Vanessa y Veronica

Saying goodbye to Vany was overwhelmingly sad…for both of us.  We had spent the last 6.5 months with each other…24/7 really.  After almost 10 years of not living in the same city (with one year overlap in Boston), it felt like we were getting to know each other all over again.  Even better, we did what bonds us the most—playing violin.  We had started playing together at a young age…in church choir, school orchestras, mariachi, as a trio with our father, as a violin duet.  And since I left El Paso back in 2002, we hadn’t played together much.  Playing violin as sisters, was much more than just musically pleasing…it took us back to our childhood years with each other.  Hindsight, the beauty of this trip went way beyond exploring new countries, experiencing new cultures, witnessing nature’s magnificence and playing violin, it more deeply lies in the wonderful new friends we made, the heartwarming reactions and words of appreciation of people for whom we played, and the inspiration visually sparked in many kids/youth, but above all, the most beautiful part of this trip was the unbreakable bond that was created between us as sisters…a bond that we will take with us for the rest of our lives.

It was less than 48 hours before Vany’s flight left back to the US…we arrived in Caracas with plans to explore the city and see what we didn’t get to see during our last visit…and well, it turned out to be a complete failure, but we managed to have an even more worthwhile experience than seeing the city’s famous sites.  The night we arrived, we went out with some of the friends we had made during our Angel Falls excursion (one who very generously offered for us to stay at her place).  It was a really fun night…nothing extraordinary, but plenty of dancing and enjoying the night with our friends.  The dangers of Caracas became very apparent on the way home…not that anything happened, but the precautions our friends thought were necessary, scared us.  We had to ask for permission to park the car within a private apartment complex and then walk to our host’s house.  One of the girls was almost on the verge of tears saying how dangerous this was the entire time…she confessed that she is somewhat traumatized…her brother had been killed just a couple of years back, driving on a street very similar to the one we were now walking…to us, her fear was completely justified.  Thankfully, we all made it to the house completely unharmed.     

The next day, we ended up spending most of the day running errands (our to-dos that we thought would only take a morning, ended up taking up the entire day).  What was most impressive was how our host, Daniela, ushered us around the city helping us get these mundane to-dos done.  We couldn’t believe her patience and willingness to help us out.  She did it as if it wasn’t even a favor…incredible.  By the evening we were exhausted, so we decided to buy a bottle of wine and pack and exchange photos, etc.  It was a slow process (we were tired and the wine didn’t help), but at least we weren’t in a rush.  We woke up early the next morning to take Vany to the bus to the airport.  Just as we were about to leave, a couple of suspicious guys on a motorbike passed by the house.  Seeing as we with all of Vany’s things, including her iPad and violin, we decided to call a taxi instead…making us late to the metro, which in turn made her miss her bus.  She ended up having to take a somewhat expensive taxi, but in the end we were all happy that she was safely on her way.  

Relax, relax, relax…that was our plan for Isla Margarita.  Our trip would be coming to an end soon, so we decided to just hang out by the beach.  And so we did…we wanted to relax so much that we did something we usually hate doing…we purchased an all-inclusive package at a hotel.  We must admit, it was pretty nice.  I got to go running by the beach most mornings (although I was left shoeless because I decided to “hide” my shoes at one of the beach ends and run barefoot…only to return to nothing), Vany got to practice plenty of violin to prepare for auditions, we chatted plenty over drinks and had a great selection of food for every meal.  The only bad thing was that we were almost like prisoners.  We thought about going out and exploring the island, but unfortunately we were low on cash.  It’s a bit complicated, but a recent law passed by the Chavez government, gives an artificial exchange rate between US dollars and the local currency, Bolivares.  So, under the “official” exchange rate, you get ~4.5 Bolivares per US dollar.  But in reality the current market (the black market, really) will give you ~8.5 Bolivares per US dollar.  So financing a trip to Venezuela is either very expensive (under the official exchange rate) or difficult to manage (you have to carry a lot of cash hoping to find someone to exchange it at a decent rate).  Long story short, we were suffering from this difficulty, so we didn’t explore much beyond our hotel and the nearby beach. 

Since we were with the theme of relaxing, we even decided to fly back to Caracas (we had kind of made it a rule to travel by land as much as possible).  But after over 50 bus rides, we thought that avoiding a four-hour ferry and eight-hour bus, and instead catching a quick, inexpensive flight would help keep us relaxed after the beach.

The tallest waterfalls in the world!  An extraordinary 979 meters high of a fall, Angel Falls, unlike Iguazu Falls is difficult to reach.  From Caracas, it involved an overnight bus to Ciudad Bolivar, a flight to Canaima, a four-hour boat ride, and then a 1.5-hour hike to the viewpoint.  The good thing is that most of the journey is actually quite fun (except the overnight bus, of course).  The flight was exciting just because it was on a five-passenger plane (we have never been on such a small plane (!) and the pilot even let us sit in the front!).  The boat ride was a beautiful journey through the jungle that included going through rapids and stopping to bathe in a beautiful waterfall (although we must admit that our bottoms were sore from sitting on wood planks for so long).  The hike was a breeze compared to other hiking we’ve done on this trip and was particularly pleasant given that we went so early in the morning, which ended up being quite fortunate given that as soon as we left a thick cloud covered the falls.  In fact, online I had read of tourists being very disappointed because clouds had covered the falls the entire time they were there…reasonable feeling given the intense travel that it involves.  Actually, we seemed to have chosen a great time to visit (by coincidence, really)…at some points of the year, the volume of water coming down the falls decreases to merely a trickle and at other points it becomes so great that the viewpoints are inaccessible and the falls are covered by clouds most of the day.  So it seemed that we got really lucky…while at the viewpoint, the sky was incredibly clear allowing us to get an obstructed view of these amazing falls. 

One of the greatest parts the excursion was that we ended up in a group with really fun people (mostly Venezuelans)!  They were incredibly energetic and friendly.  We hit it off with them right away.  We even played violin for them the first night at our “refugio.”

The rest of the excursion involved visiting two other beautiful falls, Salto Sapo and Salto Hacha…they were beautiful, but by far the most incredible part was how amazingly close we were able to get to the falls.  We walked behind the falls in our bathing suits (it was inevitable to get drenched!).  The falling water was so close and powerful, that it was almost scary…I couldn’t help but think that this kind of access would not be allowed somewhere like the states, whether for the better or worse. 

Our last night in Canaima, we decided to go out to the one and only local bar.  We didn’t come prepared to go out, so we wore the only clothes we had…which involved tennis shoes, flip-flops, yoga pants and dirty shirts.  We even took our ponchos and flashlights…we felt like quite the hit.  Seeing as we were staying on an island, we had to arrive by boat (which was quite fun).  We originally only planned to stay two hours, but we were having such a great time dancing to Latin music (yay!!  we were finally dancing our little hearts away!) that before we knew it, it had been closer to five hours!!  Feeling bad for our boat driver (he had been waiting for us the entire time), we decided to call it a night.    

It was a long journey into Caracas…almost 24 hours of being on a bus.  These long bus rides, which used to only be slightly unpleasant at the beginning of the trip, have now become almost unbearable…to the point that we basically have sleepless nights on them.  But one nice thing that we have noticed is that we no longer have nights of insomnia from stress or worries that we experienced frequently prior to our trip…now they are just due to long bus rides.

Our time in Caracas, unfortunately involved running more errands than we would have liked.  I desperately needed additional passport pages (I only had small empty corners left in some pages of my passport, which made me nervous going to each new country thinking that they might turn me away at any point during immigration)…thankfully I was able to get them quickly, although the process did involve a couple of expensive taxi rides and a hefty $80 fee.  We also spent WAY too much time with a woman we met on the street (I know this sounds shady) who insisted on helping us arrange our travels to other parts of Venezuela that we were planning to visit.  In the end, everything was arranged as we hoped, but it took too many back and forths…I guess efficiency is something we shouldn’t be expecting here.

In terms of performances, we also didn’t have much luck.  We had arrived on a holiday week (July 5^th is Venezuelan Independence Day) and given that one of our main contacts was the U.S. Embassy (they get July 4^th off for obvious reasons), it was almost impossible to arrange a performance during our time in Caracas.  We also visited El Sistema, a very famous orchestra program that gives children/youth from impoverished communities the opportunity to learn a stringed instrument and play in an orchestra.  The idea is to create social change and help drive development in disadvantaged communities through the means of music.  Unfortunately, the orchestra was on tour and would arrive back in Caracas right around the July 5^th holiday…great.  Disappointed, we made our way back to our hotel.  Fortunately, our contact at Ronald McDonald House Charities was able to arrange a performance at Casa Ronald McDonald for children/youth patients and their parents who are being treated at San Juan de Dios Hospital. (A special thanks to Lyana Sabogal, Maria Teresa Cedeño and Vanessa Guerrero for helping organize this performance!).  It was a wonderful experience!  After we played for the kids/youth and their parents, each one of them introduced themselves, told us their story and personally thanked us for taking the time to come and play for them.  Their words were the best gift we could have received.  This was a nice and rewarding way to spend our 4^th of July, especially given that we missed the U.S. so much on this special day.

All this running around left us little time to actually explore Caracas.  That being said, the little we saw of it left us quite pleased.  It was quite the opposite of our expectations.  We had heard it was terribly dangerous (maybe we were just lucky) and just another large, unpleasant city covered in traffic jams.  So yes, there were traffic jams, but the city sits in a beautiful valley surrounded by green covered mountains and to be honest, we never felt unsafe walking the streets.  We even went out one night and were surprised at the great ambiance.  We were quick to make friends (Venezuelans are so friendly!) and before we knew it we were on our way to a beautiful rooftop bar with one of our new friends.  We had an incredible time! 

That’s not to say that Caracas doesn’t have its problems…we were there too short of time to give it any fair judgment.  It was, however, very interesting to hear the drastically varying opinions and thoughts on Chavez…there were the fervent supporters (like our taxi driver who claimed that Chavez has helped get people off the streets, has helped those from extremely impoverished communities, and provided healthcare to those who cannot afford it) and the opponents (like some of the new friends we made who complained that their increasingly limited rights had become downright oppressive…even traveling outside the country is now heavily controlled and limited by the government).

Although we left plenty to-dos and to-sees in Caracas, we plan to do those when we return at the end of our long journey, which is only slightly over a week away.