A Tale of Two Cities

Caracas, Venezuela

Sitting at my uncle's dining table overlooking Caracas, it's quite hard to imagine what life in Caracas is really like. Last week I heard he would be going on holiday very soon, so my window of opportunity to spend some time with him and his Venezuelan family was closing by the day. After a 2-day bus journey I made it into the mad world that is Caracas.

After a couple of nice days is Cartagena, it was time to say goodbye to my girlfriend for a while. After 10 months on the road together pretty much 24 hours a day, this was the moment she had been waiting for perhaps a little more than me. Our last night together was certainly not from a Hollywood script. As we set off for an evening stroll, the big screen showing back to back Jacko hits was actually quite a nice bar where we stopped for a drink.

Smoking a cigarette outside, our host from the hostel we were staying - but moved to try and have a more romantic last night - bumped into us. She took it well, and invited us to join her for a spot of aguardiente on a bench on the main promenade leading up to the big clock tower of the old - beautiful - part of the city.

As an amusing anecdote, while we were talking, her dogs went crazy at this fairly dodgy looking street fella, which was unusual for them, which made him even more dodgy. 10 minutes later, another guy walked up to us, fumbled underneath the edge of the bench casually, explaining that he was just picking up something he left there earlier (all of these conversations were in Spanish, naturally). He walked away casually, and delivered his Coke to the dodgy guy.

Anyway, anecdote aside, the conversation with the lady was deep. Having been in Colombia 2 days, I was trying to put it all together for myself. I have read, studied, listened and talked about Colombian realities for the last 4 years in the UK. Actually being here seemed to juxtapose everything that I'd read. It's fine to walk on the streets in the evening. It all seemed rather cosy and a world away from civil war.

The lady's story brought it all crashing back into place again. She explained how her family were indigenous folk living near Medellin in the 1970s. Because her mother worked for and was quite friendly with some of the posh folk, one night they told her that that the shit was going to hit the fan that night. She put her children, aged 3 and 4, underneath the house (which was raised slightly on stilts) in the evening and went to bed as normal. The lady then explained how before dawn, she heard how gunmen murdered practically the whole village, including hearing her parents being shot dead directly above her, at the age of 4. Somehow she managed to find her grandparents and escaped, I don't remember the story very clearly after this point. This kind of put the romance for the evening on the back burner and we didn't really recover it.

The next morning at 7am I took a local bus to the bus station which was over an hour away, and bought a ticket (bargained down to $17.50) for a "direct" bus to Maicao, on the Venezuelan border, supposedly 10 hours away. One change and 14 hours later, I arrived in Maicao. On the way, the bus passed through Barranquilla, then Santa Marta, and the Tayrona National Park, the latter of which I'm heading back to in a few weeks because it is apparently stunning - jungle backing onto white sandy Caribbean sea.

As the bus pulled into Maicao, a local dude had jumped on board and organised the next leg, to Maracaibo, where I was planning on staying the night. Which was actually great timing, because it was already pushing 9pm, with a good "couple" of hours left. He took my bags and slung them in the back of a very large Chevy estate car. Luckily I was expecting this, as this is the only form of transport from here to Maracaibo, the nearest city on the Venezuelan side of the border.

This was a pretty cool journey, cruisin through the South American evening listening to tinny Argentinian pop music. Well, cruising in between the 10 times we were stopped on the road and asked for ID by various layers of Venezuelan authority.

I arrived into Maracaibo bus station at around midnight. Luckily I knew there were some cheap hotels near the back of the bus station, and headed over. Trouble was, I didn't have any Bolivars on me. The official exchange rate is about 2.5 to the dollar. But the black market exchange rate is around 6. So, the hotel owner of the cheapest place said he'd change my money at 3. When I only had a $50 note, that's quite annoying. Luckily after a little while, a guy from the next door hotel popped out to see what the commotion was about. He was a solo traveller from the US, a young teacher with lots of interesting stories. He helped me out bigtime, and saved me a lot in the process.

The next morning I started the next 12 hour journey after breakfast and a quick money change. The other confusing thing is that last year they took 3 zeros off the currency to make it a bit easier, but everyone still talks in thousands. The bus I took was the most luxurious bus I've ever got - huge amounts of room, almost fully reclinable chair - and of course like a fridge.

The only notable part of the journey was crossing Lake Maracaibo. It's a huge inlet from the sea, sitting right on top of an equally huge oilfield. The weird and beautiful thing was the patchwork quilt of green algae over the surface, it looked real trippy, like you could walk on it.

Arriving into Caracas, I hit a really lucky break. As we were getting our bags of the coach, a friendly looking fellow passenger asked where I was going, and offered me a lift. I gave him a once-over, and he was travelling with 3 children. Looked harmless enough. We piled 7 of us into his son's car and raced away from what turns out to be on of the most dangerous places in Caracas.

Caracas is built into a valley. As it's population grew to over 10 million, so it sprawled out it fingers into the surrounding valleys and up the hillsides. Consequently, it afford stunning views almost everywhere you turn.

2 quick observations about Caracas / Venezuela. One is that you can fill a 20 gallon tank of petrol for less than a dollar. The other is that food costs almost the same as the UK. Pretty weird.

Yesterday I managed to convince my uncle to let me out into the city on my own. I was accompanied by his wife most of the way, but then convinced her too that I really didn't need to be shadowed around and really wanted to amble around on my own. I checked out Bolivar's birthplace (he sure wasn't from a poor background) and hung out in the Plaza Bolivar soaking up the atmosphere and watching folk, like most people in Plaza. Not many tourists around, in fact didn't really notice any white folk at all. But nor did I get any sense of insecurity, danger, or a bad vibe at all. But I like it without the tourists, so best to keep up the charade. Tell everyone it's really, really dangerous!

In between being allowed into the city - actually it's more practical, as there isn't any public transport from my uncle's house - I'm learning html and php web languages. Might as well make myself useful... gotta go, gotta stir the famous Heston Blumenthal bolognese - the all day cooking meat in milk one. Mmmm mmmm. Dammit, didn't write about Venezuelan politics.... ha, the elephant in the room. Next post, I promise.

Sorry for the lack of photos, my camera got eaten by the postman sending it from Nicaragua to Panama. Will get another soon...