Day 2. It´s a bird, it´s an airplane... no, it´s Hugo Chavez!

It was the first time I flew in a 2-storey airplane boarding almost 500 passangers. Was it huge! The downside to this was that we had to wait for all the losers from the delayed connecting flights. Boarding beginning 1-hour later than planned and 2-hour wait inside the airplane... fantastic start to our journey.

The flight itself was painless but hardly enjoyable as the stewardesses were angry with all the passangers from the start, especially those annoying passangers who dared to ask for a drink between the meals. How could they! I know I said it about almost every airline company I flew with, but I´ll never fly with AirFrance again :)

When in Caracas we were hit by an incredible wave of hotness. Took us 2 hours to get done with the government formalities and we were ready to go.

Went to the tourist information to ask about how to get to the city center, how to tell the legal taxis from illegal ones and where to change money. The black market dollar rate is 50% higher than officially so we took our chances and changed cash with some guy in the rent-a-car Hertz booth in the airport. Actually almost everybody in the airport is a currency exchange services proivider so didn´t have to look for the opportunity at all :)

From the airport we took what was supposed to be a "collectivo", or a shared taxi but turned out to be a personalized city tour of Caracas. The taxi driver was more than friendly and drove us through all the City highlights like Simon Bolivar monuments, corrida place (didn´t know they have corridas in Venezuela), Hugo Chavez mansion and many many more.

When asked about the popularity of Hugo Chavez in the country he referred to him as "no popular pero... regular" :) And just to go on with this politics plot, you can see Hugo Chavez smiling from billboards all over Venezuela and Caracas. "Hugo Chavez gave us the subway", "Hugo Chavez provides us with cheap petrol" and likes but my personal favourite was the billboard on the subway, where Hugo Chavez would inform a guy who was travelling on the public transportation with a tv-size box that he was taking up precious public space thus behaving unsocially :) This is probably we never hear of Venezuelian superheroes - there is simply nothing to do for them in Venezuela as Hugo Chavez does all of the job! :)

Caracas is by far the most beatifully located major city I have ever seen (haven´t been to La Paz yet though). It is surrounded by massively high rocky mountains covered by a layer of clouds. The surrounding mountains are really high, up to 5000m above the sea level, and remember this is only a 15-minute ride off the ocean shore! Impressive. 

Spent a night in a basic backpackers hotel, right off the Venezuela Plaza subway station.