Blogs from Caracas, Capital, Venezuela, South America - page 8

Uff, finalmente in Sudamerica. Il volo è stato meno peggio di ciò che pensassi. la differenza oraria è solo di quattro ore rispetto a Tenerife per cui il famigerato "jet leg" mi ha risparmiato stavolta. Il venezuela, da questi pochi giorni passati qui, è un pentolone pieno di olio, il cui coperchio salterà in aria da un momento all'altro facendo non poche vittime. La città è stracolma di mendicanti ma allo stesso tempo auto di grande cilindrata sfrecciano ovunque quasi a voler fuggire un pericolo invisibile ma reale, realissimo. Alcune zone di Caracas sono "off-limit", specialmente di notte. Lo so, lo stesso si potrebbe dire di Torino ma credetemi che non si tratta di scippatori e spacciatori, qui ti tagliano la gola per un pugno di banconote. D'altra parte... il clima è eccellente :-)... read more

so I am already in Germany, finally came this afternoon after missing my transit flight and spending a day in Madrid. Michal is not so lucky, he is still in Caracas, and really not happy about it. Its a horrible city with horrible people and dangerous as hell. There are military and police walking around with machine guns, and you cannot trust them one bit. Air France Venezuela suddenly decided to not let him take his flight, because the flight was changed, and apparentely it was not allowed to be changed, they refuse to give him a new ticket or let him fly out. Tomorrow I will try to organise him out of there. This airline, is really terrible, just problems after problems, and they dont give one toss about dealing with problems they cause. We ... read more

After a six hours on the bus we arrived in Caracas froze to the core. The air con on the bus was ridiculous and the only restbite was when we stopped for lunch which I used to heat up in the sun! We also had chance to taste our first Arepa, similar to a pita and filled with roast pork, cheese and salad, very filling. Once at the bus station we tried to haggle for a taxi but they all wanted double what the hotel told us to pay! They were saying that petrol was very expensive just a shame its one of the cheapest places in the world at 2p a litre compared to £1.20 at home?! So after an hour on another bus and metro we arrived at our pre booked hotel nice and ... read more

So, we went to Caracas. If you ask me how the trip went, it'd be pretty hard for me to give you a straight answer. Let's just say it was interesting (as they seem to go around here). We got out of class at 8pm last Thursday and headed to our houses to frantically throw the last of our things in our bags. Then we headed out for the bus terminal which was about a half a mile from our neighborhood. We arrived just in time to hop on the bus and head out. We were riding on a double-decker buscama (bus bed) and our seats were on top. So we got settled in and tried to get some sleep. This was not an easy task. Merida is located in the northern part of the Andes ... read more

Arrived safely in Caracas, it was a bit stressful when we arrived, a lot of officals coming up to us speaking in Spanish (surprise, surprise) - but our guide was there to meet us which we were very thankful for.... Myself and Ida were like two wet rags after the flight but Emma was buzzing and looked great coming in from Lisbon - maybe something to be said for those LARIUM tablets after all.... Off to Barinas tomorrow more later hopefully........ read more