This is voice-to-text transcription and may contain misleading spelling errors.
Photos are later digital files placed here for decoration unless otherwise noted.
Making a telephone call. First, there is a variety of phones. Some take coins or tickets of some kind, some take a special telephone card. Nobody uses them, or can show you how to use them. The telephone numbers are in a variety of formats with 5, 6, 7, or 8 digits being the most common. Telephone books, if found, are no help, as they are listed alphabetically under colloquialisms. Example, to find Banco Union, you look under C, E, or H because it is on Calle Humboldt. Edificio Banco Union. Got it? Information is impossible, nobody speaks English. There is a quirk although nobody can show you how to use the phone, they are all willing to half-understand what you want, call a number they can’t explain who it is, talk up a storm in Spanish then hang up without letting you talk directly to the party. Then half-explain what was said and all charged to your Visa. Have you ever played "telephone"?
The electronic translators (gadgets) don’t help as most meaningful English phrases are two words and they only translate one at a time. Example post office, subway station, swimming pool, and these people are functionally incapable of linking two words into a phrase. You would have to show the Spanish speaker the first word, then the second word. "Swimming" + "pool" will get you into a lottery ticket booth near a pet store. "Subway" + "station" gets you into a sandwich shop with a with valet parking and so on. Compound words like "notebook" are even worse.
Anyway it’s Saturday November 11 or 12 and I can’t find a bank with Interac and the day has been lost trying to call my bank. Monday I’m going to call the main office of CANTV and try 1-800-CALL-ATT. This will be fun I know it
[Author’s note 2025: Now don’t map out these dates too closely, because I don’t really have a system while in South America. That’s a result of being unable to predict a fixed time and place where you could get anything done on a given day. The local economy is not geared toward any fixed schedule. CANTV is the local telecom company.]
This is one of the tunnels on the road to the beach. Caracas is some miles inland in a mountain valley. tThose buildings covering the hill are slums locally known as Ranchitos.
