Early start this morning getting everyone packed up and downstairs for breakfast.
After breakfast we check out and pile into our 2 cars. I follow Ricardito but he doesn’t know Caracas and we are quickly lost.
A typical Caracas bario built into the hill
Ricardo switches cars to join him. 2 hours later we’re on the highway. Machismo > maps. Downtown traffic is also extremely bad.
Caracas
The drive out of Caracas offered some great views. The mountains are lush greens and then there is the havoc of the city below. The clouds drift through these small peaks. It’s quite a climb to get through the passes there.
Green hills surrounding Caracas and Ricardito's minivan (white, behind pickup).
Once through the pass though, the landscape flattens out except for the occasional stretch of mountains inland from the sea. The highway is better maintained than the streets of Caracas, but they are still “como la luna” – pocked with potholes and large stretches of ground down asphalt waiting to be repaved. The 160km journey took about 3 hours from the outskirts of Caracas (not including the 2 hours of traffic sitting and circle driving).
After arriving in Valencia we went to market and then settled in for an evening with just Suegro + Suegra, Ricardito, Astrid, Nene, Lethy and I.