A QUE LUIS

One afternoon in Maracaibo May 2008.
Cheers

Bats

One of the things I sometimes thought wile in Europe was about the different animals I saw in Venezuela, Iguanas, frogs, snakes, bats etc. Today, the air condition unit broke so we had to take it out of the shaft and take it for repair. Since you don't take an air conditioner out to often, I decided to clean the basin where the condense water collects. On the basin I found about 3 centimeters of bat droppings. Do any of you have an Idea how bad this smells? Wile cleaning it I found a bat skeleton (picture).

I just thought I share this with you.

Till next time

Departure from Frankfurt to Caracas and the first confrontation with Venezuelan reality.

17MAY2008

After spending 15 days in Germany with my family it was time to leave the continent. I will not get into details about saying goodbye to family and friends as I imagine we all know how hard it is.

One of the things I keep thinking before checking in at the airport was not the 60KG of luggage I had with me in comparison with the 20KG I was allowed, but the fact that my life fits in 4 pieces of luggage and is 60KG`s . By the way, I was traveling on a airline staff ticket and I was hopping that the extra weight will be accepted and it was accepted no problem as the flight was not full. I kept thinking 60KG`s, only 60KG`s of life in this 20 some years in Switzerland.

After a beer at the departure hall I came to the conclusion that my digitalized pictures of family and friends, health, support, passport, flight ticket, laptop and my mp3`s are enough to start a new chapter. The rest is just extra weight but I am happy to have this extra weight with me.

9 hours and 50 minutes later and a hard landing in Maiquetia, it was time for me and the rest of the 150 or so passengers to stretch out our legs.

Please use the next lines as a kind of lonely planet travel info.

I arrived at 15:30 and proceeded to pick up my luggage. At Caracas airport you have to pick up you luggage from the carousel and take it with a luggage cart to a huge x-ray machine. This procedure was implemented by the government to check if what you declared in the declaration form matches what you are bringing into the country and if it does not match the you pay for it. Simple or? This system also serves to check if you are bringing any drugs into the country and as you know and as CNN and Fox news tells us that Chavez is the only one allowed to deal with drugs in the world.

After the procedure I pick up my luggage and put it back again on the cart and proceeded to walk to the national airport located about 200 or 300 meters away. Please also note that this luggage carts are not designed to transport 4 pieces of luggage but I managed. At the moment you enter the national airport there is someone that stops you from entering and takes your precious luggage cart away. Oh f....k, what to do now?. Well, dont panic, there are friendly persons waiting a few meters away from the luggage cart stop point that will happily help you for a horrendous amount of money.

One of the things I hate is people trying to take advantage of someones situation so I decided to transport my life on me. I thought again about this 60Kg`s and the thought's where not nice.

Walking around, I found the arrival and departure information board. I saw a flight that was supposed to depart at 17:30 so I proceeded to the airline ticket counter which I passed 100 meters ago. After dropping my bags on the floor and cleaning the sweat from my face, I asked the lady at the counter about the flight to Maracaibo at 17:30. With big eyes she asked me what flight to Maracaibo at 17:30?. I pointed at the Information board and said the one on the board!. Her answer was, the information on that board was from yesterday and that the next flight to Maracaibo was tomorrow. I took my bags and started walking again.

At the end of the national airport I found Acerca Airlines. The only flight to Maracaibo was at 20:40 and according to the supervisor the flight was already full. I asked him to please put me on the waiting list and proceeded to buy a ticket but to my surprise they wont sell any ticket's unless you have a confirmed seat by the supervisor.

Looking over my shoulder I saw some person's siting on their luggages against a wall. As I had over 3 hours to wait I made myself comfortable with the rest of the standby passengers. Looking around I saw a poster saying, DONT PAY MORE FOR YOUR FLIGHT FARE. CALL 0414 ######. At this time the poster did not make sense to me.

I got to know this military person that needed to be at the Maracaibo base on Sunday at 09:00 and if he was not on board this flight he would be in big trouble. Suddenly a man appeared offering seats for the Maracaibo flight and charging 100 USD for his service. The military man accepted his offer and after a few minutes he had a ticket and proceeded to check in. The ticket man approached me and I rejected his offer. I was mad because again someone was taking advantage of others.

Just before eight and after spending so many hours awake, I decided to pay to get on the flight but just before closing the deal a man with a red baseball cap ( or was it green?) approached us and started confronting the ticket man saying tings like, do you know that what you are doing is illegal? The ticket man say yes I know. Do you know that you can go to prison for this?. The ticket man say yes I know. I have a video of you and will give it to the authorities. The ticket man left the area.

Apparently the ticket man is a fried of the employees of Acerca Airlines. The employees tell you that the flight is full hoping that you will pay the 100 USD to the ticket man and then split the money. I understand the poster now.

The man with the red/green cap is a public service personnel and since I am on the video he took, he asked me to talk to the authorities about this case and I gladdy will do it. The cap man is another prove that this country is changing for the good and although its a lot of work and time consuming I am glad to be a small part of it to fix one of the many problems the Venezuelan USA made society has.

For your information, the flight from Acerca R7 739/17MAY2008 departed Caracas with over 10 seat empty.

Cheers to all and hope to write to you soon.