VZ thoughts, unfinished

Monday december 30

woke tired and dark still after the fathers knocking on my door at about twenty past five. Had made plans the night before to avoid traffic en route to the beach by leaving early and here it was already. cool enough in shorts and tshirt pour coffee into a travel mug. I look out of six story window down to rugged venezuelan streets where the rest of the group is already starting to gather. Behind schedule but only slightly, the family exits, through keyed door and steel gate, down locked elevator and exited thru similar gated door into parking lot. Foot thick concrete walls guard cars with motorized gate and electric fencing on the top. The valencian security issue is one not to take lightly, evidently seen in every structure, even semi-expensive protected with similar walls, some with big shards of broken glass embedded in the top. Others barbed wire rolls and more electric fencing. But the family pulls out into the road where everyone is gathered, standing near still-running cars excited even in early morning before dawn. My dad is designated leader. So driving through valencia in even greater heightened sense of un-security. Through red-lights where nobody stops, and intersections lay unmarked with no sense of who has right-of-way, so everybody assumes they do. The venezuelan culture is endemic of just that. An irrational selfishness that bleeds into near every aspect of everyday life. From losing money on change paid too much, gringo pricing at bars for three beers, or laughing mocking gas station attendants at dads bad accent, or simply the way they drive. Without turn signals or headlights crumbling old cars bump and burn exhaust down the shoulder of the freeway. Passing others and even swerving back into a lane, with no more warning than a hand waving out the window. Left turns from right lanes swing out and around two cars before cutting wild across intersection tires screech stop letting them through, but hold up the rest. Right turns from left lanes just pull out in front of cars. Pot holes like pock marks on the teenage face of the freeway, incredibly dangerous when hit doing 70 miles per hour, while trying to avoid the tinted window bus blaring reggatone swerving dangerously in front. But our little caravan group stays somewhat in a line and bounces along down mountains towards the beach. Venezuela is a country rich with natural beauty but impoverished with the desire to take advantage of that. Garbage litters the roadways, and stands in smoldering piles on the mountain side where just recently burned. In dry seasons whole sides of mountainous hills are burned off in huge blazing fires for no reason other than they'll burn. Apartamento structures mid-construction or mid-decay stand abandoned and crumbling amongst the city-scape. Skeleton of SVU burned out and crunched near the autopista. Children dropped candy wrappers and everything else on the ground without second thoughts. Broken beer bottles at the feet of leathery old venezuelan man drinking them at 7 in the morning on barrios-like building's front steps, with ceilings of tin cans and corrugated metal. So thru last little town at the bottom of the mountain, the vendors just beginning to get going on their stands. Setting up displays of cheap plastic bright colored goodies to attract eyes of eager beach goers. Little box shaped shacks built of cinder blocks into the rocky hillside where empenadas and arepas are made and sold, signs boasting the best in town (but in spanish of course) adorn their roofs. The guys behind us make a stop for gas, and eventually for beer, but their choices limited to about three. Cheap beer flavored water served in thirty packaged bottles in a big blue plastic square. Returnable glass. Sandaled kids wheel tricycle-like contraptions pile high with floaties and coolers, hammocks and toys hoping to makes sales someplace further down the road. Two story houses in various stages of completion along the roadside, bars across windows downstairs of shops not open yet, too early in the morning. Flyers for beer and for pepsi strung up from balconies like christmas lights back in the states. Dirt alleyways across which typically venezuelan dogs run rabid and fighting through garbage cans tipped over and spilled out, nobody to clean up. Big blue plastic containers atop houses provide running water and only as sanitary as the river, the people must be used to the water. Or some dont have any at all. We pass through town with only momentary back ups due to the slight traffic with early departure we'd avoided most of.