Advertisement
Published: April 27th 2009
Edit Blog Post
I loved Venezuela, the people are great, the culture is so different from anywhere else I´ve experienced, the places were beautiful and the women are amazing. Despite this I was also looking forward to getting to Peru and some more touristy areas so that I could actually have a conversation in English! No joke the whole time I was in Venezuela I did not meet one tourist or local who spoke decent English. (I know I shouldnt expect them to speak english, gotta learn some Spanish! But is hard) This is also one of the things that I loved about the place as well but it is possible to have to much of a good thing. So anyway I got up on my last day in Venezuela and said goodbye to the people that I had met there and got on my 5 hour bus trip back to Caracas, which by the way is one of if not the most dangerous city in the world. But I was feeling confident about this because I knew where I got the first bus from in Caracas the first time and how to get to my hotel from there. So it should all be
fine.......
My confidence began to fade though when the bus was delayed by 3 hours and I was now going to be arriving at night. But I still thought that I would be ok. Then we arrived and everyone got off the bus and I had no idea where I was.
In fact I had no idea if I was even in Caracas. I could not find one person who spoke even a word of english and my confidence was fading quickly. I couldnt even jump in a taxi and ask them because you cant even trust taxi drivers in this city at night. Eventually using my spanish phrase book I established that I was in Caracas somewhere, but this didnt help me all that much. A Colombian guy that I met on the bus was doing his best to help me, he asked around if anyone spoke any english without any luck. Then we somehow worked out that he was going to a similar place in Caracas that I was and decided to share a taxi. Normally I wouldn´t share a taxi with someone I didn´t know but I didn´t have much choice. I felt safer getting
a taxi with him than on my own because here you cant trust all of the taxi drivers and I was in a dangerous city at night, no idea where I was or how far it was to my hotel and who I could trust! Not the greatest of situations to be in.
We got out of the taxi after about half an hour and I still had no idea where I was, because we still couldnt communicate apart from a couple of words. We were outside a big bustling warehouse with hundreds of Colombians rushing around carrying and unpacking thousands of boxes (yes Colombian drug dealing did cross my mind!). He managed to communicate that he worked here and knew someone who spoke english here. Not wanting to stand out on the stree by myslef I followed him inside. So here I was in a warehouse in the worlds most dangerous city at night by myself with hundreds of colombians who spoke no english and no idea where I was!
Although this was definetly not a good situation to be in, luckily they were just really great guys who wanted to help me out. They were actually
really cool people and in the end I spent a couple of hours hanging out with them. Turns out the guy who spoke english wasnt there but in the end we found an internet cafe and were talking on google translator, gotta love google! I asked them to call me a taxi and they said that they would but that taxis werent safe for travellers at night so they would come with me. So they called a taxi, took me to the hostel and even paid for the cab for me and then went off without wanting anything in return. Talk about lucky!
My first experience of Peru wasn´t great. Actually that is a massive understatement, I got robbed and conned before I had even been in the country 2 hours. However, lets not dwell on that because I spent three weeks in Peru and absolutely loved every minute of it. I found a great hostel in Miraflores which is near Lima and ended up staying there for 5 nights even though I only meant to stay for 1. Met loads of great people and found the beer to be so cheap that everyone couldn´t resist getting drunk everynight.
The hostel had things going on everynight like beer poker or quizes before everyone headed out to the salsa clubs which are really fun. Seems be loads of people from the UK in Peru for some reason but it means that i had more people to meet than in Venezuela and I can get advice from other travellers who have been to where I am going. I met this hot german girl called tina on the second night which might have been one of the reasons I stayed there so long. Every morning at about 11 or 12 when I dragged myself out of bed I would I would drowsily walk into the reception and after the first couple of times the lady in reception just knew what I wanted and would say ''another night ben?''. A bartender position came up at the hostel and I was almost going to stay and work in the bar for a couple of weeks but in the end someone else was able to stay for longer so he was a better choice for the job.
I Met loads of other cool people in Lima who I hope to stay in touch with, in particular these two irish girls called Stephanie and Rachael who are actually going to be on the same Inca trail as me. I didnt get much cultural stuff done in Lima because Loki hostel has a funny way of drawing you in and making you spend way to much time in the hostel and going out drinking that you dont really experience much of the area you are staying in. So when I get to Cusco Im going to try and actually get out and about more and see some of the Inca ruins and sites that are scattered around cusco.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0673s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb