AT HOME AT ‘CASA VENAMOR’, LA GUARDIA, ISLA MARGARITA
Tuesday, 07 November 2006 (Election Day in the USA)

After spending several very interesting but tiring days in and near Riobamba, Ecuador, (around Mt. Chimborazo) with our friend Gerardo Chacon, and, with him, traveling by pickup truck high up into the Andes to visit economic development projects that he has initiated and furthered, we reluctantly leave Ecuador for six months. (The Andean projects will be the subject of a longer article I am preparing so will not write much here.)

Arriving in plenty of time for our Caracas flight about Santa Barbara Airline, we are surprised to find that we are first going to fly to Guayaquil. It appears that they do not have available in Quito a pilot qualified to fly over the Andes. So the plane has been left in Guayaquil. All Caracas passengers like ourselves are shunted onto a domestic TAME flight down to the coast and where we eventually join a Caracas flight.

That aside, however, the trip is unexceptional, the high point being seeing the major Andean peaks sticking out of broken cloud. What a stark contrast however between eating airline snacks and drinking red wine while hopping smoothly, efficiently and cleanly around various South-American airports and our travel by long-distance bus from Bahia de Caraquez through the coastal-banana plantations or up through the mountain passes to Quito or Riobamba at over 3,000 metres. Even starker the contrast to the ‘camonietta’ ride over washboard roads and through high-altitude banks of rain clouds up to well over 4,000 metres (above the tree line) with Gerardo to the tiny, poverty-stricken indigenous villages.

While shuffling around the airports we meet Luis José Iturriaga, who is Business Development Officer for Coldwell Banker, the US-based real-estate company. He travels all over Latin America setting up franchises and the like. Very likeable, friendly and cheerful man and informative not only about life and politics here but very helpful as well to get us through the airport at Caracas and onto an overbooked flight to Isla Margarita. We would probably still be sitting at Caracas and paying for hotel rooms but for Luis.

We had been seeing a lot of residential building in Ecuadorian cities, and Luis was able to tell us what has been driving this building boom. First, emigrant workers are sending money home to their families in Ecuador from Spain and the USA. Remittances are now the largest source of foreign exchange (after petroleum) for Ecuador. A lot of the money is going into building large and, in my opinion, mostly very gauche mansions for when the Ecuadorian worker finally comes home and gathers his family about him. The houses are built in stages so there will be a lot of raw buildings around for some years to come.

The second main driving force is the America baby-boomers. The retirement buck can be stretched a lot farther in Ecuador or elsewhere in South America. Many retired persons who would have trouble living on their retirement nest-egg in the USA can not only build a large house here but can also even afford a housekeeper. In countries like Venezuela the health care is not only affordable, it is totally free.

Finally landed at modern Palomar Airport on Isla Margarita, we negotiate for a night taxi ride to La Guardia. All the taxis seem to be huge gas-guzzlers from the 1980s. This is not remarkable when you consider that gasoline cost about 20 cents a gallon! We had already been burned in changing money at the Caracas Airport. You get a much better rate by changing dollars with one of the flying dealers at the terminals. But you have to watch that they do not palm a twenty-dollar bill or two while the trade is taking place and you are a little distracted. We think that happened to us. So, although we got a much better rate – 2500 Bolivars per dollar instead of the official Bs. 2150 - we also think we were ripped off for twenty dollars.

With this experience in mind we are on the qui-vive at Palomar. The first car in the taxi rank does not have a taxi sign on top and I refuse to take him. The next guy is hesitant about jumping the queue until I insist. I forget to negotiate the price before I get inside and we are moving. He starts at twenty-five dollars and we wind up at twenty. Later we hear that that is a pretty good rate for a night taxi to La Guardia.

Arriving at Casa Venamor we find it barred and shuttered up tight though with an outside light burning. The village streets are empty. The air is warm and soft if, after the Pacific coast, slightly muggy. We wonder if, since it is still only mid-evening, David and Estela, the American couple who have been staying at the house till now, might be out somewhere. After a bit of door-pounding, however, we hear a voice, bolts being withdrawn and doors being opened. They welcome us warmly into the house.

We keep them up until late drinking beer and exchanging stories to get acquainted. Then about midnight, tired and stiff from our days of travel, we fall into the comfortable beds at the top of the house with the fan and the air conditioner blowing away like a flight of helicopters. We hardly hear them.