Wake up, its 1:45 AM. You just fell asleep 15 minutes ago? Too bad!
Shower, pack the car, drive to Nyack. Transfer bags to the car service and a couple hours later @ JFK.
Check in went smoothly enough and they didn’t charge us for the overweight bags. On the contrary they actually put the “first class priority” tags on our bags. I think that was because we did online check in which saved them tons of time. I don’t think anyone else on our flight did. Normal line was immense.
Flights were uneventful. First flight was 100% full with a lot of “once in a lifetime” fliers.
Panama City airport is a peculiar place. It is more like a mall than an airport jam packed with Jewelry, Booze, Cigarettes, Electronics and Perfume Duty Free. Lots of people buying… and then a lot of people unsure of what to do with that brand new 50″ LCD on their next flight…
Second flight was 99% full. The one empty seat? Right next to us. 2 hour flight again with a meal and drink service, I got maybe 10 minutes of sleep.
Mark sleeping Panama to CCS
As we land in Caracas, Lethy busts out crying. Woman next to us is confused but then realizes they are tears of joy. Lethy is of course quite embarrassed and I’m strictly forbidden from taking pictures.
Immigration goes smoothly enough. They try to convince us that Yellow Fever vaccinations are required but let us go when we show a photocopy of my immunizations chart (which doesn’t include Yellow Fever). It’s not required. I think they were trying to levy a fine/bribe.
We come out to customs and from there Lethy can already see her parents through the several glass walls. She waves and tries to gesture that we need to wait on our bags. Her gesturing to bags and such draws looks from Customs officers. Our bags come out quickly, we drag them over to Customs where they go through an X-Ray and drug sniffing machine. We pass, we pay no taxes… and we are off to the “bullpen of arrivals” (my name for it). Past lots of guards with machine guns and through several large glass doors we make our way to La Familia.
I will begin with an explanation of names.
Suegra or Leticia will be used for Lethy’s mom.
Lethy or Leticia Maria will be used for Lethy.
Ricardo or Suegro will be used for Lethy’s dad.
Ricardito is Lethy’s brother.
Ricardisimo or Nene is Ricardito’s 2 yr old boy.
I would have shot video and lots of pictures of the approach, the running, the hugging and the tears… but honestly I did not feel like my bags would be there a moment later if I let go of them. Ricardito shot some video and took pictures. I will ask him for them and insert later!
Introductions (which were unneeded considering we’d video chatted before) went quickly and there was a strong sense of surreality. Wow. That’s a word, it passes spell-check. Scrabble championship here I come.
This whole arrivals area is milling with people in uniforms of various kinds. Army, police, security, airport staff, various taxi, hotel, etc. And they are all eyeballing us and anyone else with luggage. Some people simply had clothes balled up and plastic wrapped together as their “luggage”. They drew no attention. One large Muslim family complete with women in head dresses and men in suits with slicked back hair and lots of flashy jewelry drew a large, unruly crowd of people looking to “help”.
A few minutes later we are off to find Budget car rental. Downstairs in the car rental, Cambio (money changing) and Taxi stand area things are much the same. Budget is at the far end of the concourse. They speak no english. Reservations don’t seem to mean much.
I am asked for my passport, credit card, driver’s license and…. fingerprints to be run through Interpol. I doubt they actually ran them, it seemed like more of a scare/hassle you tactic.
They want contact information for 2 places in Venezuela and 2 in the US. The security deposit is $2000.
The rental price is jacked up with “taxes”.
There is no car pickup. 2 guys run off once the paperwork is done and bring the car from who knows where to the taxi stand. Suegro y Ricardito go to get Ricardito’s car. This takes a long time. In the meantime we stand at the Taxi area with everything locked in the car. Lots of eyeballing and uneasiness. Finally Ricardito arrives. Astrid and Nene will ride with Ricardito. Suegro y Suegra with me and Lethy. No one knows exactly where we are going despite the map.
The drive from the airport to here is terribly difficult to describe.
There are 2 types of vehicles on the road. 90% are rusted out, beat up, multiple wrong color / shape / size quarter panels, people standing shoulder to shoulder packed in the back of pickups, straight out of Mad Max. The other 10% are brand new BMW / Lexus / Mercedes SUV’s with ram guards, roof lights, completely blacked out windows, etc.
The roads: There are lines painted on the road. There are wide shoulders with very deep, open gutters that quickly narrow down to nothing. There are potholes EVERYWHERE. I saw 1 speed limit sign in roughly 50km. Signage for exits is … well there is a sign right AT the exit, but nothing beforehand. Every half kilometer or less there is a break down or a pulled over car (with several armed guys on motorcycles in green uni’s) or a huge pile of rotting refuse and rubble. The burned out huts with gangs of men hanging around described on websites are exactly as said. Street vendors line the gutter and wander the lanes where traffic is “slower”.
The drivers: While I assume there are traffic rules in Venezuela, no one seems to care. If there is room for 4 cars wide, people drive 4 cars wide, 2 lanes of lines be damned. Constant honking, no signaling. Passing on the right (using the shoulder) is a constant occurrence. The only rule seems to be go if you think the other guy will flinch first.
My experience: As we pull away from the curb, we go over right, left, straight, faster, slower translations. Suegro explains Ricardito’s car can not handle hills and will top out at 40km/h uphill and 60 on straightaways. He will follow us and I will need to wait up for him… no one knows exactly how to get where we are going. Just the district and street.
So, within 30 minutes of meeting my inlaws, I’m on the road, in a foreign land, with no observed traffic rules, Suegro is so excited to talk to me (in Spanish), we don’t know where we are going, and I am trying to keep Ricardito within sight. People are passing me on left and right at 100km/h or more. Cars are overheating and stopping in the middle of traffic. It was… an experience.
The exit for the district of the hotel was… “unofficially closed”. There was a police checkpoint of sorts and so we did not go there. We exited in the next district and made our way back along local roads. Local roads actually follow more rules, mostly because of lights (which are observed, but you damn well better floor it on the green or there will be honking) and heavy pedestrian / bicycle traffic. We filled up the tank (6 gallons, roughly 75 cents!!!!) when we were really lost and had lost Ricardito at the previous light.
Finally, we find the street the hotel is on and we guess it is West of us. We guessed right and it was just a couple of blocks further.
Embassy Suites – Caracas: As soon as we pulled off the road into the roundabout we stepped into another, more familiar world again. The hotel lobby is great: Waterfalls, live music, and plenty of mahogany, marble and chrome. While smaller, it has that same open core feel as the ES on Maui. Glass elevators rise up 15 stories. Lethy’s family is in culture shock. Check in goes smoothly. Lethy totally stiffs the bellhop – she gives him 50 cents – enough to fill his moped, but still… she runs after him and gives a real tip after a good laugh Suegro and I share. The rooms are very nicely done. You could just as easily be in NYC or LA. The only difference is open air bathrooms. And seemingly no hot water for showers?
Anyhow… we walk the surrounding area looking for some dinner. All the buildings within a block or two are banks. HSBC, Citi, CaribBank, Chase, etc, etc. The area seems very safe. But all the restaurants were closed on Saturdays. They are only open for lunch on the weekends. Very odd. We settled on dinner at the lounge in the hotel which was overpriced and nothing spectacular. There is a nice restaurant in the hotel, but it was similarly closed. It’s not clear if its a permanent thing or a weekends thing as well. We were supposed to go to the birthday party of an uncle after dinner, but it was already 9:30 and everyone was quite tired.
It was a long but good day and there was a lot of culture shock all around.