Life on the Road

Life travelling out here is a bit different to being back in the real world, so here's a short description of what goes on.

Commuting

To get around as economically as possible, and to mix with the locals, travelling is almost exclusively achieved by public bus. The bus network is fairly good in most Latin American countries (no one has a car), there is a regular service through every town. In Venezuela it was even better, there was some kind of public transport running along virtually every road in the country. In Central, public transport only seems to run between towns, not within them and around the local area.

In Central America (excluding Costa Rica of course - which is like the 51st US state), the poor man's buses are the 'chicken buses', which are the old US school buses - the big yellow things which look more like army trucks with bad camouflage, than vehicles for transporting school children. And true to their name, its not unusual to see live chickens being transported, you can expect to see anything from birds in cages, big sacks of flour and rice, piles of wood...

Spiced-up Chicken bus, Nicaragua

The passengers are always entertained with music, usually at an annoyingly and inappropriately high volume. If you are lucky, then its Reggaeton, if you are unlucky then its some cheesy Latin guitar pop (Gustavo Leyton should be shot). And if you are really unlucky, then the driver has taped an old TV to the ceiling at the front, and the passengers are subjected to the music videos of these terrible songs (I don't mean Reggaeton of course).

The buses often double as markets, at every opportunity local sellers get on to try and tempt you with their wonderful products on offer, whether it be the quite useful chilled water in a plastic bag, or the usually poor and tasteless local street food, to any other random selection of items available in the world - gin-seng, foot fungus cream, sex education books, English dictionaries, or of course super glue.

Food

Life can get fairly simple out here, and there's usually one thing dominating your thoughts - food. To keep things as cheap as possible and to try and follow the local cuisine where ever you are, the best way to do this is to stick with the street food and whats available in the markets. The problem with this is the poor quality and taste of local food. If its meat its generally been deep fried, in a frying pan of one week-old oil, slapped on a plate with no sauce, and accompanied by rice, beans, an excuse for salad and vile tasting tortilla-looking things.

A plate of the usual - chicken, rice, beans

Other street food is equally uninviting, pastries or biscuit type things tend to be dry and pretty much inedible. A pastry we keep running into in Central, consists of some kind of disgusting cheese and sugar mix inside - cheese and sugar??

So its not really possible to stay happy and healthy on solely local food. Breakfast now consists of a trip to the local market for fruit - pineapples, mangoes, avocados, melons, oranges, coconuts, bananas, watermelons - whatever is the cheapest and most popular in the current location. In El Salvador avocados suddenly got really cheap for some reason, on the Caribbean, coconuts are fee of course, in Honduras bananas are literally given away, and in Nicaragua pineapples were a good deal.

The great market in León, Nicaragua

The jackpot is to find a hostel with a kitchen so we can prepare our own food, then not only do the meals become cheaper, but also full of taste, vitamins and goodness. Every place we stayed at in El Salvador had a kitchen, one even had an oven!, and coriander, Cinnamon, and fresh cream started to appear in the markets, aah, great memories...

When we haven't found a hostel with a kitchen for guests to use, the next best option is to find a cheap hotel that has its own restaurant included, then we tell the owners we are professional chefs and love to cook, and ask if we can use their kitchen - its worked a couple of times, but not every time.

Choosing the route

The route is kind of made up as I go along, any kind of serious planning and I tend to come out in a rash. There are plenty of travellers on the road out here - much more in Central America than in Venezuela, so often the best information can be gathered by asking them, but also a lot of information on places you can get from guide books and the Internet.

Crime

If you have a high level of common sense, and keep your whits about you, especially in the most risky places such as markets, bus stations, airports and border crossings, then crime isn't a huge problem. I've been robbed 3 times so far - all in Venezuela. The first time was within a few days of arriving, the police for some reason were not happy with my passport and documents, and so felt the need to dissect every part of my rucksack. A few days later I realised I no longer had my head torch - Venezuela police are scum! The second time I had my shorts stolen from the beach whilst I was busy swimming in the sea. The third time must have been at Caracas airport when a customs official or baggage handler took my penknife from my rucksack. All school boy errors that I have now learnt from.

Finishing off Nicaragua

I haven't written for a while, so here's an update for anyone who still remembers about this blog.

Estelì in the North

After the adventures in Leòn, our time was running out in Nicaragua. We had one more stop in a mountainesque town, Estelì, towards the northern border with Honduras. Our main objective in Estelì was to visit a 25 metre waterfall rumoured to be a short distance out of town.

The journey there consisted of a bit of walking, some bus rides and a bit more walking, before arriving at a dirt track accompanying a small river leading out into the wilderness. Hence our anticipation was of a pristine waterfall, with clear water, surrounded by rich native woodland, unicorns drinking from the splash pool, and parrots serenading us with their songs.

But oh no, unfortunately it was typical scene that we had become far too accustomed to in Nicaragua, but to be fair, in most of Latin America. Rubbish. There was plastic garbage everywhere despite many signs posted around instructing people not to drop litter, and the water smelled. We carried on towards the actual waterfall we were after, to find a little less garbage, and a little cleaner water. We decided it was worth the risk and swam in the pool formed by the water fall, to escape the heat of the day. For the next 4 days I had an ear infection. Lesson learned.

Observations of Nicargua

Nicaragua is a very poor country, and it can be seen in every respect. Not only are the people poor in terms of their monetary wealth and posessions, but also in their education, their culture, their hygiene and their food (!). Statiistical evidence of this can be seen by a quick look at the demographic data of the country.

Rubbish

Generally the towns in Nicaragua are full of rubbish and pollution, the markets and the bus stations are especially bad, and it breaks your heart when you see young children playing around in all this mess. Hygiene, germs, cleanliness - these are all things that people have no knowledge of, let alone the affects of pollution on the natural environment, or even just the nice appearance of their own town, street or indeed their own garden. Most houses you pass with any kind of land infront or behind, are covered in garbage.

Food

The diet of the people appeared to me to be pretty terrible. I am trying to travel as economically as possible; the best and most interesting way of doing this is to get around how the local people get around, and eat what they eat. You might think that being a fairly tropical country, which produces all kinds of weird and wonderful fruit and vegetables, the popular cuisine might be rich with all these ingredients. Couple that with the fact that fruit and vegetables are the cheapest thing available to the market shopper, I am still bewildered at the fascination with tasteless deep fried fatty crap, rice and beans, and poor quality fried chicken. We really were suffering at the hands of local food, but to be fair to Nicaragua, we still are whilst travelling through El Salvador, Honduras, and rumour has it, the poor food continues into Guatemala. Though did I here a rumour that the Mexicans make good food..?

People
Well its hard to sum up the people I encountered in Nicaragua in one paragraph, as there were so many different experiences from different kinds of people. Some people live a hard life here, doing lots of physical work for literally no reward. Then other people do literally nothing all day, and quite rightly also recieve very little income. There weren't a huge amount of smiles flying around in Nicaragua, this really became noticable when you actually saw children having fun, smiling and laughing - playing football on the beach or diving into rivers from ever greater hights to impress their friends. This was such a constrast to the majority of glum faces - kids sitting in the gutter in the markets, selling chewing gum on the streets or carrying piles of wood up dirt tracks back to their house.

The poorest countries in Central America are turning out to be very similar, so although these comments are directly about Nicaragua, I have encountered the same kinds of things in El Salvador and Honduras.

Venezuelan Food so far

So I´ve been trying to sample the different foods typical of Venezuela, and here´s what I´ve found so far. I have been staying in the mountains mostly so my experiences admittedly are limited, and I hope there is better food to be found else where. Food doesn´t seem to be at the top of the cultural list here (although that´s a bit rich coming from an English guy), I think it links back to that lack of sophistication thing. Anyway, here´s whats gone down my throat so far:

Empanadas
They are essentially a stuffed deep fried corn flour dough, tenuously ressembly Cornish Pasties, but in Venezuela at the least, they are not so good. There is a standard selection here: chicken, meat, cheese, vegetable. They are partly let down by the fillings (the cheese is more like a piece of chewing gum that´s been chewed for two hours; tastless and pointless), and partly by the over greasy deep fried casing.

Arepas
These are like smallish looking but thick pancake things, but made out of maize or wheat. They seem to be the most common and most typical food of Venezuela. Everyone eats them for at least one meal a day, and if they´re unlucky, two. I spoke to a guy the other day who was proud to tell me he ate them 3 times a day. In a nutshell they are dry and tasteless, so its up to the filling to save them... which is the problem. The family I´m staying with take them with ham and an excuse for cheese, and sometimes for a real treat sometimes they add a bit of margarine. If all of these fillings were of a decent quality, and the whole thing was cooked properly, then they might be edible. I´ve had them with avocado and salad which was bearable, but still not worth eating everyday.

Churros
These apparently originated in Portugual and Spain, which might explain why they taste so good. They are like little sausage shaped deep fried dough things, with sugar sprinkled over them. They are a great when dunked in a Chocolate Espeso, which seems to be just melted chocolate in a cup. Divine.

Jugos Naturales
Fruit juice made from fresh fruit in front of you. You can usually choose from orange, pineapple, mango, strawberry.... A great chaser to a nice strong coffee.

Meat Dishes
Disappointing. Stake knives here should come with a battery in them and a small motor to help you cut them. I´m sure there must be good stake some where, I just haven´t found it here yet. The most interesting meet dish I´ve had, was a stake with a dark sauce with bits of strawberry and peach in, sounds odd, but tasted interestingly good.

Chicken Dishes
Quite literally nothing to write home about, so I won´t.

Fish
I´ll wait until I get nearer to the coast before I tell you how below average the trout dishes in the Andes are.

Soups
One of the dishes that are done reliably well here. Always with coriander, and usually with potatoes, vegetables and sometimes stewed meat in. Nothing drastically different from an English vegetable soup, but the coriander gives it a nice twist, and its a reliably good choice wherever you´re eating.

Pasteles (Pastries)
You can find some great pastries in some of the cafés here; usually covered in sugar, you can find them with different jams in (guayaba, strawberry), or pieces of different fruits. A great accompaniment to a coffee...

Coffee
Hit and miss. If you miss, you get an overpriced cup of instant. If you hit, you get a big hit of caffeine. The coffee is nice and strong here, you can get either a generous sized espresso or a large sized espresso, which is the size of an average cup, which results in a great caffeine rush. Qué Bueno.

First Impressions of Venezuela

On first impressions, the towns in Venezuela appeared much like those I had experienced in Ecuador (an apparently relatively poor South American country). The places are busy, full of big trucks, highly polluting old 4 x 4´s, and a bus every 30 seconds. The old English adage ¨You wait ages for a bus and then two come at once¨ doesn´t apply down here, its more like ¨You catch a bus.¨ full stop.

As I made my way through the country in my first week, it became clear Venezuela is, or was a bit more than what I had experienced before. At first glance, the people and the culture seemed very similar. The constant music, the smell of trucks, small market stalls that all sell the same pointless sweets and banana chips that no one seems to buy, crap cheese, the same two types of beer (read ´lager´) that taste the same, and every where you look, health and safety laws are being broken. But then in Caracas you have a very clean air-conditioned metro station. In the second city Valencia, the bus terminal appears to be in the middle of a cross between a theme park and an out-of-town shopping centre. And lots of people are walking around with mobile phones. I sat next to a guy on a bus the other day who had an IPod Nano; I mean, an IPod Nano for god sake! (that's an expensive mp3 player for those not in the know). I´m glad I didn´t have my player out, he would have probably dropped some money in my hat in pity.

Venezuela was a pretty rich country at one point, the richest in South America back in the 70´s, then due to the fall in oil prices, the world recession in the late 80´s and the obligatory corrupt governments, that kind of changed. But the legacy of these glory days has left Venezuela with a sizable and noticeable middle class. They shop in air conditioned shopping malls, drive new western cars, listen to mp3 players, live in pleasant ´urbinazaciónes´, and are known to take holidays in the U.S. or Europe. But they are still stuck in this developing country, and are surrounded by the poorer majority. For example, in the urbinazación that I am currently living in, there is a guy who grazes his (very thin looking) cow on the various patches of grass that are dotted around the neighbourhood.

There is very little hint of any sophistication here, I guess you could say I´ve struggled to see any middle class culture so far outside the possesion of material things. I´m still not quite sure what they do in their spare time; they don´t hang out in cafés in the evening (they all close by 5pm), they don´t take walks in the countryside, they don´t go to the theatre (there aren´t any), and they aren´t out eating in restaurants (they always seem to be empty apart from a few people who are on holiday themselves) and they definately don´t have an appreciation of good food.

Though there is one small point of refinement here that I do like; and that´s the freshly squeezed ice cold fruit juice - and it´s as standard, you can´t get anything less. Something that you would need to take out a small mortgage to buy in a café in London´s West End, costs less than a postage stamp here (more on Venezuelan food will follow shortly).

This country is intriguing so I´m enjoying my time here, and a look at the politics makes it even more so...