Day 51- Back from IC part 1

At last I am back in Santo Domingo, which could be called home for me now.

To make it clear, our initial plan when going to IC in Brazil was like this:

-leave from Dominican Republic on a charter that takes off from Punta Cana (DR's largest vacation resort, which is at about 4h distance from Santo Domingo) and lands in Caracas, Venezuela.

Our seats on this charter were offered by a supportive alumni, which promised us also return seats.

-stay for a few hours in Caracas, until we needed to catch the next plane to Sao Paulo

-on the 30th of August, after the IC is over, stay and visit Sao Paulo until the 4th, when we had a plane back to Caracas

-stay in Caracas for three days and then catch the charter with the special "agreement" back to Punta Cana in DR on the 7th of September

The nice experiences started on the way from Santo Domingo to Punta Cana, when we were extremely close to losing the plane as we got lost on the way to Punta Cana.

Fortunately, we made it on time and caught it in the the last second.

In Caracas we were greeted by some extremely nice people (thank you Thais and family, Bernardo, Anita, Mauro, Daniel, Mark, Ricardo) which took us from the airport and hosted us for a few hours until our plane left again to Sao Paulo.

IC.....this conference was for me a very interesting experience.

Mainly because I was very sick starting with the 4th day and lasting for another about 5 days.

39 temperature for two days in a row, severe dehydration, and of course a trip to the hospital.
I did not really want the hospital part, but as some point I understood that it was not just a severe cold and that I needed help besides my normal medication.

As it turned out, it was an infection in my throat that caused the illness.

After getting slightly better, and by better I mean able to walk, the conference started to mean something also for me.
Although, not as you might think, as I did not really go to sessions, I was only at the last party and I did not really have any attraction to talk to a lot of people.

Overall, this experience saw me getting more pragmatic and a bit sadder than usual.
An interesting way of feeling, and a new challenge for me.

After the conference ended, I went to a hostel for the next five days (actually two different hostels), alone, as Malina went to visit Rio de Janeiro.

This time was dedicated to visiting Sao Paulo and getting to feel the Brazilian way of living.

First impression is that the city is HUGE (and it really is, the fourth largest city in the world, 17m people), with

very large building everywhere.
A lot of traffic, noticeable pollution and people from all over the world.
I actually do not know how a Brazilian looks like, because all the people are so different.
As we found our during a presentation of Brazil at IC, on the black market the passport of Brazil is the most expensive one, because everyone can look like a Brazilian :)

So you can imagine the diversity and mix of people.
It is also very developed, an obvious sign being that it has an extremely large number of private helicopters flying all around, with almost every large office building having a heliport.

As a whole I liked Sao Paulo, as it made me realize how I really feel about Latin America, and gave concreteness to my plans for the next few years.

What impressed me most while seeing Sao Paulo was the feeling of being truly alone, as it was the first time in my life when I really did not know anybody around me.
An interesting and revealing experience, showing me how important is the comfort zone to be happy and how much more I need to appreciate people that really care about me.

On the 4th I left Sao Paulo, heading for the three days stay in Caracas.

The city is extremely nice, with very tall buildings (from what I saw, their average floor number in buildings is 20), an extremely green chain of mountains surrounding and overlooking the city (a national park called Avila) and lots of cars.

Venezuela, the place where filling a tank of gas is cheaper than water (less than 1$ for about 70litres of gas), is also a very interesting place.

The main thing you feel is that the Chavez regime is very similar to communism, constraining the people and the market place.

For example, to buy a new car you have to put your name on a list, as every car importing company can only import 100 cars per month.

You cannot buy or sell dollars in the country without asking permission.

The state BUYS companies instead of selling them.

The government changed the official hour of the country, taking it back with 30 minutes from the normal GMT hour!!!!!!!!!!

They changed the coat of arms of Caracas from a horse looking to the right to one looking to the left (as they are leftists).

This and many more made me realize that this is maybe how Romania felt before 89', and also to realize that if I would have lived then I would have left the country for sure.
As I will not ever want to live in Venezuela either.

But, as there is always a but, the people and the capital are extremely nice.
Beautiful, in the figurative and in the proper sense also, in terms of treating visitors and living life.

What I expected to see and was not really true for me is that they are supposed to have the nicest women in Latin America, which I expected to be nicer than Romanian women.

But....that is not really true. We have much nicer women :)

And, in the end of this initial post of my experience traveling through Latin America, I would like to share the biggest surprise of the trip so far: they have Logan in Venezuela (and also in Brazil) :)

More info about the trip and the adventure of returning back to Dominican Republic in the next post.