Project VELAIA

My flight from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) left late in the evening. To be on the secure side I took an early train leaving at 9 or 10 am from Santa Fe Station in San Diego. At the Santa Fe station I also bought a bike box for $15 to be on the secure side – you never know whether they’ll supply you with one on the airport, so better check that you have one before you get to the airport. 

The blue silver Amtrak train was pretty slow compared to the high speed ICE trains operating in Germany. But it was way more comfortable and almost totally empty. Every seat even in the second-class compartments came with a power plug and a lot of space. There are special hooks for up to 3 bikes per railroad car and the unfolded bike box went in the luggage car at the beginning of the train. From the LA main station to the LAX airport there’s a “flyer” bus in operation and they took my bike and the bike box without complaints. 

At the airport I first went to my airline, a Columbian airline with name Avianca or so, and checked whether they would charge me for the bike and they said they would! But I’d checked online before and told them I wouldn’t pay an additional $150 – when I checked in later on they didn’t charge me as I had only two pieces of check-in luggage, each below 23 km. And again I realized: Traveling light and the minimalist way pays and is so much easier. Hanging around the duty free area I got into that typical airport mood: You see so many things, different people from all around the world, you hear and try to guess their languages and of course you try to get through the security check without problems.   At the same time my father left Germany on a flight to Madrid for transit to Caracas. I had planed to arrive in Caracas 3 or 4 hours ahead and after a long long lasting flight with almost no sleep and a lot of Spanish speaking companions and bad English coming from the speakers whenever the crew had to announce something I did arrive at Caracas International Airport (CCS). After waiting for 45 to 60 minutes in a long immigration queue I was surprised and happy at the same time to see the massive bike box standing at the oversize luggage counters and even in a pretty good shape. Some annoying workers told me to get away with the box and not get the bike out immediately and stupidly I did so. I should have stayed in this secure area, only open to arriving passengers. But instead I put the bike together just after the security check (still in the to the public closed area) and rolled bike and luggage out into the crowd. Immediately a few people approached me and started talking about “change”, “cambio” and dollares, euros and so on. I thought it’d be a good idea to change $20 first and check for the black market rate later on the internet. I killed the time exploring the airport and when the flight of my father came in I stood ready to get a nice shot of him after such a long time. 

And there he passed by but strangely not towards the exit. 10 or 15 minutes later he came from the other side, rolling a box with two wheels on the bottom in front of him, carrying 2 bags and a big suitcase. He seemed to be in much better shape, looked younger and really in form in his blue and white bicycle jersey. After a short greeting we went to a quiet and empty spot of the airport where we carefully disassembled the bicycle package he had build in more than an hour at home. Then he went for a short test drive through the airport with all the luggage attached to the bike … looked pretty scary to be true but he managed to stay on the bike. A big audience followed his test ride, commenting, screaming and joking about the unseen vehicle. The airport police was also pretty interested and one police officer brought one of his friends after the other to watch this weird vehicle. We left the airport to get into the city of Caracas and find a hotel. But I guess we could have done way better to stay at a hostel or hotel near the airport for the first night because what followed can only be described as a nightmare for a touring cyclist’s first evening on his bicycle in a totally different (car) culture:For $25 we got a taxi ride to town together with the bikes – quite a good deal compared to the prices mentioned in the LonelyPlanet guide. Then we changed 200$ to Bolivares for a pretty bad rate of 2.8 Bolivares for one USD, but still much better than the official 1 : 2.15 exchange rate.  The driver left us back in town and told us the general direction to the Avenida Urdaneda where we would find many hotels and probably at least one with a free room. Then it got scary: Caracas is a metropolis of 5 to 7 million people, has quite some problems with violence and a lot of loud, noisy and ‘not a damn giving’ car drivers. Additionally we had to take a lot of care not to hit one of the countless potholes or several meter deep drops into one of the canals for waste water that lay open because someone had just removed the metal top. Somehow we survived this one hour ride through the dirty and hot town and arrived at a hotel where we were lucky to find a room for two, a secure place to stay for the next two days in the middle of this hostile and dangerous city.  We got quite a few things done there but not as many as we should have, because we happened to be there just during the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. And Dad couldn’t stand the city at all. We therefore left at least one day too early and didn’t even get a topographical map (mappa con topographia). Leaving the city in south-western direction we cycled up a green valley towards Los Teques. We caught a few drops of rain but the the bigger problem was definitely the traffic. Just a few kilometers after Los Teques we found a club where they’d just finished a mountain bike race. I confused the club with a campsite and asked whether we could camp here for the night.

When they found out that we’re not fluent in Spanish (to say the least) they called senora Hilda, the organizer of the club, who spoke some English with us and somehow managed to find a nice place to camp for us – for free! Funnily we even got a chance to hear (and see) how Germany lost against Spain in the European Soccer Championships (futbal here in Venezuela) and the people always told us that we (Germany) scored second for the following week or so  The drivers generally took a lot of care for us cyclists and are respectful … most of the time I’m cycling behind my father because I’m bigger and probably more experienced with traffic rules in countries like this. I signal to the drivers when they can overtake and when they have to stop. Sometimes, especially at narrow, winding and uphill sections I cycle in the center of the lane to block it for overtaking in sharp right turns or I hold out my arm like a police officer signaling the drivers to stay back. Dad and I continued towards Maracay, quite a big city at the Lago de Valencia, but turned southwards toward Villa de Cura (or La Villa as the locals say) in a massive 3 or 4 lane roundabout. Approaching this nightmare for any traffic participant I directed the traffic around us and kept in the center of the line. And surprisingly we somehow survived! The street to Villa de Cura had a lot of traffic but broad shoulders that compensated in parts for the traffic. Just before town a few local cyclists decided to escort us and others joined, so within a few kilometers we were a group of 6 or 7 approaching La Villa, they also told us how to get to Valencia using a secondary or tertiary road on the southern side of the Valencia Lake.  We spent the night behind walls in a weapons factory where a few friendly guards first let us pitch the tent on a spot of nice short grass, then turned the water on so my father Elmar could shower and finally even invited us for diner (Yuka and a not-vegetarian soup for my father, and some sweet dessert). They had one ugly perro (dog) called Rocko, the dog of the chief guard and a few sweet small puppies whom I wanted to photograph. But the boss insisted on me also photographing his ugly and fat dog, so I was happy to have a digital camera to not waste precious film. 

Riding along the southern lake side was a dream and I can easily imagine the horror a cyclist would have cycling along the main highway on the northern side. Instead we passed many chicken farms, located in the rain forest and our clothes got really sticky from all the humidity in the air. In Valencia we arrived at noon, and my father made the first purchase at a restaurant – the bill looks really interesting with many many cancellations due to misunderstandings. 

And then we continued in a southern direction for another 20 km, finally leaving the extreme traffic on the road number 5, turning west towards Nirgua. But after only a kilometer or so I told Dad to stop beside the road. I had faint head aches and thought it’d be better to rest and we agreed to search a quiet spot away from the 4 lane road (both directions) without shoulders. So we cycled towards the entry of a massive chicken farm with 70 to 80 employees and rested in front of the gates where the guards gave us potable water and the workers were always curious about the foreigners with the strange bicycle. I felt that I had caught a cold, the nose was running non stop and when I left the tent in the night for a minute to water nearby plants, I almost fell down due to a lack of energy. I told Elmar and we decided to find a restaurant or hotel to rest for a day or two.

 

But instead we got two big climbs and a lot of exhausting traffic until we reached a bigger town called Bejuma. There we had lunch and went on the internet at an internet cafe where it took 20 minutes to just load the entry page of the T-Online mail account of my father – almost unimaginably slow! 

Later on we took a hotel room so I could rest and revive. The following morning Elmar tried to get pure gasoline, benzina blanca. A task that’s almost impossible down here, especially if you’re not fluent at all in Spanish and don’t know town.

 

 So my father ended up having two friendly and helpful locals drive him through town, from one pharmacy to the other, from fuel station to fuel station, and after 2 hours he returned to the hotel to pick me up – I was not at all pleased about that as I still felt extremely weak and would have preferred to stay at the hotel and read, but I was stupid and followed him. 

Jose, a ex baseball player from a Minnesota team, is now working all over South America as a talent scout for his former team. He’s fluent in English and always translated between my father and me and his cousin Carlos, who drove us through town. The four of us visited Carlos home and family and Jose’s home and wife and finally went to a restaurant 15km away for lunch. We were really lucky that Dad stumbled upon the two friendly Venezuelans who helped us a lot – thanks amigos! 

But as a result my cold didn’t get better and we had to stay for another day that I spent inside the hotel room with a short exception in the evening when we visited the bakery (panderia) over the street where we’d become regulars already. Then finally the day had come to leave, to hit the road again and to feel the breeze of freedom blow into our faces again. There were a lot of dead dogs both (in parts) on the road and beside the road and some couldn’t even be identified as dogs any more because of all the cars that had rolled over them and the rain that had slowly disassembled their bodies, taken first the hair of, then the skin. Then the bugs and worms had come and finally only the skeleton or a few bones were left and maybe another dog passing by in the search for food … who knows. Some of the dogs here are really ferocious, aggressive and dangerous towards cyclists and especially towards touring cyclists on a recumbent and I’m in that predator survival mood that I’ve had for a long part of my trip through the Middle East, Central Asia and Tibet, where I see every dog as an enemy and fight them with all possible means, starting with dark shouting, continuing with pulling up the front wheel and heading straight towards them with a dangerous grimace. But the deadliest weapon I have are definitely the stones I like to catapult into their direction – and I threaten to do so already from a distance so they know I’m serious. 

Again we stopped in the hot and muggy noon to have a salad at a restaurant. Combined with the food came a extremely sweet juice made from lemon juice and sugar cane, I think the locals call it pampelon or papelon.  And on we continued on a road leading straight through a lake towards Chivacoa.

 

Finally we stopped in a small town beside the main road and asked the policia for the direction to a hotel. They guided us 100m to an almost totally vacant hotel. The son of the senora who owns the hotel, Tirso, was extremely friendly, connected us on the phone to his English speaking friend in Caracas, then with a German woman, Anette, in Merida, showed us his photo album with pictures of his yoga master and trips to India and together with is 83 year old mother we ordered a vegetarian pizza – really warm hospitality we enjoyed this evening! 

Tirso had two martial arts students to train the next morning and he showed us the hotel one of his brothers from Valencia, an architect, had designed. He explained his mother couldn’t care for the hotel her own any more and none of the children wants to, so he’s helping her to sell, and a big “Se vende” sign is hanging high on the building. We continued on the main road towards Barquisimeto and again a group of cyclists, this time road cyclists, joined us and guided us into the city and straight to an internet cafe. It was a hard ride especially because of the high humidity in the middle of the day and we were happy to take a 2 or 3 hour time out in front of an internet cafe where we got free wireless internet.