Getting there: Our flights down to Venezuela could not have been smoother. Which was shocking, really, because we flew on Avior, a Venezuelan airline with which we’ve not had the best of luck in the past. The thing is, it’s the only carrier with a direct flight from Miami to Barcelona (that’s the city in Venezuela where Ton Ton’s family lives, not the magnificent metropolis in Spain.) The last time we flew on Avior, when we got to the Miami airport, they informed us that our flight time had changed. The plane was scheduled to leave an hour earlier than our tickets indicated and no one had bothered to inform us. Fortunately, Ton Ton insists on arriving to every flight he takes three hours in advance so we did not miss the plane. Also, last time Ton Ton’s sister flew on Avior, the plane caught fire as she and her husband were boarding. I’m not even joking. They saw the flames and started running in the other direction. Luckily, we encountered none of that. All flights departed and arrived on time (even early sometimes) and nobody caught on fire.

Our first night: So after hugging and kissing the fam and toasting to our arrival, we decided to put Luki to bed. After all, it was waaaay past his bedtime. Ton Ton’s mom didn’t have a crib for him, but she provided us with a toddler bed which included side rails and everything. When we’re home, we put Luki in his crib with his special blankie (don’t forget about this special blankie, it will have a starring role in a later part of the trip) turn off the lights and let him fall asleep by himself. He never cries. And so, silly us, we tried to do the same thing in Venezuela. Except that he figured out how to climb out of that toddler bed in less than a millisecond and began to wander around the room, poking his fingers into every electrical outlet he could find. I laid in bed next to him and tried to sing him to sleep, managing to keep him still, but wide awake and asking for “more” every time I finished a song. I’m still not sure when he dozed off because I was fast asleep by then.

Our second night: We figured that if we could make it impossible for him to climb out of the toddler bed, he would go back to his old habits of falling asleep by himself. Here is our brilliant plan: we moved the bed so that on one side it was right next to the wall, and on the other right next to our bed. Our much taller bed. We put Luki in there, handed him his special blanket, turned off the lights, kissed him goodnight, walked out of the room. Minutes later, he was crying loudly. We opened the door and found him standing directly in front of us. He had climbed up onto the much taller bed, walked across it’s entire width, and climbed down the other side. We caught him trying to figure out how to work the door handle. To escape.

Beach trip #1:

Reunion: So Ton Ton had his 20th high school reunion while we were down there. I accompanied him even though I wasn’t technically invited because I just knew I’d have access to a wealth of embarrassing information. And I did, like the pictures of him at prom in a red bow tie and cummerbund and the story about the time he and his buddies broke into the high school to steal a physics exam. But my favorite part was hearing about how he used to walk around swinging his head back to get his long hair out of his eyes all day and telling people, “don’t call me Tony, please, I want to go by Slash.”

Stay tuned for parts II and III of our trip in the coming days.