Greetings from Macuto, Venezuela.This was the view outside the entrance to our hotel, a veritable river of mud, two days ago. You should have seen it the night before! We had to take off our shoes and roll up our pants to wade across.
We arrived on Monday night after a marathon day of travelling starting with our flight from Istanbul at 6am. Because we were travelling backwards in time the day just went on and on. We arrived at Caracas airport totally exhausted. The airport by international standards was appalling, hard to believe Caracas is a South American hub!
Anyway, we have spent the last two days watching endless television in our room, eating these fried tortillas called empanadas and doing some limited exploring of Macuto, which is a coastal town near the airport. Our initial plans were to spend a few days in Caracas itself but when we arrived the highway was blocked due to a landslide and this sapped our desire. You may have read that 21 people died in the flooding and thousands were homeless. Macuto was river of mud and some of the streets were turned to fast flowing deluges with cars stuck and the drivers desperately trying to push them out of the water. It was quite surreal. So we have one more night and have given up on going into the city. Tomorrow we fly to Miami via Bogota.
Macuto is a strange place. Since the rain has stopped, cleaning operations have begun and the place is regaining some kind of charm with people playing dominos and tile rummy outside and enjoying a beer. There is a little beach and the buildings are a mix of ugly modern one story places and two or three story old colonial Spanish style. I guess Cuba would look a bit like this.
Anyway, we are looking forward to Miami and the wedding. Venezuela has been a bizarre experience.
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