I arrived in Caracas bright and early at 4:30am on Thursday morning! As we descended to the airport I saw the lights of the coastal towns and realized, yep, I´m going to Venezuela. Much to my dismay, my debit card didn´t work in any of the 6 ATMs at the airport and I started to freak out. Luckily I had some US$$ so I just exchanged those so I could pay for a bus ride into town (the airport is 26km outside of Caracas). I was originally going to take the airport shuttle into the center, but instead ran into a nice Turkish fellow who was just coming back from Colombia, but had been in Venezuela previously for several months. He helped me with the local buses, in every possible stage of decline, and I made it to the center of town and my hotel just fine. The ride into town was great- a nice winding trip through the coastal mountains complete with smoke belching and jerking bus. The mountains were tropical sometimes, but would change to desert-like without much warning. The dirt is the same color as in the Rift Valley- a bright reddish-orange and of course, sadly, there were plenty of barrios (shanty neighborhoods) as well. And it is HOT here! We´re talking 95 or more degrees with 80% humidity. Upon arrival in town, I made another disappointing discovery- everything is 2-3x as expensive as I was led to believe, with many things being more expensive than what I am used to at home- a small package of salad is $7 in a grocery store and a package of Nutri-Grain granola bars goes for around $10. I have started going to the grocery store after I spent nearly $20 on a really small dinner that was supposed to be $5 according to Lonely Planet (the guidebook I am using). Anywho, after paying a small fortune for my hotel, I took a long nap and then set out to explore the city. The city is set in a valley with the coastal mountains rising steeply right out of the northern neighborhoods. From the center I can see some of the sprawling barrios creeping up the hillsides to the south. There is a lot of traffic here and I was warned that it is terrifying and you can´t cross streets, etc, etc, but really it is much better than Cairo in my opinion and I just follow locals across the streets and do fine. In the area I am staying, there also seem to be more shoe stores than there are people and each is blaring a latin-hiphop song. I found that my debit card does work in Banco de Venezuela ATMs thank god, although it takes a bit of trickery and card jamming.
After the ATM, I took a stroll through the center of town to visit the many sights based around Simon Bolivar. Bolivar is Venezuela´s national hero (similar to to Ataturk for Turkey) and monuments and shrines to him abound. Usually complete with a nice crown of bird poop, but really, I don´t think anyone else notices... He basically liberated a large portion of the northern bit of South America from the colonial powers. I first went to the house he was born in, meticulously preserved in what appears to be an original state. It was a beautiful house with many open courtyards and a nice garden, although right nextdoor to the garden was the 15 story Bance de Venezuela tower. The front room had great murals of Simon´s battles and various other events in his life and were awesomely gory as this art always seems to be. From there I went to the Simon Bolivar Museum whose proudest possesion seemed to a pair of his dirty socks and his bathtub. After this I got lost in a semi-bad neighborhood, but made it back safely and walked to the Panteon Nacional where Bolivar and other prominent Venezuelans are buried. It was quite an impressive building, really tall and in a colonial style set against the coastal mountains. The interior was gorgeous with great paintings on the ceiling depicting Bolivar in a god-like manner in the clouds with other Venezuelans floating around him.
On Friday morning I took the metro out to the museum area. First I went to Museo de Ciencias Naturales (Natural Sciences) which was mostly a bunch of stuffed Africa animals and the "Cabeza" (head) that was literally just a bunch of animal head mounted on the walls- there was even a moose! I also went to the National Art Gallery which was really nice with pre-Hispanic art, some religious art from the 16th century and some modern art. After the museums, I took a bus through the barrios to the teleferico, a cable car that goes 4km up the coastal mountains in Parque Nacional El Avila. Luckily, there was a girl sitting next to me on the bus that helped me a bit (it was all in Spanish, I´m doing surprisingly well considering my limited vocabulary) and I found it with no real problem. The cable car was sweet. It went straight up the mountain, over some valleys and canyons and with incredible views of Caracas. The whole area is pretty jungley with lots of jungle bird sounds, huge versions of Mom and Dad´s house plants and bright orange and blue butterflies the size of my palm. It sounded like the Amazon exhibit at the Oregon Zoo. I rode up with seven female students, probably about 14 years old that jabbered about this and that boy and squealed everytime we went over a canyon. Entertaining. From the top of the mountain, I could see down the opposite side to little villages springing up out of the banana palms and jungle trees and could even see all the way to the Caribbean. The area near the top of the mountain is more or less cloud forest so the fog would come in and out- it made it nice and cool for sure! After the cable car, I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the upscale suburb of Altamira and got lost in the biggest mall I´ve ever been in trying to find a map of Parque Nacional El Avila. This mall had like 6 wings. I had to talk to 5 security guards before I found the bookstore- of course after all of that, they didn´t have what I needed...
Saturday I headed out for a hike in the national park. Once again, I got lucky and sat next to a group of women on the bus who then showed me the way to the park entrance. The neighborhood right outside the park was gorgeous! Huge gardens surrounding little houses and wide, tree-lined boulevards. All the people I saw in the area were either riding their mountain or road bikes or wearing running shoes and running shorts. Everyone was so active. The first hike I did went to a waterfall and then wound around the south slope of the mountains. The waterfall was really pretty and really jungely, but there were TONS of people swimming in the pool of water below it so it wasn´t exactly serene. I also saw a park ranger and unlike me, he had a very large pistol strapped to the side of his thigh. Gah, I´m glad I don´t carry a gun! The rest of the hike was OK, but it was so hot I could barely move. I honestly can´t think of a time I have had so much sweat dripping off my face like I did on that hike. HOT. And the cicadas were almost deafening- it amazes me that an inch long insect could make so much noise! There lots of birds singing too and lots of those big, bright butterflies again. Next I hiked up a giant hill that was all in the sun so it was even hotter and there were people running up it! I couldn´t believe it! I wanted to die just walking and thats saying a lot for me! And then at the top they were doing pull-ups and complcated looking situps on some bars they had at the top. People in good shape and used to heat I guess.
Well, that is pretty much it for Caracas! Also, I would like to announce that I have invented a new diet plan called the Caracas diet: go to Caracas on a budget and you too will only eat crackers and salad! Hah.
I am in Chichiriviche, on the Caribbean coast now and will have a story about that later! Love you all!
