I didn´t get my continental breakfast!

So I recently returned to Carorita from a little jaunt to the coast. That’s right, a jaunt. Anyhow, maybe little is the wrong adjective to use, as I just realized that I rode for varying lengths of time on 19 different public transportation vehicles, 1 private truck, and a boat. Basically I made a big loop that went along a good portion of the eastern/northern coast. I visited both places that I had wanted to see before I leave, Parque Nacional Morrocoy and Los Medanos de Coro. Morrocoy is a national park along the coast that includes a bunch of cays that you can spend the day on. It’s very pretty and supposedly there is decent snorkeling and diving, although I think I was on the wrong cay. Los Medanos (the dunes) are right outside the town of Coro on the neck of the odd looking peninsula on Venezuela´s northern coast. It’s a miniature desert; nothing but giant 75 foot sand dunes as far as you can see. I've never visited the Sahara, but I did see the movie (and Flight of the Phoenix), so I feel qualified to say that being in the medanos probably feels like being in the Sahara. So I saw what I wanted to see and in that regard the trip was a success.

You know how they say there are two sides to every story? Well here is the other side to this one. I divulge this tale knowing full well that if anyone actually reads this then I will be made fun of probably for forever. But I'm in a generous mood and am willing to sacrifice my pride for the sake of humor. Ok, here goes.

On the last bus ride of the first day of my trip I was sitting behind a guy who seemed to me like a foreigner. I mean, he had a blonde euro faux-hawk haircut and a big backpack. Plus, I’d noticed him looking at me earlier and thought I’d detected one of those nods you give other foreigners when you’re traveling. So we began to chat but it turns out he is Venezuelan after all and lives in the town to which I am headed. (Side note: I guess that there are 9 ± 8 Americans in Venezuela) I should have known something was up when I spotted the diamond stud in the side of his nose…red flag 1. Anyways, the bus actually only passes by the turn to the town, so this guy Jeshua (who will be hereto after referred to as Whaley in an act of long overdue blog vengeance), myself, and several other people end up waiting together to catch a ride the rest of the way. Even though I had left my house at 6:30 in the morning, it was getting dark at this time. Ok, so as we’re waiting, Whaley offers for me to stay at his house, I’ll call that red flag 2. I'm not a complete moron, so I told him thanks but no thanks. After a while, a truck stops and picks us up and heads towards town. After it stops and lets us off Whaley offers to lead me to a phone so I can call a posada. When I describe my whereabouts to the guy who answers the phone at the posada (which was full anyway), he tells me that I am in fact nowhere close….turns out I'm not even really in the town. I was under the impression that Whaley lives in town, most likely because that is what he had told me. But really he lives in a neighborhood a mile or two outside of the town itself…the part of town with things like hotels and posadas. It reminds of that part in The Wedding Singer….thing’s that could have been brought to my attention yesterday!

So by now it’s completely dark outside and I wouldn’t know how to get to a posada even if I had one to get to. At the same time, there’s this shirtless (red flag 3, he took off his shirt on the pretense of the warm weather) stranger Whaley waiting outside who has offered to let me stay at his place. Obviously this wasn’t an ideal situation, but I was pretty much out of options. So it turns out I am a complete moron after all….Ok, thanks for the offer weirdo I’ll stay at your place. So on the short walk between the phone place and his house, he asks me if I have any kids or a girlfriend. My gaydar was getting a pretty strong signal so I lied and said I have two girlfriends. I repeated the question to him and was met with the reply, ¨No, yo soy gay¨. At this point I deem that the look I caught him giving me in the bus was in fact red flag 1, I just hadn’t realized it. I like to think of myself as pretty open-minded, I mean I'm not homophobic or anything. In fact somebody’s sexual orientation really is of no concern to me in almost all circumstances….unfortunately for me, spending the night in a gay stranger’s house is an exception.

Well, Whaley lives with his 50 year old godfather Franco whose heterosexuality was confirmed when I spotted the nudie calendar in the bathroom, which I was quite relieved to see. Apparently the weather was still a bit warm for Whaley´s liking, because when I come out of the bathroom he has taken off his jeans in the middle of the den and is standing there in nothing but some tiny waaay-too-tight sky blue skivvies. Who does that!? So to recap so far, I've somehow ended up in the den of a gay nearly naked stranger’s house in Venezuela. ¿How did this happen?

Well, Franco and Whaley gave me some (what else?) arepas for dinner, gave me some advice about the beaches, and the three of us ended up talking politics for a couple of hours. One weird moment (ok, the whole thing was weird, but this was especially creepy) was when Whaley handed me a magazine that I think featured some clothes that he had designed. I looked at it for about 2 seconds before I saw, and you can’t make this up, a cartoon of Bart doing Millhouse. Turns out it was a magazine about being gay. Soon after, he gave me a bottle of coca oil and recommended that I rub myself down with it for protection from mosquitoes. Sometimes in a different country it’s hard to distinguish odd behavior from cultural differences….this was not one of those times. That guy was freaking weird.

So after a while I went into the room they had given me to go to sleep. To make up for Whaley’s lack of appropriate clothing, I slept fully clothed. To borrow a quote from that blog that I just read courtesy of the real Whaley, I figured pants were a ¨slightly better deterrent against ass rapery¨ (sorry to be uncouth, but this was a genuine concern of mine at the time). At about 3 a.m. I woke up because I heard a noise. It was the noise of a mattress being dropped onto the ground next to the bed. It was Whaley and in that moment I was sincerely frightened that he was in the same room as me. It was storming outside, and Whaley told me a tale about how his room gets flooded when it rains so he came to sleep on the floor in my room. Somehow in my sleep-shrouded mind this made a bit of sense at the time, although now I realize that this is obviously a ridiculous excuse. I mean, does it fill with 3 feet of water, enough to get you wet on top of the bed? What about one of the other rooms in the house? You’re telling me the only dry spot is the one closest to me?

I was pretty freaked out, and certainly in no mood for sleep. So at about 5:30, as soon as I could see light in the sky, I got my stuff, wrote a lame note, snuck out of the house, and eventually found the safety of a real town. Gracias a Dios, everything turned out fine.

It’s not really a great story to have in the old repertoire. I mean, if I'm ever playing a game of Never Have I Ever, and somebody says ¨never have I ever pillow talked to a nearly naked oiled up flamboyantly gay guy¨, I will be obligated to take a drink. You never know, it could happen.

Ok, that’s enough for now. I could write more, but you readers probably have something better to do. I’ll keep my blog points for a later entry. Chau.