Carapas

Always a bit of a shock to the system hitting a capital city after sleepy inland and coastal towns. Wandering the chaotic, dirty and somewhat seedy streets of Caracas at 11pm looking for accommodation when most places were fully booked didn´t make for the smoothest of entries into the big smoke. There is good reason Caracas (or Carapas as we fondly refer to it) does not make it into the LP top 1000. Despite warnings about muggings and pickpockets there was more danger in being a pedestrian! We spent a lot of time dodging psycho caminetto (little buses) and car drivers who don´t bother differentiating between the footpath and road or a green or red light. Also spent time jumping out of the way of police riding their motorbikes along the pavement. Clearly being our fault for walking on the pavement the cops harassed us wanting to see our passports. They were having none of our photocopied passports and seemed to be fishing for a way to extract a gringo tax but fortunately we were close enough to our hotel to be able to get the real thing and therefore having nothing substantial to pin on us they rode off in disgust.

After 2 incredibly frustrating days trying to organise flights to Los Roques, Quito and an exit from South America to Central America (don´t mention the U.A. word –uuuuuuuuuuuuurgghhhh!!!!!!!!!) and fix up the little fraud situation on Kaz´s mastercard…. Some spanner in Brazil got hold of the card number and did a little shopping at a local milkbar – what can you honestly buy for $1500?? We were totally determined to find a more enjoyable side of Caracas over the weekend…time to put on some dancing shoes….

We were looking forward to leaving the tricky tango footwork behind and having some fun with our Salsa. Venezuelans love their salsa and regatone music (a sexy, energetic version of reggae) so we didn´t have to look too far. Right within our hotel actually – great for stumbling home – that´ll be the 5th floor please. The live salsa band with 3 trumpets, an electric guitar, bass, drums, keyboard and various shaking things rocked the house and provided loads of inspiration as did the locals who are brilliant on the dance floor. Great fun! We were ready for more and had another terrific salsa night at the super friendly (usually an oxymoron in Caracas) El Mani es Asi with our hugging waiter and group of locals who pulled up chairs for us when we needed a break from dancing.

During the day we checked out the Contemporary Art Museum and Galeria de Arte Nacional with its bizarre quasi wind turbine sculptures and the place to be on a Sunday – Parque Del Este. It was hard to move without tripping over an excited, face-painted ankle biter with a new ball, balloon or barney hat. Very cute and an entertaining afternoon of people watching. A small zoo had a bored, lonely jaguar sleeping in a tree and some monkeys monkeying about as they do.
It only took 5 days of city living for us to be pinning for the sandy stuff again - off to Puerto Colombia on the coast.

Love,
The Beach Addicts xox

Arse of the week: Do you or don´t you have an agreement with TACA and make up your minds, 45,000 or 50,000 frequent flyer points - aaaaaargh!

Meal of the week: Definitely not Monday´s paella on Wednesday night. Arepa with agaucante after some good dancing - despite the funny looks from the cheese and ham addicted Venezuelans.