Well I have been on an adventure! Venezuela isn’t that popular a tourist destination, mostly because it’s a country in chaos and that makes it unsafe. It has the potential to be a very rich country – they have gold, diamonds and oil – but that money seems to only stay among the rich. The middle class are leaving the country, so the very rich and the growing number of very poor remain. We drove past long lines outside the supermarket with people queuing up to buy the government subsidised foods as inflation increases. The fuel price is so low they are practically giving it away, there are old beat-up cars on the road and the buildings look tired. They have an official exchange rate and the far better black market exchange rate, crazy town!

I arrived in Caracas early in the morning. The guy who met me at the airport explained the money situation and so I could get the best exchange rate, he organised for me to meet his friend in the back of a car with tinted windows. Sounds pretty sketchy right? Anyway, I handed over my USD and got 3 big wads of Venezuelan bolivars.

The guy in the car was playing the barry manilow song “Mandy” on his sound system – all quite bizarre. After the deal, I got out of the car and we went to find my actual driver. I arrived at the hotel and Decided not to venture outside. Luckily, the rest of my tour and our guide arrived in the afternoon.  Little did we know that our next day would be 22 hours worth of travelling!

The south of Venezuela is relatively safer and that is where we were heading. People go to the airport 3 hours early for a domestic flight in Venezuela so we were up at 2:30am. While we were waiting at the check-in line, some guy pushed past us in a hurry………and then we noticed the smell. I don’t know how it was possible but he managed to shit right at the check in counter and another in the walk way and one at the entrance of the airport. Making it more horrendous, people had dragged their roller bags through the shit so it was spreading through the airport. Disgusting!! 💩

Anyway, we flew to Pt Ordaz, a mining town and had a mini bus to drive us 8hrs further south. 2 hours into this journey we came a across a political protest blocking the highway, this was relatively peaceful and only delayed us a couple of hours.  Back on the road, we stopped for lunch, did a little shopping because 2 people’s bags didn’t arrive and the started driving towards the tepuy or table top mountain of Roraima. We drove through a storm that managed to knock over 3 trees directly across the road.  The first one, the men of the group were able to move out of the way, the second and third needed a machete and chainsaw – neither of which we had on the bus.  It took about 6 hours to clear those and we arrived at our estimation at midnight!! Luckily, the trip gets better from here 😀