Heidi & Richard Bendel's travels

20 February, 2007

We arrived at the bus terminal in Puerta La Cruz at 5h30am and it was rainy and dark. We didn’t really have a plan but we had the Lonely Planet on the camera, a little difficult to see (not the perfect solution, but since we couldn’t get a copy of the LP for ourselves, we borrowed 1 and photographed it). We waited at the station for a while, until it got a bit lighter and we tried to plan the next few hours. The town was not very big and we could easily walk to the hotels. So we started off and found a hotel on the Malecon- beachfront. It was complet (full) and so I waited with the luggage whilst Rich headed out to find another hotel. I watched the garbage being collected and the morning activities of the people in the town i.e. people going to buy the newspaper, bread and milk. It wasn’t very interesting but it passed the time. Rich came back and found a decent hotel but we couldn’t check in until 13h00. We changed in the lobby and headed out for breakfast. The next task was to find someone to exchange some dollars for Bolivares. Travel Tip: One has to have loads of dollars cash (there is a big discount for having travelers cheques) when they come to Venezuela – it is essential to change dollars for the local currency with the black market rate otherwise you lose a lot of money (like more than 60%)!!!! By the time we were finished the whole town knew we wanted to exchange and everyone knew how much too- crazy! This is Venezuela. We got back to the hotel and were lucky enough to have wireless from the lobby- we hadn’t been on line for such a long time. Most of the town was closed because it was the final day of Carnival. We spent the afternoon walking along the not-so-clean beach and on our way back we walked through many street stalls that had just been set up for the nights festivities (Carnival). The music in the street had begun and there was a lovely vibe. We had a cerveza or two and there was a procession/parade of floats and people all dressed up but it was not very spectacular. It was interesting to see and experience. Rich got all our thorns out from the previous days hike (thanks Hardy) – operation thorn- and then we got to bed exhausted!