Farewell Venezuela

Wow already again 3 weeks gone since our last entry. Amazing how time goes by when you’re busy. Sid finished all the varnish and has just a few little odd jobs to do. I moved my sewing machine away and hopefully for a long time. We just need to clean up now, provision and pick a good weather window to leave Venezuela for good. Been busy catching up with all our friends and last week we were so busy we had a dinner every night, we are fooded out (yeah, yeah I know I made this word up). It’s been an interesting 3 weeks, especially to see how the President here is brining his country to it’s knees, every day there is something new. Two years ago he closed RCTV so they went on Cable and actually did better then ever before. Now El Presidente told them that if they don’t air his messages on TV that he will shut them down again and so he did. The students are again protesting against him taking away their freedom of speech and in the first demonstration many students got either killed or injured by his militia and Chavistas. I have to add that the Students are peaceful demonstrators it’s the goonies Chavez sent out after them that cause the problems. He already threatened to take drastic measure if they don’t stop demonstrating and I believe he will. The day after he devaluated the Bolivares, he threatened to take over any stores increase prices. Exito is one of the lowest priced stores kind of like a Wal-Mart with third world products and most of all French owned, was taken over by the Government only two days after his threat (the French owner also lost his Casino). It shows again that he is taking over one foreign owned business after another. This is the end of Exito and it pissed off a lot of Venezuelans including Chavistas. He also took over three more banks. Whenever I go into town I have to take a taxi and I tell you every one of them is complaining about the president and they all shook their head when they admitted voting for him twice. They all are disappointed that he deceived them and is taking away their rights and making their life miserable. There is no quality to life here anymore. One week ago Debi and I went to the Central Market and as we stood at one of the butcher’s stalls he kept telling us “NO HAY!” which mean “I don’t have” so I started pointing at some pieces of pork he repeated and whatever I pointed at he said the same while serving customers. We got the picture he refused to sell us anything. In the course of walking through the rest of the market we saw nothing but hostile looks towards us, we felt really uncomfortable and left the market. I’ve shopped in this market once a week for the last three years and never had this experience. Then when we went to one of the pharmacies we usually buy from they told us we had to have a doctor’s note. The items we bought we just bought one week prior with no problem. The other pharmacy had no problem selling the meds. I wonder what he told them all on his 6 hour Alo Presidente TV show which is aired every Sunday. Now when he devaluated the BS he did it with two prices 2.60 for essentials and 4.30 for non essentials, get this pickles and Whale sperms are on the essential list, cheese and ketchup and so many more things are not. The prices at stores have skyrocket and a can of corn or green beans is now over 2 dollars. Shopping here now is as expensive as in the States if not more.

I told you last time about the rolling power outages, we should have it every Tue/Thus/Sat from 15:00 to 17:00 not to mention that we loose wifi and water when the Marina loosed their power from 9:00 until noon. Of course the times don’t work, they shut the electricity off any time they want and mostly every day and the power never comes back on time. Now imagine when there is no power there is no traffic lights functioning either so the chaos is real in town and the protests of the students are not helping either. Just good we can go shopping via dinghy but the shelfs at the grocery stores are emptying fast as Chavez is stopping imports. The other day I was at the store buying laundry detergent and noticed that the price had doubled, next to me a middle aged Venezuelan woman was in shock and with tears in her eyes she told me that she cannot afford to by soap anymore, broke my heart.

Venezuela has 13 power plants of which only 7 work at the moment, actually 2 or 3 only half way the rest are broken and two more are on the verge of breaking. Chavez threatened the workers of the plant on his Alo Presidente show that if they don’t’ repair the plants he will be forced to have 12 hours a day power outages. He knows that he has to fork the money up. Heard rumors that he did pay but the money disappeared, yeah right. It is sad to say that it’s time to leave, we still love Venezuela but it is time. Currently there are 3 American, 2 French, 1 Italian, 2 German and 1 Dutch boat left in Bahia Redonda and they all are leaving as well. This will be a hard week for us as we will have to say goodbye to all our wonderful friends and to leave them behind to a not very promising future. I cannot imagine how they feel having all their rights taken away as Chavez promised a few days ago he will go faster now to turn his country to his communistic dream.

We also had a security guard obviously a Chavista giving us a hard time, so they had to let him go as the resident condo owners, mainly foreigners felt threatened by him. Also a security guard in the marina had to be fired because he was not doing his job plus steeling. We caught him peak into our cockpit, he claimed he wanted a glass of water. A few days later he came back and asked for food, the next day one boat found one of our towels in his cockpit and the two of his cockpit cushions gone. The guard slept in his cockpit using our towel for a blanket then he took the cushion, one was found floating in the water. One month ago I caught him peaking into our window at night. Some bumpers have been stolen off boats as well. Maremares had a dinghy theft and so did a guy we know at his house.

I wished we could leave this country still as a Paradise and not overshadowed by all the sadness now, we always will treasure the good time we had and the many wonderful Venezuelan friends we made and we wish just the best for all of them, but most we hope that on the long run they will win the battle against their tyrant dictator. It will be a long recovery to restore the country to what it was.