Today I waited for a bus for 10 minutes, tried flagging down three before one stopped to let a passenger off and I could get on. Then it was jampacked and I found myself holding onto a bar for dear life, hanging out the door while the bus careened down the road. Because that's what buses do here. They careen. It's like they're trying to dance to the salsa that is being pumped out of them at insane decibels. Bus drivers here (drivers here in general) are demented. They are heedless of everything - not only the lives of their passengers but probably their own lives, as well, and certainly the lives of any pedestrians who even think about stepping from the sidewalk to the pavement. My organs try to evacuate my body all at the same time every time I try to cross a road.

Sometimes being here is one of the most amazing experiences in the world and I love every second of it and everything I do... and then there are times when it's the most frustrating thing and while I don't hate it, I can't help but compare life here to life at home, and how some things are "better." And then I want to yell at myself, because things aren't necessarily better at home, they're just different. Today, for instance, with the buses not stopping. Sometimes I feel like they don't stop just because I'm a gringa and they can spot me from miles away. Then I remember that's just how buses work here and I just have to deal with it - plus, that's part of the fun and the reason I came here... to experience the culture. And part of the culture is being ignored by bus drivers.

Going on the teleferico on Saturday was amazing. It's hard to explain the whole thing here, but like I said, it's the highest and longest cable car in the world. The top station is on Pico Espejo, which is at an elevation of about 16,000 feet, and I went all the way to the top. It was so cloudy at the top that I couldn't see anything but the station itself and the statue of the Virgin Mary that resides there. And it was cold! Luckily, I'm a hearty Minnesota lass and can handle it. I don't think the Venezuelans quite knew what to do with themselves. They were all wearing heavy coats, hats, scarves and gloves. As we were coming down from the top, it actually started snowing. Just to put that in perspective, once we got all the way back down to the city, it was 83 degrees! It was weird to go through such a temperature change, not to mention the altitude difference.

Here's a Venezuelan Fun Fact to shed light on the craziness of public buses:

Public buses do not have a set schedule here. There are no times for when certain buses will stop at certain places. Individual drivers decide when they want to work and will just drive around, stopping if someone flags them down on the street or if someone wants to get off. On the main roads there are set "bus stops" but on the smaller roads, sometimes you just have to look for people congregating and join them, with the hope that they're waiting for the bus, as well.

Can anyone explain to me why my feet are so cold, when it's 79 degrees and sunny out?