7:30pm bus to Caracas
13 August 2005 (Saturday) – 14 August 2005 (Sunday) – Santa Elena de Uairen to Caracas, Venezuela
Santa Elena is tiny, but tiny. I could not afford to go on another tour, so I had a lot of time to kill today in this tiny town, as I waited for my 7:30pm bus.
Thank goodness, someone left behind a very thick seemingly-trashy novel ‘Destiny’ by Sally Beauman in the ‘hotel’ and old Antonio of the ‘hotel’ (which is actually his house or at least he lives there) gave it to me.
The other problem was after my watch was robbed from me, in moments of need, I used my alarm clock to tell the time. But the alarm clock has a design flaw. The SET and MODE buttons jut out, so having the alarm clock in my pocket or in my bag inadvertently sometimes reset the time or stop the clock completely. Sheesh. So, I was never really sure what the time was.
And I was not alone, for asking all the three little old men who sit around my ‘hotel’ everyday, all day, what the time was, produced three different times. I then decided to go to the bus terminal earlier, just to be sure.
At the terminal, I observed a Venezuelan guy slowly taking out each item of his belongings from his suitcase (truly, everything!) for the military police’s inspection, and I thought I would have to do the same. Gosh, the effort to squeeze everything back in again!, I groaned. I hope I can make it in time for the departure. But, for me, they just gave a cursory glance inside and taped up my bags.
Then, I also learnt that Venezuelan buses did not care very much about the departure time. We must have left at around 8pm or later.
We arrived in Caracas at around 5pm the next day in a very busy bus terminal that looked absolutely dodgy. I had already arranged for a host in Caracas. Rafael had given me his address but he asked me to give him a call beforehand just to make sure he was at home.
I found the centre of communications. Good, Venezuela has this telephone facility, like Argentina and Chile (not found in Brazil, unfortunately), where you could just enter a booth in the centre, use the phone and pay the amount you used. There was no need to buy a telephone card. But, gosh… the queue in front of the centre was horrendously long. I decided to buy a telephone card, but as soon as I bought it, the queue disappeared! Hey, where did everyone go? I then saw the sign ‘NO HAY LINEA’ (There is no line.). I picked up the public telephones and tried my new telephone card. One after the other, I received no response. Many people were doing the same. It seemed ‘suddenly’ there was no telephone network in the terminal. How very odd!
I guess I just had to take a taxi directly to the address and pray that Rafael and his wife were at home. The taxi driver took a while to locate the address but we found it eventually.
Great, they were at home! They were also wondering if I ever was going to show up as I had not called them. At the first instant when I met Rafael and his wife, Rosa, I like them. They are very welcoming, very interested in what I am doing, and very, very helpful. Great!! I feel that I like Caracas already.
Rosa made me arepas which is the typical Venezuelan ‘bread’ for my dinner and we talked all night about everything. As it turned out, Caracas is full of Chinese restaurants and they both love Chinese food. She asked me how to prepare a proper chaufan (fried rice). She explained that although they followed the recipe, they could never never ever get it the way the Chinese restaurants prepared it. Her friends had also failed in this aspect. So, how in the world do you cook a damn plate of chaufan?
I explained how my mother would prepare chaufan, but here in their kitchen, there was no wok, and they use electric heater, not fire. Geee… I don’t know, there must be something about the wok and the fire. Using a pan over electric heater… nah, I doubt it would work.
Tags: 05) Merchants of Little Venice, Caracas
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