Margarita, Journey I had

Sometimes people go on a trip to another country and are marked by the culture simply because it is different. There are also vacations in which people see things they never thought existed, or at least in their country. In 2007, I went with my family on a vacation cruise. The third island that we visited on the cruise was Isla Margarita. This island is a part of Venezuela but it is not exactly in their main territory. Just like Vieques is part of Puerto Rico. On the island we took a cab and notice that the driver was always avoiding the freeway. We first went to a place where it was like a church but of a religion that I didn’t recognize. Outside of the church there was a river and it the river there were a group of women that were washing their clothes in the river. It was the first time I had seen something like that in real life. We left the church and went to a mall. In the mall, there were two kids selling socks. My father bought from one of them and gave a dollar to the other. Then the kid who didn’t sold the socks started following us all over the mall and each time he catch us, offer the socks for a lower price. We entered a souvenir shop and the kid started crying because he couldn’t sell the socks. My mother didn’t know what to do but my father called the kid and bought him the socks.

 

 Afterward, we left the mall and went back to where the taxi was. We realized that we were late and we needed to get back to the cruise in the fastest way possible. The taxi driver took the freeway. In the freeway we were stopped by a police. It was then in that moment that I understand why he had been avoiding the freeway. He quickly explained to us that the cops in there make taxis with tourist pulled over on purpose so that the passenger had to bribe the police or else he would stall them for a very long time, causing them to be left by the cruise. We had to put money between our passports, so that when he asked for the passport, he would obtain the money and let us go, we were able to leave successfully and return to the ship on time. This trip made me realized how different the world is and how ungrateful people are. The difference in their culture and society was bigger than what I would have ever imagined.