About Ciudad Guayana...

I'm about to leave for the Gran Sabana, tomorrow morning, and I'm still in Puerto Ordaz, the nice western part of the "Ciudad Guayana" city. This city differs a lot with the eastern part, San Félix. Puerto Ordaz is a very rich place, different from all what I've seen yet in Venezuela. It looks a lot like a normal North American city, with clean streets, rich suburbs, big cars, parks and hollywood-style palmtrees in the streets. I really feel in another country here!

The typical Venezuela is like other Latin America countries, full of trashes on the side of the street (plastic bags, broken glass bottles and any dump possible), with nervous people always horning their car in an undescriptible chaos. Here everything is just different, and more civilized. I like this. Another great thing about Puerto Ordaz is that you don't spend the whole day to listen to Salsa music at every street corner, making you totally insane after some hours. Here people seems calm and relaxed. The panaderías shops are clean, no flies walking everywhere on the food, and no sticky feeling under your shoes when you're walking. Great!

San Félix is the total opposite, and is only separated by a river and a puente from Puerto Ordaz. This barrio is the typical third world environment, with poor man's houses, made from "adobe" bricks and with the metal roofs, full of holes. There is nothing to understand in this. Puerto Ordaz is getting bigger and newer everyday, with new constructions and it seems that all the money for cleaning is spent here, instead of San Félix.

To conclude, Puerto Ordaz got many things, like big shopping malls (bigger than what we have in QC for sure) and nice streets and construction, but the price is also very high. You will not find hotels under 25$US by night, and the food is also more expensive than the rest of the country. There is so much extremes here, from the cheapies villages falling to ruins, to the modern expensive cities, weird! With 80% of people living in total poverty, how can a city get so modern, i still have trouble to dig this.

Change of subject. I made a list of the most popular songs i listened on my IPod duing my trip. It is totally uninteresing but i felt to do this hehehe. So if you are not concerned, just go to hell and close this web-page :)

In the (I guess) priority order, the most amazing songs were:

1. Ojos De Brujo - Corre Lola Corre (from Techarí album)
2. Shpongle - Beija-Flor (From the EP)
3. Manu Chao - Hamburger Fields (Live @ Glastonbury)
4. Pigs In Space - Visitors (Part 1)
5. Oasis - Don't Go Away (Acoustic Live Version)
6. Dub Trees - Return Of The Native (Album Version)
7. Chingon - Malaguena Salerosa (Kill Bill 2 Soundtrack)
8. Chambao - As De Corazones (Endorfinas En La Mente)
9. Rush - Resists (Live @ Rio De Janeiro Acoustic)
10. Nacha Pop - Lucha De Gigantes (Amores Perros Soundtrack)
11. Audio Chemistry - Long Long Arms (Unusual Suspects 2 Compilation)
12. Shpongle - ...And The Day Turned To Night (Eclipse Compilation Version)

More news to come, from Santa Elena de Uaíren, probably in 10-12 days.

-JS-