Carnaval y la Culata

Long weekend = long post; brace yourself. We spent most of Friday gathering supplies for our upcoming adventure; the Pico Bolívar plans had fallen through due to a lack of guides, so we would be going in two separate crews to El Parque Nacional Sierra la Culata. Our crew of four guys and three girls would be going without a guide for two nights, while the other crew of three dudes would be going with a guide for three nights with a side trip to some hot springs. In retrospect, I probably should have jumped onto that train, but we ended up saving a bunch of money and having a more memorable experience. Per the advice of Cesar, our Phonetics instructor, we went to la Plaza de Heroinas, where we met an awesome woman who could rent us equipment. Dressed in sundress and bandana, she had a mystique about her and spoke a pretty chévere brand of castellano. She rented us tents and sleeping bags at less than half the price of the “endorsed” travel agent Bruce, the guy who organized our first trip to the Páramo and the beach. Although he is fairly reliable, our relations have slowly turned sour as we discovered how much he is overcharging us. Our trip cost me about $5, while that of the other crew cost about $60. Around noon, we headed over to the Plaza de Toros to buy tickets for the next day’s bullfight. We waited in line in the hot sun for about an hour and did not move an inch due to a guy up front trying to buy all the tickets so he could resell them at a higher price. At this point, we decided it was not worth it to spend our whole afternoon waiting to buy tickets for a sport we were not all that keen on in the first place. Virtually every Merideño we had talked to said they were opposed to the bullfights, but that it is something you should do once, our main motivation. Most of our friends who went did not make it past the third bull (they kill at least six each match), and they told us plenty of horror stories of bulls goring horses to thunderous applause and one bull who apparently was not angry enough, so they killed it in back and sent out a new one that would provide more “entertainment.” We then made a trip to the Garzón to buy food before heading to church with Cointa for her birthday. Mass in Venezuela is less formal and much more focused on the fellowship aspect; the sign of peace was a good 5-10 minute affair complete with its own song, and the whole mass had plenty of clapping. I had to laugh when Cointa answered a phone call halfway through mass and proceeded to have a hushed five minute conversation. I was able to hang onto about 60-70% of the words during the service; hearing any language is difficult via a muffled microphone. Later that night, we wanted to head over to the area surrounding the Plaza de Toros to see what the Carnaval was all about, but were warned by about five different people that a group of gringos heading over there past 9PM is a guaranteed robbery, so we passed on that.  Saturday we got some last minute supplies, sat in the plaza by our place for a few hours watching pigeons’ mating rituals, and ate cake with a few Venezolanos at a café. All the Americans were surprised when the cake came virtually waterlogged; I guess traditional Venezuelan cake tends to be pretty soggy, who knew?

Sunday morning we awoke around 5:45AM to the usual cacophony of car horns and car alarms. I imagine Venezuelan driving school must go something like this: Approaching intersection? Horn. Need to run red light without stopping? Horn. Pedestrian? Horn. Not moving? Horn. The car alarms are equally as incessant, going off at the slightest stimulus, especially fireworks, which create an obnoxious chain reaction of car alarms. Cointa is used to it obviously, but none of us can sleep in past about 8AM due to the noise. Rant over. There was a heavy fog covering the whole city reminiscent of the one in the 1980's film (free of zombie pirates, however), which made me a little bit nervous. Cesar had said “cuando se baja la neblina, pueden  perderse.” Nonetheless, we hopped on the 8AM bus to la Culata and arrived at about nine, delayed by an interesting costume parade in one of the small towns along the way. Due to some bad advice, we spent about two hours trudging through farm fields before finding the real trailhead. In an effort to be helpful, Venezuelans will give you directions even if they don’t know the way, which is something I will be more careful of in the future. Although I had a map, we did not know exactly where we got dropped off, so a compass reading would have been useless. For the next couple hours, we slowly transitioned from farmland to the mountain Páramo ecosystem, which I have learned is a general term for a particular subset of alpine tundra climate characterized by the giant rosette plants which you can see in most of my pictures. After a brief lunch on a mountain pass we walked through Valle el Muerto, and then trudged up a pretty steep incline, at which point the fog which we had been outrunning all day caught up with us and visibility was limited to about twenty feet. I kept thinking, “Wow, Mom would love this fog!” We followed a path next to a river until about 3PM when we decided it would be best to set up camp since we could not really see anything. The rain started falling as soon as we stopped and things started to get interesting. We had banked on our ability to make fire in order to cook food, which became infinitely more difficult once the already-sparse wood became soaked. With the effort of all seven of us, we managed to maintain a fire with the dry undersides of the giant rosette plants just long enough to cook some pasta. We were probably a little irresponsible in our choice of group members as some people did not bring rain jackets and became pretty miserable following the rain. After dinner, everyone jumped into the tents to stay dry. The fog had lifted and I still had quite a bit of energy so I climbed a nearby ridge and explored for about two hours. I was in awe of the overwhelming silence, punctuated by drops of rain here and there. I had just started thinking about how great it would be if the rain stopped so I could take some pictures when sure enough, providence gave me about fifteen minutes of clear skies to do so. Throughout this entire journey, I have become more conscious of my time spent in and out of the moment. Standing on top of the ridge humbled by the harsh peaks above, I felt more “in the moment” than I have in a long time. Something I learned later on is that due to the geography of the area, all the cloud systems in the valley will eventually work their way up to la Culata, hit the ridge we were camping next to, and turn into rain every day at about 3PM. Now we know. We spent the rest of the night in tents playing cards and then had a pretty miserable night of restless “sleep” since we were packed into small tents. We had been told we were renting a five-man tent, and I had my two-man tent with me, so we figured we could sleep comfortably. However, the five-man turned out to be more of a three-man, so two other dudes and I packed like sardines into my tiny tent. At about 7AM, the girls had had enough and were itching to head home, so we cleaned up our camp and then split into two groups. It was sunny and warm, so my friend Andrew and I decided to go a little further to the base of Pan de Azucar, the peak we had hoped to climb and probably would have except for our two-hour detour at the beginning of the day. The magnitude of our failure was made more painful and embarrassing upon hearing that the other group with the guide had summited Pan de Azucar.  Still, I think our group needed a weekend to do our own thing without a tour guide; I suppose this was more a practice round.  Despite some discomfort, our small crew got to know each other really well, and I learned that a stove and dining fly are a necessity. One of the guys from the other crew said he would easily be able to reproduce the trip they did this weekend without a guide, so I think in a few weeks we will assemble a hardy group of backpackers and do that trip, or a variation on the one we just did. When I got home yesterday, I slept for about 15-16 hours. For the past week, my glands have been pretty swollen, I have been having some ear pain, and my nose has been running pretty steadily. I had attributed two of those symptoms to the constant elevation changes and my allergies, but yesterday I was having trouble swallowing and was kind of feverish, so I went to the farmacia, and they recommended some medicine to take for what I assume is a sinus infection. According to Cointa, I would have had to go to the emergency room to get medical attention since everywhere else is closed due to las Ferias, but she said the pharmacist would say the same thing a doctor would anyway. If nothing changes within the next couple days, I will go to a clinic and get better advice. This weekend was not at all what I expected, but I had a great time anyway! Tonight we played a little basketball at a court near our place. Cointa has been listening to this station that seems to play only cheesy covers of late 70’s and early 80’s classic rock, and they just finally played the original of Huey Lewis' “The Power of Love,” so I’m in a good mood.