Puypuy, Venezuela

Saturday Apr. 26, 2008

While recovering from food poisoning in Manaus, Carlos, Poncho and I were introduced to another avid motorcyclist by Leandro. Dr. Durval was a semi-retired, wealthy and very friendly man who seemed to thoroughly enjoy showing strangers like us his part of the world. First he took us on a trip up one of the many rivers in the area aboard his very nice boat to have a fresh fish lunch in a floating restaurant on the Rio Negro (Black river). But when that started having engine problems he simply returned us to port, handed the keys to a worker with orders to fix it and shuttled us off to another river where he rented another boat and driver to take us somewhere else. We never really knew where we were going, but it was exciting and very interesting. Along the way Dr. Durval would buy something we had never tried before from a window salesman while stopped at a set of traffic lights. This included some delicious nuts, fruits and snacks that I would have probably never had the chance to try because I didn't know what they were or even how to eat them. Of course it's also hard to do that while riding a moto.

The boat stopped to watch small pink dolphins jumping where the Solimoes and Negro Rios joined creating the Rio Amazonas (Amazon river). The rivers were high now as it was the rainy season and you could see how they had reclaimed and covered land that was dry just months earlier. This new boat was long and narrow and with it's huge new motor the driver was able to wield it like a needle through several narrow, jungly areas until we came to see the giant amazon water lilies and other beautiful flowering plants that grow in these areas.

Then we went up the Rio Negro and stopped at a house built above the water's edge on stilts. It had chain-link fences that ran down into the dark water from the edge of a wooden sidewalk that formed a cage of some kind. It was there I saw my first Arapaima, one of the world's largest freshwater fish. I could lean over the railing and see them staring back up at me. And when a small fish was dropped into the water as a treat, it seemed as if the water exploded before the bait even hit the water as they clapped their mouths shut with fury to get it. I literally jumped the first few times I heard it.

Before the day ended Dr. Durval drove us to one of his friends' houses. I think it was one of the biggest surprises of the whole day for me, as we drove through a rough looking neighborhood with unattractive 8' high cement walls on both sides of a narrow dirt road, the gate opened and we drove up a long manicured driveway through lush pampered gardens to a stunning house with plenty of big, shiny toys parked around it. Including a custom built Orange County Choppers moto which I was told was never ridden. We met the owner and his policeman brother but I didn't ask too many questions. They fed us well and were very nice, but this was one of the few times I felt a little uncomfortable and was relieved when we left.

The next day as I rode the 786 kms (488 mi) north out of Manaus on this desolate, dilapidated road through the Amazon Rainforest, I hoped my strength had returned sufficiently after being sick for so long to handle such a big day. Travel was only allowed between 6am - 6pm through the Yanomami Indian reserve where stopping was deemed illegal, except at the one gas station. This would not be a good place to have an accident or run out of fuel.

Thankfully I had no problems and after crossing the equator back into the northern hemisphere once more, I was greeted in Boa Vista by Leandro's very nice friends Jose and Patricia who helped me find a decent hotel for the night and even bought me a lovely dinner.

A few notes from my time in Brazil:

- A country with the most shocking and obvious extremes of poverty and wealth that I've seen yet

- The largest and most organized communities for large motorcycles I've ever seen. Most, extremely friendly and helpful. Almost necessary to reduce costs and increase saftey

- Rigid government policies for entering the country attempts to reciprocate the visitor country's requirements for Brazilians

- Attitude of most government officials in consulates was quite arrogant and rude

- Very expensive ($1.60 US/liter), high alcohol content fuel doesn't run well in vehicles not made specifically for Brazil. Most people use less expensive, pure alcohol fuel in specialized vehicles

- Highways are heavily controlled with unmanned radar, police with radar, millions of speed bumps and low speed limits

- Highways have allot of large, dangerous potholes forcing drivers to swerve to avoid them, often into oncoming traffic or off the road

- Highways seem inadequate to handle the huge volume of traffic, especially large commercial vehicles

- There are allot of bad drivers (Brazil has one of the highest road accident rates in the world according to the Government of Canada)

- Huge taxes on items purchased legally (even items manufactured in Brazil) probably means there is a large black market economy for the less wealthy person to be able to survive

- Education level in some less-populated areas is often limited and can be frustrating (i.e.: give someone change as payment at a store to get rid of some and they give you more back; ice factory sells you a bag of ice but won't sell you another bag separately; meals on the boat up the Amazon are served at 6 am, 12 pm and 6 pm, but when the time zone changes one hour back the meals are now served at 6 am, 11 am and 6 pm).

- It's uncomfortable to watch someone drive up to a gas station, buy a cold beer and then drive away while drinking it (drunk driving laws seem not to be enforced and I constantly heard about accidents related to them in the news)

- Business sense is very different than other Latin American countries (probably more like North America's 'we don't care if you shop here' attitude), and often, trying to get something simple done was extremely frustrating. This sense of logic seemed to decrease drastically the farther away I was from a large city. It's like being in another world actually. I have seen very ugly hotel rooms that are missing a sink in the bathroom or have a very foul smell. They obviously needed guests, but yet they were more expensive than a city hotel of better quality and not willing to discount

- As with most Latinos, Brazileros love noise and it is rarely quiet. Even the office of an executive will often have a TV or music playing loudly in the background

- A very large and independent country that at times felt like it was intentionally trying to be difficult with its neighbors and visitors, and definitely seemed more interested in national exports than helping its own people

- Often, people in small towns could not understand my Spanish because they had never heard a foreigners accent

- Like Bolivia, vehicles rarely use headlights, even in bad visibility

- A country with a very diverse landscape and many beautiful locations

As I crossed the border from a country with the most expensive gas in the Americas to one with the cheapest in the world, I began to feel more than the gas was different in Venezuela. Nobody was smiling or laughing.

President Chavez has a strong military background which is obviously a redeeming characteristic with the grumpy military guys I met distributing fuel in the small border town of Santa Elena del Uairen to patient Venezuelans in long lines. The price was a whopping $0.097 VEF/L ($0.031 US/L), but they would shut the pump off at $4 VEF or 41 L (to help stop black market sales and even longer lineups). Foreigners (Brazilians were pretty much the only ones they ever saw around here) would have to buy their gas at another station for $1 VEF/L ($0.31 US/L). They grumbled a little about letting me fill up with the locals, but finally gave in when I started showing them where I had traveled. However, they didn't like it when I came back for more a second time later that same day after touring the Grand Savannah. Surprisingly, they even sell a cheaper grade of gas in Venezuela for $0.07 VEF/L.

Interesting note about almost every hotel room that I've inspected on my trip: For some reason that I can't figure out, they always take me to the room furthest away or on the top floor and usually I have to request something closer to the door because I have so much stuff to carry.

By now I was somewhat accustomed to hearing about violent deaths in the news, but I was shocked while eating breakfast one morning to hear that a 22 year-old female who was studying in Cuba had been murdered, but when her body reached home in Venezuela it was missing all the organs, including the head. This story really didn't help my feeling of uneasiness in Venezuela.

After a short stay in town to convert some Brazilian cash on the black market ($3.25 VEF/$1 US vs $2.14 VEF/$1 US) and get acquainted with the Venezuelan ways, I rode north for a day with a young Brazilian named Rodrigo who was riding a precariously loaded Honda XR250 around South America for 14 months. We rode through the beautiful and incredibly different Grand Savannah where the road and panoramas improved significantly from my previous days in the rainforest. While riding on the highway that day a huge flying beetle hit my helmet visor so hard that it sounded like a rock had shattered my visor, but it didn't, and it didn't even leave any guts.

We were stopped by several military checkpoints that day where I was reminded that the military controls this country. By the third checkpoint I started getting frustrated by the lazy and arrogant attitude of the guards who couldn't even bother to get up from their table beside the highway to stop people. There was a map on the wall showing the northern half of South America with the Guyanas (Guyana, Suriname & French Guiana) covered by diagonal red and white lines. When I asked one of the young guards why this was, he replied that the Guyanas were a zone of reclamation and they were like that on all their maps. He said that a reclamation zone means that the land was really theirs and when some treaty they had signed was over, is would be reclaimed (similar to how Guatemala believes Belize is theirs and how Argentina believes the Falkland Islands are theirs). He then mentioned that Colombia was theirs also, and without thinking as I chuckled about his last statement I said that possibly all of South Americas was Venezuela's. Rodrigo smirked and said the young guard turned quite red before letting us go.

Not far from my destination that day, Ciudad Guayana, at the north edge of the Savannah, there was a 6-hour old road block in one town where locals were protesting a lack of drinking water. Thankfully they liked motos and invited me to pass through without delay.

It was interesting to see that Chavez's gift of almost free gas had resulted in the continued use of big, old, gas-guzzling, oil-dripping cars.

I didn't really have a plan on where to go in Venezuela, but I did not want to be in Caracas. I'd heard too many bad things about it. I was mainly here to find shipping to Miami, but I knew the best place to find that would be from the airport and the ports on the north side of the capital city, along the coast. So that's where I was headed, the coast. The plan was to ride straight north until I got to the coast and then west along it, bypassing the city.

What I found on the coast near the start of the Peninsula de Paria (near Trinidad and Tobago) was a secluded little beach called Puypuy where I got a nice, clean, modern dorm room on the beach all to myself for $12.36 USD/night. It was worth riding the rough, secluded little roads to get to such a beautiful beach where I was the only guest. Both nights I was there the power went out and so I was forced to use candlelight and relax to the sounds of the crashing waves. It was a welcomed break, and although Buzz was just outside my door under a thatched roof, the stories of robbery from everyone I talked to made me decide to keep rolling rather than get too comfortable.