Last night I slept like a rotisserie chiken, turning slowly and constantly, head spinning faster than body in an air conditioned oven. The hotel, cool marble lobby, sparkling well-proportioned room, could be anywhere. But it´s in Caracas. What a thrill.
Arriving at the airport, the usual stresses in the immigration queue were swift as a boisterous group of 6 British youngsters piled to the desk and presented visas and yellow fever vaccine records. Suitcases arrived quickly and I kissed mine, relieved it had made it after all the stresses of Heathrow that morning. Wheeling ourselves out into the arrivals hall we scanned the crowd, starting to feel not so much the heat, but certainly the humidity. There was Mercedes, the program Co-ordinator at the British Council with two taxi drivers to take us into town.
A 20 km, 45 minute drive, rising about 800m through lush steep green hillsides, some covered with precariously perched shoe-box houses, others just green, the tops hidden by cloud. The driver played salsa and merengue and we discussed with him and Mercedes both music and the 'trajedia' in 2000 where heavy rains had caused many of those slopes to fail and many to loose their lives.
Then the hotel, and meeting the 3 other girls who'd arrived 24 hours before us. 2 hours to rest- time in which I spoke to Mum and Dad and chatted to Esther who I'm rooming with, and then the 2 of us met the other girls for dinner.
We wandered to the next block to 'La Feria', effectively, from what I saw last night, the food-court of a mall. Loads of choice and I plumped for a relatively simple, roast chicken with yuca and carrots dish. Good enough, and by the time I'd finished eating, tiredness had caused my head and all around me to start spinning, like a delayed motion sickness. Looked at the watch- it was 8:15pm, but time to head towards bed anyway. By the time Esther and I finally stopped chatting from our beds in the darkness, like 15-year-olds on a school trip, it was a slightly more respectable 9:30.
And today an early start, and after a comfortable hotel breakfast, we headed to the British Council offices alongside the hotel. Bright and fun, the space was as welcoming as the people, and in the conference room the day passed fairly slowly at first, with arrangements being made for onward travel- introductions to the British Council and our role in Venezuela, practicalities and all those other bits and pieces. Soon it was lunch time and we had rolls and crisps and a short sit down in the sun outside, warm enough to get over the chill of the BC offices kept, as they joked, cool to remind everyone of the UK. The afternoon was a chance for more orientation and introductions, and the current social and political climate was broken down. Real food for thought and we left excited that we'd be around for all these reforms and the december voting on the 33 proposed constitutional amendments. As we crossed the courtyard back to the hotel for a rest before dinner my head was starting to spin again.
