Impressions

When you first arrive in a new place, all the new things you see give you a slap in the face. Here are a few things I have observed, and some other randomness:
-my clothing is suddenly very conservative, I can just imagine the women jumping, squirming and sqeezing into their ultra tight jeans each morning, and choosing the perfect stilletos to match.
-we were at a fairly large bus station yesterday and it felt exactly like being at the Klondike Days (X, whatever) fairgrounds...loud music, multitudes of sweaty people in tight clothing, the smell of frying food, waiting in line for rides (12 hr night bus ride is not nearly as exciting as the spinning rides, although I did feel like vomiting at one point on the bus).
-in Central America we felt a little annoyed that one guide book could have such a monopoly over travellers(sorry Lonely Planet), so we broke free and got Footprints for South America. It has been a challenge. It is set up differently, sometimes lacks maps for cities of 500,000 people...and the prices for hotels in Caracas, our first night in South America, was WAY off!
It also neglected to mention that the official exchange rate is roughly 65% of the black market rate. This means that we have a little trouble figuring out our budget (which number do we use) and it means that we are better off changing dollars into Bolivares than we are using our ATM cards (if they worked in Venezuela) or our Visas.
The positive view on not having the perfect guidebook is that we are forced to talk to people more in Spanish to ask for directions and help. Believe it or not, there was one point when Steve and I talked about going guidebook-free. (Crazy!)