"I am a winner!"

Venezuela might be led by a neo-populist, Bolivarian, pseudo-socialist, but that doesn’t mean all Venezuelans share their president’s egalitarian worldview.

Nidiana, as we learned, believes in a mercantilist, zero-sum worldview, where only winners and losers exist. This was made evident on our first night in the Andes, when Nidiana turned what was initially a friendly game of spoons into a cutthroat, no-holds barred, winner-takes-all showdown.

By the time it was over, Nidiana, grunting like Monica Seles in her Grand Slam primer, had left multiple open wounds on the hands of her opponents in the dinning tent in her ruthless efforts to capture every spoon on the table. The porters, meanwhile, kept a safe distance from the endless stream of terrifying screams of aggression and woeful yelps of pain that came from inside the tent.

By the time it was over, Nidiana had emerged victorious and proudly exclaimed for all to take heed, “I am a winner!”