SANTA ANA DE CORO

SANTA ANA DE CORO: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2
Though a State Capital, Santa Ana de Coro is small and manageable. Spaniards founded the town in 1527. It is a safe clean joyful place - no warnings against robbers, muggers, drug addicts, homosexuals or degenerates. You can relax and walk the historic quarter in the evening. Search here in vain for the splendours of Oaxa or Cusco. Coro is on a humbler, more intimate scale. Even the cathedral is little bigger than a parish church. Yet if perfection is simplicity and immaculate proportions, then Coro is a jewel. Sad that Coro is on UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in danger...

GOD SAVE ME FROM VENEZUELA

TO CORO: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2
I ride through my last city in Venezuela. I am on a six-lane thruway. A small Chevrolet whips across from the outside lane to the hard shoulder and overtakes a truck on the inside before swerving back out to the fast lane. A truck pulling a trailer loaded with steel girders sits on my arse. I slow a second and he hits his klaxon. I am scared. I am so scared I want to weep. I don't know which exit I should take. The overhead signs mean nothing. I look up for more than a moment and a maniac will kill me. I want to give up, pull in to a gas station, hire a truck to transport me out of this hell. A pickup shoots from the fast lane to an exit. The driver misses me by inches. Please God save me. What am I doing here?