So there we were, miles from home, having narrowly escaped a month in a red light district. Now it was time to do what we had come to the country for. That decided, we set off in search of the course venue. But how to get there? The most hazardous part of the journey was crossing the road near our hotel to get to the pedestrian area. What we didn’t know is that Venezuelan drivers are no respecters of other road users. I had never seen so many people crammed together (cars three abreast in two lanes) trying to move an inch, while shouting insults at the tops of their voices and banging furiously on their horns. And that was just the way they treated other drivers. Pedestrians might as well have been invisible at best and at worst moving targets heading straight for the licensed kill zone of the zebra crossing. The first time we approached the crossing, we must have stood for ten minutes, wondering how we were going to get through. Then we saw how the locals did it. As soon as there was even the slightest gap, they would hold up a hand like an invisible shield and start to cross. Most of the time they got away with it, if the traffic was snarled up enough, but even the locals had to leap for the safety of the pavement a few times.
The hazardous crossing accomplished, we headed for the hills, or at least out of the busy downtown area. We’d made all the arrangements from Barbados, with the help of our guides, a local salsa band whom we’d met through one of our younger, hipper teachers. So we had a name, an address and an immersion course in Spanish – or so we thought. When we arrrived at the venue, it looked a typical school building, with high ceilings, wide corridors and lots of desks. When we said who we were and who we had come to see, we were shown to a room and asked to wait. After a few moments, our teacher came through the door. But all was not as it seemed. Apparently there’d been a mixup – and they suggested we come back in a few days by which time they’d be ready for us. When we returned, they had laid on a class for us – at least that’s what they called it. But we weren’t impressed. We had been studying Spanish since we were 13 and from the age of 15, all our language lessons had been in Spanish – no English allowed. So we needed a bit more than ‘what’s your name’ and the Spanish equivalent of ‘la plume de ma tante’. (For those not in the know, that’s a phrase used in the UK to indicate a basic level of French competence.) We gave them one more chance to get it right, then we parted company by mutual consent. We’d learn far more by talking to people out on the street – as long as we could manage to cross the road!
This is part of my Travel Tales in Venezuela series. In the next instalment, we go on a midnight trip to meriden and have an encounter with a gun.
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