Just Getting Started...

...is a trip for Venezuela.

This is a land of such diversity of terrain you could get overstimulated just reading the cliches about it ("If Venezuela were a television, you would wear out the remote changing channels", etc.). After much research into Venzuelan desinations, and dithering about whether we should go to the Andes first, or maybe the Caribbean archipelago of Los Roques, I was flummoxed to read on Lonely Planet's ThornTree forum one day, a casual post that the one, major road between the airport (into which we were scheduled to arrive on January 15, 2006, at 10:45 pm) and Caracas, bustling capitol city, was closed. Until 2007.

If you read the article linked below, you will get a little taste of what life is like south of the border.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1861

Can you imagine if this were San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge?

P.S. Not to worry about our story's protagonists: they are planning to skip Caracas for now and fly straight on to Channel No. 12, the Andes, and the town of Merida. Keep your remote handy. ras