Against All Odds Read online

  The next morning, the muggers must have woken up with an impressive, free hangover. From there, they probably worked it out that it was better to keep friendly with us for the free hand

  outs than try to rob us for a few dollars.

  Word continued to spread around the small town until every scumbag in the area ended up joining the nightly event. A beer only cost ten cents, so we were not bothered by the added expense. La Victoria became much safer for us all. The funny thing was, the loco locals actually became our bodyguards.

  The average attendance rose to as many as thirty locals and as many as fifty or sixty on a Friday or Saturday night. Husbands started bringing their wives, and soon, their wives began preparing food to bring along and share with us. Even my staff began to join us, which further added to the event.

  Venezuelans like to spend more on their cars’ music systems than the cars themselves. We were guaranteed to have at least one macho man in attendance with a car better suited to being a mobile disco, and that meant plenty of dancing.

  The old Spanish man had to order hundreds more cases of beer each month as more and more people joined the congregation. The expats all chipped in some money so the old man could increase his security, and we made it clear to the loco locals that if his business was ever compromised, all the parties would stop immediately. Therefore, nothing happened.

  Like most other places in Venezuela, there were often shootouts in the streets. One morning, as I left the hotel, I noticed several bullet holes in the walls of the hotel reception. We had all heard shots fired the night before, but we didn’t realise the fight had continued into our hotel. Evidently, someone involved in the shoot-out had used it for shelter whilst returning fire.

  I became friendly with a local storeowner, and he and his much younger wife invited Carolina and I to visit a beach he liked. I didn’t know it would take over an hour and a half to drive there when we left La Victoria. Eventually, after over an hour’s drive we arrived at the beach, which wasn’t anything special. We hung our bags on the only tree we could find to shade us, and went for a swim. As it happened, we couldn’t risk taking our eyes off our things because a man was showing a lot of interest in them and standing nearby, just waiting for his chance to run off with them.

  The storekeeper had to go back to guard everything so we could relax and enjoy the warm Caribbean water. Later that afternoon, he drove back a different way, which took us through the winding mountain roads of La Guaira to show us where villages once stood until the December mudslides.

  All that remained was what could best be described as dry riverbeds where trees, villages and street lights had once been. Not all the roads had been rebuilt. Instead, many had been roughly cut deeper into the hillsides. The earthen road was so dangerous and narrow in places that we had to get out of the car and walk ahead in case the car slipped over the side. Rocks continued to roll down the steep hillside and some had to be rolled out of the path of the car before we could pass.

  There was a very eerie feeling about the place. Knowing that thousands of men, women and children had been washed down these slopes a few months before, buried by millions of tonnes of mud, rock and everything else in the mudslides, the ambience was uncomfortable to say the least. There were no birds singing, no breeze and nothing to absorb our voices in what felt like a lunar landscape.

  It became more unnerving when the storekeeper took a gun out of his glove compartment and explained that the area was well known for people dressing up as police officers and holding up cars that they stopped. I’m not the type to unnecessarily put myself in dangerous situations as those happened naturally, and if I’d known about the drive back to La Victoria, I wouldn’t have gone in the first place.

  After nine long months, we had the work in some kind of shape and it was time to erect a prototype monorail to transport the nickel into the electric blast furnaces. Though I was originally a plater and not a design engineer, I could still see by the design that there was a major weakness. It was an accident waiting to happen.

  I reported the design weakness from an obvious and practical point of view, but I was shot down every time I mentioned it. The client directly contracted the crane supplier so I had no say in the matter.

  The day came to weight test the monorail, so I instructed my people to keep well off the monorail steelwork, and position themselves safely on independent surrounding steelwork. As per procedure, my contractor followed the usual protocol and made the monorail lift just five tonnes of the seventy-tonne dead weight test, which it managed to do.

  And then they added another five tonnes, which it also managed to lift. I remained on the ground standing under some concrete flooring while they loaded another five tonnes. Again, like the other times, it lifted the test weight, but this time they lifted it higher. When it was around thirty feet off the ground, it failed.

  Without any warning noises, the monorail broke exactly where I had predicted. It ripped off a German technician’s left arm, close to his shoulder. As the test weight hit the ground, many small stones hit me in the face. After that, I turned and ran straight into a concrete column, which didn’t help my appearance. Everyone emptied out of the offices to see what the noise was all about, including my two secretaries.

  They found me covered in muddy water and blood, which was coming from several little puncture wounds on my face. I was lucky, as were my staff, to be alive. Because we were in Venezuela it was very difficult for the site ambulance to help the badly injured German technician. Apparently, everyone wanted to see the blood dripping down through the open steel mesh flooring.

  A few months later, they tried to conduct the test again. Sure enough, the next failure was the steelwork joints themselves, as I’d previously pointed out to the vice president. That time, a man was badly injured on the side of his face.

  They didn’t need a design engineer to point out the weakest points in the design, but two guys would never forget that project.

  On one weekend, when Carolina was home visiting her parents, a friend and I decided to drive to the beach for a change of scenery. The beach we aimed for was famous for a Venezuelan folk dance called the tambor, meaning drum as it was the only instrument used. We drove into a place called Maracay, also known as Ciudad Jardín, meaning Garden City, which is home to the only bullfighting school, Maestranza, in the country.

  From Maracay, we ended up following a road that began at the north-western part of the city called El Limón and went to Ocumare de la Costa and the beaches of Cata and Cuyagua. The road is still the most dangerous I’ve ever driven on. It passed through a rain forest with few remaining barriers left along the edge of its winding route. Due to the frequent landslides, the original barriers had long since been knocked over the edge and down the thousand feet slopes.

  Because the landslides had reduced the narrow road over the years to single-line traffic, the road was considered a one-way route with an entry timetable depending on the direction you were travelling from.

  We arrived at Cata Beach, where the road first provides access to the coast, and we found a hotel near the beach. It was a quiet place that never hosted tourists due to the dangers in the country. It was lunchtime, so we wasted no time in checking in and ventured down along the beach until we came across a very sorry-looking restaurant. With plastic tables and chairs set out on a rough concrete floor and a rusty, corrugated iron roof full of holes, it didn’t look very inviting. Due to the heat and immense humidity, we were both in need of refreshment, so we ventured in just to grab a cold beer before continuing to look for somewhere better suited for our needs.

  While standing at the bar, which was made from old wooden pallets, we noticed a large aquarium across the room. I went over to see whether there was anything inside. Much to my amazement, it was crammed full of lobsters of all sizes.

  The barefoot waiter joined me, his T-shirt filthy and full of holes, and he asked whether I fancied one. I thought I’d make it easy for him and pointed to the
lobster nearest the surface and he dipped his arm in and pulled it out alive and kicking. Even though it was too big for the two of us, we went along with the choice.

  He returned back a couple of minutes later and asked how we wanted it cooked. I hesitated as he listed about a dozen different ways. The only choice I partly recognised resembled thermidor, which was always my preferred dish. After selecting that option, we waited well over an hour before he returned with the lobster.

  He had placed it on a battered, old, stainless steel tray, and spared the usual presentation, but the food itself looked fine. It wasn’t until I tasted it that I realised it was the very finest thermidor I’d ever had in my life. Needless to say, as hard as we tried, we couldn’t finish it and asked for the bill. For the beers and the meal, we didn’t pay more than ten dollars.

  The hotel was set about a hundred yards from the beach, but that didn’t stop us from hearing drum beats starting at eight o’clock in the evening. We couldn’t hear any other instruments, so we followed the sound until we got to an area of the beach where cars could park alongside.

  A few of the local people had already arrived and were drinking Polar beers from their cold boxes; they were still dressed in beachwear. They were already dancing the tambor on the sand, probably still drunk from the daytime. The dance had been invented at Charoni Beach, which was just a short distance along the coast.

  By ten o’clock at night, the area was alive with local people demonstrating their very impressive dancing skills. Because we were probably the only foreigners they had seen for a long time, we were encouraged to join in. Of course, they all found our pathetic attempts very amusing, but they understood it wasn’t our natural style. The tambor is a very erotic form of dancing, and couples swapped their partners every couple of minutes, carefully avoiding any physical contact to keep the knives from coming out.

  We stopped a taxi and got him to take us to buy some beer and a cheap polystyrene cold box and ice. After that, we returned to the beach so we could pay back the beers we’d been given. We went to the shop two more times before retiring at four in the morning and returned to the hotel for some much needed sleep. From the hotel, we could still hear the drums beating for another four hours.

  We checked out in the early afternoon, but we were told that the road back wasn’t open until four o’clock. Not knowing what to do, we asked whether there was anywhere of interest to visit nearby. The receptionist recommended we go for a swim in a river, which was on our way, and scribbled a rough map for us. We found the place okay, which was downstream from a derelict hydroelectric power station just above the waterfall. The day was hot and humid as we explored the old works. We were completely engulfed in dense rainforest, and the place had a very uncomfortable feel about it.

  We ended up in the river at the base of the thunderous waterfall, but instead of enjoying it, I continued to feel that it was somewhere we were not welcome.

  I really didn’t like the atmosphere, so we didn’t stay long. I felt like I was in a very small humid room with something hanging on my back. We’d spent a short time sitting under the waterfall enjoying the cold water pounding down on our shoulders, however, the next day we felt like we’d been beaten up.

  During this contract, Carolina began her old tricks again: demanding a ridiculous amount of money to support her family. I still hadn’t fully recovered from how they had abused me back in Puerto Ordaz after we’d got married.

  I had practically rebuilt their house on my last stay in Puerto Ordaz. I grew tired of it, and I made Carolina return home. I found a Venezuelan abogado (lawyer) to put an end to it. A friend had recommended him, and he turned up at my office the same week.

  He arrived in his full air force uniform, and every Venezuelan on site recognised him but me. He was the major general of the Venezuelan air force, but he was also a lawyer in his spare time. He used his influence to make his legal work easier. He drove me to Maracay, where we registered the first step in my separation.

  As we entered a building, everyone who was sitting in the waiting room queuing for their turn noticed who’d walked in and immediately jumped up. My lawyer is very famous, I thought. We didn’t need to queue. Instead, we walked directly into the local judge’s office without even knocking on the door. The client with the local judge got up and left the room immediately when we entered. Just a few minutes later, we were done and on our way back to my office.

  I met him a few more times over the following months. He regularly came to visit me at my hotel to discuss my divorce, joined me at restaurants, and even drove me to the military base in Caracas once to show me where he worked.

  When we’d finally received a copy of my marriage license from Carolina, the complications started. Apparently, when I signed the marriage paper back in September of 1997, the night I got married, I didn’t realise I was also verifying that I was the original father of Carolina’s seven year old daughter.

  Even though I’d never been to Venezuela before 1997, he explained that it made the whole divorce process more complicated because I now had a daughter to support until she was eighteen years old.

  Later that month, he picked me up at my hotel on a Saturday afternoon. He was wearing civilian clothes, and he drove me to Caracas using his wife’s car to show me the military base. When we stopped at the checkpoint, the guard on duty casually walked up to his side of the car and asked for his ID. When he produced his ID, the guard jumped to attention faster than a speeding bullet and saluted him.

  We drove all around the base before leaving for the centre of Caracas as I wanted to go to a famous bookshop there to pick up a dictionary. Everywhere we walked, people stopped and stared. They probably wondered who the little white guy with the major general of their air force was. We returned back to La Victoria in the evening, and after he’d had a couple of beers, he left for home.

  I only met him a couple more times before I returned to the United Kingdom to carry out my first contract there since 1989. My lawyer assured me that everything would be taken care of in my absence and that there was no need to worry. I had no idea that it was the last I would ever see or hear of my lawyer. I later heard that a helicopter, which was flying outside Caracas carrying three top ranking officials, exploded in mid-air. Apparently, a bomb had been placed onboard.

  Back in the United Kingdom, I started working at a compressor station in Scotland. I’d heard how beautiful the countryside was in Scotland, but I never imagined it could be so picturesque. While driving through the country lanes each morning to the compressor station, I saw pheasants, rabbits, foxes, and roe deer every day.

  The local hospitality was second to none, and many a good night was spent sampling some of the 366 single malts in the lounge bar. A selection, I might add, that put the pub in the Guinness World Records book.

  Chapter 11

  First Time in Qatar

  I travelled to Qatar in October of 2001, which added to my track record of mistakes. I realised after the first day in Doha that I was being paid less than half the amount agreed upon in London. I quit the same day, but the company refused to hand me back my passport, claiming it was already being processed. I asked why it was being processed after I’d quit the day I’d arrived, but I just received a dumb look as a response.

  I was staying in one of the few hotels in Doha at that time, and I demanded the return of my passport every day so I could fly home. This went on for almost a month until, one day, we all had received written instructions to find a place to rent.

  There was a big seminar that was going to be held in Doha, and every hotel room had been pre-booked. I was about to be homeless, living on the street. A kind Iranian welding engineer working with us offered to help me out. He showed me his rented place, but staying there would mean sleeping on the floor as he did. Out of desperation, I contacted the British consulate for their advice.

  They told me that it was illegal for my company to withhold my passport, so they contacted the corrupt project manager
and instructed him to immediately return my passport and arrange my flight home.

  The day I arrived back in the United Kingdom, an agent called me just five minutes after I entered the house. He asked whether I was interested in a contract back in Venezuela.

  Chapter 12

  Third Time in Venezuela

  On 19 December 2001, I went back to Venezuela to work on two upstream oil facilities in a place called San Tomé. It was another opportunity to see Carolina because San Tomé was only an hour drive away from Ciudad Bolívar. I wanted to know what had happened regarding our divorce. Shortly after arriving, I discovered that I was still a fully married man, as all progress had stopped when I lost my lawyer.

  Naturally, it was the Christmas season, and most expats had already flown back home. But not me: I flew out of Cardiff. It was the problem time of year again, and the early morning fog caused a take-off delay. As a result, I missed my connection in Amsterdam. I called my agent, and I was booked on the next flight going roughly in the right direction nineteen hours later.

  I went into Amsterdam to waste some time before returning to Schiphol Airport where I’d have to wait to board my flight. My flight took me to a remote Caribbean island where I had another six hour wait. Finally, I boarded an Italian Airways flight to Caracas.

  Caracas International Airport can be a very dangerous place for those who don’t know the tricks the Venezuelan kidnappers use to get visitors into their fake taxis. They assume a company representative is meeting its contractors in the arrivals hall. Their method is to boldly and confidently approach the unsuspecting traveller and ask for his name and company.

  Next, they inform their fellow kidnappers, and they quickly write the traveller’s name in big letters on a large card before walking past the traveller with the card held high. The innocent traveller would introduce himself as the person on the card, and the Venezuelan would welcome him with some small talk and proceed to escort the traveller to a car waiting outside, even helping with the baggage along the way.