Caracas and beyond

I spent my first week in Caracas meeting and getting to know the family that I knew I had but was never in contact with. My Aunt Carmen lives in a large apartment in Caracas on a beautiful tree lined street. The area used to be a farm, and my cousins talk about how when they grew up, there was nothing but trees. Now it is densely filled with malls, shops, houses, and apartments. Cousin Ben met me at the airport and gave me a guidebook and a map. He told me he had everything I could want, and so I did not bring one, partly out of the sake of being adventurous, and partly because I believed him. It turns out that both attitudes were a mistake. The guidebook he offered me turned out to be 15 years old, hard to follow, and written for someone who has a car.
On my first day in town, I went out with my Irene in an effort to work on my Spanish. It was a good intention, but it was clear that it was so much easier for us to speak in English. So that is what we spoke most of the time. It didn´t do much for my Spanish, but it was very entertaining as Irene is a woman with a lot of charactar and a flair for the dramatic when it comes to conversation.We walked around Plaza Bolivar, of which every city has one, and admired the colonial buildings, the birthplace of Simon Bolivar, and some museums from the outside.
She then took me to a place called Sabana Grande, which is a popular street that is shut down to vehicular traffic. It is a street lined with clothing shops and bookstores. The bookstores, while being of great size and quality with the range of books they carried, didn´t have a single guidebook for Venezuela in English. It turns out that I am going to have to do this entire trip upon the graces of my family and my wits.