Choroni Playa!

Well, I made it back from Choroni! I literally rolled right into class and off the night bus yesterday morning having slept four hours and not eaten in oh maybe 18 hours. Where to even begin with the weekend story…

Last Thursday night about 11 other students and I hopped on board a bus around 8pm for the long 12 hour drive to Maracay. Luckily the buses were actually nice, kind of like a coach bus with reclining seats, although they literally keep it 40F with the AC blasting. It was a little hilarious to see all the Venezuelans bundled in hats and mittens-because lets be real, they just don’t have that kind of climate here. After overdosing on Tylenol PM and a little sangria we woke up in Maracay to switch buses to the beach.

We climbed off of the AC and into the 90F on a more typical Venezuelan bus (you know, the short buses painted neon with graffiti, dripping in rosaries and blasting reggeaton.) We took off snaking up the mountains, on the most dangerous roads in the world. It was crazy! We drove through the rainforest, passing bamboo on a one way road curving the corners-cliff side, I felt like I was on a valley fair ride. The bus driver would frequently blast his horn every time we rounded a corner to warn any other cars coming. What a great warning systems, I guess blinkers are pointless when your on death roads!

Choroni was beautiful!! A small Caribbean town, very impoverish though but beautiful! The buildings were all strung together in narrow alleys in hot colors, we stayed in one called our ‘posada’ which didn’t turn out to be to bad because we had running water, oh yeah with the exception of cockroaches. One thing for sure I will take for granted when I get home if I haven’t said it already is a normal toilet (one with a seat on it), not having to carry toilet paper with me wherever I go, and not having to rely on hand sanitizer!

The beach was stunning, and the ocean perfect for swimming in, it made all of the traveling worth it. During the day we hung out at the beach and at night we checked out the local bars or rather hung out by the coast where all the hippies from Choroni gathered to drink, sing, play their guitars and sell handmade jewelry. One night down by the coast they had a huge celebration where people came out and played native drums, danced, waved flags and chanted to a giant saint hoisted on a chair haha. All the people (including us ‘tourist gringos’) followed the celebration as they chanted through the town. Now that I think back, it was kind of creepy…

On our final day there we started to run out of money. That was a problem. Literally in the northern half of the entire country there is no such thing as an ATM or taking credit cards. After spending our cash on of course drinks (including real water) and the little food we could get our hands on we were in a bit of a situation. Two of the guys I was with, Liam and Jud sold their swimming trunks to some Venezuelan guys at our hostel (everyone goes gaga for anything American here, especially logos which cost a fortune) for roughly 20USD to be able to get home, it was hilarious.

When we left to get back on the crazy mountain bus we ran into some more problems, we literally lined up on the dust of a demolished building in one part of town (we grabbed some broken cement pieces to sit on) while we waited for the bus. Seriously, there were unpredictably tons of Venezuelans waiting in line. We had 4 hours to get back to Maracay to catch our night bus, and zero dollars. I laughed so hard as we sat around in a circle and pulled all of the change out of pockets to pool together for a cab to get back quicker, we turned up only a few dollars short so we proceeded to bargain for a cab. We ended up jumping in the back of a jeep that played Cat Stevens remakes, stacking our bags on the top, with old venezuelan guys taking pulls of liquor in the back, and no money left for anything for the next 20 hour. It might have been the hungriest night of my life. Thank god the guys sold their shorts or we would not have been able to make it home!

---

---