7 am saw me at the Manaus airport, waiting for my flight
first to La Guaira (aka Caracas Maiquetía), and from there to Bogotá. I took
the opportunity to buy cachaza at the airport duty free store. Cachaza is fire
water used to make delicious caipirihnas, the signature drink of Brazil.
As usual I spent all flight deep asleep, to the point I
didn’t feel the plane landing, or all the people filing out of the airplane. At
some point one of the stewards had to shake me vigorously and I woke to an
empty airport.
I have a 6 hour layover here at La Guaira, which I used to
catch up in some of my travel log (like Bilbo I am recreating the details of
the trip off of memory), and spending my last 10 million Bolívares. They went
toward a lunch of fried chicken (pretty tasty and with big pieces), and an
afternoon coffee and an arepa filled with cheese and slowly roasted pork. The
arepa is the national snack of Venezuela. It is made of arinapan, which I think
is a corn flour of some sort, with the dough molded into a square about 10 cm
on the side and 2 cm thick, and then cooked by frying. Once it is ready you
slice it open and stuff it with cheese, pork, chicken, ham, and/or avocado, and
you eat it as a torta or a hamburger.
The second leg of the trip brought me to Bogotá, where I
landed around 7 pm. By the time I went through immigration and customs it was
8:30 pm, and by the time I was done with the car rental it was 10 pm. From
there I had to drive to the city proper, to find my hotel (fortunately I
already own this city, and was able to navigate a bee line to my new hotel, “La
Manoir”, which is definitely a lot more posh than I am used to (is this
Expedia’s way of rewarding me for many years of being a loyal customer?). Posh
or not I had to wash some clothes, so by midnight the place looked like a
refugee camp. I believe I am now almost done cleaning the mud from the Gran
Sabana!
No comments:
Post a Comment