Monday December 2, 2002
Cruising Caracas on the Night of the Strike

Today we knew, was the day that the Venezuelans had planned to strike in protest of their current leader, Chavez. Or rather, what they really want us to have an election to find a new leader (they've already successfully thrown Chavez out once, but didn't have anyone to replace him, so they had to get him back). We had heard that we would be safe in smaller, mountain towns, but if Caracas was dangerous on an average day- DEFINITELY don't go today. Fair enough. We had planned to drive to a town along the way and look for a hotel or posada then. I won't bore you with more tedious details- we ended up in Caracas, a block and a half from the square that was the center of the demonstration.

There was another American there, and he said a store around the corner would be open for another half an hour. Curt and Steve went to get some sandwich fixings so we could have something for dinner, and we met in our room so we could see the streets and watch the news. It was quite exciting really. And in reality, it seemed fine. People were driving around honking, and on TV, we could see what was going on at Alta Mira Square where we were. They were making speeches and things, but there was no violence.

We had no idea what to expect the next day- if the strike would continue, and if so- how far reaching it would be. Was the ferry running? What about the airlines? Somewhere along the line, we had opted to just get back to Margarita the most quick route- by plane, if we could. We figured the good news about being in Caracas during a strike was that there would be no traffic. Wrong! What a mess. It took forever. And now that the big part of our adventure was over, we just wanted to get home.

Once back aboard, I was totally charged up about our adventure. I thought when we went cruising, this would have been what our life would be like. It felt like we had spent a week living inside the pages of National Graphic. I've always liked to travel, but now I felt as if I'd seriously caught the bug! I guess I hadn't been traveling to very adventurous places.

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