How Chavez is Destroying Venezuela

In the last 11 years as President, Hugo Chavez has thrown Venezuela down a socialist path littered with totalitarian paranoia. Socialism is not the root of his evil, and indeed, it has proven to be the most popular current politcal stance in South America. The problem with Chavez is that he's got such a big anti/capitalist chip on his shoulder that he's steering Venezuela into destruction. Venezuela is faced with food shortages, malnutrtion, poor healtchare, high violence rates, and an energy crisis. What is doing about it? Buying $5 billion USD worth of Russian weapons (in addition to the $4.4 billion that he already spent). He is also in negotiations with China to purchase additional weaponry. Nobody is attacking Venezuela, so who is Chavez at war with? 

Chavez has riled more than a few national leaders with his angry rhetoric and shallow threats, but now he's turning against his neighbor, Colombia. An early turn came a few years ago when four Venezuelan soldiers were caught spying on Colombia. The Colombian military called President Uriba, who said "Give them a hug, tell them that they're our brothers, and send them home." Why was Chavez spying on Colombia? Nobody knows, but it goes against the two country's long history of peace.

In 2008, Colombia attacked a FARC guerilla camp in Ecuador, just over the border from Colombia. This was an unprecedented move which upset relations with Ecuador, but netted some very "interesting" information. Besides the fact that Ecuador was harboring the guerillas, two laptops revealed records that over the last several years, Chavez had funneled over $300 million dollars to finance the FARC in their fight against Colombia. Again, we ask why?

Earlier this year Chavez manually, and arbitrarily, reset the exchange rate for the Venezulan dollar. He instituted a two-teir pricing system that would make domestic goods cheaper but double the prices of imports. In the long run, all the prices will rise as Venezuela has very little domestic producing capacity and has to rely on imports for most manufactured goods. But in the short term, it netted the goverment an extra $50 million USD from oil sales, that he was free to use as he wished. It just so happens that his re-election is just a few months down the road. One of the other effects of this monetary change? Colombian farmers who exported agricultural products to Venezuela, were shafted out of their payments. Trade between these two countries was effectively killed, even though Colombia used to be Venezuela's biggest trade partner.

Just this week, a Colombian family living in Venezuela has been accused of espianoge. The family of 8, who run an ice-cream factory in Venezuela, have been jailed on the basis that the father of the family had taken a photo of an electrical substation. He was later found to have pictures of bridges, roads and buildings. Under this criteira, I would be considered a spy in every country I've been too. Chavez didn't stop there, however. He further blamed the "spies" with acts of sabatoge to the electrical infrastructure. Venezuela has been in a painful draught this last year, which, as a result of their heavy dependence on hydroelectric power, means that they have also faced dire power shortages. Chavez has previously blamed the lack of rain, but not he has a new reason: these Colombian spies have been behind it all. Never mind the fact that the family has lived in Venezuela for 17 years. It's also convenient to neglect the fact that Chavez spent $9.4 billion on Russian weapons instead of improving the power infrastructure, among other things that need help.

Also this week, I was alerted to the fact that Caracas is one of the 10-most dangerous cities in the world and holds the noble distinction of being the murder-capital of the world. Way to go Chavez. Look who is Number One now, biatch!

While Colombia is not completely safe and has it's own violent history, things are quickly improving. Years ago, the Colombian cities of Medellin, Cali and Bogota were high on those lists of most dangerous places. Now, none of them are. Colombia sees five time more international travelers than Venezuela, even though Colombia is the only country with a US State "Travel Warning." Chavez is vehenmentally opposed to the right-leaning Colombian government, who, along with US help, is aggresively and successfully dismantling the FARC. People say the war on drugs isn't working, but I can tell you that in Colombia's case, it has made a huge difference.

While Kristin doesn't feel as safe as I do, we have not had any problems in our month in Colombia. We have encountered some of the friendliest people in South America. The only safety issues other travelers have exprienced are the corrupt Ecuadorian border police, who are notorious for stealing valuables while rifling through your backpack during the customs "inspection."  We have one more week of traveling south before hitting the Ecuador border. You can bet that we'll employ all of our tricks to stop the border police from taking any of our belongings. 

I apologize for the heavy nature of this blog, but I believe it is an important issue that might not get fully covered in the US. Most of this info is all stuff that I have learned while traveling. In the US we have this image of Colombia as dangerous and maybe we know of Chavez as a little off his rocker. But he's crazy and could personally cause distability (or war) here in northern part of South America.

And if it wasn't obvious, this also explains why we are traveling in Colombia and not Venezuela.

Colombia: Turning Guns into Guitars

Risk, Continued

Found another photo, this one from Guatemala.


And as Shubho pointed out in his comment on my previous blog, we've only seen a fraction of the world. Perhaps the best (in sketchy transportation) is still to come!

Let's Go Back to Bogotá

We have been in Colombia for two weeks now and I have yet to write a blog about it. I feel negligent to the thousands of readers who have been forced to settle for lesser forms of workday distractions. However, I am delighted to report that in the two weeks we have yet to be kidnapped, drugged, or conned by cops. In that same time, nobody has contacted us to make sure we're still OK. Either way, we are fine and you can now go back to your regular work-day distractions.

To be blunt, in the US Colombia is known for cocaine and kidnapping. For this reason we did not originally plan to come here. However, in talking with intrepid travelers over the last six months, we have heard one rave review after another. Our plans weren't set in stone so we decided to alter our course to explore Colombia. I found a cheap one-way flight from Buenos Aires to Bogotá on studentuniverse.com. A good friend connected us with his extended family here. And to top it all off, we were delighted by the news that our friend, Janie, would be joining us for two weeks.

It felt like everything was going to work out perfectly. Still, we were nervous. After all, only ten years ago Colombia averaged ten kidnappings per day. I think the country's murder rate was so high that they couldn't even count it. Does the name Pablo Escobar ring a bell? He was the notorious, ruthless kingpin of cocaine in the 80s and early 90s. He was the fourth richest man in the world. Can you name any other famous Colombians? I couldn't.

(Note: Juan Valdez - the coffee guy - is fictional. Shakira is Colombian but has deliberately distanced herself from her homeland)

So here we are in Colombia. We stayed in Bogotá for five days, mostly exploring the old part of town. The city is interesting, to say the least. It sits at 2640 meters, smack dab in the middle of the country. Bogotá has grown dramatically in the last decade as rural folk move to avoid the dangers of the drug war. The eight million or so residents didn't have a lot of city-pride, but I think that is changing as conditions improve. It now has an efficient public transport system, one of the most extensive bike networks in the world, new shopping centers and better roads. Safety has increased dramatically. In the 90's, Bogotá witnessed over 4,000 murders a year. Now you can walk one block downtown without seeing a police officer. It seems like police corruption has been mostly eradicated, but there is still the problem of police impostors. Our host family had a ton of personal horror stories of con-artists, fake cops, robberies, getting drugged, and seeing dead bodies in the streets. However, they can also attest to the fact that things are getting better.

Bogotá has a lot to offer and is tourist friendly. However, Janie had aspirations of seeing the Caribbean coast while here. We normally takes buses everywhere, but this time we were able to find a 90 minute flight that was cheaper than the 20+ hour bus ride. We jumped on that without hesitation. We toured the coastal areas of Cartagena, Santa Marta, Taganga, and Parque Tayrona. I'll blog more about that later as I still need to upload the photos.

Ten days of brutal heat and humidity and we were ready to return to Bogotá. We found the same great deal on flights. Janie left for the states yesterday while Kristin and I are spending the week here working on various projects. I'll also talk more about that later too. For now you can enjoy the nifty map I've created that shows everywhere we've been. *see sidebar on right


Inside what we called the Candy Cane Church. The exterior is the same design, which made it a useful and easy-to-find landmark.


I realize that I am posting fewer and fewer pretty pictures and more documentary ones. I mean really, how many old churches and big mountains can you stand? This is a view of Bogotá. I don't think any photographer could make this look pretty.


My ladies.


Spooky masks on display at the Gold Museum. Colombia has more gold deposits than any other country. This museum displays the "leftovers" that weren't taken by Spain, pirates or grave robbers. These leftovers number over 300,000 pieces in this ONE museum. I can't imagine what originally was in Colombia.


The mass transit system is very cheap and efficient. I can not say, however, that it was always comfortable.


A tour of the five story police museum was our highlight. We got a free English-speaking guide who gave us coffee, took photos with us, and flattered us with cliches. It wasn't all fun and games though - the entire bottom floor was devoted to the drug war. This wall shows some of the more infamous drug dealers, including Pablo Escobar on the right. I apologize for gruesome nature of the photos, but I want to present the full picture.


Janie is holding up the secret shelves of Escobar's desk. He had four of these built by a special carpenter. Then Escobar killed the carpenter and his entire family, so that no one would find out the secret. Escobar also underwent four plastic surgeries to change his face to make him harder to recognize. I could go on and on about the interesting stories that we learned.


William, our police guide, brought us coffee. In Colombia they drink their coffee strong and sweet, in little plastic cups, at all times of the day.

No Earthquake Here

Hey Everybody - we are in Sao Paulo, safely on the other side of the continent from Chile. Thank you for your concern voiced via Facebook and emails. We do have several friends from Chile though, so please keep them in your thoughts. We are still waiting to hear from them all. It seems that Facebook has become the best way to communicate en masse.

I still owe you a post about Ilha Grande and another about Paraty, both to be accompanied by more envy-invoking photos. I apologize in advance.

Guatemala - Final Thoughts

Guatemala was the first country visited during our long journey and will naturally burn a unique imprint in our mind. After spending a full month here, I feel like we got a pretty good sense of this country. We lived with a gringo family in a normal Guatemalan town, traveled to many of the usual tourist hotspots, hiked deep into the northern jungle, and visited very poor, rural villages and schools.

A few things in Guatemala work really well. My hospital stay was the best medical experience I've ever had. The hospital was clean, had modern equipment, and prompt efficient service. Fresh fruits and veggies are local, cheap and universally available. It seems like everybody has a piece of land and can eek by, somehow. Alcoholism is not a problem. Communities are strong, usually centered around the local Catholic Church.

Two items that particularly stick out at the top of that list are cell phones and mass transportation. Guatemala never had much of a telephone land line infrastructure. By the time cell phone technology became reliable, modern cell towers were installed throughout the country, thereby leapfrogging the antiquated system in which the US is heavily vested. Cell phones are reasonably priced, minutes are super cheap, you pay as you need (no two-year contracts!), and coverage is fantastic.

The other thing that works really well is mass transportation, the bulk of which is handled by "chicken buses." These are pimped out school buses from the US: painted, stickered, chromed-out rigs with thumping sound systems. However, these buses are cheap, fast, and can take you everywhere, easily. It costs about a dollar an hour to ride these buses. Our commute to Antigua was only $0.25 for the two of us. We've never had to wait more than five minutes for a bus. Supplementing these ghetto-rigged recycled contraptions were shuttle vans, occasional taxis, and the ubiquitous three-wheeled tuk-tuks (which are everywhere in Asia). Most people don't need to own cars.

There are other things, though, that make life in Guatemala more difficult. Laws are created without much forethought and are inconsistently enforced. An example is that a law was passed requiring all motorcycle riders to have a black vest and helmet imprinted with their license number. This was created to stop the number of motorcycle drive-by robberies and shootings. However, a few weeks after the law went into effect, after everybody has spent all the money on new gear, the police realized that it was actually a lot harder to distinguish people when they all wore the same vest and helmet. They stopped enforcing the law soon thereafter.

The government is still corrupt, but at least it's stable now. Guatemala's past (and present) is deeply intertwined with that of the US. In 1954, Guatemala seized land from the United Fruit Company, a US corporation, and redistributed it to the people.. The gov't. paid UFC the amount that the UFC claimed the land was worth, as stated in tax statements. However, UFC deeply undervalued it's land so that it would have to pay less taxes. The UFC had close allies in the US government, which itself was scared of this "communist" initiative. The US subverted the elected Guatemalan leaders, installed our own right-wing puppets, and thereby instigated a civil war that last for 45 years. And really, the battle is still not over today. Most of the soldiers, from both sides of the fight, have either gone into security or crime (it's hard to tell them apart!). Today, 70% of the land is held by the top 1% income earners.

Crime is rampant and criminals often target tourists.  There's not much protection for the natural land and parks.  It's not safe to venture into the mountains without armed guards. This was incredibly difficult for me and Kristin, as we go to the mountains to find freedom. Yet here we were surrounded by forests, jungles, mountains and volcanoes, yet it was off limits to us. We felt trapped and imprisoned. There are more private security personnel then there are police officers.  Guatemala is the most heavily armed country in Central America. There are guards with shotguns and M-16s everywhere - banks, ATMs, park entrances, and so on. Heck, even the coca-cola trucks have 2 armed guards. High birthrates, low levels of education, lack of good healthcare - the list goes on. I don't think I saw one Guatemalan reading in the entire month.

Overall, it was a great experience. We saw the highs and the lows of the country. When we were able to explore the wilderness, we thoroughly enjoyed it. There are a lot of amazing things to see here, but it's not a place for every traveler.

Antigua Market

The open-air market is at the heart of Antigua, and it's at it's peak on Saturday morning. We'd already been there a few times before, but we thought we'd check it out again. Well, it was loud, colorful, aromatic, fun, and crowded. We bought a ton of fruits, veggies and nuts. Everything is local, cheap and delicious too! Most of the women continue to wear their traditional woven clothing, with lots of black, purple, blue and red colors. 

Unfortunately, as we were having lunch at a nearby restaurant, our friend realized that her bag had been sliced open and her wallet was stolen. We've heard numerous stories of Guatemala being dangerous, and this brings it home for us. 


What have we done to protect ourselves? In addition to the obvious things, we: only travel with a photocopy of our passport, have hidden zippered pockets in our pants, use a homemade money belt, have a fake wallet (with a few bucks and some old cards), spread our money around our pockets, and keep important things on our body - not in a bag. We have a few other secret tricks. Email me if you're interested.