In Merida

Yesterday Hernan was going to give me a lift to the bus station, unfortunately he got stuck in the traffic when he was coming back from his mother's house, as it was raining a lot. He phoned and advised me to get the tube. It was only one hour to the bus departure so I got stressed. I quickly put my rucksack on my back, grabbed two other bags, took off my flip flops and run outside into the heavy rain. I was running for about 15 minutes until I got to the tube station. I was soaked to the bone and sweating all over my body. I got off at the Los Dos Caminos tube station near the bus station and I asked for directions. A man told me to take a bus as it was too dangerous to walk, however I just shouted "gracias" and I run. There were some bus stops on the way and as the word "dangerous" was ringing in my head, I adopted this tactic: I run to the first bus stop, hide behind it, looked around, waited 20 seconds and I run again to the second bus stop, waited 20 seconds, checked if everything around was ok, run to the next bus stop...... until I safely arrived in the bus station.
On the bus I met two Venezuelan girls (one was sitting next to me) and we had a long chat in Spanish. In the first ten minutes I got very upset how crap my Spanish was but then.... suddenly... magically... Spanish words started coming to my head and I started to understand what the girl was saying... So a year of learnig the language hasn't been wasted :)
After a few hours it got really cold on the bus, people were shaking and coughing, including the girls and of course - myself. At one point I could not take it any more, my patience finished. I went downstairs to the drivers' cabin (it was a double decker coach) and I told the drivers that I had a special medical condition and alergy to cold (ha ha ha...) and if they don't switch off the air conditioning, they will have to take me to a hospital. They told me that it was impossible to regulate or switch off the AC but they invited me to their cabin to sleep on the seat next to the driver. It was much warmer in the cabin however they put on very loud music, but at the end I prefered laud music than freezing cold... I thought about asking them to turn down the music but then I changed my mind as probably the music helped them not to fell asleep behind the wheel.

Distance: Caracas - Merida 680 km, 13 hours by bus, cost: 18 pounds.
My Couch Surfing host Cesar picked me up from the station, took me home, made coffee and arepas (traditional Venezuelan food), showed me around the town and told me a lot of stories about Venezuela and its people. Sometimes I can't believe how much I am learning during my trip and it is not like reading boring books, it is sooo interesting because I know the people and I am in the country I hear about. I just wish I could remember all the information in the future as I am not able to write it all down in the blog.

We talked about politics of course as Cesar is an anti-government activist at the University and he was shot twice during confrontations with the police. He showed me places on his head where doctors had to take out the bullets... He still has some bullets in his leg. In the picture: one of the demonstrations his University (ULA) organised in Merida.
We also talked about the shortage of electricity in Venezuela (and cut off in all parts of the country apart from Caracas as the president lives there, many schools and hospitals are based in the capital, and it is visited by many foreigners). For example Merida: the University doesn't have electricity from midday until 2 pm every day (consequently - no access to internet). The rest of the city doesn't have electricity from 2 pm until 4 pm or from 4 pm until 6 pm, et cetera. It was extremely noisy when we were walking in the streets today as people used big generators to light up their shops or houses, as a result of a cut off.
There are two big hydroelectric plants in Venezuela (in Caruachi and Guri) but the level of water is very low in them and this is the reason for the electricity shortage.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5071