Last day in Venezuela
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2007
1
39
91
Trip End
Jun 25, 2008
Arapito,
Venezuela
Sunday, December 30, 2007
It is one of the pretty beaches between Puerto la Cruz and Cumana on the outskirts of the Mochima national park.
In the distance were islands and a lump of glowing white rock. I'm not sure what it was but it made a nice backdrop.
It was a typical Venezuelan beach scene with everyone under umbrellas on beach chairs with big cooler boxes for ice and drinks, and children and young adults wandering up and down the beach selling seafood and local snacks. Almost everyone scantily clad in speedos and thong bikinis, even older ladies and less than svelte specimens
Typical beach scene
.As the sun came down, some of the young food sellers stopped and started a game of beach baseball. It made a spectacle in the golden light.
For the second night in a row we pitched the tent and had the beach all to ourselves, surprising given it is peak holiday season. And again we were adopted by a little stray puppy who whimpered softly outside the tent flap to be allowed in after we retired.
Scared of tales of sold-out buses we left early the next morning to make sure we got to the Caracas airport by dark to while away the hours till our early morning flight.
As it was the main bus wasn't half full and our five connections including local buses and the excellent metro went like clockwork. We even had time to stop off at a street market by the metro for Mark to have his boot fixed by the first of the line of cobblers under an overpass. It was teeming down there, and it was good to get a glimpse of the chaos for which Caracas is renowned.
On the plane out of the country, I reflected that despite warnings of how dangerous Venezuela was, we had a month without incident.
Final thoughts
All in all I enjoyed Venezuela and found it a real eye opener.
Peculiar white mass
Being there when the referendum vote was held made it more interesting and we talked to Venezuelans both pro and against Chavez. Everyone agreed that he is crazy(changing the flag so the horse looks 'left' not 'right' and proposing to change the name of Caracas into a sentence-long name are two examples). But a few people we talked to liked that his leftish ideas meant the government was finally doing things to help the poorer populations.
One example was in the town as you head into Los Llanos over a river. For years on end the town was cut off by the bridge getting washed away, but once the government was sure a new modern bridge was what the community needed, it was built in three months.
On the other hand, many people said Chavez is as money hungry as anyone and we heard alarming reports of educated people being unable to work as they had spoken out against him.
Venezuela is described as the most Americanised country in Latin America but even some well-off Venezuelans we talked to disliked the workaholic capitalistic drive they had experienced in the States and didn't want Venezuela to adopt that
Baseball on the beach
. It will be interesting to see what political direction Venezuela will take in the years to come.
The aspect of Venezuela that I found the hardest to fathom was the money situation.
As I have written before, the government uses an official cash rate that greatly overvalues the Venezuelan dollar so there is a huge black market.
Interestingly, all tour agency prices are given in US dollars and bolivars, with the conversion rate being that of the black market. This means that unless tourists want a ridiculously expensive holiday, they are forced to change money on the black market.
Adding to the problem is the high inflation rate, officially 20% but likely more. Prices have increased 40% over the last year. This explained why our Lonely Planet published early this year was so out on the costs and why a medium-sized jar of peanut butter in the supermarket was $US15 with the official rate
Our tent gets its first night at the beach
. From talking to people the true value versus the official rate had likely become more and more disparate over the last three months, due to worry over the outcome of the referendum to see if Chavez could change the constitution to stand for president forever and increase his powers to confiscate property off the rich. I think the gap between the official and black market rate is closing in again now after the referendum.
The second thing I struggled to get my head round, especially as New Zealand is the land of the dairy cows, was Venezuela's milk shortage to the point you couldn't buy it in supermarkets. A few weeks before they couldn't buy sugar despite there being sugar cane processing plants all over. Funnily enough, Mark saw an article in the newspaper that New Zealand was sending a special shipment of milk over. NZ to the rescue.
Once again, such shortages are likely caused by Government intervention that sets the price of food staples and together with financial exchange restrictions means no one wants to sell their products for a lousy profit in Venezuela.
There are no restrictions on petrol though. And it costs, even with the official rate, a ridiculous 3 US cents a litre in some provinces. It's big car heaven out here.
