Caracas surprised me so much... The city is beautiful, surrounded by hills, it is clean and people in the streets wear nice and clean clothes (such a change after spending three months in Brazil...). It doesn't seem to be dangerous at all (although I am sure it is), you can use your camera and not get anxious that you are going to be killed for doing this. So far Recife in Brazil was the most dangerous city I have seen. In Recife people don't go out after 9 pm unless they have a car (for this reason I hardly did any dancing in the city) as there is no police, the level of crime is unbelievably high and you can see scared people in the streets, people scared of other people....
I have done some visiting today, I went to Centro Storico and the house of Simon Bolivar.
What I found out about Venezuela so far? As my friends know I like counting money very much :) so I did few calculations. In Venezuela there is an official money exchange market and black market. To exchange money on the black market you have to know somebody, otherwise you may get into trouble for buying fake money for example. My hosts helped me to exchange money on the black market, the rate is much better than on the official market.
So....
it costs 8 pence to take a tube (yes, 8 English pence!!), no matter what distance you travel
it costs 30 pence to take a bus (more than tube, incredible...)
petrol costs 15 pence a litre
1 litre of bottled water costs 1 pound 20 pence (!!)
These are the official market rates..... Venezuela is much cheaper than Brazil.
Other discoveries:
Venezuelan men are jaw dropping :))
there is a lot of control in the country, if people want to travel abroad they have a limit of 250 dollars which they can take out from bank per month. They have to ask permission to leave the country a month before they travel and when they come back to Venezuela they have to prove how much they spent abroad, what did they spent it on and where... oh my god!!...
Venezuelan people do not do much sport, they prefer to watch competitions on TV or talk about sports
Venezuelan coffee is veeery good, much better than Brazilian