Venezuela is supposed to be a wonderful country full of natural beauty, and we were greatly looking forward to spending some time there. Why then, is this post titled "Venezuela - oh dear ..."? Unfortunately, like many things in life, the reason is to do with money ... money and a bus ...
Firstly some background: To get to Venezuela we were flying from Panama City. Since our flight was an early morning one, we decided to spend the night in Panama City airport to save some cash. Never a good thing. Especially not a good thing when the seats in departures are incredibly uncomfortable. On our last airport all-nighter in San Jose, we were treated to big banks of seats upon which you could stretch out ... and pass out. This time all we had were little canvas numbers with no place to put your head. Each one was separated from the next by a pair of large metal arm rests, making it impossible to lie across a few of them - and thus making it impossible to get any sleep. We boarded the plane very sleepy.
A change of plane and a 5 hour wait at San Jose airport later - we arrived in Venezuela. We were only planning on spending just a week here on our way to Brazil, but were hoping to catch a few rays at a beach town along the way, and maybe even stop in at Angel Falls - the world's highest single drop waterfall.
The first thing we had to do before beginning our mini adventure, was to grab some of the local currency from a cash machine. Fortunately, the airport was blessed with five available cash machines, all in a row along one wall. Unfortunately - my card did not appear to work in any of them. It was then that we began to realise the first major problem with travelling in Venezuela - the cash machines do not accept foreign cards. We did not know this at the time however, and were still hoping to find one that did.
Fortunately (very very fortunately as it would turn out), I had $80 of emergency money stashed away which I was able to exchange for Bolivares - the currency of Venezuela. All I had to do was exchange these dollars at an exchange booth right? Sounds simple? It wasn't.
There was an official exchange booth in the airport offering a rate of 2 Bolivares to the dollar. I went into this booth, ready to change my dollars. Whilst in the queue however, I was approached by a number of people offering me rates of up to 3 Bolivares per dollar. If I went with these unofficial money changers, I could get 50% extra money for nothing.
But ... I didn't know what Venezuelan currency looked like. They could have handed me fake notes, or out-of-date notes, or random bits of coloured paper ... anything really. I asked a police officer to help me find a money changer who wouldn't scam me, but even this wasn't fool proof ... ever heard of a dishonest cop?
In any case - it all worked out ok. I ended up with 50% more Bolivares than I would have done going through a bank, or official exchange office. But why the discrepancy between official and black market rates? It was all very confusing.
The reason became clear a few days later, when we asked a tour agency tout (the only person we found in Venezuela who spoke any English) why there were two rates. Apparently, at the beginning of 2008, the Venezuelan Government launched a new currency, in an attempt to forestall the spiralling inflation rate that was gripping the country. This currency was called Bolivares Fuertes, and each unit was to be equivalent to 100 of the old Bolivares (which explains why local Venezuelans confusingly quote prices 100 times higher than they actually are). This new currency appears to be failing quite spectacularly, as according to our tout, there has been huge inflation since its launch. The Government, embarrased by this, is refusing to acknowledge there has been any inflation, and has pegged foreign exchange rates at January 2008 levels. The result is an exchange rate that reads 2 Bolivares to the dollar, whilst the reality should be closer to 6 Bolivares to the dollar. This has enabled a the black market trade in US dollars to blossom, since traders can offer much better rates than the banks or official channels. According to our source, the Government controls the black market, so isn't too bothered by this development.
The upshot is, Venezuela is prohibitively expensive for the foreign traveller at the moment. Every price, in an already expensive country (in South American terms), is two to three times higher than it should be - depending on the exchange rate you get. Over the week we were there, we had to stay in the cheapest places, eating street snacks and apples (apples were $2 each for goodness sake!), so as not to blow our budget for the rest of our time travelling. Unsurprisingly we elected to get to Brazil as soon as possible, without seeing or doing anything in Venezuela.
All this was ahead of us however, as we stood at the airport bus station, nervously clutching our small handfull of Bolivares, shuing away anyone who came too near us. We wanted to get out of Caracas as soon as possible because, rightly or wrongly, it has the reputation of being one of Latin America's most dangerous, most expensive and least visually appealing cities. We had heard some real horror stories about Caracas from other travellers. One girl had got into a taxi at the airport, only to have the driver pull a gun on her then drive her round to various ATMs, taking as much money out as she could. Obviously this wouldn't have worked for us (!), but we still didn't want to spend any more time here than was necessary. We hung around long enough to get a bus to the centre, a taxi to the long distance bus terminal, and a bus from there to Maracay - the gateway to one of Venezuela's best stretches of coastline.
Not that we saw any of it. We had used all of our money getting to Maracay, so we spent most of the rest of our time there trying to get more. The first day was spent trying all the cards we owned at wide range of ATMs across the city - all of which had a massive queue for some reason - and none of which worked. We managed to plead with the hostel owner to let us have a night on credit, then went out to the only restaurant in the area that accepted cards. Amazingly my card worked! Can't use it in a bank ... but restaurants are fine. The meal was good, but horrendously expensive. Liz's salad consisting of a few leaves of luttuce, a tomato and some cucumber (not even any dressing), cost over $10.
Day two was spent queueing inside the banks. Three of the banks I went to dismissed me out of hand. They didn't give cash advances ... after all, if I wanted money - I just had to go to an ATM ... right? At last however, I found a bank willing to give me an advance. It took 3 memebers of staff and over 2 hours, but eventually they gave me some money. We set about getting a bus to Brazil immediately.
As Brazil was a two day bus ride away, we got as far as we could in 24 hours, then decided to overnight in a place called Ciudad Bolívar, apparently a nice colonial town and the gateway to Angel Falls. We were even considering still going to Angel Falls if the price was right ...
To be fair, some parts of Ciudad Bolívar were nice, as you can see in the above photos, but most of the town was a bit of a dump. Because of the bus timings we were forced to spend a full day there, so we looked around, took some pictures, ate a few $2 apples, and found out all about Venezuela's money problems from our friend the English speaking tout. He then let us know it would cost $600 each to see Angel Falls. Riiiiight. I'm sure the falls are very nice and everything, but that price is just ridiculous. That afternoon we spent the rest of our money on the next direct bus out of Venezuela and onwards to Brazil.
As we got on the bus that evening we were in high spirits. We had spent an awful five days, mainly either on busses or in bank queues, eating very little and generally being very miserable. Things were looking up however ... our bus was comfortable, fast and more importantly going non-stop to one of our favourite countries ... Brazil. Hooray! It was time to celebrate ...
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Firstly some background: To get to Venezuela we were flying from Panama City. Since our flight was an early morning one, we decided to spend the night in Panama City airport to save some cash. Never a good thing. Especially not a good thing when the seats in departures are incredibly uncomfortable. On our last airport all-nighter in San Jose, we were treated to big banks of seats upon which you could stretch out ... and pass out. This time all we had were little canvas numbers with no place to put your head. Each one was separated from the next by a pair of large metal arm rests, making it impossible to lie across a few of them - and thus making it impossible to get any sleep. We boarded the plane very sleepy.
A change of plane and a 5 hour wait at San Jose airport later - we arrived in Venezuela. We were only planning on spending just a week here on our way to Brazil, but were hoping to catch a few rays at a beach town along the way, and maybe even stop in at Angel Falls - the world's highest single drop waterfall.
The first thing we had to do before beginning our mini adventure, was to grab some of the local currency from a cash machine. Fortunately, the airport was blessed with five available cash machines, all in a row along one wall. Unfortunately - my card did not appear to work in any of them. It was then that we began to realise the first major problem with travelling in Venezuela - the cash machines do not accept foreign cards. We did not know this at the time however, and were still hoping to find one that did.
Fortunately (very very fortunately as it would turn out), I had $80 of emergency money stashed away which I was able to exchange for Bolivares - the currency of Venezuela. All I had to do was exchange these dollars at an exchange booth right? Sounds simple? It wasn't.
There was an official exchange booth in the airport offering a rate of 2 Bolivares to the dollar. I went into this booth, ready to change my dollars. Whilst in the queue however, I was approached by a number of people offering me rates of up to 3 Bolivares per dollar. If I went with these unofficial money changers, I could get 50% extra money for nothing.
But ... I didn't know what Venezuelan currency looked like. They could have handed me fake notes, or out-of-date notes, or random bits of coloured paper ... anything really. I asked a police officer to help me find a money changer who wouldn't scam me, but even this wasn't fool proof ... ever heard of a dishonest cop?
In any case - it all worked out ok. I ended up with 50% more Bolivares than I would have done going through a bank, or official exchange office. But why the discrepancy between official and black market rates? It was all very confusing.
The reason became clear a few days later, when we asked a tour agency tout (the only person we found in Venezuela who spoke any English) why there were two rates. Apparently, at the beginning of 2008, the Venezuelan Government launched a new currency, in an attempt to forestall the spiralling inflation rate that was gripping the country. This currency was called Bolivares Fuertes, and each unit was to be equivalent to 100 of the old Bolivares (which explains why local Venezuelans confusingly quote prices 100 times higher than they actually are). This new currency appears to be failing quite spectacularly, as according to our tout, there has been huge inflation since its launch. The Government, embarrased by this, is refusing to acknowledge there has been any inflation, and has pegged foreign exchange rates at January 2008 levels. The result is an exchange rate that reads 2 Bolivares to the dollar, whilst the reality should be closer to 6 Bolivares to the dollar. This has enabled a the black market trade in US dollars to blossom, since traders can offer much better rates than the banks or official channels. According to our source, the Government controls the black market, so isn't too bothered by this development.
The upshot is, Venezuela is prohibitively expensive for the foreign traveller at the moment. Every price, in an already expensive country (in South American terms), is two to three times higher than it should be - depending on the exchange rate you get. Over the week we were there, we had to stay in the cheapest places, eating street snacks and apples (apples were $2 each for goodness sake!), so as not to blow our budget for the rest of our time travelling. Unsurprisingly we elected to get to Brazil as soon as possible, without seeing or doing anything in Venezuela.
All this was ahead of us however, as we stood at the airport bus station, nervously clutching our small handfull of Bolivares, shuing away anyone who came too near us. We wanted to get out of Caracas as soon as possible because, rightly or wrongly, it has the reputation of being one of Latin America's most dangerous, most expensive and least visually appealing cities. We had heard some real horror stories about Caracas from other travellers. One girl had got into a taxi at the airport, only to have the driver pull a gun on her then drive her round to various ATMs, taking as much money out as she could. Obviously this wouldn't have worked for us (!), but we still didn't want to spend any more time here than was necessary. We hung around long enough to get a bus to the centre, a taxi to the long distance bus terminal, and a bus from there to Maracay - the gateway to one of Venezuela's best stretches of coastline.
Not that we saw any of it. We had used all of our money getting to Maracay, so we spent most of the rest of our time there trying to get more. The first day was spent trying all the cards we owned at wide range of ATMs across the city - all of which had a massive queue for some reason - and none of which worked. We managed to plead with the hostel owner to let us have a night on credit, then went out to the only restaurant in the area that accepted cards. Amazingly my card worked! Can't use it in a bank ... but restaurants are fine. The meal was good, but horrendously expensive. Liz's salad consisting of a few leaves of luttuce, a tomato and some cucumber (not even any dressing), cost over $10.
Day two was spent queueing inside the banks. Three of the banks I went to dismissed me out of hand. They didn't give cash advances ... after all, if I wanted money - I just had to go to an ATM ... right? At last however, I found a bank willing to give me an advance. It took 3 memebers of staff and over 2 hours, but eventually they gave me some money. We set about getting a bus to Brazil immediately.
As Brazil was a two day bus ride away, we got as far as we could in 24 hours, then decided to overnight in a place called Ciudad Bolívar, apparently a nice colonial town and the gateway to Angel Falls. We were even considering still going to Angel Falls if the price was right ...
To be fair, some parts of Ciudad Bolívar were nice, as you can see in the above photos, but most of the town was a bit of a dump. Because of the bus timings we were forced to spend a full day there, so we looked around, took some pictures, ate a few $2 apples, and found out all about Venezuela's money problems from our friend the English speaking tout. He then let us know it would cost $600 each to see Angel Falls. Riiiiight. I'm sure the falls are very nice and everything, but that price is just ridiculous. That afternoon we spent the rest of our money on the next direct bus out of Venezuela and onwards to Brazil.
As we got on the bus that evening we were in high spirits. We had spent an awful five days, mainly either on busses or in bank queues, eating very little and generally being very miserable. Things were looking up however ... our bus was comfortable, fast and more importantly going non-stop to one of our favourite countries ... Brazil. Hooray! It was time to celebrate ...
TO BE CONTINUED ...
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