You have not experienced a hair pin turn until you climb the mountain road on the way to Choroni in a 19 person bus at 11 o'clock at night. I must say, I am grateful for the darkness, because it deceived me into thinking that we were not, in fact, inches away from plummeting to our deaths at anytime for approximately two hours of our six hour ride to the beach. It also helped that we had been drinking for much of the ride down- Caracas traffic and a harrowing mountain road will drive most sane teachers to alcohol, which was certainly the case for the 13 CIC expats and two brave natives that joined us on last weekend's beach adventure. Ivan and Zeke braved the trip with what we summated was 5/6ths of the expat teaching staff at CIC. When we asked our principal what would have happened to the school if we plummeted to our deaths, or met some other unfortunate delay in returning to school, she answered only with "we'd manage". I don't think that the administration has come up with a "all of our expats have gone missing" contingency plan yet, but after last weekend, they probably should.
The ride to the beach was certainly worth it. The house, or rather hacienda/estate/Latin mansion we stayed at was absolutely stunning. We all had a bed, copious spots to sit and relax, a pool to enjoy and a wonderful landscape to savor. We even had two dogs to play with, a band of monkeys to entertain us and a housekeeper to make us breakfast each morning! Saturday morning, we enjoyed an arepa-filled breakfast and headed to the dock on the edge of town, where we caught a motorboat ride to a beach that was 15 minutes from town, and only accessible by foot or boat! The views form the boat were breathtaking- mountains buffered the shore, with sea caves and beaches around every peak. The water was just indescribably blue. A mix of teal, aqua and deep blue, it looked like it must have been colored by a masterful painter. I have been to Italy, Greece and Australia, but never have a seen a water so lovely, and the beach where were made camp rivaled all the beaches I have seen before. It was absolutely stunning. We set up under a few umbrellas, and Gordon and I immediately slathered ourselves with SPF 60. As the whitest of the white people in the group, people were quite concerned with quality of our lathering jobs, as no one wants to deal with third degree burns when the nearest hospital is only accessible via a peril-filled mountain road. We all enjoyed the sun and surf, playing frisbee and soccer, swimming and snorkeling. Ivan took me out for a snorkeling adventure close to the shore. Not very far out was a whole other world underwater! Schools or fish, brain coral and even a moray eel greeted us- I never wanted to come back to the dry world! But alas, Ivan was concerned about my back in the sun, and I was sent to reapply sunscreen and sit in the shade.
After a solid five hours at the beach, we returned to our hacienda for rest and showering, and then headed to dinner. After an incredibly long wait (especially considering that we were 14 famished adults and one starving eight year old), I was served a fish as long as my arm, fried, complete with eyes and teeth and scales. Despite Jason and Ivan's attempts to help me find the meat among the rest of the fish, I wasn't able to eat my fill due to my discomfort with the idea of my dinner looking at me. I gave up entirely after Jason made the fish talk to me and then sat the entire head on my plate. Asshole.
For the first time in the history of my friend group, we all went to bed before midnight that night, which meant we are all up and ready for more arepas bright and early (like 9am) the next morning. We split into groups based on what we were interested in accomplishing for the day, and Ivan, Gordon, Walli and I set off for a walk through the town up to the main beach, Playa Grande (which, for you English speakers, is creatively named "Large Beach"). As we began our trek, we realized it was hot as hell, which we rectified by a) beers and b) coconut popsicles that were to DIE for. The town was brightly colored and bustling and separated from the beach by a river that housed motorboats for taking tourists to and from the farther beaches. Playa Grande was as beautiful as our beach the previous day, just, as the name suggests, larger and subsequently more crowded. Vendors sold food and drinks amongst the hundreds of umbrellas, and people were everywhere in the water as well. I even spotted a few short boarders in the surf, doing a remarkably good job at not mowing over small children as they tore through the waves. On our return trip the hacienda, we picked up some souvenirs and the native alcoholic concoction call the Guarapita. Guarapitas came in multiple flavors- passion fruit, coconut and even chocolate- and always in enormous bottles that thankfully encouraged sharing. They were DELICIOUS, which meant that after "sharing" ten bottles, we found ourselves far drunker than we anticipated while boarding the bus for our six hour ride home. Thankfully I slept most of the way, which meant I missed most of the treacherous road down the mountain, and put off the impending nausea until we were about an hour from home. We arrived at about midnight, and the next morning was the roughest I have had since I've been here, between the sleep deprivation and the number the guarapitas did on my stomach. The moral of this segment of my beach story is guarapitas in general=awesome; guarapitas before a six hour bus ride= worst idea ever.
This week has been as busy as ever at work. I finished meeting with all of my seniors' parents, worked on a organization program to help the upper grades with organization and time management and pulled off a very successful first college visit. I have massive amounts of stuff to do Monday and Tuesday this week, since Wednesday Friday I will be accompanying grades 6-10 to a team building camping trip four hours away in Valencia! I am very excited for the trip, as it will help me get to know the kids better and allow me to get our of Caracas again to see more of the country.
To end this post, I'll share another "I'm clearly not in America anymore" story. Today, I went with MariaElena to "boot camp". Instead of gyms in this country, people exercise in mass in public places like parks or school stadiums. MariaElena frequents one such groups called MTS, which stands for Marcos's Training System, appropriately nicknamed "BootCamp". Marcos is probably one of the most attractive men I have ever seen in my life, though I have only seen him from the receiving end of a bullhorn as he yells in Spanish to CORREMOS NO CAMBIAMOS! Today's boot camp was held in a construction site, where he ran 100 or so of us through pools of mud and even brought in a water truck to hose us down as we planked and jumpingjacked our way through a two hour work out. He even utilized the rocks around the site to make us do clean-and-presses. And if I needed another reason to realize this was not my normal American work out experience, half way through our 200 squat finale, a herd of goats wandered into our group, fairly unphased by the 100 grunting people and blaring music. Monkeys, guarapitas and goats- oh my! Clearly my Venezuela experience continues to entertain and delight- in fact, the end of my honeymoon phase seems no where in sight! :)
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