Vacation Report

What I did last summer spring

by Max V.

My vacation started on Friday in Port-au-prince. I was very excited because it was my first vacation in a long time. I took a big airplane to Miami all alone. It was a little scary, especially the part about drinks costing five dollars, but it was okay because a nice lady had sold me a few at the airport. I got to the airport in Miami and had to walk a lot to go to the place where they look at your passport. That airport is stupid.

Then I got very excited in the taxi because it was going to see my cousins! Yeah! Guillaume and Thomas were there and they told me about how they had been in Key West and met some nice people and were very hangover or something. They are very funny.

So then we went to walk in this place called South Miami Beach. It is like a city on a beach! The women wear very small clothes and they have small noses and the men look very hard at their t-shirts, even when there is no funny picture. And there are many stores and restaurants and loud music places and they are all open at night! Me and my cousins went to a place called the Nikki Beach Club. It was very cool! They had beds on the beach! And people were drinking on them! And some of the beds had curtains around them so people could sleep in them when they are tired. It’s a good idea. But no ladies went to sit on our bed, so we left.

The next day we went to the beach and I swam in the water! The people on the beach wore funny things. Then we watched the French Cup Final and my team won! Yeah! Guillaume was sad because his team lost but it is always like that when Marseille plays.

Then we ate dinner and then we went to a very loud place called Mansion. We had to wait a long time at the door and someone said it was because there were no girls with us, but then I gave the man at the door some money and me and my cousins got in. It was very nice inside. There were girls drinking and dancing and a man was making music and the women that were drinking started dancing on the tables and they were very silly! Thomas bought me a Red Bull and Vodka and it tasted like bubblegum and me and my cousins started dancing and then I don’t remember things so good.

In the morning I was worried because I felt a little sick in the stomach and the head, but my cousins said it was normal and that we needed to go eat. So we went to Little Havana and we ate at a big restaurant called Versailles. It is the only picture I took on this trip because the music places in South Beach they do not like cameras. That is Thomas on the left and Guillaume on the right.

We were tired that night but we still went outside. There was a place called the Raleigh Hotel and people told us there was a pool party! But no one was swimming in the pool. Weird! The women looked like the ones in mom’s magazines and they were very tall and thin and they had little dogs with them. And the men spoke on their phone a lot and they had a lot of goo in their hair and they were shorter than the women. One of them was also making music at a table. Everywhere in South Miami Beach there is a man making music at a table! This time my cousins bought me a drink called a Mojito that kinda tasted like lemonade. And then we went to other places. At one there were people playing pool and there was one where women dance on your seat and there was one where I forget what happened.

The next day I was very sad because Guillaume and Thomas had to leave and I was all alone in Miami. But I bought a very cool phone that is also a camera so that the next time I go into a loud music place I can take pictures!

Then I had to go to the airport and take two airplanes to see my friends in California. The people at the airport gave me a car with no roof and when I drove it it was like the movies! Then I was very happy because I saw Jude and Jason and my godson Mariano and he is very cute and the next day Aunt Jill arrived and it was like being in Washington!

On TV they always show California when it is sunny, but that is not true! Orange County is cold and grey like the city where Mary Poppins lives. So I did not drive my car very much even though Mariano liked it very much and told me that it was “a rope whup”.

We went to a lot of very good restaurants and ate a lot. We also went to the beach, but the water was very cold. Then we went on an island and we took a boat! But it was even better the next day because we all went to Disneyland! Yeah!!!

It was the first time at Disneyland for Jude and Mariano and we were all very excited. We went on the Jungle Cruise and the Tiki Room and Haunted Mansion and the Pirates of the Caribbean and then we tried to find a place where they sold mojitos but there was only one and there were too many people and we were all very sad, except for Mariano. But then we went on Dumbo and It’s A Small World After All and Indiana Jones and we saw the parade and we tried to take a picture of Mariano with Mickey but Mickey left and we tried to run after him but he is very fast.

That day made everyone very tired and so stayed at the house a lot after that, except for we went outside to a shopping mall where there was a Ferris Wheel and a restaurant that a very big soda fountain and I had one called a Murphy’s I

rish Red and it came in a glass that was very tall and it was very good. Oh, and we also went to a restaurant called Riptide that had a lot of food and you could eat as much as you want! And

there was people with drums and dancers that looked like Lilo and a man came to our table and gave us fizzy grape juice all the time. Yeah!

But then I was sad because I had to go back home and it was a very long way and I did not sleep very much on the airplanes and I went from the airport to a business meeting and I was very tired.

The end.

p.s.: Thanks to Jude and Jason for the hospitality!

p.p.s: In case you were wondering, Jason won last entry’s contest and the bottle of rum for his PauP mobile entry (though his second one was perhaps even better). Thanks to all those who tried and better luck next time.

p.p.p.s.: How ‘bout another contest. Winner this time gets a phone call from Bonnaroo next month. Here’s the deal: Find a caption for what I am thinking in the picture to the right taken at Disneyland. Funniest one wins.

Guyanarama

To be honest, I didn’t know much at all about the country I was about to visit. Whereas Haiti is known the world over for its independence movement, voodoo and self-governance challenges, Guyana seems to be exclusively notorious for a bunch of American nutjobs answering the ultimate last call. The Jonestown tragedy, passages in Naipaul’s The Middle Passage and the fact that the local inhabitants were improbably in need of my assistance were about the only ways the country had made itself known to me at the time of my landing. Truth be told, I couldn’t recall the last time I visited a country without having first read enough guidebooks to tell locals where to find ½ price wings on a Thursday.

I didn’t even realize until halfway across the Caribbean Sea that my first step on Guyanese soil were going to complete my introduction to the world’s inhabited continents (no plans to visit Antarctica unless penguins start sharing needles). The thing is that Guyana, despite its location convenient to the Amazon and an egomaniacal military presidente, is very much a Caribbean country; albeit one in which jaguars occasionally snack on pets.

To get to the G-spot (Guyana is sorely lacking in nicknames), I had to fly from Miami to Port-of-Spain and then catch a connection to the capital, Georgetown. My neighbor on the first leg of the journey was a middle-aged Indian man from Trinidad who managed to fit a life time of stories into the lulls of a three-hour flight. I heard about the betrayal of his secretary, who he treated like a daughter but who ended up stealing from him; about the time he and his brother were robbed at gunpoint in their auto-part store, how the brother found the thief living in the streets years later and how the former victim and his friends beat the man half to death; about the problem is aging best friend is having trying to satisfy his wife and three young mistresses – picaresque stories right out of Pagnol, Saki or Chaucer.

Landing in Georgetown at night, I was not able to ascertain very much about the place other than it seemed much more developed than Haiti (what with their paved roads and streetlights), very much into cricket (the World Cup was very much in full swing during my visit) and noticeably British in heritage (either that or our cabbie was severely dyslexic).

As you can see from the pictures, daylight brings out more of the city’s peculiar character. It echoes off the white-painted wood which forms the exterior of pretty much every building in town, feeds the Wimbledon-worthy grass that covers the unpaved ground and urges the women to carry colorful parasols as they walk the neat, suburban, city blocks. Thanks to Naipaul, I did know to expect a multicultural society made up almost equally of Indians, Africans and descendants of mixed marriages. Add to that the Brazilian, Chinese, Amerindian and European minorities and you have a country populated by representatives from nearly every human civilization. This variety is duly reflected in Guyanese menus, which tend to run about seven pages on average. Somehow, the concept of fusion cooking seems to have escaped the locals, and so instead of mixing up the cuisines, places tend to offer tandoori alongside feijoada, won-ton soup and fish&chips.

I think I’ll skip ahead to more straightforward travel stories now, so you’ll just have to picture the setting with what I’ve written above (remember: cricket. green & white color scheme, paved roads “ethnics” with parasols, long menus). Also really excellent baked goods. And really low prices (‘went to a bar, ordered a round [mixed and drinks and beer] for six people and paid less than $5).

Thanks to a regional meeting in Miami (see Feb. blog entry) I had already met some of my colleagues down there, one of whom was a Franco-American James Madison grad named Thibaut (No Thea, he doesn’t know Xavier – I asked). He was in charge of planning the activities and boy did he come through. By far the most memorable experience of my two weeks there was the visit to a town called Bartica, a mining community located three hours down river from Georgetown. We were scheduled to pay the local hospital a visit on a Monday and Thibaut made the arrangements for our little group to spend the whole weekend there.

To get to Bartica, one has to board a slightly decaying wooden 15-foot river boat outfitted with a brand-new 200-hp engine and travel down a river measuring twenty miles across. It is one bad-ass ride. The deeper you travel upriver, the more the scenery makes you feel like an extra in the “Heart of Darkness” movie that Hollywood has conspicuously failed to make (Apocalypse Now notwithstanding), complete with rusting river steamers run aground on the mangrove shores. Less ominous, stately homes also dotted the shore, like the one pictured here that belongs to Guyanese singing sensation Eddie Grant (Electric Avenue, I Don’t Want to Dance). When we finally arrived in town, a smaller, less well-kept version of the capital, our party set to work gathering victuals to bring to the house that Thibaut had rented for us on the outskirt of town. Once enough rum had been secured, we trekked into the vegetation (default tropical, between forest and jungle) to reach our home. Again, the pictures will showcase this place far better than this overwrought prose. In short, it rocked (like Made Out of Babies-rocked, not Weezer-we’re-too-geek-cool-to-move-about-onstage-rocked). Its two-level veranda, private pier and cold swimming pool almost redeemed colonialism as a valid socio-economic system. We spent two days eating massive meals, drinking rum and playing cards in what was one of the best weekends in memory. It was quiet there too, as the house dog really had been eaten by a Jaguar the week prior.

Back in Georgetown, we tried our best to top that stay. And so I went to a fair (I kicked ass at bumper cars), joined a pub trivia team (it turns out sharks do not blink), and played tennis on the US Ambassador’s private court. But since I did not take my camera to these excursions and because I’m getting tired of writing, I won’t go into these events.

To wrap up: I can’t wait to get back to the O.G. in October and strongly urge you all to consider Guyana as a tourism destination (I didn’t even get to see Kaieteur Falls – check ‘em out on Google).

See you soon (if you live in South Florida or California),

Max

p.s.: To encourage you all to leave comments, I’ll have a contest. I need your help to find a nickname for my car. It’s an old, thoroughly rusted blue Isuzu Rodeo. I’m calling it “the ‘zu” but that’s pretty weak. The winner gets a bottle of Barbancourt Rum next time I see him/her.