A Carolina Yanqui in King Hugo's Court: Trip Pictures

Last week I traveled to the west of Venezuela for the first time, to the city of Maracaibo and then to the state of Táchira. I was too busy last week to write a post about the trip, and at this point I can´t really think of a narrative I can create to capture the entire trip, so I decided just to post some pictures I took along the way and write some captions. Sometimes it´s more fun anyway to look at pictures, right?

La Iglesia de Santa Barbara, Maracaibo

Maracaibo is an interesting place. It´s a really big city (about 3.5 million) but it definitely had more of a provincial feel to it then Caracas. Frankly it doesn´t have all that many tourist attractions. There is exactly one colonial era building remaining in the city, and much of the historic downtown was bulldozed in the 1970s to pave way for modernity. But there is a seven block stretch near the lake where there is a beautiful park and a couple of equally impressive churches, reminiscent for me of Valencia, Spain. Here is one of the churches, in honor of my mom.

Here´s a more common view in Maracaibo

20 plaintains for 20 bolívares

Plaintains are popular everywhere in Venezuela, but maracuchos eat them with everything (lots of coconut, too). Here is a typical cart selling them. There are two principle ways of eating plaintains: ripe (the yellow ones) they are fried and served as a side dish. Delicious. Unripe (green) they are flattened with some sort of hammer and then either dried and fried to serve as tostones (more or less plaintain chips) or in Maracaibo used to make patacón, which is like a quesadilla but with the fried plaintain used as the tortilla.

Las Pulgas

Maracaibo has an enormous flea market that extends for probably two kilometers. Here´s a typical view.

Virginia may be for lovers...

Maracuchos are known for being loud, jovial, and perhaps a little cocky and obnoxious. I think the state slogan sums it up perfectly. Zulia (Maracaibo´s state) keeps winning!

Lake Maracaibo

Maracaibo is situated on Lake Maracaibo, which is enormous (the largest in South America). Until oil was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century Maracaibo wasn´t much of a city, but now the lake and its oil underneath is the foundation of the entire Venezuelan economy.

Friends I made at a bar

More friends. One goes by the name of ¨Gandhi.¨

Luís took me to a gaita bar and serenaded me al estilo Andre.

La Iglesia de Chiquinquirá (¨La Chinita¨)

La Virgen de Chiquinquirá (¨La Chinita¨) is the patron saint of Maracaibo. Even the airport´s official name is El Aeropuerto de la Chinita.

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Now we move to Táchira, which is the southwestern state of Venezuela, situated on the border with Colombia, in the Andes mountains. The twin foundations of the economy there are agriculture and gasoline smuggling. With gas costing roughly $4.50/gallon in Colombia and $.09/gallon in Venezuela you can understand why. Because so much gas is smuggled, each car receives a ¨chip¨ that looks a little like an EZPass that entitles its owner to up to 42 liters of gas/day. Of course everyone knows that the president of PDVSA, the state oil company, sends two tankers a day into Colombia for his personal benefit.

San Pedro del Río

There are some beautiful towns in Táchira. San Pedro del Río sells crafts to local tourists on weekends, but during the week it is basically empty.

Marcos Pérez Jiménez

Marcos Pérez Jiménez was Venezuela´s (more or less) benevolent dictator of the 1940´s and 50´s. He was born in Michelena, outside of the state capital of San Cristobal. Many Venezuelans believe that he was the last effective president, and most of the roads in the country today were built during his administration. Perhaps he also gave Kim Jong Il some style advice?

Táchira is probably the most devout region of Venezuela. There were churches all over the place, and people actually attend mass on a regular basis.

Nice view.

A typical view of the region and the size of its villages. The mountains at the end of the Andes are not enormous, with most of the peaks in the area between 1,500 and 3,500 meters.

Dulce de Leche

There are lots of small agricultural producers in the region. I visited a one-man dulce de leche producer who made 110 kilograms a day of the sweet stuff.

Miche or Frankenstein´s lab?

They love their, miche, the local sugar-cane based alcohol in the region, drinking it almost as though it were coffee. As I drove around with a friend/guide we would stop every 90 minutes or so and he would ask, ¨do you need a little more alegria?¨ Then we stopped at what was essentially a moonshine operation. At the ¨bar¨ jugs of miche were flavored with every ingredient imaginable, and some that were not. I tasted, just about all of them, including culebra (snake), which you can see here (the jug on the right is known as miche viagara). Leslie, you were definitely getting a bottle of culebra if I wasn´t worried that it wouldn´t make it through customs.