Chavizmo

After a fairly gruelling 19 hour journey, I'm back in the promised land. I've occupied the cheap but elegant large mock-antique sofa in the centre of the courtyard of Hotel Miramar in Santa Marta, listening to my rocking new mix on my headphones. I don't have a portable music player, so I can only listen to tunes when I have power to plug into. I'm glad I have decent headphones. They want 5000 pesos - about £2 - to use the wifi here - jokers! - so I'm trying out my new wifi cracking software. No luck yet.

I left Caracas on Monday night by bus, aiming for Merida. I chose to stop off here on the way back to Colombia, having heard that there are rocks to climb. I've used my harness and boots only once in San Francisco, and they take up a fairly sizeable part of my bag, so might as well give em some use. Arriving 5 hours after schedule at 1pm, I trekked down Calle 24 towards the cable car - the highest (4700m) and longest (7km) in the world - but also closed for repairs. I'm quite happy with safety-zealousness when it comes to cable cars. Right at the end, Hotel Paty was just what I was looking for, small, cute, family run and cheap - 30 Bolivars (£3).

Tuesday afternoon went on a mission to Jaji, a village a few km away in the hills. Merida is set in the middle of two ridges of the start of the Andes, 1700m up and 19˚ as I'm accurately informed by the welcome sign. Quite spectacular and very lush. Wednesday afternoon, I took a bus on my own to the outskirts of town to find a rock. The workmen working nearby to Roque de San Pedro were highly bemused at the idea of bouldering. Without ropes, I don't really want to climb more than 5ft off the ground, so the idea of bouldering is to traverse horizontally. First one guy sent me up to the top of this hillock clambering through undergrowth, only to return, quite happy with the rock at ground level. It was great to stretch all those muscles I haven't used for about 9 months since last doing it, and I'm still feeling it.

Leaving Venezuela, I can't leave out my thoughts on Chavez. Before coming here, I was fairly supportive of Chavizmo for 4 reasons. First, reforming democracy, he has empowered decision-making at the local level. Second and third, education and health have seen almost 100% literacy rates return to Venezuela and provided (basic) universal free health care. Fourth, his middle finger to the U.S. hegemonic system and development of ALBA (Alternative American trading bloc) is something I like to see.

The other story is the one generally presented in the international media, especially in America (North and South): Chavez is a crackpot despot who is enforcing his tyrannical will on the Venezuelan people. He has only managed to spend on social goods because of the unprecented high oil price in the last 5 years, and it will all come crashing down so he must be got rid of at all costs before it's too late.

Well, I think it's fair to say that my uncle and I were on different sides of Chavez's fence, but after all, I think we're both much closer to the fence than I thought at first. Although I certainly wouldn't want to make too much of it, vague parallels can be drawn to Castro's highjacking of the Cuban Revolution in the 50s (and beyond). Chavez's model of socialism is certainly heavily imposed, and the opposition don't like it, crying election fraud, which I don't know whether or not to believe. Nonetheless, I'm still (just) on the Chavez side. But it's a golden example of how one the most progressive leaders in the world is still a far, far from perfect solution for a political system, particularly one contextually mired chest-deep in neo-liberal hegemony.

It seems the wifi cracking software needs to see someone else's packets being sent in order to snoop in on it. Hmmmm.