Fw: Peurto La Cruz, Venezuela. 10:13.0N 64:40.0W
MALARKEY
Jo & Trevor Bush
Sun 19 Aug 2007 21:52
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It has be a while since our last blog
and recalling the memories to write this one is proving quite
difficult. A lot of water has passed under the bridge and probably almost as
much grog since arriving here in Bahia Redonda Marina, Puerto La
Cruz.
  We are delighted with the marina. It is very
cruiser friendly, cheap & secure and with all the necessary facilities on
tap including a very nice swimming pool and a good bar/restaurant. The only
major downside is that all the locals speak Spanish. This is an absolutely
disgraceful state of affairs, 'wot no speaky English!!!' Who the hell do
they think they are just speaking in their mother tongue, surely everyone in the
world knows they have to speak English, how on earth are we going to be able to
communicate with them. Just when we were about to leave, Joanne came up with one
of her many ridiculous ideas 'what about us learning Spanish'. Despite my
initial disgust, I could see some merit in this audacious remark and so off
to school we went to learn Spanish.
We chose to go to the town of Merida in the foot
hills of the Andes Mountains, very close to the Columbian border. There is a
school there with a good rep called the Iowa Institute, ideal for teaching
numpties like us, the local lingo. It is also a major tourist destination for
the Venezuelans. The main attraction for the locals is the mountains and the
cooler climate. The plan was to do the
touristy thing in between going to school. With this in mind we had our lessons
moved to 4 hours in the morning rather than the normal 2 hours in the
morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. Well it seemed like a good idea but we
were so knackered after 4 hours of one on one intensive teaching, all we
could manage was to stagger back to the Posada/hotel in a daze
and have a nap before going over what we covered in class and then doing our
homework. It didn't take us long to realise that our brains are a lot older
& slower than they used to be and that school is best left to the kids.
But I am pleased to report that after 1 week we did learn some Spanish, although
we have a long way to go, and we did enjoy Merida. We also managed to
go on one excursion up into the Andes Mountains on Jo's birthday.
 
 The Andes Mountains, at least the bits we saw, are
very different to the Alps. They are covered with strange plants with furry
leaves and yellow flowers even at over 4000 metres. Nothing much grows over 2000
metres in the Alps. So hiking is very pleasant here despite the intermittent low
cloud cover and the high altitude. And at least you get to swim in one of the
many hot pools unlike that stupid boiling lake in Dominica!
  Whilst on our trip we both managed to get a good
fix. I got an ice-cream fix from the world famous ice-cream parlour which holds
the Guinness Book of Records for the most flavours of ice-cream. I had one scoop
of hamburger flavour and one scoop of Miss Venezuela. I must confess that miss
Venezuela tasted much sweeter...yum. And Jo got her puppy fix. As cute as they
were, these Venezuelan mountain dogs grow to the size of a St Bernard and it was
a hell of a job persuading Jo to leave them all behind. She
finally accepted, after a lengthy discussion, that no these
puppies were not her surprise birthday present and that six giant mountain dogs
on a boat is not very practical.
   We also got to see the smallest church in the
Venezuela which Juan Felix Sanchez cleverly built himself
and then buried himself and his 'lady friend' in it... And from the
smallest to the biggest, we finished the day off perfectly. We got to
see the biggest bird, the condor. It is fairly rare to see this bird
close up with its 10 foot wing span fully out stretched, so we regard ourselves
privileged.
And finally, as a timely reminder as to why we are
here in Venezuela in the first place and not in the Carribean, the picture
below is an image of Hurricane Dean that passed just north of us. It is giving
Jamaica a hammering as I write this with winds in excess of 150 mph. I
really cant imagine what that must be like but I know I am glad we are not
there.
 The outline of the island it is about to hit is
Jamaica and to the north is Cuba. We are a
couple hundred miles to the south.
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