Chapter 1 - The Takeoff In The Plane

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Home Ondas del Lago Contributed Content Patricia Flahie McClelland  Venezuela 39 Years Later Chapter 1

Venezuela 39 Years Later - Chapter 1 The Takeoff

.....from Miami and it did take off and that's all very thrilling, and I was sitting next to this lady. And on the plane, they play Bingo on Servivensa. So it's something to keep people busy and it's $7 to play Bingo on the plane. And the prize is a round trip ticket from Miami to Caracas. So my seat companion decded she was going to play because she likes Miami a lot and she asked me if I were playing, so I said, “No I'll just support you while you play”. So she played and lo and behold, she won! She won a round trip ticket from Miami to Caracas or the other way around, in fact. So that was quite eventful and then I was expecting the chauffeur from the Tamanaco to come pick me up and - Guess What? He didn't. Or she or nobody did. So I asked someone is there any particular spot in the airport they pick people up from and they said “Well, you're not the first person the Tamanaco driver did not pick up”. So I decided just to go out and get a cab then.

So I went in an old run down cab with a cantankerous driver and I think I asked him to take me Avenida Las Mercedes and he didn't want to.

So we drove here (Tamanaco)...

   
  Avenida Las Mercedes from Hotel Tamanaco, 1955. We were stayng there in August, 1955. Same view of Avenida Las Mercedes from Tamanaco in 1998. This was just down from our house.  

...and got out and came up to my room and the room was just fine.

And so after that I decided to go get some money out of the wall. Forget it, it doesn't like my card or it doesn't want to do anything. So it just wasn't giving out money. I'll go see the bank itself tomorrow. We'll see. Anyway I changed some American money into Bolivares. And after that I was all set. At least I could go do something. It was about 4:30 quarter to five.

And I decided I wanted to get out and see the place before it got dark because it gets dark around 7:00.

And so I had this long drawn out conversation with the doorman and I told him what I wanted to do I wanted to go take a cab around this area Las Mercedes for about an hour. And so he talked to another cab driver who came over to me and went off into great conciliabule of some sort and I don't know who in the hell he talked to. And finally some other guy comes over and I say I want to go around for about an hour and then he goes off and I think he practiacally forgot about he the whole thing. So here comes a cab dropping somebody else off so I said, “Would you take me around because this other guy doesn't seem to be able to make up his mind”. So at about that time, the first cab driver or the second one, whichever you bother to pick, comes back and goes “Tut Tut” and so I walk over to the car, and I said, “Well how much are you going to charge me?” Well, he says 3 1/2 hours riding around Paris - not Paris, Caracas that will be 35,000 something or other Bolivares. So I said I don't want to go for 3 hours, just an hour because the sun's going down and you can't see anything anyway. So one hour 10,000 whatever Bolivars. Oh, I said, you've got yourself a deal.

Chapter 2 Finding Old Haunts

 

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