The banks of the Manzanares are very attractive, shaded by mimosas, erythrinas, ceibas and other gigantic trees. A river whose temperature descends during the floods to as low as 22'C when the air is 30'C to 35'C is a blessing in a country where the heat is excessive all year round and one wants to bathe several times a day. Children spend a good part of their lives in this water; everybody, including the richest women, knows how to swim. In a country where people live so close to nature the most important question people ask each other on first meeting is whether the river water is fresher than it was the day before. There are several ways of bathing. Each evening we visited a group of respectable people in the Guaiqueri suburb. In the moonlight they would install chairs by the water; men and women were lightly dressed as if at European spas, and would spend hours smoking cigars and chatting with their families and strangers, according to the habits of the place, about the dryness, the heavy rains and the excessive luxury of Caracas and Havana ladies. Nobody worried about the small but rare crocodiles that approach humans without attacking, although dolphins swim upstream and scare bathers by spouting water.