It's at this point that the water procession begins, but it's not the spirited folk festival that I remember. The statue of Mary is unromantically plunked in a motorboat and—with a retinue of fancy fishing boats and other watercraft—takes off for the bridge so fast that we catch up only moments before she is handed over to a crew from the Venezuelan navy. I am ready to weep.
At that moment, the little girl stands up in the bow of our ferry and opens her arms to take the breeze. She is everything I'd been thinking we missed—a sacrament of this moment and this place, a bond between river and sky. Her grandfather beams with pride at his little Virgin of the Orinoco, and one of the traveling troubadours begins to improvise a song: "Even though the sapoara have not come, there is reason to celebrate."
We take him at his word and head for a restaurant I know called Ña María, back at the fish market. The owners, Ana Farfán and her mother, María Lourdes Rojas, a genial Guayanese who proudly wears shiny yellow 24-karat gold jewelry earned by her success, are old friends of mine. We gulp down ice-cold Polar beer and order the house specialty, a lovely, aromatic fish sancocho. After this, we have crisp fried fillets of laulao served with a mound of palo a pique, the area's popular rice and bean combination, a telltale sign of contact between the Orinoco, the Venezuelan plains, and the islands of the Hispanic Caribbean, where similar dishes are also a staple. As I chat with Ana and María, I feel I am visiting family, so dear and welcoming is the taste of their food. I am back on my turf, and I know that I will return one day, like the sapoara, to this river where a part of my soul also belongs.
Pinterest
