I woke up to the sound of the alarm in the morning glad that Jose had booked the taxi for the airport the night before.\u00a0 I headed to the airport, got there in plenty of time (I know, unusual for me) and bought a guidebook for Venezuela.\u00a0 I also managed to board the plane at the correct point, without them having to call my name out and with the correct documents – see\u00a0I must have learned something on my travels!<\/p>\n
Once in the plane I sat and read my “Lonely Planet” which I had bought at the airport and got really excited about the prospect of traveling in Venezuela.\u00a0 There was also a function to set up your own playlist on your personal terminal which really excited me, sad I know but they had such classics as old Madge albums and Belinda Carlisle.\u00a0 Other than being very relaxed and happy, the other thing which was of note about the flight was the absence of seat-kicking gremlins to my rear!\u00a0 Although the woman sat next to me did cross herself as we were about to take off which was reassuring.\u00a0 I also experienced people clapping and cheering when we landed which was something which I thought people had made up previously.\u00a0 It does beg the question, as people have pointed out, what the opposite would be.\u00a0 I mean are they sat there going, “right so we\u00b4re in agreement, if we crash we\u00b4ll all boo, right?”.<\/p>\n
So after a flight which passed pretty much\u00a0without incident I arrived at Caracas airport.\u00a0 I went through customs and asked about taxis to the hostel I had picked from my guidebook.\u00a0 I was quoted some horrific prices for taxis and bargained them down.\u00a0 Prior to arriving I had read both in my book and online about how unsafe the airport and the area between the airport and the city was and I decided to opt for an “official” cab as recommended.\u00a0 The problem with bargaining here, which I have had far too often it has to be said, is that I didn\u00b4t actually know the conversion rates.<\/p>\n
After some haggling I got in the taxi.\u00a0 I\u00b4m beginning to\u00a0think there\u00b4s some label attached to me which tells the first taxi driver I get in each country to scare the living daylights out of me and this ride was no exception.\u00a0 Actually I think it might have been the worst taxi ride I have ever had, and that includes Asia!\u00a0 The guy was possibly insane, jotting out infront of huge vehicles, paying no attention to signs or lights and using lanes as if they were going out of fashion.\u00a0 Actually insane is possibly\u00a0a bit harsh, I think he was slightly blind.\u00a0 No seriously!\u00a0 When I looked at him after his first, “you will regret coming to this country young lady”, manouvre I noticed specs with lenses as wide as a small bus.\u00a0 Then, at periodic stages he would take them off, scrub his eyes profusely and rub the lenses or swap his glasses for another pair which, presumably, would allow him to see and thus make him a better driver.\u00a0 They didn\u00b4t and I had several heart attacks.\u00a0 Well nearly.<\/p>\n
As we got closer to the hostel I spent a while hoping that we were on some shortcut and that I was actually about to arrive at the correct place in some air of calm and tranquility but it was not to be.\u00a0 We pulled up in a street with enough prostitutes for King\u00b4s Cross and Amsterdam combined to be proud of, along with several other shady individuals and buildings with security doors, bars and electric fences.\u00a0 To be honest I think I should have expected this to some extent when the guidebook said that it was the worst part of town, possibly with the exception of the suburban slums at the outskirts of the city, but it was\u00a0a bit of a shock after Santiago.<\/p>\n
So I got out of the taxi and went into the hostel.\u00a0 Well after they had buzzed me in through the security gates that it.\u00a0 Although the guy on reception spoke no English he was sweet enough and I managed to get my point across.\u00a0 I headed up to my room on the first floor and was not overly excited when I walked in.\u00a0 In hindsight I had spent\u00a0a lot of my time prior to this in rather nice accommodation, but at the time, tired and a bit overwhelmed\u00a0I wondered what on Earth I was doing there.\u00a0 Granted the toilet rarely flushed, the shower was just a pipe squirting out cold water and the room always stank of manky drains, but the place was clean-ish, light and, erm, had a window which is more than can be said for a lot of the places I have stayed in.<\/p>\n
After checking in I headed out to find\u00a0an internet cafe.\u00a0\u00a0I went to a local mall where\u00a0I was confronted with enough people\u00a0who refused to understand my crappy pigeon Spanish to shake a stick at before finding a grumpy girl in an internet cafe who\u00a0grunted and pointed at me.\u00a0 I then sent one of my most depressing emails from my trip so far to my mother which is now actually relatively amusing.\u00a0 I noted that I had left things in my room which I was convinced were going to get stolen as I had to leave the key with the receptionist and\u00a0the lovely smog.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I got back to the hostel I met a couple of people on the terrace, which was very nice actually, the terrace and the people.\u00a0 Actually the first people I met might or might not have been nice as they disappeared very quickly when they realised just how crap my Spanish was.\u00a0 I did meet Reynold though who was a very friendly South African chap.\u00a0 After chatting to a couple of people and figuring out that my plans out of the city were anything but clear, I decided to sleep on it and had an early night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up to the sound of the alarm in the morning glad that Jose had booked the taxi for the airport the night before.\u00a0 I headed to the airport, got there in plenty of time (I know, unusual for me) and bought a guidebook for Venezuela.\u00a0 I also managed to board the plane at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}