Yesterday I met Luis, Lilly and Stefan from Couch Surfing and we visited some places in Maracaibo (in the picture). After that we spent an hour in Susan's flat. Susan is Irish and she works as a chemistry teacher. She will be leaving Venezuela in a month time to work in China. She told me that the country has changed a lot (for worse) since she came here two years ago. It was twice cheaper and there were no electricity cuts. Regarding the blackouts, it is really annoying sometimes... You want to check emails... you can't - no power. You need to wash your clothes... you can't. You want to put air conditioning on... you can't. You have to take out money from a cash machine... you can't... All you do every day has to adopt to the electricity cut off times.
Usually a blackout lasts for two hours; it used to be four hours a day but people from Maracaibo protested to the government. It is very hot here, much hotter than in other parts of the country because it is a basin, and they desperately needed air conditioning.