 
Isla Margaritaville

A travel essay by Luther Hughes

©2006 by Luther Hughes.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copy Conventions. Published in the United States by Waccamaw Press

South Carolina

ISBN (10 digit) 0-9785857-0-4

ISBN (13 digit) 978-0-9785857-0-9

ISBN for the eBook edition 978-0-9785857-2-3

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E-mail me what you think of this book to waccamawpress@gmail.com

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This crazy story is dedicated to Doug Fisk and all the other members of the "Poverty Jet Set".

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Part I:

Here's an introduction and a prologue that takes place mostly in South Carolina.

The Idea to Flee

Scarcely off the northern coast of South America is a small pearl of an island imaginatively named Isla Margarita. Christopher Columbus gave the island its name on August 15, 1498. I suppose he didn't like the name the island already had: Paraguachoa. Nonetheless, he claimed he named the island Margarita because it was full of pearls. Later, while I was visiting Margarita a man told me that Margarita is Greek for Pearl. I looked up pearl in a Greek dictionary and found this: μαργαρίτησ. I don't know if μαργαρίτησ is pronounced "Margarita". Moreover, why would Columbus give an island a Greek name?

In reality, Columbus probably named the island after a girl, Princess Margarita of Austria. The pearl story must have been to cover his affection for the princess. Be that as it may, 507 years later I ended up fleeing a troubled marriage to spend a month on Isla Margarita with my then seven-year-old daughter, Mariana.

Jimmy Buffet sang the following:

Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know it's my own damn fault.

Is that why I went? Could be.

Before I begin this account of my travels to Isla Margarita, I must give the reader some prologuical information. By the way, "prologuical" is a word that I made up. Thus, I hope it catches on. Anyway, first, I assumed that the few people who actually will purchase this book do not all speak Spanish. Therefore, I gave accounts of much of the Spanish conversations in English. On the other hand, when the meaning was clear using the surrounding context, I gave the account in the version of Spanish that I have learned unedited. In other words, I did not correct my poor Spanish for the purpose of this book. If I corrected the Spanish I spoke or heard, this would not be an honest account of my journey, and would have made me sound much smarter than I actually am. Besides that, Spanish words are full of accent marks, and I was too lazy to figure out where to put them. Besides Spanish mistakes, there may also be a few English grammar errors. I did my best to edit this book, but I'm sure I missed a few mistakes. The writer Paulo Coehlo wrote, in his book The Zahir, that he reads and corrects his books three times before sending them off to be read and corrected again. After I wrote this book, I read it three times and corrected the mistakes I found. If you are a Grammar-Nazi, get over it and enjoy the book.

Also, I changed the names of a few people to avoid any embarrassment. I wanted to tell an honest tale without hurting anyone's feelings. Therefore, I felt it was necessary to change just a few names. To me nothing is funnier than us humans. For that reason, we laugh at ourselves, and we laugh at each other. My hope is that we can laugh at the absurdity and silliness of life without seeming to make fun of people.

I just wrote this book, because it was fun to write it. In the grand scheme of things a daddy and his little daughter's little trip to a little island off the coast of South America isn't really a big deal. However, the trip had some funny moments and I hope I can make the readers laugh a little.

Furthermore, I don't care whether five or five million people read this story. This is liberating, because I can write whatever I want to write without worrying whether or not someone will tell his or her friends to buy this book.

Finally, all the historical and geographical facts I gave in this book are strictly anecdotal. This is not a scholarly report on the island of Margarita. This is a travel essay that takes the reader with me on my journey from a small town in South Carolina to Isla Margarita. Now back to the story...

☼

The genesis of my idea to travel to Isla Margarita came to mind on some Friday night in the Living Room Coffee House and Used Book Shop in Myrtle Beach. I believe it was March. Originally, my summer travel plan was to travel to China with my two children and my brother in order to visit my friend, Ted. Ted was married to a missionary named Kathleen and lived in Beijing. He and I had talked of camping on the Great Wall and visiting Tibet. Taking my daughters to China sounded like a great way to spend a summer. However, on that fateful night my plans would suddenly change.

Every Friday night at 6:30, a friendly group met at the aforementioned coffee bar to speak Spanish for a few hours. Most members of this fun gathering actually spoke Spanish. I, on the other hand, made a feeble attempt. Below I will recount the conversation that I had on the fateful night that I decided to travel to Isla Margarita.

Aroura, a smartly dressed Colombiana in her sixties, asked me (in Spanish), "Where are you going this summer?"

I answered in stuttering Spanish using the incorrect verb tenses, "I'm going to China with my brother to visit my friend, Ted. He's married to a missionary and lives in Beijing."

Nicholas, a sixty-eight-year-old American of Spanish parents, asked me, "Are you taking Mariana and Zoë?"

"Por supuesto," I answered, of course I am.

Rosalyn, a twenty-eight-year-old slender Venezuelan, walked into the shop. She wore a pink skirt that draped loosely over her hips and a white shirt that hugged her slender waist tightly. After kind greetings with all, she sat down with the group, which numbered about eight. My seven-year-old daughter, Mariana sat in the corner reading a book she had taken off the shelf.

My two-year-old daughter, Zoë, sat on my lap and stuffed her face with a chocolate brownie. She only ate half the brownie leaving the uneaten half smeared on her face and my white shirt. Rosalyn asked Nicholas about a Caribbean cruise Nick took with his wife. Eventually, they began talking about Caribbean islands. "Have you ever been to Isla Margarita?" she asked him, but in Spanish.

"No. Where is that?"

"It's part of Venezuela. I went there when I was a child. It has beautiful beaches with beautiful women in tiny bikinis...." She continued telling Nick about Isla Margarita, and the more she spoke, the more I wanted to go. As she continued to articulate about the island, I pictured it as the mythical land of Margaritaville. By the time she was telling Nick about the empanadas, I was nibbling on sponge cake and watching the sun bake all those tourists covered with oil.

Then she turned to me, "Where are you going this summer, Lucas?" Most Spanish speaking people referred to me as "Lucas", because it is easier than "Luther".

I woke from my daydream and replied without missing a beat, "Isla de Margarita."

"¿De verdad?" she asked.

Then Aroura asked, this time in English, "I thought you said that you were going to China."

"I changed my mind."

Before leaving the café I purchased a $2.00 used copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Then, I was actually on the road heading home with little Zoë sleeping in her car seat and Mariana sitting in the back seat using a flashlight to read a Judy Blume novel. A not yet full waxing moon reflected sunlight on night clouds to my right. Billions of unseen stars hid behind the light and the clouds. Light reflected off the large moon and the clouds making the night bright enough to cast shadows. Nothing feels better on the skin than a cool breeze blowing off the Atlantic on a warm Carolina night. I rolled down the window and that wind felt easy against my face. Margarita Island. Isla Margarita. The idea of going to some little spot on a map that I knew nothing about was so appealing to me that night. The more I thought about it, the unknown mysteries of that place captivated me and dominated my thought. From that night on, despite the location of my body, my mind was on that tiny island that I knew almost nothing about.

By the time I parked my car outside my house, I had devised a plan of sorts. My plan was to drive my little old piece-of-shit Honda from South Carolina to Miami and then fly to Isla Margarita with my two children. The only problem was convincing my future ex-wife.

I carried Zoë into the house and washed the chocolate off her face and brushed her teeth while she slept. This child could sleep through anything, I thought. The difficult task came next.

Karen was my future ex-wife and, unfortunately, my nemesis. Over the four years prior to this journey we had been separated about as much as we had lived together. Karen is a pretty and intelligent woman who deserved someone better than me. Despite the fact that we had lived together on and off, she disliked me more than she liked me. In fact, her disdain for me approached pure hatred. This was not a conducive environment for compromise. Nonetheless, I felt I needed to work something out with her prior to taking our children away for the summer.

☼

"Karen, I've decided that China would be too expensive this summer. Why don't we go to this island called Margarita?" I asked her.

"What do you mean we?" she replied.

"I mean we could all travel down there together, and I'll stay with the girls after your vacation time runs out. What do you think?"

"No way, Luther! I'm not going to another Spanish country."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I want to go to Hawaii and visit Patty Jo."

"OK. Then, can I take the kids with me?"

"You can take Mariana, but leave Zoë with me. "

At any rate, we reached a compromise: Karen was off to Hawaii (at my expense), and I was off to Isla Margarita for a month with Mariana. I know now how the framers of the constitution must have felt after reaching the Three-Fifths Compromise. How could I take one daughter and leave the other behind? I felt guilty for not including little Zoë in my plans. On the other hand, I tried to justify this decision by trying to believe that at two years old Zoë was too young to go, but I knew I was lying to myself. On the other hand, each of our daughters were able to spend a month alone with one parent. Still, as I type these words, I regret not taking Zoë with me.

Cross-Eyed Mechanics and a One-Armed Bandit

Raymond's "Stop and Shop" was a tiny dusty store with a tiny dusty garage and old rusty gas pumps out front. Raymond called everybody "baby": Young, old, male, and female. Two old men sat on the bench in front of the store all day long talking kindly to everyone who walked past them. One of the old man had just one leg and wore thick round glasses. The other old man's mouth was tobacco stained, and nearly all of his hair and teeth were long gone. Both gentlemen still managed to smile and wave to the customers as they walked up to the store. The aisles in the store were too narrow to accommodate all the people. Of all the people in the store, two, at any given time, might have been customers. The others seemed to just be hanging out inside or talking with Raymond.

Raymond gave everyone credit, but I'd never seen him write anything down. When I wanted gas, I just pumped it and waved to Raymond. Then I would stop in from time to time and pay what I figured I owed him. A cross-eyed mechanic named Bill ran the car shop, but, just like his store, the garage was full of people. Sometimes Bill would even tell me what the problem was with my car and let me use his tools to fix it myself. I believe nearly every small town in the Carolinas had their own version of Raymond's Stop and Shop. Most of these types of stores sold fried chicken and biscuits from under a heat lamp.

I had purchased a new stereo for my old car. The stereo played music from SD cards and jump drives. I hoped that Raymond would have someone who could install it. Consequently, when I saw Raymond standing behind the cash register (wearing one rubber glove for some reason), I asked, "Raymond, do you have anybody who can hook this up." Before he could answer, the phone rang, and Raymond picked up. He, then, pointed to his wrist like he was showing me an imaginary watch. Next, he pointed out to the garage. I held Zoë with my right arm, and Mariana's little right hand was in my big left hand. Raymond looked at the kids, covered up the mouthpiece on the phone, and, with his slow Carolina draw, stated, "Those Little Luthers are growing like weeds." He always referred to my children as "Little Luthers". This moniker puts a smile on my face every time.

"Too fast."

"That one-armed bandit out there'll take care of that CD player for you," Raymond said before restarting his telephone conversation.

Out in the garage, there was a cubby-cheeked, big-bellied black man missing a hand. "You must be the guy who installs stereos for Raymond?" I asked the one-armed bandit. He was the guy. Then I turned to Cross-Eyed-Bill and said, "Could you please change the oil, and rotate the tires."

CEB replied, "Yeah man."

One-Armed-Bandit-Stereo-Installer asked me, "Where y'all stay?"

"Less than a mile from here. Real close."

"I can carry y'all home, and bring your car to y'all when we're done here."

One hour later, my oil was changed; my CD player installed and my tires were rotated. On top of that, One-Armed-Bandit-Stereo-Installer drove my car to my house when it was all over. My car was ready for the 600-mile journey to Miami. The total cost was $50.

Tennessee Homesick Blues

However, before making the journey to Miami and on to Margarita, Karen was off to Hawaii. Consequently, the girls and I spent much of June taking little trips including a trip to my home state of Tennessee to visit my folks.

On the first Saturday night in June, I loaded three sleeping children in the back of my piece-of-shit-1990-Honda and we were off to Tennessee. The extra child was Mandy, age six. I was watching Mandy, because her mother, a flight attendant from New Zealand, was in Japan and asked me to watch her.

I spun out of South Carolina on a Saturday night, because I needed to attend church in Tennessee. I needed to hear bluegrass gospel music, and eat southern cooking with my people. No matter where I live I will always be from the mountains of Tennessee.

My newly rotated tires rolled over South Carolina and Georgia while I listened to music and the girls all slept. 480 miles went by. As I crossed the Tennessee state line, a little green sign came into view. When I saw the sign I knew how Johnny Cash felt when he sang about the Chattanooga City Limit's Sign:

...I rubbed my eyes and saw the prettiest thing

The Chattanooga City Limit Sign...

I arrived outside my family's boarding house and trailer park in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, Mama showed no signs of sleepiness as she enthusiastically hugged me and woke up all three girls, Mariana, Zoë and Mandy, with a barrage of kisses.

☼

Sunday morning, we loaded into Grandpa Jim's pick-up truck and drove 45 minutes down the narrow winding Suck Creek Road until we arrived at a little white church beside the Tennessee River surrounded by the tree covered mountains of Appalachia. Kelly's Ferry Community Church was sitting beside the Tennessee River like an old friend waiting to see me.

As church commenced, eight people stood in the front of the congregation playing a myriad of musical instruments including a mandolin, a banjo, a large bass, a dulcimer, a fiddle, and several guitars. All of them sang beautifully. The pastor's daughter Cheryl sounded just like Alison Krauss. From time to time, members of the church came to the front and picked up instruments and performed. Even the small children came up and played the piano like an adult who had been practicing for years.

As members of the church skillfully switched from instrument to instrument, I was amazed at how much talent was concentrated in such a small group. Every note I heard pulled the strings of my heart. Magnificent music played for about an hour and then Pastor John preached. Before preaching he read the story of Jesus clearing the temple of moneychangers from the Gospel of Mark:

...Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers...

...Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves...

Following the sermon, as I exited the church, I noticed a small plastic toolbox with a slit cut into the top and a little white handwritten sign that said, "Offerings". This box was never passed around. Nobody was pressured to give- just a little toolbox with a small hole in the top for those who want to help pay the light bill of the church. How discreet. How beautiful. No amount of irony was lost as I thought about Pastor John's sermon. This little toolbox was in stark contrast to every other church that I have visited where the offering plate is passed around and members are constantly compelled to give and give. Most of the members of this church were working people and didn't earn a great deal of money. Nevertheless, the church was doing fine without coercing people to donate their money to "God".

The smokers were the first people out of the church. The white wooden doors opened to luminous sunlight bouncing off the river and seeping through the oaks, maples and pines causing all standing outside to squint. I exited to the smoke-filled, sun-soaked porch of the tiny church. I stood there conversing with Dixie, a woman Mama's age.

"Dixie, how's your health these days?"

"Not so good, honey, but, with the Lord's help, I'm still kicking." She went on to describe her and her husband's various elements, and I realized that many people in this world live with some type of daily physical pain.

Mariana, Mandy, and Zoë played on the swing set and monkey bars, and I walked over to watch them. Nearby, my brother Charlie stood next to a man named Steve having a conversation about politics.

Steve was a former social studies teacher who at the time I wrote this book built computers. He also ran an ultra conservative political website, and loved to debate politics with my brother, Charlie, and me. Steve and Charlie were debating the war in Iraq. Charlie is more liberal than me. So, one could imagine how the debate was going.

Steve saw me and said, "Charlie, look it's more liberal reinforcements coming to help you." I always think it is funny when my friends from Tennessee call me "liberal". I have very liberal social views. I think gay people should be able to marry, for an example. On the other hand, I know that gun control would never work in a place like Tennessee. I also believe in small government and low taxes. For this reason, I am probably neither liberal nor conservative. On the other hand, compared to my fellow southerners, I suppose I'm liberal.

"Steve you know what I think of the war in Iraq and war in general?" I asked him.

"This ought to be good."

"You know that old John Prine song called Your Flag Decal Won't get You in the Heaven anymore? Well, there's a good line in that song, 'Now Jesus don't like killin' no matter what the reason's for.'"

Steve smiled and shook his head, "Oh. You liberals are so misguided."

In case the reader has never heard of John Prine or his music, the chorus to the aforementioned song goes like this:

But your flag decal won't get you

Into Heaven any more.

They're already overcrowded

From your dirty little war.

Now Jesus don't like killin'

No matter what the reason's for,

And your flag decal won't get you

Into Heaven anymore.

Later, we all gathered at the church kitchen and ate a big potluck dinner of good southern cooking. I sat with Shawn and Cheryl with Zoë on my lap.

I said to them: "I think it is so wonderful that y'all are home-schooling your two girls. They're both so smart and talented. I wish I could home-school my girls."

Then, Cheryl replied to me, "Yeah. It takes a lot of dedication. We spend four hours a day on schoolwork, but, with all that is going on in the schools today, I know it is worth it."

☼

Inevitability meant that sweet little days would pass, and we would have to leave Chattanooga and get back to South Carolina. As I packed up the car, Mama just wept. Mariana saw the river of tears flowing down her face and wept too. Mandy didn't want to be left out; thus, she cried, as well. Only Zoë and I had dry eyes at this point, but, in short order, Zoë joined in on the wailing. Finally Mama reached in through the open windows and hugged everyone tightly almost refusing to let go. Her 52-year-old face was red and flushed with tears. As I pulled away from the old boarding house, I saw her standing alone in the driveway lamenting our departure with sadness that neared grief.

Can't you Smell that Smell?

Darkness surrounded us as we crossed the Savannah River. Zoë said, "Daddy! Daddy!"

"Yeah, baby?"

"I have to poop."

Zoë had to poop for the hundredth time since leaving Chattanooga. Our eight hour trip had turned into a twelve hour trip as it always had. So, instead of going to a gas station, I just pulled over. She was shitting logs as big as oak trees when she screamed, "Daddy! Help me! Ants!" Red ants were biting her feet. So, I picked her up (keeping her in the squatting position because she was still pooping!) and poured water on her feet to ease the burning and wash off the ants. Then, those little bastards started biting my bare feet. So, there I was, holding a pooping two-year old, pouring water on her feet and trying to kick biting ants off my feet and legs! I looked like a fool. As the reader pictures this, he or she must remember that I have only two arms. I cannot imagine what motorists thought as they drove by seeing me dancing around while holding a pooping two-year-old.

As Murphy's Law would have it, I ended up stepping in one of Zoë's large piles of feces. How can someone so little produce such giant sized shit!

I thought that I had scraped off the entire glob of kiddy poop by the time I had gotten back into the car. (There's a John Prine song that states baby poop is the worst kind.) However, poop was still smeared on my bare feet. "Oh crap!" I said after looking down at the excrement smeared floor mat. "Crap!" I said meaning it quiet literally.

Mariana responded, "Oooh! Daddy said a bad word!"

"Mariana, 'crap' isn't a bad word."

"Then can I say it?" she cunningly answered back.

"Ok. Oh. All right. Then, you're right. Sorry. Don't say 'crap' and I won't say it either."

"But, Daddy, you just said it again?"

"I was quoting."

"Then, can I quote."

This time I spelled it: "Look you cannot say C R A P or any other bad words period. Got it?"

Then, Mandy began crying with a rising crescendo, "What's that smell? What's the smell? Ooooooh! Get me out of this stinky car!"

The mayhem lasted only briefly longer, because I used the water in our ice chest to clean up my feet and the floor mat, and we drove off. Finally, I looked back at all the kids and far too sternly demanded, "Take a nap!" They must have felt badly for me, because without a word all three went to sleep.

By the time they woke up, two and half hours later, either the smell was gone or we had gotten used to it.

Talking with Clouds and Other Stuff

As I pulled up to my house in South Carolina, Karen walked out the front door and onto the porch. Zoë smiled at me and said, "Mommy's gonna say, 'Hey Bumkie!'" Karen seemed angry with me, but she enthusiastically hugged Zoë yelling "Hey Bumkie!" Zoë ran up and grabbed her mama and did not let go until she fell asleep hours later.

☼

The following Saturday morning, after Zoë went down for her nap, I left the kids with Karen and went down to the beach to go surfing. I spent three hours riding one-meter high waves breaking to the left.

There is something euphoric about surfing that is difficult to explain. I have been surfing for years, but, like most of the activities I enjoying doing, I have never become that good at it. For me, that's not important. I still surf like a beginner, but I just love doing it.

After surfing for three hours, I paddled out into the swells and just laid back on the long-board and looked up at the sky. The smooth rolling swells gently rolled under the board sending me into a state of pure repose. I was suspended and floating between the earth at the bottom of the ocean and the clouds in the sky. This was one of those simple moments that feel like magic. The shapes of the clouds, against the backdrop of electric blue, resembled kings, dolphins, and relief maps of countries. A puffy white dolphin appeared to be jumping over a cotton ball Australia and a boy held what looked like a ball or a turtle. I swear I saw South America with a tiny dot above her. That dot was Margarita Island.

"What lies ahead for me on your terrestrial version?" I asked the cloud.

The cloud did not reply (Thank God.).

When I finally, emerged from the water I felt exhilarated. A long shore current had moved me down the beach about two miles from where I started. So, I held the surfboard on my head and ran back to my car. Eventually I drove away with my bare feet tingling from the hot sand and the surfboard-toting two-mile run.

Queen of the Nile

I have a fourteen-foot canoe named Cleopatra. My little girls love it. Cleopatra is much bigger than my Honda. So, when she is strapped to the roof, it looks like I'm driving a giant turtle. We had just three more days before it was time to commence our journey to Margarita Island. Hence, I loaded the canoe on my Honda.

Mariana, Zoë and I ate our breakfast on a picnic table next to the boat ramp at Lake Tabor in Tabor City, North Carolina. The four tables were protected from rain and sun by a wooden canopy with a wooden sign nailed to it that read "No Sagging". Just in case someone didn't know the meaning of "sagging", an illustration of a young man with sagging jeans and a revealed butt crack made it clear.

Following breakfast, we climbed into Cleopatra and began exploring the lake. Mariana and Zoë sat side-by-side in the front seat with one paddle each that was appropriately sized. Steering was challenging due to the wind and the fact that Zoë and Mariana were paddling different size paddles at different rates, but I would never ask them to stop paddling. They were having so much fun paddling, and they looked so cute trying. Besides, how else would they learn?

Mariana was most impressed by a patch of water lilies, and Zoë kept looking for "crocodiles". Once Zoë spotted a cypress knee jutting out of the water she yelled, "Look Daddy! Crocodile!" Then, once we paddled closer, she said, "No! Turtle. It's a turtle, Daddy." Finally, when she saw that is was neither, she asked, "Can I touch it?" So, I paddled over to it. She smiled big and touched it.

"You know baby, we don't have crocodiles in South Carolina; we have alligators," I said to Zoë.

"Do we have sharks?" she asked me.

"Yes."

"I want to see a shark! Let's find a shark."

"Sharks only live in the ocean. We're on a lake."

"But I want to see a shark!"

"We have to go to the beach and paddle in the ocean."

"Never mind. Let's just look for crocodiles."

☼

Three days went by, and leaving two-year-old Zoë behind broke my heart in two pieces leaving one piece in her tiny hands. Mariana cried a little as she said good-bye to her mama, and we drove off. I felt like shit for leaving Zoë with Karen. Why was I leaving little Zoë behind? How can I be without her for a month? How can she be without me for a month? Nevertheless, I selfishly drove on.

Southbound on I-95

I-95, that wonderful path connecting the east coast to the warmer climates south, lies 45 minutes west of my house in South Carolina. By the time, we fueled up and put ice in the cooler at Florence, the excitement of the trip had lifted our moods. Driving south on I-95 is a tremendously liberating feeling. I felt like Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when he yelled, "The sky is open! The sky is open I tell you!"

As we spun into Georgia, I reached behind the seat and handed Mariana a little surprise. Mariana's eyes lit up when I gave her the boogie board I had purchased for her. It only coast about $4. It had swimming dolphins printed on it, and dolphins are her favorite animals. She hugged it, kissed it and said, "Daddy! Thank you! Thank you! I love it!" Then, she told me how she would swim with it in Miami and Margarita.

I plugged my jump drive into my new stereo. The memory stick was loaded with music from Bob, Dave, Jack and Jimmy. The first song that emanated from my speakers was Jack Johnson's Bubble Toes.

It's as simple as something that nobody knows that her eyes are as big as her bubbly toes...

After a minute or so, Mariana and I joined the singing when Jack sang...

La da da da da da, La da da da da da da...

The next song was Jimmy Buffet's '77 classic Margaritaville. When Mariana heard the song she asked, "Daddy, is that where we're going?"

"Maybe."

☼

The back of my Honda looked like a bed. I had laid the back seats down, and took out most of the passenger seat. Then I covered the whole thing with plywood and a foam pad both cut out in the shape of the inside of the car. Besides that, I placed a cooler on the passenger seat floorboard loaded with drinks and snacks. Access to the cooler was under a tiny door in the plywood. Basically, I had turned a diminutive Honda into a little camper.

Mariana spent most of the trip reading the second book in the A Series of Unfortunate Events series using a LED light that clips to the book. I had purchased the light from a truck stop. She spent hours in her "bedroom" reading until she fell asleep at midnight hugging her boogie board. Occasionally, I looked back at her sleeping so comfortably with envy. Finally, I stopped at a rest area north of Jacksonville and slept back there with her for five hours.

The following morning, Mariana woke up first complaining, "Daddy, it's hot in here." We had slept until the sun was high in the sky and the inside of the car was like an oven.

After a restroom break, I said to her, "OK, let's roll down the windows and drive to Miami. We have a plane to catch..."

Eventually, we were off to the Miami International Airport to catch a plane to Caracas, Venezuela. Then it was half a day of waiting in lines and getting stuff stamped and showing our passports and all that mess. Finally, we caught a smaller domestic flight to Margarita Island.

Part II:

This part of this book tells the story of our trip to Isla Margarita.

Hands in My Pockets from Miami to Margarita

After the plane safely touched down in Caracas, the passengers applauded loudly and some cheered. I have landed in many Latin American countries, and the passengers always cheer. I suppose they are praising the pilots' ability to land the plane safely. Maybe they are just happy to be alive. I really don't know. We people north of the border never cheer when the plane lands; and I do know why. We don't cheer, because we expect the plane to land safely. For my people, landing safely is expected and not rewarded with applause. For example, the odds of dying in a commercial plane crash are 52,600,000 to 1. However, the odds of dying in a car crash during the course of ones life are 100 to 1. On the other hand, flying in a jet is somewhat surreal and when they do crash it could be amazingly horrific.

Also, there was a time when flying in an airplane was a genuine adventure. People took their lives in their own hands when they boarded a plane. In the not too distant past, passengers' fears of flying were legitimate. I wonder if passengers of fifty years ago clapped their hands when the plane landed safely.

As soon as I left my car at the campground in Miami, a prickly pricey process began. As we moved from one place to another, I felt like there was a mob of people lining my path and seizing as much of my money as they were able to acquire.

First, I paid $50 for the taxi ride from the campground (where I parked my car) to the airport. I, also, gave the guy a tip. Then, I paid a $20 security fee at the Aeropostal check-in desk. Next, I was slapped with a $15 entrance tax at the airport in Caracas. After that, a moneychanger in the airport attempted to switch 10,000 Bolivar bank notes with 1,000 Bolivar bank notes. I called him a thief in Spanish, and told him to fuck off in English.

Bolivars are abbreviated "Bs". Thus, 100 Bolivars are written as Bs100.

This process continued as we left the airport. I had found a quaint looking guesthouse on the Internet that appeared to cost $20 a night and include airport transportation. We ended up paying $35 for the "free" airport transportation. Following this, the clerk handed me a bill for $40 a night.

"Creo que este apartmento cuesta $20," I said to her.

"No, mi amor," replied Rosario, the clerk. She continued, "$20 para persona."

The upshot to all of this is we settled on a price of $30 a night until I could find more budget accommodations.

At last, I fell into bed feeling fleeced. Of course, this is how capitalism works: Everyone tries to find creative ways to get as much of everyone else's money as possible. I'm not against capitalism, but sometimes I feel that I am walking down a corridor of outstretched hands trying to get a hand on what little money I have. Some of these hands try to make it look legitimate like the airport tax collectors, and others just steal it outright like the thieving moneychangers.

As I fell asleep that night in our guesthouse, I thought about Jesus and the moneychangers in the temple. I thought that I might understand why Jesus was so angry in the temple. I remembered the little inconspicuous offering box at the little church by the Tennessee River. This made me smile thinking that in this avaricious world not everyone is covetous of everyone else's cash.

First Night

Here's what I wrote in my travel journal concerning the first night on Isla Margarita:

June 30, 2005

¡Estamos aqui en Isla Margarita! We are happy and we are in a wonderful place, but this has been an expensive day. Today was expensive because of poor planning and poor decisions on my part, but "se la vie".

In Caracas, we had to walk from the international airport to the domestic airport, which is only five minutes away in the pouring rain. Just before I reached the Aeropostal desk for check in a man came up to me, asked me for my ticket, and said to me in Spanish, "Wow. You are on the 5:00 flight to Porlamar! I will give this to my supervisor." The "supervisor" took our tickets to the front of the line, and we were checked in as quickly as that. Neither man worked for the airport. They were simply looking to make a dollar or two. I gave him $1 as a tip, but he pestered me for two, and I gave in.

The screen at Gate #3 flashed in English and Spanish: "Porlamar Boarding". So, we got in line right behind this couple with their two kids and an old man who appeared to be the parent of one of them. The couple was born in Miami of Cuban parents. The husband told me that his father used to have a ranch in Cuba that was measured in miles, but Castro took it from him after the revolution. He also told me that he knows of doctors in Cuba who had to work as baggage handlers so that they could have enough money to feed their families.

After waiting through the line, we were told that the plane to Porlamar was going to be late and that we were in the wrong line. The Cuban-American family was fuming, "In the United States, if the screen says we are going somewhere, that is where we are going!"

I spent the two hours checking my e-mail and calling to arrange pick up at the airport. I had made reservations for a place called Saint Michel Inn on a website called "Hostelworld.com" and paid a $12 deposit. I called the number given by the website and a man answered who did not understand anything I was saying. So, he gave me the number for his wife. Maria Antonio was in Caracas when I called her on her cell phone. She told me that the Hostel World did not tell her that I was coming. She spoke to me in English and gave me another number of a woman named Rosario.

Rosario, a dark thin woman in her 40's with very short hair, was waiting for us when we arrived in Porlamar. Despite her years, she had a body of a fit 25 year-old and wore tight clothes. She had a megawatt smile, and spoke in the British English that she learned while living in London. When we stopped at a market to purchase food, she greeted everyone with a kiss and called all of them "Mi amor".

Saint Michel Inn is located in a village called El Tirano. The Inn is atop a hill on a dirt road in a neighborhood across from a little yellow store. In the center of town, along the busy paved road, there is a supermarcado, a few smaller stores and a couple restaurants.

Saint Michel Inn turned out to be a lovely little place with eight apartments build around a courtyard with a little pool. Plants and colors were everywhere, and the place was exceedingly clean. Maria Antonio's husband turned out to be a German man named Hans. He spoke Spanish a little better than he spoke English, but linguistics was not his strength.

From the inn we walked to his house where he handed me a beer called "Polar". He told me that it was from Venezuela, but tasted like German beer. We worked out the following system of communication. I spoke to him in German when I knew how to say it in German, but, if I could not, I spoke to him in Spanish. Finally, if I did not know the words in Spanish or German, I spoke English. He used the same method except in reverse order: English, Spanish and, then, German. I guess we communicated in "Gerspanglish".

I called his wife from the house, and we negotiated a price that was more than I could pay, but cheap for the room. I told her that we could only stay for a short time at that price

She wanted us to stay for our entire visit, and said, "I have a nice place. I cannot have a lower price. How little would you like to pay?"

I pretended her question was rhetorical.

The Czechs Forgot their Bikini Tops & I Forgot my Bank Card

Mariana and I must have been really sleepy our first night on Isla Margarita, because both of us fell asleep on our clean comfortable bed at 10:00 PM. I slept like a dead man and woke up at 7:00. I did some push-ups and sit-ups to get awake, but Mariana continued to sleep. At last, it was 9:00 AM, and I was anxious to explore. I said to Mariana, "Wake up sleepyhead! ¡Vamos ala playa!" That was all she needed to hear. Playa is the Spanish word for beach.

The beach at El Tirano, Playa Cordón, was a 10-minute walk through a typical neighborhood with old cars, and tiny tin-roofed concrete homes, some with small shops attached. All the roads in the neighborhood were unpaved. We passed a group of children playing basketball with a soccer ball on the dry dusty street. The homemade hoop was nailed to a piece of plywood with "NBA" written in permanent marker across the front. The "N", however, was backwards.

The Pueblo Caribe resort looked completely out of place situated across the street from the beach where the neighborhood came to an end. The houses in the neighborhood had rusted tin roofs with walls of random wood. The large modern resort had unarmed guards standing at all entry points. I saw a few international tourists lounging around a pool behind a concrete and iron wall. The beach in front of the resort was deserted save for two topless girls under a large thatched covered shelter.

Mariana saw three thatched covered shelters on the beach and yelled, "Palapas! Palapas!" A "palapa" is the Mexican Spanish word for those thatched roofed beach shelters that she saw during our summer in Mexico. We parked ourselves under one of the three palapas. The two girls, as it turned out, were from the Czech Republic.

Mariana saw the sunbathers and said, "Hey. It's just like Spain here!" Mariana learned about topless sunbathers during our summer in Spain. I had to explain to her that different places had different rules about stuff. At Playa Cordón, we swam in the perfectly rolling waves and walked along the small beach. The Czech girls chatted with us a little. It was a nice way to spend half a day.

☼

Once back at the Saint Michel Inn, I opened the curtains of the sliding glass doors, and glorious sunshine filled the room. Mariana looked through the doors and saw the petite pool and yelled, "Daddy! Let's go swimming!"

"No problem, but why don't we unpack our stuff first?" This, by no means, was a big deal since all we carried was a half-full duffel bag. At this point, I made a startling discovery. "Mariana, I forgot my bank card. We have no money."

"You have money. I saw it."

"OK. You're right. I did bring some Euros with us and I withdraw a few hundred dollars in the case that my card wouldn't work, but that is it...." Thus, I had Euros, Dollars and Bolivars. So, I took all the currency I had, and, then, figured out how much it was worth in Bolivars.

I used Bs2400 per dollar as my rate, because that was what I had been told I could get. I only received 2100 at the airport, but I had to be a little optimistic. Based on that figure, I determined that we had Bs80,000 to live on per day. Therefore, we had about $33 a day to pay for food, entertainment, and lodging for two people.

"Mariana, I have good news and bad news. The good news is we get to stay in the wonderful apartment for a little while because I already paid some money. The bad news is we have to move. We only have $33 a day to spend, and this place costs $30 a day. We can't eat on $3 a day."

"Will the new place have a pool?"

"I doubt it."

"I hope it has a pool."

"Let's go swimming, baby!"

"Yeah!"

☼

Hans was holding a Polar Beer in one hand and was vacuuming the pool with the other hand. When, he saw us approaching the pool, he pulled out the vacuum and ran over to what looked like a pump house for the pool. Evidently, he flicked some switch inside, because, after he entered the small building, water sprang from the concrete lions' heads along the side of the pool. The pool was modest in size, but grand in design. Besides the row of iron water-spitting lion heads along a tropical plant covered adobe wall painted faded light blue, the pool was covered in small ceramic tiles. The deep end, if one could call it that, was covered in a tile mosaic of a jumping dolphin. Hans emerged from the shed with a big smile and an extra beer. Those fountains were, obviously a source of pride for him. Mariana was equally elated to view the water pouring out of the mouths of the lions.

Without even asking me if I wanted one, Hans handed me his extra Polar Beer. I said, "Danke." He replied, but I did not understand a word. This would not be the last time I was handed a beer on this island. I believe handing a man a beer is the official handshake of Margarita Island.

Speaking Spanish with a Chinese Accent

From Saint Michel Inn to the main road with the supermarket there was 100 meters of peaceful unpaved road. As we walked this little journey, I spotted a hefty bright green chameleon on a tall pink terracotta wall to our left. We stopped to marvel at the animal for a minute or two as he stared down at us with one of his protruding funny looking eyes.

Beyond the pink wall near the main road sat a little yellow store that, from the outside, looked like Van Gogh's 1888 painting Yellow House. My mind wandered back to a day in 1989 when I was a college student wandering around Europe. On that particular day, I found myself inside the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam moved by the simple beauty of the post-impressionist's paintings. The colors to my soul acted like music to my ears. At the time I was aware of much of Vincent Van Gogh's interesting biography, but I had never learned to appreciate a painting before that moment. In 1989, I stared at the painting Yellow House feeling like I had gone back in time to 1888. I found other paintings there that appealed to me more, but, nonetheless, that one moved me. Everywhere on Isla Margarita there were colors that were sometimes bright and other times faded. At the end of that small sandy road sunlight bounced off a little yellow store that, to me, looked like the little yellow house in Arles that Van Gogh painted.

I told my daughter, "Let's go into that store because it look's like Van Gogh's little yellow house."

"Who is Van Gogh?"

"Don't you remember when I told you about him? He's the painter from Holland who painted Starry Night."

Then she answered, "Yeah. I love that painting."

"I tell you what, after we visit this store, I'll tell you the story of the little yellow house in Arles, ok?"

"Yay!"

The owner of the little yellow store, Ana, looked at me very strangely when Mariana and I walked in. She was a young Chinese woman with her hair fixed like an old Chinese woman. She pointed at Mariana and emphatically stated, in broken Chinese accented Spanish, that Mariana is not my daughter. "¡No es tuya!"

"Si. Ella es mi hija," I explained in southern American accented broken Spanish. Mariana does look Asian because Karen is a Pacific Islander.

"She looks Chinese," she continued in Spanish. Then, she spoke in Chinese to the young Chinese woman at the cash register, and asked me a barrage of questions about Mariana in Spanish. I tried to explain that Mariana's mother is from Micronesia. I used what I thought was the Spanish name for Micronesia, but she did not recognize this.

Finally, she asked me, or, rather, said to me, "¡Le madre es china!" This sounded more like a statement than a question: "Her mom is Chinese!" Evidently, nothing I said would change her mind, in her mind the only way my daughter could look like she did was to have a Chinese mother.

Thus, I gave in and said to her in my poor Spanish, "Si. Le madré es china y el padre es mio. Ella es un medio china y un medio mio."

We continued the conversation as I purchased a bottle of water. As I left, I said to the woman, "Sha sha"- "thank you" in Mandarin. Then she corrected the way I said "sha sha", and made me repeat it until I said it correctly with the proper tone.

"Let's find a restaurant," I said to Mariana.

"Will they have chicken nuggets?" she asked.

"No."

"I want chicken nuggets."

"You can get chicken nuggets in South Carolina. Let's eat something Venezuelan."

We simply walked down the hill from the yellow Chinese shop and walked up to the first restaurant we saw. We sat at an outside table. The waiter, wearing a white T-shirt and brown pants, brought me a beer, just as Hans did, without even asking. Only then did we order our food. We devoured an outstanding dinner of fish soup, filet of fish with yucca fries and fried bananas, and two blended juice drinks (melon and mango). The meal with drinks and tip cost us just Bs18,000 ($7.50). Mariana loved the yucca fries.

"Now tell me the story of the little yellow house," said Mariana.

"More than 100 years ago the painter, Vincent Van Gogh, rented a house that was yellow and in the town of Arles. Van Gogh invited his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin to live with him. His plan was for a bunch of artist to live together and paint together."

"Did his plan work?"

"No. Van Gogh had some problems with his emotions. One night he got angry with Gauguin and pulled out a razor like he was going to cut him. However, he felt really bad for doing that, and guess what he did?"

"What?"

"He cut off his own ear!"

"What did he do with it?"

"Good question. He put it in a small box and made it look like a gift. Then, he gave it to a girl!"

"Ooooo! I wonder what she said?"

"Maybe, 'What is this?' I don't know that part. Anyway, back when I was a college student traveling around Europe, I saw Van Gogh's painting Yellow House. Do you know what I did?"

"What?"

"I got on a train and headed down to Arles to see the house."

"What did it look like?"

"It was gone."

"¡Digame!"

First thing the following morning, we headed to Laura, the empanada lady, for breakfast. She occupied a cart at the top of the road five minutes by foot from our inn. Her cart was near Ana's little yellow store across the street from the supermarcado. The supermarcado had a counter with an enormous assortment of desserts and wonderfully smooth tasting coffee.

Prior to the trip, many people told me to eat the empanadas in Venezuela. Once we stood in front of the cart, Laura bellowed, "¡Digame!" This must be the most used phrase on Isla Margarita. "¡Digame!" means "Talk to me!".

"Queremos dos empenadas, por favor," I replied. Then she spoke very quickly, but I think she was asking what kind of empanadas we wanted. I responded, "Típico de empenada de aqui, por favor." Then, she answered something that included the words: "queso" and "frijoles".

What we ultimately received was these wonderfully greasy cheese and bean empanadas for just Bs1000 each- less than $1 for both. We took them back to the inn and ate with gusto.

With our stomachs full, we headed back down to Playa Cordon, the beach at El Tirano. The topless Czech girls were there, but they had found tops and boyfriends. The blonde girl was with an impossibly muscular shaved-chest guy, and the brunette girl was with a hairy guy. Both men were wearing those man-kini things that only European men would wear. Shaved-Chest-Man's man-kini was so small it was thong-ish. Mariana and I parked our stuff under the same palapa as before and rode waves together.

During this trip, Mariana became especially clingy to me. Even in the water she refused to let go of me. I had to say to her, "Mariana, you need to swim by yourself a little so that you can have confidence." She did not want to be more than two inches from me at all times. Despite the fact that Mariana can swim better than most adults, she wanted me to hold on to her the whole time. Another example of this clinginess occurred in our apartment.

After Playa Cordon, back at our room, I went to the bathroom. After I emerged I found Mariana standing right outside the door waiting for me. "This is too much," I said to her.

"But, Daddy, I just want to be close to you because I love you," she responded knowing that I would soften immediately.

"OK. Baby, you can stay as close as you like, but give me a little privacy sometimes, and show me that you still remember how to swim. OK?"

"OK."

Later in the pool, she was doing all types of swimming feats and saying, "Watch this, Daddy!" It was like she was trying to prove to me that she could swim.

Playa El Agua

The following morning, I asked to Mariana, "What do you want to do?"

"Swimming!"

I don't know why I even asked. "Let's go swimming at a different beach. Let's explore!"

After coffee and pastries at the supermarcado, I saw a clean looking Honda heading our way. So, I stuck out my thumb, and the car stopped. The driver, Ana, was a nice girl around forty years old. She asked me in Spanish where we wanted to go. I replied, "Una playa linda." I was trying to say "nice beach".

"¿Playa El Agua?" she asked.

"Si. Por que no." Sure. Why not?

As we drove toward Playa El Agua, Ana explained to me that there were these vehicles called ruta cortas that were as cheap as buses and would take us short distances. I had noticed a few old cars driving around with hand written signs in the window that read "RUTA CORTA". Finally, I knew why.

☼

Playa El Agua was more crowded than the little beach down from our inn, but not too crowded. A tree shaded brick promenade stretch along most of Playa El Agua with tiny shops, and people selling bracelets, phone calls, T-shirts, paintings, carvings, and a myriad of other items that tourists would buy. Playa El Agua was busy enough to be fun, but small enough to have charm and a low-rent backpacker type atmosphere.

The clean waves rolled in so smoothly that it looked like a surfing movie. Mariana pointed out into the ocean and said, "Let's dolphin ride those waves!" She held onto my back and we rode wave after wave until the sun sank low in the sky. As we climbed out of the water, Mariana said, "Daddy, I'm having fun! I love Venezuela! Are you having fun?"

"Yes I am! You know what? At this moment, it just hit me how wonderful this trip is going to be."

In the past, I have noticed, in the course of a journey, that I get hit with an overwhelming moment of realization that sends me into a natural high. That moment in the water off Playa El Agua with Mariana clinging to my back, I became very happy to be on Isla Margarita. Salt air filled my nostrils. Translucent water placidly streamed around me. My eyes were filled with a picture postcard tropical dream. South American sun tanned my skin.

From that point on Playa El Agua became our axis mundi.

Blind Bus Drivers and Thieves

Besides forgetting my bankcard, I also forgot my clothing, and my camera. I was so focused on getting all of Mariana's stuff packed that I forgot to pack for myself. This was one of those moments where one asks oneself: "What happened to my brain?" Thus, with all the stuff I left in my car back in Miami, I had only the clothes on my back, my swimming trunks, my passport, and the cash in my pocket. I needed a camera and one more shirt so I could have two shirts.

The only place to find the stuff we needed was Porlamar, the commercial center of the island. Our mission was to find a bus to Porlamar, buy a cheap camera, a white shirt for me and a pair of flip-flops for Mariana. Then, get a bus back to the supermarket near our guesthouse. The bus ride that followed was strange to say the least. In fact, this would be the first of many strange bus trips on the island. Eventually, it became evident that each time one enters a bus on Isla Margarita, one enters a sort of weird parallel universe. In due course, each time we walked onto a bus, I half expected Rod Sterling's voice: "...A man and his daughter believe they are stepping onto a bus; when, in fact, they are stepping into the Twilight Zone...do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do..."

I noticed a group of people standing outside the supermarcado apparently waiting for something. I assumed that they must have been waiting on a bus. Sure enough, a bus came. We followed the throng onto a colorful bus with a handwritten sign that stated Porlamar. "Colorful" was actually an understatement. Every outside inch of the old converted school bus was painted with tropical flora and religious symbols. I don't know for sure, but I guess many used yellow American school busses must end up in South America.

A bus driver is entrusted with the lives of so many people each day. Driving a bus required a commitment to safety, a quick mind and sharp vision. Then, I noticed the bizarre looking man who drove our bus and his super thick eye glasses.

The bus driver must have cut the bottoms off two glass coke bottles to fashion the glasses he wore. I don't know how his eyes weren't burned up by the magnified rays of sunlight, or how he managed to see well enough to drive into oncoming traffic while counting money, making change, text messaging, and looking at girls' butts and watching everything but the road.

On the other hand, even if he had perfect vision, he would not have been able to see since his window was covered with everything imaginable. A foot-wide pink crocheted sun visor covered the length of the window from the middle to the top. Below the sun visor, there were dozens of stuffed animals in crocheted hammocks stuck to the windows by large suction cups. As if there weren't enough objects blocking the window that he probably couldn't see out of anyway, he had a small alter with an eight inch "Virgin Mary"(a Barbie doll dressed like the Virgin) surrounded by small plastic flowers and a lit candle at the base. How this man managed to keep this bus on the road, I will never know.

At stop number three, the bus trip began to resemble an acid trip. A skinny man wearing a ball cap and another thick pair of glasses climbed on the bus carrying a Bs1000 note in his right hand and a rooster and an open bottle of beer in his left. The rooster was feathered normally on half his body, but was naked on the other half. The man gently stroked the rooster on the back, and the rooster behaved very calmly for the entire bus ride. The man sat on a wooden crate right next to the driver. At one point, the man handed the rooster to the driver, who took both hands off the steering wheel and his eyes off the road and inspected the rooster for about 20 seconds while steering with his knees.

I could not understand their conversation, but what else could they have said to each other besides the following:

Nearly-Blind-Rooster-Holding-Man: "Would you like to hold my rooster?"

Nearly-Blind-Bus-Driving-Man: "Sure. I will just endanger the lives of these nice people on this crowded bus so that I can inspect your weird looking rooster."

Nearly-Blind-Rooster-Holding-Man: "Do you like him?"

Nearly-Blind-Bus-Driving-Man: "If I could see him, I would tell you that he is a very nice rooster."

Somehow, we managed to make it to Porlamar without driving off a cliff. As I walked off the bus, I thought, I can't wait to write this stuff down.

The center of Porlamar was a large pedestrian shopping area with brick walkways lined with shops and street venders selling a huge variety of food and anything else one might need. The place was full of colors, smells, and noises. We found Mariana's flip-flops for Bs2000 at one such street vendor, and, then, I purchased my shirt for Bs10,000 from a more traditional looking inside shop. Next, I made the most costly mistake of the trip.

A man stood out in the open in the middle of an open square holding a wad of cash. He was obviously a moneychanger. He offered to exchange $100 for 2800 Bolivar per dollar, which would give me Bs280,000. That was 400 more per dollar than I was looking for. I had been warned to only exchange money in shops, and, as I wrote earlier, a moneychanger in the airport had tried to rip me off. Blame it on greed or temporary insanity, but I agreed. He gave me the Bolivars, but I did not give him the $100 until I counted it. It was 5000 short. I told him to give me 5000 more Bolivar. So, he took the money and counted out 5000 more. This is when he must have changed the stack of 10,000 Bolivar notes for a stack of 1,000's. He did this with the skill of a magician in the blink of an eye. I didn't realize it until I was trying to purchase a camera one hour later. The upshot is he stole about $90 from us at a time when we were really short on money. Asshole.

That moneychanger made me think of Jesus in the temple. When he saw moneychangers in His temple he cast them out and overturned their tables. These types of assholes even pissed off the Prince of Peace Himself.

"I can't believe I let that man steal money from us Mariana."

"Are we going to be alright?" Mariana asked me with concern in her little voice.

"Sure. We'll be fine."

At that moment, this old man, bent nearly halfway over from his years, meekly approached me carrying a few tubes of Super Glue. He looked as old and decrepit as a man could look. He had wrinkled withered skin that was paper thin and covered with brown and black spots. His dirty clothing swallowed his little emaciated body. He moved toward me like a snail: Slowly and without picking up his feet. Without saying anything, he held his packages of Super Glue close to my face. I guessed he was trying to sell them to me. What did I need Super Glue for? How much money could this man possibly get for selling Super Glue like this? "No. Gracias."

Mariana was holding my hand as we walked down the multihued pedestrian shopping area adjacent to the vibrant main plaza. Her free hand was on her stomach. "Daddy, my stomach hurts."

"Honey, you must be hungry. Let's eat at that food stand over there." She nodded in agreement. The bright red food stand had a sign that read "Hamburguesa" and a bench that stretched the length of the two-meter long stand.

"¡Digame!" said the white hat wearing sandwich maker. "Hamburguesa" the Spanish word for "hamburger", but the white hat wearing dude was not making any kind of hamburger I'd ever seen. The man at the other end of the bench was eating a two-inch thick sandwich filled with a nice piece of ham, an egg, lots of veggies, and a myriad of sauces. "Colossal" was the first word that came to my mind when I viewed that hamburguesa. I pointed over to the man and told him that I want one like that one. Mariana and I split it, and it was plenty. The cost? Less than $1.00.

As we boarded the bus with the hand written sign that read "Playa El Agua", Mariana asked, "May I have a coco frio for dessert?" Mariana had wanted a coco frio since we arrived, and every time we saw a stand it had been closed. I thought, for sure, there would be coco frios in the tourist beach of Playa El Agua. She slept on my lap the entire 40-minute bus ride, and woke up ready for her coconut drink known all over Latin America as a coco frio.

There were plenty of people selling all types of mollusks along the beach, but all the coco frio stands were closed. Nonetheless, the refreshing water and waves gave Mariana a reprise from her hunger for a coco frio. We rode waves "dolphin style", as Mariana called it, until the sunset. Before catching the bus back to El Tirano, I called Karen and left another message. That was the fourth time I called her and had to leave a message. Karen was not the "message checking kind".

Coffee-Girl-#1

The supermarcado in El Tirano (the one near our guesthouse) had a counter with an enormous assortment of desserts and smooth tasting coffee. There were always two women behind the counter that reminded me of the soup Nazi from the old Seinfeld sitcom. Everyone on this island speaks quickly, but these girls win the prize for fast-talking. Also, with each new customer, they pretty much yelled, "¡Digame!" I had been drinking two of these coffees a day, and Mariana and I had been tearing up the desserts.

The bus had dropped us off directly in front of the supermarcado, and we went inside for our desserts and coffee fix. Besides us, there was only one other customer at the counter. Maybe, the coffee girls will be more relaxed? "¡Digame!" one yelled to me. Maybe not.

"Quiero café con leche grande y esto." I pointed at this beautiful strawberry cinnamon thing behind the glass, and we made our way to the end of the counter. The other girl making the coffee actually smiled at Mariana, who was reclining in a shopping cart. I initiated a conversation with her speaking slowly in Spanish, and, to my surprise, she demonstrated an ability to speak slowly. I was grateful for this, because I had a difficult time understanding Spanish spoken so quickly. The woman was probably just less than five feet tall with chubby cheeks and a plump little belly. She had light colored hair and grey eyes.

She told me that her fourteen-year-old son looked like a gringo works in the store. This perplexed me, because I thought this short chubby girl was less than 30 years old. She probably had the child at a young age. She also told me that she moved to Isla Margarita four years ago because she loves islands. I told her that I, too, love islands, and, in fact, I named my daughter after an island chain in the Pacific- the Mariana Islands.

Then, she said, "Espera," (Wait) and walked away. She came back with her phone number and told me to call her, and we will go to the beach together so that the children could play with each other. I smiled and took the number. The name she wrote on the paper was "Jenny".

As another woman was ringing up our groceries, Mariana looked up at me with puffed cheeks and worried eyes and pointed to the door. I grabbed her and ran outside, and she vomited on the sidewalk. We walked back in and I paid for the groceries. Before I had a chance to pick up the bags, I carried her outside again, and she, once again, vomited on the sidewalk outside the store.

Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl left her coffee and dessert counter and came outside. She gently rubbed Mariana's back and spoke to her in Spanish. Mariana did not understand a word, but she liked it. I think the smoothness of her voice soothed little Mariana.

A Sick Baby

This began a long sick night for my princess. Mariana repeated a cycle of throwing up, drinking water, and brushing her teeth all night. Then came fevers. She clung to me the whole night, and kept asking me, "When will I get better, Daddy?"

"You will feel better tomorrow, and we will go to the pharmacy and get some Pepto-Bismol, aspirin, and some Gatorade. All that will make you better." We slept on and off from 8:30 PM to 7:30 AM. All night my heart ached for my little girl.

Seeing that the morning sunlight entered the room, Mariana moaned and said, "Daddy, I thought you said that I would feel better."

I carried her to the pharmacy. However, our first trip to the pharmacy was futile, because it was closed. Then, Bertrice, the cleaning lady at the guesthouse, saw me with Mariana and asked if she was OK. "Ella tiene náuseas, todo la noche," I said to her.

She made a really concerned face and said, "Ven conmigo. Por aca.", "Come with me this way." We went into her nice apartment that was part of the Saint Michel Inn, and she handed us a plastic bag full of some type of tea.

She said, "Manzana. Bueno para estómago..." She went on telling me how it made her children, nieces and nephews feel better when they had stomach problems. Then, she followed me to the room and showed me in great detail how to make it. She was generally concerned about Mariana. Manzana is Spanish for apple. The tea smelled like apples and spices.

Eventually, we found an open pharmacy. Mariana slept on and off until 3:00. By 3:00 PM, she was feeling better and asked me if we could go swimming. A swim in the pool and some chicken noodle soup completely revived her. I carried her around El Tirano for part of the late afternoon getting to know the people in the community. Among others, I visited the Chinese girl at the Chinese grocery store, Ana, and the empanada lady, Nancy.

I negotiated a rate of Bs2400 per dollar with Ana, and I was pleased. When I handed her the $100 bill, she looked at it very closely and snapped it open and shut. This amused Mariana. In fact, for the rest of the trip, every time Mariana got her little hands on some currency she looked at it closely and snapped it open and shut mimicking Ana. I assured Ana that it was real, and she seamed convinced. She sent her cousin, Marco, to get money. This gave us 15 minutes to chat. I enjoyed the novelty speaking Spanish to a Chinese woman speaking Spanish with a Chinese accent.

Despite the fact that I told her otherwise, she was convinced that Mariana could understand Chinese. Ana was speaking in Chinese to Mariana in a manner that seemed like she was telling her how to live a better life. My daughter looked at me confused. So, I told her, "Just nod and smile. She thinks you speak Chinese." I tried to tell Ana that Mariana's mother spoke another language that is very different from Chinese, but she would have nothing to do with that. I also told her the story of the guy who changed the Bs10,000 notes for the Bs1000 notes. She said that was very bad. In fact, if I translated word-for-word what she said to me it would be the following: "He is very bad man."

Following Marco's entrance with the Bolivars, she counted the 0's after each bill to show me that it was the correct amount. I told her that from now on, I would change money only with her. Just before we exited the store she looked Mariana in the eye and told her something in Chinese. Mariana nodded and smiled causing Ana to give me an "I-told-you-so" look.

☼

As we walked to the empanada lady, Mariana told me that I was not allowed to buy an empanada, because it would make her sick to watch me eat it. We blamed her 24-hour stomach problem on an empanada. So, I said, "Don't watch me eat it."

"Digame, mi amor," said Nancy. That sounds much better than just "digame", I thought. I paused to think what kind of empanada I wanted prompting Nancy to ask me if I wanted some soup called "mondongo". It was full of bones, tripe, pork fat, taro, yucca, homily, and maybe a little kitchen sink. I asked her if I could have it to go. Thus, she gave me a huge plastic bowl with a lid, and a piece of Venezuelan bread called arepa. The cost was just Bs5000, and I had enough food to feed an army. As I left, she asked me to bring back the bowl manaña.

Back at the room, I handed Mariana her book, and said, "You'd better not watch me eat this!"

By the time it became night, Mariana's stomach problem was a distant memory, and she was eating everything in sight. "Let's go to the roof," I said to her. She smiled big, and we walked up to the rooftop terrace at our little guesthouse.

A tropical breeze blew across the roof as we sat up there reading our books. Night time in the tropics is like no other night time on any other latitude. I swear that same breeze that cools my suntanned skin also cools my spirit. Despite the darkness, we could make out the ocean in the distance below the clouds.

Mariana was on book #2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events. (Eventually, she would read the whole series.) Occasionally, I would ask her what was happening, and she would give me a cheerful animated explanation in great detail. Then, a great rain fell from the sky. Before dashing back to the room, we stopped to watch it for a few minutes.

Independence Day(s)

On the morning of July 4, Mariana told me, "If we were home, we would see fireworks."

"How do you know that? We've never been home on the fourth of July," I answered her with a grin.

☼

Later, we met the Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl and her son outside the supermarcado, and took a taxi to Playa Manzanilla. The taxi driver charged me Bs7000 for the ride, but Jenny, the Coffee-Girl, said that I should have paid only Bs4000. After that, I learned not to ask the price, but simply hand the taxi driver Bs4000.

Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl told me that Playa Manzanilla was her favorite beach on the island. I could see why. Whipped cream clouds partly covered the entire sky and hung over the semicircular bay that encompasses Playa Manzanilla giving the sand a more yellow hue. Hills rapped around the bay and black volcanic rocks reached up from the sand forming all sorts of strange shapes. Some of the rocks rose up out of the sand like 20 feet forearms and hands reaching for the sky. Small colorful pelican-filled fishing boats half filled the beach, and the bay. Shirtless fisherman worked on nets and pulled boats to and from the water. The bay could have been painted by Van Gogh and written by Hemingway.

After the aforementioned thought, I verbalized it to Jenny in Spanish. She smiled and told me that she adores Van Gogh, but has never read Hemingway. She told me that her favorite author was Gabriel Marquez. I told her that I thought Marquez was South America's version of our Hemingway. Subsequently, she went a step further in her accolades about Playa Manzanilla by saying this was her favorite beach in the world. "I can see why," I told her in broken Spanish.

About fifteen scrawny children were crowded onto a brightly colored little fishing boat about fifty meters off shore. They were taking turns jumping into the water from the bow of the boat. Playa Manzanilla was frozen in time. The pictures before my eyes could have been seen 40 years ago or tomorrow. I swear I saw Santiago and the boy in their little colorful fishing boat coming to the shore with the day's catch.

We walked to the far secluded side of the beach and parked beneath a volcanic outcropping that jutted straight up like a finger. Jenny and her son only spoke Spanish, but we had no trouble talking. My Spanish had reached a level where I was able to do two things:

• I was able to say whatever I wanted to, but with poor grammar and pronunciation.

• I could understand someone speaking directly to me, but not two native speakers having a conversation with each other.

Mariana and Jordan played incessantly climbing rocks, collected fish parts and dead crabs with sticks, and digging holes. Jenny told me about her seven sisters, her blonde Muslim ex-husband who now lives in Michigan, and her life on Isla Margarita. I told her that my wife is a nutricianista, and that I am a history teacher. I also told her that I named my second child Zoë. The whole time we talked Jenny kept covering her ample stomach with a towel like she was trying to hide something. She wore a two-piece bathing suit that was mostly string, but was ashamed of her plump stomach. Back in the USA, women have many different types of bathing suits to choice from: One-piece, two-piece and so on. However, here on Isla Margarita, there are only really tiny bikinis that proudly display most of a woman's backside. Is this liberating? Maybe. Why should skinny girls have all the fun?

We could only talk so long until it was time to swim. Then we all jumped into the water. Fifty yards from us, I spotted a strange disturbance in the water. I pointed over to it, and young Jordan asked if I knew what it was. I answered with an evil laugh, "¡Tiberon!"

He swam for the shore yelling in English, "Shark!" Mariana smiled and pretended to be scared and also yelled, "Shark! ¡Tiberon!" I had to figure out what it was. So, I swam out to it. What I discovered was strange.

There was a school of large fish swimming around with their heads half out of the water and mouths open. The fish were very large- probably two feet long. The big fish just kept swimming around and around with their mouths sticking out of the water. Why? I had no idea.

It began to rain and Jenny suggested we take a taxi to her home to eat. Once we arrived outside her gate, she quickly paid the taxi Bs4000.

Jenny's house was in a neighborhood called La Mida. Her two-story house had tiled floors and was immaculately clean. I was surprised to see two English gentlemen in their sixties sitting in the tiled living room of her larger than I expected house talking with Jenny's roommate, Fabiola.

Ian and Robert were from Manchester. They divorced their wives years ago and have been traveling the world together ever since. I assumed they were an old gay couple, but this would turn out to be wholly erroneous.

Actually, they reminded me of something an aging author once wrote. After the writer Truman Capote became an old man, he described himself as a "decaying child". I do not believe Capote had these Manchester boys in mind when he described himself in this manner. Nevertheless, Ian and Robert were exactly that - a couple of decaying boys living out their old age hedonistically.

They didn't speak Spanish, and Fabiosa didn't speak English, but they seemed to be talking away somehow. Fabiosa told me that she was named after a princess from Europe, but she wasn't a real princess. I told her that I bet her daddy thinks she is a princess. She smiled, almost blushing, and said, "¡Siiiiiiii!"

"Is this your first time here, Luther?" asked Robert.

"Yes. How about y'all?"

"Oh. We've been here many times. This is our eighth time."

"Wow. Y'all should just buy a place here."

"Yes. The property here is very cheap. For 5,000 quid you can buy yourself a nice house."

"You mean to tell me I can buy a house for 8 grand US?"

"That's right, but you'll need a good lawyer."

"What brings you back to Margarita so much?" I asked them.

Ian and Robert both went on to rhapsodize about the women, the booze, dancing and all kinds of activities normally associated with men one-third their age. These old men were enjoying their lives.

Before the meal arrived, we spoke about Manchester United, English pubs in Spain, the music scene and the war in Iraq.

After a wonderful meal of rice, veggies, and beef, Jenny had to go back to being the coffee girl at the supermarcado. So, we took another taxi back to El Tirano. Jenny works from 1:00 PM to 9:00 PM six days a week for Bs80,000. So, she supports herself and her son on $33 a week. Her weekly budget was exactly my daily budget. She also told me that she sends money to her abuela back on the mainland.

☼

Meanwhile, back in front of the supermarket near our guesthouse, the man who normally sells copied CD's on the sidewalk had a couple of cameras. Since, I could probably go without food or water longer than I could go without taking a picture, I purchased one for Bs80,000. Now we would be able to record our trip with photos. As I counted out the 80,000 Bolivar, I thought of Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl working 48 hours to earn the same amount of money. The bright green chameleon that we saw earlier was back on the pink terracotta wall. So, I stopped and Mariana took a photo of him and smiled. I think the chameleon smiled too, but it was hard to tell.

☼

Back at the room, Mariana spent the entire evening reading, and finished her second book. I only brought two books with me for her to read. After one week, she had read both. At seven years old, Mariana had become a veracious reader. As her daddy, I felt so proud of her every time I saw her reading.

Our room had a television. "Mariana, let's watch some Venezuelan TV."

"Cartoons?"

"If I can find them."

July 5 is the Independence Day for Venezuela. Mariana turned on the TV to discover that President Chavez was on every station. He was wearing a Venezuelan flag sash across his suit, and stood up straight under the shadow of a statue of the ubiquitous Simon Bolivar. He was in some ornate building flanked by military brass and important looking people. A huge brass band played the patriotic songs that sound the same in any language and in any country. Chavez and all the others mouthed the words and walked around the palatial setting looking both solemn and pompous. After traveling so much and seeing this behavior in so many countries including my own, the whole act seemed to me so contrived, small minded and silly. When will we realize that we are one human race? How many wars have come out of this religious style nationalism?

Mariana became as bored as I was watching TV. Consequently, we walked back to the supermarcado for my coffee and our pastry fix. Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl was there and welcomed us with an enthusiastic smile and loud kisses on the cheeks. Despite the fact that we spent the morning with her, her greeting was as fervent as old friends who had been separated for years. I asked for a café pequeño, a custard style cake, and a beautiful little fluffy white cake with a glazed strawberry on top. The coffee came in what looked like a paper thimble. So, I drank it down in one sip and ordered a café grande that came in what looked like a paper shot glass. Then, we ate the pastries with gusto and ordered more.

Jenny stood at the counter talking with us while the other Coffee-Girl took care of the many customers. Jenny and I had the following conversation in Spanish, or, rather, she spoke in Spanish and I spoke in a language that resembled Spanish that she somehow understood. Hence, for the benefit of the reader, I will recount the conversation in English.

"Mariana and I will be looking for an apartment today, because we have to leave our place in two days."

"How much do you want to pay?" asked Jenny.

"Bs30,000 Bolivar."

"You can stay with me. I have room."

I thought that it would be nice to stay with a local family, but Jenny's body language was telling me that she was interested in me in a more physical way. I did not want an uncomfortable situation, because I did not come to Isla Margarita to get laid. I suppose I went there to escape my failing marriage and spent time with my daughter. I did not know how to answer her tactfully. "Maybe we can do that, but we are going to still look around a bit."

"What are you doing tomorrow?" she asked.

"I don't know. We have no plans."

"Do you want to go to Sambil?"

"Sure. What is Sambil?"

"Sambil is spectacular. A wonderful place for kids."

"That sounds like fun. We will come to your house in the morning."

Later in the day, I would learn from a taxi driver that Sambil was just a big expensive mall. This changed my mind about visiting Sambil.

Riding Around the Island with the Manchester Boys

"Let's go to Playa Yaqui today," I said to Mariana the next morning after studying a map of the island. Playa Yaqui was a beach near Porlamar, and the only reason I thought about going was that we had not been there.

"Yes! But first let's jump in the pool."

"OK. Then, after that, let's eat breakfast at Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl's house. Yesterday, they invited us to go to Polamar and Sambil with them, but I think Sambil is like a mall. I don't want to spend the whole day walking around a mall."

"Me neither."

"After I found this out, I told her 'no', but I said that I would bring breakfast over. So, what I think we will do is stop by Nancy-The-Empanada-Lady and then take a bus to her house. After that we will probably go to Playa Yaqui."

She made a terrible face and yelled, "Empanada Lady! No!"

"The empanadas are for Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl's family, I'll buy you some chicken at the phone and Internet chicken place next to the supermarcado." Mariana liked this idea, and smiled.

There was a business next to the supermarcado called "Big Chicken". Besides serving big pieces of chicken, pizza, and empanadas, they had Internet and phones.

"WWW" stands for World Wide Wait on Isla Margarita. I have never seen slower Internet connections anywhere, and Big Chicken's connection was the slowest on the island. For example, I typed "www.hotmail.com" and went to the bathroom. When I emerged the sight was still loading. This is no exaggeration. In order to send e-mails, I would simply type them in Word and, then, cut and paste them to the message. Finally, I would press "send" and wait until I grew old.

Big Chicken charged just Bs200 a minute to call the USA and Bs1500 to use the Internet for an hour. All the phone places charged the same rates. The price must be standard. International calls from Isla Margarita were easy and convenient.

Big Chicken had no chicken that day. Thus, Mariana ended up getting a giant hamburger that cost Bs3500. It took them 30 minutes to get it to us: 15 minutes to make and 15 minutes to sit on the counter in front of the kitchen while the Big-Chicken-Girl ate an empanada and talked with other customers.

By the way, Big Chicken sold empanadas, but the employee left the restaurant and walked across the street to purchase her empanada from Nancy-The-Empanada-Lady.

We phoned Karen. She was pleasant, and kind. She told me that she would wire $500 through Western Union if Mariana and I needed it, but I would have to pay her back "with interest". I told her that I could just go on-line and transfer money into her account from mine. Then, I told her "never mind". I felt like if Coffee-Girl could make it on $33 a week, Mariana and I could make it on $33 a day.

We stepped right out of Big Chicken and into a waiting car full of people at the bus stop. This big old clunky car was a ruta corta. Neither the driver, an old man wearing a brown leather fedora and thick glasses, nor his passengers said a word as we climbed in. Once we were on the road above Playa El Agua, I said, "Aqui, señor, por favor." He stopped the car, I handed him Bs1000, and we stepped out.

These ruta corta drivers must take a vow of silence before becoming drivers. These men neither said how much the ride cost nor much of anything else. At first when I rode with one of them, I just paid Bs1000, and the driver took it. Later in the trip, I gave them Bs500, and that worked just as well. Since Bs500 is about a quarter, Mariana called these vehicles "Ruta Quarters". I never learned the correct price, but 25 cents for a ride was economical enough for me. Gasoline on the island was just pennies for a liter. Fuel was so low priced, it seemed free.

The mystery of the mute ruta corta drivers became even more mystifying after a few taxi rides. For some reason taxi drivers on Isla Margarita talked our ears off every time we took them and charged us rates ranging from Bs2000 to Bs8000 for the same trip. I wondered if there was a secret code: Taxi drivers must not stop talking. Ruta corta drivers must say nothing. Come to think of it, maybe ruta corta drivers are some secret order of monks who take vows of silence and poverty before driving around the island packing their ramshackle vehicles with crowds of passengers paying them a quarter?

☼

The gate was locked at the coffee girl's house, so I yelled in through the bars: "¡Hola! ¡Hola!" Jordan came out and told me that his mom was at Big Chicken checking her e-mail. I guess we'll see her next year! He unlocked the gate for us, and four puppies ran out to eagerly greet Mariana and me with a barrage of little barks and lickings. Fabiola was in the kitchen wearing a skintight white dress. I offered them some empanadas, but Fabiola said her stomach was hurting, and Jordan said that he would eat them later.

Fabiola asked me if I had ever been to La Restina, the narrow isthmus that connects the two halves of Isla Margarita. I told her no and asked her about it. She ran upstairs and grabbed a photo album.

She tried to show me just one or two of the pictures in the album, but ended up showing me the whole album which had pictures of her and her mom on the beach at La Restina wearing thongs. In one photo she and her mom were in the water sticking their abundant posteriors in the air. I told her that it was a wonderful photo, but my old heart could not take such a photo, and we both laughed.

She went to get some water and placed the photo album on the counter. I looked through the rest of the photos and discover several nude photos of her at the end. In all the nude photos, her large butt was prominently displayed. In one photo, she was on all fours on a bed wearing a small white top with no bottom. When she returned, I showed her another photo of her sleeping on her stomach wearing an opened blue blouse with her large naked butt completely exposed. She laughed and called me a chismoso, "nosey". Margaritaños love their rear ends!

Jordan looked out the window and yelled, "¡Mamá!" Just as she walked in, the Manchester Boys, Ian and Robert, pulled up the driveway in a rented car. Within a few minutes, all of us were drinking coffee and Jenny and Fabiola were making plans to go to La Restina with the English men.

"What are your plans?" I asked Ian.

"Don't know. I guess these gals are making some plans for us. I think we'll just go where ever they want."

Robert and Ian went back and examined their car in order to determine where to put everybody. When they returned, Ian said, "Fancy a ride?"

We don't say "fancy a ride" in Tennessee. "Sure. If you have room, we fancy an adventure," I answered.

"We'll have to put the kids in the boot," he answered speaking British English in his English accent.

Everyone ended up fitting nicely in the car. Mariana and Jordan had plenty of room in the space between the back seat and the hatchback. We spent the next few hours lost driving through little villages often stopping at small cafes for coffee. We were lost because the Englishmen halfway thought they knew where they were going and the Venezuelan girls continuously gave them directions that they did not understand. By the time I translated the directions; they had normally missed the turn or were driving the wrong way down a narrow street. Besides this, everyone had his or her own plans for the day.

Mariana asked me, "Daddy, where are we going?"

I answered, "I don't know, and I don't care. We're just along for the ride."

"Are we going to Playa Jaqui?"

"Probably not, but who knows? Let's just see what happens. Think of it as an adventure."

Mariana smiled.

Ian and Robert ceaselessly flirted with the Venezuelan girls and every girl they met with their crazy broken English with a Spanish word thrown in here and there. I don't think any one knew what they were saying. Jenny took to the flirting and flirted right back. Fabiola laughed and rolled her eyes at the comments. Mariana was enjoying riding in the back and playing with Jordan. I was just enjoying the show.

As it turned out, Ian and Robert, obviously, were not a couple of old gay men. They were two bachelors living a perfectly lascivious life. The two divorced their wives and now spent all their time drinking and chasing young women with all the confidence of two young handsome dudes. I imagine they looked in the mirror each day at their sunburned, overweight, wrinkled, hairy bodies beneath a thinning crown of white hair, smile big, and said, "Yeah, baby!"

Robert stopped the car, pointed to a little café, and said, "We drink café there. Pretty señoritas there. Me like señoritas." As he said the word "señoritas" he made hand gestures to illustrate large breast. Jenny laughed and Fabiola rolled her eyes.

We all climbed out like a bunch of clowns in a small clown car. The café was near one of the ubiquitous "Plaza Bolivars" in La Asuncion, the small town that serves as the capital for Nueva Sparta(New Sparta), the state that contains Isla Margarita. At the center of the Plaza was a statue of Simon Bolivar, who is omnipresent on Isla Margarita and all of Venezuela. Nearly every plaza on the island is a Plaza Bolivar. I must have seen 1000 statues of Simon Bolivar on this little island. Besides that he is on most of the money, which bares his name.

By the time I snapped a photo of the plaza and the colorful houses that lined the street, Ian and Robert had the poor café woman completely confused. I whispered to her in Spanish that we needed five café con leches and two helados. After they took the coffees and ice creams out to us, I slipped in and paid the bill. It was the equivalent of $2.00 for all of us.

I took a sip of my café con leche, and Ian leaned over as if he was going to tell me a secret. "You know for just Bs50,000 you can get a nice looking girl to come up to your room from Playa El Agua."

"Really. Bs50,000?"

"Really."

"Wow. But, you know, I can't do that, because I have my daughter here."

"Ian and I will watch her for you, or you can get a babysitter one night."

"Thanks, but that's OK."

We finally made it to the narrow pebbly isthmus and tossed rocks in the water and collected seashells. Jenny walked around wearing the tinniest bikini I have seen in my thirty-five years. Jenny said to Ian, "You want pictures? Sexy girl." This was the first time I heard her speak English, and she spoke just like Ian and Robert were speaking Spanglish. Ian took pictures of Jenny, while she posed in ways that brought the most attention to her large rear-end. Robert gave Fabiola a shell in the shape of a ring. Fabiola put it on her finger. Robert said, "You mi esposa now."

Fabiola held up seven fingers and said, "Esposa numero seven."

Then, Ian held up eight fingers and replied, "No esposa numbero eight." Then, they all giggled. (Note to reader(s): Isla Margaritaville is the first book in history to ever use the word "numbero".)

We stayed for an hour, collecting shells and helping to free various vehicles from the loose sand. This made it clear that Robert and Ian's little car would never make it across the sandy isthmus to the less populated other side of the island. Hence, we loaded in the car and continued our aimless exploration.

Fabiola asked me in Spanish, "Why did you come to Isla Margarita?"

I answered in jest: "I came here because I wanted to drink a Margarita on Margarita with a girl named Margarita."

Fabiola laughed and asked me, "What type of Margarita girl are you looking for?"

"¡Una perrita!" The term perrita means little dog, but in Venezuala it could also mean a woman who chases many men. This was me trying to be funny, but sounding stupid.

Robert drove, Ian sat in the passenger seat, the kids squeezed in the boot, and I sat in the back seat between Fabiola and Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl. We stopped at a town called Juangriega where Jenny purchased some flip-flops for Jordan, and Mariana played on the old cannons pointing out to the sea.

From there we drove up to an old fort above a beach named Playa Caribe. Robert yelled from the front of the car, "What do you say we all visit my favorite beach?"

Mariana heard the word "beach" and yelled from the back of the car, "Yes! Yes! ¡Si! ¡Si! Let's go to the beach! We can swim!"

Playa Caribe had astoundingly pink sand. We parked ourselves beneath a vacant lifeguard stand. Both Ian and Robert were wearing those man-kinis that I described earlier that only European men would wear to a beach. The man-kinis could barely contain their plump-sunburned flesh covered in gray hairs. Jenny stripped down to her microscopic bikini and lay on her stomach to get sun on her nearly bare backside. In fact, lying on her stomach made her look completely naked. To further emphasize this point, she undid her top in order to avoid any tan lines on her back.

By the time I returned from swimming with the kids, Jenny had raised up a little scarcely presenting her bare breasts to viewing pleasure. Robert and Ian were doing their absolute best to observe them while they conversed in their version of Spanglish.

Eventually, she turned over, hands covering her boobs and asked them to bury her in the sand. Both Robert and Ian obliged. She was obviously enjoying the attention. Fabiola just went to sleep.

Hours later, the puppies greeted Robert and Ian's rented car as we pulled up to Jenny's house. Fabiola climbed out of the car to open the gate, but first picked up one of the dogs. With a big smile on her face, she strutted back to the car and said to me in Spanish, "I would like to introduce you to Margarita. She is a real perrita." Smart-ass.

That night, Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl cooked us all a big dinner of pasta with a white sauce. The waitress from the Margarita Café at Playa El Agua, joined us for dinner just as the power went out. Jenny and Fabiola lit candles all over the house, and we all enjoyed a fine meal and an evening of story telling in a house full of candles.

Mala 

Mariana woke up at 7:00 AM. I was typing on my laptop in the kitchen area of our apartment at the Saint Michel Inn. "Baby, it is really early. You should go back to sleep," I told her.

"OK. But, can you type over here. I want to be close to you."

"Sure," I said, and she went back to sleep for two more hours. At 9:00 AM, I was listening to Ben Harper music on the laptop. As Ben sang Burn one down, Mariana woke up and said, "Can you play a song by Dolly Pardon?" So, I played Tennessee Mountain Home for her, and she was happy.

...In my Tennessee mountain home life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh; In my Tennessee mountain home crickets sing in the fields near by...

As we listened to Dolly rhapsodize about Tennessee, I could not shake the feeling that we could not have been in a more dissimilar place than Isla Margarita. Then I said, "Mariana let's go find a new place to live. We have to be out of here tomorrow."

Off we went in search of a new place. First, I asked Ana at the Chinese store, "Estamos buscando para un apartamento."

Her response was something like, "¿Cuantos pagar quiere?" I told her that I only wanted to pay about Bs30,000 a day. Then, she responded that there were no apartments in El Tirano for that price. Our next stop was Playa El Agua. This turned out to be auspicious.

Instead of finding an apartment at Playa El Agua, we found a wonderful blend of coconut juice, coconut meat, sugar, and ice called cocadas. The cocada lady was situated next to the full service laundry mat and charged just Bs2000 for a heaping cup of this magnificent mixture.

The full service laundry was a wonderful place. We stopped there once a week and dropped off all our cloths except for swimming stuff. Following a few hours of swimming, we would pick up our clothing, which was clean, folded and placed in a plastic bag. All for less than $2.00. How wonderful! ¡Que bien!

Beyond the full service laundry mat next to the cocada place was a funky little restaurant called the Café Solar. The Café Solar was pink and covered with tropical plants. There was a wood framed walk-up window where customers placed their orders and all the tables were outside looking like a Parisian sidewalk café.

A stunning eastern looking woman sat at a table writing the day's specials on a menu board. She had the  (Ohm symbol) tattooed on her shoulder. Piercing dark eyes complemented her bright smile. She had amazingly long, thick, wavy black hair. I started speaking to her in Spanish, but she responded in North American accented English.

"I'm Luther and this is my little girl, Mariana."

"I'm Mala. Where are you from?"

"We're from South Carolina. You?"

"South Carolina. I could have guessed, you were from the southern United States. I was born in Kenya. Then, I lived mostly in Canada. I'm a Canadian citizen."

"How long have you been on Isla Margarita?"

"Eleven years."

"Are your parents Indian?"

"Yes. They live here on the island."

"Let me get this straight. You were born in Africa of Indian parents, moved to Canada, and have lived on an island off the coast of South America for eleven years? Wow. I must say that you are the first person I have met with that story. How is it having the name 'Mala' in a Spanish speaking country?" Mala means bad in Spanish.

The funny thing about meeting new people is that we have the same conversation where we find out names, what we do for a living, birthplaces, and family. Only then can we move on to other topics. While traveling, I have met many people, and I have had that same conversation. The three of us drank chai and spoke more.

She sipped her creamy spicy chai and said, "Actually, there are lots of Indians born in Kenya who live in Canada. I guess the last part of the story is the unusual part. By the way, I sometimes use my Spanish name, Rosario." Then she asked Mariana, "Would you like to see my garden?"

She was very proud of her tropical garden behind the café. She had a big sign pointing to it proclaiming "garden" in both Spanish and English. She had fruit trees, spices, vegetables, flowers, and several tables where customers could sit peaceably drinking tea or coffee. We sat at a shady table next to a tapestry of a Hindu deity. The combination of the sweet spiced smell of our chais and the tranquil garden was soothing and conducive for conversation. Besides this, Mala had a very special voice. She spoke softly and serenely like a yoga teacher or a hypnotist. .

"We're looking for an apartment," I told her.

"How much do you want to pay?" she asked.

"About Bs30,000 a night."

"That's about how much I pay for my apartment. I will ask my landlord if he has another one. Unless (pause) I don't know if you are willing to share an apartment, because I have another bedroom that I am not using."

"Sure. Sharing would be fine."

Then, Mariana chimed in, "Do you have a pool?"

"Yes."

This was all Mariana needed to hear. She was ready to commit sight unseen.

As we sat in the serene garden, we talked about traveling. She told me that she had just returned from Italy only four days ago. "In fact, my gondolier is here," she said. Of course, her gondolier would be here. I thought and laughed to myself. Almost right on queue, a tall chiseled Italian man with blue eyes and a perfect three-day beard walked in. Sure enough, he was a gondolier from Venice who was spending two weeks on Isla Margarita.

"Wow. You're the first gondolier, I have ever met." I told him.

He tersely replied, "Yes."

"My name is Luther and this is my daughter Mariana."

"Yes."

"What's your name?"

"Jackamo."

"Jack-a-what? Can I just call you Jack?"

"Jack-a-mo."

"OK. Jackamo. I got it."

Mala, then, suggested we meet at 10:30 the next morning at Café Solar. Then, she told us about this yoga place that only charges Bs3,000 for 90 minutes of yoga. I told her that we would go there in the morning, as well. Then, we left her alone with her gondolier.

Tighten Your Noodles... Relax the Booty

Mariana and I were the only ones who showed up for yoga on that particular morning. The yoga studio was as funky as any other yoga studio with incense and all kinds of Hindu type items hanging on the wall. There was a pyramid fashioned from iron bars at one end of the studio with candles inside. Ana, the forty-something-blonde yoga instructor, was as eccentric as anyone who runs a yoga studio.

Ana flicked her long hair out of her face using her left hand. She seemed to be pointing somewhere with her outstretched right hand. Then, she spoke slowly and softly with me in Spanish telling me that she was from Italy. I asked her if she wanted to speak English. Next, she turned her eye gaze toward light shining in from a triangular window and said slowly in a strong northern Italian accent, "There are other islands in the Caribbean that are better than this one, but this island (dramatic pause) has so much positive energy." She paused and turned her head to Mariana and dreamily said, "Ah. Children..." Again she paused this time looking back to the light coming in from the triangular window. After enough drama was built from the gaze and pause she finished, "...they will save the world."

I wanted to tell her, "Ah children..." Then, pause and look away for dramatic effect and continue, "They'll fuck up the world just like their parents." However, I answered in my best Yoga-ese, "Ah children..." Here I paused, shook my head and smiled for dramatic effect, "They are so pure." Besides, I'm not really the kind of guy who uses profanity in normal conversation. Mama raised me better than that.

During yoga she kept telling us to "tighten your gluteus", but it sounded like she was saying, "tighten your noodles." Besides that, she pronounced "body" as "booty". For example, "Breath in... Arch your back... Tighten your noodles... Now release your back one vertebrae at time. Relax your noodles...Now... relax the whole booty..." All through the yoga session Mariana continued to give me confused looks as if she was asking, "What is this crazy lady telling us to do?"

At the conclusion, I handed Ana Bs6000, but she gave me back Bs3000. She looked at me and stated, "The little girl..." She paused, looked away (Oh, the drama) and continued. "...is free."

Coffee-Girl-#2 & the Informative Journey Across Playa El Agua

Following yoga, we made the long journey to the other end of the beach at Playa El Agua to meet with Mala about the apartment. Along the way, we stopped at three distractions.

The first was a little coffee shop with phone, Internet, and souvenirs. The attractive friendly woman behind the counter smiled at Mariana, and looked at me. "Digame mi amor," she said to me.

"Queremos un café con leche y un chocolate caliente." As she made out drinks, I said, "Mi amor." I was trying to be local, but instead I sounded loco.

"Si," She laughed at what I called her and saluted as she emphasized, "Mi amor."

"¿Cual es su nombre?" I asked her name.

"Libia."

"Mi amor, me nombre es Lucas y mi hija es Mariana."

She then took me by the hand to a computer and showed me a photo of her little girl, also seven. Another single mom. I explained to her that I love the Venezuelan coffee, and I could not drink enough. With that much elucidated, I told her that I would see her again soon, because, as I previously stated, I loved the coffee on Isla Margarita.

We continued walking along the little tree lined promenade alongside the beach for another hundred meters, Mariana spotted a sign that stopped her in her tracks. The sign read, in English, "Swim with Dolphins". Below the words there was a picture of a smiling little girl holding onto swimming dolphin that appeared to be smiling as well. Mariana said, "Daddy! Daddy! Did you see that? Swim with Dolphins! I want to do that!" She was beyond excitement. From that point on, "Swim with the Dolphins" became her "Red Rider BB Gun". (Some readers will get that reference.)

"OK. I'll ask the man how much it will cost, but no promises because we are very, very low on money."

"Yes!" she screamed.

A clean cut man probably in his mid-20's named Renoir, greeted us, and explained that it cost $50 to swim with the dolphins, but Mariana would not be able to swim alone. A few meters from Renoir was a drunken looking man named Roberto. He held a 20-ounce bottle of beer in his left hand. He greeted us with slurred speech and a big smile. Next to him stood a longhaired man selling handmade leather trinkets.

"Mariana, we cannot do it, because it will cost us $100."

Her face sank, and she said to me in a small sad voice, "I understand."

"I love you, Mariana," I said to her as I hugged her.

Next, we came to the phone and Internet place. "Let's call Mommy and Zoë," I told my daughter. I was trying to cheer her up a bit.

Karen was actually home, and after Mariana told her that she wanted to swim with dolphins, she handed me the phone.

"Why can't Mariana swim with dolphins?" Karen angrily asked me.

"We don't have the money."

"Luther, you're selfish. If it was something you wanted to do, you would find the money. Your nothing, but a 'broke-ass'. Anyway, I'll wire you the money, and my daughter will swim with dolphins!"

"OK. OK. So, what's new in the big town?"

"Raymond is in jail."

"What? Raymond? What happened?"

"He was dealing drugs and selling stolen goods from the gas station. His shop is all boarded up with spray paint on the boards reading 'By Order of the Sheriff's Department'."

"Unbelievable! Wow. Our little town will never be the same. I guess that explains why he gave everyone credit and didn't keep track. I guess that also explains why he only charged about $10 to do anything to your car."

"Yeah. I better go."

"OK. Bye."

Click.

☼

As I walked away, my mind raced thinking of poor Raymond in jail, and Raymond's Stop and Shop closed down and boarded up. Mariana kept asking me questions about what Mommy told me. I just told her the truth.

Los Helechos

Yoga, the "Swim with Dolphins", and our phone call made us late for our 10:30 appointment with Mala, and she was not there. So, we had comida at her restaurant while we waited for her to return. Meanwhile, about four middle-aged guys stopped by looking for her. Three of them were English-speaking foreigners and one was an old Margaritaño who learned to speak English at Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia of all places.

By the time she arrived, it became obvious that Mala's beauty, gentle disposition and kind smile were as big a draw to her restaurant as was the food. She spent time talking with each customer, and vendor that visited her, as we ate a delectable meal of vegetable soup and pesto pasta.

☼

Mala's apartment was located in a compound called Los Helechos, which means "The Ferns". Her apartment was just as I imagined a girl born in Kenya of Indian parents who was raised in Canada and lives in South America would have. Indian sarongs and tapestries covered much of the walls and furniture. A carnival mask from Italy was on the wall above the TV. The air in the apartment smelled of jasmine and spices.

Mala went to great lengths to make us feel comfortable. Our bedroom had its own bathroom. She put little packages of soup, shampoo, Q-tips, and so forth in the bathroom and fashioned some toilet paper around the toilet seat to make it look like a hotel. She put children books on the bed for Mariana to read. Besides all of this, she cleared out half her fridge and wrote all the TV channels from her satellite TV on a little pamphlet she made. Mariana wandered around the house saying, "This is great! I love this place! Let's stay here, Daddy!"

Mariana made a big deal about every little detail. "Daddy, did you see the size of this sink? Wow!... Look at this little table! We can read here! We can eat here! Look! Look!..."

Mala's apartment was walking distance from Playa El Agua. After, we moved in with Mala, Playa El Agua became further solidified as the center of our visit to Isla Margarita.

¡Viva tu Vida Baby!

From there we went to Playa El Agua to catch the bus to take us to Porlamar to pick up the money that Karen wired us. Following the bus ride, we loaded in a taxi to find the Western Union place, which was located in a modern building complex called Centro-Commercial. We received the cash at a 15% lower rate than at the Chinese store. As it turned out, we received $200 from Karen. This extra money did not allow us to live extravagantly, but our budget was increased a little. First, we purchased flip-flops for Mariana's teacher and a Shakira CD for Mariana- both for a grand total of the equivalent of $4.00.

For the second time on this journey, I saw that decrepit old man hunched over trying to sell a few tubes of Super Glue. He walked right up to me and held up the small packages of Super Glue silently asking me with pleading eyes to purchase them. I said no, and he moved on. Why do I need Super Glue?

☼

The bus trip back to Playa El Agua was as bizarre and comical as the other bus trips. The bus in front of us had the following message painted in big letters over its back window, "Vive tu vida"(Live your life). I read it and thought, ¡Siiiii! That's exactly what I'm doing. Of course, since the words obstructed the view of his back window, maybe the bus driver and his occupants will not be able to vive their vidas for much longer!

Our bus driver waited until we were on a curve with oncoming traffic to overtake the Vive-Tu-Vida-Bus. Miraculously, we all survived another day to Vive our Vidas. Then a good-looking woman asked the bus driver if he could take her down the road to her home, and he agreed. I don't know how that bus fit on the narrow streets of her tiny pueblo, but he managed to not only fit on the street, but also narrowly miss pedestrians and other cars, and yell catcalls to every pretty woman who walked by. "¡Oye mamacita!"

When the woman stepped off the bus, the driver leaned over, looked directly at her butt and licked his lips. Then he said something to the boy sitting in the front passenger seat, and the boy smiled big. To make it fair to all the passengers, he asked them one-by-one where they lived, and took them to their homes down every little street on that side of the island. Mariana said, "We're never going to make it to Playa El Agua!"

Finally, as the bus bounced down a dirt road in some little neighborhood, I asked the driver, "Vamanos a Playa El Agua, ¿no?" He asked me where I wanted to go in Playa El Agua and then he drove directly to Coffee-Girl-#2. I paid him Bs1300 and stepped out of the Twilight Zone and onto a walkway in front of the little café on the beach where Libia worked. Then, it was coffee, hot chocolate and swimming in the sea.

The cool water felt so wonderful after the hot cramped bus trip. Perfectly shaped waves rolled in like an artist painted them. Mariana and I body surfed wave after wave until the sky turned the sky into a pallet of pastels.

☼

Mala came in the apartment a few hours after we arrived. She said, "I am having a little get together tomorrow. My friends want to meet you. I have been telling them about this man with a half-Micronesian daughter. I have to go to Porlamar now. The restaurant was so busy today, and I need to buy some things." That was the last I saw of her until the next day.

☼

I climbed out of bed at 6:30 AM on our first morning at Mala's place. Mariana was fast asleep. I went out to the hammock strung across the patio with my book to enjoy the serenity of the early morning. A peaceful wind blew from the sea across Playa El Agua and washed my face and rocked the hammock. Mornings like those are among the myriad of reasons I travel. However, my succinct peace was interrupted by, "Daddy! Daddy!"

"Mariana, I'm just outside. Everything is fine."

"Daddy! Daddy! Come here!"

I reluctantly rolled out of the hammock, and shuffled into the bedroom where I found Mariana weeping. She pointed to the space beside her and whined, "But I need you here!"

"Honey, that is crazy. Why are you losing all your confidence? I'm not going to leave you. Nothing is going to harm you." She cried more after I said this. It was obvious that she would not go back to sleep unless I was right beside her. So, I gave in. I read beside her until she fell asleep, and, then, I went into the living room and watched CNN on Mala's TV. There was a bombing in the London Underground and 37 people were killed. Mariana woke up two hours later.

Sexy Trini

Following a continental breakfast at Mala's place, we walked down the hill to Playa El Agua making our customary stop at the cocada shack for one of those wonderful coconut shakes.

After blending and pouring our drinks the cocada lady asked me, "Quieres ron?"

Rum at 9:30 AM? Why not? "Si. Porque no," I responded. Then, she practically emptied the bottle into my cocada. No extra charge. Next time, I'll say, "Un poco de ron."

"OK Mariana, next stop the beach!"

"Yeah!"

As I previously inferred, having nothing to do, but lie in a hammock is a wonderful part of traveling. Another wonderful aspect of traveling is meeting interesting people. I've been globetrotting for 18 years. Besides making me a "broke-ass", as my future ex-wife called me, I have met many cool people. I discovered that if I am open-minded and slightly bold, I could meet interesting people on trips. Also, I like to think of myself as a person who sees inner beauty more than outer beauty. I despise the way the media tells people how they should look and defines beauty. It is a shame the way people are judged by their looks- particularly woman. Having affirmed the aforesaid philosophy on beauty, I must assert that the aforementioned had nothing to do with why I spoke to Trini. As shallow as it must sound (and, indeed, is) I spoke to her simply because she was beautiful in the physical connotation and the generally accepted meaning of the word "sexy".

Trini was standing in front of a lounge chair looking like a fashion model with large sunglasses, and a peach bikini perfectly covering large natural breasts and a slender athletic tanned and toned body. Her body looked like it was carved from stone. Her bikini was classy, yet revealing. Her curved butt cheeks were exposed, but not in the ostentatious way that most Margaritañas, including Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl, proudly display their backsides.

She had a mostly peach colored scarf rapped around her head like some Italian actress. She looked my way and laughed at me as I tried to politely dispense an aggressive man selling sunglasses. I looked her direction. The sun reflected off her wet latte hued skin in a way that looked like she had been polished. I smiled back and thought, I have to speak to this woman.

I walked over to her. "Yo quisiera practicar español. ¿Puedo hablar contigo?" I daringly asked her to speak with me, because I wanted to practice my Spanish.

"¡Claro que si!" she answered with a warm smile. She told me that she was here with her seven-year-old daughter. Then she pointed out into the ocean where her little girl was playing with her little cousins in the waves. She told me that her ex-husband (Yet another single mom) is Italian, and she worked for a Spanish company doing translations in Italy. She was visiting her family on Margarita. She asked me if I was married and I said, "Si." This made conversation much easier and lighter. She no longer viewed me as some guy trying to pick her up from the beach. Conversation was easy and relaxed until Mariana began making up little emergencies to interrupt us. "I have to pee!" "I hurt my leg!" "My foot!" "I'm hungry." Then, Mariana pulled my arm and said, "Daddy, let's go swimming!" So, I asked Trini if we could talk more at a later time.

"¿Podemas hablar mas tarde?"

She agreed.

Mariana and I played in the waves for a full hour. We were out a little deeper than the group of laughing children, but, occasionally, we would catch a glassy wave and ride it together to near the shore. Eventually, I saw gorgeous Trini walk into the water like the girl from Ipanima. She took her daughter by the hand, walked over to us, and introduced Mariana to the whole gang of kids. Her daughter was the youngest, and the oldest was a fifteen-year-old boy. For the next few hours Mariana played with the kids mostly in the water.

Trini and I sat on the beach and talked the whole time. Talk was so easy that I forgot I was speaking only Spanish. In due time, Mariana grew tired of playing with children that she could not speak with. So, she sat down beside me again and started her, "Daddy, can we swim?" Trini gave me her Italian cell phone number, and we made vague plans to meet.

From there, we walked along Playa El Agua with plans to eat under some kind of cover to give my un-sun-blocked face a break from the equatorial sun, I saw the Manchester boys sitting under shade. I greeted them with, "¡Hola perritos!" because they are a couple of old dogs chasing women all the time.

"Hello there, Luther and Mariana. Have you managed a car yet?"

"No we plan to rent one tomorrow."

"Then you'll have a real go about the island."

"Y'all look a little tired."

"Yes. We went to this underground place near Porlamar. Drank too much."

"Are you feeling sick."

"A bit ill, yes. I think a girl put something in Ian's drink," said Robert.

"Really. Wow."

Ian then said, "I was getting along well with this little beauty, and suddenly I became very ill. She kept trying to get me to go home with her after that. I think it was a ploy to rob me. It's a good thing Robert was there."

A man walked up to me and asked me if I wanted to buy a pair of sunglasses for Bs20,000. I only had a Bs10,000 note in my pocket, but I needed a pair of sunglasses.

"9,000?" I asked.

"18,000." He answered.

"9,000?"

"16,000."

"9,000?"

"14,000."

"9,000?"

"12,000?

"9,000?"

"11,000?"

"9,000?"

"10,000."

"Esta bien. Bs10,000." I finally agreed.

I put my new $4.00 sunglasses on, and the man walked away. Ian said to me, "Wow. You got those glasses really cheap. I paid Bs20,000 for these."

"Yeah. But, I think yours are nicer than mine. I'm going to see if I can find a car rental. See y'all later."

☼

Renoir was standing next to the "Swim with Dolphins, Jeep Tours..." sign talking with the guy selling the leather. Roberto sat on the wall separating them from the beach holding a smaller beer than yesterday. I greeted everyone and they all remembered our names from the previous day.

"Renoir, I would like to rent a car for a day, but I don't have a credit card," I said to him in Spanish.

"No problema," he replied and grabbed a calculator. He typed in "80,000", and showed it to me.

"OK. That is a good price. When can I get the car?"

"When do you want it?"

"Mañana(tomorrow)? 9:00?"

"Esta bien. Hasta Mañana.", "OK. See you tomorrow morning."

I was soon to discover that "Margarita Island" was actually "Mañana" island. Nothing happened today. It was always Mañana. Jack Kerouac knew about Mañana. In On the Road, he wrote the following:

Mañana, a lovely word, and one that probably means heaven.

Vegen and Freedom

Mariana and I ended up eating fruit covered in yogurt, honey, and granola at the Solar Café with Mala and Jackamo. We sat in the peaceful garden at the back of the café. Jackamo was a man of few words, but I managed to get him to talk a little about being a gondolier in Venice. He spoke heartrendingly: "It is a job like every other job. After a while everything becomes a job. It is my family. It is my lot. My grandfather was a gondolier and so was my father." Jackamo was not a guy who smiled often.

Mala introduced us to a couple of Kiwis: Vegen and her daughter Freedom. Vegen was a private investigator in New Zealand before she took off four months prior for a one-year world tour with her daughter. Freedom was a nine-year-old, half Maori the same size as Mariana. Freedom whispered to Vegen that she wanted to play with Mariana, and Mariana whispered to me that she wanted to play with Freedom. However, both girls were, initially, too shy to talk to each other.

Jackamo told Mariana, "You should ask Freedom about her necklace. Then, you two will become friends."

Next, Mariana slowly walked over and stated, "Freedom, I like you necklace."

Freedom replied in a strong New Zealand accent, "My dad gave it to me. It's Maori."

In five minutes, they became inseparable.

Mala and Jackamo left us with plans to meet at a Thai restaurant called Tai Chi, which is owned by a couple from Argentina. This was the get together that Mala had previously mentioned.

Vegen had just arrived in Margarita and did not speak Spanish. Subsequently, I took them with Mariana and me to the supermarcado in El Tirano. Once at the supermarcado, I realized that nearly every employee already knew Mariana and me by name. Vegen asked, "How long have you been on this island? Everyone knows you!"

Outside the store, I showed her how the buses, taxis and ruta cortas worked. From there we went to Playa Manzanilla where Mariana and Freedom played and talked about all their travel adventures, books, and friends. Freedom's New Zealand dialect of English sometimes confounded Mariana. For example, Freedom referred to sandals as "gendles" and a bathing suit as a "tog". Mariana probably used a few South Carolina terms that Freedom didn't know, but after a while they were speaking each other's language. Mariana and Freedom were like two peas in a pod. I could not imagine two little children having more in common.

Vegen took off the dress she wore over her bathing suit prompting Freedom to point to her mama's belly and say, "Mummy has stretch marks because of me."

"Thanks bunches Freedom," Vegen sarcastically replied. Freedom just smiled.

"Then, Vegen looked at me and said, "Kids will say anything!"

She took a photo of Mariana and me. Then I took a photo of Freedom and her. She strategically placed Freedom in front of her stomach for the photo.

"Wow. You've been traveling for four months. That's great. I'm so envious, because all we have is one month."

"Yeah. Freedom and I have been saving money for two years for this trip."

"How long do you plan to travel?"

"As long as we can. We will just travel until the money runs out. Yeah. Uh. Maybe two years."

At that point Freedom and Mariana ran in between the two lounge chairs we had rented. Nearly in unison, they asked, "Can we go swimming? Can we? Can we?"

"Sure."

Then, Freedom asked, "Mummy, can I have some money to buy a soda from that restaurant first?" Freedom pointed to the only restaurant in Playa Manzanilla.

"No. You know better than to ask for that!" was Vegen's sharp reply. Next, the two children ran into the sea.

Vegen continued talking with me: "I feel bad sometimes, because for the past two years Freedom and I have sacrificed so much so that we can have enough money for this trip. I have not allowed her to buy a soda or anything. Now, here we are on the trip, and we have to sacrifice in order to make the trip last longer."

"Freedom's father is Maori, uh? That's why she and Mariana look alike. Mariana's mother is a Pacific Islander, as well. Besides that, it seems like they have a lot in common."

"Actually, Freedom's father will have almost nothing to do with her. I have to give him gas money just so he can go see her. He keeps promising that he will buy her something, but he never does. Do you remember that necklace that Freedom loves so much?"

"Yeah."

"I actually had to give him the money to buy that for her. Now she has something from her father, and she cherishes it."

"So, what made you come to Margarita?"

"My boyfriend is from here. I met him in Europe. His name is Garcia. He keeps asking, but I haven't said 'yes' to anything yet!" Then she smiled.

"Is he here now?"

"No he's in Caracas. He was working in Denmark, but he is in Caracas now. Freedom and I were there, but it was too bloody dangerous. Caracas is a shithole. Gunshots and all that."

"You heard gunshots?"

"Crimany! Every frigg'n night. I had to get her out of there. Garcia wanted to come too, but asked me to pay his bloody way here. I said, 'Look, honey, if you want me, you better find a way to get here on your own!'"

"So, he's coming?"

"He plans to start a tourist business here. He has big plans."

Vegen and I talked until Mariana and Freedom came up to the chairs and grabbed my hands and pulled me in the direction of the sea. "Come on Daddy! Swim with us!" Mariana yelled. Of course, I jumped in the water with them, and we swam until it seemed time to go.

Tai Chi

Later that night, we rode with Mala to the beautiful Tai Chi restaurant. We ate outside in a courtyard surrounded by tropical plants, art, fountains, and a little turtle pound. The courtyard was made of stone, heavy dark wood, and plaster. Everything was covered in natural hues. We were the only customers.

The owners were a couple in their 30's. Their young daughter, Clara, took Mariana's hand and led her to the turtle pond surrounded by ornate flora. Despite Mariana being older and neither girl speaking the other's language, they played fairly well together.

We ate, drank, and told stories. Jackamo was a little less sober than normal that evening. I actually think I might have noticed him smile once. After a while it was like I was visiting someone's home rather than a business. Drinks were poured, music played and conversation flowed. The owners, Carina and Carlos, intermittently came to our table and spoke with us. Of course, they learned where everyone was from, and all that. Mariana and little Clara played well together until Clara became sleepy.

The night ended with us standing around the bar trying various drinks with Carlos and Carina. For example, Carlos would ask, "Have you ever tried...?"

"No."

Then, he would pour us a drink, and we would drink it. Finally, we paid the bill. I believe my share was Bs50,000 which was the most I paid for a meal the whole trip, but was cheaper than taking a family to McDonalds back in South Carolina.

For some strange reason, by the time we made it home, my right eye had become swollen like I had just gone a few rounds with Evander Holyfield. I think it was due to all my time in the sun without sunscreen.

"Does your eye normally look like that?" Mala asked me tactfully.

"No. I think it is because I was in the sun too long. Maybe it is from all that radiation or something."

She went into her bathroom and handed me a packet containing some type of cleanser wipe for eyes. "Use this and the swelling will go away," she confidently proclaimed.

I used it and the swelling went away.

Tired

Playa El Agua, 9:00AM: "Where's the car?"

"Wait. Let me call." Renoir took out a cell phone and made some calls. Always-Drunk-Roberto smiled and made a hand gesture signaling me to sat down and wait. Renoir hung up his phone and said, "Ten Minutes. Wait."

"Ten minutes? OK. I'll be back in twenty minutes. Margaritañto time, right?" Renoir smirked at my comment. Mariana and I went to the café and had our coffees and hot chocolates with Libia-the-Coffee-Girl-#2. We stayed for thirty minutes.

"Where's the car?"

"Thirty more minutes."

"OK. We'll go for a swim over there. Just yell at us when it comes."

We swam for a while, but no car.

"¿Mañana?"

"Si. Mañana."

Mañana, a lovely word, and one that probably means heaven.

"Mariana, let's take a break from the sun," I said to her, and we walked back up the hill to Los Helechos.

Mala had thoughtfully rented the "A Series of Unfortunate Events" movie for Mariana. I decided to give our skin a break from the sun, and just stay inside to watch the movie.

Mala was not at the apartment when we arrived, but she had left the following note:

Good morning.

Tea is made- jasman/green tea. Please turn the switch down on the air conditioner. Have a great day!!

Mala

After I read the note, I realized how propitious it was to meet Mala. She was an excellent host who paid attention to details. She took care of us like we were staying in a hotel yet treated us like houseguests. We were in the best of both worlds as far as accommodations.

Following the movie, we both read for a while. Then, we headed down to Playa El Agua to find something to do.

☼

Jackamo sat alone at the Macao Italian bar talking to no one. I sat beside him and ordered a cappuccino that took 15 minutes to make for some reason. Conversation at first seemed a little forced, but eventually he told me, "I am tired."

"Really?"

"Yes. I have been working tired. I have been tired for two years now."

"Is that why you are here?" I asked him.

"Yes. I am here to rest and reenergize myself, but I just called Venice and there is a lot of work now. When I return, I will have to do a lot of work. I would come here in the wintertime, but I have too many things I must do in the winter. I must work all the time. I am just so tired." Jackamo carefully pronounced every word and paused between each word making his speech slow and serious.

The Italian owner of the bar spoke to me in English, as well. He interrupted Jackamo saying, "Mala told me that you are here with your little girl. I'm Francesco and this is my wife Stephania." Francesco spoke with a big smile on his face. Sephania, his wife, looked like an Italian Penelope Cruz. I spoke with him about what we do and where we are from and that same conversation that people generally have when they meet in strange lands. I discovered that Francesco and his beautiful wife lived in Los Helechos as well. From that time on, I would see the two of them riding their Vespa between the Macao and Los Helechos many times. They even wore those velvet Vespa helmets that Italians wear in Italy as they speed through the busy streets of Rome.

Jackamo sat quietly until I was ready to leave. Then, he looked at me with a serious look and said, "I will pay for your cappuccino."

"Gracie," I said in Italian.

"It is no problem. Thank you for the company."

As we left, Mariana said, "OK Daddy. Let's go see Freedom."

"Let's do something else."

"But, you got to spend time with your friend, and I was a good girl even though I was bored. Now, it is my turn."

"You have a point there, baby. Vegen and Freedom's place is close to here. She gave me directions the other day."

From there, we turned down a narrow road and noticed a car rental place. I asked the man inside if we could rent a car without a credit card, and he said, "No."

Opposite the car rental place was the Manchester Boy's apartment. They were both seated outside on a terrace overlooking the road each with one arm around a señorita and the other hand holding some kind of drink. Both men smiled and raised their glasses as we walked along the road and looked up at them. Perritos, I thought as I waved back. Then, they motioned for me to come up. Why not, we're not in a hurry. We stayed for only five minutes. While their newly purchased girlfriends drank their drinks outside of the terrace, they showed me where they hide their money. "You could never be too careful," Robert told me. Then, we left to continue our journey to Vegan and Freedom's apartment.

We turned right down a muddy dirt road with a cow chewing the cud knee deep in a puddle in the middle of the road. Past the cow, at the end of the muddy road, there stood a dumpy looking hotel with peeling paint coming off the outer wall. A broken car and several small cc motorcycles in varying degrees of disrepair littered the alternately muddy and grassy area outside the hotel.

Inside the open gate, a group of tough looking men, sitting on plastic chairs, played cards on a white metal table beside a pool filled with green water and covered in leaves. The men, drinking 20 ounce bottles of beer, turned and looked at Mariana and me as we entered. They looked at us as if they were expecting me to speak. I knew the room number, but I decided to ask anyway. Subsequently, one of the men put down his hand of cards, stood up, kicked through a pile of empty beer bottles, walked over to us, and knocked on Vegen's door for me. Why? Who knows? Maybe he thought I could not knock in Spanish? Maybe he just wanted to help? Maybe he was just plastered and didn't know what the hell he was doing?

Vegen, who was reading one of Mariana's books that we loaned Freedom, greeted us enthusiastically, but Freedom was lying on the bed looking green. Vegen said to us, "Freedom's feeling a bit ill. Something she ate, I think."

"Pobrecita," I said to her in Spanish. Then, in English, "I see you're reading A Series of Unfortunate Events," I said to her.

"Yes. I' m desperate for something to read. I've managed to read everything I have in English. Please, if you have anything get it to me!"

"I'm reading an old Jack Kerouac book called On the Road. I'll be done with it in a few days. I'll pass it on to you, but I also promised Mala the same book. So, when you are finished, please, give it to her."

"Thanks bunches Love. That would be cracken. By the way, I found me a job. It only pays Bs80,000, but I only have to work Monday to Friday from 12 to 4."

"Hey, I bet thirty-something US dollars a week is a lot less than you made back in New Zealand."

"Right. But, it will allow us to stay longer. Have you seen that Internet place with the 'Surf the World' sign out front?"

"Yeah."

"That's the place. So, I can check my e-mail and all that while I work. They have a bar in the back. Mala's friend, Sara, work's there. Have you met her?"

"Not yet, but I keep hearing about her. She's the tattoo artist who painted all of the funky Hindu stuff on the walls at Café Solar, right?"

"That's her."

"I can watch Freedom while you work. Mariana would love that," I told her.

Vegen's face lit up, "That would be great. She wouldn't have to sit there all bored and everything. Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. It would be fun for me too. Can you believe I used to watch another Kiwi kid last year? This is a real coincidence."

Freedom and Mariana played as Vegen and I chatted. I told Vegen about Mandy. Then we walked back up the hill to Mala's apartment.

The Gondolier Stocker

Jackamo was stretched out on the hammock when we arrived. Once he heard us walking up, he quickly stood up, and put out his cigarette, and nervously asked, "Where's Mala?" Then, he slowed down, lit another cigarette, and more calmly asked, "Have you seen Mala?"

"No."

He was visibly disappointed. So, I tried to make small talk, but to no avail. Next, I turned to Mariana, "Do you want to get your hair braided like Freedom's?"

"Yeah!"

I looked up the Spanish word for "braiding", trenzar. As we walked down the hill to return to Playa El Agua, I practiced how I was going to ask where I could find someone to braid Mariana's hair. "Estoy buscando para una trenzadora."

☼

We stopped by Libia's café, and I asked her if she knew a person who braids hair. She told me that no one is braiding hair at this hour. She suggested that we come back mañana, but before we left she said, "Set down and let's talk for a while."

I attempted to have a conversation with her, but Mariana became very cranky and limply hung from me and continuously interrupted. I knew she was sleepy, and we had to leave. I invited Libia to visit me at the apartment after Mariana went to sleep, and I drew a map. Libia told me that she could not come that night, but could another day. I told her that Mariana was cansada, tired, but she suggested she was celosa, jealous.

By the time we made it back to the apartment, Mariana was weeping and repeating, "I miss Mommy!" She settled down when we made plans for the next day. I told her, "Right after we call Mommy and Zoë, we'll get your hair braided. How does that sound, princess?"

Through teary eyes she answered, "That sounds great, but we call Mommy first."

"Honey, I know one of the reasons that you are crying is because you are tired, but I, also, know you wished Mommy and I were back together, right?" She nodded with tears running down her cheek. "When we get back to South Carolina, I am going to try to fix things with Mommy so that everything will be normal again." Following this, her little teary face smiled the sweetest smile one could imagine.

I treated her like she was a baby that night. For example, I brushed her teeth for her. Whenever, Mariana became gloomy, I always treated her like a baby, and that made her feel better. That night was no different. I sat on the bed, and rocked her to sleep while she tightly clung to me. Her grip slowly released as she drifted off to sleep.

I read Jack Kerouac on the hammock as a cool tropical breeze blew up the hill from Playa El Agua. To my surprise, Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2 climbed out of a taxi.

"¡Que surpresa!" I said to her that I was surprised to see her. "¿Como estas guapa?"

"Muy bien, guapo. ¿Y tu?"

"¿Bien. Estas hambre?"

"Si. Un poco." She told me she was a little hungry. So, I cooked her some pasta, and we sat outside drinking wine and eating pasta. Then Mala walked up.

I said to her, "Te presento Mala...mi esposa." (I would like to introduce you to Mala... my wife.)

She looked surprised until Mala quickly said in Spanish, "I'm not his wife!" Then, we all laughed.

For a while the three of us talked; then Mala said, "I have some work to do. I have to get ready for taxes." Then she went inside and began stacking up receipts and using her calculator. Next, a lone figure walked up from the road. It was Jackomo.

I invited him to sit down, and I poured him a glass of wine. He joined us, lit a cigarette, and had that conversation with Libia that strangers have when they first meet.

I slipped inside and said to Mala, "Jackomo's here."

"I know. I'm just too busy for him right now. Maybe I will come out for a little bit."

Jackomo spoke with me in English and spoke with Libia in Spanish, but conversation was strained. He was there to see Mala, and was clearly agitated that she was not coming outside to see him. I asked him, "Where did you learn to speak Spanish?"

He explained to me that the Venetian dialect is very similar to Spanish. "All I had to do was listen and then make it up. I don't even know if I am saying things correctly." As we spoke about the similarities of Italian dialects to Spanish, Libia looked around in boredom. Thus, I switched back to Spanish.

Meanwhile, after an hour of talking, Jackomo finally got up the nerve to go inside and talk with Mala. He stood not far from the door and nervously smoked a cigarette. Mala continued working while paying him only polite attention. Libia sent a text message on her phone. "Que haces?" I asked her what she was doing. She told me that she sent a text message to a taxi because she had to get home. I walked her down to the road, and she was off.

Jackomo came out, and I attempted conversation. Finally, there was a long awkward silence, and I went to bed.

☼

The next morning, Mariana slept for an hour more than I did. So, I worked on my travel journal and read some more Kerouac. The last thing I read before putting the book down was the following:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

I closed the book and thought, Jack you got that right!

Mariana's first words after waking up: "Let's call Mommy and Zoë."

As we made our way out the door that morning, I was taken aback to see Jackomo still lying in the hammock. I thought about going inside and waking up Mala to tell her that her Gondolier-Stocker was lying in her hammock wearing the same clothing he wore the previous night, but I decided simply to lock the door. Besides, I wasn't sure Mala was inside anyway.

Phone Calls and Monkeys

Zoë answered the phone after our second attempt at calling that morning. Mariana and I passed the phone back and forth. Two-year-old Zoë kept say, "What cha doing?"

"I'm talking to you. What are you doing?" Mariana and I always answered.

"I'm talking to you," Zoë always answered. I felt like such an awful daddy leaving little Zoë back in South Carolina. Missing Zoë made me feel pain in my stomach during the pause of Zoë handing the phone to Karen.

I told Karen that Mariana was missing her, and she replied that I should not have taken her. She called me selfish and a bad father and a bad husband. Our conversation was not going well, but Mariana's mood brightened up after talking with her mommy.

Then, I phoned my brother, Charlie, and wished him a happy 35th birthday. He and I would both be thirty-five for the next two weeks.

Mariana and I had made the aforementioned phone calls from our favorite café. Along the way, I had picked up Mariana's friend Freedom and some flowers for Libia to put in her shop. Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2 had brought a monkey for Mariana and Freedom to play with. The two girls were in heaven playing with the friendly baby monkey.

Libia told me that when we return the next day she would have more animals for the kids to play with. In the following days, she brought an iguana, a parrot, and, of course, the monkey made several return visits.

I began to hand Libia the flowers and she smiled. However, before she could grab them, the monkey snatched them out of my hands.

"Libia, gracias por visitarme anoche. Me gusta hablar contigo en español. Quieres ir a mi apartmento este noche para mas conversacion?" In my poor Spanish, I thanked her for the previous night's visit and invited her to come again. I also told her that the monkey can keep the flowers.

"Tal vez." She told me that she might visit me tonight.

As we were getting ready to leave, I put on my sunglasses and they disintegrated. They broke into pieces right on my face. I said to Libia in English, "You think I could pay ten grand for a pair of sunglasses and they wouldn't fall apart!"

I laughed at my own joke. Libia could not speak English. So, she asked me to repeat what I said in Spanish. "¡Mi Amor! Otra vez en español, por favor," she pleaded.

"Claro. Pensaría si yo pague diez mil para estas gafas de sol ¡que lo no rompería!" My stupid joke wasn't funny in Spanish either. Maybe it was funny, but the humor was lost in translation. Yeah, that was it. Then, I remembered the old man selling Super Glue. Wow! If I would have purchased the Super Glue, I could fix these glasses now, I thought. Then, I told Libia about the old man with the Super Glue. She told me that he was an angel that I ignored.

Speaking Spanish with a Foot in my Mouth

From there Freedom, Mariana and I parked on the beach. Mariana said to Freedom, "Let's build sand castles!"

"Yeah!"

As soon as Mariana put her hand into the sand she pulled out an ankle bracelet. It was green with a brown bead. I tied it around her ankle, and she loved it. Then, Freedom dug hole after hole. At first, I did not realize why she was digging. The digging went on for another week.

After about an hour, sexy Trini emerged from the sea like she had been there the whole time. I thought maybe she had turned from mermaid to human for the day. She walked up to us with water dripping all over her goddess-like body. I asked her if she had come from her home under the sea, but I must have said it wrongly. She did not get what I was saying, and told me that she was with her cousin.

Mariana jumped in the middle of us and said, "Daddy! Daddy! I'm thirsty!"

"OK. Thirsty, let's go get something to drink." I purchased a two cocadas for Mariana and Freedom, and three cocadas with rum for Trini, her cousin and me. As I carried the five drinks in my two hands, my nose began to inch. The more I tried to not think about my itching nose, the more I thought about my itching nose. I completely forgot about my itching nose, however, when the sand began to burn my feet. Somehow, I made it back without spilling a drop, but I was so anxious to get rid of the drinks that I nearly tossed them on the girls.

Trini and I spoke only in Spanish, but I had the impression that she might also speak a little English. From time to time, she would tell Mariana or Freedom something in English. On the other hand, I did not want to know if she spoke English, because I liked the idea of practicing Spanish. Besides, I met her under the auspicious circumstance that I wanted to practice speaking Spanish.

I will recount part of our conversation in English, but we spoke it in Spanish.

"Where is your daughter?" I asked her.

"She is with my mother and all her cousins. I decided to come to the beach without children today." Mariana and Freedom were attempting to bury me with sand as we conversed. Trini glanced down through her oversized sunglasses and said, "You have nice legs." I was stunned by this remark, because she had said nothing like that before. All our conversations had been so formal that I wasn't prepared for such a remark. Then I meant to say, "Not as nice as yours." However, I apprehensively screwed up the Spanish and said, "Not as nice as mine." This sounded almost as stupid as my intended remark.. So, I told her in English, "Not as nice as yours." Then, she rolled her eyes, smirked, and lay back in her lounge chair.

I tried to change the subject, but, instead, made another error. "How old are you?" I asked her.

"Don't you know that you never ask a woman her age?" she replied. Then she asked me, "How old are you?"

"35."

Then, for some reason, she said to me, "I like to be with a man for many months even before I kiss him on the lips and even longer before I go to bed with him."

I had no idea why she said this. I replied, "Oh. I'm not after you in that way." For some reason this sounded completely wrong, and she acted offended like I was being arrogant.

Then, the cousin chimed in and said, "I'm 27." This reminded me that we had left her out of the conversation. Besides that, I was saved from saying anything stupid for a few minutes. So, I asked her the normal questions, and she asked me the normal questions. Then, we both knew what we did for a living, where we were born, and little details about family and all that.

As if I had not made enough inappropriate comments, I decided to invite Trini to visit the apartment. I asked her to come visit after Mariana goes to sleep so that we can talk, drink wine, and eat some pasta. I meant to ask the question in a way that sent the message that I was just interested in talking to her and practicing Spanish. Instead, I sounded like some arrogant jerk trying to pick up women on the beach. The Spanish word for such a man is creido.

"I think it is inappropriate for you to ask me out in front of my cousin," she replied.

By this time I was buried from the waist down in sand, and the girls began piling on more sand. The sand had become a tangible metaphor for my conversation. It seemed the deeper they buried me with sand the deeper I buried myself with bullshit. Then Freedom said to Mariana, "Don't forget to cover his tits."

"What did you say?" I asked her, because my ears could not believe a nine-year-old girl just used the word "tits".

"I told Mariana to cover your tits."

"Don't say 'tits', because that's a bad word."

"No. It's not. It must only be a bad word in America."

Trini asked me in Spanish what Freedom had said. I told her the Spanish translation "tetas". For some strange reason I needed to make sure she understood me. So, I made the mistake of pointing to Trini's perfectly shaped breasts when I said "tetas". What the hell was I thinking? To make matters even worse, I miss judged the distance of my pointed finger from Trini's tetas and lightly touched one of them. Again, Trini rolled her eyes.

I needed to leave before I said anything else more imprudent or touched her inappropriately again. I made my exit by taking Freedom and Mariana to the Margarita Café for blended fruit drinks. Along the way I realized that I had invited two women, Trini and Libia, to come see me the same night. This may sound bizarre, but, in truth, I only wanted conversation with these women. I was traveling with my seven-year-old daughter, and sharing an apartment. Logistically, it would have been nearly impossible for these visits to turn sexual. There was no place in the apartment for this kind of activity to transpire, and I would never leave my daughter alone. Anyway, what were the chances of Trini coming to see me after our last meeting?

Garth

I took Freedom and Mariana back to Los Helechos, and we jumped into the pool. A skinny man in his forties introduced himself to me as Garth. Garth was a South African who rented an apartment above the pool. His wooden apartment had a fantastic view and could be described as cozy. He shared the apartment with a tall thin attractive Colombiana named Andres. Garth was a veteran of the fighting in Angola. He looked and talked just like Michael Cane.

Andres spoke to me in Spanish with a deep voice. When Garth and I spoke to each other in English, she took part in the conversation, obviously understanding everything, but always answered in slow understandable Spanish.

Garth took Freedom, Mariana and I up to his apartment. All three of us were dripping wet, but he didn't mind. He seemed happy to have the company. He told me that he planned to buy his apartment when he gets the $12,000 together that it will cost him to buy it.

Garth pointed to a motorcycle and said, "It doesn't run. I can't get the part on this island. Even if I could get it, I probably couldn't afford it."

Soon after, Mariana and Freedom jumped into the pool, and I sat with my feet in the water talking with Garth. As it turned out, since moving to Venezuela, he has tried and failed at many economic endeavors. Besides that, he told me stories of getting ripped off in major exchanges of currency that made me feel not so bad about losing $100. Garth was at the end of a long string of defeats.

"What do you do on this island?" I asked Garth.

"Nothing right now."

This Isn't a Date or Anything

Later that night, I told Mariana a story, and rubbed her back until she fell asleep. Out on the hammock, I finished reading On The Road. Mala had a copy of Paulo Coelho book Once Minutos. Mala had told me that was the first book that she had ever read in Spanish. So, I made an attempt. At first it was very difficult, but eventually, I became lost in Coelho's beautifully descriptive and erotic story.

☼

From the darkness I saw two people walking up the apartment. Libia and Trini? No. Once illuminated by the porch light, I could see that it was Garth and Andres. Earlier, I had purchased a bottle of Argentinean wine. Thus, in short order, we were drinking three glasses and telling stories. Andres looked at what I was reading and told me that she loved Once Minutos, and, besides Gabriel Marquez, Coelho was her favorite author.

Conversation continued in the same fashion as before with Garth: I spoke English and Andres spoke Spanish. Just as before, Andres understood every nuisance of the conversation in English, but chose to speak only in Spanish. Both Garth and I understood her Spanish.

Andres told me, in her deep raspy voice, that she loves children and has mostly worked as a nanny, but has no children of her own. Garth told me that he may or may not stay on the island. The couple seemed to have an understanding that their relationship was a temporary one. We killed the porch light and lit candles on the outside table.

At that moment, I could make out a lone female walking up to the apartment in the darkness. Again, was she Trini or Libia? Once the candles cast a light on her, I could see that it was Libia dressed to kill in a red dress.

This prompted Garth and Andres to swiftly stand up in order to depart. "You don't need to leave so soon. This isn't a date or anything like that." As soon as I said that, I was thinking, I hope Libia didn't understand that! I mean she is all dressed up.

I immediately knew that Libia did not understand what I said, because she asked Andres who promptly translated it to her. Libia smiled a little smile and looked at me disapprovingly.

As soon as we were alone, I poured her a glass of wine and told her, "¡Ay! ¡Estas buena!", "Wow. You look hot."

She replied in Spanish, "Thank you, mi amor, but I'm not dressed up for you. This isn't a date or anything. I have a party to go to for my cousin. I just stopped by to see you along the way." She sarcastically emphasized "This isn't a date or anything."

"How long can you stay?"

"Only 30 minutes."

We talked for thirty minutes. I had a difficult time understanding what she said, and she had a difficult time understanding what I said. Everything I said I said wrongly and often offended her. Nonetheless, we talked for thirty minutes. As she climbed into her taxi and drove away, I thought, Wow. Today was not my day to talk with women.

Garcia

At noon the next day, Mariana and I made our daily stop at the Internet place to pick up Freedom. Vegen said through her smile, "Garcia is here. He's finding us a place right now. He told us that he has connections, and he can find us a nice house really cheap."

"Cool. I'm looking forward to meeting him," I answered.

"You will like him..."

As we chatted, Mariana and Freedom hugged each other, and excitedly spoke to each other. I had no idea what they were saying, but each girl spoke enthusiastically to each other.

From there we walked toward my morning café con leche with Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2. Along the way, I spotted Renoir standing next to his "Swim with Dolphin et. el." sign. Leatherman and Always-Drunk-Roberto were in their normal spots both holding bottles of Polar. Standing in the middle of them was a diminutive fellow with tattoos, a shaved head, a beer, and a big smile.

Freedom smiled, pointed and said, "There's Garcia!"

Garcia spoke to me with nearly unaccented English. He told me that he had been living in Denmark for three years, and had just divorced a Danish girl.

"I'm going for a coffee. ¿Quieres café conmigo?" I asked him in Spanglish.

"Yes," he answered me in English.

Before I left, I jokingly asked Renoir, "¿Mañana?"

His response was as always: "Si. Mañana."

Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2 greeted Garcia with a kiss on the cheek and an "I haven't seen you in a long time" in Spanish. They obviously knew each other well. On a small island like Margarita, I imagine that everyone knows everyone. Garcia and I spoke about Europe. Somehow we got on the subject of Switzerland. Then, a young woman sitting at one of the computers in the café interrupted in English and said, "I'm from Switzerland." Garcia not only spoke to the woman in German, but in Swiss German. I could not believe what my ears were hearing as he seemingly fluently conversed.

"You speak Swiss German?" I asked.

"Sure. I also speak Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and others."

"Italian?"

"Yes."

"Portuguese?"

"Sure."

"Japanese?

"No."

"Ha! So, Mr. Smarty Pants, you don't speak Japanese!" Garcia actually laughed at my attempt at humor. Finally, someone in this country got my silly jokes!

Libia leaned against the counter and listened to the conversation. Then we switched to Spanish so that she could be in the conversation. She told us that her ex-husband was from Spain, and that she would like to go there someday. Finally, Mariana and Freedom had enough chocolate milk, and I needed to make my exodus.

I invited Garcia to join Freedom, Mariana and I at the beach, but he declined saying, "No. I need to find us a place to live."

Freedom ended up spending the night at Los Helechos with Mariana and me. Mala loaned me a yoga mat, and I slept on the floor. The next morning, I dropped Freedom off with Vegen. "I'm taking Mariana to this place called Diverland so that she can swim with Dolphins," I told Vegen. With that we were on our way.

Diverland

Depending on one's point of view, getting to Diverland turned out to be either a two-day odyssey or two day ordeal. Our journey to Diverland did, in fact, have some things in common with Homer's Odyssey. For examples, there were multiple types of transportation, the trip took longer than it should have and there were sea monsters. On the other hand, after three buses and two taxis and an entire day of travel, I was beginning to think Diverland must be located near Neverland. The following section of this story tells the tell of our odyssey to the magical land of Diverland.

Early in the morning, Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2 took a map out of a desk and used a black marker to trace the directions to Diverland on it. Besides that, I called Diverland from Big Chicken to tell them we were coming. They told me that Mariana could swim with dolphins for $50.

The taxi dropped us off onto a giant empty parking lot. Diverland was huge, but seemed to be deserted. A large red metal gate was closed, but unlocked. So, I pushed it open and followed the signs with dolphins and arrows on them.

At first I felt like Clark Griswold, in the 1983 movie Vacation, after he finally made it to Wally World only to find it deserted. However, we saw a man standing outside the "Swim with Dolphins" orientation building. He said that they were open, and that many people were coming. Then he gave us some really bad news. He said that Mariana was too young to swim with dolphins. Mariana could not understand the Spanish, but she could tell how the conversation was going. I looked at her and she looked nervous. I felt so badly for her. I can see her little heart breaking.

"Honey, this man is saying that you are too young to swim with the dolphins," I said to her.

Her little face looked so disappointed. "Daddy, can we just go swimming now?" She sounded defeated.

"You know what? When we get to Florida, we'll look for a place to swim with dolphins."

Another taxi and another bus and we were back at Playa El Agua just as the afternoon began to cool following sunset.

I made it to Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2's café just before it closed. She asked about Diverland and I told her the story. She looked at Mariana and said, "Pobrecita."

"Can we go swimming now?" Mariana asked me.

"Let's go."

From there we walked past the "Swim with Dolphins" sign posted next to Renoir and Always-Drunk-Roberto. Renoir stopped me and asked if we wanted to go to Angel Falls or swim with the dolphins. I told him the day's story and he said, "Espera." Then he called his uncle on his cell phone. They spoke in rapid fire Spanish, but I could hear him telling his uncle my story. He hung up the phone and told me that it would be no problem for my daughter to swim with dolphins at Diverland in the morning. He told me to meet him there at 9:00 AM- Mañana.

I explained this to Mariana and she was ecstatic. I also explained to her about Mañana, and told her not to get her hopes up too high. However, it was too late for that. I had no way to lower her expectations. She was ecstatic at the possibility of swimming with dolphins. Then, we spent the rest of the evening in the water.

Thus, a second attempt to swim with the dolphins and a second journey to Diverland was in the works. In the words of Odysseus:

Enough: In misery can words avail? And what so tedious as a twice-told story.

The next morning, before we left for our 9:00 AM appointment, I made what I called "breakfast bites". I cut up toast into small squares and topped each square with a "Nutella" type spread called "Torres" and a slice of banana. Mala helped Mariana and I polish them off. Of course, we made our customary stop to drink a cocada on the way.

☼

We arrived thirty minutes late (early on Isla Margarita) to find Renoir, but no van to take us to Diverland.

I asked Renior, "¿Donde esta el carro?" Then he picked up his phone and obviously woke who ever was supposed to give us a ride. Maybe it was Always-Drunk-Roberto? I looked around, and ADR was conspicuously absent from the scene. I had kind of expected to find him passed out nearby, but he was nowhere to be found. Yes. It must be him that was supposed to give us a ride, I thought. He must have been up all night drinking and now he cannot get out of bed.

Renoir then said, "15 minutos mas, señor." Which means 30 minutes in Venezualano time, or all day long in Magaritaño time.

I knew I had time for a coffee, but I asked anyway, "¿Tengo tiempo para un café?" Always-Drunk-Roberto came out of nowhere, put his hand on my shoulder, and said with his usual slurred speech something in Spanish that sounded like, "Of course you can my friend!" And, of course, we went to visit my friend Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2.

I never drank much coffee back in South Carolina, but in Venezuela I was becoming a coffee addict. The coffee tasted so full of flavor, but yet smooth and easy to drink. I could not get enough. I was so addicted to it that I was beginning to wonder if the coffee girls made trips to Colombia to get the cocaine they added to their coffee.

Libia, wearing a tube top and sporty pants, affectionately greeted us. When I asked for coffee, she replied, "No, mi amor." I guess the machine was not ready. I loved the way everyone on this island referred to each other as "mi amor". When the Taxi was full, the driver slowed and said to the woman waving on the side of the road, "No, mi amor." When I asked if I could have cheese and beans in my empanada, Nancy-The-Empanada-Lady replied, "Si, mi amor."

Coffee-Girl-#2 asked us what our plans were for the day. I told her that Mariana and I were about to make our second attempt to swim with dolphins. Then, somehow, the coffee machine resurrected itself from the dead.

I asked for two coffees and chocolate milk. Libia poured a white powder in my coffee and I asked, "What is that?" She responded that it was sugar. Sure, I sarcastically thought. I purchased the second coffee for Renoir, but ended up drinking it while we chatted. Then I ordered two more, and checked my e-mail and called Zoë. Karen answered and was actually a little bit kind at first.

However, when I told her of our troubles getting to Diverland, her tone changed, and she told me that Mariana "better" swim with the dolphins.

I hung up the phone, and Libia showed Mariana little ceramic people. Then, she turned to me and asked if I was speaking to my ex-esposa(ex-wife). I responded that I was speaking to my "future" ex-exposa, and we both laughed.

Meanwhile, I delivered one cup of coffee to Renoir. The second cup of coffee was for the nonexistent driver, but Always-Drunk-Roberto looked like he could use a cup of coffee. So, I gave it to him.

Oscar, the owner of the travel agency and uncle of Renoir, picked Mariana and I up in a big old blue van. His five-year-old daughter, Barbara, and his seven year-old daughter, Lucia, were giggling in the back of the van. Neither Oscar nor his daughters spoke English. As we climbed into the van, Oscar said something to Renoir that I did not understand, but Renoir's reply pleasantly surprised me. He said to him in Spanish, "Don't worry. Lucas speaks Spanish." That was the first time I ever heard a Spanish speaker say to another Spanish speaker that I spoke Spanish. I thought, Wow. Now I am on my way to really learning Spanish!

Oscar and I had a wonderfully smooth conversation for the entire trip to Diverland. For the second time on the trip, I was having a conversation in Spanish and I was so relaxed that I forgot I was speaking Spanish. We spoke about raising girls, politics, and macro and micro-economics. He told me that he did not like Chavez. He described him as a socialista and compared him with Fujimora and Castro. He said that the really poor people like him because of handouts.

Mariana and the two little girls became instant friends. They played Hide-n-Seek in the back of the van and laughed frenziedly.

For the second time in two days we were turned away from Diverland. A young woman in a bikini and sarong told us that Mariana was too young. When I told this to Mariana, she was not too sad because she was so busy playing with the girls. Oscar asked me if I wanted to go to Sambil. "Como no," I said, why not. I guess there was no way to avoid going to Sambil.

Sambil was just what I thought it would be, a giant modern mall shaped like a butterfly. Margaritaños are so proud of Sambil, however. Oscar took us to the food court and purchased ice cream for the kids. Then he left me in charge of the children while he made a phone call. He came back and told me that he called the president of Diverland and Mariana will be able to swim with the dolphins, but not until after 2 hours. Then, Mariana told me that she was hungry. I did not tell Mariana the good news yet, because she had already been disappointed two times.

The food court looked like any food court in any mall in America. The closest fast food restaurant to us was a place called Margarita Burger. The item pictured on the top of the menu was the Margarita burger itself. The cost for two cheeseburgers and fries from Margarita Burger was Bs26000. Besides the elegant Thai restaurant, that was the most we paid for a meal. Was it worth it? In any case, during the course of my entire 35 years, I had never tasted a worse hamburger. A little piece of burnt leather between a stiff bun and two pieces of cheese was what constituted a Margarita Burger. Mariana, however, did not seem to mind. Oscar asked me how my burger was, and I replied, "Cuerdo quemada.(Burned leather)" He laughed.

Next, Oscar drove us around Pampatar to show us the little harbor and the fort. Following this, he took us back to another shopping area where we played pool while the kids spent the Bs20,000 in tokens that he gave them to play air hockey and video games. When the tokens were gone, they played in the giant play area with plastic tunnels and places to climb. I thought about how long it takes Jennie-the-Coffee-Girl to earn Bs20,000, I felt bad that Oscar gave that many tokens to the kids. I offered to pay, but he flatly refused saying that it was his pleasure to put smiles on the children's faces.

Three or four hours later, Oscar dropped us back at Diverland. When Mariana finally figured out that she was about to swim with dolphins, she smiled a colossal smile that would not leave her face for some time.

Mariana and I were given wristbands and ushered into a room to watch a film about swimming with dolphins. The film was in Spanish. There were about ten other people in the room watching the movie. The film explained a few technical biological points concerning dolphin navigation and social hierarchy in the wild, but, for the most part, the film was just dolphins jumping to dramatic and emotional music unfortunately sang by Michael Jackson. In one emotional scene we watched a sick elderly man being lowered into the water to, apparently, be healed by the "magical" power of the dolphins.

After the thirty-minute film, we were ushered outside and then, surprisingly, back inside again.

"¿Por que?" I asked why we had to go back. The man explained to me that we were going to watch the film in English. I told him that we had just watched the film in Spanish, and it was not necessary. "It is required," he flatly told me.

Thus, we watched the same film this time in English, and with a group of Americans. One woman watching the film actually cried. After 30 minutes, we were escorted out again as a group of Germans were being escorted in to watch the same film, I assume, in German.

I began to follow the Germans back in, but the same guy that required us to watch the film in English stopped me and told me to wait at a picnic table. I told him, "¿Somos requeridos ver el pelicula en alemán otro vez, ¿no?" I was trying to be funny asking him if we were required to watch the film in German, but he did not get my joke, and simply told me, "No." Again, my humor was lost in translation. Inside, however, I was laughing hysterically at my own joke.

While we waited a seal came walking over to us out of nowhere. A seal?!?!? There we were sitting at a table, and a seal just walked across the pavement and right up to Mariana. Next, came a man in a wet suit that asked us if we wanted to pay $5 (US dollars) for the honor of taking a photo with a seal. I declined, but many others lined up and snapped away.

Out came the Germans, and the same thing happened again with the photogenic seal. Then, the man in the wet suit walked away with a fist full of fivers, and all the seal got was a few fish.

From there, we followed a path to the pool, which contained two dolphins and four trainers. I had to stand behind a barrier with other family members of the participants. The barrier was close enough to view the action, but too far to take good photos of the "momentous" events that were about to unfold. There was a photographer taking well-choreographed photos of all the participants. These photos would later be for sale.

Mariana hooked up with a newly wed American couple celebrating their honeymoon. The couple looked miserably sunburned. Everyone in the water donned life jackets, and bobbed up and down with their heads always above water. Little Mariana looked so brave out there.

I stood on a chair to get a better view, and, like the American woman watching the emotional video, I actually started to get a little choked up. I was not feeling emotional because I think there is anything inherently magical about swimming with dolphins. Sure. Dolphins are intelligent animals, but so are dogs. I wouldn't pay $50 to swim with dogs. No. The cause of the lump that developed in my throat was my little girl. She looked so courageous out there in the water, and I knew she was happy. We had to burn two days, and sat through two poorly produced films for her to swim with dolphins for thirty minutes, but she deserved it. At the same time, I felt terrible that Zoë was not able to swim with these dolphins due to the deal I made with Karen. Furthermore, spending time with my oldest daughter was as wonderful as it was terrible to be away from my youngest daughter. I will never make such a deal again, because both of my children deserve to see the world.

The trainers took Mariana and the other participants through a well choreographed experience. The dolphins leaped over her, and she rode them twice. Finally, she came out of the water telling me that swimming with dolphins was her favorite part of the trip.

Mariana and I were the last to leave Diverland due to the fact that we were chatting with the workers and a couple from Spain. By the time we made it to the empty parking lot, all the taxis had left with their occupants. So, we had to walk from Diverland to the nearby shopping center and catch a taxi to Porlamar.

Once in Porlamar, we walked around the pedestrian shopping area and ate at every food stand we could find on our way to the spot beyond the Plaza Bolivar where the buses to Playa El Agua were parked.

Outside the bus, a man selling juice drinks told me that Porlamar used to be called Puerto del Mar, but Margaritaños always shortened words and it became Porlamar.

Then, off in the distance, I once again saw the frail old man who had twice tried to sell me Super Glue. I grabbed Mariana's hand and made chase. Actually, due to his lameness, it wasn't much of a chase, but we still had to make our way through the crowd without losing him. I'm sure I looked like a crazy fool chasing a crippled old man while holding the hands of a seven-year-old. The feeble old man looked back over his shoulders and picked up the pace. He wasn't running by any means, but he went from the speed of a snail to about the speed of a turtle. Why was he "running" from me? All I wanted to do was to buy some Super Glue and have a nice conversation. I wanted to hear his story and tell them that I was sorry for ignoring him twice.

Finally, I caught him and told him that I would like to buy some Super Glue. "Desculpame señor, quiero Super Glue, por favor."

"No Tengo," he told me that he didn't have anymore. He walked away without saying another word.

Dead Surfers

The next day I told Mariana, "Let's do nothing all day except swim and eat. We've spent the last two days in buses and taxis, and I feel like relaxing."

"Yeah! Yeah!" she said with a smile.

We spent a blissful morning at Playa El Agua doing yoga with the Italian woman, eating empanadas, drinking cocadas, and riding waves. Then, at noon, we went to the Internet place where Vegen worked to retrieve Freedom.

Freedom and Mariana, both wearing big floppy hats, hugged each other immediately. Vegen and I talked a bit, and Mariana asked if Freedom could spend the night. Vegen looked at me, and I nodded. "Sure. Why not?" Then both girls hugged and cheered.

From there we did our Playa El Agua routine. We walked toward my café con leche with Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2. Along the way, I spotted Renoir standing next to his "Swim with Dolphin" sign. Leatherman and Always-Drunk-Roberto were in their normal spots both holding beers. Standing in the middle of them was Garcia. He was obviously intensely searching for an apartment Margaritaño style. He'll find one Mañana.

I looked at Renoir standing there.

"¿Mañana?"

"Si. Mañana."

Mañana, a lovely word, and one that probably means heaven.

"Vegen just don't understand the way things are done here on Margarita. She thinks that I could just find us a nice place in one day. But that's not the way it works around here," Garcia said after all of us had our normal conversation. I just nodded.

I just nodded, but I had no idea what he meant. Did he mean the only way to find an apartment on Margarita was to drink beer all day?

Mañana, a lovely word, and one that probably means heaven.

The café and nearly everything else was closed, and the sky was dark. After swimming for a while, we took a ruta corta to the grocery store and found it closed, as well. Meanwhile, at Los Helechos, we found Mala.

"Mala, do you want to eat dinner with us? I'm cooking."

"Sure, but do you know we have a hurricane coming?"

"No."

"Yes. I had to get the restaurant ready. All my surfer friends are excited. Do you surf?"

"Yeah. Are there going to be big waves tomorrow?"

"My surfer friend, Sonia, tells me that there will be three to six meter waves tomorrow. You'll see her down there. She is a two meter tall black German woman."

Six meters, that's 20 feet! I thought. "I would love to surf tomorrow, if I can work out the logistics with the kids."

"Maybe you can work something out with Sonia. She has kids too. You could watch her kids while she surfs and she could watch your kids while you surf."

"Sounds like a plan, Stan. I'll just look for a black German woman that stands more than six feet!"

☼

We ate a dinner of pasta and chicken, and Mala shared some banana wine with me. I let Mariana taste it and she said, "This tastes like dessert wine." Then she told Mala about the time that I let her taste wine in Italy and how she loved dessert wine the best.

"Mala, you eat like a bird," I told her.

"Do you know that birds can eat five times their weight?" she smartly replied.

"OK, then, you eat like an animal that doesn't eat five times her own weight."

☼

Mariana and Freedom fell asleep, and the night became still and quiet. The quiet before the storm. I was on my back starring at the ceiling thinking of twenty-foot waves. I longed to be on a long board traveling down the face of a giant wave. I feel asleep without my usual routine of writing in my travel journal and reading a book. During that moment sandwiched between asleep and awake, I found myself back in the ocean off the coast of South Carolina on my back lying on my long board looking at the clouds again. Once more, I saw shapes in the clouds. The imaginary swells rocked me to sleep, and I had a very strange dream.

In my dream I was in my family's boarding house in Tennessee, but my grandmother, who passed away in 1997, was there with my mom and step-father(both, by the way, were still very much still alive). This was not the strange part. In my dream, I leaned against a giant red wood surfboard, and I asked Mama to watch Mariana while I went surfing. Surfing in Tennessee! This dream became even weirder.

Then, I stepped out the back door and onto what looked like Waimea Bay on the North Shore. Glorious sunshine heated the sand beneath my feet, and perfect waves... perfect glassy twenty-foot waves serendipitously breaking left rolled unto the shore. The beach and the water were empty except for a Hawaiian man standing to my right.

"Eddie Aikau is that you?" I asked him.

"Yeah brah," he answered me in Hawaiian pidgin. Then, he headed off into the waves. A bang woke me up. Apparently, something blew into the wall of the apartment. Wow. I'm dreaming about dead surfers in a hurricane! This can't be a good sign!

Outside the apartment the hurricane was just getting started. Rain, propelled by wind, continuously dinged the windows and the wood making knocking noises. I stepped outside briefly to feel the wind and water, and then went back into the safety of the apartment.

Eddie Aikau was a Hawaiian big wave surfer who was famous first as a lifeguard who saved many lives and then as a surfer who would surf waves that no one else was brave enough to surf. In fact, the surfing expression "Eddie would go" was based on him. In 1978, the traditional Hawaiian sailing canoe that he was in capsized. Eddie and the crew hung onto the upside down boat for hours. Finally, Eddie told the crew that he was going to paddle his long board back to shore- 12 miles away- and get help. He paddled off into the open sea and was never seen again.

I went back to sleep, and dreamt of waves all night. I actually woke up seasick. I slept so soundly that I missed the rest of the hurricane. The sun shined brightly through a clear blue sky in the morning. The storm had come and gone.

☼

Bright and early, Mariana, Freedom and I caught a ruta corta to Playa Parguito, the surfing beach. As we entered the old car, I had no idea of the adventure that was about to unfold The driver appeared intoxicated. He might have been out drinking the night before at a hurricane party. The car looked like a crushed beer can with wheels. I sat in the passenger seat with both Mariana and Freedom between the driver and me. Neither girl would sit in the back, because a smelly dirty looking man was asleep back there.

The door would not properly close. Consequently, I had to keep my right arm out the broken window and hold the door closed. Each time the road curved left, I felt like I was going to be thrown from the vehicle. We also dodged our fair share of downed trees and limbs. The road was littered with plenty of downed trees and limbs and other debris from the previous night's hurricane. Somehow, I managed to keep from flying out of the car. Besides all of this, the driver talked incessantly about Jesus. Occasionally, he took his bloodshot eyes off the road, and praised the Lord with his alcohol-tainted breath. "¡Hay vida in Jesus!" I, on the other hand, was not able to talk with the driver about Jesus due to the fact that I spent the whole ride talking to Jesus.

Mercifully and miraculously, we made it to the Playa Parguito to find a beach full of surfers and boogie boarders. As I climbed out of the car, I understood more of what I read from Kerouac's On the Road:

All that old road of the past unreeling dizzily as if the cup of life had been overturned and everything gone mad. My eyes ached in nightmare day...

Once my feet were safely on the sand, I thanked the Lord to still be among the living. Then, I asked around to rent a board, and we were led to a man asleep on a six-foot board. He told me that he would rent it to me for Bs6000. I told him that I was looking for a longer board, and he pointed to the other end of the beach.

I found a man and a woman in a shack on the beach full of boards of all sizes. I paid Bs10,000 for a longer board with three fins and a big colorful beach umbrella. I put Mariana and Freedom under the umbrella, and paddled the board out to the same waves that were in my dream.

Dreaming about a dead surfer should have been enough of a sign not to surf that day, because, after that day of surfing, I was lucky to be alive. Besides that, I was not a big wave surfer. I was used to surfing three-foot waves in Myrtle Beach. Furthermore, I rode those three-foot waves in Myrtle Beach with difficulty. Why in the hell did I think I could surf the monsters that were rolling into Playa Parguito that day?

The first wave rose up behind me like a sea monster getting ready to eat me. My board and I were sucked up the face of the wave until I shifted my weight forward. Then, I popped up and felt like I was free falling down the side of a building. I was unable to remain upright and make my bottom turn as I made it to the base of the wave, and the wave fell on my aslant body causing my back to bend in the wrong direction.

Eventually, I emerged from the deep a leash-length away from my board and, strangely enough, I could not see out my right eye properly. I closed my left eye and saw only a big blue blob. With my left eye, I checked the kids and they were building sand castles.

I nearly killed a sponger on the next suitable wave. He skillfully buzzed right beneath me as I unskillfully hurled in his direction. We missed each other making a giant "X" in the water. Then, I crashed "agony of defeat" style falling in every direction conceivable. My board flew in the air and my leash somehow wrapped around my neck. This time, I emerged from the water with a nosebleed.

I paddled back out and sat on my board waiting. Ifelt like the ride of my life was on the next wave. I looked behind me, and there it was. I paddled and caught the wave. Just before I snapped up I became frightened as I looked down and realized how far down was the drop was about to be, but I snapped up and rode down the face. I quickly went from surfing in 2005 to World Wide Wrestling in 1985. Instead of riding down the line and ducking into the tube, the wave turned into the tag-team of Superfly Jimmy Snuka and Andre the Giant. I was gorilla-pressed, and power-bombed.

As I limped out of the water, I could taste the blood dripping into my mouth from my nose. Besides that, my ears were ringing, my back was aching, and all I could see from my right eye was that big blue spot. Blood was in the right ear, but I think it was from my nose.

"Kiddies, I have an announcement to make," I said.

Mariana and Freedom looked up from their sandy construction projects and said, "Yeah."

"I am no big wave surfer. Give me three-foot South Carolina waves any day!" After those three waves, I was done. "Let's go get some snacks."

I ordered three fruit drinks at the restaurant at the other end of Playa Parguito. The restaurant was full of surfers telling stories in Spanish, German, Italian and English. All had euphoric smiles on their tanned faces. Others worked out on the chin up bar between the restaurant and the tavern. The big waves had created a festive atmosphere where conversation and drinks flowed easily and early. A little girl came up to our table and introduced herself to Mariana and Freedom. "My name is Yael," she said.

She was nine years old and the daughter of Miami-Cuban parents. Her Cuban mother came looking for her, and ended up sitting with us. She had black hair with blonde streaks, and wore a green bikini. We had that same conversation where we found out where we were born and all that stuff. She, of course, was a single mom. I was beginning to think that Isla Margarita must have been having a "Single Mama's Convention". Actually, up in Chicago the all female Lollapalooza Music Festival was in full swing. Maybe, Margarita Island was having Mama-palooza. Eventually the Cuban mom left with her daughter. She must have had to go to a meeting of the single moms.

Next, we went to the beach where I met a slender black German woman standing more than six feet. Her hair was in a natural afro and her skin was the color of dark chocolate. I could not believe how many beautiful women were on this island. As soon as I saw her standing on the beach holding her surfboard, I knew that she was the woman that Mala told me about.

I had studied German for five years back in college, but I couldn't speak it worth a Scheiße. That didn't stop me from saying in poor German, "Sonia! Ich bin Luther und dies ist meine Tochter Mariana und sie kleiner Freund, Freedom." So, I introduced Mariana, Freedom and myself to her in German. She did not appear the least bit impressed, and asked me in harsh English, "What do you want from me? How do you know me?"

"We're staying with Mala. Sorry to disturb you. She told me that you would be here with your children."

Her mood suddenly softened, and she flashed a grin. Then, she introduced her two children. I purchased drinks for us, and we sat on the beach in front of the tavern, and had that same conversation where we found out where we were born and all that stuff.

"Are you a model?" I eventually asked her. The question was not meant as some poor attempt at flirting, because she looked like the typical model.

"Not anymore. I used to be. That is how I met my husband in Berlin. He is a filmmaker." She was not a single mom. I could hardly believe it.

"So, you're a former model married to German filmmaker. I meet your type everyday." I was trying to be funny, but she did not see the humor in my statement. "Do you come here often?" I asked.

"My sister and I own a house here."

"Is your husband here?"

"No, he is too busy. Is your wife here?" she asked me.

"No, she is too busy. Besides, we are separated."

"The waves were great today. Do you surf?"

"Yes. I surf. Wow! Amazing day. Perfect glassy waves. How high do you think they were? Three? Four? Five meters?" I failed to mention how poorly I surf.

"They were not that big," she plainly stated.

A lime slice was wedged on the side of my glass. I took the lime and tried to squeeze it into the drink. However, the juice sprayed straight into my eye and burned. We sat just 10 feet from the restrooms, which were actually stalls covered with thin bamboo "doors". I grabbed Mariana, with Freedom following, and hastily made my way to the restroom.

"Daddy! Daddy!" she yelled to me as we entered.

"Just a minute baby. I can't see a thing. Let me just rinse my eyes with water."

"But Daddy!"

"Just a minute!"

As soon as the cold water rinsed out the lime juice, I saw in the mirror a woman seated on a toilet behind me. "What are you doing in here?" I asked in Spanish.

Before I could answer my daughter yelled, "Daddy! You're in the girl's bathroom!" Embarrassed can hardly describe how I felt as I looked around and saw nothing but females. I returned to the table and my lime-less drink more than a little humiliated. "I didn't see the sign on the door. Oops."

Sonia just looked at me without talking for a second, and then we returned to small talk. Her kids, the Cubanita, Freedom and Mariana were instant friends. Eventually, they all ate empanadas together from the empanada lady with her little wooden kiosk on the beach. She was charging Bs1000 per empanada, and Bs1000 per juice drink. Thus, five kids had lunch and a drink for about $4.00.

I asked the empanada lady of Playa Parguito what is a "parguito". She told me in Spanish, "A parguito is a fish, but we also call gay people parguitos." In other words "Playa Parguito" could mean "Parguito Fish Beach" or "Gay Beach".

She laughed and asked me if I was a parguito. I told her, "No soy Parguito." (I am not a Parguito.)

She responded, "Which one? You are not the fish? Or not gay?"

Hiking the Coast

The next day started off "Ground Hog Day" style with our morning yoga ("Relax your noodle...), cocadas (one with rum), Café con leche (with Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2), "¿Mañana?" with Renoir, and, ultimately, a stop at the Internet place to get Freedom.

"Did you find a place?" I asked Vegen.

"I, finally, got tired of living in that shit-hole and, I, finally, got tired of waiting for Garcia to get off his lazy ass and find us a place. So, I found a place on my own. Freedom and I have been taking care of ourselves long before Garcia came along."

"Where's the new place?"

"It's up the hill from here. A place called Castillo Blanco."

"'Castillo Blanco' means 'white castle'. Are you staying in a castle?"

"No, smartass, but it's a hell of a lot nicer than that other shit-hole. We got it for Bs40,000 a night. What are your plans for today?"

"Actually, I was thinking about taking the girls on a hike. I spoke with Mala and she told me there were a few good hikes on the island."

"Cool. I wish I could go."

We stepped out of the Internet bar and into a ruta cota. The driver was the man with the brown leather fedora and thick glasses. He had given us rides before. We squeezed into the car next to the multitude that somehow fit inside his dilapidated vehicle. Both children had to sit on my lap. Since I didn't know where I was going, I didn't tell him where to take us. I wonder where we will end up? I wondered.

Mariana asked, "Where are we going?"

I answered, "I don't know. Let's just see where we go."

Eventually, he pulled into Playa Parguito. I looked right and saw a mountain with a trail going up. This must be the place. I gave Fedora-Man Bs500, and we stepped out of the crowded vehicle sans a single utterance to the driver.

Next, we began walking to the beach. Freedom said to Mariana, "Do you like Bob Marley?"

"Yes," my daughter replied to her friend.

"Do you know Three Little Birds?"

"Yes. I love it!"

"It goes like this:" Freedom sang, "Don't worry about a thing..." Then Mariana remembered the song and both girls were singing, "...every little thing is gonna be alright..."

As I heard their singing I thought, A seven-year-old and a nine-year-old from opposite sides of the world singing a song from a long- since-dead Jamaican reggae singer! Look how music can bring folks together. The girls skipped along happily singing...

Don't worry about a thing, worry 'bout a thing now; 'cause every little thing's gonna be alright, alright" Singin', don't worry about a thing...

As soon as we stepped onto the sand, we spotted Garth and Andres walking down the beach carrying two beers. As it turned out, they were off to visit their masseuse friend, Rosa, who had a large white canvas shelter set up a few hundred meters from us. They invited us to join. So, we went along.

The four of us, Garth, Andres, Rosa the masseuse, and I sat in a circle under her canopy on the beach. The Canopy had a massage table under it and wispy white curtains blew in the wind along the four sides of the canopy. Mariana and Freedom made friends with a gang of five to ten year olds playing around and on an empty lifeguard stand. During our conversation, Andres disappeared twice to buy us all beers. Normally, I drink no more than one or two beers, but I felt obligated to repay the favor. Consequently, I purchased the next two rounds.

Garth told me another story of how a friend of his lost money in a bogus currency exchange. This time it was $2000. He was making some type of business deal and wanted the best rate for his dollars. Garth and his friend found someone offering them a great rate, but he turned out to be the same type of swindler who tricked me earlier.

"I don't feel so bad about the $100 now," I told Garth.

Andres talked about how the various cities in Colombia have their own dialects and styles. I have heard this from other Colombians. I believe that Colombians must be the most patriotic people concerning their cities of origin. Andres was from Bogotá.

After our bilingual conversation and four beers, I was ready to begin the hike. I invited Garth et. al. to go along, but they opted for another round of beers.

To our left, off shore winds turned the swells into clean waves that broke unto the pink sand and kissed our toes with their cool salty Caribbean water. To our right, families and tourists ate empanadas and arepas, and women of all shapes and sizes proudly displayed their backsides covered only with strings of various sizes. Eventually, we came to where Playa Parguito ended at a hill with several trails traversing the semiarid looking landscape. We randomly selected a trail and marched upward.

From the top we faced the ocean and looked left and right to beaches nestled in palm covered coves and bays of various sizes. Below us, a group of about fifty teenagers were jumping off the rocks into the ocean. In order for them to get to this isolated part of the hill they would have had to walk down the steepest and rockiest part of the hill. Nevertheless, they had music and drinks. Some of them were dancing precariously on the edge of tiny rocky cliffs.

We found a tiny deserted protected cove on the other side of the hill. The water was dead calm and crystal clear. The lack of people in the water scared Freedom. "I want to swim. Can I ride on your back?"

"Sure."

"Me too! Daddy!"

"Sure."

With two children in tow, I swam out into the clear waters. The coolness of the water soothingly washed the heat from the hike off my sun soaked skin. A dozen yards from the shore I found a rock submerged just two feet under the water. We stood on our submerged island and watched little tropical reef fish swim all around us in water so clean it looked like a fish tank.

Mariana and Freedom were spellbound and amazed by every little thing that swam by. I liked the idea that my seven-year-old daughter was standing on a rock submerged under clear tropical waters, watching colorful creatures swim by, and discovering the thrill of travel. Meanwhile, her peers back home were probably playing a computer game or watching the same Lion King video for the seventh time. Maybe little Zoë was watching a video, as well? This thought produced a pain in my stomach.

We continued our hike along the coast ascending and descending another small hill, but this time we arrived at a beach, which became the first of a string of local beaches leading to El Tirano. These beaches had a completely different look and feel than Playa El Agua or any of the other beaches we had visited on the island. These were local beaches. No German tourists or even Venezuelan tourists. These people obscuring the sand beneath their feet were Margaritaños.

They were cooking out, playing soccer, dancing, drinking, and laughing. No one was spread out on a towel soaking up sun. Nearly everybody was on their feet or on their butts engaged in one of the aforementioned activities. I ordered us frozen fruit drinks from a beach bar, and they were just Bs1000 each. That amounts to half of what I had paid at other places and less that 50¢.

"Kiddies, we're eating here!"

We ate like two little pigs and one big pig, and sampled a multitude of frozen fruit drinks at intervals of two without rum (for the kids) and one with (for yours truly). By the time we left, we ate and drank enough to be gluttons, but I spent a grand total of $5.00.

Next, we continued until we reached the beach below El Tirano, Playa Cordón, where I found no topless Czech women, but a smattering of Germans. As soon as we sat on the sand, Freedom commenced to digging holes. The more she dug the more she looked frustrated. Why is this little girl digging holes?

From there it was only a short walk up the hill to the supermarcado and a café con leche, and the bus back to Playa El Agua where we would find, Renoir and Coffee-Girl#2.

☼

Once at the supermarcado, Marco, the guy who checks receipts at the door, enthusiastically greeting all three of us by name, Jordan, who was bagging groceries, yelled over to us, and Jenny-The-Coffee-Girl-#1 came out from behind the counter to give all three of us kisses on the cheeks. After a few weeks on the island, I felt really at home.

After I dropped Freedom off with Vegen, I asked Mariana, "Why does Freedom dig so many holes?"

"She's looking for an ankle bracelet," replied Mariana.

"Oh. I get it. You found an ankle bracelet in the sand, and she wants to find one. Remind me to buy one and bury it somewhere. That way she can find one and feel better."

Don't touch the Monkey. He Bites.

The following morning, I was staring at the light coming in through the kitchen window of Mala's apartment and wondering why the morning sunlight looks and feels so differently than the rest of the day's light. Mala came out of her room, and I prepared breakfast. "Do you want to eat breakfast with us?" I asked her.

"Sure. By the way, what are you and Mariana doing today?"

"Vegen invited us to her new place to swim this morning. After that, I do not know."

"Where is her new place?"

"Castillo Blanco."

"Oh. That's in La Mita."

"What are your plans?"

Mala replied, "I'm going to start the day at Playa Parguito. I am meeting my masseuse there for a foot massage."

"Rosa?"

"You know her?"

"We met yesterday."

"You and Mariana get around. I guess you know everyone on the island by now!"

"Wow. A foot massage! That sounds great. Is she good?"

"Yeah, wonderful. After that I will be very busy, because I am opening up a jewelry store. I have even been talking to Vegen about working there."

"You are a real go-getting."

"I have been so busy that I have not got to spend anytime with your little girl and you. We could, however, watch a movie tonight."

"That would be great."

"I know this sounds silly, but I want to see the comedy White Chicks. I think it will be a good laugh. Stop by the store later and we'll rent two movies. You can pick one out, as well." White Chicks? I had assumed that Mala was into funky independent foreign movies.

☼

A ruta corta driven by the same mute fedora wearing man with the thick glasses safely delivered us to the Castillo Blanco and I handed him Bs500. Again no words were exchanged. Mariana and I walked through the gate into the courtyard that surrounded the pool. We found Freedom waiting for us beside the pool with her new little friend, Pablo. "This is my new friend Pablo, and, over there tied to the tree, that's the monkey. Don't touch the monkey, he bites." Sure enough, there was a pissed off monkey tied to a tree on the opposite side of the courtyard. The monkey made angry gestures every time we looked in his direction. He acted in such a way that suggested he wanted to escape, but, first, he planned to get revenge on a few humans for making him a captive. He was a very angry monkey.

"Where's your mama?"

"She's taking a shit."

"What? Did you just say the 's' word? You can't tell me that little girls can say that in New Zealand?"

"Yes. 'Shit' is not a bad word in New Zealand," she confidently told me with a big smile on her face.

Pablo, Freedom and Mariana lined up in the shallow end of the pool, and I tossed them one-by-one to the deep end by lifting each above my head and throwing. I call this little maneuver the "Gorilla Press" after the namesake World Wrestling move. However, I cannot take credit for the move, because I think "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka invented it in 1982. Mariana could not get enough of this. She loved the thrill of flying through the air and landing in the water. Splash!

Thus, we developed a few variations of the Gorilla Press including the much gentler "Baby Press" for Zoë, and the extreme "Godzilla Press". Mariana always asks me, "What is the scariest press?" I always tell her, "It's the 'Daddy Press', but if I did that you might fly clean out of the pool. So, forget about it. It is too dangerous."

Vegen eventually joined us at the pool, and we chatted for a while. Eventually, time passed, and we all jumped into a ruta corta and made our way to Playa El Agua. Vegen went to work, and the girls and I spent some time on the beach.

☼

Eventually, we caught up with Mala at the Café Solar as she was closing. Mala, Mariana and I walked from her restaurant and past the cocada lady, the full service laundry place and into the video store. All the DVD's were copies, and there were three computers in the back for checking e-mail. Mala picked out White Chicks and checked her e-mail while I grabbed a copy of Life Aquatic. I had seen it before, but I really enjoyed it. Mariana wanted a kid's movie, but I selfishly told her, "No. We're going to watch movies for adults after I put you to bed." This reminded me of what Karen had said about me only thinking of myself.

☼

Meanwhile back at Los Helechos, I said to Mala, "Mala, do you plan to watch both movies tonight?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"Do you mind if I put Mariana to bed while you start one of them?"

"No problem. Which one shall I start?"

"How about White Chicks?"

"Are you sure? Maybe I should watch the other one since you've seen it?"

"No, I would enjoy watching it with you. I'm sure I will get to see White Chicks some other time."

Mala watched White Chicks as I read to Mariana and told her stories. Then, I stayed there beside her with the lights out until she fell asleep.

My eyes adjusted to the light as FBI agents Marcus and Kevin Copeland (played by the Wayans brothers) kicked butt, and, then, make the startling revelation that they truly were black men and not white chicks. Really? I couldn't tell.

Following the movie, we chatted a bit. I asked her about her early days on Isla Margarita. She explained to me that she worked in a hotel, but made most of her money exchanging currency. She was a moneychanger.

"Do you want to hear something crazy?" she asked me with a little evil smile on her face.

"Sure."

"One time I rolled around in it."

"You rolled around in it?"

"Yes. It was like 10 years ago. I spread the money out on the bed and rolled around in it."

Immediately my mind flashed an image of Mala's brown naked body rolling around in money on clean white sheets. The image of a pretty naked woman frolicking around in currency reminded me of how long it had been since I had last seen a naked woman. Jesus please forgive her for being a moneychanger, because she is so hot.

I told my mind to stop thinking that thought, and I told my mouth not to ask her, "Were you naked?" Instead, I just said, "Wow. Cool."

"Yes, you end up with a lot of cash when you exchange money. Why don't we start the movie?"

"Sure, but how about some wine?"

"I have another bottle of banana wine beside the refrigerator."

I retrieved the wine, and we started Life Aquatic.

"How was the foot massaging today?" I asked her.

"Oh. I didn't get one."

"I can give you one, if you like?"

"Sure. I never turn down a massage?"

I wanted to say, "OK. Get naked and I'll massage your whole body!" However, I had to be satisfied with just her feet. As I began massaging one of her feet, I asked, "How much do you usually pay Rosa?"

"Around $5."

"I didn't tell you this would be free. So, you will owe me $5 when I'm done." We laughed a little.

As we watched Life Aquatic, I massaged each foot for 30 minutes or more. I started with the smallest toe and worked my way to her big toe. Then, I massaged each part of her foot. Mala had wonderful feet, I thought. As pathetic as this sounds, I enjoyed giving her the foot massage as much as she enjoyed getting it, because too much time had passed since I had had my hands on a woman in any way. Despite the fact that I was technically still married, my wife would not let me touch her. I was in marriage limbo where I was neither permitted to have affection from my wife nor any other women. My romantic life had reached a new low. Rubbing a woman's feet was about the most action I could have at that point in my life.

"Are you tired?" she later asked.

"No. I'm fine." I said. Take off your clothes and lie down, I thought, but did not say.

Garcia Finds a House and His Ex-Wife Fucks Her Grandfather

Vegen was all smiles when we came to pick up Freedom. "Garcia found us a great place!"

"Where is it?"

"Here in Playa El Agua. It's a big house, and it's just Bs40,000 a night. We can only stay there for three weeks, but, hey, it's great."

"That sounds wonderful."

"Why don't you and Mariana stay with us tonight?"

"Sure. Sounds like fun. Are you sure it would be alright, since it is your first night and everything?"

"Absolutely!" she answered still beaming.

☼

We spent that night at Vegen and Garcia's new house in Playa El Agua. Garcia had apparently come through with his promise to find a nice place to stay. The spacious four-bedroom house was across the street from the beach in Playa El Agua. The house, tastefully decorated in natural hues, was fully furnished with the nicest furniture I had seen on the island. A security fence surrounded the coconut-tree-covered yard.

Vegen was glowing as we entered the house. Vegen's smiling face was due in part to the fact that she had doubted Garcia, and she now believed in him. "We are only paying about $15 a night for this place. Can you believe it?" It sounded too good to be true.

"Would you care for a coco-frio?" Garcia asked me as he pulled three coconuts from the fridge.

"Claro," I responded. A machete leaned against a palm tree near the pool. So, I took the coconuts outside and chopped the tops off with the machete. Mariana, Freedom and I drank the juice; and, then, I chopped the nuts in half, and we ate the meat.

Mariana spotted the large pool and said, "Daddy! Daddy! Let's jump in!" Of course, I was unable to keep the children out of the pool. Eventually, Mariana and Freedom lounged on floats and drank coconut juice from straws stuck into fresh coconuts.

Vegen said, "You two are staying here tonight, right?"

"Sure. Why not? Thanks. That would be fun."

Garcia had a four-by-four sheet of plywood leaning against a tree in the backyard. He had it half whitewashed and, from time-to-time during the afternoon, he painted on it or stared at it- mostly he stared at it. "What are you working on?" I asked him.

Vegen was standing behind me and answered for him, "Garcia's starting a tourist business."

Then, Garcia said, "I have plenty of connections here on the island. I can give tours." He went on to explain how he planned to make a tour business like the one Renoir and others ran along Playa El Agua. I guess he was working on his "Swim with Dolphins and Jeep Tour and whatever" sign.

Garcia's friends were in and out of the house all afternoon. With each visit, Garcia would stop working, visit a little and then get back to applying white paint and staring. By the time night came, the board was almost covered in white. Vegen was not happy with his progress.

"Do the kids want to watch cartoons? We have Satellite TV" Garcia asked.

Mariana yelled, "Yeah! Yeah!"

The ubiquitous Presidente Chavez was on the TV giving a speech when Garcia turned on the TV. Before turning the station to the Cartoon Network en español, I heard Chavez refer to President Bush as a "maricon".

"Did I hear that correctly? Did he just call President Bush a faggot?" I asked Garcia.

"Yes. He thinks Bush is going to invade and take the oil. He's crazy. Everyday he gets more power. He's just like Fujimora. Do you know him?"

"Yeah. He was the Japanese guy who was elected president of Peru, and eventually became a dictator. I think he lives in Japan now."

"Chavez is just like him. I wish he would just go to Japan! Do you know if Chavez spread all the money made from oil to all the people, everyone in this country would make $40,000 a year?"

"Really?" This could not be true, I thought.

"Yes. $40,000." He said it slowly. "$40,000."

Eventually, a Colombian named Leo joined Garcia, Vegen, and me on the back patio beside the pool. He had a bottle of Aguadente, the clear alcoholic beverage of Colombia. Vegen did not speak Spanish, and Leo did not speak English. This made for an interesting conversation. As I recall the conversation, I cannot remember exactly which parts were in Spanish and which parts were in English. I put the kids to bed about 10 PM.

As a cool tropical breeze blew off the ocean to the patio, we conversed, drank, and listened to salsa music until 4:00 AM. By 2:00 AM, we had conversed about music, politics, religion, and travel. Then Vegen told Garcia, "Tell them the story of your ex-wife."

"Oh. This is a good one. I tell you that people from Scandinavia have a completely different view of sex and modesty. They are very open with sex, and are naked more than they are dressed. I worked at a tattoo pallor in Copenhagen, and while I was at work, my wife was fucking everyone and everyone was trying to fuck me.

"Once, we were having dinner with her family, and they were laughing about the time she fucked her grandfather! I'm not kidding you. It was like, 'Hey, remember that time Anni fucked grandpa! That was funny!'"

Vegen jumped in, "What? Grandpa? I can't get my mind around that image. No way!"

"I'm not lying. They actually joked about it like it was nothing. Eventually, we divorced, because it got too crazy. I just couldn't put up with her having sex with every man or every relative she met...."

The follow morning, Mariana woke up at 9:00 AM, and was ready to roll. After staying up all night drinking Colombian liquor, listening to salsa music, and hearing stories of wives having sex with grandparents, I knew that I would need several café con leches to get me going. Yoga, however, was out of the question or, so I thought. Both Mariana and Freedom were holding hands when they entered the room to wake me up. "Can Freedom go to yoga with us this morning?"

"I think we will skip yoga this morning."

"Noooo! Daddy! Pleeeeeeaaaaase!" they said it nearly in unison.

"Sure, but I need coffee first."

I told Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2 the story of the all-night-drinking, salsa-listening, story-telling night sans the part about grandpa. She brought her little monkey to the café in anticipation of Mariana and Freedom's visit. The girls took turns carrying the monkey around like it was a baby. Mariana asked me, "Can we take it back to South Carolina."

"No way."

I purchased three extra coffees, and took them to Renoir, Always-Drunk-Roberto, and Leatherman. I had made several attempts at renting a car earlier in the trip, but I learned that it is impossible without a credit card. Thus, I negotiated a deal with Renoir for a jeep tour of the island. I did not want to leave Margarita without seeing most of the island.

Renoir gave me a "special price" of $30 for the all day tour that included meals and all the drinks I could drink. In Spanish, I asked Renoir, "Does this price include everything for both of us?"

"Si. Todo," he assured me that it included everything.

"Ok then, I am not going to bring extra money," I lied to him, because I planned to bring extra money just in case. The jeep tour would be mañana, and would last from early morning to the afternoon.

☼

Mala joined us for a session of "tightening your noodles" and "relaxing your booties". This was Freedom's first time in a yoga class. She had to go to the bathroom twice during the class, and talked a couple times with Mariana. However, this did not bother Ana, the funky Italian yoga instructor, because "Oh, children... they will save the world."

At the end of the yoga class, everyone was lying on the floor and relaxing for about ten minutes while funky chilled out yoga music softly played. I don't know how long I slept or why no one woke me, but I woke up alone on a yoga mat. By the time I came to, Ana was in the little gift shop in the front of the yoga studio talking with Mala, Mariana and Freedom. Everything was a fog as I wandered over to them.

"I can't believe I feel asleep like that. Mala, do you want to go to the beach with us now?" I asked.

"No. I have to work. Today is Friday, and we will be busy. Sunday, however, is a very special day for me. That is the only day I take off, and I do the same thing every Sunday. Every Sunday, I spend my day on the beach behind The Macao Bar drinking piña coladas, and relaxing in the sun. What are your plans Sunday?"

"Nothing," I replied to her.

"Then, I would love for you and Mariana to join me for my Sunday routine. By the way, you snore."

"That would be great."

"Also, don't forget the party tonight. I spoke with Andres, and she will watch Mariana. This is what she does for a living. She is wonderful with children."

"I know. She has already spent some time with her, and they were great. I just don't know about leaving her with anyone. I've never done that on a trip."

"That's you decision."

"I really would like to go. So, I guess I could make an appearance. Normally, when I go to parties, I like to stay long and have fun, but, since I'm traveling with my daughter, I could only stay for an hour or two. By the way, how much should I pay Andres? Bs15,000"

"I was thinking about that. That sounds good. I think Bs10,000 would be too little, and Bs20,000 would be too much. Bs15,000 sounds good."

"Cool."

Crying and Homeless

Tap, tap, tap on the door. It was Vegen and Freedom stopping to see us on this Friday night. Vegen nervously stood just past the doorway as Freedom ran in to play with Mariana. Vegen had an unsteady smile on her face. Obviously, something was amiss.

I greeted them with, "Hey, Vegen... Freedom, How's it going?"

"Oh, alright. Well, not really alright, uh..."

"What's up?" I asked.

"Well, do you know of any place that Freedom and I could sleep? Actually, could you just keep our luggage tonight while we look for a place? We need to find a place, and, uh, yeah."

"You moved out of the house?" asked Mala.

At this point, Vegen put her hands to her lips and burst into tears. Mala and I stood speechless for a moment.

"Well, see, the house really wasn't ours. Garcia made the deal with a guy that was only watching the house. It wasn't his house to rent. He thought he could just use us to make some money. He was a security guard, but now he is fired. The bad thing is it was my money. Garcia was supposed to pay half, but I had to loan him his half. I guess we lost it. It's all gone. We paid all the rent up front..." More tears. Sobbing.

Mala spoke, "Look the hotel that Jackomo stayed in is nice enough. It's right down the road next to the La Negra Restaurant, and it's just Bs30,000 a night. It's like a hostel."

I added, "Vegen, I'll watch Freedom as long as you need me too."

"No. Freedom is my responsibility. I have taken care of her all her life."

"I mean, I could watch her tonight for you while you go look." I wanted to invite them both to stay, but this was not my place. Freedom had stayed with us other nights. Thus, I knew that would be no big deal. Then, I remembered the party.

"Oh. Actually, Andres will be watching both the kids for like an hour or two. You met her, right?" I felt a little funny telling Vegen that while she was homeless and depressed, I would be partying.

Vegen's luggage was gargantuan. Her two enormous bags could hold several illegal aliens if she was inclined to smuggle a few people back to New Zealand. Besides those, she also had a rug from Morocco and a lamp from Bali. Instantly my room filled up with everything, but a kitchen sink from India.

Vegen walked out the door and into the darkness alone. Freedom and Mariana played a bit in the room, and I read them a few stories, and then told them one of my "Canoe Kids" stories. For years I had been making up stories about a group of children I called the canoe kids. In my story, they live on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. They are always involved in some adventure which ends with them camping on a mountain with their Cherokee grandfather who explains the moral of the story. My kids love these stories. After the story, I put both kids in the bed, and slept on the floor beside the bed on Mala's yoga mat until they fell asleep.

Mala was seated at the counter sorting jewelry for her new business that she planned to open. She had these beautiful bracelets with tiny roses embedded in them. "Would you like to buy one for your wife? They're only $10."

I wanted to, but I did not have any money to spare. Mala did not know my financial situation. Besides, my lack of cash was caused by my own lack of planning and stupidity. I was too embarrassed to tell her that I did not even have an extra $10.

"I don't understand why Vegen was crying," I said to her.

"Yeah. Finding a place to stay is easy. She has traveled the world. It's just part of being grown up," replied Mala. Mala wore a pair of jeans that looked great going up her long legs and around her perfectly curved hips. Her top was loose and linen with Balinese style designs covering the front.

At that point I realized why Vegen cried. She cried because Garcia let her down. She had been trying to convince herself that Garcia was not just another of a long line of losers that she has dated or married. Vegen had been taking care of Freedom and herself for a long time, but she wanted a partner to help her.

The Party

Tap, tap, tap on the door. Andres arrived. "I told her in Spanish, "This will be easy. Mariana and Freedom are both sleeping, and they will not wake up until morning. I will be back in one or two hours."

"Que bien." With that, Andres plopped down in front of the TV, and Mala and I were off.

"We're going to pick up my friend Keith first," said Mala.

"Oh, yeah. Where is he from?"

"He's an American like you."

Keith was standing outside his apartment waiting for us holding a six-pack of beers. His floral-printed shirt was unbuttoned four buttons from the top. He wore loose-fitted black pants and flip-flops. He was a little overweight, unshaven and slightly disheveled with a "Jack Black" quality about him. This was refreshing, because all of Mala's friends that I had met were impossibly handsome. I felt like I was in one of those movies where everyone is good-looking. Chubby Keith did not fit this mold.

"Hey, Keith. I'm Luther. My daughter and I are staying with Mala."

"Yeah. I've heard about you," he answered in northern accented American English.

"Do you live here?"

"Yeah. I've been here for a while now."

"What do you do?"

"Nothing."

"How long do you plan to stay?"

"A long time." With that the conversation switched.

Keith was probably in his early 30's. He was single and living alone doing nothing on a tropical island off the coast of Venezuela. This guy had a story to tell. I would never learn his story, however.

☼

The party took place in the house of Sonia (the former model) and Sophie, Sonia's sister. The small house was in a neighborhood in Playa El Agua just a stones throw from the beach. A seven-foot high concrete wall surrounded a courtyard with tables and canopies. The house was perfect for this type of party. Sophie would later tell me that she paid just $9000 for the home.

The ubiquitous sounds of Bob Marley emanated from the speakers and filled the courtyard full of talking, drinking, smoking people. After a few songs, I recognized the CD as Bob Marley's greatest hits album Legend. That CD must have been issued to everyone in my generation. Song number six was playing when I arrived.

...Get up, standup, stand up for your rights...

This was one of those funky laid back ex-pat reggae parties that I have seen in so many places and on so many trips for so many years of traveling. Many of the people I met that night were from somewhere else. Inevitably, I heard song number seven.

...little darling stir it up...

I grabbed a beer from the fridge and walked over to a table in the middle of the courtyard. Introductions were quickly dispatched and conversation began to flow. A shirtless Colombian with his blonde hair in a ponytail struck up a conversation with me in Spanish. He explained to me that he works on a dive boat for money and surfs for fun. He spoke Spanish muy tranquilo, and I easily understood what he was saying.

"¿Hermano, de donde eres?", "Dude, where are you from," he asked me.

"Carolina del Sur," I told him that I was from South Carolina. "I live near the ocean there, as well. And, like you, I love to surf and scuba dive."

"Is there waves there?"

"Yes, but not as good as the waves are here. Anyway, the one-meter high waves of South Carolina are perfect for my ability. I just about died here last week after the hurricane. The diving is great, though."

"Dude, South Carolina has waves and diving. Sign me up. I want to go. I'm about ready to get out of this shit-hole. How hard do you think it would be to get a job there?"

"I don't know. We have dive boats and people work on them. I guess it would not be too difficult. Do you speak English?"

He answered this question in English, "A little." His response removed the wind from his sails. His expression turned cheerless and he paused. Then, he switched back to Spanish, "So, you almost died after the hurricane?"

"Those waves were just too big for me."

"Dude, those waves were nothing!" (He kept calling me "hermano" which I translated as "dude".)

Then, his girlfriend came over. She was a slender dark-haired Colombian wearing a loose-fitting floral dress with no bra. As she leaned over and handed him a splith I could see the side of her right breast. He took a hit from the splith. Then, he offered it to me, and I declined.

...I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot no deputy...

From there I went over to the main house and spoke with Sonia who was mixing drinks and making marijuana waffles. I did try one of the waffles not knowing they had marijuana in them. Mala saw me eating it and came over and said, "Luther! Those have marijuana in them."

I pretended that I knew they had pot in them: "I know. My rule is that I don't smoke anything." I lied, because I had never eaten marijuana either. The music of Bob Marley continued to ooze from the speakers.

...emancipate yourself from mental slavery... none but ourselves can free our minds...

Mala turned to Sonia and sternly said, "Don't make his waffles too strong."

After the conversation with Sonia petered out, Keith came over beer-in-hand and said to me, "How ya holding up there, bud?"

"I'm doing fine. Lot's of interesting people to talk to here." After he walked away, I stood there awkwardly alone drinking a beer and eating a marijuana-laced waffle. As I scanned the place, I realized that I had already met nearly everyone at the party at some other part of the island. Now they were all together in one place. I had half expected to see the Manchester Boys in some corner trying to convince a couple señoritas to go back to their apartment, but they somehow missed this party. The truth was that I really wasn't doing fine. My one daughter was in South Carolina and my other was asleep in an apartment nearby. I had no business being at this party.

One side of the house was a converted carport where a large TV hung from one corner. The TV played a slideshow of photographs, and half a dozen individuals sat on chairs, the floor and a couch viewing and commenting on the pictures. I saw Always-Drunk-Roberto in one of the photos. To my surprise, there on one of the couches, sexy Trini sat between her cousin (the one I met previously on the beach) and Coffee-Girl-#1. I had no idea they knew each other.

I was shocked to see them, but they acted like they half expected me to be there. Coffee-Girl-#1 in fact told me that the Manchester boys might stop by later. We had warm greetings and some small talk. Then, I moved back outside and stood awkwardly alone for a while longer. I stood there holding an empty beer bottle because I did not know what else to do with my hands. Uncomfortable in my own skin, I did not know where to look or how to stand.

Around midnight, a couple arrived with a little girl about Mariana's age. Suddenly, I had separation anxiety. The most terrible feeling started in my head and spread to my feet, and I became lightheaded and sick at my stomach. The feeling had nothing to do with the waffle. The feeling was like a realization that I forgot to turn the stove off or I left the iron on or worse. I was struck by an epiphany: I will never leave my children like this again. I will keep both of them with me. I planned to go home and try to save my failing marriage so that I would never have to be away from them until they grew up.

Mala came over to me and said, "Luther, the party is over for you. I'm taking you home." I thought it was funny the way she tried to take care of me at the party, but I didn't mind. One beer, one waffle, and one round of Bob Marley's Legend was enough party for me that night.

I hugged and kissed a dozen people on the way out and heard the last song of Legend.

...we're jamming... wouldn't ya like to be jamming too...

Just before I left, Renoir came in with his girlfriend and his uncle and his uncle's wife. I asked him if he could have a car for me mañana, but he only politely laughed, because the joke had become too old and lame just like me.

☼

I felt like I could trust Andres, but, nonetheless, leaving Mariana with her was a mistake. What if someone broke into the apartment while I was here? Then, again, I thought of Zoë and I realized that I had no idea where she was or what she was doing. I thought about falling asleep at the yoga place. I felt like such a terrible father. What the hell am I doing?

As I was leaving the party, Libia-The-Coffee-Girl-#2 walked though the gate into the courtyard. I only had time for some brief small talk. Pangs of guilt hit me as she asked, "Where's Mariana?"

Andres was just as we left her plopped down in front of the TV. I discreetly handed her the Bs15,000, and, after a brief conversation, she walked back up to her and Garth's apartment. Mala jumped back into her car and went back to the party. I brushed my teeth, and went to see my little daughter, who was sleeping cuddled up with Freedom. She never knew I left her.

The Jeep Tour

After a café con leche and a hot chocolate with Libia, Mariana and I walked down to meet Renoir to commence our grand jeep tour of the island. However, Renoir told me that the jeep had gone to Los Helechos to pick up Mariana and me. The misunderstanding was promptly remedied by a quick call on a cell phone. An open jeep driven by a thirty-year-old man name Juan showed up with three sunburned tourists seated on padded benches in the open rear of an old black jeep.

Mariana and I sat next to a middle-aged man from Cali, Colombia. His formally pale skin was badly burned. He looked like a walking talking peppermint candy with swirls of red and white. Opposite us sat a 17-year-old girl from New Jersey with her 17-year-old boyfriend. The girl was born on Margarita, but left when she was nine. The Jersey boy's sunburn looked more like strawberry shortcake than peppermint candy. He was a native of New Jersey and, normally, whiter than sour cream.

We were ready to be transported to various parts of a beautiful tropical island, and my three companions looked as happy as if they were being transported to jail. Rarely did any of them smile or even once appear to enjoy any part of the tour. After we had the customary introductory conversation, the three went mute for most of the remainder of the tour.

Our first stop was at the Castillo de Santa Rosa. For me the castle was like any other fort or castle in Latin America, but, nonetheless, it was an excellent opportunity for pictures. Mariana ran to the watchtowers and looked out with enthusiastic glee. The best part of the Castillo de Santa Rosa was its friendly and helpful staff. Once back at the jeep, Juan tossed us beers. After Juan handed the American teens their beers, they looked at each other like they had just been given forbidden fruit and giggled a little.

Juan told us that the castle was built in the 1600's. An old man with a gentle voice stood beside the jeep and told us a beautiful story of a pearl diver whose child was born with a disfigured leg. He said the diver prayed every day to the Virgin to fix the child's leg. Then, one day he dove deep into the Caribbean and retrieved an oyster with a leg-shaped pearl inside. Apparently, this was a sign that his prayer was answered, and the child's leg miraculously healed. He said that the actual pearl is in a museum on the island. Where? I could not find out.

The pimply face, sunburned teenager sounded like Beavis and Butthead when he asked, "Oh, like, I didn't understand what he said. Doesn't anyone here speak English?"

The girlfriend, who spoke fluent Spanish, replied, "It's, like, this man's child had a bad leg and he found this pearl and, like, the leg got better."

Next, we drove up a winding road to reach the top of Cerro el Copey. Before reaching the top of the hill, Juan stopped the car without pulling off the road. He climbed out of the cab, and, pointed to a tree on the downward sloping hillside. He told us that Cerro el Copey was named after that type of tree. He said that it is sometimes also called Cerro Jóvito Villalba. Villalba, he explained, was one of the guys who brought some democracy to Venezuela, and he was born on Margarita.

Stopped in the middle of a curvy mountain road, I snapped a few photos and prayed that we would not get run over by a larger vehicle. As Juan spoke, my fellow passengers just looked off into the distance. Seeing that he was losing the crowd, Juan tried to brighten things up by telling a few jokes. As I type these words, I cannot remember the jokes, but I know it was not as funny as the ones I told on the trip. Anyway, I politely laughed at his attempt and humor and nudged Mariana to encourage her to do the same. The others just stared off into space apparently enduring their own personal sunburned hells.

At this point I could see that Juan felt like he had lost the crowd. This is the only explanation I could think of for why he decided to inflict vengeance us. I suppose he was trying to punish us, when he put "Roxette's Greatest Hits" into his CD player and turned it up as loud as possible. Then, we drove up the hill. As Roxette sang, "Listen to your heart; when he's calling for you. Listen to your heart; there's nothing else you can do...", I was thinking of telling the driver, "Hey Juan listen to your heart. It's telling you to turn that shit off!" Unfortunately for us, I believe his eject button must have no been broken, because the 18 song CD looped continuously throughout the entire journey.

As we made our way upward, we pulled behind a slightly larger jeep. The jeep was full of laughing drinking people who seemed to be enjoying life. They were all Latinos. Both jeeps stopped at the top of another hill with a scenic overlook. Mariana and I jumped out for pictures, and the happy people climbed out of the other jeep and- I swear this is true- dabced to the salsa music coming from the CD player in their jeep. Neither jeep turned off their CD players causing Roxette and Salsa to mix like fire and ice. The jeeps were parked about fifty feet from each other on either side of the scenic overlook. Thus, the sweet spot for photography was right in the middle. Mariana and I walked to the edge to take pictures and ended up standing at a sonic crux with the competing genres pouring into opposite ears.

I looked straight and viewed a scenic tropical landscape. I looked right and viewed tightly dressed señoritas dancing to salsa music with shirtless señors around an old black jeep. I looked left and viewed three miserable sunburned people who didn't bother to get out of the back of the jeep enduring the late-eighties version of Abba.

I previously stated that Isla Margarita is shaped like a bow tie. The narrow center of the bow tie comprises the Parque Nacional Laguna de la Restinga, which is mostly an estuary. This was the next stop on our jeep tour. The two jeeps parked outside in a gravel parking lot beside the water. From there we walked through a narrow wooden walkway to the boats. The boat ride through this estuary would prove to be the highlight of our jeep tour.

Mariana did not know about the boat ride. Hence, her little face lit up with a bright smile when she realized that one of the boats tied to the docks was actually for us. A placid old man with leathery skin reached out his hand to help Mariana in the boat.

She looked back at me for approval, I nodded and she took his hand. We stepped into a 20-foot long canopy-covered wooden boat with padded seats. The white bow of the boat was trimmed in faded red. The rest of the vessel was yellow and dark blue. The motor on the back of the boat was colossally large for the tiny boat and covered with a cut up tarp for some reason.

The old man skillfully steered us slowly through the narrow canals of the mangrove estuary. We were surrounded by mangroves. He told us, above the roar of the motor, "La Restinga had been a national park for 30 years." Each narrow canal had a small wooden sign displaying its name. For example, in one narrow passage between islands, the mangroves grew together above us creating the illusion of a tunnel. A small wooden sign declared this passage to be the Tunel del Amor (tunnel of Love).

Next, we sailed through the Canal del Besos (Canal of the Kisses). Here the old man turned off the engines, reached into the dark water, and pulled out an orange sea star. Mariana's eyes grew big as he handed it to her. This was the first of many stops where the old man reached into the water and pulled out little treasures that he handed to my little girl. I thought, Would he do this if no children were on the boat?

Following this magical boat ride, a third jeep full of Germans joined us on a trip around the west side of the bow tie shaped island making us a procession of three jeeps. I was beginning to realize that Margarita Island had become a top destination for Germans. This part of Margarita is called Macanao. Macanao turned out to be arid and sparsely populated. This half of the island was a world away in so many ways from the other part of the island east of La Restinga. The right side or eastern half of the island has the look of a lush green tropical island with thriving villages and a few cities. Macanao is arid and nearly void of population. Nonetheless, Macanao was chock-full of deserted beaches and open spaces.

We were now a three jeep convoy of dancing Latinos, camera adorned Germans, and sunburned tourists with a daddy and his daughter making our way over a nicely paved road. Our parade ended at a beach called Punta Arenas. Just as the name suggested, Punta Arenas meaning "sandy point", was the sandy point occupying the extreme west of Isla Margarita. Except for an empty lifeguard stand and a restaurant, there was no development at Punta Arenas.

"You have one hour until we eat," Juan told us in English. My jeep-mates paid $3.00 for covered lounge chairs on the beach and went to sleep. The Latino jeep people gathered around and on the abandoned lifeguard stand across from the restaurant and turned the music up as loud as it would go. The Germans headed to the beach, and most of them stripped buck-naked. Mariana and I spotted a trail heading off into the dessert. We took it. Facing the ocean, the trail was off to the right and meandered past cacti and yucca until it ended at a ten-foot high bluff overlooking a tiny beach.

Later at the restaurant, we ate two delightful meals of rice, beans, fish, yucca fries, fish soup and all the beer and soda we wanted. We ended up sitting with the Germans. Sara, who sat across from me, spoke English and covered up her former nakedness with a sarong. She was tall girl with brown hair. We had the same old introduction conversation.

At one point she asked me, "What do you do?"

"I'm a teacher. What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a student."

"What do you study?"

"I go to Gymnasium." Gymnasium is the German version of high school.

"So you're a teenager? How old are you?"

"Seventeen. How old are you?"

"I'm really old. 35."

She made a face like she just took a sip of spoiled milk and said, "Wow. That is old!"

Following dinner, Mariana and I walked down to the sea, and turned left. From there we walked for an hour. Once we walked past the jeep tour people, the wide sandy beach was so deserted that it was nearly void of footprints. Mariana continuously picked up seashells and handed them to me. Many of the shells were broken fragments and would not be considered keepers by most shell collecting folks. However, Mariana found beauty in each and everyone. For example, once she picked up a broken bivalve shell and smiled saying, "Wow! Daddy, look at how beautiful this one is! Do you see the purple?" The shell fragment was about as big as a penny.

Once my pockets were filled with her little "treasures", I told her, "Mariana, I'm not carrying any more shells for you. If you collect them, you have to carry them."

"But Daddy, look at this one." She held up the broken remains of a whelk.

"If you want it carry it."

"But, can't you just carry one more?"

"No."

"Please?" My rule is she can only ask for something twice, and she knew not to ask again."

"No, baby."

"Fine. Then I won't collect anymore." She was angry.

The sound of beeping horns called us back to the jeep. Juan told us, "Up until now, we have been only on paved roads. Now we are going off-road. For this reason, we have these 4x4 jeeps. Can I please see Mr. Hughes?"

"Yes."

"You owe us $10 more."

"Why?"

"The jeep tour is free for your daughter, but you have to pay $10 for her meal."

"I don't have it."

"You don't have $10?"

"No."

"OK. No worries."

"Thank you."

In short order, we were bouncing around the roadless interior of Macanao. With one arm I held onto Mariana and with the other I held onto a rail on the side of the jeep. If I had not done this, I am sure that I would have been knocked from the jeep. This was truly a fun ride. I can see how people get addicted to four-wheeling, because it was like a carnival ride.

We followed paths until we reached a tiny village of huts next to a cove. A fifteen-foot wide stream flowed into the ocean. The stream separated the tiny village from a bluff with a few rickety little wooden and grass kiosks set up to sell crafts and such to the jeep tour tourists. I imagine that this is what keeps this little village going. I suppose the only reason the village exists is because of tourists.

An elderly woman with impossibly weathered skin stood under a thatched canopy and behind a table with a few seashells displayed for sale. The Germans made a b-line to her little stand. She smiled, and they took photos of her like paparazzi descending on a supermodel. Once the photo taking ceased, they all left without buying a seashell. I watched as the smile washed off her tired wrinkled face. I have never purchased a seashell before, because I have always felt that seashells must be found to be of any worth. However, that day I purchased three for mere pennies. As I purchased the shells, I counted the shells on her table and realized that even if she had sold all of them she would still not have enough money to buy an empanada.

We stayed one hour at that beach. The Germans got naked and the Latinos danced. My jeep mates wondered around the bluff and then went back to the jeep early. Following this, we drove to paved roads and the village of Boca del Rio.

Manuel stepped out of the jeep and announced in English, "They sell coco-locos here. This is our local drink of coconut and rum. They are Bs2000. Enjoy." He didn't bother to repeat this in Spanish.

The people from all three jeeps flooded onto the bar outside a restaurant in Boca del Rio for the coco-locos, which turned out to be exactly the same as the cocadas with rum that I started each day with back in Playa El Agua. I asked for one for me and one for my little girl sin rum. I specifically told them not to put rum in her drink.

I guzzled mine down. It was nearly as good as the ones I was drinking for Bs1000 back at Playa El Agua. "Daddy, I can't finish mine. Can you drink it?" asked Mariana. She does not like to throw away food or drink. She learned this from her mama. I believe this is a good quality, but she uses me as a human waste disposal, because I end up eating all of her leftovers.

After I tasted hers, I realized that it was chock full of rum. Mariana had already drunk half the glass! "How do you feel?" I asked her.

"Fine." I bet you do.

Finally, Manuel dropped us off at Los Helechos and the jeep tour was over.

Brokenhearted on a Curb with a Pile of Luggage

Tap, tap, tap on the door. This time Vegen, Freedom and Garcia stood on the other side. It was dark outside. Vegen's face was stoic, but Garcia's face offered a forced smile. Garcia came in to help me with the Vegen's colossal luggage. As we walked to the bedroom, he held onto my right elbow with his left hand and said, "She just doesn't understand the way things work here. Things take time. I'll have my business up and going soon..." He continued speaking to me in an explanatory and apologetic manner. Why he was so worried about what I thought?

Vegen took Freedom by the hand and walked out into the darkness and sat on the curb. She seemed to be explaining things to Freedom while wiping her own tear-soaked eyes. Garcia and I stacked the luggage beside them, and Freedom followed me back to the apartment to be with Mariana. The apartment had no phone and no one had a cell phone except Mala, who was not there. How did they plan to get a taxi? Where did they plan to go?

Vegen and Garcia just sat on the curb in the darkness next to their pilled up luggage. They had nowhere to go and no way to get there. I did not want to intrude on their business. I did however say, "Is there anyway I can help? Do you want me to keep Freedom another night?"

Vegen replied with, "No. Freedom is my responsibility. She has always been my responsibility."

"Ok then. Sorry. I better get Mariana ready for bed." Every night on the trip, Mariana and I spent about an hour getting ready for bed. We brushed teeth, read to each other, conversed about the day, told stories, and, finally, I would rub her back until she feel asleep.

The hour passed. Mariana slept soundly. I stood up from the bed and grabbed a book with the plan to go out to the deck and read on the hammock. Once out on the hammock, I spotted Vegen, Freedom and Garcia exactly as I left them.

Mala came home. She greeted them. She greeted me. She went to bed. There they sat. I told them goodnight. I went to bed. I woke up the next morning. They were gone.

Sunday on the Beach with Mala

Sunday morning, we loaded into Mala's car and rode down the hill to Playa El Agua parked outside the Macao Bar and Grill. Francesco and Stephania greeted us like we were family. Mala's Sunday routine began with her pulling a lounge chair under the palm trees on the beach in front of the restaurant. In short order, we were drinking piña coladas and eating snacks while reclined on lounge chairs. Due to the fact that she had had enough alcoholic beverages for one trip, my seven-year-old daughter drank a frozen fruit drink with no rum. I tasted the drink to make sure that it was free of alcohol.

The sun shined down unhindered from the cloudless sky until being hindered a little by the palm fronds gently swaying above our heads. A young topless German woman sat in the sand fifty meters from us by the waters edge. She laughed as venders tried to sell her bracelets, snacks, and sunglasses.

Mariana asked Mala, "Do you go topless?"

"No," was Mala's emphatic reply.

"Mariana! Don't ask people questions like that," I said to her.

Mala, however, was far from prudishly attired in her string bikini that was instep with the Margaritaño style of bikinis yet classy in the way that Trini's bikini was classy.

"You seem so relaxed," I said to her. "You must really enjoy these days off."

"Yes. I love my Sundays. This is how you will find me each and every Sunday. I will be right here in front of the Macao doing next to nothing. I brought these paddles along. Later we can play." She showed me two large wooden paddles and a little red rubber ball.

"Sure."

"Can we play now, Daddy?" asked Mariana.

"Sure."

Mariana and I hit the rubber ball back and forth using paddles. Many times Mariana hit the ball astray sometimes landing in the midst of people lounging on the beach nearby. I had to apologize a few times in Spanish and once in German, but, nonetheless, Mariana started becoming accomplished for a seven-year-old.

"Malita, how about a walk?" I asked Mala.

"Sure. But, when we get back let's play the paddle game."

"Sounds like fun. Let's see how many times we can hit it back and forth without letting the ball hit the ground."

During our walk Mala told me that people once broke into her apartment at night to rob her. She said that they beat her badly and she had to stay in the hospital. She told me that ever since then; she has had trouble trusting people. After the walk, we played the beach paddle ball game at the edge of the water. Mariana was not too happy with this, because she felt left out. I told her that it was my turn to play with my friend. She understood that line of reasoning, because, after all, she spent much of the trip playing with Freedom.

At first, I blamed my inefficiency at the game on the sun in my eyes. However, after we switched sides, the topless German girl distracted me. Eventually, I was, nonetheless, able to concentrate on the game. Mala and I played until we were accomplished enough to hit it back and forth 47 times without the ball hitting the ground.

Full Moon Sunset

One more night on Margarita, I thought as we walked east along the promenade at Playa El Agua. At last out penultimate day had arrived. Mariana and I started at the yoga place, and told our good-byes to Ana, who firmly embraced both of us. Since Mariana had the daunting task of saving the world, she hugged her longer. As Ana tightly squeezed her, Mariana looked up at me with pleading eyes that said, "Daddy save me from this crazy woman." Ana's embraces lasted so long that both of us started to get a little uncomfortable.

Then, we were off to our favorite café. Libia-The Coffee-Girl-#2, told us that she would love to see us the following summer. I told her that we would enjoy returning. She then told me not to pay for my last café con leche and Mariana's hot chocolate. She actually said that the drinks were on her. I hope she did not have to pay for them since she probably only earned Bs80,000 a week like the rest of the workers on this island. More warm embraces and kisses on the cheeks. I asked her to visit us once more before we left. She said that she could not.

Past the café, Renoir stood near his uncle, Oscar, who was leaning against the one-meter high rock wall that separated the promenade from the beach. On either side of Oscar sat Barbara and Lucia. They wanted to play with Mariana, but Oscar told them they had to go see their mother in thirty minutes. Always-Drunk-Roberto was nowhere to be found, but Leatherman gave Mariana a free bracelet with sea shells and beads strung through a thin leather strap.

I remembered Freedom digging in the sand for an ankle bracelet. So, I purchased a small ankle bracelet for her. I did not have time to bury it.

"Mañana," I paused, "We're leaving." Then, out of nowhere ADR showed up. He actually hugged me. Unfortunately, this placed him close enough for me to smell his alcohol saturated breath.

"Let's say good-bye to Freedom and Vegen," I told Mariana.

"I wish Freedom could go back to South Carolina with us Daddy"

"I know you do baby, but you have your sister waiting for you at home and many friends."

☼

Vegen stood outside the Internet place talking with the shaved-head Dutchman who owned the place. He held a Polar beer in his left hand. "Freedom is anxious to see you. She's around back with Sara at the bar," Vegen told Mariana and me. Vegen seemed relaxed and was smiling. Maybe everything was coming together for her.

"Can Freedom spend the night tonight? Please, this is our last night!" exclaimed Mariana to Vegen.

"Sure thing, babe.... if it's alright with Dad."

"No problem, but we have an early flight to catch. Can you pick her up at 8:30AM?"

"Sure."

"You know what? Mariana and I have explored nearly every inch of this island, but I have never been to the bar behind this Internet place, and I have not met Sara despite hearing so much about her."

Vegen laughed.

☼

Sunset on a tropical island is nothing short of enchanting. The sun sank low enough in the sky to permit a cool breeze to calm the island, and allow naked eyes to open wide. A full moon was out early enough to greet the falling sun on the other side of the sky. The clouds turned into a watercolor and reflected on top of the ocean. The waves were large, but not churning. This gave the sea an appearance of a melting mirror reflecting the pastel clouds against a sky blue canvas.

Freedom was the only "customer" seated at the bar. A Venezuelan man named Carlos was washing glasses. He greeted me in English. I answered him in Spanish. Then, in short order we knew each other's names, where we were from and all that jazz.

Sara was laughing with Freedom. "You must be Sara," I said to her. She looked up still smiling with the most intensely blue eyes I had ever seen. Her straight brown hair was parted in the middle and in a ponytail. Much of her suntanned skin, including the tops of her breasts, was covered in intricate tattoos. "I'm Luther. This is Mariana."

"You're staying with Mala," she answered in an English accent. "I've heard so much about you from Ana, the yoga teacher and from my friend Mala. Oh yeah, from Rosa too."

"You must be from London?"

"How could you tell? You must be from the United States?"

"How could you tell?"

We talked for 20 minutes. Sara painted murals of Indian deities, made tattoos and worked in a bar on a tropical island. I could talk to someone like that all night, but Mariana and Freedom wanted to swim. I bid Sara good-bye and told her that if I came back to Margarita, I would ask her to put a tattoo on me. She agreed.

I swam with the kids until it became too dark to safely walk back up the hill to Los Helechos. So, I waited outside the Internet place until a taxi took us home. He charged us Bs8000.

"Why so much?" I asked him in Spanish.

"Because it is dark," he answered in Spanish.

☼

That last night after putting Mariana to bed, I went back outside to lay on the hammock and type in my travel journal. To my surprise, Libia was waiting for me outside the apartment. She sat alone smoking a cigarette.

"What a surprise!"

She smashed the cigarette into an ashtray. "I'm on my way to a party and I just wanted to stop by and tell you good-bye. It's not a date or anything."

"How long have you been here?"

"Too long. I should have left already."

With that I noticed a taxi pulling up to the gate. She stood up to give me a good-bye hug and I noticed her lips. They were full, wet, and lipstick red. I don't know what came over me, but I leaned in to kiss her on those lips. She placed her left hand on my chest and told me to stop. Then, she pointed to her cheek and told me that she would not kiss a married man. Then she was gone.

Leaving Margarita

Garcia and Vegen arrived just 30 minutes late. A bus to Porlamar and a bus to the airport would have combined to cost us Bs2600 and two hours. I liked the Bs2600 part, but the two-hour part would put us at the airport too late. So, we opted for a Bs25000 taxi that took just 30 minutes.

Before climbing into the taxi, we said our good-byes to Vegen, Garcia, and Freedom. Vegen gave me a big hug and kissed me twice right on the lips. Garcia told me that he would call me when he arrived in Miami, and we could see each other. Despite the facts that I will probably be 700 miles north of Miami, and I knew there was no way I was driving to Miami to see him; I nodded. Freedom and Mariana were truly sad to be leaving each other. I was happy to have met them, because Freedom made Mariana's trip more memorable.

I told Vegen, "Of all the interesting people I met on this trip, you and Freedom are my favorites." I meant those words. I believe I found a kindred spirit with Vegen, a parent showing the world to her little girl.

The taxi driver's name was Alexi, and he had four children. We talked the entire ride while Mariana slept in the back. He questioned me about the flora and fauna of South Carolina. He asked what the farmers grew. I told him they grew cotton, tobacco, and indigo. I had to use my Spanish-English dictionary to explain "indigo".

"Does it snow?" He asked me.

"Maybe once every ten years where I live," I answered him. He told me that he would love for his family to see snow someday.

After paying for the taxi, and an airport tax of $11, we had just $90 and Bs17000. OK, I thought, it would cost $50 in gas to drive to South Carolina. With $90, we could make it from the Miami International Airport to my car and, then, drive to South Carolina and still have a little money to eat on. No problem. However, I thought wrong. As it turned out, Venezuela had an expensive $50 a person exit tax on top of all the other taxes. In other words, we did not have enough money.

Mariana noticed a concern look on my face. "Daddy, I hate when you make that face."

"Darling, we don't have enough money to pay the departure tax, and get home."

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know yet, but we will be fine. Don't worry."

Next, we boarded the domestic flight from Porlamar to Caracas. Mariana told me that she was hungry. We were given a little sandwich and a small dessert on the plane. We ate every bite.

Once in Caracas, I took the $90 out of my wallet and put it in my back pocket. I felt I had to keep that $90. An airline agent said to me, "Go pay the departure tax and bring your receipt here. Then I can give you a boarding pass with the proper stamps."

"I don't have any money left."

"Go there and tell them that."

I was not worried. This had become an experiment for me. I was thought about the following:, What would happen if all those hands I had previously mentioned reached in my pocket and found no money?

"You have no money?" the man at the tax desk said while looking sternly at me.

"No, sir. What can we do? We just want to get home."

He left his desk and took us to the tax office where a man told me that we have to pay the tax. He then said to me in English, "Go to the INIAC office. They might help you." The INIAC office was useless. They told me the same thing: If I wanted to get on the plane, I must pay the tax. I was running out of options. I knew I could find a moneychanger in Caracas and exchange my $90 for enough Bolivar to cover the $100 tax (if I was careful), but that would leave us with nothing in Miami.

Furthermore, I wasn't finished with my game. How far will they go? Will they ask me to stay in Caracas and get a job? How long would it take me to save $100 making only $30 a week while paying for food and a place to stay? Of course, if push can to shove, I could get the money.

The announcement came on in both English and Spanish: Last call for the flight to Miami.

Something had to give, and something gave. The tax official spoke to me in English, "Where are you from, my friend?"

"South Carolina."

"I have been there to play the soccer," he told me. "How much money you have?"

"Nothing."

"Do you know anyone in Caracas that can give you money?"

"No."

"OK. I help you." The next thing I knew, I had a bunch of official looking papers with stamps and writing all over stapled to my boarding pass.

"Bien Viaje," he said to me as we walked off toward our gate.

Despite the rush, our flight was delayed another hour, and Mariana said, "I know you told me that you can't do anything about it, but I just want to say that I'm hungry."

"You know what, baby? We have an hour before our plane leaves. You should just sleep. That way, you will not know if you're hungry."

"OK. Daddy, but promise me something?"

"What?"

"Promise me that you will wake me up when they give us food on the plane."

"I promise."

Mariana slept until we were airborne and dinner was served. Just as I promised I woke her up, and she ate all her chicken and rice and most of mine.

☼

My Honda was just where I left it back at the campground in Miami; however, my bankcard was nowhere to be seen. My parents wired some money to me, and we drove back to South Carolina.

Zoë met me in the yard with a barrage of kisses. After Karen finished hugging Mariana, I walked over to her. I don't know what came over me, but I went to kiss her. We hadn't really kissed in years. Just as Libia had done, she extended her left hand and placed it on my chest. "No," she said.

February 2006 - Epilogue

Half a year has passed since my summer on Margarita. I still receive e-mails from some of the people I met. Mala sold her restaurant, and opened up her jewelry store. She has plans to open a new restaurant somewhere in Playa El Agua, as well. Vegen finally dumped Garcia. As I type these words, she is living on the island, and working at the same Internet place. Freedom goes to school and is now fluent in Spanish. Libia e-mailed me and told me that she had fallen in love with a Margaritaño. As I type this, she is pregnant with her second child.

Raymond, by the way, served a few months in jail, and is back in business. He now charges a little more for repairs, however. Ted is still in China. He and his wife, Kathleen, are expecting their first child. I still may make it out there someday.

I imagine that somewhere on Margarita, a fedora wearing old man in thick glasses is driving around the island picking up passengers in silence. Always-Drunk-Roberto is probably still drunk and hanging out with Renoir and Leatherman. Garcia is probably still planning to start a tourism company. A poor old man might be trying to sell a few tubes of Super Glue. Some asshole is probably skillfully exchanging 10,000 Bolivar notes for 1,000 Bolivar notes while some unsuspecting foreigner is thinking he or she is getting a good rate. Maybe someone is in Caracas unable to pay the $50 a person exit tax.

As for me, Karen and I will be divorced one day, but, as I type this, we are still technically married. She moved out after I returned, and then moved in again. She told me that she plans to move out as soon as she finds another place. As for me, I spend my time with both of my children, but at night, when they are asleep, lately, I have been sitting at my computer writing a book called Isla Margaritaville. (Jimmy Buffett please don't sue me.)

I feel that the little places of this world are what make the Earth so beautiful. The pyramids of Giza, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, Paris, London, New York and the Great Wall of China are all parts of the general description of our world. They are examples of the big important stuff. However, the details of this world are found in the little places like an island called Margarita. The details are beautiful.

My trip to Margarita Island reminded me that everything in this world is balanced: For every place we go, we leave someplace behind. On my back I have a little tattoo of a Ying-Yang symbol with rays of sun coming from it. Following my trip, I received the tattoo as a reminder of how all the forces of the world whether it be positive and negative or happiness and sadness always balance out yet life is still lovely.

As it turned out, Isla Margarita was not the mythical land of Margaritaville, but it was someplace special with a cast of characters I will never forget and new friends I hope will never forget me. Sitting here at my computer in South Carolina while my kids are sleeping, I add Isla Margarita to my list of special places. The more I travel the longer this list becomes.

So, what is the problem with loving so many places? No matter where I find myself, I am always homesick.

About the Author:

Since publishing his first book in 2004, Hughes has sold or given away dozens of books worldwide and has a loyal cult following. Luther Hughes is currently living somewhere and making up a bunch of lies for his next novel.

E-mail the author at lukesharp22000@yahoo.com, and he'll sell you a book if you want one. You can also find his books as eBooks on the Internet.

Books by Luther Hughes:

2004 – Road Maps on the Dashboard

2005 – Six Nights

2006 – Isla Margaritaville

2007 – Hitchhiker's Guide to Iceland

2010 – Buddhist Coffee House

2015 – The Time Traveler's Guide to Turkey

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E-mail me what you think of this book to waccamawpress@gmail.com

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