We´re coming back to Venezuela

Day 3 - Caracas

 

The insanity began at the Caracas airport where we were greeted with a mob of screaming locals. Some sort of famous singer showed up or something. We still think the mob was there for us though and we G-d up the crowd good and proper as we walked past. After navigating through the scammers we were relived to find our driver in amongst the scam artists and tourist kidnappers holding a sign with our names on it. This strange man’s name was William and he could not speak a word of English. Note: we need to learn Spanish. There was one thing he understood though, which we can’t discuss in full, we only know his name is Fernando. At any mention of this name William would nod gently, and through a slight grin whisper the words "ahhhhhhhhhhhhh... Feeeeeeeernnaaaando, harhahrhahahrarha". William got us safely to Hotel La Floresta, our new cave!

Venezuela!

more to come soon . .

Lessons In Santiago

Day one

We arrived in Santiago to some sort of chaotic mess of crazy people waving signs and trying to scam us. We trusted some schmo in a suit, gave him all our posessions and got in his car. The hostel was a shady looking unmarked red building next to a highly active police station. We embarked on a ridiculous mission to find somewhere to exchange Us dollars for Pesos and buy lunch. Two hours later after circling and backtracking we found an ATM. Loaded up With 100,000 pesos, we spent more time walking in circles before going to a restaraunt we first walked past about 100m from the hostel. They probably accepted US dollars there anyway, which would have saved the whole mess in the first place. Turns out the currency conversions we made in our head were about 300% out. At the time we thought we were getting some damn cheap cube roll (steak?).

Crazy Plane

Whilst waiting in line to check in, the computer system crashed causing a 2 hour delay for our flight out of Sydney. Amongst the frustration, some sort of nutcase provided us with entertainment.

He annoyed flight staff following them extremely closely up and down the aisles. Beric was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of what he was hiding under that cape. Turns out he was pantless.

The Plan

Heres the plan see...

314 days, 19 countries, 60,000 miles, 30kg of climbing gear and three retired engineers.

On Wednesday we're outta here to live the lifestyle of bums. I hear supermarkets throw out all kinds of good expired food.