How learning a little Spanish can be priceless for South American travels
Sunday, 8th November 2009
Way back in 1997 when people still felt positively about Tony Blair and New Labour, and my Spanish was rather more basic than it is now I found myself in Venezuela.
I had done GCSE Spanish a few years previously but had never spoken it in a Spanish speaking country and arrived in the country in a dodgy port called Guiria on a hot sticky night. It was a dirty city full of stray dogs, rats running across the port piles of garbage, groups of bare-chested men hanging around smoking unfiltered cigarettes, scantily clad girls hanging around on street corners and the like. This was my first taste of Latin America and it was midnight. I’d just got off a cargo boat from Trinidad and my travelling companions and I were the only gringos in town. We made our way to the recommended hostel from Lonely Planet only to find a boarded up graffitied shell.
Clearly we could not sleep there and were beginning to attract attention. We saw another hotel a block on. The front door was closed but the lights were on so we knocked and a friendly moustached man answered. He didn’t speak any English and I was the only one of our group who had even taken a Spanish lesson. Out of necessity my brain kicked into gear and I started remembering things. It was a little laboured at first but I managed to get us stiflingly hot and very basic rooms. I managed to ask about a shower and was taken to an outside courtyard and directed to an area partitioned off by a green screen made of blankets to protect my modesty, behind which was a bucket of cold water and a jug. This was the shower! I was in another world and I loved it!
Even though I could only remember just a few phrases at first, the friendly hotelier was keen to know more about us and once we’d all taken “showers” he re-opened the bar for us and sat down to “chat”. I don’t know what we talked about or even whether he understood me but it felt fantastic to have a beer a friendly local face after our slightly shocking introduction to Latin America. Somehow, I think through use of a carefully drawn map, he even managed to point us in the right direction the next day to change travellers cheques, get some snacks and find the bus to Caracas. Just goes to show that even with a little language, if you need to, you can get a lot done!
A couple of weeks later, and light years later with my Spanish (or so I thought) I found myself in the backpacker town of Merida. I’d been travelling Venezuela and my Spanish had improved! I’d just got back from my first big trek in the Andes, was on a high from conquering Pan de Azucar (Sugar Loaf) mountain and headed out for beers. We found ourselves in what seemed to us like a very cool place called Birosca full of trendy young Venezuelan students, backpackers, and, of course, beautiful women – Venezuela has won more Miss World’s than any other nation. As the voice of Lenny Kravitz blared out through the soundsystem and the place started to get moving a found I was the subject of some very welcome attention from a señorita of around my own age. Our eyes met, we exchanged smiles and we danced (in as much as it is possible to dance to Lenny) in front of each other as he asked, as did we, are you gonna go my way?
Would she? I certainly hoped so and as Lenny faded out she asked my name. Hers was Carmen and she was a student. So far so good, I was a mochillero – backpacker, one of the new words I’d learnt on the trip and all seemed to be going well. The beat quickened as The Prodigy’s “Breathe” followed Lenny and, as this was a pretty new song at the time, people began to sit down unfamiliar with these crazy boys from Essex. “Eres casado?” she said. “Ah” I thought, she is asking me if I am tired so we can sit down, have a beer and talk more privately – yes! I said.
No sooner had a said this, she was gone! She had not asked me if was “cansado” (tired) as I thought but “casado” (married). I figured this out after about 20 minutes but by then she was at the bar with a Polar beer in one hand and with the other wrapped around the neck of a burly Australian.
Tags: spanish, spain, language, course, venezuela, merida, south america, spanishindependent
Posted by Alex under Experience Cultures,
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