Venezuela '24 Part 3: The journey is the destination

Finally! David, Kristin, and Katharina land. "Luca, pick you up," David tells us on the phone.
So the beaming man picks us up and takes us to the others. They're already standing at the meeting point with 11 bags and several small laptop boxes, where our bus picks us up.



After only a few hours of waiting - exceptionally little for Venezuelan standards - we set off.
There are only a few other people riding with us, so we have room to close our eyes now and then. Although I almost don't want to. "The journey is the destination"—so true.
I look out the window, see the ever-changing vegetation, people living in conditions completely different from ours, fresh fruit on the trees, the sea. In front of me, Marleen is handing out handmade chocolate. It must now be eaten before it melts. ;-)

Marleen, Luca, and Goyo will be with us almost continuously over the next few weeks, supporting us daily, hosting us, and making us laugh heartily. It's a tremendous gift to be able to spend so much time with these wonderful people. They are the precious gems who repeatedly travel to Macuro, harvest the cacao there together with the villagers, monitor the fermentation, and ultimately transport it to Caracas to produce their chocolate and, in the future, Maya Munay's cacao mass.

On the bus, we play cards, snack on the first fruits, and admire the sunset. We're a little late, but the bus driver tries to compensate for this with great enthusiasm and a bit of anxiety. To be on the safe side, he turns off his lights on the curves where he drives in the middle to avoid losing too much time, so he can see if there's any oncoming traffic. It sounds a bit suicidal, but it proved to be a successful tactic.

Since we weren't yet entirely familiar with the situation, we didn't anticipate that there would be no food or drink available after around 6 p.m. This led to the first water shortage. The non-vegetarians were lucky to find a lone hot dog vendor standing in the middle of the street in the middle of the night.

The fact that we didn't arrive until 3 a.m. meant that we no longer needed accommodation, but instead waited at the ferry for sunrise and the departure of our ferry. As it turned out, no other ferry crossing would be as relaxing.



Tired but content, we enjoy the first rays of sunshine of the day.
The ferry (more like a large speedboat) takes us, many polishers and residents, a few liters of beer, hundreds of kilos of corn flour, chips and everything else we need to live with limited infrastructure, to Macuro.

The ferry only runs on Tuesdays and Fridays. One outbound and one return.
Tickets are very limited, but it is the only way to purchase.
Everyday items and utensils, as well as vitamins during the dry season. During our stay, the only fruits were sour but delicious green mangoes and a handful of the last remaining mini guavas.
Everything else comes from the mainland. Phew, difficult. I prefer to eat only fruit in these temperatures, but okay – then we'll just eat the all-time favorites: cacao pods and coconuts :)

We enter the “harbor” of Macuro.
A small jetty, lots of palm trees, dogs, children, and excited people happily welcoming their new refrigerators, crates of beer, homemade ice cream, and us.

You can read about our first impressions of Macuro, where and how we stayed and what our first cocoa was like in the next post.