Airports

The first thing you notice when you arrive in Caracas is the security. Considering how relaxed immigration and customs are, it's really intimidating to walk into the main terminal and come face to face with men in full military regalia, wearing badges that say "Vigilante" and carrying semi-automatic rifles. They don't even look twice at my passport, or check my bags in the customs line, but I suppose they aren't so worried about smuggling drugs INTO Caracas. Considering Simon Bolivar is an international airport, it's a lot smaller and less equipped than I'm used to. But, after a week of seeing other, even smaller airports, it seems luxurious by comparison.

We arrive in Ciudad Bolivar in the evening. It's small. Small enough that there is a single waiting room for departing flights, a cafeteria, and a single arrivals room. The carousel makes a loud grinding noise, and then stops working. One of the porters makes a half-assed atempt to fix it by shoving a traffic cone into the jammed machinery, before they all determine it's too complicated to fix, and just start shoving bags out onto the carousel. This results in a general free-for-all with passengers climbing on the carousel and other bags themselves, so we end up being the last to get our bags. Our guide, Rodman, is a really nice guy. He's very animated and outgoing, so he gives us some details about the city, mainly that it's a safe town, during the day, but we shouldn't leave the hotel after 6 PM, and if it starts to get dark outside, we should rush back quickly. To prove this, when we decide to go to dinner one night, he drives the 15 minutes from his office to our hotel, to drive us 2 blocks to the restaurant, and comes back an hour later to retreive us and bring us back. And it turns out it was a good job he did because as we leave the restaurant we are questioned by a police patrol car who has been called to the area to stop a street brawl. Ciudad Bolivar isn't the safest little town.

Rodman picks us up the morning of our departure for Angel Falls, and drives us to the airport. On the way, he gets a call and starts explaining to whoever is on the line that "we're already outside". Apparently the airline has called his mobile to ask him when we'll be ready for check-in - that's how small this airport is. Rodman takes us inside, and tells us someone will be with us shortly to check our passports. Then, he steps behind the counter next to the other agents, and asks us for our passports, before issuing us our tickets. It should be noted that he doesn't work for the airline, but no one seems to mind that he just sort of does whatever he wants, so we go with it. Later Rodman decides he needs to inform us about a delay, so he just walks through the security control area to tell us, and the other passengers, and then walks back out of the secure area. It's a very relaxed enviornment.

The Ciudad Bolivar airport, is followed by the Canaima airport, which turns out to be a wall-less, thatched hut with a single desk serving as immigration. The man here checks our passports and our ticket, printed by Rodman, and complete with clip-art palm trees and hand written plane information, and writes our names on a list, so we'll be called to get on the next flight. Welcome to South America!