coro (venezuela) + cartagena (colombia)

so it's been a while since i last updated this, and a new entry is very much needed...from choroni i took the fun bus up and then down the mountains through the henri pittier national park and then, after a couple bus rides, i finally made it to coro, on the northwestern caribbean coast of venezuela, just in front of aruba, curacao and bonaire (netherlands antilles), which used to be served by a ferry (i know, inviting, right?!)...coro is famous for its colonial architecture and the medanos de coro, a series of big sand dunes right outside the city center! when i arrived, on dec 24th late in the evening, the city was crazy with shoppers and music and the atmosphere was pretty hot...i was pretty hot too, since i got bit by mosquitoes really bad in choroni, and my legs were on fire!!! but yeah, i stayed at this cool place whose owners are architects who studied abroad, and i spent christmas eve with a venezuelan family, 2 canadian and 1 spanish girls, plus the hosts...it was very good, we exchanged "cheapo" (chimbo) presents and it was funny!!! then the next day i made it to the medanos, the giant sand dunes, and i was blown away! it seemed like a real desert, although i've never been to one! the whole sand dune phenomenon is very interesting and philosophically intriguing to me, plus i got to be by myself in the middle of just sand and wind for a while...hehe then later in the day i made my way to maracaibo, spent the night at the bus terminal there, and then eventually made it across the border to maicao, colombia! the bus we payed to take us to the city terminal left us in the middle of the two immigration checkpoints, so me and 2 brazilians had to bargain our way out of there somehow...and we were in the middle of no man's land, the place looked pretty scary if you ask me! we had to pay for an overprived bus ride to...the terminal, only to wait 2 more hours there before we could get on the road for real...so then we arrived in cartagena only pretty late in the evening, had again to fight with taxi drivers and whatnot to make it into the center...the hostel i was going to stay at was full, so i looked around for a bit and decided to settle for a very cheap and kinda shady looking like place...where they got into my room while i was showering and stole my cell phone!!! fuck them!!! fuck colombia, i thought, i am getting the hell out of here! but then again, i should have put a lock at my door right away instead of going for the quick shower...so again, i guess it could be kinda my fault...and then out of the things they could have stolen, the cell phone is by far the least important to me! but you know poor people all over the world love cell phones, so let them have it!!! i spent a day at the police, next to a guy who was handcuffed to the wall and had stolen and crashed a motorbike while on some sort of glue kinda drug, and he was rapping for me to beg for some change since he said he needed it in his next 5 years in jail...well my day spent in frustration and anger didn't really produce much, and then my brother finally reached me, so i could start forgetting about the whole incident and focus on my trip...because cartagena is truly an amazing town...a port town (like marseille, france, the other place where i was robbed...of my hanky!!!), but a beautiful one! as a port town, it has the whole range of scary-shady-weird looking-etc people that always follow you and bug you and offer you all sorts of drugs and girls (i've never been offered by so many prostitutes before in my life!) and whatnot...which gets pretty annoying if you ask me...but then again, the city center is really amazing, old and beautiful!!! we went to check out boca grande last night, which is the part of town where the moneyed colombians stay...and it looks so much like miami beach it is pretty scary!!! today we walked around all day and we're pretty exhausted, but i had a blast eating arepas and mangos and cheese off the street vendors, bargaining our way through some burned cd's with vallenato, and stuff like that...the smile of some colombian girls is unexpectedly very rewarding and surprising at times! well anyway, tomorrow we're going on a full-day boat excursion to the islands of rosario around the bay, then to playa grande, a beach not too far from here...and then the next day we're supposedly going to this mud volcano where you can swim in and have "mud fun"! hahah we'll see how that goes...i am seriously looking forward to getting out of a touristy place and feel more like i am in a more colombian place...

caracas + choroni

so caracas, i need to write more on that...the contrast between poverty and misery and wealth and consumism is really evident there, after 10 whole days in the country i had never seen the kind of people i was rubbing shoulders with at the numerous malls of caracas: those are exactly the same as the ones in miami, the people as well...plastic surgery and a lot of importance to looks and brands...the center of town was really crazy though, a unique experience of overload of sounds, smells, people and things everywhere...i kept walking around the same block trying to find my way around, while watching for my stuff and trying to find something to eat!
i enjoyed the center of town, then i went to miraflores, the armed forces headquarter, and while i was taking pictures a soldier approached me asking me for my camera...to make it short, i unbelievably made my way inside the heavily-protected building just because of my innocent picture...and all because they had to check my identity or whatever! the president of ecuador was visiting chavez, so security was tight...plus the situation, and the city in general, is just very electric and it feels like it could explode at any second! that's one of the things i think i liked the most about it, the energy...there's so much energy that it either "kills" you, or it rubs onto you and you can feel it too...and i did while walking through piles of trash, completely surrounded by people, things, vendor stalls, food smells, car horns, you name it, it was there...moreover, the city's setting is spectacular, with the avila dominating everything that goes on...
i luckily made my way out of town without any damage or loss, and finding myself enjoying the mess/chaos/energy, you can call it whatever you want...
then we had some interesting experience on the bus out of town: a tire went flat right on the highway, and the noise was so loud i woke up and got up like everybody else...we thought the thing was going to catch on fire, and i am afraid there isn't much as far as safety there! but it was just a flat tire, and boy, was the tire was smooth and worn out!
from maracay i got on a fun, old american schoolbus with the interiors spraypainted a fluorescent green and turquoise, and we slowly made our way towards the beach with reggeaton blasting through the sound system...we entered the henri pittier national park and drove up to 1830 meters, only to descend through woods and fog all the way down to the beach! it was really fun, and it wouldn't be the same without the music and the crazy driving!
so now i am staying in choroni, technically puerto colombia, this touristy town that is surrounded by mountains and woods (the parc itself), the beach is really nice too, but i took a fisherman's boat to chuao, a town that i had to walk 4km inland to and that is famous for its cocoa...it was surrounded by cocoa plantations so i got to see cocoa "seeds" really up close...then i took another little boat to playa cepe, a semi-secluded beach that is surrounded by palm trees, it was all very enjoyable...
tomorrow i am going to coro, a colonial town, to spend christmas eve at this place where i am going to cook myself up a feast and then sleep, for the first time, on a hammock...and from there on christmas day all the way to colombia passing through maracaibo...so merry christmas everybody!

santa fe + caracas

after finally leaving merida, i embarked on a fancy super air-conditioned bus to caracas, slept super nicely, only to wake up to the mess and chaos that is the capital of venezuela. luckily it was still kinda early in the morning, so it wasn't too too bad,...yet, i had to catch 2 buses and 2 metros to switch bus terminals, and with all my crap it was quite the adventure...without mentioning what i saw on the street, as far as piles of trash and everything else...i finally made it on the bus to puerto la cruz, and then to santa fe, a little fishing town on the border of the mochima national park...it's a one-street town, with all the travelers staying by the beach...i had a nice and cheap room 5 meters from the water, it was awesome! well, yeah i also had to kill 3 cockroaches in 2 nights, but that's just part of the deal! i got to meet some travelers, although the place was not swamped with foreigners, which is always nice. it was actually pretty peaceful and enjoyable; the first night we had a crazy crazy sunset, and then the next day i went on a boat trip with some germans (which, besides spaniards, are all you can find as far as travelers) and it was fun. we snorkeled at this place between two islands called La Piscinita, because it does look like a pool: super clear water surrounded by coral reefs...and i'm definitely not an expert at that, but it was pretty nice...i also got my back sunburnt, but that's partly my fault...the rest of the day was spent at an isolated beach with the germans and 3 basque guys, and it was pretty enjoyable! nothing much but bathing, tanning and taking pictures of the iguanas that were coming to be fed by the tourists!
then i left santa fe and made it back to caracas, where i've been staying for the past 2 days...it is the most latin american place i've seen so far, which means the place where the contrast between stricken poverty and in-your-face wealth is the most evident...i walked into one of the several malls around town to discover a new kind of people i had never ever seen before in the streets! and tonight i went to this other mall that was just out of the ordinary!!! i also went and took pictures of miraflores, the palace where the army resides, famous for the coup in 1992, and got caught by some soldiers, since they were very alert because correa, the president of ecuador, is visiting at the moment...so i had the chance to go inside...
>(to be continued)<

late night conversations in venezuela.

i like to talk to locals when i travel and discover new things or perspectives, opinions, whatever it may be...so i have been asking people, ones i felt confortable asking to, about chavez mainly, and venezuela in general...tonight i finally found somebody young that said they did not like him...she thought there is a whole lot of propaganda and not that much is being done...not more than some other presidents have done in the past at least...and that chavez really has polarised politics in the country by making a lot of people worship him...so now people either religiously adore him, or straight out hate him, nobody can be neutral anymore...
but the most interesting part about our conversation came about when they mentioned gas prices here...keeping in mind that venezuela has the largest quantities of oil after saudi arabia...well, gas (petrol) here costs 80 bolivares per liter...roughly 4 Euro cents!!! it costs way less than water...where can you find a place where water costs more than oil?? it is plainly mind-boggling to me...it costs less to fill up a 2-liter bottle with oil than with water!!!

merida, venezuela.

i am here in the andean town of merida in venezuela, and i am loving it, but i will try to backtrack and say something about the previous days...
from bogota i got on the "wrong" bus to cucuta (colombia-venezuela border) and that's where my bad luck started...the bus took a hell of a long time, stopping everywhere, going through the backroads and loading passengers anywhere!!! so throughout the same night i probably had at least 5 different people sitting next to me! i was looking forward to riding through the colombian andes at night and getting to the border in the morning, but i soon started to realize what i had gotten myself into...anyway, the peak of the trip was when in the middle of the night some soldiers got on our bus with their machine guns in sight, and one sat right next to me for about an hour! needless to say i was freaking out and thinking bad things already, since that was an area with guerrilla and in the middle of the night...you know? i never dared say anything, so i still don't know if they were just getting a free ride or if they were actually supposed to protect us...but i was scared! then we passed some more checkpoints and some were body-checked a couple of times...the view of soldiers with machine guns is pretty common, so i learned to get used to it...
once the endless and annoying ride finally ended, i got on another bus to the actual border, then walked across, had my whole big backpack searched, got the stamps i needed to get on my passport, then took another bus to san cristobal in venezuela, got body-checked a couple of times, ...and then i finally made it to san cristobal! well, little did i know...the last bus to merida (my destination) had already left, i couldn't get any money out of the ATM, and even though a very nice woman policeman helped me (once she knew i was italian), i had to change some colombian pesos from some random person to pay for my ridiculously overpriced little, dirty and muggy room by the bus terminal...oh, i had also forgotten that venezuela is an hour ahead, so i missed my last chance of spending my last money at an internet cafe before calling it a night!
the next day i was determined to finally solve my money problems, and went around 5-6 banks, to no avail! i finally entered one of them and asked for cash advance, which i didn't even know existed! haha (oh, it's "avance de efectivo", very useful term to know; another very useful word i quickly learned is "cancelar": it means to pay in advance, meaning you can't grab the item or be serviced before you pay) well, the person there helped me a lot, welcomed me to venezuela and quickly gave me what i asked for...so that's when fate finally started turning in my favor!
i finally got on a bus to merida, got some food and water, and enjoyed my bus ride with air-conditioning (since it's pretty hot) and loud, fun music (that people always sing along to: fun!). this time the bus almost never stopped! well, except for some more police checkpoints and stuff like that...then i finally got to merida, where i am being hosted by M...
for some reason i already knew that i was going to live it here, and i really do! it's more easygoing, less dangerous, friendlier and cheaper than anywhere in venezuela (although i have not been anywhere yet!), and it's by the highest venezuelan mountains (pico bolivar-5004 meters, and pico humboldt)...it's by the same andes i had explored last year in argentina, only at the other end! i met a lot of european travelers, walked around and i already don't want to leave!
well, yesterday i took the longest and highest cable-car in the world up to 5007 meters a.s.l. by the pico bolivar...after trying to get used to the altitude, i rode a horse for 4 endless hours up and down mountains, rocks and streams...although i felt really bad for the poor horse, it was much more of a physical workout than i thought! the best part was the dog that was running before and by us, it reminded me of belle & sebastien a lot!!! i tried taking pictures of the whole thing, but it was pretty hard and we will see if the results are even decent! thanks to the horse i got to this remote village at about 2700 mt a.s.l. called Los Nevados, where i chatted it up with some locals about chavez, took some nice pictures, got a rustic bed for the night, and before going to bed...dinner was included, so i went down for dinner and talked the "senora" into making me something vegetarian...which was very yummy! i had dinner with a spanish couple that i will meet again sometime i think...then went straight to bed, and slept for a whopping 12 hours!!! i am sad i missed the sunrise this morning, but i couldn't get up anyway...went down for breakfast again (where "down" means down a super steep cobblestone road!) and then hopped on a jeep (4WD vehicle, or offroad vehicle,...) with the spanish girl and 3 italian-swiss tourists and a local...well, down a tiny path running next to the side of the mountain for 4 hours to get back in town...
so that was my fun adventure so far; tomorrow i might have to leave and go to the mochima national park where i will be relaxing at the beach, visiting some caribbean islands and maybe even snorkeling...from there it's onto a more secluded beach by puerto colombia, then a quick trip to caracas before going back to bogota for christmas...
so far i've been loving venezuela, which has been up to its reputation for chavez and beauty queens. the former is everywhere, well, rather, pictures, posters, banners, images, etc of him are everywhere, also because the elections were just 2 weeks ago...i've been asking a lot of people about him of course, and most seem satisfied with what he's been doing...as for the beauty queens, venezuela is statistically the country with the most girls winning international beauty pageants, and you can totally see that walking around...it's not about quantity but quality, definitely!
oh, merida is going to host the 2007 "copa america" this coming july!
i've also been enjoying the loud, dancy, fun, hispanic music blaring everywhere, the cheap internet cafes and the views...i am sure i am forgetting something but i better go now!

bogota!

i'm only two days into my trip (technically it's the first day, since i spent the other one at the mexico city airport) and i'm already feeling pooped! it better be the altitude, because otherwise it's not going to be fun! well, bogota lies at about 2600 meters above sea level, it's chaotic, noisy and very polluted...you can feel stuff down your lungs as you walk around! there are a lot of bikes everywhere, risking their lives among the many other kinds of vehicles that take over the city streets...the arrival at the airport reminded me of one of the take that's tours back in the day, where hoards of screaming, jumping and chanting people holding signs were waiting behind the barriers...trying to find my way out of that was an experience! and once outside the airport, the colombian reality hits you...i've been enjoying riding the TransMilenio today, this amazing public work that was supposed to be a metro system, and instead is a "fast" bus system that rides in the middle of the street...well it's more complicated than that, but oh well...
i was secretly hoping bogota would blow me away for some reason, and it hasn't yet, and it probably won't i assume...it's a nice place with a historic/colonial city center and lots of people everywhere, and yes, i haven't experienced its nightlife, yet it pains me to say it's not unbelievably spectacular...which is fine! haha
i'm headed to cucuta tonight, a border town with venezuela...

the most populous city in the world?

so i am here in mexico city since yesterday i missed my connection to bogota, i stressed out for about an hour, then started bitching at the people in charge, so i finally got on the same plane today, plus i got a nice hotel room and three meals from them...so life is not that bad at all, i am actually glad i did miss that plane! haha i took a nap, watched some soccer from my room, then went into the center by metro straight from the airport, walked around the zocalo (big square) and the surrounding area, then came back and went to sleep...now i am rested (since i was not when i left texas!) so i am ready to tackle colombia and venezuela!