The School Shark Empanada

No movie watching after 9:00 PM. What?!

2010-01-02T23:04:00.010-04:30

Venezuela has an electricity deficiency and it's running out of it.

The latest attempt to avoid this problem is with a new regulation that mandates the shutting down of shopping centers and malls, including anything that is inside except for casinos, by 9:00 PM "until further notice". One serious problem is that most of the major movie theaters in Venezuela are attached to a mall, which means that everyone must be out of the last movie by 9:00 PM for the theater to shut down on time. Now movies can't start no later than 6:30 PM, and if it's something longer like Avatar you might as well go on the weekend or skip the afternoon at work.

For years Venezuela has been known to have an electricity deficiency to the point that any clock plugged into the wall would be slow within a year (not enough power to make them tick fully). I've noticed for years that while I've been here streets lights seem very dim and occasionally there are serious electricity fluctuations at home; electricity-dependent devices wear/break down really easily, and it's best to plug them to something more serious than a surge strip. There were some serious blackouts before my arrival, to the point where, for example, tuesdays and thursday afternoons had no electricity in homes.

There a few reasons why this has become a more serious problem recently:

A couple of years ago, the time was changed to be more half an hour sooner (from GMT -4:00 to GMT -4:30) to allegedly have more even sunlight throughout the whole country. Unfortunately, aside from causing perpetual confusion for everyone, it also means that the sun goes down much much sooner than expected, especially while people are at work, which means that lights will go on earlier and last longer, including in shopping centers and malls.
One of the main sources of power for this country comes from a hydroelectric dam named Guri, one of the largest dams in the world, and because of drought this year (thanks, El Niño) the water levels aren't high enough to produce enough electricity.
And not to mention that there's probably a whole lot more people using inefficient air conditioners (windows are not really sealed around here), running more TVs, computers, internet, etc. You can't run the 21st century without a lot of electricity!
Probably more complex reasons I don't know about.

I haven't been told how they're really solving this problem aside from regulating the use of electricity. The government is not really very transparent about what they're doing aside from boasting about new things and ideas that will cause problems (solving problems isn't sexy enough).

Venezuela also has rich sources of sunlight (It's Always Sunny in Venezuela) and wind (lots of coast) that could also be used to generate clean, modern electricity, but my guess is that the government is going to sit there and wait until someone comes and installs the facilities to get electricity from those sources.

Christmas Piggies

2009-12-31T13:43:00.003-04:30

This season I've noticed that there are plastic piggybanks in every store, corner, or really by anyone in a job related to serving a customer:

Photo by Ciro Duran

People are essentially asking for donations, or bonuses, mainly for Christmas and New Years festivities (aka partying and getting drunk). The piggy bank thing is a long standing tradition, but I feel it has become more prominent in recent years. It used to be by the side and some (not all) stores had it, but now everyone has one, and people go out of the way to ask for a donation. Even the guy who takes your parking stub as you exit a shopping center (because the machine that takes the ticket doesn't work or people don't know how to use it) asks you to give them some spare change for the piggy. Keep in mind that this is has nothing to do with their employer, but more for a personal benefit.

Some say that the "revolutionary" government has basically broken people into expecting that someone else will take care of them or that begging for money without doing anything productive is a fine thing to do. Sadly for most people here working a bit hard never seemed to be a thing, anyway, though in a way you can't blame people for not getting paid well. It's unfortunately that the money is all wasted for two parties instead of being saved up and invested in more necessary things, though!

Stopped by a Bored Cop

2009-12-30T19:38:00.004-04:30

An example of how bad the lack of communication is over here, and how people in government positions abuse of their power:

While driving around with my sister, Maribel, we ran into some portion of a main road where the cops set up some cones and were slowing people down. Maribel slowed down as soon as we saw it, but the cop ahead her made a hand gesture to slow down more. Maribel responded and kept slowing down. We were going at less than 5 Kilometers per hour and the cop kept doing the hand gesture as we passed her, and she knocked on the window and said to stop on the side of the road. It turns out that she was somehow trying to tells us to stop and didn't know how to do the right gesture.

On the side of the road, my sister apologized for not getting what the cop meant stop instead of slow down. Then the cop started whining about how she and the other cops set up those cones at 6:00 this morning for our safety and blah blah blah blah. Maribel tried to reason with the bitchy cop, but it was like dealing with an idiot child in uniform. Then she went away and another cop came to take our license and registration. He let us go, immediately

I don't get it. Maribel explains that nobody really knows the true reason why they'd set this up and stop vehicles at random but they're doing it to see if drivers are missing their papers and either ticket them or ask for a bribe (bribes are more common). Of course, cops never explain anything; they just follow orders and have no people skills.

On the first day of Christmas...

2009-12-26T20:20:00.004-04:30

Venezuela being a predominately catholic country celebrates Christmas a lot. But hey, don't let religion get in the way because it's mostly an excuse to party hardy. Here's my week leading up and beyond Christmas:

Monday December 21: Celebrated the first official day of winter by having this sort of thing called "the spirit of christmas" eve, which is this sort of European tradition that has been adopted by families here to make wishes for the coming year.... also adapted in Venezuela as an excuse to have a social event and drink scotch. Went to bed at 3:00 AM
Tuesday December 22: My cousin (Alberto) is in town and he wants to go to the beach! Yay! Finally I get to go! On the way we get some Rum and the rest is history. Went to sleep at a reasonable time, but then the Pepsi's caffeine kicks in in the middle of the night.
Wednesday December 23: Finishing buying gifts and my cousin (Ariana) was also having her 21st birthday. While 18 is the equivalent to a 21 year old in the U.S., the party ends up turning 'merican after someone brings out tequila and starts giving everyone shots. Went home at 5:30 AM. Didn't drive.
Thursday December 24: Had to wake up semi-early to go to my grandma's house and celebrate her birthday and Christmas eve (which is what's celebrated here as opposed to Christmas day). She lives a couple of hours away. Went to sleep at a reasonable time, but it's really hot and humid where she lives.
Friday December 25: Went to visit my dad's uncle, and ate a lot, to the point I was having Thanskgiving, followed by drinking more scotch with the old folks.
Saturday December 26: Return to Puerto La Cruz to join my dad's cousins to a speedboat trip to one of the islands. Another beach day yay... mostly drinking wine and eating cheeses. Good times.
Sunday (tomorrow as of the writing of this post): Beach... maybe? We had plans for it. Haven't figured out if we're going.

Red Light Entertainment

2009-12-13T23:42:00.004-04:30

When there's a red light in one of the major avenues of Puerto La Cruz, you might see street vendors come out and sell all sorts of random things from colanders to pirated movies, and others are entertainers who do tricks for money right in front of traffic. Tonight, I saw the most bizarre thing:

A guy standing in front of of traffic juggling sticks lit on fire!

It seemed pretty normal to my aunt and sister, who didn't really say anything about it.

I wonder if these kinds of things only happen here, or there are similar sorts of crazy entertainment happening in other red lights in other countries. Feel free to leave a comment if you've encountered such a crazy event.

Beaching Issues

2009-12-07T12:06:00.006-04:30

My parents live within walking distance from the beach. It'd probably take me at most 30 minutes walking from our house to get there, and I've been considering doing that but:

I can't swim in those beaches because they are quite polluted. So I'd have to walk there to get some sun, hang out, and walk back, and shower at home.
My old friends are busy, not in town, or have left town forever. How long could I last without swimming?
It could be very, very dangerous. I don't know what areas are safe to walk through. I'm still dazed and confused, and I'd be walking around by myself with no cell phone. And there's seriously high crime awareness in this area.

That feeling of danger is very prominent. It's a really lousy thing that if you've made any money you practically have to protect all your valuables (camera, smart phone) and not take them out in public. Here you really feel like you can't trust anyone, not even the police. You look around and every residence has walls 8 feet high topped with an electric fence and bars on every window, and nobody walks anywhere for fun. You see very few people on a bicycle, even if the streets are flat (in other words, perfect for riding a bike!). I'm trapped in my own home.

I'll wait until the weekend until more people are free to go to a swimmable beach and have some fun all day. In the meantime, I'll stick to the swimming pool crashing at my aunt's house.

Jet Lagging?

2009-12-01T09:59:00.003-04:30

Although Venezuela is only half an hour later than eastern time (without daylight savings), I'm suprisngly having some jet lag issues. Because Venezuela is closer to the equator, the sun rises and sets very differently from the Pennsylvannia fall, so I wake up at the wrong time and am constantly unaware of what time it is. I suppose it doesn't help that I don't have a watch and my roaming cell phone stays at home.

The sun here rises around 6:00 AM, but it rises quite bright, so at 6 my eyes are fully open thinking it feels more like it's 10 AM for me but I feel super tired and try to go back to sleep, completely breaking my sleeping pattern. Sunset happens exactly at 5:30 PM, which is a just a little later than what I'm used to this time of the year, and the sunsets here also seem to happen much faster, too.

These little changes have really messed up with my eating and sleeping schedule. I think I'm getting used to it, though. That is, getting used to feeling totally confused all day long.

Back Again

2009-11-28T22:42:00.006-04:30

I return home until the end of 2009. Let's see if I can keep posting as a travel blog every other day or so.

The flight back is always a long and tiresome one. This time I flew straight from New York's JFK airport to Simon Bolivar International in Maiquetia (commonly known as the Caracas airport). I don't live anywhere near Caracas, but actually five hours away by car (40 minutes by air) in the east coast at a smaller "metro" area referred as Puerto La Cruz, the nearest airport being in Barcelona (there's one in Venezuela, too!). Because I arrived in Venezuela at midnight, I typically go to this small "touristic hotel" down the street from the airport called La Parada which has a shuttle service included with the overnight stay. Finally, the next day I fly to Barcelona and call it a day, although the night in between is feels a little strange every time.

When I first land in Venezuela, I'm always tired, dazed, and confused. Everything feels foreign to me now days, and some regulations have changed in which immigration and custom procedures are similar but not the same. I got this friendly group of "Caraqueño"s to guide me a little bit so I wouldn't feel so lost.

Getting to the immigration line, I follow my new group of friends down the corridor in a rush to beat the other flights arriving from other exotic places (Europe) to get to the lines. In a typical fashion, there isn't enough people to attend the demand, and we run to the very last line, which says that it's attending the crew and disabled people, allegedly, but it's just a sign (regulations or signs mean nothing much around these parts). After jokingly saying that we are "disabled" from being in an airport all day, another station opens and another line is created, which doesn't say "Venezuelan Citizens" in the booth either (I think it also said "Flight Crew Only"). Finally, you meet the guy with a "Buenas Noches", he looks at the immigration form, stamp, stamp, stamp on your passport, and it's done.

You wait impatiently for your bags. Then you go through customs which is just give a form to some dude, run the bags through a giant x-ray machine, and that's it!

Once I get to La Parada, I fill out some information (my parents had made/paid for the reservation already) and set a wake up call. My flight to Barcelona was at 10, but the receptionist says she'll wake me up at 7am "because of bad traffic on saturday morning" and as soon I was ready they'll take me to the airport.

The room is tiny, with a tiny bed, a tv, an air conditioner unit too big for the room, and a small bathroom with a funny sunroof. Good enough for a night, and all I want to do is sleep, anyway.

I don't sleep. I'm not home 100% yet, I have a rush/high from the flight, the air conditioner isn't cold enough, then later it feels like I'm sleeping outside in the middle of a Pittsburgh winter. I close my eyes and the next thing I know is daylight and I'm awake. I turn on my phone and realized it's 6:30 AM! But I feel it's like 10:00 AM for me because of the sun. I lay in my bed waiting for that wake up call, covered in bed sheets because the huge AC powering a tiny bedroom is still damn cold, and I can't turn it off. I realized that there's a weird panel behind me that has an off switch, and I finally turn the thing off:

Get up and I get ready. I remember not drying well enough from my shower with the tiny towel that was provided, but the tiny bathroom's sunroof gives me an idea. I stand under it and loand behold I'm fully dried in less than 5 minutes because of the humidity/heat/sun/magic. I can't pull those kind of shenanigans back in the middle of a Pennsylvania fall.

I get to the airport with one overweight bag, a carry on luggage, and a overfilled backpack. The person at the airline tells me that apparently my backpack is the carry on and that the carry on luggage is to big to be placed in the overhead compartments. She's being a bitch, like anyone working behind a counter in Venezuela, and so I make a quick decision to check in a carry on without a lock, full of non-pirated DVD gifts, and with brand new shoes. I made a huge mistake.

The security process was to laugh out loud. A lady three people ahead of me was wearing too much metal (big buckle belt and buckled shoes) and kept going through the metal detector with beeps, but other two people ahead of me didn't really want to wait, and were all trying to cross the metal detector at the same time as "Buckles" was coming back to put stuff in the X-Ray machine. There was some yelling from the security officer, but that didn't put things in order, so I tried to hold the line as much as I could until those three people got their issues settled and I was ready to go through. And damn, those metal detector doors are cranked all the way up because it frowned upon the same belt buckle that didn't matter going through the door in Pittsburgh. So I had to go back, too!

After that ordeal, it was still 8:00 AM, and I had to wait a couple of hours until I left. I spent most of those hours pondering why I checked in that bag without a lock and wondering what I could have done about it. I ended up getting a nice arepa with fresh "Palmizulia" cheese and a delicious tiny "latte" (we call them "marrón" (brown) here). While I was eating at the cafe, I spotted a mouse running from one hole by a counter to another. Nice.

The airplane gets to the jetbridge at 10:00 AM, and so we leave closer to 10:50 by the time we're all in and ready to go. The flight is only 40 minutes long, the Douglas-built jet is actually much more comfortable that those Boeings American Airlines love to use, and I believe that the Venezeuelan stewardess must be part time models because they're ridiculously attractive. For good measure, I drink a local Pepsi sweetened with cane sugar instead of that high-fructose corn syrup.

Hooray, I'm home. The Barcelona airport is under construction and the luggage carousel has disappeared. I get lost for a while and finally get to a sad excuse of a luggage pickup. As soon as I get my unlocked carry on, I take it out, open it, and get sigh of relief that everything is still there! Perhaps there is still hope in this country.

Then the rest of the day was spent eating good home food (including a Lebanese dish made with raw ground beef, it'd been years since I've eaten it! And I enjoyed eating it!), surprising my cousin who I didn't tell when I was actually arriving today (she thought it was much later), and wondering what time sunset was happening (5:00pm ish).

All in all, not too bad for day 1. I've still got a whole month left. Wondering what will happen next? Me too!

Hot Dogs: Venezuelan Style

2009-10-20T19:33:00.006-04:30

While the hog dog may be considered to be an American fast food, I've found that surprisingly many countries have modified it into their own creation, and Venezuela is no exception.

Hot dogs are the definition street food back home. In the streets of any city in Venezuela, the easiest street cart to find is one that sells them. It wasn't until the 90's when they finally started to compete with other types of food such as falafel/shawarma carts. Tacos and other Tex-Mex like foods still remain a mystery.

The street dog vendors developed a particular recipe for the Venezuelan definition of a hot dog, which you can make at home, too. The traditional recipe is as follows:

Pork+beef-based frank, preferably "coney"-sized. Boiled
Long bun, not sliced from the side like you'd expect, but sliced from the top of the bun!
Chopped fresh cabbage (not sauerkraut)
Chopped yellow onion
Crumbled chips (we call those Papitas, which translates to tiny fries)
The holy trinity of sauces* (Yellow Mustard, Ketchup, and Mayonnaise)

May also include:

American-style bacon
Your average yellow cheese slice (like Kraft singles)
Garlic sauce
Cheez-whiz-based sauce
and/or grated Parmesan cheese on top

And it may look like this:

Photo by Carren Jao

Looks messy but trust me, it's delicious!

Now keep in mind that this are the kind of hot dogs I know of are in the eastern side of Venezuela, and they may vary depending in other regions. I've run into recipes of Venezuelan hot dogs online which I never even seen.

If you're interested in other kinds of hot dogs, check out Hot Dog Variations design article which is what reminded me to make this blog post. You could also read the Wikipedia, of course.

* The holy trinity of sauces is a very well known Venezuelan sauce combination which can also be found in sandwiches and hamburgers. Basically if you want any fast food to taste Venezuelan style, you add the three sauces.

Now Conducting LA

2009-10-06T19:02:00.004-04:30

Young Venezuelan conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, becomes the music director for the Los Angeles Philharmonic:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/06/dudamel.orchestra/index.html

Dudamel is definitely one of the most (if not, the most) talented persons to come out of Venezuela in recent years, and was the director for Venezuela's well-known national youth orchestra. Here's a clip from a few years ago of them playing Alma Llanera, which one could consider Venezuela's national song:

Felicitaciones, Gustavo!

Cacao

2009-08-02T15:30:00.004-04:30

An interesting article from The New York Times:

"Venezuelan cacao beans have been coveted by high-end chocolate makers around the world since the 17th century. But cacao farmers today struggle against a daunting bureaucracy and emboldened squatters."

Video

Article

Venezuela produces very fine cocoa beans, though that production has been given less priority since the country's government focused on oil production.

Independence Day

2009-07-05T17:49:00.006-04:30

Almost coinciding with the United States' independence day, Venezuela's independence is mainly celebrated today.

On July 5th in 1811, after a brief revolutionary movement on the 11th of April the previous year, the declaration of independence was completed and signed, thus making Venezuela the first Latin American country to declare itself independent from Spain. At that point, the war against the Spanish government began, and it wasn't until about 10 years later (due to a decisive battle on July 24th, 1821) where Venezuela pretty much drove the Spanish out and finally ending the war for independence in 1823.

Celebration in Venezuela does not involve barbecues nor fireworks, though. It's mostly a military holiday where the armed forces march out on the streets. People get the day off, anyway, so it's a good time to rest.

The celebration of independence is also divided into the three dates mentioned above:

April 19th: Proclamation of the Independence of Venezuela
June 24th: The Battle of Carabobo
July 5th: Day of the Declaration of Independence

The Venezuelan Happy Birthday Song

2009-07-05T16:56:00.016-04:30

My birthday was last week, and although my (American) friends sang a lovely rendition the traditional Happy Birthday song, Venezuela has an extended version called Ay Que Noche Tan Preciosa (Oh What a Precious Evening) prior to singing the American translation, which goes something like this:

Ay que noche tan preciosa,
Esta noche de tu día,
Todos llenos de alegría,
En esta fecha natal.

Tus mas intimos amigos,
Esta noche te acompañan,
Te saludan y desean,
Un mundo de felicidad.

Yo por mi parte deseo,
Lleno de luz este dia,
Todo llenos de alegría,
En esta fecha natal.

Y en esta luna plateada,
Brinde su luz para ti,
Yo ruego a Dios porque pases,
Un cumpleaños feliz!

Oh what a beautiful evening,
This evening of your day,
Everyone's full of joy,
In this natal date.

Your most personal friends,
Give you company this evening,
They salute you and they wish you,
A world of joy.

On my behalf I wish you,
Full of light on this day,
All full of joy,
In this natal date.

And in this silver moon,
Shares its light to you,
And I beg God that you spend,
A happy birthday!

And then, Happy Birthday To You translated, with the same melody:

Cumpleaños feliz,
Te deseamos a ti,
Cumpleaños, [TuNombreAqui],
Cumpleaños feliz!

Happy birthday,
We wish to you,
(Happy) birthday, [YourNameHere],
Happy birthday!

Oh, and by the way, Happy Birthday translated has no copyright bearing by the Warner corporation.

Bolívar Strong

2008-01-01T19:49:00.001-04:30

As of today, the currency in Venezuela has changed. Well, it hasn't changed too much. The Bolívar, named after Venezuelan founding father Simon Bolívar, had to be simplified: One American Dollar used to be worth 2150 Bolivars (officially. Black market price is 4000 bolivars or more), but now the currency has been divided by a thousand and it has become the Bolivar Fuerte (Strong). So, now one American Dollar is worth 2.15 Strong Bolivars.

The slogan for this new kind of currency is "A Strong Economy, A Strong Bolivar, A Strong Country", but consider that everyone is going to be paid the exact same amount, everything is still going to cost exactly as inflated as it is, and everyone is going to be confused.

One interesting thing about the Bolivar Fuerte, though: The front side of the bills are VERTICAL:

Third Week Language Barrier

2007-12-31T01:28:00.000-04:30

Tomorrow (the new year) will be exactly three weeks since I landed in Caracas, and tonight it was the first time I noticed that I'm starting to have trouble speaking in English. While my internal monologue remains Spanish-free, as soon as I start speaking my pronunciation comes off with a strong Venezuelan accent and the speed I speak is much, much slower like I have to translate everything from Spanish, followed by my internal monologue developing a thicker accent as well. It doesn't get better in Spanish, either, because when I speak it I still feel that I'm translating from English first.

I seriously need to call someone to test my English.

No Milk for You!

2007-12-28T11:12:00.000-04:30

I woke up early this morning, and I wanted to eat something like cereal to calm my rumbling stomach, but there wasn't any milk in the fridge. It wasn't because my parents didn't buy milk, but because there is a general shortage of milk around these parts.

My sister tells me that if she drives by a convenience store or a bakery where there is a crowd of people, she stops whatever she is doing and goes there because she knows the crowd is for something like milk. She's seen women FIGHT over the milk, and due to limitations every family can only get two of whatever is available, anyway.

There are two types of milk in Venezuela. The most common one is powdered milk that comes in a tin can and one mixes it with water to make it liquid, typically used to mix with coffee and so forth. The other is liquid pasteurized milk that one can typically get from the cold dairy section in the supermarket; the kind that is used for cereal. Usually they're either whole milk or skim; none of that 2%, 1%, 0.5%, 0.25%, etc. that one sees in American supermarkets.

It's insane to think that milk has become pretty much a luxury here while at my own house back in Pittsburgh every one of my housemates drinks a different kind of milk, so typically we have two or more bottles in the fridge. And if the milk goes bad, we just get more milk.

I hope eggs and butter don't start disappearing, too.

In Venezuela, Again.

2007-12-15T09:52:00.001-04:30

I just got back "home" for the holidays. It's been a year since I was here last, and I feel more confused than I thought. When I was flying from Caracas to Barcelona, where my family lives, I had to pay some flight tax and when the lady gave me some coins back I couldn't really do the math because I couldn't really think that those coins would add up to the 1000s.

Nothing seems to different, just a few new roads, but the usual mess seems about the same.

Don't cry, Chavez; you can't always get Yes for an asnwer. It's still a democracy, right?

2007-12-03T01:43:00.000-04:00

The votes are in favor of No for the constitutional reform, but it's very close, perhaps too close: 51% to 49% to be exact. Chavez may have to step down in 2012, but I bet he has some dirty tricks under his sleeves left. We'll see what happens next year.

Sources: BBC, The New York Times, El Nacional (Spanish), El Tiempo (Spanish)

Referendum This Sunday

2007-11-29T17:31:00.000-04:00

The polls for the referendum, which consists of the things discussed in my previous post, are happening this Sunday. Unfortunately, I'm too far away to do my vote, but I really hope there's enough sane people voting for it. I also hope that they don't rig the votes, but who knows what happens in such a unorganized country.

Today I saw USA Today, and there was an article about Chávez and the Referendum. When I moved to the United States ten years ago, most people had no clue that Venezuela was located in South America. Some people still don't today, but I do get a whole lot of "what's the deal with your president?". I guess Chavez is making Venezuela popular and known these days, but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.

Why don't you shut up?

2007-11-13T13:12:00.000-04:00

NO To Constitutional Reform!

2007-11-08T22:24:00.000-04:00

The following entry was not written by me, but instead was written in Spanish by my friend Ciro for his blog about video games, El Chigüire Literario (The Literary Capybara). However, with his permission I translated it to English for a whole new audience to read:

El Chigüire Literario says NO to Venezuela's Constitutional Reform

What's happening these days

These days in Venezuela, our president Hugo Chávez presented a proposal of "Constitutional Reform" to the National Assembly to modify 33 articles in the Constitution. These articles where debated by the National Assembly and its members added 13 more articles to the list. The problem arises that all of this has happened in less than 5 months, and in only 27 days this will be submitted to a public vote for this Reform whose discussion has been plagued with conflicts and defensive attitudes by the members of the National Assembly.

In root of this situation I expose my point of view with respect to this, and why I consider that this reform will NOT improve the country's current situation.

How did we get here?

It's difficult to summarize our current situation; it's tremendously complicated. Notice that I've started at the end with the voting for the Reform, but this is the result of other events and past situations, and to try to cover everything means to tell the history of Venezuela's modern democracy, which goes back almost 50 years. I will however enumerate a few points about this country that I believe can summarize it a little about how we got to this point:

Venezuela has a great problem with poverty. And I'm not just talking about the people's material poverty. We have a great problem with education that hopelessly sets our whole population behind.
The poverty problem gets worse with social unbalance. We have the poorest of the poor and at the same time the richest of the rich. This is a ticking bomb to any nation.
Previous administrations' politics have been populist. The result is that a big part of the population thinks that the Government must provide everything that is necessary to live. And almost all of the population thinks that problems must to be resolved in months, while in order to revert our situation requires a careful plan that could take years to solve our problem.
The current administration, with almost 9 years in power, has known how to captivate a great part of the Venezuelan population, mostly including the poor. It's a clear and established objective for the president to stay in power as much time as possible since he believes to be the only one capable of solving Venezuela's problems and gives no chance to other parties. It's publicly known that Hugo Chávez wants to stay in power "until 2021", "until 2031", or "forever" as he has admitted in various occasions. In a masterful political plan, it makes these poor people believe that Venezuela's problems are caused by "oligarchs" and "rotten parties". And although it's true that in Venezuela there have been small groups with big concentrations of very powerful people, the truth is that they want to include every person who happened to make a good living with honest and hard work in these groups as well. At the same time, this plan includes the constant promise of a better future, a better future, and that future... never gets there: we continue to have the same levels of poverty. It doesn't matter if the administration can inflate all the numbers it can and define them to its own liking. The real numbers are showing when you go out on the streets and see reality standing right in front of you.
The previous point has caused a social rupture that has never been seen in decades. I'm not exaggerating if I tell you that currently there are two conflicting Venezuelas. From this radical sides emerge and these sides end up in fights, wounds, and even deaths. From this radicalism comes terribly blinded visions of reality from both sides: Everything that is not in agreement with the president's line of thoughts is immediately labeled as counter-revolutionary, oligarch, coup-inducing, etc., and there are quick jumps to conclusions like things are financed by the United States, which one of the more aggressive of the current government ideology although we continue to happily make business with them.

Back to the topic

The Constitutional Reform follows closely the points about the current administration that I've just described to you.

One part plans various strong changes to the Constitution that deserve to completely rewrite it once again: an undefined number of terms for the president (or continuous reelection), establish a socialist form of government, something that we know it hasn't really worked in other countries around the world, limit basic human rights in case of state of emergency, change the definition of private property to give the power to the government to have greater control over it.

The other part plans changes of the same populist nature that we've already had even before the current administration: reduce the quantity of work hours per week, recognize in a piece of paper "the power of the people", or whatever that means, and other things.

And it's not that this Reform is completely bad. The thing is that the last piece of the machine which would give excessive power to the president is that this whole series of changes are going to be polled as only two blocks of laws including the two parts already explained.

And it's because of this, among other reasons, that I diagree with these changes and I will say NO to this Reform.

Time Zone

2007-08-25T16:54:00.001-04:00

Venezuela's time zone is Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT) minus 4 hours, or at least it will be until september, where it will be changed to minus 4.5 hours. It's for the children! (at least according to the article). Now computers will have to be upgraded, international businessfolk will have to get used to it, and I'll still be confused what the local time is when I call my family.

The perception of time in Venezuela is obviously different. Sunrise and Sunset are always at around 6:45 (am and pm, respectively) so one gets used to expecting the day to change at exactly those times. This is how it is on the eastern side of the country, and towards the west closer to Colombia, the sunrise and sunset happens later. Perhaps the country actually needs two time zones, although that would be kind of confusing for such a small country to have them compared to a behemoth like the United States.

Venezuela doesn't have a daylight savings or summer time. Because it is under the tropic of Cancer and it's relatively close to the equator, there are only two seasons (rain and dry) and the length of day and night never changes, or a least it's not noticeable.

When I first came to the United States ten years ago, I found it very strange that it was 9:00 PM and the sun was still out, and in the winter it was 5:00 pm and it was pitch black outside. Now that I got used to it, I go home and I'm surprised when it gets dark. We'll see how it goes with the new time zone next time I'm there.

The Economic Situation

2007-08-14T13:42:00.000-04:00

A picture is really worth a thousand words: The website deputydog has posted two pictures of Caracas that shows the economic divide between the lower class and the middle/upper class in major cities of Venezuela.

This is nothing recent; it has always been this way as long as I can remember, and it's hard to say whether it's getting better or worse under the new management.

The Dancing Devils of Yare

2007-06-20T23:48:00.000-04:00

Every year on the Thursday before Easter, in a small village south of Caracas called San Francisco de Yare (pronounced Yah-Reh), there is a very famous parade/dance of people dressed in red clothing wearing giant devil papier-mache masks. Although this holiday, what we call in Spanish Los Diablos de Yare, only happens in one place in Venezuela, it is one of the most cultural symbols of the country.

I have never seen the dance in person, and perhaps I've seen glimpses of it on television or tourism videos, but what I know is that the masks are everywhere. Everyone in Venezuela knows about this tradition. For example, I took this picture in the Venezuelan consulate office in New Orleans, LA, last year:

The actual masks are much more elaborate; these might be the ones that are sold as souvenirs anywhere in the country.

The New York Times posted a nice slide show with background music showing some good pictures about the dance and the masks, and there is also an article that includes the history and information about the most recent incarnation of the dance (You have to complete the free registration to read the article, but not the slide show).

So, now that you know what the Diablos de Yare are all about, if you're ever in Venezuela feel free to buy one of those masks from the souvenir shops, or if you're lucky, go see the dance in person. I actually don't have a mask myself, since it would be kind of a delicate process to pass it through the airport and all that mess.

Maybe I'll get one, someday.

Armando Reverón Exhibition

2007-03-21T21:41:00.000-04:00

I made a stop in New York City last week and I noticed that there is an exhibition for Venezuelan impressionist painter Armando Reverón at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Unfortunately, I was in New York for just half a day (mostly because of a canceled flight) and I barely got a chance to enter the museum. However, to anyone who's interested in modern art and stops by Manhattan should check this exhibition out, though!

Sadly, the next opportunity that I can go to New York would be long after April 16, when the exhibition closes. I'd still like to go to MOMA and other museums in New York, anyway, because I'm a sucker for that stuff. :)

Interview with Chávez

2007-03-20T23:14:00.000-04:00

I got this e-mail recently about an interview that ABC reporter Barbara Walters had with Venezuela's current and most controversial president in the last few decades, Hugo Chávez, who has become quite famous in the United States after he started calling George W. Bush names like donkey (dumb ass), drunk, and idiot:

The full interview apparently was shown on 20/20 last Friday. There might be a chance that you could find it online these days, if you're interested in watching the whole thing.

The Capybara Empanada?

2007-03-20T22:48:00.000-04:00

I just saw this article on the New York Times about how the meat of the world's largest rodent, the capybara (or chigüire) is a delicacy in Venezuela:

"Capybara aficionados include President Hugo Chávez, who grew up in Barinas, a state on Venezuela’s steamy plains where capybaras are common. On his television show, “Hello, President,” Mr. Chávez has promoted capybara empanadas washed down with papaya juice."

I'm from the north east part of Venezuela, and the plains (or los llanos) are a foreign place to me. It is perhaps one of the most rural area in Venezuela, and only a couple of years ago I found out that they ate capybaras. I know they have other different and strange traditions, and perhaps I'll post about them in another entry.

The School Shark Empanada

2007-01-03T14:26:00.000-04:00

Hot, greasy, delicious, and it only costs 75 cents.

Feliz Navidad

2006-12-29T15:08:00.000-04:00

In Venezuela, Christmas is a big holiday, especially with 96% of the population coming from a Roman Catholic background. However, Christmas Day is just like any other day, except that the stores are closed, and usually families go out and about. In the Puerto La Cruz area most people go out to the beach.

Christmas Eve is the big event. There is usually a dinner party with plenty of food, beer and/or blended scotch whiskey, and desert. The whole family gets together, and I'm not talking about just mom, dad, and children: Uncles, grandparents, second cousins, third cousins, great uncles; anyone who is related and lives nearby, basically. While adults sit and chat about all kinds of topics, kids run around and sometimes play with fireworks, which are used to celebrate Christmas/New Year's Eve and not Independence Day.

Decorations are typical: A Christmas tree that is usually a synthetic tree instead of a real pine tree, those usual red flowers and plenty of sparkle, lots of pictures of Santa Claus all over the place, and those red Christmas hats. There is also plenty of references to snow, and for some reason everyone thinks of snow and Christmas as the same thing, even though it only snows up in the high mountains near Merida. A lot of families create nativity scenes, too, and they can get pretty big; my grandmother created one once that took a whole wall! I think she won some kind of contest, too. Baby Jesus is added to the nativity scene at midnight.

There exist a dispute of who bring the gifts to the children: It's either Santa Claus, or San Nicolas, or the one and only Baby Jesus. When I was kid it was always Baby Jesus who brought me the gifts, but in recent years it seems that the middle/upper class has started calling this mystical creature Santa Claus (in English). So now the government, trying its hardest to promote Latin American identity due to the obvious subculture blend, is not allowing any images of Santa out in public places.

Venezuelan Impatience

2006-12-28T11:51:00.000-04:00

I often wonder why Venezuelans, at least the ones from eastern Venezuela, seem to be so impatient. Everyone is always trying to get through everyone's way, as it primarily demonstrated through their driving. I may have found one of the many reasons.

I arrived in Caracas a few days ago, and I needed to get on a flight to Barcelona (Venezuela, not Spain) which is close to where my family lives. My flight was going to take off at 7:40 AM, and I got to the airport at around 6:15 AM to meet with a line longer than what the check-in area can hold. When I get my boarding pass at around 6:50 AM, the airline person told me that the boarding time was going to be at 7:00 AM. I thought that it was soon enough and headed for the security area, and on my way there I noticed that the boarding pass said that the boarding time was 6:45 AM, and when I check on the monitor with all the flights it said "Abordando" (Now Boarding) for my flight. Already knowing what to expect from a Venezuelan airline, I knew that it had to be an error and that they weren't really boarding the plane.

So I sat close to the gate and at 7:00 AM, nothing happens. I sat there waiting. I checked the time, kept waiting.

It was 7:10 AM and still nothing. The sign by the gate still said "Abordando". Voices kept coming from the loudspeakers about boarding other planes and nothing for us. At around this time, people got desperate and started to form a line by the gate, which became quite long after a few minutes. I didn't panic; I saw the same thing happen a few months ago when I came to Venezuela and I knew that it wasn't going to work. I also saw the same thing happen at the Miami airport the day before. An attendant for the airline came by and started yelling and breaking off the line. She said that they would call people by rows, and that they would have to wait.

At 7:20 AM, there was still no call for our flight, and a smaller line started to reform by the gate. No attendant came to break off the line.

At 7:30 AM, I notice that some guy by the gate is giving an aggressive gesture to someone by the plane and then starts calling people by rows. He calls rows 11-22 first, and because I'm in row 2 I sit and wait. I notice that after a while the seats by the gate are getting emptier, so I stand up and get in line. It turns out that I was one of the last people to get in the plane and he never really called rows 1-11.

When I finally got to Barcelona, which was surprisingly almost on time, we had to wait once more. It took about 20 minutes for our luggage to get to the carousel, and we were the only flight that arrived at that time!

So, the whole time we were given false hope, and we lost trust with the airline and became desperate for some kind of action. This is why there is impatience, because when it not only happens in the airline but the same principle happens everywhere else, you start to lose trust on time and on people.

So, let's review the events:

Ticket boarding time: 6:45 AM. For a domestic flight? That's actually quite optimistic to be boarding almost an hour before the flight.
Written boarding time: 7:00 AM. Still too early.
"Abordando" on all signs. Were they really boarding? Why did they tell us that if they weren't ready?
People start forming without being called in typical Venezuelan fashion. Someone from the airline breaks them off like everything will work out.
Boarding at the last minute. It's never fun to rush.
Not calling the other set of rows. By this time I lost all hope that it would happen, anyway.
Luggage takes too long at a small airport with one arrival. Why?

How does one ever fix a society that doesn't run on time and that gives false hope to people that have already lost trust?

Junk Food

2006-10-14T12:48:00.000-04:00

American fast food that you get from a local restaurant or a street vendor in Venezuela is different from what you find at American franchises. Places like McDonald's, Subway, or Wendy's are available, but they are pretty much exactly the same except that everything is measured in metric units (One 6-inch sub = One 15 cm sub).

Here are some of the classic junk food and its ingredients:

Hot Dogs: Bun, wiener, cheese, cabbage, onions, crushed chips, ketchup, mayonnaise, and mustard. May add extra sauces like cheese sauce, garlic sauce, etc.
Hamburgers: Bun, meat patty, ham (because it's a hamburger!), cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onions, ketchup, mayonnaise, and mustard. Optional or may include: a sliced boiled egg, chicken, bacon, and/or a pork chop.
Pizza: More like Italian pizza, sometimes served in squares instead of pie slices. Anchovies are not whole, but just bits, and mushrooms are usually canned mushrooms.
Nachos: Nachos? You mean Doritos? There are no nachos like the ones you get at the movie theater or a stadium in the United States.
Sandwich: Aside from the meat of choice, it's most likely to have lettuce, tomato, a boiled egg cut in slices, ketchup, mayonnaise, and mustard.

You might want to try these versions if ever travel to Venezuela. The safest ones to try are pizza and sandwiches, but you must have an iron stomach for the burgers and hotdogs from street vendors because they're usually not the cleanest places to eat from.

Tourism Videos

2006-10-01T13:30:00.000-04:00

When I was at the airport in Maiquetia, they were playing this video on the many screens around the gate area:

Also, I found this other video, which is similar, this one has narrator who speaks English, but it's kind of funny how he says Venezuela:

These two videos pretty much show what Venezuelans think about Venezuela: It has everything in the world.

In Memoriam

2006-09-19T19:51:00.000-04:00

I'm dedicating this post to Mr. Francisco Alvarez and Mrs. Morela Barreto, who recently died in a car accident on their trip from eastern Venezuela back to their home in Valencia, which is in mid-western Venezuela. I was informed by my dad this evening about the whole thing.

Morela, Francisco, and their children, Jose and Celeste, all lived in Fayetteville for a while. Morela completed a Ph.D. in food science, and then returned home. Meanwhile, their oldest son, Jose, completed his bachelors at the University of Arkansas and was/is doing a masters in University of Oklahoma. Their daughter was going to high school when they returned to Venezuela. Morela was a professor at the University of Carabobo in Valencia while Francisco was a retired professor who was very much into alternative forms of medicine. The University of Carabobo suspended classes because of the accident.

They were really nice people, and some of the most authentic Venezuelans I've met. I used to go to their apartment in Maple Manor and eat some food and talk about various topics, like Venezuelan traditions and all. Francisco would have all sorts of interesting and funny stories, so it was always fun to listen to what he had to say. When I decided to start a booth for Venezuela in an international bazaar they had every year at the University of Arkansas, Morela would let me borrow some tradicional clothes and stuff I didn't really have to show.

It's a shame that I didn't get to see them when I was in Venezuela. One day I heard from my mom that they were in town visiting one of our friends who also had lived in Fayetteville because they were on their way to their destination to where the accident occured. I wonder if they stayed in that place the whole time and they were finally coming back a few days ago. I was really wishing that our paths would have crossed again.

I'll miss them.

Driving Around...

2006-09-16T12:15:00.000-04:00

Here's a video I shot of my sister driving around Puerto La Cruz that I forgot to post:
It sort of gives you the feeling of what one of the nicer areas of the city is like. Unfortunately, it's hard to see the road rage in action because of the low traffic.

Back in the North

2006-08-31T08:49:00.000-04:00

I've been back in the United States for the past four days. However, it doesn't mean that this is the end; I still have a lot of topics that I never talked about, and Venezuela still exists, so there will be some major current events that will be posted here.

I will try to post a new entry every week, so stay tuned.

At the club...

2006-08-27T23:28:00.000-04:00

This tall guy walks into a club, and the bouncer stops him. He says, "let me see your ID." The tall guy gives the ID to the bouncer and confused, because the bouncer didn't ask anyone else for ID, he asks "Why? Is it because I have a child's face?" and the bouncer says, "Yes."

And I thought they never ask for ID in Venezuela for anything. I guess going to the club is a little too much. Last time I tried to go into that place I wasn't let in for wearing shorts.

TV these days...

2006-08-24T23:27:00.001-04:00

You know, there was a time where everyone watched a few of the 10 soap operas offered daily in every local channel, but now days, with cable television, the Venezuelan youth watches the following shows religiously:

Latin American Idol (En Español)
Gray's Anatomy
Prison Break
Desperate Housewives
Scrubs
Medium
Smallville
Ghost Whisperer
America's Next Top Model

I've been hanging out with too many women lately, so maybe this is what women watch. Guys shows are probably different (e.g. South Park and more football/soccer), so maybe these are just the new version of soap opears. Some of them are pretty entertaining, too.

Now it's for Everyone!

2006-08-23T17:28:00.000-04:00

The logo you see to your right is one that is on every single government department in this country. It means that Venezuela is now for everyone, and not just for the upper classes like it used to be, apparently. But not just for every Venezuelan, it seems that it's also for any country in the world. Just look how they'll give away cheap oil to China, too. Strangely engough, Venezuela has been producing a lot less oil in the past few years since they've got the employees of the national oil company, PDVSA, organizing missions to build hospitals, teach people who never finished school, and so on. They also get paid a whole lot better than they did when they did actual petro-chemical jobs.

If Venezuela is for everyone, then why is my sister having such a hard time trying to get a new passport? It's not like the united states where everyone can get a passport at the post office; one has to deal with the department of identification, the same one that gives away national id cards. Their website keeps collapsing 5 minutes after it opens for passport requests. So, it turns out that Venezuela is now for everyone else, and not for Venezuelans. Just because the services are available, it doesn't mean that they work.

Presidential elections are in December, and the candidates against the current administration are promoting, as part of their agenda, that Venezuelans should be for Venezuelans first, and not for the rest of the world.

Subculture Blend

2006-08-22T19:46:00.000-04:00

You can't deny that the United States of America is a superpower that has affected the world, and it seems that in other countries its culture has been injected, the wrong way. Venezuela, being close enough to the USA, gets a lot of American stuff like music, products, movies, etc.

There is a problem, however, because the culuture becomes fashionable, and therefore to anyone who's lived in the United States, it doesn't make much sense.

Although most of Latin America speaks Spanish, a lot of the cable channels are named in English. There is one called Sony Entertainment Television, and the announcer says everything in Spanish but he says "Sony Entorrtainment Television", probably because it sounds cool in English. The Warner Channel is worse, they have a narrator whose native language is obviously Spanish, but he announces everthing in English. It's pretty annoying: "Smallville, the story of superman when he was a kid! Tonight on the Warner channel!" I have a feeling that he's the same announcer from the Sony channel, too!

Plenty of stores have names in English, but they're the silliest names you can imagine. At a local mall, there's a store called Shoes & Shoes, and another one called Glasses, Glasses, & Glasses. If it's not a name in English, then there's aphostrophe + s attached to the end, even though it's only common to use it in restaurants in American culture (and uh... Kinko's?), and it's misused. A common store name would be something like Brenda Clothing & Shoe's, or Perrockeros Burguer's. The word burger is also a common mispelled word, because the Spanish equivalent, hamburguesa, has a U in it. Some stores have brand names, though American companies don't seem to care over here. There's a Universal Video, using the Universal Pictures logo, a Panera Bakery and Cafe, which claims to be part of Panera Bread although the logo and name is not the same, and there's a swatch store at a mall that sells mostly Casio watches.

Finally, the subcultures start to blend in places. Girls can one day dress like yuppie girls ready for the club, while the next day they'll dress up punkish like that "Avril Lavigne" because it's fashionable and not because they believe that being part of the mainstream yuppiness is too corporate and they want to be alternative, or whatever. For the first time in my life I see a store with gangster clothing on display, even though not many people listen to hip hop and nobody plays American football. There's a tatoo and piercing parlor that has more action figures than a comic book shop, and they sell other things like bongs and pipes. Reggaeton, a new style of latin music similar to hip hop, has videos with booty and latino gangstas straight from New York, LA, or Miami, and yet nobody in Latin America dresses that way. Nike (in Spanish pronounced like nice but with a k) has become a brand very much like the Tazmanian Devil in America is for the white trash.

And there's many more. It really meses with my head and I will stop thinking about it, but you can check out some of the pictures that I've taken about the subject.

Threatened

2006-08-15T18:08:00.001-04:00

A couple of hours ago, Maribel and I were coming back from the university after dropping her boyfriend off who's taking some "summer" classes. All of the sudden the car stops and I look up and there is a fat 11/12 year old boy dressed in dirty clothes standing in front of the car. He was holding with his right hand a piece of concrete that broke off from the median, and he was making a movement as if he was about to throw the rock at our front windshield.

At this moment, I'm kind of freaked out. What should I do? Should I step out of the car and yell at him or kick his ass? But what if he throws the piece of concrete and breaks our windshield?

He screams, "Gimme your money!". Ah, so he wants some money. My sister doesn't have any change, but I do, so I pull out about a thousand Bolivares (roughly $0.40) and he walks towards my side. I lower the passenger window a bit and give him the bill.

He doesn't go away. He is still standing there making the same threatening I'm-going-to-throw-this-rock movement and he says "No, give me everything!". I freak out again. What do I do now? Push him by opening the door, get out and kick him? That's not going to solve the probem. Should I just push him and scream at him? What if he throws the rock first, and breaks the passenger window and pieces of glass fall on me? Is that worth what's in my pocket?

Then, the car moves. There was nobody in front of us, so my sister in distress stepped her foot on the gas and we went past the kid. I look behind me and the kid walking, trying to threaten other people.

A few minutes later, we ran into a couple of cops standing on the street, as they always do like human speedbumps, and we tell them what is going on nearby. They said "We'll check it out". I'm not sure if they ever did, or they told another unit to go check it.

I wonder where that kid learned how to do that. I wonder if they will get him. My mother said that these sort of things were rumored to be happening recently, since she works at the university.

That's one of the main problems with the Venezuelan culture. Everyone wants to make a quick buck, and depending on who you are and where you come from, you'll find a way, with the most extreme case being by threatening drivers in the middle of the street with a piece of concrete. And most people can get away with it.

An Ice Cream Parlor with A Thousand Flavors

2006-08-10T12:06:00.000-04:00

Mérida has this very famous ice cream parlor called Heladería Coromoto that has a menu of approximately a thousand flavors. It held the Guiness World Record in 1990, 91, and 92 for the ice cream parlor with most flavors.

They don't necesarily serve all one thousand flavors daily, though. From what I saw, they pick about 100 or more flavors per day or per week. What's most interesting about this ice cream parlor, however, is that they have gotten very creative with flavors for ice cream. Aside from having traditional flavors like strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate, they have a whole selection strange flavors like including shrimp, crab, salmon, black beans, beef, spaghetti with cheese, etc. Tourists just like to go there and take pictures of the strange flavors, and if they're brave enough, they'll try them.

I was a wuss, and I chose to eat an Avocado and Cacique (a brand of Venezuelan rum) ice cream cone. I actually liked it; the avocado only had a very mild taste of avocado, and the Cacique tastes just like rum ice cream. I was disapointed because I've eaten Rum and Raisin ice cream before so I knew what it tasted like already; I should have gotten Regional (a brand of Venezuelan beer) ice cream instead. My friend, Vladimir, didn't eat anything, and I asked him to try mine but he refused.

Next time I'm there, I promise that I'll try a full meal and eat some beef, rice, plantains, and beans ice cream! Or maybe not...

The Longest and Highest Cable Car Ride... in the World.

2006-08-09T11:35:00.000-04:00

Aside from having the highest waterfall in the world, Venezuela also holds the record for having the highest and longest cable car ride in the world, too. Riding the Teleférico de Mérida is one of the things you must do while you're in Mérida, and it is quite a fun expereience. It goes all the way to the top to Pico Espejo, a peak that is right in front of Venezuela's highest mountain, Pico Bolívar.

Don't expect it to be one long cable car ride, though. It is divided into 4 smaller rides, starting from Mérida and ending on Pico Espejo:

During the ride they play traditional music from the Venezuelan Andes with a narrator describing how the cable car was built, though the narrator sounds like a Japanese narrator (very articulate and excited) and it can get quite annoying after 8 rides, especially if you don't speak Spanish and have no idea what he's saying. However, almost everyone is so excited about the ride that they talk all the way through, completely ingnoring the narrator.

Some of the stations in between have some mild entertainment, like a tiny exhibit about Pico Bolívar, and some of the employees play traditional Venezuelan music:

Of course, they ask you to donate some money for these events.

The second to last station has a food area where you can get some okay food and some hot chocolate, though this is for when you're coming back from the top because they like to take you all the way up as fast as possible.

Pico Espejo is interesting because it's always changing depending on the weather. The last time I was there, like 17 years ago, it was clear and sunny and I thought it was the coldest weather I've ever felt in my life. You could see Pico Bolívar, which is always covered with snow and it looks really cool. The only way to get to Pico Bolivar, though, is if you're a professional climber.

This time around, it was cold indeed but nothing to die for; I guess I've experienced worse. It was also completely foggy and we couldn't even see Pico Bolívar at all! However, there were some patches of snow, and my Venezuelan friends were quite excited about it. Because of the high altitudes you may experience some dizzyness. I did, especially coming back from the Pico.

There's also a Virgin Mary statue where you can take some pictures. I'm not really sure if the statue has any significance other than spiritual protection.

Unfortunately, the next day we noticed from the city of Mérida that Pico Bolívar could be seen and it was completely covered in snow. If we could have waited one more day...

Don't forget to check out all of my pictures of the Teleférico.

The food in Mérida

2006-08-05T16:52:00.000-04:00

I think the one thing I did the most in Mérida was to eat food. There's a lot of good food in Mérida, and perhaps southwestern Venezuela, that is quite different from the food you get in the eastern coast where my family lives:

Trout
Trout is farmed in the mountains near Mérida, so that's the fish they eat there. I didn't necessarily try it, though, except in pasteles.

Pasteles (Cakes)
Pasteles are the Andean empanadas. They're made with weat flour and they're small, round and fried and inside they have a traditional filling (trout, rice and ground meat, cheese and potatoes) or a more modern filling (salami and cheese, bacon and cheese, mushrooms, "Pizza", etc).

Strawberries and Cream
This is very common in mountain regions in Venezuela because Strawberries can be farmed there. You can also get strawberries with ice cream.

Andean Arepas
Arepas Andinas are similar to Venezuelan arepas, except that they're made with wheat flour and they feel and taste more like baked bread.

Blackberries
Again, blackberries can be easily grown in the cool mountains, and there's plenty of fresh blackberry juice available. There's also homemade blackberry wine that you can buy everywhere.

Pizza
The pizza is good in Mérida for some reason. It is different from American pizza since it has kept the italian tradition of making pizza. Just beware that if you like mushroom pizza it will taste different because in Venezuela, Pizza has canned mushrooms instead of fresh mushrooms.

Andean Chicha
Traditional Venezuelan chicha is a thick rice-based drink, but in Mérida it is corn-based, and with fermented pineapples and ground clovers. It tastes totally different from traditional chicha and the linking varies from person to person. I actually liked it, but I prefer the traditional chicha.

Gas Prices

2006-08-02T23:57:00.000-04:00

While I was in Mérida, my friend Vladimir drove me around in a 1996 Jeep Cherokee. You'd think that people would drive smaller cars with gas/petrol prices these days, but not in Venezuela because here's a full tank for that SUV:

42.27 liters for Bs. (Bolivares) 4,100.
USD $1 is approx Bs. 2,150.
1 US gallon = 3.7854118 liters.

In Venezuela, gasoline costs approximately $0.17 per gallon! And I'm talking about ultra-premium, 95 octane, unleaded fuel.

Gasoline is subsidized in Venezuela, and they don't plan to change it because there's way too many politics involved. People drive everywhere, though, so they have to fill up the tank more often, sometimes twice a week. Once in a while, when we don't have anything to do and because most unmarried people live at their parents' homes, we go around driving to have a conversation and "hang out", just wasting the fuel away...

Historic Jají

2006-08-01T10:30:00.000-04:00

About an hour away from Mérida, up in the mountains you can find a very small village called Jají (ha-heeh). It is one of the landmarks that people visit every time they come Mérida.

To get there, I wouldn't recommend a car because the road is uphill and with a few dips along the way; it's better to travel on a SUV. Once you get to the town square, the road is only made of cobblestone, and the it's on a steep hill, so one side is higher than the other.

The town square of Jají is the main attraction. It looks quite colonial, and it's filled with shops where people can buy souvenirs and knick-knacks, a few places to eat, a few posadas (inns) nearby, and a huge church. Other than that, it has a beautiful view of the mountains, and that's about it. So, usually you drive up there, walk around for a while and take some photos, buy some things, eat some food, and then you drive back to Mérida.

The only thing about Jají now days is that it needs a little T.L.C. The streets were full of wrappers and cups; they serioulsy need to put trashcans in that place or have a cleaning staff. You can also find a lot of the souvenirs down at the market in Mérida but a lot cheaper. However, I did buy a cool hat in Jají that I didn't see anywhere else, even though the hat is not necessarily from the region but it was made in Venezuela nevertheless.

Feel free to check out the photos I took in Jají.

Mérida and its People

2006-07-31T01:23:00.000-04:00

I just visited Mérida for a whole week. From the Puerto La Cruz area it was a painful 18-hour bus trip, but it was definitely worth travelling there.

In southwestern Venezuela, right in the very end of the Andes, you can find this picturesque, town-like, city. It is surrounded by moutains, and the weather is quite breezy most of the time. Sometimes it feels like a cool spring day, and you might have to wear a sweatshirt.

The people of the southwestern Venezuela region are called Gochos by the rest of us, and they are quite friendly. They seem to be much more polite in stores, driving, etc. Their accent is also different. They speak Venezuelan slang but slower with a Bolivian-like accent and call everyone by Usted, a formal version of you that most people use towards the elderly. I´m guessing it must be the general Andean way of speaking.

Mérida is perhaps known as the moust touristic city in Venezuela, and it has a large population of tourists. There are a lot of Europeans there, and you can spot them everywhere. I met some from the Netherlands and Belgium, and I saw and heard some tall blonde people who were wrinkly and sunburned with light-colored eyes and spoke a germanic-like language (that wasn´t actually German) or Spanish with an accent. Venezuelans also come to visit, and you can differentiate them easily from the locals because they actually wear jackets, gloves, and hoodies, so they really stand out from the rest of the crowd. It does feel quite cool for the average Venezuelan who doesn´t live there, though; when I visited as a child I did wear all that stuff, and I thought it was the coldest weather, ever. Well, back in those days even Orlando, FL, seemed cold to me.

Currently, in Mérida, the government is building an electric trolley system called the Trolmérida that will run in the middle of major avenues, covering most of the city. It wasn´t the best time to go there because of, as I´m now calling it, the inefficient efficiency of Venezuela, they´ve torn down most of the avenues to build it all at once, and the traffic is painfully heavy at any point in the day. I bet in a couple of years, though, it will be awesome having that transportation system running with the avenues nice and clean again.

How to eat Fish

2006-07-28T11:32:00.000-04:00

Venezuela is very coastal, and it is big into seafood. A lot of the dishes have fish in it, and usually fish is eaten as a whole, though sometimes you eat fillets but it´s not as common. There´s also a lot of Mediterranean influence, so there´s a lot of octopus, squid, and shrimp-based dishes.

Here´s how you eat a whole fish:

Make sure the fish is right-side up. It doesn´t freak you out as much.
With your fork, pull out the top and bottom parts. It´ll reduce the chances of ending up with a spine in your mouth.
Pull up the skin away from you. You can eat the skin, but it has a lot of fat.
Apply some lime juice, if you want.
Pull the meat away from the spinal column of the fish. It´ll come out nicely.
Eat.
When all the meat is gone on one side, turn the fish around and repeat the process.
Eat the eyes if you like their taste and crunchiness.

Don´t worry, the guts and stuff have been taken out before it´s cooked, so you only get the good stuff. I prefer the fish to be grilled, though the one in the picture was actually fried. They´re both pretty tasty, though.

Mission: Identity

2006-07-20T17:28:00.000-04:00

President Hugo Chavez, a former paratrooper, has started a whole lot of programs called Missions to bring Venezuela up to speed, apparently. Some of them are to bring education and medicine to the poorest parts of Venezuela. In others, they hire people without jobs to clean the streets and other activities, including the processing of new ID cards.

In Venezuela, everyone gets a Cédula, which is an ID similar to the American Social Security Number. However, you carry your card around with you and present it at various places, similar to showing your Driver's License. Everyone gets their first Cédula when they're approximately ten years old. Because I'm twenty-three and I was in the United States when I turned twenty, it means that my ID card was expired for about three years. It's not like it matters because they still accept it, but I needed to get a new one "just in case".

Last Saturday, my mother receieves a call from her neighbor about a"operative" for Cédulas in Puerto La Cruz under an overpass, so we drive there to get my new card. It is raining, and when we get there there's a lot of water leaking from the top. The process seems to work under the Oriente clerk rules, where you're supposed to know how everything works already. The first thing I had to do was to register to vote. Next, it was to enter my information like 3 of 4 times to each person in the line. Finally, I get my picture taken, put my fingerprints all over the place and they print the cards and laminate them. They look quite cheap as they're just printed on paper and laminated.

It still took an hour, though. Once you get all your information filled out and your picture taken, you have to wait until a lot of people get their information in as well because they print the cards in batches. Because all of it is so chaotic, when I had to sign the papers with my information I noticed than anything but my name and ID number was completely incorrect. There is no room for corrections, though, so I just signed away because frankly I didn't care. It was still much much faster than going to the actual government building where you're supposed to get them, because you have to get there at around 6:00 AM and wait until noon. Then you have to wait like 1-6 months for you to get your card. I call the new way an inefficient efficiency.

As for my old ID card, they took it away! They just stapled it to the back of one of the papers I had to sign. I asked the man if I could run make a copy for him and keep my old card as a memento, but he said that I couldn't. I told him that a bunch of people had copies, but he said that it was because they allegedly lost their old ID cards.

Bullshit; that's what my sister said when she got her card so that they wouldn't take her old one away. How the hell was I supposed to know that I had to make a copy and make that excuse?

At the Bank

2006-07-18T20:58:00.000-04:00

I've never seen a more systematic and bureaucratic system than the banks in Venezuela. I've been to two banks, and they work quite different:

The Bank of Venezuela (Banco de Venezuela) reminds me of the American Department of Motor Vehicles (the DMV). The first thing you do when you walk in is pick up a ticket, sit, and wait. But it's not just a sequential number that everyone gets; depending on what kind of business you' re performing and whether or not you' re a client of the bank (checked through your ATM card), you get a number based on priority from an unnecessarily fancy ticket machine. So, when you look at the screen with the current number, it seems that it's just coming up with totally random numbers assigned to different counters. Nobody calls your number; you have to pay attention to the numbers because all you hear is a doorbell sound (and I bet they use a regular doorbell box for that.)

Banesco is a bit more traditional. They have a single long line wrapped around "red tape". Very classic. Mom says that it's one of the few that still works this way, though.

Once you get your turn, you try to perform your task as fast as possible. The clerk stamps the stub like 7 or 8 times, and then gives you or takes your cash depending on what you're doing. Once you' re done, get out of the way because the bank is so busy that they really don't have time for a "thank you"; they'll only tell you "Could you move for the next client, please?" and when you turn around there's the next person in line, right behind you.

At the ATM, you can't take too long either. You don't enter your pin fast enough and it will kick you out, and if you try too many times then it will take away your card, for security reasons. You can never withdraw more than approximately USD $125.

Finally, you never, ever, want to go to the bank on a Friday afternoon because it's when the working man, the blue collar man, gets paid and they get the afternoon off to go deposit or cash their checks. The bank closes at around 3:00 pm but they actually stop working when everyone inside the bank gets their turn. The reason why workers get the afternoons off is because one person used to withdraw the money from the bank and pay it in cash at the construction sites but it turns out that the one guy who did it always got robbed on the way back.

About Customer Service

2006-07-16T22:39:00.000-04:00

Customer service is... different. This is what "clerks" do here:

They´ll ask you questions that might not be mandatory.
For example, when I got out of the plane the clerk who stamped my passport asked "And what are you studying in the United States?" and I responded, but the way he asked sounded more out of curiosity than mandatory.

They want exact change.
No matter where you are, when you pay they´ll ask you if you have any change for them so that they can give you back a bigger bill, especially if it goes below 5,000 Bolivares (the Venezuelan currency). The closer you are to exact change, the less the chance that they´ll ask you the question.

They assume that you know how the system works.
The system for everything here is as complicated as possible, and clerks assume that you´re not fresh off the boat like me and know where to stand in line, pick up a ticket, and wait for the right time. Even if you have to do the process once every ten years, they still assume that you know what you´re doing.

It´s served in parts.
Twice I´ve been to a restaurant/food place where the waiter brings the food in parts, as it´s coming out of the kitchen, even if the rest of the food for your table is not done and might take some time to be ready. Shouldn´t they wait to serve it all at once?

In the Oriente (eastern side of Venezuela) they are notorious for being more rude than the rest of the country. Here are some of their additional rules:

They own the place.
A lot of clerks here think that they own the business where they work. They act like they know how stuff works and can treat you like shit accordingly. Sometimes they might make you some kind of offer or say that they don´t offer a certain service even if you´ve been there before and receieved such service.

No change for you!
The "want exact change" rule applies, but if you say that you don´t have any change they might not give you change back and keep it! My sister told me a story about a time she went to pay the electric bill and she didn´t have any change for the clerk in the counter, and she ended up in a heated discussion followed by him throwing the change back at her.

You´re inconvenient.
If clerks are talking on the phone, and it´s your turn, they´ll make you a signal to wait for them to stop talking. Their conversation is not with a client; they´re actually talking to their friend about the night before or what they´re doing later, and you have to stand there and learn about their private life. Oh, and they´ll give you a look that means "Shit, a customer. What do you want?"

It varies from person to person.
All clerks are different, and so sometimes you have better luck with one than the other. So, if you can´t get something done, then you can try again with another clerk and it will most likely work out.

Basically, in Venezuela, the customer is never right.

Guanta, Puerto La Cruz, Barcelona, and Lechería

2006-07-15T08:56:00.000-04:00

My family lives in the eastern part of Venezuela, in the region they call Oriente (the east). Somewhere along the coast of Anzoátegui state there are three cities that are part of a metro area with approximately half a million people:

Guanta is a major seaport. A lot of big ships sail there from all over the world, and there is a huge cement factory nearby.

Puerto La Cruz is a well known city because it grew from a major oil refinery and businesses developed by southern European and northern Middle East immigrants. It houses severall tall (~12 story) buildings, and plenty of people work there. It also has a ferry port that sails to Margarita island, a popular vacation spot in Venezuela. However, it is not the safest place to live, and the tourist population has decreased in recent years because of crime and lack of attention towards tourism.

Barcelona is the captial of Anzoátegui, and it has a lot of the industrial-type jobs. It's home to the Jose Antonio Anzoátegui airport, and it's a pretty old city so you can find some colonial houses and buildings in the downtown area.

Lechería is a small district/city between Barcelona and Puerto La Cruz and it has the nicest buildings and houses. A lot of the richer people in Venezuela own vacation condos there and come to stay in the weekends or on vacation. It also has several five-star hotels, malls, etc., so it's definitely a vacation spot. A lot of people (like my family) live there because it is safer than the other cities and it is at a convenient spot between the two major cities. There are also plenty of yuppies who live in Lechería, and real state is quite expensive. I've heard of houses that might cost up to a million Dollars.

The weather is hot and humid. It has been raining every afternoon these days since it´s rainy season, so it doesn´t feel as bad. Most houses and buildings have central air conditioning that is set to be way too cold, so it´s interesting to walk out from freezing your ass off to sweating like pig.

At the Airport

2006-07-13T16:19:00.000-04:00

The Simon Bolivar International Airport is the main airport in Venezuela. Most of the international flights land there, and I´m not even sure if there are any other airports with international flights in the country. Although it is commonly called the Caracas airport outside of the United States, the airport is actually located in Maiquetia, which is north of Caracas right by the coast, so in Venezuela they call it the Maiquetia airport.

Airports in Venezuela are smaller aiports where they do have some places to eat and some shops, but there is usually no place to sit nor sleep outside the security point. The Maiquetia airport has two terminals, one for international flights and one for domestic flights, so in case that you´re coming from the outside and need to travel somewhere in Venezuela, you have to check out your bags, walk outside the airport and walk a few feet to the domestic terminal. I´ve asked why it was designed this way, but nobody seems to know.

Every time I go to Maiquetia, it looks different. One year, during the infamous day of the Venezuela mudslides, I had to sleep in the airport, and it was at its worst condition. As the whole mudslide devastation happened right by the airport, the bottom floor was flooding and we had to stay upstairs, and because there are no hotels in the airport itself and nobody could leave nor come to the aiport because the roads were blocked, I had to sleep on top of our luggage as we carried soft suitcases. The roof was leaking as well.

This time, the international terminal has been completely remodeled and I had absolutely no problems. It seems that they´re trying to make a good impression and with the help of the guys at Samsung they´re very high tech, too (there are plenty of Samsung ads all over the place, similar to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport). The whole arrival and customs process took at most fifteen minutes, whereas before it would take up to an hour.

The domestic terminal still looks the same, though. My airplane to Barcelona, Venezuela, needed some maintenace so the ticket lady had to yell out what was going on instead of using an intercom.

Everyone in Venezuela wants to be served first. Before boarding time, half of the people were already in line, and after the lady told us that maintenance would take twenty minutes and she would call by certain row numbers, some of us sat down but others just stayed there waiting. When it was finally time to board the plane, those who waited standing up had to wait even longer and let those who were in the rows that the lady called go through. When the airplane finally arrived to Barcelona, right after the stewardess talked about waiting to take the seatbelts off until the plane stopped, people started taking them off anyway and were almost getting up.

With the waiting and all, at least the flight from Caracas to Barcelona only lasted 30 minutes. The plane never really goes straight; it just takes off and ascends and right after it´s already descending and ready for landing. Interestingly enough, I sat next to Americans all the way from Northwest Arkansas to Barcelona, so I spoke more English than Spanish during the whole trip.

Prologue: Edi and the Chocolate City

2006-07-07T15:41:00.000-04:00

Before leaving to Venezuela, I had to renew my passport. In Venezuela, it is typical that they do not have any "material" (the booklets?) for passports, ever, and it gets more complicated than that specially when time is limited. So I had to drive ~1300 miles (there and back again) to New Orleans to sign and put my fingerprints on paper at the nearest Venezuelan Consulate, basically.

New Orleans. Everyone is wondering what it is like after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. If you're a tourist visiting The Big Easy like me, then you won't notice much damage. Downtown New Orleans looks cleaned up and nice. It's hard to tell what was damaged from Katrina and what was already damaged unless you've lived there or been there enough times to notice. Bourbon street looks more damaged than the others, but I'm just guessing it's because it's such a whored out street that it just looks and smells worse than any other street in the French Quarter. Some people are cashing in on the disaster with tours to see the Katrina damage, however. The only actual damage that I saw was in some hotels in the outskirts of New Orleans that basically had walls swept away by the storm. The Superdome looked pretty awful from the interstate, too.

The real damage really happened on residential areas, where people like me wouldn't have a reason to drive there. I spoke to a Venezuelan from Maracaibo who's been living in the New Orleans area for more than twenty years, and he told me that he only lost a few feet of fence and his refrigerator (because they did lose electricity for a bit). However, some of his friends lost pretty much everything, and some turned in their house keys at the bank and left. He worked in construction and was telling me about how construction had become more expensive since then; nobody gets paid a minimum wage anymore, since the demand for construction is high and everyone wants to get paid much more.

That is the real permanent damage to Louisiana and surrounding areas. The phyisical damage could be temporary, but it's going to cost a lot of time and money to fix it all, and it's going to be financially tough on the people living there. It doesn't help that a lot of the donations were complete scams. What a mess.

Feel free to check out my photo album of New Orleans.

Introduction

2006-07-02T14:43:00.000-04:00

The school shark empanada is my favorite kind of empanada. In Venezuela, we actually call it "Empanada de Cazon", and the word cazon has many translations: Baby Shark, Dogfish, School Shark. Whatever translation you prefer, it doesn't matter; what matters is that you should try an empanada de cazon if you ever go to Venezuela because they are quite delicious. Although empanadas are quite greasy and usually salty for the English-speaking taste, they are commonly eaten for breakfast. In the mornings, one can drive around and find an empanada cart, which are actually rare to find in the afternoons or evenings.

On July 10, I'll be flying to visit my home, Venezuela, for about a month. I haven't really lived there since 1997, but I've visited quite a few times. This time, though, I will have enough time to look at how much things have changed in the past 9 years, or how much I've forgotten about the place. My hope is to travel around other areas outside of my hometown, Puerto la Cruz, that I've visited years ago when I was just a kid. The next entries will not chronicle my every day activities in Venezuela, but they will describe places, people, events, and the culture of Venezuela as it is now. I hope that this information is of interest to everyone who reads it, not just the ones who've been to Venezuela or who are from Venezuela.