Statue of Simón Bolívar in Caracas

We left Juneau in the early afternoon of Saturday, December 16, 2000, and didn't arrive in Caracas until after midnight a day and a half later. We had a six-hour layover in Seattle which gave us some time to hit Southcenter Mall for last-minute provisions. Cathy and Rick met us in Seattle and we finally boarded a red-eye flight for Chicago close to midnight of the first day. After a morning in the Chicago airport we hopped our last flight to Caracas. I got my first opportunity to speak Spanish with a man sitting next to me on the Miami-Caracas leg. He knew English, but he humored Jason and I as we chatted with him in Spanglish. He told us about the mud slides that wiped out the cities near the airport last year, and that he worked for Movilnet, Venezuela's wireless communications company. I faked understanding him a lot of the time, though, so I was nervous about how well my Spanish skills would hold up once we were in the country.

My excitedness hadn't allowed for much sleeping throughout this ordeal, so by the time we arrived in Venezuela I was running on adrenaline. Facing customs was laughingly easy, a quick stamp and you're on your way, no words spoken nor any eye contact. I smiled and said "Grácias" nonetheless. We caught a por puesto from the airport to Caracas proper. These were essentially cabs that waited around until they were full before leaving. Travelling in a group of twelve, however, tends to eliminate any waiting. Since it was the middle of the night, Caracas was deceptively quiet. We found a hotel and crashed for the night, por fin, at around 1:30 AM.

I managed a few hours' sleep until the cacophony of city noise awakened me. That morning we had our first meeting going over our plans and procedures, then we were off into the city. Caracas is crowded, very big, and extremely noisy. Along every sidewalk are merchants' tables, selling everything from clothing to fruit to music. The music stands in particular were fascinating feats of engineering; they had to be able to not only hold at least a few dozen CD-Rs or tapes for sale but also be able to blast the tunes into the passing crowd at maximum volume. So they'd be CD racks, an amp, and however many speakers they could fit grafted together with wheels attached. These sidewalk music vendors were my first introduction to Venezuelan music, as well as to what I now call the First Law of Venezuelans and Technology. This law states that if a technology exists, it must be used, and it can't be used just part way. It must be cranked up! Thus when it came to stereos and radios, volume was the only thing that really mattered. I can recall only one stereo from the entire month that could actually handle the loudness it was being asked to play. Usually everything was cranked until it was a giant, unrecognizable cloud of distortion.

Every city we visited in Venezuela had a Plaza Bolívar, usually a block set aside in the central part of the city with a statue honoring Simón Bolívar, the country's beloved liberator. Above is the picture of the one in Caracas, which we visited that first day.

We only stayed in Caracas a couple days, although for awhile it looked like we were going to be stuck there. Since we arrived shortly before Christmas, all the bus lines we called were booked up for nearly a week. Our second afternoon after we held class, Rick and Cathy went to the bus terminal itself and secured tickets to Ciudad Bolívar.