So we went to the backpacker hangout of Chorini along the coast to meet some more people and generally find what the heel was going on. We turned up in time to see the most incredible avalanche of locals arrive for the weekend on Choroni´s beaches, including the aptly named monster, Playa Grande. The sea of people was frightening, though they were very sensible with the sun shades, and the water looked brown at times because it was so dense with Venezuelan bodies.
And there was an incredible amount of plastic surgery around - at last Anna and I found a common interest to discuss! That´s not fair - we have been talking so much that we have been learning great things about each other - you know that we both watched Dogtanian and the three muskahounds when we were younger (singalong if you know the words!).
And we had two great long days on the beach - but then we needed two days to recover as we had high temperatures and unpleasant side effects either from heat (it was 40 plus in the shade) or maybe just changing country bacteria.
Anyway, we learnt that inflation has doubled prices in the last year in Venezuela. Also that the Bolivar has always been overvalued against the dollar. That the extensive black market trade in dollars has normally solved this. But that the currently weak dollar, combined with the inflation, means that the exchange rate is the lowest it has been for some time (not helped by the change to new Bolivar Fuerte notes (the "strong" Bolivar - a joke to everybody). All in all one successful tour operator told me it is probably the worst ever time to visit Venezuela. The standard Angel Falls tour cost around 100usd 4 years ago and is now 400usd. There is hardly any double accomodation under 30usd and everything is pricey. The locals aren´t happy but at least some wages in the cities are keeping up (especially in Maracaibo the oil centre).
After recovering for a few days in the lovely and safe Posada Alfonso in Choroni, we moved on the Andean mountain city of Merida, where I have just spent two days non-stop blogging to make up for my lack of blogging over the past few months. We want you to know, with our blog, that we love you.
So, we like Merida, but it is ideal for multi-sport adventures, the world´s highest and longest cable car is down for repairs (aaargh) and we have decided to cut our time in Venezuela. It was the country in the world I most wanted to visit but we arrive in what is a traveller`s economic disaster. We have looked at the money and realise that we can do far more elsewhere - and now we can spend a few weeks in Columbia and Ecuador and try to book a good Galapagos trip. We will head for the border on Sunday night and Monday and take a look at Santa Marta and Cartagena on the Columbian Pacific coast. Many thanks to my regional advisor, Mr Shanahan, for his thoughts, including persusaive evidence that we should take a monster Amazonian boat ride at some point. We "only" have until Nov 4th in South America and the Peru gringo stuff, Bolivia and Argentina are musts so we have to see what else, like any of Brazil, we have time for - fingers crossed - one natural disaster (Tropical Storm Arthur) and onw one economic one is enough for me for this year.
All travellers report that Columbia is great at the moment but we will take precautions. Our border crossings in and out of Columbia will take place in unsafe areas so will stick to the obvious areas and move on quickly to major towns, and avoid night buses. We will also sacrific the flight we had from Caracas to Lima in 3 weeks time - now that we have our hearts set on Galapagos, going overland will stop us having to backtrack from Peru to Ecuador and back and give us a chance to see Columbia - and sing plenty more Shakira!
We will leave you there blog readers and hope you enjoy the updates and photos.
Yours MC Deli and Miss Deli (currently preparing stew in Vene Suis - our cute hostal on the hill in Merida)
This is my ´where in the world´picture for Q, on Playa Grande with about 20000 Venezuelans
Sunset over the posada in Choroni
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