Caracas (August 7, 2006)

Our flight from Quito to Caracas was supposed to leave at 8:25am so we arrived at the airport around 6:40, with what we thought was plenty of time to check in. Santa Barbara Airlines, however, takes the record for the longest amount of time to check in. When we arrived there were approximately 15 – 20 groups of people ahead of us, after an hour only about five had been checked in. We asked if there was going to be enough time for all of us to check in before the flight and were told “no problem, the flight has been changed to 10:30am.” Eventually they separated the line into people going to Caracas and people on another flight, which made things move a bit faster, but it still took us 2 ½ hours to get checked in, and the plane did not end up leaving until 11:20. Looking back, this was an omen of our future travel in Venezuela!

Our flight arrived in Caracas around 4:00 (after a detour to Guayaquil to pick up more passengers, in the opposite direction from Caracas). The Caracas airport is big and modern, which was our first indication that Venezuela is more developed than the other countries we have visited so far on this trip. This also means that it is more expensive! We decided to eat at the airport and get our bearings before heading into the city and spent US$15 on our simple meals – not too bad by North American standards, but more than we were used to paying. The money in Venezuela is called Bolivares, and the exchange rate to the US$ is around 2200, depending on where you change your money (all the porters in the airport were asking us if we wanted to change money), and the prices are all in the 1000’s. It took us a while to wrap our heads around all these big numbers, and we felt like we were paying a fortune for stuff. The heat and humidity were nice changes though, and the lush greenery of Caracas was beautiful.

We asked at the tourist information desk (which surprisingly is in the departure area) how to get into the city, and which bus terminal to go to for a bus to Puerto Ordaz. We planned on not staying in Caracas and leaving tonight on an overnight bus. We wanted to take the bus and the Metro into the city, but for fun we asked how much a taxi would cost. A whopping US$85 we were told, and when we were in complete shock over that, the driver dropped his price to $40. What?! Where are we? Could we possibly still be in South America? In the end, the bus and Metro cost us $9 (and took around 2 hours because of traffic jams), but then we had to take a taxi from the Metro station to the bus terminal to buy tickets to Puerto Ordaz.

We finally arrived at the bus terminal (at 8:30pm) and were told that there were no more seats on any of the buses leaving for Puerto Ordaz tonight. Ugh. We bought tickets for the following morning at 10:00am and left to find a hotel to stay in for the night. We decided to go to the Grand Sabana area, which was the closest and our guidebook said the safest, were ripped off by a taxi driver (he charged us more than the last guy and we only went about five blocks), and started asking around at hotels. Nobody had any rooms available! Just what we needed. Finally we found a room and paid US$25 for one of the worst rooms we have stayed in so far. By this time it was 10:00pm and we were exhausted after being on the go for 16 hours. I didn’t sleep well because of a big thunder and lightening storm during the night, but Lincoln slept right through it.