Subject: Venezuela
Date: E-mail sent October 20, 2005 10:57:31 PM from Chennai, India
Our ship is sitting at the port in Chennai, India. It's 10:19 a.m. local time, 12:49 a.m. Eastern time. We're waiting for the ship to clear customs, and since I wasn't able to catch up on my web site during our seven day crossing. This was also the last long stretch we'll have on the ship for awhile, so I'm not sure how many more of these updates I'll be able to get out. Even if I don't get my site put together until December, I promise to eventually catch up and put something together. Until then, please forgive the under construction look and enjoy the photos I am able to post.
This is my fourth attempt at writing this e-mail. My days are so packed in port that it's impossible to keep this short and sweet, but I'll just mention some highlights and you can check out http://atsea.amyburky.com/venezuela/index.html for photos and more commentary from Venezuela. Please e-mail me if you want the unedited version - warning, it's LONG!
My first sights of Venezuela were beautiful and grand. The Andes towered straight up from the sea and there were thousands of little shanty houses all over the hillside. The population in the Caracas area especially is just exploding and there is a huge struggle for land. There are many "squatters" or people (mostly the poor) who have gone and claimed the land as theirs by putting up a little shack and living there. The wealthy actually own the land, but they pretty much bought it out from under the poor people who actually live there. I don't know as much as I should about exactly how this works, but I do know that there are millions of little shantytowns all over Venezuela. We docked in La Guaira which is the port city for the large city of Caracas about 40 minutes away by sketchy taxi (the cars are falling apart).
I went off the ship with 5 students - my friend Molly Menschel, her roommate Cory, Cory's boyfriend Collin and friend from home Susan, and another student, Mischa. After an adventure at the airport akin to a scene out of The Amazing Race, we ended up going to the bus station to catch a 13 hour bus to Mérida. Our bus left at night, so we had a half day (which was plenty for my taste) to explore the huge city of Caracas.
At the bus station we turned into those shell-shocked tourists that are the target every con is looking for. We got dumped out of the cab and directly handed off to some guy who was supposedly helping us buy our bus tickets. We made our first big mistake and didn't stop to think and look around and figure things out for ourselves before letting some stranger whisk us off. I think we all realized this wasn't the right thing to be doing, but it was our first day in a new country, speaking a foreign language, and we just hadn't yet acquired our travel smarts. When the guy asked us to all hand over our passports something told me NO BAD IDEA, but it was just happening so quickly, so we handed them over, but said that we wanted to go with him. It all turned out OK, although we lost enough money to make it a good slap on the wrist experience.
Finding money was our biggest problem in Venezuela. In all of my international travel, I had never had a problem using my ATM card and have come to depend on finding ATMs in every country. I did bring a small amount of cash with me, but certainly not enough for the entire 4 days. Molly and I tried about 15 different ATM machines only to find that most ATMs don't work with international cards. I found a money changer, but it was a huge process requiring two thumb prints and they take off a huge cut for themselves. From the little I observed it looks like all bank transactions require two thumbprints in addition to a signature. Getting money legally was our biggest problem in Venezuela. The Chavez government so tightly controls the economy, that it's very difficult for foreigners to get money - at least legally. There are people on the street totally willing to exchange your US Dollars cash (not traveler's checks) for Bolivares, this is what they call the black market. Exchanging money on the black market is illegal, so I refused to do it, but I probably should have because you get a much much better exchange rate. It's almost assumed that you use the black market. The exchange rate on the black market can be up to 2400 Bolivares/USD, and you don't need any passport or anything, but when I used the legal exchange house I had to go through all that hoopla of passport, lines, and thumbprints and only ended up getting about 1850 Bolivares/USD after they took their cut off the top.
We had been told that there were a few food items that we were not allowed to leave Venezuela without trying, so we used our time in Caracas to enjoy good Venezuelan food.
Our bus ride to Mérida was more comfortable than I expected. It was on a buscama (sleeper bus) where the seats recline more than normal bus seats. We once again struggled to find enough money to buy bus tickets back the next day and with very little money remaining took a taxi to our posada that we had found in a Lonely Planet book. We got to our posada and Patty, the owner of Posada Patty, ushered us right inside. She didn't speak any English, but we were able to communicate fine with the amount of Spanish we knew. It was a very cute little posada (hostel). It was pretty much like she was opening her home to us. There were a few other people staying there. A girl from England who was going to start studying in Mérida. There are a lot of language programs in Mérida, but this girl was actually going to study Venezuelan history. There were two other guests - they also spoke English, so when we were all hanging out in the central public area, we could all understand each other.
It was Sunday, and the stores were closing soon, so Patty sent her 4-year-old daughter Claudia out as our tour guide to take us to a little bakery and market to get food for the next several meals. It's so refreshing how trusting people are in other cultures. I don't think any mother would send her 4-year-old daughter out with 6 people she just met to walk around the town. Of course, I don't know any 4 years olds that could lead a group down to the bakery and then haul us over to the supermarket. Claudia was quite the little tour guide. She made sure to point out her favorite candy - sour gummy worms, in the store so we could buy them for her. She also remembered to buy toilet paper for her mom and bought it all by herself. I could have walked around with Claudia all day. She took me by the hand and dragged me up the hill, the yakking Americans were moving a little slow for her.
We'd called ahead to a tour operator in Mérida and booked a paragliding trip for that afternoon. At 3:00 we were picked up in white jeeps with bench seats down the side (a very popular vehicle to cart tourists around in Venezuela). We had a fairly long drive out and wind up to the place where we were paragliding. There were TONS of SAS students there. Though 13 hours away, Mérida was not a secret. Since there were 2-3 times as many people wanting to go paragliding as pilots, we had to go in groups. They matched us up by weight with the pilots. Molly and I had the same pilot - Jerard. Molly was in the first group, I was in the second. That was great because it meant we could take pictures of each other from the ground.
Once we got strapped into the parasail and our pilot (with helmet on), we were told just to start running (towards the edge of the cliff) and just keep running. Hopefully, if everything goes well, the wind will pick us up. A team of guys had to help with the take off, and they didn't always do such a good job, so a few people had some crash take offs, but I got off without a hitch and it was beautiful. Imagine floating above a canyon at sunset with God rays shining through the clouds, that's about what it was like - GLORIOUS! My flight was just over 25 minutes. Jerard did a few spinny tricks where we spiraled around which was very fun, and I took lots of pictures. Both the view from the ground and the air was amazing. There were about 15 sails out at a time just floating in the air, and from the air I could imagine what it must feel like to be a bird. The landing was pretty easy, you just kind of plop down and sort of run until you stop.
Molly, Cory, Collin, Susan, Mischa, and I hung out watching the other groups waiting for our jeep to leave when we realized that the only jeep left wasn't ours and we had been left. We hitched a ride down to the bottom of the mountain with another group and found out that our jeep had waited for us at the bottom, but had just left without us, so once again we were stranded and at this point there wasn't room in the jeep for us.
The tour operators were taking all of the pilots out for beers. In this culture, instead of tipping they just buy the pilots beers. Paragliding is more of a hobby for these guys, even though there are a lot of tourist activities, they're apparently not really used to tourists, so this is just something they do for fun. Since they hadn't yet figured out how to get us back into town, we followed one of the pilots and walked into the nearby little town which wasn't much more than 2 little stores. After hanging with the locals for a while we were finally taken back to our posada, but it had been an adventure for sure.
The next morning we had another grand adventure - canyoning. Once again we met our tour operator and climbed into the large white jeeps. When we finally got out to our drop off point, we had to put all of our clothes and stuff in a plastic bag to leave in the jeep and take helmets and a couple of dry bag backpacks and hike down to the river in just our swimsuits and sneakers. It was about a 25 minute hike and I felt completely naked and once we had to put on the helmets a bit special ed.
Down at the river we put on full wet suits which were very snug. The name of the river was the Santa Catalina river. I had brought my waterproof digital camera, but there wasn't anywhere to carry it fortunately our guide Lenin offered to take it for me which made for some great pictures. Once we got our wet suits and harnesses on, we followed our guides Lenin & Milo down the river. Neither of them spoke English, so we were going into this pretty uninformed. Normally in the US any adventure activities you do, you have to sign a stack of release forms, but we didn't have to do anything for canyoning in Venezuela. It didn't take long to realize why I hadn't ever heard of canyoning in the US. This isn't exactly the safest sport, or at least not the way we did it.
We walked down the middle of the river, sometimes getting carried down a little waterfall or getting swept down by the current. It was fun, but I was glad I had decided to wear sneakers at the last minute instead of my river sandals. Most of the trip was walking down the river, but we would come to 3 waterfalls that we would repel down - 12 meters, 22 meters, and 35 meters (or something like that). There were also 3 places where we jumped off a rock cliff into the river below, that was the scariest and least safe part in my opinion. Our first jump was from about 10-12 feet and we were only jumping into waist deep water, but the bottom was sand. The second jump was by far the scariest and I almost couldn't do it. There was about a 3 foot wide area between 2 rock walls, we had to jump off one side, within this 3 foot area, and land below in an area where the current was strong, and swim off to the side into a little eddy before getting carried down the next drop off. That next drop off was another one of our jumps and it looked easy enough, but I apparently misjudged the jump and hit my shin on a rock. Thank goodness I had a think wet suit on because I still got quite banged up even with the wet suit.
Our first waterfall was a good introduction to repelling down the falls. It was about 12 meters with a moderate amount of water. We went down one at a time, but there wasn't any backup, we were responsible for holding onto the rope while we repelled down. If we let the rope slip out of our hand, we'd plummet to the bottom. The secret is to keep your head down, dangle your feet, and just let the rope lower you down. Oh yeah, and once you start, don't stop. This first one was a shocker, with the language barrier, we didn't really know what to expect. It was kind of shocking when we found that you couldn't really breathe when you were under the waterfall. The waterfalls kept getting taller and more intense, there was no way to breathe if you stopped in the middle, so it was go go go.
We had a few hours to relax, get some more bread for dinner, and try the amazing Venezuelan chocolate and coffee before our short trip to Mérida came to an end and it was back on the bus for the 13 hour trip back to Caracas.
One thing that we didn't get to do while we were in Mérida because time and money wouldn't permit was ride up the teleférico or cable car. Mérida has the tallest and longest cable car in the world. It's probably something we should have definitely done, but thanks to those Venezuelan ATMs, it didn't happen. The other thing we would have liked to do is bridge jumping where you're harnessed and jump off the side of a bridge. I think we had quite enough adventure even without the bridge jumping.
A few observations from the bus ride and Venezuela in general:
We woke up in Caracas and arrived at the bus station about 10:30 - 13 1/2 hours after leaving Mérida. We were in Venezuela for 4 days and spent 2 nights on a bus and only 1 night in a bed. We were hungry, tired, and smelly, oh and poor, but we wanted to take the cable car up to the top of Mt. Avilla before going back to the ship. We also wanted to do some souvenir shopping since we hadn't been able to get anything in Mérida, although that would have been the place to shop.
When we got back to Caracas we made another classic tourist mistake and let some guy "help" us out to get a taxi and money and we got separated and half of us never ended up with money. Eventually - after unsuccessfully driving around to find a safe bank - we all found each other at the Mt. Avilla cable car.
The cable car was pretty cool, it looked longer than the Mérida one to me, but I know it wasn't. We were starving and hadn't yet had breakfast, so I dug into my bag and got the rest of my emergency food supply which was some cookies I'd bought the night before, a granola bar, a couple fruit leathers, and some water. We passed it all around, each taking a little bite. It was overcast at the top of the mountain, but the cable car provided a nice view of Caracas. We had to be back to the ship that evening, so we ended our time in Venezuela with some attempted souvenir shopping. I ended up having to spend my last $4 to buy a t-shirt at a small stand inside the port just so I'd have something tangible to show for my trip to Venezuela.
I'm not sure I've talked enough about the taxis. We were told not to get in a taxi that looks like it's had a few too many bumps and bruises. The safest taxis to get in are small white cars with yellow license plates. Well, the taxi that we took back to La Guaira broke all the rules. It was falling apart, many many bumps and bruises, and it was not small or white and the license plate wasn't yellow. Well, it was our last Venezuelan adventure. It was a good thing we didn't try to head back any later because the traffic back to La Guaira was pretty heavy and there is no alternate route. If this road closes down, we're stuck. Our driver drove very very slow, I think he was trying to be nice and let us take lots of pictures out the window, but it was a very long ride (over an hour) in a very cramped car (there were 6 of us after all).
No one ever wants to leave the countries we visit. Our time there is so short, and we have amazing experiences, but the day always ends climactically as we stand outside on the top deck and watch the ship pull away from the dock. Leaving the twinkling lights and land behind. I always plug my ears and smile when the ships horn blows 3 times and I know we're on our way to another adventure.