el voz de llanero llama me!

Well you know, I am studying... and I am listening to music while I am studying..
And now a days I listen a lot to musica espanola (pronounced espanyola) ..
It is weird.. that when I listened to that language in music.. it brings back a flood of memories..

of infinite trips between ciudad Ojeda and Maracaibo.. that would never end.. I would listen to the music.. and feel drowsy.. until I was close enough to the Maracaibo bridge traffic jam.. and my driver took a toilet break right... until some vendor tried to interest me into his merchandise through my taxi window.. and then ..

Of the trips to Merida, canaima and other lovely places.. when the radio of some shop on the road side would narrate the story of his daily routines and supposedly funny (although indecipherable) tales..
I suddenly recalled the tunes that are very local to Venezuela.. the voices of llaneros.. (the llanos (pronounced yanos) are the savannah plains..llaneros, the men of the plains).. their voice was so simple.. their guitars were very small and colorful.. and they had nothing but that guitar of 4 strings.. and bongo drums.. and singing on and on.. not much variation to the tune.. but still.. it was nice to listen to an old man sing..
This brought back the memories of the bus trip from North Venezuela to its southern tip.. Our trip to trek to Roraima.. On the way, due to heightened security (since the drug mafia had killed the military heads daughter) we were subjected to a search and passport verification all along the way .. made to get down in the dead of the night every 2 hours or so.. We were tired dry by the trip .. and exhausted due to lack of sleep.. and it was cold to get down from the bus at 3 am.. and we were scared of the guardia... (the national guards equivalent).. because they are famous for taking law in to their own hands ever so often.. In this state of exhaustion, anger, annoyance, fear and drowsiness,,, the only sense of normalcy in the situation .. was .. the tune of the llanero..

And now that I am listening to their voices again...the drowsy coffee breaks.. the half-yellow-lit high-way side restaurants/cafes/memorabilia shops..and the dirty toilets sin papel, the venezolanos who were curiously throwing sideways glances.. and the aching sleepless bodies, along with... the thrill, the unexplainable sense of being the absolutely tied-loose (of any sense of security or turf knowledge) stranger in the place.. the fear..and yet the joy of being so close to unbelievable natural beauty..everything.. comes back to memory... and i feel that the best part of my life probably just went past me.. and here i am sitting in a coffee shop whose brown paper-cups.. has an old map of Venezuela on it!