Caracas & general Venezuela rant.

Kara says:

Caracas. Not the world's most attractive city. Also fairly dangerous so we did the pathetic tourist-in-a-taxi thing and snapped a few photos through the windows. A few colonial buildings left in the centre of town - parliment, Hugo's place, a couple of goverment buildings. We went up to the top of a hill by cable car for a bird's eye view of the ugliness, and in all fairness of some green-ness over the back of the hill, see photos. Also saw Bolivar's tomb, see photo. Bolivar: famous and much loved freedom getter for much of south america. His dream was to ditch the spanish and have a united states of south america. He did well with ditching the spanish, got them out of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and I think was also instrumental in getting independence for Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay. Alas less successful with the uniting states bit. Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador were united for a while which explains why all their flags are the same - I thought they were just unimaginative. Yellow for the riches of the country, blue for the sky, red for the blood of the struggle for independence. Also photo of modern building with giant picture of Bolivar on the side (slightly blurry as taken from inside taxi), he's probably on a good half of all buildings here. Photo of my favouite archtectural feature in Caracas - the giant nescafe mug. And (blurry again, sorry) photo of the slums on the edge of town. There were actually pretty classy looking slums, all the houses were painted and fairly well kept compared to what we've seen in Peru and Bolivia but in a country as rich as Venezuela (was?) it's pretty bad.


Venezuela. Now there's a country going down the drain. It must be incredibly disheartening or frankly depressing to live here, to be trapped here, and watch it and your life going to hell.

Apologies in advance but this entry is basically "stuff that's wrong with Venezuela". Number 1 - one that's hits you at the airport and haunts you the entire visit - two exchange rates for the peso. Hugo probably thinks having two rates makes him better than all the other countries that just have one. The "official rate" is 2.14 pesos to the US dollar, Hugo set this rate a few years back, it's the rate you'll get at banks when you change dollars to pesos. Of course you can't BUY dollars at that rate 'cause pesos are worthless and not even Venezuelan banks are that crazy. The "unoffical rate" is the rate you get for dollars on the black market, somewhere between 4 and 6 pesos per dollar. On the bright side we got to buy pesos on the black market - livin' on the edge or what? - the downside is that at the offical rate (everytime you use a credit card or atm - not that you can find an atm that works in the first place...don't get me started!) everything costs three times the real price. Now I'm no student of economics but I just don't see how this can be sustained, something somewhere has got to collapse at some point, surely?

Hugo (bless him) put this in place to stop people and their money leaving the country when he came to power, as everyone with half a brain had the instinct to run. Each citizen is allowed to buy up to US$2500 per year (after trawling through a mountain of paperwork) at the official rate if they can prove they need it, ie. plane tickets and hotel reservations in the US. Aside from that people try to get their hands on dollars from tourists, black market etc to fight the current 50% (!!!) inflation rate. And of course no-one anywhere in the world is going to buy pesos at a rate of 2.14 to the US dollar. So if you live here you're stuck with mountains of useless monopoly money.

Adding to the rising cost of living is that everything, even perishable foodstuffs, is imported. When Hugo started talking about collective farming all the farmers got out of the business while the going was good so now the country basically produces nothing.

Hugo also, being a good socialist (or is it a facist?) decided to try nationalising the oil production which is Venezuela's main income. Having kicked out all the foreigners the locals now don't have the skills to keep things running properly and oil production is now only 2/3 of what it was a few years back.

Now what else? I'm sure there's more. Oh yeah. They have my fingerprints!!! To change a few measly dollars they spend a good 20 minutes doing paperwork and then get you to smudge you fingerprints all over the documents. I know I indulged in a little black market trading but I'm not a criminal!

And before we left, just to leave a bad taste in your mouth, there was the airport debacle. Hugo's "National Guard" (or SS?) have invaded. They've decided to do their own security checkpoint so now at security when you've gone through you get to do it all again! It's insane. They have their machines set up literally one after the other - National Guard first and then the usual airport security. And to make sure they have a chance to mess with (and thieve from) your checked luggage too they "observe" the loading of baggage onto the planes. This caused a big delay with our plane because the National Guard would only let them load one cargo hold at a time! They stole karl's penknife and compass and who's knows what else that we just haven't discovered yet.

So wouldn't recommend Venezuela just at the moment, there has to be revolution brewing and the government is frankly scary so wait 'til after the civil war when things stabilise again.

Other stuff Hugo's apparently done: added a new star to the flag - there were 7 stars signifying 7 states but Hugo added another state and another star. There was a horse on the coins running to the left - now there's a horse running to the right drawn by Hugo's daughter! You've got to admire a good, old-fashioned dictator in this day and age though, eh? And i just saw on the news the other day he's "democratising" the airwaves - he has closed down dozens of radio stations and now all stations have to be majority state-owned. I had been wondering about how you know when to get out of your country when things are looking dodgy, what's the final straw that makes you realise this is the time to flee. I think it's probably the state taking over the media. Although look at Italy...

As an antidote to this entry, the Canaima and Angel Falls entries are full of compliments on how beautiful Venezuela is.

Final photo of Karl having a celebratory, leaving Caracas beer at the airport blissfully unaware that at that very moment the National Guard were pilfering his bags.