Going on Vacation to Venezuela? What Could Go Wrong?
Venezuela was once a beautiful but generally laid-back and therefore often relaxing tourist destination. My wife and I spent well over a year there off and on between 1996 and 2001. We enjoyed it so much that we thought of settling there permanently, probably up in the Andes not far from the university city of Merida.
Although much of Venezuela’s beauty remains, many things are different. What follows will, I hope, be seen as an attempt at satire comprised of a mix of disgust, love, despair, and hope. Disgust and despair may have overwhelmed love and hope.
The Venezuelan minister of tourism, Alejandro Fleming, is pushing Venezuela as an ideal vacation destination and he is right. Not only does scenic beauty abound, vacationing there would be instructive in many ways.
Fleming said the Ministry wants to give the industry a socialist twist, a claim that is not entirely new because it was the announced policy of his predecessor, Pedro “Fritz” Morejon, who has since and deservedly disappeared from the radar screen.
The State, the Minister reaffirmed, is running 11 hotels nationally and in June the Venetur chain of hotels, as they are known, will offer package tours after prices have been re-assessed and updated.
The prices will be re-assessed and updated as soon as a new financial system is fully in place.
The new system aims to eliminate the wheeling and dealing of the national financial oligarchy in international alliance that include parallel dollars, irregularities in exchanges houses and money laundering, Chávez explained from Miraflores Palace to Venezolana de Television, where the Council of Ministers is meeting. …
We are revising the technical aspects of what will be announced shortly, he pointed out.
The government moves expeditiously and competently in such matters, so it’s not too early to make plans for a summer vacation.
For the many health conscious tourists, Venezuela can’t be beat; indeed, one could drop ten pounds or more due to the massive food shortages obviously caused by capitalist greed, food hoarding, incompetence of a few petty officials, speculation, and the bourgeois nature of some union members. President Chávez is as furious about the recent discovery of sixty thousand tons of rotting food stored in containers at the port of Puerto Cabello as President Obama is at the recent oil well disaster; like President Obama, he is on top of the situation.
“Debacles like this cannot be forgiven,” Chavez said during a televised speech. “Justice must come into play with a well-sharpened sword.”
“I’ve been informed that they detained one of those who must face up, the one responsible for bringing that food and having forgotten it there,” he added without elaborating.
Chavez’s comments came shortly after the Attorney General’s Office announced the arrest of Luis Enrique Pulido, the former president of Venezuela’s state-run food production and distribution company.
Coffee, a vile capitalist witches’ brew if ever there was one, was produced not long ago in great quantity and quality; it is now gone, which is clearly a reason for joy among those interested in healthy living. Although malaria was up 85% during the first quarter of 2010 compared with the first quarter of 2009, and dengue fever was up 138% percent, this was due to the drought last year; Venezuelan mosquitoes, unlike all others, thrive where it is dry and can’t survive in wet conditions.
I can’t wait!! I will go there for my vacation this year! My wife and kids will love it!! I can hardly wait until OUR wonderful, glorious and superfantastic (as well as modest, kind, and hardworking) El Presidente turns our evil capitalist country into another worker’s paradise. . . .
The U.S. has been doing this for many years. Infrastructure all across the nation is crumbling.
Sounds like a “last in a lifetime” opportunity to me….
Here is an article I wrote about a decade ago about traveling to a really neat place inland in Venezuela.
Things were far, far better then, but I don’t think much has changed in Los Nevados, up in the Andes a long way from what passes as “civilization.” The article contains this link to a recent video showing the road we took to get there. I think the video is fairly recent; our driver went a tad slower than the guy in the video.
Amazing there must not be a word for “scope” in Venezuelan… (sic)
Well Dan, I guess I can provide you with an update if you want.
I’ll be arriving in Venz. tomorrow, to stay for a week. Unfortunately I am not going on vacation. I’m going to try to stave off an expropiation.
Ahh, I can’t wait to go back! It will be so much fun going to 6 different supermarkets to get the grocery shopping done! Plus, my immune system will come back stronger than ever, no more flu shots for me!
I wonder if Chavez will dare to give us Alo President instead of the Brazil – Ivory Coast game. In a way, I hope he does.
Please do! Have a safe trip and don’t eat too much. Maybe el Presidente will sing for you if you wear a cute red shirt.
Great satire Dan.
What’s really pathetic is that there are lefties- American lefties- who still try to pretend that Chavez is neither a dictator nor Communist- and that ‘Bolivarian socialism’ has been a triumphant success- a “model for the Americas”!!!
To paraphrase a great line from a great film, “there will be no capitalists tolerated in the casinos or the swimming pools.”
You can accomplish the same thing by coming to California. You’ll wonder at the physical beauty while you dodge the potholes in our formerly grand road system. You’ll marvel at the remains of the agricultural establishment that fed the country. You’ll see empty factories and the remains of subdivisions of empty houses. If you are lucky the power will stay on. And if you are careful you won’t run afoul of the infamous “Californis Carjacker”
The fame of el Presidente reaches far and wide. According to this, apparently Taiwanese, site, He has recommended a cure for insominia.
I’ve been there (VE) 6 times between 2002-2005. It got just a little bit worse each time. Colombia, which I visted an equal amount of times during that time frame, got a bit better each time I went there. Uribe is on to something.
I can’t resist this.
“If I didn’t live in Venezuela I would pay to get in”.
Here we live in ‘interesting’ times. But the natural beauty of the country is breathtaking.
We have the most beautiful women, the best plastic surgeons and the start of the Andes around Merida. Go up in the cable car about 14,000 feet and you will be breathless at the sight (and lack of oxygen).
Oh! I almost forgot, we have earthquakes as well.
Venezuela! reminds me of the last time I visited New York City(Moscow on the Huson);well, not exactly: the infrastructure is more modern in Venezuela,and the people and weather are much nicer.
thnx dan. i live in CA, cannot stand being in the states any longer than a few weeks. what you say about Venezuela is likely understated. if you have a family there and are struggling to feed them your experiencing the criminality of communism. i see it here in Nicaragua, another great country, with history, art, and culture that reveals the sterility of the usa. Nicaragua too, has experienced the boot of criminal governance from the right and left for too long. the part your satire misses and really should focus on is that the usa is in the exact same decline. as the usa bounces back and forth between left and right wing zealots, the decline of personal wealth, daily freedom, the ever mounting mountain of law, regulation and permits, the control of education and soon the media. i think you should have used your satire to show the entire west declining while patriotic dumb frogs in the pot thump their chest about liberty and freedom which abandoned the usa long ago. boiling frogs are all gringolandia represents any longer. even the illegals are leaving. heck the food is a lot better in mexico anyway. elect a libertarian, maybe the usa will be worth something then.
Thanks, Gcblues. I’ve done that several times, including here. There are parallels, and they are scary. This article in Christian Science Monitor catalogs some of the discontent in Venezuela with el Presidente. I could not avoid thinking of the United States and President Obama when I read it.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry, I also watched first hand as Hugo and his gang took over between 06 and 08. Sad to see so many decent folks abused by such an idiot !
I recommend laughing, even forced laughing.
The way things are is a damn shame and things have been going downhill at an accelerating pace since at least 1998. Things were hardly perfect before Chavez assumed power, but based on what I saw between 1996 and 2001, they were far better. Venezuela produced most of her own food in abundance and there was a sense of happiness. Corruption? Ubiquitous. Poverty? Certainly.
I agree completely that there are lots of decent folks, and many of them unfortunately are complicit. Even those who were — and are still — complicit are having monumental problems. There will be legislative elections this year, but due to election “reforms,” the opposition parties seem incapable of taking over the legislature. Even were they to do so, that would probably be inadequate to deal with Chavez et al.
The best I can try to do is to make fun of him; he is a sick joke, but even laughing at sick jokes is less distressing than crying.
Here is an article by Daniel, down in Venezuela, about his recent trip to Margarita Island for a brief vacation.
Doesn’t seem quite as pleasant it formerly was.
Even those who like Chavez are unhappy. Here is an article from VHeadlines by Roy Carson, usually a big Chavez supporter, about the state of affairs in Venezuela. Maybe there is hope for someday. Among other things, the article says,
The article is worth reading.
President Obama is not the only “leader” upon whom the admirers are turning.
Oliver Stone’s marvelous new motion picture about Venezuela’s great strides forward under el Presidente Chávez hasn’t gone over very well in Venezuela. Variety reports that
I despair when US commentators say things are deteriorating just the same -or worse- in the USA as in Venezuela. That’s BS and an insult to the truth and to acknowledging the the truly deplorable and rapidly deteriorating conditions in Venezuela under Chavez: from infrastructure and services, to crime, poverty, violence and loss of civil and human rights. I’ve traveled far & wide across the US, and must attest that you have a well run and looked after country, which is in a league far and above the lamentable conditions of Venezuela. I agree people should complain and address problems so that appropriate measures are taken, but PLEASE don’t belittle your high quality of life by comparing it to my beleaguered country crumbling under the inept and despotic rule of the tyrant Hugo Chavez. You’ve got it far better than you might realize. And now… off to fight for Venezuela’s freedom & justice.