FAKE HOUSES AND REAL BIRDS

TO THE FRONTIER: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5
Sixty Ks to the frontier: this is indigenous territory. Chavez posters border the coastal highway. Many posters boast of new houses built under the partnership of Chavez and the State Governor. I pass a clutch of pale blue huts crammed on a patch of freshly spread gravel, no shade. The huts are the size of a suburban garden shed. Each hut has a door and one window. The huts are new and unoccupied. They are statistic houses - glories of the Revolution.
The highway cuts across a tidal lagoon and damns the flow of water. The lagoon inland of the highway is stagnant and odoriferous. The seaward side is a shallow haven of water birds. A herdsman dressed in shorts and a baseball cap drives a few thin cows across the lagoon to graze sparse grass on a dune. I park and count bird species: two kinds of heron, waders, ibis, duck, oyster catchers, what appear to be moorhens, a small bird with long legs and a long, thin, curved beak...
Why, oh why, don't I carry a bird book?
Because I don't have space.