The Macaws In Caracas

The "guacamayas" in my birth city, Caracas, are a constant reminder that event though you live in the middle of chaos, somehow this chaos lives in a twisted harmony with nature. I wasn't raised in Caracas, so my first contact with these beautiful birds happened when I was 18 years old. I was renting a room in an old lady's house. Little I knew about the little bowl with sunflower seeds she kept in the window, "weird", I must have thought. Turns out, every single day in Caracas, right about 5 or 6PM, the macaws will LET YOU KNOW that is time to go back home, they call them "las gritonas" (the screamers) because right at the end of day, they will all scream their way to their home nests, mostly located by the Avila mountain that surrounds the city. It's a spectacle of colors and sounds that it's impossible to ignore or even get used to. Every day, the macaws of Caracas conquer the sounds of chaos, motorcycles, traffic, and stress and make everyone stop and look for about 30 seconds.