First impressions of Venezuela
Trip Start
Jun 26, 2008
1
3
101
Trip End
Jun 2009
Caracas,
Central Venezuela,
Venezuela
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
We had booked to stay 2 nights at the Hotel Ole Caribe which was just what we needed to adjust and get up to speed with things. The hotel is to the east of the city and we enjoyed the views from our window and the great pool at the hotel. Not exactly the 5star experience we were used to but great in that Ems could use her new i-touch with the WLAN free service in the hotel.
Monday we woke really ealry and watched the sunrise and then hit the gym and streets after cacthing up on a few emails. The gym was great as it reminded me of the one from school with very old but "proper body building kit".
We took a stroll down the street to find somewhere for a bit to eat. The streets are covered in litter and there are many buses and cars parked on the curbs. I say Cars and Busses, more like rust buckets, all getting some much needed repairs which are done by local upstart mechanics with hammers and plyers...
We decided to splash out and enjoy a dinner at a restuarant on the sea which was called Cristal Mar or Rip off Corner as we found out. We were advised that all the food on the menu was "no good" and proceeded to be advised of the specials which turned out to be great, after the seafood dishes and my few beers which were all great we got the nasty surprise of a 90 Squid bill !!!! Oh well lessons learnt.
Ole Caribe- nice pool
Welcome to Venzuela. Here there are two prices the official ones and the ones that we the tourists get :: The fun begins.Having checked out of our hotel early on the 5th we headed into CARACAS central with Veronica from the travel agent who is taking us to see a specialist travel agent to arrange our next moves from here.
Caracas lives up to its reputation in looks, the places is a buzzing, dirty, 3rd world dive. As we drive through an alternative route as the main freeway is congested one can see that this place is like downtown Hilbrow in Johannesburg (Not a place to go on your own)
Anyway, after an hour or so we end up in one of the nicer sides of town where we meet up with the good folk from Osprey Tours (Thomas, who originally came from Oxfordshire but grew up in Venezuela and spent some time in the US is super helpful and sorts us out with a 3 day trip to Angel falls along with a transfer to the bus station and an additional night in Ciudad Bolivar after our trip so that we are not stranded.
We get all sorted by 12 and head off uptown in Caracas to an area called Altermira for the afternoon. This had a lovely Plaza and old Estancia which is now a museum.
We were taken to the bus station at 5 where we had a 3 hour wait to get onto a bus to Ciudad Bolivar.... Very glad that we got to see Caracas but even happier to get the FUCK out!!
The bus station is chaos but thanks to some great help from the people at Osprey we get in, are checked in by their rep and have great seats on the Bus...
Our first sunrise on the continent
At the station there are 500 people sitting in chairs watching 4 weddings and a funeral with no volume in the dark !! Wierd !!BUSES in Venezuela:
Well these are a treat!! The are driver by frustrated "F1 driver wanna bes", who like things to be "chilled out". Our trip was supposed to take 9 hours with a break.... well we did it in under 8 with an hour stop at between 1 and 2 AM. For those of you who have watched TAXI (The french commedy) it felt a little like that. Ems and I had the back two seats on the bus, they recline right back which is nice for sleep, however after drifting off for an hour, we were thrown awake by what I thought was turbulance as it fel like the back wheels left the road on several occassions and sideways "drifts" marked this drivers speciality!!... We had been warned that they would be cold but no one said we should pack our Snow gear!!! I had 4 layers on and ended up digging my raincoat out to prevent hypothermia!!! So we have renamed these wonderfully quirky methods of trasport - the Rally Fridges!!!!
Cash in Venezuela:
The exchange rate is fixed at 2.14 BS to 1 USD. Every man and his dog will give you "exchange money" anything from 2.4 to 3.1 for your dollars which shows the currency is in a bad way and we made the mistake of only bringing 1KUSD with us which is not going very far. To make things more challenging, it is almost impossible to draw cash from any ATM!... uhh and the banks wont change travellers cheques (good thing we dont have any!) So we may be here a very long time while we work to earn money to get out :-)
