"Como?"
"Call me Ishmael." I said again.
"Que es eso, este Ishmael?" Elizabeth asked, looking a bit perplexed. "Never mind, go ahead call me Chup.... ", I muttered, but I knew that Latinos had difficulty pronouncing my name. Oh well, it was better than being called El Blanco.
"Si, tuve un buen tiempo... Las playas eran muy chevre y a mi me gustaba el cueva de guachero." I responded to an earlier question from my spot in the back seat.
Driving east from Caracas a week ago, it had taken about five hours to get to the rented apartment at Puerta La Cruz. Although there were miles and miles of coastline around the Puerta La Cruz area with beaches that looked hospitable enough, the days of the past week had been spent at beaches at least an hour further east.
"Chuck, hay superpoblacion aqui.... Chuck you know contaminacion?" I had heard that more that once before. This port city was heavily into petroleum refining and oil-shipping which meant dirty beaches. So in turn that meant driving to the beach every day.
Three to four hours per day in a 1982 Chevy Malibu having no air conditioning, bad acceleration cable, and poor brakes with two teenage girls, a ten year old-rapscallion named Julio, Senora Dora (grandma), and an "excellent driver", could take it's toll on any normal human being. Although their company was appreciated, I was happy to be heading back to Caracas, where the public transportation system would provide me with at least a certain degree of freedom, albeit small.
Due to some problems with the car, and a banking system in which every bank in the country decides to close Whenever It Feels, we were late in checking out of our apartment. Finally when the car was loaded with everything (including a sack of edible white plate-sized discs with the consistency of shingles, which I had thrown out the day before) we were on our way. It was a Sunday. We would be back in Caracah by eight or nine, if we were lucky.
After driving for an hour or so, we stopped in a small town, I'll never forget the name since I never knew it. We stopped at a small outdoor "restaurant" and ate steak, fish and chicken. When we were done, I got a couple of polarcitas (little beers) from the cooler in the overloaded trunk to drink while we were on the road. Whoo hoo!.... road trip!
About two hours later, lightning lit up the evening sky. It began to rain shortly after that. Traffic slowed down a bit, but we slowed even more since we had no defog capabilities in the car. As the rain came down harder, we stopped alongside the road por un rato. Later when the rain let up, we started on our journey again. But the rain didn't go away completely and we made little progress. At nine o'clock we were still two and a half hours away from our destination. We decided to stop at a roadside cantina and wait inside until the rain quit. Normally the rain would come and be gone within an hour or two.
"Senor, puedo comprar una cerveza para mi y cuatro coca-colas para mis amigos?" I asked the guy who appeared to be in charge of the place. So there we sat for the next two hours. Under the tin roof, the rain sounded every bit as thunderous as it had in the machine-shed on my dad's farm years ago. The OFF bug repellent did little to repel the mosquitoes or puri-puri, but made the air a lot less breathable. The owner of the place turned out to be an elderly lady who raised chickens out back and made a living by serving pollo to the people who stopped in off the highway during the day. She enjoyed talking with us even though we were strangers.
As she talked, I noticed that our (i.e., my) empty beer bottles were piling up on the center of the table. I was feeling pretty good, but not inebriated, even though I'd had six or seven beers. Contemplating the subtle nuances of the beer, I found myself staring at the car outside, and to me it appeared that either the car had a flat tire, or it was sitting in a puddle that was a few inches deep. I mentioned it to Elizabeth, but she felt that it was probably the puddle. I ran out in the rain, (it was still raining pretty hard) and found not one, but two flat tires on the car. Dooh!! Llantas estupidas!
Ten o'clock on a Sunday evening, feeling groovy from the beer, in an out of the way roadside restaurant, pouring rain, a trunk-full of luggage covering the spare tire, and me saying, "It could be worse, it could be raining.... er... no, wait, it's already raining. Dooh!" The owner, God bless her, told us not to worry. She would let us spend the night at the restaurant. She and her one helper (I think it was her son) produced (from I don't know where) three mattresses for the six of us and set them up behind the counter.
Our accomodations were much better than they would have been had we been spending the night outside on the ground. However, the situation was far from perfect. The puri-puri had determined that our blood was sweet, and the OFF had just run dry. The relative humidad which was about 110% combined with the heat to make the night, well, sultry. When one of the women tried to leave the room, that's when we found out about the dogs. We would not be leaving the room until they were gone. Fortunately, I relieved my bladder outside just before the shop-keeper and her son locked up and released the great big-ole Bengal Doberman pinchers in the main part of the restaurant. The women on the other hand, had not "gone the bathroom". The task of falling asleep was not made easier, when out of the darkness came the sound of running water (it wasn't water). They had found an empty pail which didn't sound like it would remain empty as the night wore on. Did I mention the humidity?
Every ten minutes I would shift positions as the sweaty sheets clung to me. I finally decided that the most comfortable place (at least the coolest) was on top of a 12 inch wide Formica topped ledge 3 feet above the concrete floor. It was next to a roll up door that would rattle loudly as I moved myself periodically to keep cool. For two or three hours I listened to the girls and Julio giggle, and the older women snoring soundly, I wondered if the night would ever end, and if it did, would we make it out alive. The mosquitoes in Venezuela can infect their victims with malaria you know, and all of us had been bitten more than once.
I must have drifted off eventually, because at 6:45 (AM!) after what I'm sure could have been no more than 3 hours sleep, I was awakened by Elizabeth who wanted to start the repairs. She said something like, "CHUP!! Ven aca y ayudame con las llantas!" But what I heard, was Dad saying, "they're moving the farrowing house"1. After going out back and doing what the dogs had prevented me from doing during the night, I proceeded to the car.
Removing the luggage from the trunk, I found that I would be performing the removal of the affected tire myself, before breakfast. Extricating the spare tire and the tire changing paraphernalia, we quickly found the jack had no handle. After searching for something that could be used as a substitute for about 15 minutes and listening to Elizabeth's "helpful" suggestions, the owner of the restaurant loaned us an inanimate carbon rod that seemed to do the trick. Frustration, warded off by the kindness of the good Venezuelan Samaritan once again. After the tire was off, we needed some way to get it 10 miles up the road to be repaired. Still one flat to go. Elizabeth sent Hanoi and Gabriella (the teenage women) down by the road to flag down a motorist. Very promptly it became obvious to me that good looks (in this case, the girls', not mine) could come in handy in situations like this. "We" loaded the tire on a truck that had stopped, and Elizabeth accompanied it into town. A little while later, the spare was on and I started removing the second flat.
Only an hour and a half later, Elizabeth returned with the repaired tire and two muscular hombres who even put the tire on the car. They left after graciously accepting the beer that they were offered (now about 9 in the morning). A few minutes later, under a bright blue sky, we thanked the shop-keeper and her son for their hospitality and were on our way.
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1. One of the things my father says in the morning to wake his children.