I had a lot of problems to sleep and it took until after midnight. I did not turn on the alarm but somehow the military police thought it was time for me to wake up. It was 05:00 in the morning and I had a 20 minute inspection of the whole car. You always get the feeling that they are very serious and up to unfriendly until they realize that you have nothing to declare or hide. Within a second then they change to friendly and helpful. This time was no different, except that I had to admit that it could have easily been not the military police but some professional robbers or even killers. This was actually what the officer was trying to tell and teach me. He was right and after two days in paradise I had kind of forgotten how dangerous Venezuela is at the moment.
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I went to the next village right in front of the church and covered my eyes with my towel and tried to sleep before the heat would make it impossible; this was up to 08:00 this morning. I went to the port of Guiria and went to immigration to talk to one of the assistants to inquire about the ferry to Trinidad and Tobago. According to Google Maps the cruise would have been an 80 km cruise and actually the assistant confirmed a ferry for the next morning 05:00 at 50 US$ each way. I thought about the car and there was no secure parking close by. I thought about my passport and I did not want to have problems now leaving Venezuela and then the president decides to close this border as well and I would be stuck, really stuck.
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I still had time to think about this adventure, but as I said before to myself already, I knew that I would miss several opportunities and destinations and Trinidad and Tobago would be one of them. The local market was not one of them and was worth spending the whole morning up to closing time at 13:00. The variety of goods, fruits, vegetables, animals, clothes and more was incredible as well as the mixture of people, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, sober and drunk, healthy and sick, tall and small, local and foreign. The foreign would have been me. I was the only one, but I learned from a conversation that a German couple had been in the port just a week ago with a sailing boat.
It started to rain, which was an addition to the already interesting movie I was watching. This morning the military police was also referring to the area I had decided to sleep outside the city as a dangerous area in general. Robbers and killers usually do not like to work on rainy days either and I decided to go back the same road and go as far as the road would allow me to. The coastline did not change and I had a panoramic drive for about one hour on a winding rainforest road which got worse and worse up to the point when it changed to gravel. The gravel was washed out and the road became extremely steep and at that point I decided to turn around and go back.
At my Hot Dog stand in the evening a man started to challenge my English and we started a small talk. He introduced himself as being from St. Lucia with double nationality. He came to see family eight months ago and on arrival in the early morning hours was robbed of all belongings. I had been warned this morning by the military police and now by this man again. Thanks to both of you. I decided to park the car outside the delegacy, accept the light and noise and hope to gain security.
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