DIA DOCE

We catch a dinky little 24 seater to Los Roques. The flight takes 36 minutes. The airline only has two of these planes. They make Cheo go on the other one, because ours is full. Strangely, they do not stagger these flights (one coming, one going). They fly to and from the island together, like those parrots in the Orinoco. The fat kid in front of me leans his seat back so far, he is using my knees as arm rests. His Dad does nothing to discourage this.

The Los Roques archipelago is an atoll about 90 miles north of Caracas, consisting of about fifty islands of various sizes. Though now a national park, there is still one miniscule town left over from days gone by. There are about 1500 local inhabitants, descended from pirates and slaves and all manner of seafaring n'er-do-wells. I've got a hunch that they're all related, as they have very similar features, though their skin tones vary a great deal. The ocean is bath-water warm, beautifully clear, and all shades of aqua blues and greens. Los Roques is known for fishing and diving and not much else.

Most vacationers stay on El Gran Roque, the biggest island, where there are numerous posadas to accommodate every single obnoxious Italian on the face of the earth. Wealthy Venezuelans stay on their own boats. Some Caracas people even come for the day, though I would guess that only the very rich can afford this. Plane flights are beyond the means of most Venezuelans. There is no real nightlife to speak of, just a handful of restaurants on the main island.

Did I mention the place is infested with Italians? Infested.

And wouldn't you know it... Anabella's great grandfather was the first person to build a vacation home here, long before it was a national park. He and another relative built the airport and what little infrastructure there is. One of her relatives owns the posada where we are staying, though apparently the high season prevented us from getting a discount. It's a beautiful 2-floor place right on the beach. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a luxurious kitchen and living/dining room. This is by far the most high end accommodations we have had the pleasure of visiting in Venezuela. I think the price was $200 a night.






This poster and the Chavez action figure were both in the liquor store. Cheo tells me Florentino Y El Diablo is a Venezuelan fable similar to David and Goliath. You can guess what role Chavez is playing.


This is the relaxing portion of our whirlwind Venezuelan Vacation. Perfect timing, like everything else this entire trip.

The daily routine is this: get up, buy some breakfast arepas from the stand out on the road, pack a lunch, hire a boat to take drop us off on one of the surrounding keys, get picked up at the end of the day, and cook dinner back in the posada. We brought a cooler for transporting lunch and beer. That is pretty much all you need. The posada has provided beach umbrellas. The price of the boat is determined by how far you go. The further out the island is, the more deserted your beach.

After landing, we got settled in our place and got ready for the beach. We have brought 60, 50, and 40 sunblock. Every single person in Caracas said "don't forget your sunblock". It is absurdly hot here, and once you get dropped off on a remote beach for the rest of the day, your beach umbrella is your only refuge.

We are content with going to one of the two closest keys to find a nice open stretch to call our own. Our boat drops us off around noon on Madres Key, with instructions to return for us at 5pm. We pitch the umbrellas and hit the water. This really doesn't suck. Not in any way, shape, or form.



Everybody brings books and magazines and journals, but all we do is lie around, drink rum, and swap stories all day. Periodical swimming breaks. Pretty sure there is a nap or two mixed in there somewhere.



Sometime during the afternoon I awake with a revelation about Anabella's father, John. There is something so enigmatic about him, it was really gnawing at the back of my brain ever since we landed in Caracas. Not only is it that confounded, mischievous grin he is always wearing, but also his mysterious appearances. Whenever you're at Anabella's home, he's never around. Then, all of a sudden, he just appears. You turn around, and he's standing in the room, like he's been there the whole time. You're sitting at dinner. There is a place set for him but he is nowhere to be seen. All of a sudden, you look next to you and there he is, fixing himself a plate. nobody else seems to notice. So that's one thing. Or two, I guess, counting the mysterious, mischievous grin.

Then there's this third thing: on two separate occasions, I seemed to interrupt him frozen in some bizarre Thai Chi pose. Once, in the middle of the living room, and a second time, on a completely different day, in the back yard. It looked partly like Thai Chi, partly like he was concentrating really hard to shoot a fireball out of his right hand. He would stand there, almost frozen. His legs set in some kind of fighting stance. His right arm raised high over his head, palm facing forward in a claw-like position. His left arm was bent, with the palm facing forward in kind of a defensive position. Even after I see him, he would hold the pose for another few seconds, before slowly lowering his arms and walking over to greet me, with that goofy grin on his face. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I am baffled. Below is a god-awful illustration I did in two seconds, that does not, I repeat, does NOT look ANYTHING like John (Forgive me Joncito!)



Then, in some dreamy moment on the beach, it hit me. HE CAN TIME TRAVEL. He can time travel, but the catch is, he can't control it. So he has no control over when he arrives and when he departs. This explains many things. This explains how he just all of a sudden appears in the house. You never hear him come. You never here him go. One minute he's not there - next minute? there he is. Maybe he's got the Billy Pilgrim thing, from Slaughterhouse Five, where he has become unstuck in time, zipping back and forth between various moments in his life. This might explain the grin - his child-like amusement with nearly every situation. Having just come from his birth, or his death, or his graduation, or skinning his knee when he was 7, or whatever, he is keenly aware of the relative insignificance of most individual moments. He sees the big picture. I mean, TRULY grasps it, so he can not be overly concerned or unnecessarily engaged with any particular instance. It is all amusing in it's own way. Therefore, the ninja fighting stance thing must have something to do with his actual teleportation through time. He needs to get in that position to break the time space continuum. That, or maybe he is actually sitting in some kind of invisible time machine, that only he can see. This theory goes over well with the group. Cheo seems to think I'm really on to something.

The boat is horrendously late to pick us up. You wouldn't think this would be an issue, as who among us is ever in a rush to leave the beach? But in Venezuela, there are mosquitos. Once unleashed from the foul, black pit of despair where they lay dormant all day, Venezuelan mosquitos launch a merciless onslaught of epic proportions, with the intention of feasting on every last drop of human blood on the face of the planet. In Los Roques, this begins right around 5pm. By 5:15, with no boat in sight, we are up to our eyeballs, hiding in the water, battling hordes of mosquitos. Every other person on the beach is getting picked up except us, and it is looking like we are going to be abandoned. Anabella flags down a nearby boat and we bribe them to give us safe passage away from Mosquito Island. It is a close call. Anne's legs and butt tell the tale better than any of us.

In the evening we nurse our mosquito bitten bodies at a local restaurant. The margaritas and cairpirinhas are excellent. Cheo and Anabella run in to various people they know. Music promoter. Drum and bass DJ. Some chick from school. Etc. Etc.



DIA TRECE

Day two was more of the same. Arepas. Boat. Beach.

At the dock where we meet the boat, there is a lot of talk going on. Anabella confesses that she has been holding back some news from us. The airplane we are supposed to take back has crashed on the way to Caracas. There are no survivors. Four Venezuelans. Eight Italians. One American. One Swede. This is the exact same plane Cheo had been on twenty four hours earlier. Anabella is pretty shaken up by this. Cheo and I are oddly relieved, knowing that the one good thing that can come out of this tragedy is that they will be extra diligent in checking every last inch of our plane. Sounds pretty horrible even admitting that, but it's true.

We spend the day on Francis Key. We set up on the beach directly opposite Anabella's uncle, so that she can say hello to the family. The uncle and two cousins visit us one by one in a dingy. The cousins are handsome, of course. The girlfriend is gorgeous. She has a California accent. Anabella's uncle tells me he used to fly to Canaima in his helicopter. Something about a gold mining operation. They raise anchor around 3pm, heading south to beat the rain storm that is slowly approaching from the West.

We take refuge from periodic rain showers in a nearby covered picnic area. This is fine for a minute, until we realize we are being attacked by a kajillion sand fleas. Bad idea. Back to the water, rain or no rain.

By the end of the day, it really starts to rain hard. Our boat is late again. The mosquitos show up early today too. Like, 3:30 or something. We spend the last two hours battling mosquitos like crazy. We huddle in clusters, as far out from shore as we can, alerting one another to the angry hordes on each other's foreheads.
"FOREHEAD! DIVE! DIVE!" was the call of the day. It barely helps. The rain is our biggest ally. The more rain, the less mosquitos. Good thing there are no sharks or we'd be chum for sure.



This boat system they have in Los Roques is completely fucked. People say they're going to pick you up, then they just leave you there to rot. I think, maybe, they have a deal with the mosquitos. They leave a certain number of tourists on each island, to maintain a fresh blood supply. What the mosquitos give them in exchange, only the devil knows.

Anne & Anabella cook an amazing fish dinner after we get back. Cheo gives us a preview of the new Los Amigos LP. The sun and rain and mosquito deluge kind of put the zap on all of us, so we make it kind of an early night.

DIA CATORCE

Our plane is leaving at 4pm. We manage to squeeze in about three hours of beach time. We go back to Francis Key and find a deserted spot.

Within minutes, we are surrounded by Italians. They are like a plague. I suggest that maybe we can get them to leave by telling them someone is giving away free Abercrombie and Fitch Tshirts at the sand-flea picnic hut down the beach. Italians LOVE Abercrombie and Fitch. LOVE it. Who knew?

The boat is only 45 minutes late. We told him a half hour early, fully anticipating the reality of island time-tables. In Jamaica they call this perpetual tardiness "soon come". It's always the same in the tropics.

It turns out one of the guys who drives our boat was an aspiring rapper. We assume that he recognized Cheo on the way over, because on the way back, out of nowhere, he has a stereo system all set up, ready for a 'spur-of-the-moment' audition. Music is blasting when we get in the boat.
"Who is this you're playing?" Anabella asks
"Oh, this? Funny you should ask. This is my demo tape!" says the driver.

He then hands the wheel to his friend and begins and impromptu performance, lip synching along with his songs like he was in a music video. He is hilarious. The driver is nodding in his head to the beats, doing the ad-libs and singing the chorus as he steers the boat. We are fucking DYING!

Truth be told, it's actually halfway decent. Cheo, of course, is very encouraging. They exchange Email addresses soon after we dock. The guy wants to move to New York and become a rap star. Don't we all?



The flight is just fine. No watery crashes. I love the checkout counter at the Los Roques airport. There is no counter, just a woman sitting on the ground, in the dirt, leaning up against a shady tree with a clip board. "What's your name? OK, go ahead" is all she says.

This is our final night in Caracas. What to do? What to do?