Bill Seney's

Semester at Sea: Rock 2

3 Sep 2005

Our morning began with a briefing from representative of the US embassy, who very kindly answered my question. (How do you say “I am Canadian” in Spanish?)

This was followed by a tour of Caracas (several hundred people on half a dozen busses), located about 40 to 60 minutes away by bus, on the other side of the costal mountains, at an elevation of 3000 feet (about 950 metres).

Caracas is a city of contrasts, with some sections of tremendous poverty and others very similar to any US or Canadian city. We saw but did not enter the Ranchitoes (a play on the term ranchero), the slums where squatters live on the hills surrounding the city. In 1991 mudslides killed over 30 thousand of the inhabitants but they still surround the hills around the capital.

When we were in Caracas we toured the Pantheon of Heroes, where the bones of Simon Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes are interred. Bolivar is a combination of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to the Venezuelans. President Chavez frequently describes his reform policies as a continuation of Bolivar’s revolution.

After the Pantheon of Heroes, we took a cable car to the National park on the top of the mountain overlooking Caracas (up 4000 feet, for a total of 7000 – about 2100 metres). This is a favorite destination for the inhabitants of Caracas and there were many vendors of fast foods. I tried the Cachapa with cheese, a corn pancake wrapped around a hunt of white cheese – very tasty, and an Atrapa, a hollow pastry filled with chocolate sauce.

When we came down the mountain we went to a resteraunt for lunch, where we were fed traditional food from the ranching region of Venezuela – salad with avocado and cheese, white and yellow corn mini-pancakes, butter and cheese, yarrow (spelling?), a root crop, prepared both boiled and fried, and large quantities of beef.

After lunch we visited the Colonial Art Museum, the former residence of the Marquis del Toro, a hero of the revolution, which is set up to show how he and his family lived.

After this we returned to the ship.

4 Sep 2005

The day began early with an 0530 meeting to get our passports (about 30 people on this tour) and travel to the airport for our flight to Margarita Island, off the northern coast of Venezuela. The flight, a DC-9, was on time and after about half an hour in the air we arrived on the island. It has a Caribbean climate – mostly dry semi-desert with the only rainfall on the 3000 foot (950 metre) mountains at one end of the island.

Margarita Island is a tourist spot but it is a Venezuelan tourist spot – it is where middle class Venezuelans go when they are on vacation. We were met by a tour bus, which took us to the local basilica where they were preparing for a religious festival, a botanical garden and menagerie [see note at bottom after warning to the snake & spider adverse for more details]. Next was one of the older towns on the island and an historic fort, then for a change of pace we went to the newer city and visited a local mall where we could change money from US dollars to Bolivars.

Margarita island was and still is famous for its fishing but this was unable to support the growing population so the government offered incentives to develop a tourist industry, including waving the 15% sales tax, to encourage tourism and keep Venezuelans who might have have otherwise gone to other Caribbean destinations in the country. This has led to the development of a native tourism industry, still mainly catering to Venezuelans but with some opportunity to draw cruise ship traffic in the future. To support this there is a modern city and a number of malls, aimed at the tourist dollar. Our tour was eye-opening in the contrasts we saw between the two parts of Venezuela.

After the mall we went to our hotel, owned by the Hesperia chain from Spain to relax on the beach and catch up on the news from CNN International. One thing I found particularly disturbing was an interview with a New Orleans Police Department detective who stayed at his post despite loosing his home to the flooding, and several of his colleagues to suicide from the stress of the situation. Apparently 1/3 of the police force went AWOL during the storm and he for one did not see how he could work with them again if they came back.

5 Sep 2005

This day was spent visiting Coche Island, another smaller body of land near Margarita Island. We traveled by motorized sailing catamaran, and stopped off at a shallow spot along the way to go swimming. Unlike Margarita Coche lacks a central mountain and so gets little rain so the population is small. We got a tour in a number of trucks fitted with seats which took us to see where they used to produce salt and the shell middens, huge hills of shells from the local shellfish. Currently the major industries are aquaculture (shrimp production) and the beginning of tourism. The rest of the afternoon was spent on the beach before we returned to Margarita.

6 Sep 2005

We had a free morning, followed by a tour of the Mangrove lagoon, the maritime museum and a boatyard where local fishing boats (60 feet or 20 metres long) are still built by hand tools using traditional designs.

I found all these destinations interesting but the mangrove lagoons, with their trees, birds, seahorses and starfish were particularly interesting.

After this we returned to the airport and flew back to La Guardia (flight was an hour late) and returned to the ship. We sailed for Brazil on time at 2300.

WARNING FOR THE SNAKE & SPIDER ADVERSE

On 4 Sep 2005, at the botanical garden / menagerie I got my picture taken holding a Boa Constrictor and later a Tarantuala.

- Bill Seney