From the water, the city of Porlomar, on the Isla de Margarita, appears similar to Miami. A row of high-rise apartments and hotels line the shore concealing a bustling town a couple of blocks inland. The anchorage is a large protected bay that comfortably accommodates well over a hundred visiting yachts. To go ashore requires only a short dinghy ride to the dock at Juan’s Marina. Despite the fairly impressive name, this marina is no more than a small dock and a tiny bungalow. From the “marina” it is about a two mile walk into town. The walk into town goes through some poor neighborhoods and the blaring salsa music, scroungy dogs, and men drinking beer on the sidewalk provides a distinctly Latin American feel.
One of the interesting experiences of visiting a foreign country is the chance to view yourself as others from a different culture may see you. Trekking through a poor neighborhood, it is difficult not to realize just how nice the things that I own really are. In fact, it is in some ways embarrassing how unnecessarily nice some of my possessions are. In America, it is not uncommon to seek top-of-the-line items, especially for relatively inexpensive, often used items. One example are my sandals. While in Atlanta this summer, I splurged on a pair of Rainbow sandals for about $50. I rationalized this purchase with the knowledge that sandals are pretty much the only footwear that I use and it is worth getting a reliable pair of sandals for my travels in the tropics. However, while walking through areas where $50 could probably support a family for a couple of months, it seems like an unnecessary extravagance.
Even my calculator goes far beyond performing the basic division necessary to convert bolivars into dollars. Instead of a cheap solar calculator, I have been toting around an HP 19BII financial calculator. This would be fine if I needed to determine the future value of mangos, taking into consideration the inflation of the Venezuelan economy and the devaluation of the bolivar, but the purpose of my visit here is not to seek arbitrage opportunities in the mango market. (If I really wanted to engage in arbitrage, I would bring a lot of US dollars, which are pegged by the Venezuelan government, convert them to bolivars on the black market, where I would receive a 20 percent premium, change my bolivars to a third currency, say Trinidad dollars, and then take my new currency to another country and exchange it back into US dollars. This scheme would net about 20 percent minus the small transaction fees and exposure to currency fluctuations during the trading period.
Of course, the biggest risk of dabbling in the black market is that large transactions would likely draw attention landing me in a Venezuelan jail, in which case I would have wished I had stuck to speculating in mangos.) It is a fine line between exhibiting nice items that inspire envy in the less fortunate and displaying wealth that arouses aggressive jealousy. Because of the disparity in valuable possessions, it is not surprising that theft and robbery are common on Margarita. Despite my belief that I am living a basic life on a tight budget, exposure to a vastly different economic environment illustrates how fortunate I am to have won the geographical lottery by being born in the U.S..
The main challenge that I have encountered in Margarita has been my struggle to communicate. I know only a few words of Spanish and hardly anyone that I have met speaks any English. Usually, I can get by with gestures and a few Spanish words. I have determined not to allow my lack of Spanish to deter me from exploring and the challenge of communication actually enhances the experience. However, this has led to some awkward situations. One of these situations was when I visited the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Francisco Narvaez. All of the travel guides recommended visiting the Contemporary Art Museum, but when I arrived it was completely empty except for two women working there. After paying for my ticket, one of the women escorted me upstairs and then followed me around while I viewed all of the sculptures. I’m not sure whether she was supposed to be a guide or was just making sure that I didn’t steal anything. In what would have made a decent skit, this girl and I spent a few minutes waiting for the elevator and then endured a couple more awkward minutes as the elevator made the painfully slow climb up the one level. Not sharing a common language, we were left occasionally glancing at each other, nodding slightly, smiling sheepishly, and then averting our eyes and praying for the elevator doors to open.
In a cruel twist, it seems that God has condemned all of the attractive women to non-English speaking countries. So far, Venezuela joins St. Martin as having by far the most beautiful women that I have seen. You would think this would offer adequate motivation to learn Spanish and French, but here I am still gawking without the ability to utter so much as a word. Actually, this isn’t a whole different from how I behave around beautiful women that do speak English. Aside from the women, the main draw of Venezuela are the prices. Not all items are bargains, but if you need gas (15 cents/gallon), coke (75 cents/liter), or beer (28 cents/can) then Margarita is the place to go. The two main beers are Polar and Bhrama and the local joke is that your choices of beer are bear piss or bull piss. To be fair, the cans of beer are cheap, but they are also slightly smaller than the normal size. The Venezuelans say that this is so that you can finish your beer before it gets warm. A more developed country might arrive at a different solution: drink faster. In one developed country, los Estados Unidos, we have an assortment of names for people who can’t finish a can of normal sized beer before it gets warm.
However, this site aspires to be family friendly and I will not list the pejoratives here. Despite the tensions between the Venezuelan and American governments, people here seem to embrace all things American. On the main street, there are stores called “Texas” and “California.” It is possible that these names have a Spanish translation that I am not aware of, but the neon American flags in the window lead me to believe that they are a reference to The Great Satan to the north (yes, I know that term is what Iranians call the US, but I’m sure the Venezuelan government wishes that they came up with it).
Aside from having nearly every American name brand on sale, the main street also is the home to a bar called “Cheers.” This Cheers looks more like the television version of Cheers than the original Bull & Finch bar in Boston – it even has Tecumseh, the wooden Indian that greets patrons at the door. However, when I went in for a drink, my jokes to the bartender about Mayday Malone and no one knowing my name were met with befuddled silence. As a result, I restrained myself from yelling “Norm” every time a fat man entered the bar. As for food, say what you will about the government of Hugo Chavez, but the Venezuelans can cook a good chicken, which they call pollo. Street vendors also sell some tasty empanadas. For some reason, there are quite a few Italian restaurants and, as with most of the Caribbean that I have visited thus far, Chinese restaurants seem popular. Brian’s theory about the popularity of Chinese food is that being close to South America, Latin cuisine is covered; traditionally being governed by Europeans, continental fare is standard; North America seems to just rip off foreign cooking and our only contribution is fast food, which is everywhere. This leaves the Orient, which is the only place that seems exotic to these worldly eaters.
On the financial front, I achieved another one of my lifetime goals this week: I became a millionaire before the age of 30. Granted, I am only a millionaire in terms of Venezuelan bolivars (2,150 bolivars = $1USD), but it has still been a long, hard trip to reach this point. It is true what they say, the first million really is the hardest. Yet, despite my newfound wealth, withdrawing money from ATM’s has proved even more difficult than it was back in my days of poverty (i.e. last week). The ATM’s here are like video games; you have to enter your information and make your selections in a split second or your are kicked off and have to start over. Even in English, such quick decisions would be a challenge. Further complicating the problem of withdrawing money is the fact that many ATM’s do not recognize bank cards from the U.S., even if they specifically advertise for the type of card issued in America. After wandering all over town and trying five different banks, I finally met the challenge and was rewarded with cash. It would have been easier to break into a bank. As could be expected, Thanksgiving wasn’t a big deal in Margarita. Since the Indians didn’t give the Venezuelans any maiz and Bolivar wasn’t prominently involved in surviving the first harsh winter in North America, the residents of Margarita ignorantly went about their normal lives. This is the opposite of Trinidad, which scours the earth for holidays and rumor has it that they just instituted Festivus (“for the rest of us”) on the strength of a good episode of Seinfeld. In any case, my private celebration included a hearty chicken lunch, a refreshing afternoon swim, and the grilling of some steaks for dinner. It is difficult to get too into the Thanksgiving spirit when it is 90 degrees in the shade.
Thus concludes my week in Margarita. I have enjoyed my stay and could easily stay for much longer. However, other islands beckon and it is time to move on. My next stop is Tortuga, which is rumored to be a beautiful, remote island that offers great snorkeling and phenomenal beaches. Onward and westward.