’t realize he was asking how many days I wanted for my visa. I thought he just wanted me to guess how long I would be in Venezuela. I said 15 days (quince dias). He stamped my passport with a tourist VISA and then seemed to sign it or initial it. He closed up my passport and handed it back to me. “Bienvenidos a Venezuela” he said with a rather big smile. I said, “gracias”, and took my passport. I didn’t look closely at the stamp. I put my passport away and headed towards Customs.  

Because of the late hour, the airport was not busy so I made it through Customs and security rather quickly and found my way to the exit. The official taxi stand was easy to find and a ride to Macuto was surprisingly cheap. Everything was unfolding perfectly. It only took about 15 minutes to reach the beach town and my taxi driver recommended a nice cheap hotel that was right on the water. I clearly remember getting out of the taxi cab and smelling the ocean. An incredible sensation of relief washed over my whole soul. For five or six days, I had agonized in Panama about how I was going to get to South America and where I was going to go in South America. But now I was there. And I was by the beach. I inhaled the salty fishy air deep into my lungs and smiled. The traveling life was good.  
I lifted my backpack from the trunk and walked towards the dark hotel. I had to wake up the night watchman and I didn’t have a reservation but they had an open room and they were happy to rent it to me for a very reasonable price. It was on the second floor and it didn’t face the ocean but if I stuck my head out the window I could look to my left and see the ocean. I dropped my backpack on the floor and sat on the bed. There was an interior bathroom in the room with a working hot shower so I undressed and used it. I cleansed my body of Central America so I could start fresh and clean on the new continent. Afterwards, I opened the window to let the sea breeze waft in. Wow. I felt great. I frickin made it. I laid down on the bed and pulled the sheets up and over me. It was actually quite comfortable with a big fluffy pillow. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

It was like some kind of miracle. I slept for eleven straight hours without even waking up once. Out cold in oblivion, I didn’t even dream. Absolute bliss. The previous five nights in Panama, I was tormented by the apocalypse highway dream. I hadn’t hardly slept at all. Actually, the dream had been interfering with my sleep for weeks. And then, in Panama City it intensified. I had also been drinking a lot in Panama. The night I flew to Caracas was my first night sober since I arrived from Costa Rica. I had also been seriously stressed out about traveling through the Darien Gap into Columbia. Most likely, the stress, the alcohol and the lariam (malaria medicine) were interacting to produce the crazy dream. Gunther’s constant talk about revolution and oppression and gringo invasions didn’t help. But when I arrived in Macuto by the ocean and laid back on that comfortable bed, all of that stress and anxiety just dissipated into nothingness. It felt like the gods pulled a string and the knot around my soul released and unraveled. Sleep, sleep…. glorious sleep.

When I awoke, it seemed as if it was very late in the morning. I had no timepiece but when I looked out the window, the sun was high in the sky. I dressed and went downstairs to look for food. The clock above reception said 11:45 and the friendly man behind the desk asked me if I was checking out. The night before I had told them I was only staying for one night because I planned to move on to the big city in the morning. But now morning was already over and I was in no particular hurry to go anywhere. For the first time in a week, I felt rested and relaxed. I asked him about buses to Caracas city center and he told me there was a bus stop out in front of the hotel and the bus to city center went every hour from 5:00 am until 11:00 pm. So I still had plenty of time to get some brunch and head to Caracas in the afternoon if I wanted to. But the hotel guy wanted me to check out before noon if I was leaving so he could prepare the room for another possible guest. I decided to stay another night. No hurry, no worry.

That very first day I spent in Macuto was absolutely delightful. My spirit was buoyant as I walked up an down the small boardwalk and inhaled the salty air. It’s amazing the difference a good night sleep can make. I made it. I was there. My life long dream of traveling to South America had come true. I was on the continent… The town itself was not particularlily exciting; a hybrid cross of crowded big city and weekend getaway tourist trap. There was a crowded beach mostly occupied by families but some super hot young ladies in bikinis among them. There was a small row of restaurants and a few outdoor food stalls. I’m trying real hard to visualize the scene. Re-live that day now in my mind, 27 years later. But it’s all so vague and distant. I remember an idyllic sensation. I was comfortable. There was an outdoor picnic table near a food stand that I sat at eating empanadas and drinking maracuja juice. I could sit at that table and watch the beautiful ladies on the beach without looking like I was watching them. Wow… and the empanadas were delicious.

I remember going swimming in the ocean. My first of many dips in the oceans of South America. In the late afternoon, I left my passport and money belt in the safe at hotel reception and went with my towel and beach bag down to the beach near the shoreline. I laid down my towel and sat on it to watch the waves roll in. I hesitated to swim as I thought about possible thieves but all I really had in my bag was a book, sunscreen and sunglasses. With nothing of value to lose, I stripped off my tee-shirt, dropped my flip flops in the sand and ran forward to dive and tumble in the small waves. What fun! And nobody stole my flip flops.

In the evening, I went to an Oceanside restaurant. I sat at an outdoor table with my new guidebook and tried to plot my course through Venezuela as I ate my dinner and drank a few beers. Merida in the mountains looked awesome to a hiking guy like me. And so did the Eastern beach towns and the Orinoco Delta. Angel Falls and Canaima Lagoon were definitely on the agenda but the western beaches towards Columbia looked awesome as well. The end point of my Venezuela journey was the town of Santa Elena on the border with Brazil. But I was going to take a couple weeks getting there. I could go West towards Columbia and then cut south into the Mountains of Merida. From Merida, I could cut East across the middle of the country to Ciudad Bolivar and nearby Angel Falls before heading South again to the border at Santa Elena. Or, I could skip Merida and head straight east to the Orinoco Delta and the Eastern beaches. From there, I could just go straight south through Ciudad Bolivar to Santa Elena. Since I was going to hike up Mount Roraima near Santa Elena, did I real need to go the extra big loop through Merida for even more hiking? Probably? Maybe? I don’t know. That was the issue I was contemplating as I sipped my after dinner beer in Macuto. One way or another, I would start at the hostels in city center Caracas because I wanted to meet some backpackers with experience in the country to get some good local information. Maybe I would even meet some backpackers on their way to Merida. It would also be nice to see a little bit of the big city. So that was my plan for the following morning. 
I was back in my room before 11:00pm and I wasn’t drunk at all. I read my book for a while and went to bed. For the second night in a row, I slept very well without any crazy dreams. Maybe the ocean breezes through my window helped relax my soul. Or maybe the tension and anxiety had disappeared from my nervous system because I had decided to skip dangerous Columbia on my journey. Or maybe it was just the calm before the storm.  
I awoke fairly early to the sound of jet planes. No it wasn’t black helicopters from a crazy dream. It was real live airplanes because my hotel room was kind of near the airport. I got up and looked out the window. From the sun’s low position on the horizon, I guessed that it had to be about 8:00 am. I also saw several planes at the same time fly by overhead but I didn’t think much of it. Must be some kind of special event at the airport. I showered, brushed my teeth, dressed and packed up my backpack for travel. I could probably grab some empanadas for breakfast on way to the bus stop but first I had to check out. I picked up my pack and went down stairs to reception.

As I approached reception with my keys, I was greeted by very strange image that I will never forget. The old guy who worked there who spoke no English was standing behind the desk waving his arms in a crossing pattern towards me as if to indicate stop. “No no no no no,” he said as I approached. “No check out. No go Caracas. Hay un golpe! Hay un golpe!”  

“Un golpe?” I questioned. I probably had a very confused look on my face because I had no idea about the meaning of the word. “Un golpe?”

“Si,” he said, “un golpe!”. He then lowered his arms from their crossing pattern to hold an imaginary machine gun in his arms. He then acted out firing the imaginary machine gun all around him complete with “bang bang bang bang bang. Un golpe! Un golpe!”

“Huh?” I said, “un golpe?” I was scared by his charades but still not really sure what he was talking about. I can’t help but wonder how bewildered and confused my face looked.

“Venga,” he said, as he stepped out from behind the desk and indicated for me to follow him as he walked across the lobby. There were a few couches and some chairs on the other side of the lobby and about eight people gathered anxiously around a television set.  

As we got closer I could see the images on the screen. There was smoke and bombs and tanks on the streets of a big city. There were people running amid the smoke and there was the sound of gunfire and sirens. It looked like a war zone. “What’s going on?” I said to the group.

“Revolution’ en Caracas,” said someone.

“Holy shit ” I said. “Revolution in Caracas now?” Revolution’ was a Spanish word I understood.

“Si’,” they said, “revolution’ ahora.”  

“Well damn,” I said, “I guess I won’t be checking out today.”
To be continued…

Safe Travels?

Panama City, Panama; November 1992

How paranoid was I? My present perspective continues to confuse the past. After so many Winters of wandering, I now have lots of experience negotiating tour prices with street scoundrels. Crazy characters don’t frighten me at all. Indeed, I usually try to understand them on a cellular level because the stories behind their circumstances are always unique and interesting. In other words, I think it’s fun to banter with bullshitters. But this was 27 years ago. Before I had any such experience. How naive was I? How foolish was I? I can’t honestly remember clearly but it seems very unreal in retrospect. I was suffering from significant psychological turmoil. I couldn’t decide what to do. I was very worried about the Darien Gap and traveling in Columbia. I was having nightmares about black helicopters on an apocalyptic highway so I wasn’t sleeping. Gunther’s promise of CIA protection for the Gap seemed like bullshit and all his talk of Revolution and the gringo invasion made me nervous but the more I thought about Carlos’ sailboat tour to Cartagena, the more it seemed like a dodgy operation too. I met him on the dock and he played me like a fiddle. Seventy-five dollars a day for a boat ride was pretty expensive for those parts. I never even saw the boat and Carlos’ seemed a little on the young side to be running sailboat tours. Maybe going all the way to Columbia on a sailboat with him was a bad idea?  

After my long lunch near the harbor with Gary, the minibus/collectivo took me back across the Isthmus and dropped me off in the old colonial part of the big city. It was early evening and I was supposed to meet Gunther back at the hotel to have a look at his suggested itinerary for Darien but I walked by the Irish Bar on the way there and decided to stop in for happy hour. I got smashed… drunk…. obliterated… and talked politics long into the night with a bunch of faceless, nameless, expats who occupied the barstools around me. I don’t remember the details, of course, because it was a night like many many others. When I was a lawyer, I did this sort of thing a lot. It is the lawyer thing to do. Get drunk and argue about politics. The male lawyer specimen demonstrates his virility through the forcefulness of his argumentation… I was probably advocating for the newly elected US administration. Things were going to change in Central America. America was now going to focus on human rights and environmental protection instead profits and military aid. Blah blah blah… I don’t think I ate the shepherds’ pie again and I only drank Guiness and whiskey without any tequila. Thankfully, I didn’t throw up on the way back to the hotel. But it was after midnight when I got there so I missed my meeting with Gunther. I went straight to my room and passed out drunk.

I awoke fully dressed in a pool of sweat shaking and writhing on the bed to escape the black helicopter gunfire in the apocalypse highway dream. My head hurt and the inside of my mouth tasted like a dirty sock. I went across the hall to wretch but not puke. I drank water, popped a couple ibuprofen, undressed and tried to go back to bed. I had no idea the hour because I had no timepiece, but it was still dark outside. I was a little afraid to sleep because of the damn dream but I knew morning would come sooner if I slipped into unconsciousness for a little while. Columbia? Columbia? Did I dare to go to Columbia? Did I dare to travel the Darien Gap? Or should I take the sailboat? My head hurt and my mouth was dry. I wanted to feel better. I wanted the night to be over and morning to come. I drifted off to sleep and the nightmare came again. Explosions, smoke, black helicopters and I am running to get away. I awoke in a pool of sweat again but this time, at least, there was morning light in the sky.

I showered across the hall, then dressed and headed to breakfast on the balcony. I felt like a walking zombie in desperate need of coffee. Gunther was there at his usual table and he invited me to join him.

“Sorry I missed you last night,” I said as I sat down, “I didn’t get back from the harbor until late. So I went straight to dinner and drinks without coming back to the hotel.”

“No problem,” he said, “I was here anyway, like I always am. I have your information today if you want it. On accommodation and transport through Darien? Or maybe you had some luck yesterday finding a boat to Venezuela?”

“I did find a boat,” I said, “a sailboat, but it only goes to Cartagena not all the way to Venezuela.”

“That sounds dangerous,” he said, “prime smuggling route. What do you know about the captain? What militia does he belong to? Where did you meet him?”

“He doesn’t belong to any militia,” I said. “He’s an independent tour operator who runs round trip tours to the San Blas Islands from Cartagena. A couple of his tourists wanted to keep going north into Central America so he brought them to the mainland to catch onward transport. I met him on the docks near the harbor and he offered me one of the empty spots on his sailboat for the trip back to Cartagena.” Just as I finished my explanation, the waiter in white showed up with my coffee. I praised the universe for small favors, ordered a breakfast of scrambled eggs and took a sip of the glorious black liquid. Gunther waited until the waiter was gone before he responded to my statement.

“Independent tour operator?” He said with a sarcastic scoff. “Doesn’t belong to a militia? Yeah, right. Sounds like your boat captain tells good stories. The coastal waters between Panama and Cartagena are all controlled by paramilitaries. It’s pretty much the same as the Darien Gap. There is no way a sailboat travels that route on its own. Your captain must belong to a militia and that’s the first question you should ask him before you get on his boat. To whom do you pay your protection money? Is this trip going to be safe?

“I’m pretty sure he’s not a paramilitary,” I said. “He detours far away from coastal waters to reach Cartagena. He told me that lots of gringos were going the sailboat route to avoid the skirmishing militias in the Gap. Apparently, there has been a lot of killing in Darien lately because of an escalation in the feud between paramilitaries.”

“Sounds like your boat captain is a bullshit con-artist trying hard to sell dodgy sailboat rides, ” he said. “There’s no escalating feud between rival paramilitaries in Darien. There’s a fragile truce negotiated by da CIA. Check the local papers if you don’t believe me.” He slid his pile of newspapers across the table towards me. “No mention of murder or kidnapping in Darien lately.”

“Are you saying it’s safe to travel Darien now? That I don’t need your CIA protection plan?”
“You always need protection my friend. Everywhere you go in the world. That’s da way da game works. Sometimes you pay da Gringos, sometimes you pay da local governments, sometimes you pay militias or revolutionaries or tribal chiefs. But you always have to pay somebody or you will end up dead.”

“That seems crazy,” I said.

“No no, not crazy,” he said, “it is practical. If you are going to be world traveling it is best to understand the political situation on the ground of all the places you are going before you get there. The very first thing you always have to do is figure out who da boss is and then get permission from da boss to travel through da area.”

“I haven’t needed any permission from anybody so far and I’ve traveled all the way down from Texas through Mexico and Central America to here in Panama?”

 “You have a US passport don’t you?” He questioned.

“Well, yes, of course I do.””Da passport is da permission from da boss. Da Gringos are da biggest bosses of all in these parts. They control the most territory. Especially da main roads and popular tourists sites. All you need is US passport if you stay on main gringo route. But if you go off beaten track. To non-controlled areas. You could find yourself in big trouble.”

“In Guatemala, we were advised to leave our US passports in the hotel safe on our way to Tikal because revolutionaries would stop buses and only rob the Americans. But I was never actually stopped by revolutionaries myself.”

“Yes yes,” he said, “there are parts of Guatemala still in dispute. Gringos don’t control everything yet and they are losing control more and more there. Same with El Salvador and Nicaragua too. Even small parts of Honduras are resisting. But mostly da Gringos control everything.”

“You make it sound like these places are conquered colonies and that’s not true. They are independent nations that get economic and military aid from the US. It is safe to travel there because they follow the rule of law not because they are under gringo control.”

“Oh no, my young friend, they are colonies as you say, definitely not independent nations. Entrenched oligarchies that rule through the use of a strong military to strip their lands of value and send that value north to USA. Gringos provide da money and and da weapons and da training. Local oligarchs and generals may look like locals but believe me, they work for Gringos. Didn’t you go through military checkpoints on your way through Central America?

“Yes,” I said, “lots of them. Especially in Honduras and Guatemala. But everywhere else too. Even Costa Rica. The first couple were kind of scary. But I never had any problems. They searched buses and checked identification but then they always let us go.

“Your American passport is da golden ticket. And US dollars are da gold,” he said. “All the official government militaries down here get funding and training and weapons from the US. So you da gringo, are really da client that they are serving. In other words, all those military checkpoints aren’t a danger to you because they are done on your behalf… da checkpoints are there to protect you.”

“But I don’t need protection,” I said, “that’s the whole point. A free world. And those damn checkpoints certainly seem dangerous.

“Oh yes you need protection,” he said, “lots of locals would roll a gringo in a heartbeat if not for the presence of the military.”

“You really think so? What if I’m not a gringo like you say? What if I’m just a humble traveler. Would the locals still want to attack me? I think the young military guys with their big guns and nervous smiles are way scarier than any of my fellow passengers. Did you know I saw them take frightened teenagers and young men right off the buses on several occasions. I couldn’t tell if they were arresting them for being revolutionaries or drafting them on the spot to join the military.”

“Probably a little of both. The interrogation trick question. Do you want to “volunteer” for the military or are you a revolutionary that needs to be arrested?”

“It all just seems horrible.,” I said. “Horrible for the military and for the passengers as well. Big guns and invasive searches. That’s no way for humans to behave.”

“But they do it everywhere… many places all over the world. It is a common outcome of the political dynamic between the ruling class forces of oppression and the servant class forces of revolution. There will certainly be many such searches in Columbia.”

“But if my US passport was the golden ticket in Central America shouldn’t it be good in Columbia as well?”

“In the central corridor of the country controlled by the government, your US passport is all you need. But much of Columbia is disputed by paramilitaries and revolutionaries. In disputed territories, your gringo passport could get you killed or kidnapped. The area around the Venezuela border is disputed, the southern jungle is disputed and so is the Darien Gap. For all those regions, it is necessary to make pre-arrangements with the controlling militias before attempting to travel through.”

“So if I take a sailboat to Cartagena, I can’t just hop on a bus from there to Venezuela.” 

“You probably won’t make it to Cartagena unless your sailboat is paying protection to the right para-military group. But if you do, you better contact the ELN before getting on the bus. If you can convince them that you are just a humble traveler rather than an invading gringo, they will probably give you permission to pass through to Venezuela.

“And what about Darien? I thought you said yesterday that the gringos controlled the Gap. Why isn’t my passport good enough for there?”

“The Gap is disputed area. Not under anyone’s control. Many different paramilitaries are in on the action. But the gringos have influence. They supply most of the weapons to all the paramilitaries. That’s why they have a network of safe places to stay and reliable transport through the zone. Here, I wrote it all down for you.” He tore out a page from a notebook on the table beside him and handed it over.

I looked at the paper. There was a list of three guesthouses in Panama and four guesthouses in Columbia with addresses and phone numbers for each. There were also several transportation companies (bus, minibus and boat) listed with contact information. And finally there was a hand drawn map that labeled all the villages with the guesthouses along the route all the way to Cartagena. “This looks great. Very useful. Thanks. And… uh…. how much should I pay you for it?”

“The information is free,” he said. “If you want to try the humble traveler routine you can probably follow the route on the map all the way to Cartagena and not have any problems. But if you want to be safe as a gringo, I can book your rooms and transport for you and sell you a safe passage security card to get you through the paramilitary checkpoints for a hundred dollars.”

“And how much will the rooms and transport cost me?” I asked

“About two hundred.”

“So you can get me from here to Cartagena safely for about $300 bucks?” I said.

“That’s right,” he said, “from here to Cartagena for 300 or less. Now that’s a good price? Way cheaper than your sailboat cruise I bet.”

“A little cheaper but not a lot,” I said. “But the big question for me is which way is safer?”

“My way is definitely safer,” he said. “I promise you. If you take the gringo secure network you will definitely make it to Cartagena without any hassles.”

I didn’t accept Gunther’s offer for traveling Darien right then and there at the breakfast table. Instead, I told him I was interested but undecided. I promised to let him know within a few days. Truthfully, I was totally confused and perplexed. I couldn’t decide what to do and I didn’t want to decide anything about my next move until I at least looked at a guidebook for South America. With that in mind, I set out for the international airport after breakfast because Gunther told me they had a bookstore there that sold English language South American guidebooks.

A funny thing happened at the airport in Panama City. I found the bookshop selling guidebooks right where Gunther said I would find it. Somewhat incredibly, they had an almost new “South America on a Shoestring,” guidebook that I was able to purchase. As I stood there in front of the bookshop greedily consuming the info about Columbia and Venezuela in my new book, I noticed a travel ticket agency across the roadway. Just out of curiosity, I went to check the cost of airline tickets. I was a little disappointed to learn that it would cost almost $400 to fly to Cartagena or Bogota. But then I was shocked and overjoyed to discover that I could fly one way on the late night commuter airline to Caracas for only $189 dollars. I bought the ticket right then and there for the following night. Fuck the crazy sailboat. Fuck the goddamn gringo safety network. I’m taking the easy way.

I spent the next 36 hours avoiding Gunther so I wouldn’t have to tell him I was going to fly. I spent my time walking around the old colonial part of the city and drinking in the Irish pub. The following night, I caught the red-eye to Caracas. Somewhat ironically, the day after I arrived in the safe country of Venezuela, the entire country erupted into revolution.

To be continued…

Do I Dare?

Panama City, Panama; November 1992

Waiting for the Sun to rise… desperately. My head hurt and I was very sweaty. I didn’t want to shut my eyes anymore because I was tired of the dream. I couldn’t deal with it anymore. There seemed to be a dim light in the atmosphere. It had to be almost dawn. I wanted to get up and face the day. I wanted the shitty night to be over. I had things I needed to do. I was in Panama City. I wanted to continue South to South America. The only possible way to go overland to South America was to go through the area known as the Darien Gap into Columbia. The guide book warned that it was a dangerous route filled with drug smugglers and paramilitaries. Indeed, the tiny Isthmus which connects Columbia to Panama had become sort of legendary among the many backpackers I met traveling in Central America… Have you done the Gap? No way man, the Gap is too dangerous. Si’, the Gap Es muy peligroso. I want go Gap? You too? Do you dare to do Darien man, cuz it is danger zone….

As a practical matter it was very difficult to “do Darien” because the area was mostly a very big swamp with only a few passable dirt roads. Control of the few roads was often in dispute between various rival paramilitary factions so much traveling in the region was done by speed boats or small plane. The guidebook recommended getting on the ground, up to the minute information before trying any route through the region because the security situation there was always in flux. Part of me wanted to do it, but mostly I was afraid. With all the news stories about Pablo Escobar and violent drug wars in Columbia, I was thinking about skipping Columbia altogether. I really wanted to hurry up and get to the Amazon. Couldn’t I by-pass Columbia altogether and just quickly cut through Venezuela to Brazil?

According to my guidebook, it was possible to go directly by boat from Panama City, Panama to a harbor on the coast near Caracas, Venezuela but it was not easy to arrange passage because there was no official public ferry plying the route. There were a few private cruise ships that connected the two destinations but passage on cruise ships was expensive with several pleasure stops along the way. It was also possible to charter a boat from the Panama City harbor to the Venezuelan harbor but that too would be very expensive unless you were part of a big group defraying the costs. For shoestring travelers, my guidebook recommended asking at the private cruise lines for a job as a deckhand in exchange for free passage or going to the harbor and checking bulletin boards for notices of groups that might be looking for sign-ons. So that was my plan for the day. Head to the harbor to find out about boats to Venezuela and scope out some on the ground, up to date information on the Darien route to Columbia.

The sun was definitely up. It was light out. I climbed my hungover, sweaty self out of bed and went across the hall to the bathroom and showers. I had to brush my teeth about six times and submit to a blast of very cold splash, but I felt mostly sane by the time I dressed and headed out the door to find breakfast. This was 1992, so I was traveling without cell phone or iPad and I had no individual timepiece so I never really knew what time it was but I was guessing it was about 7:00 am. The price of the hotel room theoretically included breakfast that was served from 7:00am -10:00am in the balcony sitting area so that is where I went. A young local man dressed in waiter whites greeted me as I approached and asked if I wanted coffee or tea. I scanned the scene. Only a few tables were occupied but there was Gunther sitting at the same table as the evening before. He saw me as well and gestured for me to join him. I told the waiter I wanted coffee and went to join my new Swiss friend.

“Good morning my young gringo friend,” he said, “I trust you found some food last night and got yourself a good night sleep.”

“Sort of,” I said as I sat down. “I went to the Irish place and had the Shepard’s pie.”

“Not exactly Panamanian cuisine but delicious nonetheless.”

“Sure tasted good,” I said, “but it didn’t do well in my belly.”

“Now now,” said Gunther, “don’t blame da pie for da problem of da whiskey.”

“Very perceptive,” I said.

“Or da problem of da tequila,” he added. His wrinkled eyes twitched sporadically as he smiled like a dirty gnome in possession of incriminating secrets.

The realization hit me with a wave of nausea. “Oh my god, you were there. Did I see you? Did I talk to you? I hope I didn’t say anything offensive. I’m sorry if I did. I was really drunk. I don’t even know why. I honestly can’t remember seeing you at all. For that matter, the whole night is such a blur that I hardly remember anything. I was so wasted I think I even threw up in the plaza on the way home. Could someone have spiked my drink?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “but probably not. I was only there for a half hour around ten o’clock. We didn’t talk because you were busy doing shots of tequila with some bar friends when I saw you. I waved hello but you didn’t seem to recognize me. My educated guess is that it was the tequila that made you sick. Someone else didn’t spike your drink. You spiked it yourself by switching from good clean whiskey to dirty yellow piss water.”

At this point, the waiter in white arrived carrying my coffee. He was Panamanian but his English was very good. There were three breakfast options; pancakes, eggs or fruit salad. Gunther already had the pancakes in front of him and I chose the eggs (huevos revueltoes). After the waiter was gone, I sipped the coffee and tried to relax. But the caffeine gave me the jitters.

“So now what?” said Gunther inquisitively. “You heading towards da Gap very soon or you planning to stay around and take in some Panamanian attractions first?”