DIA DIEZ

New Year's day is wonderfully relaxing. We sleep late, eat some leftovers, and nurse our hangovers. Emiliana shows up around 3pm to drive us to the top of Mount Avila for some sightseeing. The drive up is rather treacherous. Incredibly steep inclines that only a four-wheel-drive jeep such as ours could dare attempt. Emiliana, naturally, navigates the ascent with no effort whatsoever.

The view from the top of Mount Avila is breathtaking. You can see the Caribbean on one side and all of Caracas on the other. We buy some raspberry wine from this little gift shop and soak in the remaining hours of the day. Carolina and Gustavo soon arrive in Carolina's all white, bullet-proof Land Cruiser.
Bullet proof land cruiser?
Even the tires?
This chick just got even cooler.

We get to know the both of them a bit better over a few more bottles of raspberry wine. Carolina does in fact do non-profit charity work, building roads and infrastructure in the ghettos of Caracas. She also throws events and has some kind of furniture company or something. Gustavo is an executive at Citibank and a very cool dude. Both of them speak English with a flawless American accent.





After sundown, we decide to head back down the mountain to have some drinks at Carolina's pad. Before we depart, Gustavo tells us about the last time they took this route at night. Apparently some rather shady cops pulled them over, in the ghetto at the bottom of the mountain. Gustavo, always on his toes (like everyone here), had his doubts about their authenticity. He followed his instincts and decided to flee the scene. After all, they were driving Carolina's bullet-proof SUV for god's sake. Eventually, the fake cops gave up the chase. Seemed like he made the right move. For this reason, when we are halfway down the mountain, we suddenly take a dirt road detour. This dirt road leads you right up on to the nearby highway. This is the only way to avoid the ghetto below. Anne and I are cracking up, as driving out on to a moving highway from some random dirt road would never happen in the states in a million years. Not so in Caracas. They just don't give a fuck. All traffic laws are subject to interpretation, with the letter of the law being the least important factor in your decision making process.

We go back to Carolina's apartment to continue our New year's Day wind down. She is the only woman that we have met that lives alone. And she doesn't even have a dog. This is extremely rare in Caracas.



Her place is mad cute. Vintage modern furniture and all sort of funky furnishings everywhere you look. A white metal gate separates the living room from a spacious open-air balcony. Once slid open, the two spaces become one big room. Very fucking cool. We listen to music and drink more red wine and some champagne. Joints are rolled as we peruse books about Venezuela's cutting edge artists. Carolina is, to no one's surprise, personal friends with all of the artists in the books. A very civilized affair, no doubt.

Anne and Carolina hit it off immediately. Gustavo and I bond on how attracted we both are to Carolina. Or maybe that is just in my head. We discuss art and politics and New York City and architecture and music and whatnot. These two are the first Venezuelans we have met who are willing to talk about Chavez. Everyone else seems too embarrassed.

The four of us tell some more funny stories from Canaima and Orinoco. They are particularly amused by Anne's description of Cheo and Anabella's fight that took place the morning of the hike to Angel Falls:
"I knew they were fighting.....I heard many coños!" says Anne.
It's true, she did.






DIA ONCE - GIO PONTI'S VILLA PLANCHART

Way back when, when Anne and I first met the Venezweirdos, the very first topic of conversation was the Gio Ponti house in Caracas. This house, known internationally as "Villa Planchart" and locally as "El Cerrito", is one of Gio Ponti's masterpieces. It is quite often included among the great works of modern residential architecture, and to one day visit this house has been a dream of Anne's since she was a wee student back at Parsons.

Gio Ponti built El Cerrito in 1956 for Armando and Anala Planchart. When they passed away, care of the house was entrusted to their nephew, Carlos Figueredo. Carlos just happens to be the father of Armando, the keyboard player in Los Amigos Invisibles. So calls are made, fingers are crossed, and next thing we know, we have been invited to receive a personal tour from Carlos himself. All we have to do is pick Carlos and his wife Carlotta up at their house, and maybe bring them a pastry for good measure. Amazing! A once in a lifetime opportunity has basically fallen in our lap. This trip just gets better and better. Anne is so excited she can hardly contain herself.

Word has also spread among Anabella's friends that the house, usually closed to the public, is being opened up just for us. Without hesitation, Carolina, Gustavo, Emiliana, and yet another cousin named Jorge, all rush to meet us at the villa within the hour.

The house sits at the crest of a hilltop overlooking Caracas. There is a 360 degree view of the city and surrounding hills. The day can't be more beautiful, nor the view more breathtaking. We gather by the front entrance and wait for Carlos to begin. We are told that photos are permitted outside only. Damn!






We walk through the front door and stop in the foyer. The first thing Carlos points out are the stucco ceilings just inside the door. It is here that Gio Ponti embedded mosaic tile graphic forms that establish the design motifs for the entire house. I sketched them below. The two letter A's represent the owners, Armando and Anala.



The color scheme is consistent: de-saturated variations of slate blue, yellow ochre, olive, brown, and a dull maroon.

The doorway is flanked by two different kinds of orchids. The Plancharts were manic orchid collectors. There are 6000 orchids here, we are told. That seems unimaginable. To the far right and left of the foyer we see two outdoor porches. The walls of each are lined with hanging orchids. Two hundred different kinds? Maybe more. Hard to guess. The aroma when you step through the door is divine.

Anne's jaw is on the floor, for the house is pretty much immaculately preserved, just as it was created fifty years ago. What is most incredible is that Gio Ponti designed every single square inch. There is not a surface or object that doesn't bear his influence in some form or another. He designed the structure. He designed the landscape. He designed the furniture. He designed the glassware. He designed the cutlery. He designed the silver tea set. Every piece of cabinetry. Every window frame. Every ceiling panel. Every light fixture. And on and on and on. In several places he commissioned modern artists to create pieces for specific architectural forms, like the chimney or the staircase. Unbelievable.

The walls are off-white. The ceilings are off-white with sections of long, bright yellow strips stretching from one room to another. The foyer floor is made up of large, irregularly shaped slabs of brilliantly complex Italian marble of the most exquisite colors imaginable. Pinks. Purples. Golds. Yellows. Whites. Each slab is encased by long, thin, brass strips, forming a squashed hexagonal puzzle pattern. I think the rest of the house has white marble floors.

these interior photos are borrowed from a few 1960s magazine spreads. That's how long it's been since photos were taken inside the house. The colors are a bit off, but you'll get the idea.


A giant black Calder mobile hangs just inside the entrance. This is the certainly the fist time in my life I have seen a Calder simply hanging in someone's home. Crazy. Carlos tells us the mobile was originally purchased by a friend of the Plancharts in Caracas (great grandfather of our NYC friend, Manu, as it turns out), but their house couldn't accommodate it, so it was moved here.

Carlos begins telling the long and complex story of how the house came to be, of the Plancharts love of architecture, and their long correspondence with Gio Ponti during the design and construction process. Gio Ponti visited the house five or six times, and they kept a spare room specifically set aside for him.

We are brought in to Armando's den, where Carlos pulls out the original blueprints just for Anne's perusal. Gio Ponti's doodles and scribbles are all over the margins. Page after page of revisions. Long red lines define the line of sight from room to room. Aside from the aforementioned Calder mobile, one of the first things you notice inside the house is your line of sight. From anywhere you stand, you can see throughout the house, from room to room. From indoor space, to outdoor space, back to indoor space. It's really pretty damn cool.

The den has a funny secret: Armando was an avid hunter and collector of giant, trophy heads from his numerous safaris. Both Anala and Gio Ponti despised the grotesque trophies, and didn't want them anywhere in the house. A compromise was reached. Carlos pushes a button on the wall, beginning aloud, mechanical motor sound. The six modern paintings that separate the book cases on all sides of us slowly revolve around, like a lazy susan. Their 180 degree rotation unveils six cavernous cabinets, containing six mounted animal heads. Deer, Lion, Rhino, buffalo, antelope, and zebra. Below the heads, artifacts from the safari are neatly and symmetrically arranged. Two hunting pistols. Two canteens. Etc. Carlos pushes the button again and the heads disappear. This is some James Bond shit, for real. So fucking cool. You can kind of see what I'm talking about in the tiny photos below. The two photos furthest to the right: first one is before the button is pushed, second is after the heads have swiveled out in to the room.



The only elements that remain independent of Gio Ponti's singular vision are the individual pieces of the Planchart's own art collection. Millions and millions of dollars worth of modern art, most of it Venezuelan in origin. Names like Armando Reverón, Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Díez , Francisco Narvaez, Victor Vasarely, Manuel Cabre, Alejandro Otero, and a slew of others I cannot even remember. There are several Miro rugs, as well as another Calder or two, and some Italian modernists as well. Gaps in the walls here and there represent pieces that are on loan to exhibits around the world. There is even a piece by Anabella's great aunt, Elisa Zuloaga. Gio Ponti had asked specifically that this be hung in his guest room. This was the first I had heard of there being great modern artists in Anabella's family, but by this stage, I was not the least bit surprised.




What a treat this is. There is a story behind almost everything, and Carlos takes his time re-telling the best of these historic tales, all for our enjoyment. This is my favorite:

In early January of 1958, Gio Ponti was visiting Caracas. A lunch date was made with the Plancharts, Gio Ponti, and the prestigious Venezuelan intellectual Arturo Uslar Pietri. Pietri was married to Anala's sister. Pietri had to cancel lunch, due to the fact that he had been recently jailed by the notorious dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez. The Plancharts decided to forgo lunch in order to visit him in prison. They were terrified. Gio Ponti, on the contrary, seemed excited and rather happy about the news of his imprisonment.
"When the important people get arrested" Gio Ponti assured them, "you know a regime is on its last legs".
Two weeks later, they sat on the second floor balcony of the house overlooking the airport, Using the huge white binoculars that are still mounted there to this day, they watched Perez Jimenez flee the country in a small plane, escaping to the Domincan Republic with 250 million dollars from the national treasury. Gio Ponti and the Plancharts are believed to be among the first to be aware of his scandalous departure. All of Caracas partied in the streets that night, celebrating PJ's defeat.




After getting the grand tour of every single room in the house, Anne was on the verge of tears. It is really a dream come true. I was ecstatic to have played some role in realizing this, though all the credit truly goes to Anabella and Cheo.

Carlos' son, who was the resident orchid caretaker, took us down through the back gardens to the three gigantic greenhouses embedded in the hillside overlooking downtown. The concrete path to the greenhouses was lined with large cages containing pairs of every shade of macaw parrot found in Venezuela. The huge birds acknowledge each of us as we pass by. Inside the greenhouses we find the diligently maintained Planchart orchid collection - 6000 orchids, give or take; those that weren't in the current rotation inside the house, that is. Walking down the rows and rows of plants, each new orchid I come upon is more extraordinary than the previous. Each one wipes away a few hours of computer time. The more time I spend soaking in the details and colors and shapes, the fewer and fewer Photoshop layers my brain retains. I think this is working.






The place just continues to amaze me at every turn. From the outside, each angle of the house presents a new geometric juxtaposition of blue sky and angular form. It is endlessly captivating. Nobody wants to leave. Anne is going crazy with the photos. We all are. We know we may never get to see this place ever again. What a day.

After numerous heartfelt thanks to Carlos, his wife, and their son the orchid wizard, we bid Villa Planchart farewell and head back down in to the city to get some lunch with Carolina, Gustavo, Emiliana, and Jorge.

One would think that such an experience could simply not be topped, at least not today. For Anne, this is most certainly true. For me, however, there is still one very large Caracas stone unturned: used record stores. Cheo keeps assuring me we will find some time to go digging. This is our last full day in Caracas, so it is now or never.

Anne and Anabella set out to take photos of the world famous University. Gustavo is kind enough to give us (Cheo, Carolina, and I) a lift to El Centro, the heart of the city. On the way, Gustavo tries to further explain just how fucked up the Venezuelan economic system is. He works for Citibank, so it seems he knows of which he speaks. Chavez keeps an incredibly tight grip on all Venezuelan money, tightly controlling how much money comes in and greatly limiting how much money comes out. Any economic move requires months of waiting for government approval. Bizarre limits are placed on business transactions that stifle or stall activity. And the entire system is precariously resting on the current inflated price of oil. All of this, Gustavo believes, is slowly dragging the economy towards financial ruin. Like almost every other person I have spoken to, he fears dark days ahead.

To say that our record shopping excursion is a success would be the understatement of the year. At one lousy spot, in two measly little hours, we hit the freakin' MOTHERLOAD. Crate after crate of priceless salsa vinyl. Disco classics. Funk. Soul. And all of it only ONE DOLLAR. Rare records I would pay sixty dollars for on Ebay. Records that have all but evaporated from NY bins due to scumbag dealers and zealous Japanese collectors. I go absolutely BANANAS! Cheo and Carolina are handing me salsa records left and right. Did I mention that this chick told me she also MAKES BEATS? Crazy. I have to stop when I am halfway through the inventory simply because I have no idea how I will even get all this stuff on the plane. Still, I find so many gems. I just doubled my salsa collection right here and now. Suffice it to say that, in the NYC parlance of our times, I "caught mad shit up in there son". I scanned most of the records in and posted them on the last page of this blog (ocho). I left out some of the more obvious disco 12"s.

Venezuela just gives and gives and gives. And we're still not done. Next stop: Los Roques!