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Published: July 16th 2008
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Amazon 3.0 - Part 1: Puerto Ayacucho
June 19-23, 2008 There has been one major change in my travel plans for this, my third Amazon trip: the addition of Harrison, my 23-year old nephew. The two-month trip is a retirement present for me and a graduation present for Harrison.
Getting there is half the fun? Not when it involves an overzealous airline agent who tries to take away my insect repellant - from the check-in luggage nonetheless - until his colleague convinces him it is not flammable; a screeching baby kicking the back of my seat most of the way through a crowded redeye from Houston to Caracas; and an hour of back-and-forth at the Caracas airport over whether Conviasa would honor Harrison’s ticket. No sleep and waiting for one more plane, nothing looked appetizing as a breakfast, certainly not what the Domino’s there advertised as a
Desayuno Americano - “American Breakfast” - a small ham and cheese pizza with a coffee. We did eventually find a juice bar. Still, even three coffees did not compensate for the lack of sleep and I forgot to put a polarizer in my day bag, leaving the few shots I
was able to take through the small and smeary window of the turboprop overly flat. And this would be my only chance to take photos of the Orinoco from the air.
Puerto Ayacucho’s small airport is covered with bright murals in Amazonian themes. And our tour guides - Lucho and Natalia - were there to pick us up, which we had not expected as the twenty-day trip with them does not start for five more days. There will be more about them in later episodes of this blog. For now I will just say we found them
muy simpatico and that they are major players in the fairly undeveloped travel industry of this vast state of Amazonas.
And the town? Puerto Ayacucho is on a river - the Orinoco - but is not a river town. It was built to be a river town in 1924 when it was designated as the new capital of Amazonas. An eighty-kilometer stretch of rapids makes navigation upriver from this point impossible, so Puerto Ayacucho was planned to be a major river port, with a road around the rapids connecting it to the upper Orinoco. Then the road was built and very
little moves by river anymore. You cannot see the river from the town except from a couple of hills . Most of the town is strung out along busy and chaotic Avenida Orinoco , but nothing on the avenue provides even a hint that a major river is half a mile away.
Although far from the border with Brazil, it is a border town. Columbia is across the river. Anyone going to Brazil from here - which includes us - has to get the exit stamp in Puerto Ayacucho before leaving. And it is a cultural border town. There are the Indians who come into town to sell a little of something - crafts to the handful of tourists who come here; or various fruit, vegetables or herbs grown in the rainforest to town residents. There are many lost Indians - former Indians, really - who have lost their languages and tribal connections but fit uneasily if at all into urbanized Spanish-speaking Venezuela. Some of them beg, some of them drink, and they make up much of the informal labor force. Above them on the socioeconomic hierarchy are the mestizos - most will have fairly regular but
low-paying jobs. Then there are the whites, of Spanish or other European or even middle Eastern heritage, who run things. Certainly there are exceptions, Indians who walk comfortably in both cultures and mestizos in high positions, but they are the outliers on any statistical study. The correlation between race and economic position or race and social status is immediately apparent here.
A Caracas family invited us on an outing to the Parque Tobogán. The main feature of Parque Tobagán is a river running rapidly over smooth rocks, which people slide down - some on their feet but most on their butts . This was Harrison’s introduction to Latin American hospitality. They grilled two
payara, a fish from the Orinoco and made a soup from
dorado, another regional fish . The grilling was actually done by two men who had been their guides on a four-day trip by
bongo (motorized canoe). After eating the tasty payara we were told that one of their guides, Oscar -- who goes by the nickname
Todo Loco (“Completely Crazy”) , would be part of the crew on our twenty day trip on Iguana. He was doing most of the
cooking for the outing. We will be eating well.
We tried to go into the indigenous museum (Museu Ethnológico de Amazonas) but it was closed for fumigation . And Puerto Ayacucho is expensive. The US dollar is not in the high demand it once was and a good parallel rate is hard to come by. One of Selvadentro’s crew took me around looking for a good exchange rate and had to make three stops before finding anyone who wanted to buy dollars. The initial offer was 3
Bolivares Fuertes per dollar, but the buyer assumed I had $100 bills. I had twenties and the rate fell to 2.8. That made our adequate but nothing special hotel room $50.
With all the travelling I’ve done in Brazil I sometimes forget that breakfast is not normally included in the hotel price in many other countries - Venezuela among them. The restaurant under the hotel was not open for breakfast, so I walked up Avenida Orinico to find a breakfast place. The standard breakfast here is a heavy corncake called an
arepa which is split and filled with something, usually a greasy chicken stew. Venezuelans often eat them while standing
up. The restaurant - Tasca Atilio - did open for lunch and dinner with excellent meals large enough for two. The first night we ate there we had to settle for chicken as there was no fish. But the second night they had a tasty dorado which was served about fifteen different ways.
There are many interesting murals in Puerto Ayacucho, all with indigenous themes . But anything more than a day in town is plenty, so we moved to a tourist hotel upriver, on the rapids. The Orinoquia is expensive at 150 BF per person, but does include breakfast . And after noisy Puerto Ayacucho it was relieving to hear nothing more than the river plunging over the shallow rapids.
Humboldt, from his expedition through here in 1800, wrote: "Once you have passed the Great Cataracts you feel you are in a new world; that you have stepped over the barriers that nature seems to have raised between the civilized coasts and the wild, unknown interior." I can’t wait.
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Dick and Betsy
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Surreptitious Movements
The Portuguese Embassy in Seattle has issued a travel alert regarding the surreptitious movements of a man who resembles Guiseppe Verdi at his prime....in Brazil, specifically Puerto Ayacucho. We can only speculate whether your clandestine perambulations are properly interpreted suspiciously, as if perhaps a double agent or even a triple agent (do they have such critters?)..... Your previous associates at Bellevue Community College are scheduled to testify soon regarding your upstanding character and unquestioned citizenship--this would be in Congress, Wash., D.C., and if we are also asked to testify we would claim the same reimbursement offered for jury duty, plus airfare, and we would say that your travels are simply the case of a man who became bored with retirement, seeking to find adventure abroad. We enjoy the pictures, but could you please send a few showing naked sunbathers along the Orinoco? Ha ha, hang in there big fella.