almost.....

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Well, well. It has been many many days. Many weeks. We have been waiting for the permits, and finally it looks like soemthing has happened. We may finally get into yacambu after all. The professor in Ebich eems to have finally gotten off his ass. Well now we still have to wait for this and that- bureaucracy bs, so hubert wants to go cowboy style into the park tomorrow, demand they let us in. I think I will wait in the car! Either way, looks like we might actually be in the park this weekend. i hope. We shall see. We have beeen biding our time in a town between Sanre' and Barquisimeto called Quibor. Some of the people are incredibly hospitable. Others seem to dislike gringos, can say I blame them. The artisan towns around are quite amazing. I am sure the wood is endangered amazon hardwood, but the statues look nice anyway. It was amazing to watch the sculptors chisel away. One of the artists brought us into his shop and showed us how things were made. I still don't see how he can do so many carvings the exact same without any sort of pattern. Pretty remarkable. We found out he spend abut 3 months on a certain shell-shaped box, which he then sells in his shop for about 100 bolivars. I don't understand how on earth he makes a living on this. We saw no one else buying or shopping. I would imagine these carvings are packed up and sent somewhere else, probably bought for pennies and sold for hundreds of us dollars in some arts and crafts shop? I would like to find out some day. Very very friendly people. We also went to another town, all textiles. They make all kinds of hammocks, beautiful. I bought a 2 person hammock for about 25 us dollars! I was told these hammocks end up in costa rica, puerto rico and the us. They ar the largest supplier of hammocks in costa rica. God knows what they charge there.

Well that is the news from VZ for now. Wherever you are I hope all is well.


Samuel

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