Vacilando Con Antony October 28
“In Spanish there is a word for which I can’t find a counter-word in English. It is the verb Vacilar, present participle Valicando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is Valicando, he is going somewhere but doesn’t greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction. Let us say we wanted to walk in the streets of Mexico City but not at random. We would choose some article almost certain not to exist there and then diligently try to find it.“
John Steinbeck, Travels With Charlie
In the wake of recent floods, the northeast coast proves to be a bridge too far to reach, so Antony and I decide to crisscross the center of the island for news from the interior. For a panoramic view of things, our first stop is the hilltop village of Paramin, the “herb basket of Trinidad“ and home to a Venezuelan folk music called Parang, but only at Christmas. A very steep narrow road switchbacks a thousand feet up to lofty farmland above the rainforest and the valley of Maraval. Sight lines to Turtle Island far below, and my own apartment far away, provide a grand view indeed, under blessings of mild skies.
Less than an hour from the city, an agricultural lifestyle predominates in the bush country. “Hi, Mun“ and “Ya, Bud“ are routinely exchanged between pedestrian and driver as a matter of courtesy, which can warm jaded urban sensibilities. We descend through the villages of Santa Cruz and Saint Anne’s East until we hit bottom in the lowlands, where everyone is drying out after a week of inundation. They are calling it the worst flood in memory, which is something I hear a lot lately—worst earthquake, worst violence and corruption, worst wet season, worst state of mind.
Mattresses and furniture are dragged into the sun, but most of the carnage will not be salvageable. Much of the stuff probably deserved to be hauled curbside even before the floods, but now the people of San Rafael and Saint Helena are galvanized to empty the damaged homes, and, with government bulldozers on site, everyone adds to the pile. These folks did not have much before the disaster. Now, after five feet of water has passed and they can climb down from the rooftops, everyone has less. One receded creek is lined with a laundromat’s worth of clothes that washed out of a nearby neighborhood. A few businesses are reopened—Uncle Beddoe’s Groceries, DK’s Tools and Tings (hola, Luis!), and a shaded pub sitting next to a homemade-artful bus shelter welcoming all “Citizens of Heaven.“
Our driving route is a tangle of vectors through forgotten country, feral teak forests, overgrown cocoa estates, hidden mandarin groves, and vast acres of flood plain that, until very recently, served as homes and churches for the faithful. New for-sale signs are posted between shacks of rotting wood and metal siding. Even the church is for sale today. The ones who were saved kept their reservoir of worldly possessions on stilts.
We travel the Churchill-Roosevelt Freeway to what should be its logical terminus, but instead we suddenly find ourselves on a dwindling washed-out track headed to nowhere but midden heaps, escaped chickens, and squishy encroaching foliage. I am ready to walk, and a bit car sick, but my friend Antony is keen for hitting the open road, somewhere behind us. Whether on bike or behind the wheel, the gentleman is a natural Vacilador, whom Steinbeck defined as a wanderer with particular purpose but no direction:
“In Spanish there is a word for which I can’t find a counter-word in English. It is the verb Vacilar, present participle Valicando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is Valicando, he is going somewhere but doesn’t greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction. Let us say we wanted to walk in the streets of Mexico City but not at random. We would choose some article almost certain not to exist there and then diligently try to find it.“
John Steinbeck, Travels With CharlieHe does not know what he is looking for until he finds it, and it may just be around the next forbidden bend. Antony speeds ahead intrepidly, veering to avoid the furniture truck in our windshield, while I support him with ever-faithful white knuckles.
“Sandy Grandy“ is what the town of Sangre Grande is called, as if the historic Spanish battle of that name did not matter, because it frankly does not. These interior plains and savannas have been recycled many times over since the Spaniards left—the French creole, the East Indian, the African, the Venezuelan, the Syrian, even Churchill and Roosevelt. Strings of traffic knot to a halt as those from the countryside replenish provisions and petrol in town. Pastel-colored Hindu prayer flags flap above garden produce stands and a waterlogged sofa. This congested Gangetic hinterland is the closest we will get to the east coast today. Punta Galera and the Shouters of Toco will have to wait. We are simply grateful for dry land and sunshine.
After five hours in the car, our journey amounts to a ragtag zigzag, occasionally straining for a peek at the sea but mostly resigned to land-lubbin’. The air in Paramin smells like onion and thyme; honeybees pollinate the hillside weed farms near Cumuto village; breadfruit grows wild in the forest of Blue Basin, where a waterfall plunges past a Rastafarian shrine toward the rusted wheel of the old plantation. Humid air clings to lungs on the burning climbs and the pounding descents, but we are finally out of the car. Antony feels no need to lock it behind him. The Vaciladores may have found what they are looking for.
I look to a map. Trinidad sits on the edge of a continental plate like a communion wafer about to be devoured by the mouth of a South American parishioner. Despite its shape, a bloated cursive T, this is not why Columbus named it Trinity; rather, he was inspired by the sight of three large green hills at the southeastern end of the island, which sort of resemble a crucifix. My mountaineering sons would be hard-squinted to pick the hills out, as it is easy to miss the mountains for the trees. As recently as 10,000 years ago, when the earth was colder and the sea level lower, one could walk from the mainland to the island, which is how this place ended up with aboriginal people, coral snakes, capuchin monkeys, ocelots, etc.—they certainly did not all swim. Sometime in the future we may be able to leave altogether for grander western horizons, but it will take another ice age, and there are no signs of that on this steamy afternoon in the bush.
Late in the day, my map fails me. I crouch with fatigue in the foothills of the Northern Range, which purports to form the last link of the Andes chain, on suspect terrain. I have lost both the trail and Antony, and now I am navigating alone through resistant vegetation, wishing I carried a pocket-machete, or a phone. The obstacles are unending, the shifting slopes ridiculous. I cannot see my feet, or whether I am about to go up or down, so it feels like skiing in white-out conditions, replete with slapping trees. My legs are too exhausted to lift over the downed timber, so I crawl on my belly underneath, spitting in defense against the Ameiva lizards who have become alarmed by my existence. I remain unconvinced I am making any progress, except in developing a thirst. The lactic acid in my sore joints threatens to turn into cheese curd. I would ask to lay down, but I already am.
There must be an easier way. The idea of bee-lining toward a destination can make sense in the city, or in a desert or a subalpine forest, but it is absurd in the jungle, where points of reference extend no further than an arm’s length. Layers of dead leaves and rotting wood extend deep beneath my feet—it feels like walking on a beanbag—the tangle of vines seems to sprout tendrils around my legs and arms, as I twist, wrenching my rucksack from my shoulders, snapping off what I mistake for firm handgrips. On a muddy drop to a cascading creek, I slip on a gigantic banana leaf and slide down a magic green carpet into hades, tearing through a web of silk so thick that I can hear the twine ripping. At the nadir of the ravine, I scan my person for what must be some hefty local spiders, then I look up to where I’ve come from. I am definitely not going back that way. Instead, I am left sitting on an enormous mound of washed-out deadfall, somehow feeling not so out of place. At least I have a stream for drink and a cave for shelter. On second thought, the cave seems to be taken.