Last night we all got spectacularly, embarrassingly drunk. It started early in the evening with Shay and Tyler sitting at the pool-side bar drinking flaming concoctions while ogling the tele-novela stars who are also occupying the hotel. The women are tall, thin, and aloof. The guys are handsome but not rugged. They all look like Americanos. (Tele-novelas are like American soap operas, except that they have a fixed plot. When the plot ends, so does the series.)

Later that evening Jesus showed up and we went out to a place in Puerto Cabello. It was a slow night, though, and after one drink (a beer and tequila for me) we headed back to the hotel, where the bar was definitely hopping. A keyboard player sang in Spanish, and he would occasionally be joined by a handsome woman in a very red dress. (“She looks like Xena!” said Shay.) The tele-novela stars were eating in the restaurant, and we sat in the bar and drank noisily.

We all had two or three additional drinks at the hotel. Jesus was looking quietly amused, Tyler and Jeanne were definitely feeling loosened up, and Shay was even louder and pinker than usual. I can’t say how I was acting, but I was beyond a doubt drunk. I get drunk on two drinks, and I’d had (roughly) 5. At the end of the night, I could barely get to my room.

Luckily I had the foresight to tell Jesus to not show up until 10am. My hangover-avoidance technique is to keep a bottle of water next to the bed, sleep as late as possible, and to drink as much water as possible. It worked… by 9:30am I was able to get out of bed feeling only slightly woozy.

This morning at approximately noon we were sitting in Jesus’s office and he was showing us photos of a man in Ecuador who had been eaten by a snake. They were really disgusting. Suddenly he pulled a pair of binoculars out of his desk and began staring intently out at the horizon. After a few minutes he said “That’s your boat.” A large orange ship was coming towards us, loaded with containers. We got all excited as it grew larger and slowly passed by on its way to the port. It had arrived 7 hours early.

The ship will be unloaded early in the morning, and we’re hoping that our vans will be unpacked tomorrow. I’ll send another dispatch when I know for certain.

Ron