Crowne Plaza Maruma Maracaibo

... linen

Dark faces strange hair,
do I look or don´t I stare?,
here they say all are happy,
somehow it seems maybe not

Drop the vowels and speak so fast,
train my ear but understand whats past,
the entire conversation that i comprehend just fine,
I am off the beaten track this will take some time!

Yo tome un helicóptero y visitar Salto Ángel. Yo jugué en la laguna y la playa de Canaima. Saque muchas fotos de Golodrina Salto, Hacha Salto, y el agua de rojo. Come en La Churuata Restaurante. La comida es bien, pero poco caliente. Llegue a Tapuya Hotel a dormir.

... if so it is enough to make you turn Atheist - ok that is slightly unfair.... Our bus arrived more than two hours late into Maracaibo, the second largest city in Venezuela, and dropped us in an industrial estate on the edge of the city. Unbeknownst to us the bus driver has canvassed the people on the bus and this was the 'drop off' point of choice. We hadn't heard him as we were at the back of the bus and in our broken Spanish we probably wouldn ...

... be easily towed away too. The Old Town is also fairly pretty and featured a rather cheap Chinese restaurant we ate at twice. Apart from that, all we really did in Quito was book our Amazon trip and head to the Mitad del Mundo. Mitad del Mundo... The middle of the world... almost. Seems whoever tried to work out where the line of the equator ran got it wrong, I believe it was a French-American ...

... all ready, so all change into an equally unfinished room. All the rooms were nicely decorated in half, with the other half bare walls, included tv, with cnn and cable etc, but was without any kind of door for the toilet. The poor man´s Hilton? Got up for our early bus, arriving at the station for 4am, to find the office closed, and no buses. Confused we asked the taxi drivers, who told us that no buses run today to Maicao, unless people are going from ...

This was my first visit to Venezuela in ten years. My aunt Carol was getting married so my parents allowed me to go. Venezuela isn't exactly that safe anymore, especially for "tourists." I got to spend time with my family which was absolutely awesome.

My aunts wedding was absolutely amazing. Words cannot describe how gorgeous everything was. As soon as I can, I will upload pictures because that's the only way to get the full effect.

... to purchase a flight to Maracaibo no matter the cost: dont. It was so horrible (and expensive) that I cant even be bothered to slag it off. Suffice it to say that it gave me 48 of the most horrible hours of my life, made all the more horrible by the fact that I knew all the while that it would even be a boring story so I wouldnt even be able to regale people with the hilarious story about 'that time I went to Maracaibo and (insert amusingly horrific event of ...

... For now, I plan to continue teaching english and just enjoy my time here. Despite the bad press, this place is awesome and slowly replacing Guatemala and Nicaragua as my favorite countries. Semana Santa.. the week before Easter... is next week and I will be on vacation from work as everything shuts down for the holiday. I am planning to go somewhere with local friends but right now no one can decide what to do. That´s all from here......

... all buses for Merida were booked out, so, not wanting to lug my pack back to the hotel, I jumped a car with a Venezeulen couple, their son, and 2 young local Venezuelan guys. Well, even the young guys were freaking out at this dudes driving....when the rain came, my memory flashed back to the condition of the tyres which, to our favour, appeared almost new. After 6 hours we were pretty pleased to be alive....