Venezuela

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My Opion of Venezuela

I am very happy that I visited Venezuela as for me it was the most interesting experience of my South America trip but their seams to be a sense of unstableness within the country, On my first encounter to Venezuela I quickly noticed the difference in the infrastructure between the two neighbouring countries second being Colombia and only divided by a human line, the two border offices one with computers one with out, the conditions of the roads leading to and from the border and then the courtesy or lack of by the military / police, In Colombia they smile and say Buenos dais and are happy to lead you in the correct direction but in Venezuela for example they are sitting on park benches texting on there phones.
On my arrival to the Venezuela border from Santa Marta The officer checked my bags thoughily and noticed a stash of bank notes resembling money that I have collected from the countries that I have visited previously, well this was to be a opportunity to make some money and he would then ask me to lay out the money on a table in a office then accidenly / convenicly drop some notes on the floor enabling him to put my New Zealand dollars into his pocket after I stupidly picked them up. Other stories like this seamed to be a common occurrence once I arrived to Merida and spoke to others.

Then there is the problem of the currency,
Now the official bank rate (at the ATM) is 2.15 Venn Bolivar’s to $1 U.S dollar to buy & sells

But conveniently Foreigners cannot buy Dollars, but there is a black market that is almost 3 times more so depending on the time,

For 1 U.S dollar you can get between 5 and 6 Venn Bolivar’s, Black market, so if you need to change dollars all you do is go to a shop, well anyone can help you or know someone who will. But my question is where does all the dollars go?????

But this means that you have to bring American dollars into Venezuela and after my experience, would you????

Lots of the A.T.Ms are pretty unreliable as well so maybe you could get stuck somewhere without money

Also there is the story of the petrol prices I could not believe it when I saw how much it cost to fill a tank for a 4 wheel drive (my friends uncles car), he paid 1 dollar - 5 Bolivar’s for 40 litres of unleaded but unfortunately it doesn’t affect the prices of buses or taxi’s they still they to cheap you

While I was visiting in dry season December, The wet season apparently was bad for the percentage of rainfall to so the government has decided well Senor Chavez that for 2 hours in the afternoon and evening the power will be switched off to save on the hydro power so then businesses either have to buy generators or close,

It’s fortunate that the fuels cheap

Apart from this, Venezuela is very beautiful, as a tour guide explained to me about the
Attractions on offer and about the different diversities,

Now: It has k.m´s of stunning Caribbean coast line,

There are lots of national parks which are often empty during the weekdays,

The highest waterfall in the world named Angel Falls,

Wonderful climate,

The highest cable car in the world based in Merida it goes up to 4500 metres for walks to Pico Bolivar to name one. (But currently not working).

And lastly on my experience the people that I met were very surprisingly like Colombians very warm and friendly, except my incidents with greedy taxi drivers I had a great time in Venezuela, its not at all touristy so your pictures are rare to see for the tourist route that some backpackers follow, and yes for me the most expensive country in South America but on a last note the Girls are the hottest so far on my list of countries in South America.

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