Sunday, February 24, 2008

Isla Margarita

After Caracas we took a little flight over to Isla Margarita. My first time on a Caribbean Island. Had some issues with the flight again as it took off a couple hours late. This apparently is pretty common business for Aeropostale Airlines as literally every local person we talked to had nothing but bad things to say about the airline. Our cab driver went so far as to call them an embarrassment to the country.

Mostly just took it easy while we were there. I suppose that is what one does in the Caribbean. Much like in Cartagena, some of the beaches were full of locals trying to sell things. Hard to get any peace with those people around. At one point a fat local woman started to rub my back in an attempt to get me to pay her for a massage; luckily I know how to get rid of these people...I told her I didn't have a cent in my pockets and she ran off like I'd tried to set her on fire or something. Went out into the the water and got sucked pretty far out into the ocean by the undertow...could've been dangerous for a poor swimmer but I managed. Not going to see lifeguards or warning signs down here.

On our last day we rented a car and drove over to Yaque Beach on the south part of the island. It's a famous wind and kite surfing beach. The kite surfing looked pretty cool...apparently you can learn for pretty cheap there. They were having a competition so we got to see quite a few practitioners. Lots of Europeans about.

When we checked out of the hotel we took a look at the bill and questioned what the $1 "KIDS" charge was. We were informed it was a 'voluntary' donation to a charity for kids that's automatically added to the bill. I told them to remove it and the guy looked at me like I was crazy. I guess maybe I'm hard-hearted...or maybe it's just that I don't like people sneaking charges onto my bill to fund organizations that I know nothing about....

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