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Venezuela 2002

Andreas Mayer
2005-12-06 08:02:14

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28/12/01

The Flight

Flight was OK, though I was very nervous as we chose American Airlines (cheap tickets), who had an attempted terrorist attach 2 weeks before on a flight from Paris to Miami. Checked in at Heathrow, just to find out that Mark and Oliver had been upgraded to Business Class, while I was left alone in economy. Anyway good flight, no terrorists, got talking to some guy from Middlesborough who was living in Irquitos, Peru. Basically he was renting out his house back home and bumming around learning some Spanish.

Had a few hours to kill in JFK and the found that there was an endless queue for the check in and we only had 1 hour left. We queued for 50 minutes and were not moving at all, so I went up to guard and told here that our flight was in 10 minutes, so she brought us straight through the security check. There was another thorough check at the gate which made me feel fairly safe, and indeed we arrived trouble free on Caracas just after midnight.

29/12/01

Caracas - Porto Columbia

Took taxi from the airport (B18,000) to the Hotel Cristal in town, a fairly doggy place that seconds as a brothel but is quite cheap. Next day tried to change some money, big problem as there were massive queues at all the banks, but all the ATMs had Cirrus/ Maestro so we were OK. Interesting to walk around the busy streets though. There is a real mix of colours, some look European, some native Indian, some African, most somewhere in between. People seemed friendly, though very few spoke any English.

Took the metro (cheap, clean, fast) to the tourist office, but unfortunately it was on the 42nd floor of some high rise and the lifts did not work, so decided to give it a miss.Checked out of the hotel at noon and went to the bus station to get the bus to ...