Hopefully my last day in Caracas [this trip]. I missed leaving a few days earlier, it was a tradeoff. This is not the town for the cautious traveler with an itinerary, or who needs a guide or interpreter. I’m saying I wanted to leave earlier, but only about noon yesterday, 11 days into my trip, did I feel reasonably (60%) confident in reaching a destination and returning.
Don’t underestimate the local pitfalls. You have to know how to get from your hotel to the Metro, and be crystal clear where to stop. For instance, you will be lost asking for the bus station. It is called Nuevo Circo (New Circle) and is south of Station la Hoyada (literally, “The Hole”, I think) and is through a winding underground passage. Abandon hope of finding someone who speaks English.
The way I’ve planned it, I check out at about 8:00AM, purchase an Ejecutivo ticket (Executive means air-conditioned, you don’t need it but it’s only $1.00 more. The trip begins 10:30AM, ends 8 hrs. later. We shall see. I’m allowing a 48 hr. buffer zone to return, recalling that episode with the solenoid on the way to Colonia Tovar. I don’t usually predict, but here is the reputation of Angel Falls (Salto Angel). It may be interesting to compare.
The area is south-east, 4 hours driving time out of Ciudad Bolivar (Bolivar City). I still cannot find a map, possibly explained by the following. It is apparently an uninhabited desert plateau, or at least semi-arid, with granite/basalt outcroppings. Furthermore, all development is European for the tourist trade, and priced accordingly. ($630 US out of Caracas, a rip-off by any standard. My bus ticket was $13.56, with the movie included.) It seems a bit much to see in one day, even renting a motorcycle and starting early. Then again, doing it my way leaves a lot of cash free for a hotel.
[Author’s note 2019: I’m referring here to my travel plans, I have not yet left on the trip. But note my comments on pricing. I’m planning the very un-touristy adventure of renting a motorcycle to see if I can drive to Angel Falls. Nope, turns out there was no road and many rivers and no maps ofr anybody with the knowledge and the skill to tell you all this. But my spirit was willing, something money can’t buy.
I knew something was changing, but the connection to “credit” wasn’t clear in 1994. You see, the bus fare was limited by the amount of cash money people could afford to take such a trip. I was one of only two Europeans on the bus. But enter credit, and the fare leaps to $630 by private car. I had noticed the same changes in Mexico ten years earlier, but it was the Internet that accelerated prices to “New York levels” everywhere. My traveling slowed not because I could not afford it, or because I got too old to hump through the jungle, but because the old world was shut down in the manner described.]
[Author’s note 2023: Here's a dramatic tourist picture of Cuidad Bolivar, likely a drone photo. This shows the city from the northwest, looking down on the south riverbank of the Orinoco. The square white building in the foreground is the Hotel Colonial, which was once a classy place until the Arab money turned it into just another shigga-booga joint. The knob of land jutting out is the Pavilion, a public park with a restaraunt where people over 65 eat for free. My office was on the far distant right horizon, in a suburb called MarJuanta.]
As an example of the rip-off potential, I had to ask a local bus driver the directions to Nuevo Circo, the usual reply is, “Where are you going?”
It was late afternoon, I’m a morning person, without thinking I replied “Salto Angel”. He said in perfect English, “$750.00.”
I said, “You misunderstand, I don’t want to buy your bus.”
Again in English, “It is the official government tariff to Angel Falls.”
Now, by being “impolite”, I was able to find out the fare to the bus station as Bs. 15, roughly 9¢, for a savings of $749.91 US. Customer service, I suppose, as I explained in minute detail what I thought he should let his dog do, why he would always be a peasant, and that I though Proposition 187 should be mandatory in the Americas.
Hmmm, trouble already. I can’t find a map of large enough scale to go cross-country. We don’t want to be out of gas 100 miles up the wrong canyon. It looks like there are two ways in, one each from the north and south. What maps I’ve seen don’t show topography.
Again, I’m flabbergasted by the youth and wealth on these tours. Where does a 17-year-old blonde girl from South Dakota get money for a train of porters? I ask every chance I get, “What does your daddy do?”
In this case, a postal clerk! Sending his daughter on yet another $10,000 holiday. She’s a dream, but why would she look at me—I’m three years older than her father. Money breeds money—thanks again mom & dad. She has four brothers, and was wearing more jewelry than my parents spent raising me. And she is here by the hundreds. And that is whom margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 1em; margin-left: 1em;I’ve always had to compete with.
She mentioned she’d been on a “stopover” in Caracas for a “few months”. I asked why I’d never seen her around. Oh, because she’s staying in Palo Verde Estates—private apartments that rent for about $3,600 US per month. Oh, that’s why . . .
She reminds me of Judy, I guess.
[Author’s note 2019: careful how you interpret these old passages, it is out of context to take them too literally. In 1994, if you wanted to date 17 year old girls, that was your business. I’m actually mentioning how young and naïve she was compared to other women I dated at the time. And by competing, I mean I pay cash, and prices get higher when people pay by credit. It puts the squeeze on me.
There is also a note that I got a quote to rent a camcorder for 48 days for $266.27 plus a $300 deposit. I am not a camera crew and this type of transaction was exceedingly rare in the Venezuela of 1994.]
