Trapped in Margarita

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It started on thursday night with a phone call from a friend. "Hey, we're going to Margarita for the weekend and have a spare seat in the car - do you want to come?" As my previosly arranged plans for the weekend had just fallen through (as Venezuelan plans so often do) I felt this was too good an opportunity to turn down. I knew that managing the five hour drive and six hour ferry ride there and then back again would be a bit of a squeeze for just a weekend but ever since I arrived I've been wanting to go to Margarita - and life is what happens when you make other plans, right? So I just decided to go for it. Due to the highway between Caracas and Puerto la Cruz (which is where you need to go to catch the ferry) being in a horribly poor condition without any lights or road signs, we managed to get lost quite a few times. As we were about halfway there we realized that making it on time to catch the 2am ferry we had tickets for would be an absolute race against the clock. In the end we managed to arrive at 1.55am and we would have probably made it, were it not for the fact that two of us didn't have tickets and had to queue up to buy them. As we finally came up to being number three in line to buy tickets they suddenly ran out... super frustrating! Even more frustrating to find out that we would have to wait for 12 hours until 2pm the next day to get on another ferry. Not exactly a good start to the weekend. Coincidentally Mauro (one of the guys from AIESEC who were with us) has an apartement in Puerto la Cruz. Unfortunately though, the key to the appartment was still in Caracas! Dubble frustrating. Decided to go and grab some food and contemplate our situation before returning to the harbour on time for the ticket office to open again at 4am. I felt so sorry for Alex (a friend of Melissa's from Australia who had just flown in the same day) - this was his first night in Venezuela and we didn't even have a place to stay! At 5am we finally had our tickets and returned to the gated recidence where Mauro's flat was. There the kind security guards allowed us in to get a few hours of sleep on the grass by the pool but unfortunately it was a sweet but short sleep as a strict security woman woke us up at 8am, ordering us to immediately leave the premises. After breakfast in town it was almost time to head for the ferry and the relief was immense as we finally took a seat on the ancient looking ferry that was to transport us to Margarita. As we were closing in on the island five hours later the sun was setting in the deep blue ocean and suddenly all our problems were forgotten.

Margarita turned out to be bigger than I'd expected and I was suddenly glad that Sam had fought so hard to get his car on the ferry. We started by meeting up with Manuel, a friend of Sam's, who showed us around and helped us to find a hotel room. We got lucky in the fifth hotel we tried - a room with four beds and a bathroom for BsF. 100/night (about SEK 300 or 25 pounds) - sweet! Then Manuel took us straight to hunger street (there's at least one hunger street in every town here) for some delicious kebabs before heading back to the hotel for some sangria and salsa in the hotel restaurant.
The main purpose of the whole trip was for Sam to get some research and filming done for his documentary about the deaf-blind community in Margarita, so the first thing on the agenda for the next day was a visit to the house of one of the children he's got in contact with, a 12-year old boy named Loismar. With some help from Manuel we managed to learn some sign language and communicate a littel bit. It was an incredibly fascinating experience to communicate with someone who cannot hear or see you or speak to you. He even showed us some of his best karate moves!
Then it was finally time to hit the beach. Headed for Playa El Yiake as we'd heard it was meant to be one of the best beaches around but as we arrived we all looked at each other with mixed expressions of surprise and disappointment. It was nothing like the miles and miles of white sand we'd all imagined it to be. Rather it turned out to be a mecca for wind surfers and we spent most of our time jumping out of the way of people trying to learn how to manouver their windsurfing boards. So after a refreshing swim we packed up rather quickly and headed for a lookout point from which we had the most gorgeous view of the island and some of those white sandy beaches that we'd been expecting to see earlier. After taking about a million photos each we headed down to a restaurant on one of the gorgeous beaches and had a a beautiful dinner watching the sunset with our feet in the sand. Unfortunately no joy lasts for long in Venezuela and as we were getting ready to leave we noticed that the waitors had put a lot of extra items on our bill and been highly deceiving in telling us the prices of the things on the menu. As we brought it to their attention that we felt they had made some mistakes it all got really heated and ended with them threatening to call the police! And all this because people here (in general) seem fairly poor at judging which things are actually worth fighting for and which things you're better off just letting go. Here it's just all about male pride and being right. For the guys who were with us it didn't matter that the waitor had already promised to give us the right price, they had to keep arguing just for the sake of being right. Although I´m sure they guys felt as though they were only protecting us (the poor defenceless little girls), Melissa and I just sank deeper and deeper down in our seats and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible - in the end we even had to appologise to the waitors for the guys´ behaviour.
After the slight dinner disaster we headed straight for the next one. Went to the harbour to get ferry tickets for the night ferry back to the mainland only to find out that they were completely sold out! Not the best news as I was expected back at work the next morning... To numb our feelings of disaster we decided to party the night away at one of the island's biggest party hot spots that coincidentally happened to have an open bar offer that very evening. We had an absolutely amazing night which once again proves that Venezuela is absolutely amazing in the way that something good always comes out of all the bad things that happen here and there's always a new adventure right around the corner.
The next morning we all woke up way too early (hung-over and with recently aquired knowledge of at least five new drinking games and countless new words in Spanish), in order to head for the ticket office again. Unfortunately it turned out that our big night out had not boosted our luck what so ever. This time we were told that there would be no ferries until tuesday morning - absolute doubble disaster! So I had no choice but to call up my boss and tell him that I would be two days late for work... (my stomach suddenly felt full of increadible heavy stones of discomfort - caused by what my mother so insightfully calls my lutheran sence of duty and guilt). Let's just say it wasn't exactly the most pleasant phone conversation I've ever had. But at least I was lucky in that my boss' aunt happened to be in Margarita at the same time and could back up my story. So after several hours in several different queues at the ferry ticket office (there are separate queues for everything here in Venezuela - entering, asking questions, booking, paying, refunding... why make it easy?) we finally left with our tickets and celebrated by going with Sam to visit a school for the deaf blind children and learn some more sign language.
In the evening we drowe back to our hotel to book one more night and as it was all sorted and we had our key back we returned to the car that was parked just outside (in order to bring all our bags up to the room again) only to discover in horror that the front seat passenger window had been smashed in! Seriously bad news when all our belongings (including valuables) and Sam's filming equippment was in the car! But luckily some higher power must have been on our side that night because all our things were left untouched. The thiefs were probably scared off by the car alarm and never got round to actually grabbing anything. We all spent the rest of the night feeling increadibly grateful that we'd been so lucky and celebrated by going out for italian food at a slightly too expensive restaurant. Over all a very interesting day that included many, many headaches as well as complete and total relief and joy.
The next morning we headed straight for the port and after 6 hours on the ferry and 5 hours on a bus we were finally back in Caracas, two days later than planned. Despite pretty much everything going wrong, I really loved my (long) weekend in margarita and it's definitely one of my favourite places in Venezuela so far. I just don't understand why anone would choose to live in a crowded, ugly and dangerous city like Caracas when there are so many wonderful places close by.

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Photos

Stalin
I'm not kidding, this is one of the most popular candidates in the mayoral election race...

Comments

[Ruth]

Hehe...Stalin :D