After eight days in Venezuela-- primarily in Caracas and the nearby beach village of Choroni-- perhaps my most indelible memory is of mi amigo, Leomard, a young man who helped run a beachside cafe in Chorini. Leomard typified, for me, the congeniality and easy going nature of Choroni residents despite their relative poverty and, by Western standards, their simple and unsophisticated lifestyles.
My brother claimed that his amiability may have been simply a hustler's instinct. He saw me as a rich gringo, an Americano con dinero. But who cares? He understandably wanted to sell me his cerveza y arepas , but I liked him immediately, and I think he liked me. He high-fived me the first day we met and everyday thereafter until our group's departure four days later. And I always greeted him, "Leomard, amigo. Hola!" A temporary bonhommie perhaps, but a vivid, and priceless, souvenir from Venezuela.
Choroni is both a fishing and a tourist village. In order to get to the beach and the warm waters of the Caribbean, you have to wade across the Choroni River, or use a footbridge. On Thursday afternoon, while my brother, my wife, and I were still on the beach (actually my brother and I were in the water), a violent thunderstorm struck, pelting us with the rain from a tropical downpour. We rushed from the beach to Leomard's cafe where we took shelter, drinking cervezas until the rain let up. When it did, we hiked back to town, only to find that the normally placid Choroni River had become a raging torrent. With help, we were able to wade through nearly chest deep water to the bridge and cross into the town proper.
The flash flood inundated the entire lower section of Choroni, covering the streets with mud, sediment, and debris. Electricity was knocked out, and the water used for bathing, pumped into rooftop cisterns by electric pumps, was quickly depleted. But life went on. Town residents young and old (mainly negro y mestizo) shoveled the flood's detritus from the streets and and scoured the restaurant terazzos with brooms, mops, and buckets of water, so that normal commerce wasn't interrupted. As our traveling group of mainly Americans and Canadians ate dinner and drank wine that night at the cafe around the corner from our posada, I watched the locals work -- and laugh-- as the cleanup continued.
The night of the flood was the best night of our stay in Choroni, at least for me. Like the locals-- or maybe because of them-- our last evening in the village was filled with laughter and good cheer.
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On our first day in Caracas, my wife and I also met a young Venezuelan who ran an internet "cafe". He spoke excellent English (he went to college in Florida) and helped us send off an e-mail to our kids at the U of O. Coincidentally, we ran into him again at the airport on the morning of our departure. It was he who recognized us! It turns out that his real job is professional triathlete, and he was traveling to Panama City, Florida, to compete in the Florida Ironman Triathlon. Whoa! I used to do triathlons, and both my younger brother and sister have completed the Canadian Ironman! I wished Cesar Valero the best of luck, and told him I'll check the results of Saturday's race on the internet. There's something weirdly serendipitous about meeting a guy in an internet cafe and then realizing you can follow his professional career on that very same internet. I used to be a technophobe, but now I looove the World Wide Web!
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