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Leaning on the rail of the top deck with the sun setting in the frothy wake off the stern of the small ferry, the Prowler, I realized I was saying goodbye not just to Venezuela but to South America at large. I had traveled by wheezing decrepit AC-less bus under the cover of darkness - undoubtedly with Chavez's goons closing in on me for subversive writing and speaking out against that president's socialist agenda - from Puerto La Cruz to Guiria, the eastern-most point of Venezuela's coast accessible by road. Arriving in the edgy grimy port city just before dawn, I was greeted not by a well-lit bus terminal but by a dark trash-lined street corner and a mangy stray dog. An unkempt scraggly-bearded man with no shoes and a torn shirt who claimed to work for the bus companies led me to a nearby plaza adjacent to the Trinidad ferry office where a woman was busy selling coffee on the sidewalk from two large thermoses to bleary-eyed Venezuelans heading to work on the off-shore oil rigs and large sand-hauling construction vehicles. I dozed on the bench among my blue-collar companions until the sun rose and it was safer to walk the streets with my bulging pack on my back. I purchased my ferry ticket and after a few hours wait - complete with my last solemn empanada and fresh juice breakfast - I found myself clambering aboard the Prowler. Today, now officially in the Caribbean, I find myself in a completely different world, despite the minuscule distance - just a quick hop across the straits and through the Boca del Serpiente and Boca del Dragon - between Venezuela and Trinidad. I pick up a newspaper - the Guardian - on my way to breakfast, pleasantly surprised and relieved to see the printed English word that won't be a continual exercise in translation, but am shocked by the content of the front page: a photo of Trinidad's president shaking hands with a charmingly smiling Hugo Chavez, accompanied by an article on the unification of the two countries' efforts to take advantage of offshore oil and gas reserves. Slowly munching my breakfast of bake and shark and cocoa, I begin to think that maybe these two worlds aren't so different after all...
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