Another long travel day, but not long enough to warrant an over night trip. We needed to set off early in order to get to dodgy Caracas before nightfall. It is definately the most dangerous place on the trip and not being successful in booking anywhere to stay didn't help. However we have been there before and are avoiding the center in favour of the safer beach which also happens to be the closest place to the airport.

We didn't get off early, we really wanted a breakfast for a change and something healthy would be a good idea especially after the crap we have eaten the last couple of days. The pasada had a fruit and yogurt breakfast that started at 8am. This turned out to be closer to 9am and the fruit turned out to be 90% melon. Liz doesn't care for water melon so I got her share of an already hugh helping. This was served with pure liquidised water melon just in case you couldn't be bothered to chew the vast amounts of water melon already on your plate.

Walking down the road looking for a taxi to the terminal we had a bit of police action (for a change). A pickup truck full of them pulled up alongside a couple of guys walking down the road. They quickly jumped out pointing their guns in their faces before frisking them.

The security for getting onto the bus had been increased, in addition to metal detector search and ID checks they went round everyone on the bus with a camera getting mug shots. The bus was cramped, and even more cramped when the guy in front reclined their seat to the point where the head rest was almost under my chin. I reclined mine so that I could type this blog.

On all these journeys you have to keep everything very close, between your legs is the best place despite risking DVT. What these buses lack in comfort they make up in sound system - the worse the bus the louder the music. This bus, which is average has two 12 inch woofers and separate mid range drivers and tweeters. The blog picture was chosen as it shows this (just) but also shows the flood through the window (just again). If you cannot be bothered to look I tried to show the road with large expanses of water either side.

Lots of water normally means landslides if there was any land steep enough to slide. Another delay for 30 minutes proved that you don't need much of a slope, to date the fifth or sixth landslide holdup.

I have caught up with the bloggs again, currently just outside Valencia where a few weeks back we made a decision to go south rather than north to Colombia round lake Maracaibo. Liz is currently fuming as a little kid behind us is kicking the back of her seat. We already moved seats twice as both of us had kids poking us from behind. Travel days are always hard enough but on a local bus it is torture.

Getting into Valencia the aim was to get the executive coach as it would go to the safer terminal west of the city. However waiting around would mean getting to Caracas later which also is not a good idea. We took the cheaper bus which happened to take us there anyway.

I hate getting taxis from these places but we had no choice. The long ramp down to the taxis was lined with people wanting to know if we wanted a taxi. You wave these away but all they do then is follow you eventually ending up in a mini scrum round a taxi. The least pushy ones that are sitting in the taxis are the lowest risk ones. We went up and tried to fix a price, but the scrum almost went into a frenzy when they knew there was some money to be had. They tried to nick us from the taxi driver I chosen to negociate with. I kind of trusted the driver and wanting to get away from the mob, I just threw the bags into the taxi without first fixing the price (the situation was corrected from the less than advantageous passenger seat).

Santiago was an apt name for the hotel we checked into as this is where we are going day after tomorrow. It has a pool and nice sheets plus a restaurant with napkins. We didn't waste much time in getting a table. Napkins, warm bread and even butter came out - it was so nice having butter. However we had to get them to make some vegy spagetti. It tasted good to start with but got more mediocre the more you ate. We were on a bit of a high again having the travel days behind us and being in one piece - we ordered a bottle of red wine to celebrate.