Caracas

Caracas is a world apart from Quito. Instead of 17th century mansions and churches surrounded by a sea of two-story cement homes, we have 20-story office buildings, billboards and shopping malls. A single, mad highway choked with traffic runs through the center of the city, and the small mountains that ring it are covered in slums. These are true slums—tin shacks, squatters in dilapidated and abandoned one-story homes, stolen electricity and water, and violence.
Our hotel is grand and about three times the price of Hotel Quito—the greater development in Caracas seems to go hand in hand with higher prices.

Mostly just travel today. Ecuador to Colombia to Venezuela, which made us nervous due to the current tensions after Colombia's recent military incursion onto Ecuador territory. Luckily the wonders of capitalism kept our flights running without a hitch. The rides were short and pleasant, the security easy as pie (except in Colombia there was quite a large amount of soldiers in military garb around the airport). Several soldiers were sitting in front of a TV watching Hugo Chavez accuse Alvaro Uribe, their president, of being a liar, which was rather chilling.

Tomorrow we visit our first high school. I’ll check in then.