Yesterday, my wife and I went out to check laptop prices (a present one of my daughters' aunt wants to give her). I was supposed to do that the day before but it was pretty cloudy and I did not want to go out in the rain.
Seeing that the weather was not going to change any time soon and the errand was urgente, we had no choice but leave under a light drizzle.
It was not too bad. In fact, we enjoyed the outing.
We stopped at a nearby ATM to get some cash for future bus fares. @manujune was doing well after receiving treatment, so we were a bit relaxed after all.
We went to City Market in Sabana Grande, a mall with most of the tech stores in town.
Unfortunately, even though these stores are supposed to be legally constituted and under legal scrutiny, we have to deal with the same market distorsions.
The prices of new laptops here are doble the prices in other countries. Additionally, we have this dual market where we can pay with local currency (Bolívar) or foreign currencies, especially american dollars.
However, the gap between the legal exchange rate has widened in the last months (53 Bs/$ official vs 67Bs/$ black market) and a product advertised at $350 ends up costing more than $400 if you don't have cash $.
Cheaper, refurbished alternatives, are not always guaranteed.
Most of the stores had the same models and prices.
After a while taking pictures and notes for my daughter's mom to decide, we headed back home.
We stopped for a coffee at another mall down the streets.
The weather ramained cloudy and fresh for the rest of the day. However, we were still able to walk along the boulevard and fool around.
This city has definitely charming looks on a sunny or rainy day.
The old emblematic buildings are always a sight to see.
We noticed new areas are being cleaned and renovated across the Capitol subway station.
Monuments are ok, especially for tourists (and we feel like some), but we hope deeper changes are made soon to stop the economic and social distortions that make life so complicated here.
