“He’s got a gun!” Sid’s cry echoes into the night.
Time seems to slow; the air becomes thick, immobilising my limbs, numbing my mind.
I want to run, but my legs do not move. I want to work out a way out of this situation, but my brain refuses to function.
Then, as the gun lowers towards my chest, I realise one thing: there is no way out of it.
CARACAS,
VENEZUELA
23:00 local time
We all have those days when we feel the world is out to get us, right? When we can’t seem to do anything right? When everything that can go wrong does go wrong?
Today was one of those days. Only it wasn’t just the equivalent of a bad hair day. It was more akin to an instalment of a pretty crappy 90s-era horror film series.
I spent many of my younger years travelling with my dad. We used to joke about some of the near misses we had.
Days after taking a Cessna over the Nazca lines, one of the planes there tragically crashed. Days after completing the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, parts of the path were washed away in torrential flooding. As we flew from Chile to New Zealand, an earthquake struck behind us, destroying large parts of Santiago.
Tidal waves, typhoons, and even social upheaval seemed to dog our every step, leaving a trail of destruction in our wake. I even joked once that I felt like we were characters in a Final Destination movie, cheating Death but knowing that, one day, Death would catch up with us.
Of course, my dad – a professor of archaeology at Oxford University – had no time or knowledge of such mindless popular culture. Or so he claimed. (I did catch him watching Eurotrash on Channel 4 late one Friday night).
I digress.
My point is that today, I felt like Death was cashing in my IOU.
THE FIRST STRIKE
My spell of almost-bad luck started late yesterday afternoon. After the daily rainstorm had passed, Sid and I headed out for a drink. The cocktail we bought (each, I might add) was the most gigantic fishbowl full of tequila, rum, a touch of fruit juice and slushed ice you’ve ever seen. They were topped off with two bottles of Corona upended in them like an alcoholic’s birthday cake candles.
“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad to me,” I hear you say.
It wasn’t. Beyond possible alcohol poisoning, I guess.
Until we got the bill.
$104 for two drinks.
One hundred. And four dollars. For two drinks.
Luckily Sid and I were so drunk that we couldn’t help but see the funny side. However, my wallet was aching this morning.
Okay, it’s not worthy of Final Destination 87 or whatever sequel they’re up to now (although, arguably, it’s a more fleshed-out plot). But bear with me; I’m painting a picture here.
THE SECOND STRIKE
So, there we were, early evening on our last night in Miami, drunker after a single pre-dinner drink than if we’d been on an all-night bender. And, like extras from Miami Vice, we hit the streets, prowling the sidewalk (sorry, can’t do it) pavement in search of somewhere to eat.
Then thud.
I turned at a noise I had become familiar with in our brief time in Miami. The thud of coconuts falling from their high boughs.
The thud is usually followed by a crash.
Thud. Crash.
Thud. Crash.
This was followed by a cry.
The poor man who had been walking three feet behind me was on the floor, the offending coconut next to him.
The ambulance arrived ten minutes later.
Sid and I had a lovely meal, googling the statistics of getting hit by a coconut. They’re pretty slim.
THE THIRD STRIKE
With sore heads, we awoke this morning, had breakfast with lggy Osborne (yes, Sid named our iguana breakfast guest), and then checked out of the hotel. However, we took advantage of their luggage storage policy and headed to the beach to kill a few hours and soak up the last of the Florida sunshine.
And it really was the last of it.
Not long after settling in, the sky darkened. And I mean really darkened. Like a storm front moving into Middle Earth to ‘cover all the lands in a second darkness,’ as Gandalf so eloquently put it.
With the roiling mass of dark clouds came rolling claps of thunder and forks of lightning, accompanied by rain so heavy that it soaked us in seconds and wind that tried to strip us to our birthday suits.
Over the last couple of days, we have grown accustomed to the afternoon storms, which generally last an hour or so.
This was something else.
With no choice, we returned to the hotel. We spent the rest of the long morning and early afternoon sitting in the cramped lobby, watching the rain splash into the deserted pool.
Even Iggy had vanished.
When, at last, it was time to head to the airport, we retrieved our bags from behind reception, where the receptionist serenaded us with a pained, elongated whistle.
“You flying out today?” she laughed. “Good luck. The weather service is talking about upgrading this storm to a Cat 1.”
A Cat 1 is a hurricane. The lowest level hurricane, but a hurricane no less.
Great.
A quick check online suggested our flight was still scheduled to depart on time, so we grabbed a cab and headed off. Sure enough, the wind and rain hammering the cab seemed pretty Day After Tomorrow-ish. But, while our driver was a lot less cheerful than the lady who had brought us into the city a couple of days ago, he did wave the storm off as, and I quote- “Nothing to worry about.”
We were not convinced.
But, despite a bit of a hairy take-off, we left only thirty minutes behind schedule. The pilots deftly manoeuvred us above the storm with only a few bumps. The cabin crew were decidedly nervous, but they turned the seat belt sign off thirty minutes after leaving Miami, and the flight proceeded much like any other.
When our phones picked up reception on landing in Caracas four hours later, however, breaking news notifications pinged like crazy. The unexpected storm had been upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane. All flights had been halted after a plane that could only have been one or two behind ours careened off the runway during take-off. Luckily no major injuries were reported, but a lot of drama and chaos and another near miss for us.
But we had made it to Caracas. What more could happen?
THE FOURTH STRIKE
It was just after 10 pm when we fought through immigration and baggage, then out into the Venezuelan night to meet our UNESCO-arranged transfer.
Only they weren’t there.
Whatever the reason for the mix-up, neither of us cared all that much. I’ve spent so long travelling with my father through some of the world’s more exotic lands that getting from the airport to our pre-booked hotel was hardly daunting. And Sid has visited her dad and brother in Mumbai enough times to be equally unfazed by the cacophony of traffic around us.
Tired and cranky, we attempted to negotiate a fare to the Hotel Majestic with a Venezuelan taxi driver. The Venezuelan Bolivare is a closed currency in massive decline. So, our UNESCO Pre-Expedition Info Pack had advised us to use US dollars for the limited time we are in the country’s capital. I can’t see us needing much cash in the jungle, after all. Nevertheless, $10.00 seemed excessive for the short trip into the city, but three drivers gave us the same story- they couldn’t break a $10 note.
Caring more about getting our heads on a pillow than a few extra quid in our pockets, we accepted the third driver’s deal, chucked our rucksacks in the boot and hopped in.
But something was wrong.
Perhaps it was our misplaced self-assurance at our seasoned traveller credentials.
Perhaps it was the knowledge that a black man and an Indian woman aren’t the typical White European targets of ‘tourist crime’ in a place like Venezuela.
Perhaps it was the previous night’s giant cocktails still in our systems.
Whatever it was, it took us far too long to realise something was up.
We should have noticed that our taxicab wasn’t one of the city’s official while ones, and certainly not one of the hotel districts’ black ones. But, hey, it was dark.
What started to ring the alarm bells in my head was how the driver spent a lot of time on his phone. My Spanish is good enough to know that he was updating someone about our journey.
We headed away from the Simon Bolivar International Airport, south down the Autopista Caracas, towards the main sprawl of the city.
Then, sure enough, we pulled off the main road into a seething labyrinth of motorbike-infested streets. We zigzagged through the maze, struggling to make out any details through the flickering orange of the occasional working street light. The boarded-up storefronts and graffiti-clad walls gave us little hope that we were in the touristic area of Altamira, where our pre-booked hotel was located.
Sid and I squeezed one another’s hands in silence, confirming that we had both determined that something pretty serious was wrong.
. . . AND YOU’RE OUT
A short while later, we pulled up outside a building with a flickering neon sign reading ‘hotel’. Our driver insisted it was the Hotel Majestic, just as we had requested.
Dared we hope our concerns were for nothing and that Altamira was just a bit crappy?
A most accommodating hotel staff member appeared and rushed to open our door. They were fully booked, he advised us. Fortunately, they had a sister hotel just a few minutes down the road that the taxi would happily take us to.
If something smelt fishy before, now it smelt like a fishmonger’s had exploded.
This was a scam, and Sid and I knew it.
The Hotel Majestic was nowhere in sight, but we sure as hell weren’t going to get sucked into this pair’s money-making scheme.
In hindsight, we should have counted our blessings. In a city regularly labelled the ‘Murder Capital of the World’, our run-in with crime was nothing more than a ‘hotel swap scam’. Gap Year students fall for them every day. Indeed, my dad and I had a similar experience in Hanoi years ago.
Instead, indignant at the audacity of the attempted scam, I flung open the car door as the hotel assistant was about to close it again. Sid followed me out, as did, moments later, the equally indignant driver. We wrenched our bags from the boot and hauled them onto our backs, ignoring a tirade of angry exchanges.
The driver, realising his fiendish scheme had backfired and we would not be staying at his friend’s nearby hotel, demanded we pay $40 for the taxi fare.
After initially refusing, I sensed some increasing threat from the man, so I threw him a $10 note, per our initial negotiation. More than generous, considering a journey from the airport to our desired hotel should have been $3, and we were nowhere near said desired hotel.
That wasn’t enough for him.
We walked away, eyeing the dodgy looking backstreet warily. But we were committed now. Committed to navigating this place, in the dark, with no idea of where we were or how to get to where we needed to be. The driver followed, becoming angrier and angrier, demanding more money. No taxis were in sight, no prominent public places like restaurants or cafes to seek aid in, and no sign of police. There were only bikes zipping down the street, the angry growl of their engines bouncing from the walls. The few shady characters darting and flitting through the shadows like wraiths ignored our plight.
And that’s when I heard the last thing you want to hear your girlfriend cry out in the middle of the murder capital of the world.
“He’s got a gun!”
Crap.
Have you ever felt your blood freeze?
It’s such a cliche, I know. But I swear the temperature of the blood running through my veins dropped from a balmy 38 degrees Celsius to minus 10. My head began to pound – with adrenaline, I guess. My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. My legs became weak. My brain struggled to break through a fog of terror, to think of some way out of this.
Then a car horn blared, headlights flashing angrily, snapping everybody’s attention up the street. A black SUV roared down it, scattering its few denizens like an obnoxious child running through a flock of pigeons in a town square.
Our angry taxi driver was as spooked as us. He jumped in his vehicle and raced away while the man from the dodgy hotel hightailed it back up the steps and out of sight.
The SUV skidded to a halt, and the most unexpected person jumped out.
Nadia Yashina.
The Russian woman has been a friend of ours for years. She’s a colleague from Oxford, a genius on all accounts (her first degree, from Moscow, is in something like quantum physics, but she has since retrained as an osteoarchaeologist).
We settled into the SUV, one of Caracas’ official and safe ‘tourist taxis’ (which we’ll be sticking to from now on).
Nadia explained that she had decided to come with our hotel transfer to pick us up. But they got stuck in traffic and arrived just in time to see us get into our dodgy taxicab. She realised all was not as it seemed when we headed away from the Majestic instead of towards it. Luckily, Nadia’s driver was brave enough to get involved and scare off our driver (though I don’t imagine Nadia gave him much choice in the matter).
Thirty minutes later, we arrived at the Hotel Majestic and, not long after, collapsed onto our bed.
So, there you have it. From attempted alcohol poisoning (okay, that one doesn’t count), to falling coconuts of doom, to hurricanes and plane crashes, and eventually to kidnappings and gunfights (okay, slight exaggeration, I know), Death has stalked us for the last twenty-four hours.
He can bugger off now.
That’s quite enough near-death experiences for me, thank you. I have no intention of getting into any more gunfights, car chases or other assorted death-defying situations again.
Ever.
I hope.