Tales of a Brown-Haired Freak

Okay, dinner was turkey-riffic and the cleaner came by today so our house is spotless, so I can continue with my story. When we last saw our heroes, they had arrived back at the hotel around 12:30am to find the room taken over by an army of cucarochas...

( c'mon. you know you want to know what happened next )

Oh, and I was a dumb-ass and drank the water there. Still regretting that clever little move, but in my defense, I've never had any problem doing so traveling anywhere else.

Back! It was fun, I'm exhausted but happy (and poor). Here's the recap:

Go in early afternoon. Most of the plane was students, so we tagged along after them to their hotel in Porlamar and got a room. First impression of the island was nothing special, pretty typical SA. Hotel was pretty, a short walk from a major thoroughfare. Getting changed, spotted a cockroach in the bathroom but hey, it's not the most expensive place and one bug isn't that terrible so M killed it and we headed out to find some food. Should have realized it was an omen.

Found a great big mall that was pretty cool, more like a labyrinth than anything else, but half of the stores were empty (as in, no shop), and the place was completely dead. We figured it was siesta time and went to a fabulous little Greek restaurant for some fantastic steak (I've been missing red meat) and a bottle of wine then went hunting for a money exchange place, only to find that they were all closed so we stopped at an ATM to grab some cash, only to be stumped when it asked me for my ID number (no, not my pin - it already asked for that). Tried my driver's license and random entries but no dice. Shrugged it off and hopped in a cab to find some of the famous "fabulous shopping" we'd been told about, ended up at a more normal mall. And it had shopping, though I won't say it was "fabulous." Just normal. We got churros and wandered around until closing, saving our limited US dollars and paying with my mastercard. Incidentally, Venezuela demands your passport number when you pay with a credit card. Since I'm not stupid enough to carry my passport around when I leave the hotel, I stole a page from Ishie's book and handed over my PADI card and held as straight a face as I could manage while they carefully copied down my dive certification number. Hey, if the little diving emblem and pictures of fish aren't enough of a clue, who am I to correct their error?

When the mall closed, we tried the bar thing for a bit but couldn't find the hotel bar we were hunting (business men are more fun to schmooze with than drunk tourists) and headed back to our hotel around midnightish...

...where we discovered that in our absence, our room had been invaded by an army of cockroaches, the likes of which I have never seen before.

Anyway, I've got a turkey in the oven and people staying over, so stay tuned for the next installment, "In which M does a lot of shouting in Spanish and uses the word "cucarocha" a lot."

Grenada Thanksgiving, that is. I'm celebrating by heading to Margarita Island (Venezuela) in about an hour. Ciao!

JFK is a terrible airport to be spending the night at. As far as I can tell, it has no comfy chairs, no padded benches, and no carpet. What it does have is a food court (sort of) with concrete benches and very small tables. Good pizza, though. It also has me, for a while bored and tired and unable to leave my luggage unattended in said food court. Hopefully it will also have electrical outlets, or soon I'm going to be reduced to reading menus for entertainment.