I've decided to move onto Ciudad Bolivar
tomorrow, a city half way to my volunteering destination of Santa
Elena. It only took me two attempts to buy the tickets (apparently
you need a passport to travel by coach in Venezuela) after which I
decided to check out the modern art museum. Having navigated a very
busy shopping precinct to get to the museum I went in and found it to
be completely devoid of any people other than the receptionist. It
was blessedly cool inside and was nice to get away from the hustle
and bustle of central Caracas for a while. Really liked a lot of the
art – have put up some of my favourites.
More of my conversation from Hans came back to
me, in particular the fact that Venezuelans are really capitalists at
heart and shopping really does seem to be the pastime of choice. The
main shopping street which I later walked down was testament to this
but what really drew my attention was all the people on the pavements
trying to sell random crap (eg the photo with numerous phone
chargers, keyboards, fax machines). Unemployment is high in the
overpopulated Caracas so people really try and make money anyway they
can. Another example is people taking to the main roads during
traffic jams and selling snacks to the stopped cars. While this isn't
dissimilar to people I've seen in the UK coming out to sell umbrellas
when its raining, in Caracas it really seems the norm rather than the
exception to do this kind of thing.
Photo upload doesn't seem to be working - I'll try and whack some up soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment