1960 Arriving in Caracas

We moved to Venezuela from Toledo in December 1960.  I remember my parents sitting in the living room in discussing it, and whether they should let me stay in the US with my aunt and uncle in Boston.  They also gave me the option of going to boarding school.  I didn't want to do either, I wanted to go!

Mother, Lydia, and I took the Grace Line ship, Santa Paula, from Port Everglades to Caracas, where Daddy met us.  The next day, we went up a ski-lift type thing to the very top of a mountain to a tower-like hotel.  I still remember the name of it, the Hotel Humboldt.  It was above the clouds, it was amazing.

Then we flew from Manquetia Airport in Caracas to Barcelona.  It was a small prop plane.  I was sitting on the water side, and I looked down and saw a circular rainbow, like a rainbow ring.  I never saw once before or since. People traveling in airplanes often see the plane’s shadow cast on a cloud, surrounded by a circular rainbow.  of light.   It's called a 'glory', a 'pilot's bow', or an 'anti corona'.  A glory is made of sunlight scattered back toward you. It’s much smaller than a rainbow, and it’s made by light scattered from the droplets of a cloud, instead of falling raindrops.

Then when we arrived in Barcelona, we were driven to Puerto La Cruz.  We lived inside a compound.  My father was an engineer who built refineries.  I guess Americans were not particularly popular at the time with local Venezuelans so we were kept under lock and key for our own protection.  When we needed to go to the grocery store, we had a driver who escorted us to the store and I guess would have protected us if something had happened.

Even at age 14 I remember the poverty and the grimness of the locals.  There was a Sears & Roebuck in town, which surprised me.  The grocery store was pretty similar to what we had in the US.  It was a strange place.  I loved our house, it was 3 sides of a square with the 4th side being a hedge of camellias.   inside the square we had a courtyard where we ate all our meals.  When my parents had parties, everyone would dance in the courtyard.  There were flowers everywhere, and parrots  We had a mango tree and banana trees.  I loved it.

1960 The Grace Line Sisters

We flew to Port Everglades to board the ship to Venezuela.  My dad went with us.  I remember being amazed at how the houses in Port Everglades all seemed to be on canal with a boat at each house.  After my dad got us all settled on board, he was going to fly to Caracas and be there when we arrived a week later.  Turning my mother, my sister, our dog, and me loose on a cruise ship was probably not the best idea he’d ever had.  My mother immediately developed a mad crush on the purser.  Oddly enough, the purser’s office was almost right around the corner from our cabins (we had 2, one for my sister and me and one for my mother).  Velvet was installed in the kennel on the upper deck but he always got out and finally the captain decided it would be easier for him just to stay with us.  I was in charge of him, which was wonderful, because all I did all day was wander all over the ship with him in tow.

The second night out, we had dinner at the Captain’s table, and he told us he would take us on a tour of the engine room if we wanted.  I was ecstatic.  My sister didn’t come; it was just Mother and me.  I couldn’t believe how huge everything was and how amazing clean, and noisy.  We could actually see the bottom of the hull.  It was incredible.   We pretty much ran wild for the whole trip.  Mother was ‘preoccupied’, so we just caused as much havoc as possible.  

We docked in Haiti; I’ll never forget how beautiful it was.  We took a taxi to the top of a mountain where there was a restaurant where we had lunch.  My dad had left his Zeiss-Ikon camera with me and I took a ton of pictures.  One of the things I remember the most about Haiti was that as soon as the ship was docked, canoes filled with little kids came out alongside the ship, and they kids called up for money.  All the passengers threw coins down and the kids would catch them or jump out of the canoes and go diving for them.  I remember the water was really dark green.  Haiti really made an impression on me, probably because I had heard about voodoo and I kept looking for traces of it like snakes hanging from trees, etc.  We were only there for one afternoon and evening.  We had to be back on the ship that night to leave early in the morning.

We also stopped in Curacao, which I loved. It reminded me of Holland.  The ship had to make a sharp turn to get into the harbor and the dock.    

We took the Santa Rosa one way, and the Santa Paula the other way, but I don’t remember which was first.

The trip home about 9 months later was not half as exciting.  Velvet stayed in the kennel.  There was no handsome purser or running through the hallways at midnight.  We stopped in Aruba.  It was nothing but a big rock in the middle of the sea.  We tied up at a barren dock and were driven to a small restaurant.  We took a taxi and drove around the island a little, but there was basically nothing there but some oil facility buildings.  It’s hard to believe it’s the same Aruba as one sees now.  

We also stopped in Jamaica and there was a Russian submarine docked there.  It was amazing to see that.  I loved submarines and ships and anything to do with them.  Standing on the deck looking down at that little submarine, and hearing Jamaican music playing was surreal.  There was a big storm in the Caribbean, which was why we went to Jamaica instead of the Dominican Republic, as had been originally planned.