General: Venezuela

“So, tell me everything you know about Venezuela…”

If someone had demanded that of me 6 months ago, I doubt I could have filled a postcard.

How much do you know about Venezuela?

So perhaps, then, it was a little surprising we chose to visit for three weeks this Christmas?

Not at all. Sometimes it’s the enigmatic countries that are the most fun, usually less touristed, ...
...rewarding.

That’s not to say that we didn’t do our homework first. After discovering we could get reasonable flights, we dug out a few guidebooks at the library, and discovered that Venezuela might have a lot to offer.

Perhaps I’m quite thick, but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that for Venezuela to have a coastline, that coastline would have to be on the Caribbean? Pictures in the books ... more

“So, tell me everything you know about Venezuela…”

If someone had demanded that of me 6 months ago, I doubt I could have filled a postcard.

How much do you know about Venezuela?

So perhaps, then, it was a little surprising we chose to visit for three weeks this Christmas?

Not at all. Sometimes it’s the enigmatic countries that are the most fun, usually less touristed, more educational, often more of a challenge, but equally more rewarding.

That’s not to say that we didn’t do our homework first. After discovering we could get reasonable flights, we dug out a few guidebooks at the library, and discovered that Venezuela might have a lot to offer.

Perhaps I’m quite thick, but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that for Venezuela to have a coastline, that coastline would have to be on the Caribbean? Pictures in the books certainly looked every bit as nice as any Caribbean island.

But that wasn’t the only draw: It’s not far from the equator, so there’s a fairly even temperature year-round, with only a slight difference between wet and dry seasons. There are also the plains, snow-capped mountains (the Andes, if you’re being specific), tepuis (table mountains), jungle, swamps, modern cities, colonial architecture, river delta, as well as Angel Falls.

So, sometime back in the autumn we booked our flights, for £420 per person including taxes. This was directly with KLM, through their website, flying from Birmingham and changing at Amsterdam Schipol airport. This was the cheapest fare we could find, but also more convenient for us than a direct flight from London as we live in Birmingham.

Other than booking our accommodation for the first night through the Internet (£13 double with fan and bath), we didn’t really decide where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do until we got there, but that’s fairly normal for us.

It was a fine journey, and pleasantly uneventful. The plane looked a little dated, the upholstery tired – none of those little headrest screens with a choice of movies, but the food was good and the staff efficient, friendly and helpful.

I got a little excited when I spotted land at what turned out to be only halfway through the flight, but it turned out to be the Azores, and not islands of the Caribbean as I’d hoped. I can at least be smug and say that I’d worked that much out for myself about 30 seconds before the pilot announced it over the intercom, but bonus marks to KLM for employing pilots with ESP.

I didn’t pay particular attention to the timing of the flight, but I think it was about 12 hours in total from Birmingham to Caracas.

Venezuela’s main international airport is as bland and uninteresting as most others I have visited (Amsterdam’s Schipol, by contrast, is possibly the hugest, brightest and most diverting place to waste an hour or so between changing planes) but the customs and immigration officials were nice enough, and soon we were through into the main concourse ready to be bombarded with offers of taxis, accommodation, money changing and the like.

The touts, refreshingly enough, were not terribly persistent, and after a brief stop at an ATM - it isn’t possible to buy Venezuelan bolívars outside of Venezuela - we were on the bus to central Caracas. We weren’t initially sure quite how much a bolívar was worth. The bank and official exchange rate seemed to be around 2,600 bolívars to the pound, yet people were offering black market rates of 2,500 for US dollars, so we were confused and a little suspicious.

As it turned out, we had no real reason to be. Many guesthouses and shops would happily exchange dollars for bolívars at an equally good rate. I asked someone later why this was, and apparently, Venezuelans prefer dollars so they can buy imported goods like jeans and trainers in the more expensive shops. The government likes to keep the dollar cash reserves for itself, and is artificially maintaining the bolívar at a higher rate than it should be by restricting its supply, which is why you can’t buy it here.

I won’t get into a discussion about the ethics or the economics of this here. All I know is that it didn’t work for Argentina, and I can’t imagine it will work for Venezuela either, but if anyone reading this is going to Venezuela – take good reserves of US dollars, because you’ll be approximately 40% better off. In this opinion, I have approximated at a rate of 3000 to the pound, as some of our money was from ATMs at the lower rate, but we did take £200 worth of US dollars with us.

Of course, I must add a caution here. You should always be sensible when changing money on the black market. We employed the usual prudence of “if the rate seems too good to be true, it most certainly is,” and only changed money in shops, in daylight, and never very much at a time. I always counted it immediately, in front of the person who had just counted it in front of me, just to be certain. We didn’t have any problems.

The airport bus was smart and air-conditioned, but it was still a decidedly reasonable £1 for the 45-minute journey, after which we took the metro (10p) to our hotel.

Transport in Venezuela is cheap, comfortable and pretty well organised. I didn’t know this before, but Venezuela is the 5th largest producer of oil in the world, and a founder member of OPEC, so petrol is incredibly cheap. A comfortable coach journey from one end of the country to another will only set you back around £10-£15, and you pay the same rates the locals do.

There are numerous smaller buses (carritos), which ply the major routes around towns and cities, and run routes to neighbouring towns and villages. These tend to run on the “the bus leaves when it’s full” principle, but you rarely wait more than half an hour, the fare is fixed, and the fares are displayed inside the bus.

We spent a couple of days wandering a little around Caracas, in which we visited the small colonial centre and Plaza Bolívar, and explored the shopping district where our hotel was located. The wide, shop-lined streets were crammed with stall upon stall selling anything and everything, and we gawped at the kamikaze way stall-holders obtain electricity by lifting the nearest manhole cover and clipping a crocodile clip to the mains cable(?!)

We were also blown away by the amazing hamburgers! There are a myriad of tiny street stalls producing hamburgesas and perros calientes (hot dogs), and they are organised with systematic precision. The burger and an egg are cooked on a small hotplate, popped into a lightly toasted bun, and then mayonnaise, lettuce, onion, cheese, tomato, avocado, little crispy potato bits and ketchup are all added from their respective receptacles and it’s served to you tightly wrapped in paper, sliced vertically (paper included) into two semicircles. A bargain for any meal at 80p, and we usually only needed one between us to feel full. I think it was the nearest we got to finding a Venezuelan national dish.

There were a few too many McDonalds and Wendy’s for my liking, impostors we shunned in favour of the little stalls, but the Venezuelans had also embraced the Argentinean parilla or barbeque restaurant, as well as the Caribbean staples of fried chicken and rice and beans. The food we ate was almost universally good, lots of fresh fish and succulent meat, usually accompanied with rice and salad.

Something about Caracas, though, didn’t feel completely safe. It was most probably because so many people had told us it wasn’t, but it may also have had something to do with the fact that some kind of political demonstration erupted nearby when we were lazily watching the world go by in Plaza Bolívar. The teenage girl sat next to me attempted to strike up a conversation, and kept saying “cuidado”, which I misinterpreted for a time as “ciudad” - the word for town, until I realised she was saying “be careful!” - because of the demonstrators! We took her advice and went back to the familiarity of the commercial district, and the next day we headed to the Terminal Del Oriente – the station for buses headed east. We wanted to go to the beach.

It’s probably worth pointing out that we had no problems with crime of any sort in the three weeks we were in Venezuela. A number of people had warned us to be careful, as had the guidebooks, and the Foreign Office website. We joked with my father-in-law that he was our nominated rescuer if we were kidnapped, as a clause in our insurance policy provided for a family member to travel to look for us in that event. Fortunately, we didn't need it.

To be honest, we took no more than our normal care when travelling. We didn’t venture into any insalubrious-looking areas, didn’t wander around cities late at night, or get hideously drunk, we locked our hotel rooms and kept valuables out of sight at all times, and if at any time we felt wary, we were doubly cautious and moved on as quickly as we could, as any sensible traveller should. Almost all the Venezuelans we met and spoke to were very friendly and helpful, and happily gave directions and information wherever I asked.

Although we only met 7 English people, and handfuls of other European tourists in the 3 weeks we were there, there was a common theme to most of the conversations – did I or my partner speak Spanish? It seemed that we were quite fortunate that I do, no matter how badly, as it was rare to find a Venezuelan who spoke English, and others found this a constant difficulty.

While my Spanish is rusty, it gets us by, and as is the case with most people, I can read and understand a lot more than I can write or speak. I did end up feeling a bit like the tour guide, as pretty much everything had to be discussed and organised by me. This was sometimes hard work, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t visit if you can’t speak Spanish. Potential visitors should just be aware that taking a phrasebook is not going to be enough to give you an easy life, and you’re unlikely to find ready translators, or even other tourists to help you out.

If you do speak Spanish, however, at least it’s similar in accent and dialect to that you get in Spain. With it being South America, I was expecting the idiosyncrasies of Argentinean Spanish, with its colloquialisms and unusual pronunciation, but discovered after a week that I didn’t need to pronounce a “ll” as a “sj” but the normal Spanish “y”, and the vocabulary was the same I had learnt in school.

We had decided to head to Santa Fé, a small fishing village which had become a bit of a gringo haunt due to a number of little budget posadas (guesthouses) and restaurants opened up along the beach. There was also the lure of boat trips to the various islands of the nearby Mochima National Park.

After a spectacular carrito ride along the coastal road from our coach’s drop off point in Puerto La Cruz, the arrival into the village of Santa Fé itself left us less than optimistic. The carritos drop off point forces you past the grubby, shabby and fishy-smelling market as you trudge through to get to the beach, which was just as disappointing. While long, clean, and sandy, it simply wasn’t very wide, and the water looked too cloudy to offer good snorkelling.

We were pleased with our accommodation though. The room was fine (£4), and half the price of our similar room in Caracas (we had moved after the first night to somewhere nicer yet cheaper), and the food was fantastic. Our posada even had a veranda on the roof, complete with hammocks, to while away the afternoon with a good book and a beautiful view.

We needn’t have worried about the tiny beach either, because that evening we organised to join a boat trip the next day (£3 each), where there were beaches, dolphins, and snorkelling galore. There were nine of us on the boat, 3 from Belgium, a couple from Chile and an older couple from Venezuela.

The chap who ran the trip was French, I think, but he spoke a little English, and the boat’s captain was this old Venezuelan chap, with skin the colour and thickness of a walnut shell, with the wrinkles to boot. Presumably, he was fairly ancient, although I guess being out in the sun all day every day ages one prematurely. Perhaps he wasn’t a day over 102. He didn’t speak a word of English, but he was as strong as an ox, and certainly had a great sense of humour. He didn’t get exasperated once at my complete inability to climb back into the boat after every snorkelling session either, thank god.

Our next destination was the Tax-Free island of Margarita, a 5 hour ferry ride (£3) from Puerto La Cruz. Our intention was to hire a car and drive around the island, visiting its 1071 square km in our own time and at our own pace, taking in its secluded beaches and National Parks. We never really got organised though, or spotted a care hire place, so instead, we happily meandered around Porlamar, its capital, for a couple of days, and took a carrito to the far north of the island to take in a beach and some scenery.

The Venezuelans love to shop, and Porlamar is where they do it. I wouldn’t describe it as a shopper’s paradise, but I wasn’t looking for cheap brand name jeans and trainers, or bottles of imported whisky, so what do I know? Even here though, the Venezuelan tourists’ Mecca, there were few tacky souvenirs to be bought, and no postcards, and certainly no shops devoted to either. It wasn’t a loss I mourned for even a second.

I do regret our leaving Isla De Margarita so soon. We hardly explored it at all, but we had heard a vicious rumour that there was a tour company in Ciudad Bolívar running four-day tours to Angel Falls for $180 USD per person. When we were in Caracas, we read the section on Angel Falls and realised that we hadn’t anticipated how much seeing the falls would cost, and that we simply weren’t going to do it. But now there was a window of opportunity, and like Bill Gates, we took it.

It was a long coach journey to Ciudad Bolívar, made longer by the fact that our coach broke down four times. It is situated on the south bank of the river Orinoco, 420km from the Atlantic coast, and to get there you must cross the river’s only bridge in its entire 2150km length (how unbelievable is that?). The town used to be called Angostura, but was renamed in honour of the great Bolívar.

Who is this Bolívar bloke, anyway? I’ve mentioned that we visited Plaza Bolívar in Caracas (Plaza Bolívar is the main square in practically every town) that the currency is the bolívar, and now we are in Ciudad Bolívar. I’d heard of him before we visited Venezuela, but he is their hero; “El Libertador”. The countries of Bolivia (see the connection?) Ecuador, Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, and Panama owe their independence from the Spanish to him. One Venezuelan girl I spoke to said she knew more about Bolívar’s life than she did about her own!

Cuidad Bolívar was a charming, pretty place, with the old colonial town and Cathedral perched on a hill, next to the river. It had the best selection of colonial buildings we saw in our whole stay, and the rumour about the Angel Falls trip turned out to be true.

We saw the plane Jimmy Angel crashed in at the airport. Bet you thought Angel Falls was named after, well, angels, didn’t you? I did. Well, it turns out they’re named after a hapless American gold prospector who found them by crashing on top of the mountain in 1937, and then took 7 days to get down from it. Of course.

Telling you about the trip to Angel Falls will have to wait for another opinion, as I don’t have many words left, but the 25-minute flight over virgin jungle to get to its nearest town was amazing in itself. The ensuing 4 hour boat trip and overnight stay in a hammock in the jungle only added to the adventure, and I’m very glad we did it.

We were there on Christmas Eve, and while the falls are Venezuela’s major international tourist attraction, there wasn’t any of the normal tourist hoopla to go along with it. To all intents and purposes, we were in the middle of nowhere, and apart from the planes and helicopters flying past occasionally, our group of 17 were the only people there that day. It’s a beautiful sight, and all the better for its remoteness.

We returned to Ciudad Bolívar in due course, and decided we just had enough time for a last jaunt back to Santa Fé. We wanted to take another boat trip, to some different islands, more snorkelling, dolphins and deserted beaches, yawn, yawn. Then we headed back to Caracas in preparation for our flight and to buy some rum!

There didn’t seem to be any great evidence of anything particularly Venezuelan as we travelled around. The roads themselves were good; we could have been in Europe. The buildings we passed were mainly non-descript tower blocks and smaller houses painted in a variety of pastel colours, quite like some parts of Spain. The hillsides, red earth covered in scrubby trees, with the occasional Aloe Vera plant, were quite reminiscent of Australia, and there were plenty of enormous billboards advertising the familiar logos of the multi-nationals, which, if you ignored the fact that the text was in Spanish, meant we could have been in the USA.

The only clues that we were in South America were the occasional clapped-out huge old American cars, held together with equal quantities of body-filler and good luck, and the crudely built brick boxes clinging onto the hillsides – the barrios, or slums. But even the barrios didn’t look menacing or impoverished, just a bit like some kid had got a pile of terracotta coloured LEGO bricks last Christmas and hadn’t had any inspiration for what to do with them yet. Some had been painted with the ubiquitous pastel paint, but mostly terracotta reigned supreme, which meant that actually they blended well with the earth. You couldn’t really see the ones by the airport when we came into land – they just disappeared into the backdrop, presumably exactly what the wealthier Venezuelans would prefer.

Perhaps the most obvious novelties were the large spheres on everyone’s roofs – presumably water tanks – some had even been painted to look like footballs. The others were the widespread billboards featuring the same bloke holding a baby, talking to an old lady, or shaking hands with a shopkeeper. These came with slogans like “Chavez es el pueblo” (Chavez is the town) “Chavez es el gente” (Chavez is the people). Occasionally, these had been defaced, with graffiti bearing words like “corrupción” and “revolución”. Turned out that Chavez is the President, and how he came to be so is a fascinating story in itself. Although he was fairly well liked some years ago, his popularity is evidently waning.

One surprise was the way so many houses were decorated with Christmas lights and tinsel in exactly the same way you’d see in the UK. Images of Santa were the same white-haired, big bellied, red suit-wearing chap we have inherited from those great people at Coca-Cola. People wandered the street with fur lined Santa hats on. There was even tinsel on palm trees, for goodness’ sakes!

I must confess to being a little bemused. Although I knew Venezuela was ostensibly a Catholic country, I expected it to offer at least some differences from our own traditions! I found out later that there was one significant difference. Many Venezuelans have a large nativity scene outside their homes. The three kings are not put inside it, but are placed some way from the stable, and are slowly moved towards it. They arrive on the 6th, which is when gifts are exchanged, but apart from that, and the inevitable differences between the Christmas feasts, everything was pretty much the same. We were even occasionally bombarded with Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody”, although thankfully, no Cliff Richard.

Venezuela is an odd place, really. In many ways it is a lot like Argentina, or Paraguay, but with more American influences. There is some Caribbean spirit there too (mostly rum, ho ho) but it’s definitely Spanish, or Hispanic, in character. The lack of tourists, particularly European ones, is a nice change, but as I’ve mentioned, has its downsides too if you don’t speak the language.

Although it is a small country (in South American terms, anyway), because of all the different geological and climactic zones, Venezuela has an amazingly diverse ecology, and is rich in flora and fauna, with the possibility of seeing monkeys, toucans, capybara, armadillo, humming birds and all sorts of other weird and wonderful creatures. The tops of the table mountains alone are amazing repositories of unique plants and animals as each has evolved separately from the jungle below and separately from the tops of surrounding table mountains. Even now, apparently 95% are unexplored.

Given these statistics, we really saw very little of the country as we passed through. We did see a humming bird, a toucan, some monkeys, rainbow macaws, and a stick-insect the length of my forearm, but we didn’t stop anywhere long enough to do any proper wildlife-spotting. We saw many of the different climactic zones too, but mostly in passing.

It’s a shame that I’m unlikely to return, not because I didn’t like the place, but because the world has so many other places to offer. The title I’ve chosen refers to the Venezuelan tourist slogan of “the best kept secret of the Caribbean”. You know, I think they’ve got a point.

Would I recommend anyone travel there? Certainly, but I think you have to be a particular breed of traveller to want to take it on and get the best out of it. It’s simply not a place for people who want to laze around and have an easy two weeks sat by a pool, or even for the people who are happy to travel slightly further afield, but like to follow a well trammelled trail.

It’s not an easy country to travel in. No one speaks English. You’re unlikely to know someone who’s been there who can give you hints and tips on where to stay and what to see. Apart from in Caracas, there didn’t seem to be a plethora of luxury accommodation (although the places we stayed were more than adequate for us) and there are no tourist offices to help you plan your stay and advise you on what to do. You’re unlikely to meet many tourists to converse with and glean tips from, and if you do, you’ll probably need to be able to speak French to do so. For some people this would be hell, for others it's a complete bonus.

It’s a small shame that there was no particular item that I could have brought home as something typically Venezuelan, so all we have to remember the place with are photos and rum. There are some jolly nice photos, though, and jolly nice rum. I can share the former with you, thanks to Ciao’s redesign, but the rum is mine, all mine, sorry!
 

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