The others had a 5.30 start to get to their flight out of Colombia to Caracas in Venezuela. Two of us had coughed up the extra £6 to get an 11am flight and a nice lie-in. The flight was comfortable enough but after the relatively cool Bogotá our arrival in the hot and humid Caracas felt like a hair dryer being blown into the plane as soon as they opened the cabin doors. By the time we got down the plane steps I was looking forward to a shower and a clean shirt, but we had a ways to go yet…
The immigration form was particularly detailed – on the first side you had to declare how much your entire luggage was worth, and then on the other side give details of every item and its original worth. The second side came out considerably higher than my original estimate and just led to being a bit worried about whether it would suddenly disappear from the luggage conveyer belt.
The Venezuelan currency is the Bolivar, and the official exchange rate is roughly 200,000 to the dollar. On the black market the exchange rate varies wildly from 220,000 up to 600,000 to the dollar. Obviously the more you can get for your money the better, but it does lead some interesting discussions when shopping and eating as the same 500,000 meal might be costing some people $2.50, and others $0.83, meaning some of us had a more opulent lifestyle than the others.
Arriving in the departures hall I sidled up to a baggage handler and enquired as to the whereabouts of the nearest official currency exchange. As hoped he offered to take me to a friend out the back of the airport who would sort me out. I left my luggage and anything of value with the other chap and followed them out a side door where 3 shifty looking guys offered me 4:1, which I wasn’t overly impressed by so headed back towards the fire doors (which I was slightly concerned that looked like they’d locked themselves on the way out) when they offered 5.5:1, which is about as good as I could hope for, so we did the deal and I headed off with 1.1 million Bolivars for $200. It was until I got back into the airport that I noticed all the notes were for 50 and 100 Bolivars, rather than 50,000 and 100,000, and panicked rather at being left with 1100 Bolivars worth all of about 20 cents. This continued for a few minutes until I spoke to the taxi driver and he assured me that the currency had been devalued by knocking off the last 3 zeros, and yes he would still take me into the town centre for $30.
Meanwhile the other chap on the flight had completely failed to bargain and got an exchange rate of 4:1. He then wandered off with the baggage handler and rather than have a couple of hundred dollars ready proceeded to get out his money belt and show the three criminals the $5000 dollars inside. On returning he proudly announced he’d found a taxi driver offering $90 to go into town. Well done there.
In our $30 taxi we careered into town, narrowly avoiding running over a squadron of police motorcycles and repeatedly swerving from the inner to outer lanes, never bothering with the middle lane for more than a few seconds.
Caracas itself was a bit underwhelming. The hotel was quite low quality and in the middle of nowhere, but a cold shower was by now very necessary. I met up with the other 3 members of Team Colombia and we all went for a drink and a sandwich before meeting the 15 new travellers joining us on the trip to Manaus. Unfortunately one drink led to another and by the time they arrived we were 4 bottles of red wine down and just starting on a fifth.
A short series of introductions later we headed out for an overly expensive yet underwhelming dinner whilst I failed to remember anyone’s name. A few more beers and Team Colombia were ready for a night out. Everyone else had been travelling all day and needed to get to bed, whilst two were still stuck in Europe due to some pretty bad weather conditions.
On the way back to the hotel we passed the Greenwich pub, which made it destiny and three of us headed in leaving the others to find their own way home. The pub was awesome, one of the best I’ve been to outside of London. It was really nothing fancy inside, but entirely full of locals all with a big smile on their face. The drinks came quickly and no money changed hands. Various people came and chatted, and our Spanish improved with every beer they thrust into our hands. An hour or so later one of the drivers came to join us and we kept drinking until we remembered we had an early start and noisily made our way back through Caracas at 3 in the morning carrying not only passports but quite a few thousand dollars in cash.
