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<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005><SPAN
class=890154619-04062005>hi</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005><SPAN
class=890154619-04062005></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005><SPAN class=890154619-04062005></SPAN>The
last attachments were too low-res to read details... these should be good
enough to print off. I'll get several thousand printed for the June 11 demo
& P in t P.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005>cheers</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005>JS</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005>An interesting article from today's
FT</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=421024019-04062005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=421024019-04062005><!--StartFragment --><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3><SPAN class=bigHeadline>Get away from it all - except
Chávez</SPAN><BR></FONT><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN
class=all>By James Harding <BR>Financial Times: June 4 2005 </SPAN><IMG
height=20 alt="" src="http://news.ft.com/c.gif" width=1></FONT></FONT>
<P class=fp><!--startclickprintexclude--><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman"><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><!--endclickprintexclude--></FONT></FONT>Venezuela is a country in
the grip of its own peculiar Tourette's Syndrome, a nation incessantly compelled
to utter the most inflammatory word in its vocabulary: Chávez.</P><!--startclickprintexclude-->
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<P>Among Chávistas and the colonel's opponents alike, the compulsion to speak
his name seems irresistible. This verbal tic is, doubtless, more pronounced in
the company of a foreign journalist. Still, it is one of those few places where
conversation is dominated by one man. In its day, China had Mao, Cuba Castro,
the US OJ. Venezuela today has its president, Comandante Hugo Chávez.</P>
<P>Politics passes for introductory small-talk. When you meet a Venezuelan, you
often first hear about Chávez's discount supermarkets for the poor or his
plundering of the country's oil fortune, his uplifting of Venezuelan morale or
his packing the courts.</P>
<P>Only later, the conversation might drift to what they do for a living, where
they went to college, how many kids they have and so on. It is a monomania akin
to the inevitable discussion in 1980s Cape Town about apartheid, 1990s Berlin
about the "Ossies" and contemporary Hong Kong about its rivalry with
Shanghai.</P>
<P>There is an element of time travel, then, about a visit to Venezuela. While
much of the rest of the world has been consumed since 2001 by Samuel
Huntingdon's <I>Clash of Civilizations </I>between the west and Islam, the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been hashing out the debate between the
left and right theoretically put to rest by Francis Fukuyama's <I>The End of
History</I>.</P>
<P>It is, nevertheless, an invigorating argument, fuelled by the guilt of the
gross inequalities in abundant evidence in Caracas. The Venezuelan capital has
pockets of luxurious living - the jungle overhang is exotic, an early morning
walk up the Avila is a pleasure, the seafood at the Atlantique exquisite, the
steaks smoky and the sangria plentiful at the Maute Grill - but the dilapidation
of downtown Caracas is simply depressing. (The city used to boast the best
collection of modern art in Latin America, but a fire in a towering office block
nearby has left a charred urban carcass looming over the Museo de Arte
Contemporáneo and prompted the government to close the place down. The art has
been scattered among other museums and exhibitions andsome, it is muttered
darkly, has simply disappeared.)</P>
<P>Still, one of the more underrated aspects of international travel is moving
into a fresh conversational orbit. And, on that basis, there is much to
recommend a trip to Venezuela simply to be part of the Chávez debate - on the
distribution of wealth, land reform and carrying forward Fidel's mission to
counter the American hegemon.</P>
<P>If that doesn't sound much like a holiday, though, fear not. Venezuela, a
country blessed with the under-exploited Caribbean on its northern shore, miles
of undisturbed Amazonia to the south and vast, largely unvisited plains in
between, has much of the timeless on offer.</P>
<P>There is that land-that-time-forgot quality, for example, at Hato Pińero, a
huge ranch and wildlife reserve 40 minutes flight south of Caracas, which, among
other things, is home to the hoatzin. This is a bird as big as a pheasant with
red eyes, a dishevelled crest of feathers, a wheezing call and, intriguingly, a
prehistoric lineage, an echo apparently of the first known bird, the
archaeopteryx.</P>
<P>Now, I need to come clean: I am no twitcher. But, it must be said, my visit
to Venezuela opened my eyes to the mature wisdom of bird-watching. This, in
fact, chimes with a creeping realisation reinforced on holiday, namely that I am
embracing middle age. I have outgrown the Lonely Planet guides, their "high end"
section being too sparse and, often, too spartan for my indulged tastes; I no
longer pack a padlock and a torch, but, just in case, a tie and cuff-links; and
while I used to fantasise about a short wheel base Land Rover, now I want flying
lessons and my own second-hand Beechcraft.</P>
<P>The adolescent excitement of big- game safari is one thing, but looking at
the hoatzin nesting over a murky pond of lazing alligators - and, on horseback
the next morning, seeing the curassows bustle across the fields, the saffron
finches pecking on the ground, the little kiskadees in the trees, the scarlet
macaws (the name does scant justice to these multi-coloured parrots) flying in
their twosomes, the scarlet and white ibises scavenging for food, the
deranged-looking vermilion flycatcher darting and dropping on the hunt for
insects, the roseate spoonbills, the tiger herons, and the muscovy ducks - the
gratification of bird-watching seemed both subtle and infinite.</P>
<P>To be exact, Hato Pińero has the potential to pleasure the bird-watcher in
just over 350 ways. That, at least, is the known number of birds on the reserve.
There are bigger sightings to be had, too, on the top of an open truck: the
tapirs, the foxes, the jaguars, the anteaters and the world's largest rodents,
the capybaras.</P>
<P>Hato Pińero does not pamper its guests with the five-star creature comforts
you might find at those top-end Kenyan safaris or the jungle hideaways of
southeast Asia. The lodge is stylish but simple. It has a rancher chic,
decorated with buffalo skulls and tortoiseshells, saddles and spurs. Lovers:
this is a good book-reading opportunity - the beds are, with one exception,
twins. The food is good, not least because you are hungry. And, the service -
not one of Venezuela's natural strengths - is helpful, but laissez-faire.</P>
<P>The natural splendour of Hato Pińero, though, can only take you so far from
the Chávez conversation. In fact, the ranch is in the middle of an argument with
the government. The Branger family, which owns the place, is wrestling a
government effort to appropriate the land, nationalise it and lease it out to
landless Venezuelans.</P>
<P>And so our host, Jaime Branger, an English-educated <I>Venezuelanas</I> as
big as a door who played rugby in his youth and still looks as though he would
be useful in a ruck, welcomed us to the ranch with warmth, generosity - and
purpose. Carving up the ranch, he said on a drive in his pick-up truck past the
watering holes, between the laden mango trees and alongside the scampering
little deer, would only put the wildlife in danger. (The government's plan, he
also argued, would undermine the rule of law, reduce agricultural productivity
and fail to enrich the poor.)</P>
<P>At Los Roques, there is no such political talk. Drenched in sun, surrounded
by turquoise-green-blue waters, the 300-odd rocks, outcrops of land and spits of
sand which form the Los Roques archipelago offer each and every visitor his or
her own desert island.</P>
<P>After a flight of just over 30 minutes due east from Caracas, visitors land
at the Gran Roque, which as its name suggests, is the biggest stone in the
middle of the sea. On the island, there are a host of small, pastel-painted
boarding houses or <I>posadas</I>. They are almost all bungalows, each with half
a dozen or so rooms. They are mostly much of a muchness, but regulars to the
islands enthuse most about Mediterraneo and Caracol. (Courtesy of Jaime Branger
and his partner, Carlos Morales Faillace, we stayed at Bequeve, which was very
comfortable.)</P>
<P>Gran Roque operates on a low wattage: there are no cars, it has a sandy main
square with a bank, a couple of stores and a bar for locals. The most frenetic
inhabitants are the pelicans, dive-bombing for fish. A couple of bars on the
water's edge are a great place to watch fishermen bring in their catch, mostly
little'uns but often a few impressive barracudas. You get the picture - it is
the Bacardi-ad lifestyle, without the upscale glitz.</P>
<P>At the quay, you can hire a water taxi which will take you to your own island
if you choose, or one of the couple of islands which have a bar and restaurant
on them and a scattering of tourists under umbrellas or cooling in the water. (I
was there in low season - I imagine it is a little busier, but hardly jammed, in
the busier months from July to September, December through January.)</P>
<P>The snorkelling is fun, the diving is good - it is the largest marine reserve
in the Caribbean and, thanks to the relatively low number of visitors, an easy
place to see nurse sharks, moray eels, stingrays, barracudas and a host of other
fish swarming around its relatively unexplored reefs, pinnacles, drop-offs and
caves. It was calm on our visit, but I was told it's a terrific spot for
wind-surfing and kite-surfing.</P>
<P>But here is the health warning: Los Roques is for the devout sun-worshipper.
I brought Factor 30 sunblock, bought Factor 50 and came back burnt, wishing I'd
got the Factor 100 I'd been told about. As the sun went down, I revived, sipping
<I>mojitos</I> overlooking the perfect Caribbean waters. But through the bulk of
the day, I was an asylum seeker from the sun.</P>
<P>As I walked across the square one morning, the sunscreen and sweat dripping
into my eyes, my shirt sodden with perspiration, my feet in flip-flops
sun-burning like two juicy burgers, I even found myself yearning for a return to
air-conditioned Caracas and a heated conversation about Hugo Chávez.</P>
<P><I>James Harding is a former FT Washington bureau chief and is currently on a
year's leave to write a book. He was a guest of Hato Pińero and Posada
Bequeve</I></P></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
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