How To Avoid Loose Cars

It´s been 30 years, almost to the day, since I left a city with the most chaotic and anarchic traffic I had ever seen - Tehran. It was in the middle of the Islamic Revolution, when the Shah of Iran, after letting the national economy slip in a mire of corruption and inefficiency while the imperial elite lived in scandalous wealth, committed the fatal mistake of underestimating a old bearded fellow with an evil glare, turban and dress. This fellow, ayatollah Khomeini, drove out the Shah and almost a million of Iranians from the country, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was thus born. Tehran now looks a lot cleaner than in my time, but Iran keeps being stuck in the mire of corruption and inefficiency, the new elite without doubt is better off than the common Iranian, and as then, the common people suffer from shortages of all kinds of goods. So, what has changed? As my dad, a retired diplomat and a fan of Sir Rudyard Kipling, keeps on saying: different rulers, same crap. And I don´t doubt a second that the chaotic and anarchic way of driving cars in Tehran hasn´t changed either. Some traditions never die out.

Now, for a new traffic adventure, here comes Caracas. Imagine a 2-million city, which in fact houses 6 million people, squeezed into a valley with hills on the southern side and an impressive mountain range in the north. Imagine that city with an infrastructure, 2008 AD, dating from the seventies, and lovingly kept unchanged, safe for missing traffic lights and road signs at vital spots. There has never been any real urban planning, just roads and streets organically growing along the winding valley and houses standing randomly, as nature and irrational man intended. There has been a military dictator in the fifties, a small man with glasses and a too big military cap, who seemed to have had a vision of colonial Caracas been turned into a new tropical Manhattan, but his vision was cut short and he was kicked out by a civil uprising. So Caracas looks till now like an unfinished painting. Like you wanted to refurbish a house from Louis Seize style to Le Corbusier, money ran out, and you are sitting in a living room on a black and white designer couch, looking at a gilded Versailles-style crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and wondering at the horror of it all. Mozart played by a reggeaton band. Mind you, there are people who like this eclectic style. Like there are people who love living in the cacophony of contradictions in Caracas. A crumbling apartment building standing next to a colonial house in ruins, the potholed street looking like Grozny after a Red Army bombardment - it´s a fairly normal sight in the downtown area. And I know plenty of people who love it.

But now comes the best part. Under the old regime prior to 1998, it was hard for the common man to buy a car. To many it still is. Like in Fidelist Havanna, you will still see scores of old Chevy´s, Buicks and Fords rolling around on a prayer and steel wire. The socialist government of Mr. Chávez thought that this was an injustice done to poor people, and made it possible, through an easy credit plan, for them to buy new wheels. Coincidentally set up in an election year, the number of cars in Caracas grew, and grew and grew. New and newest 4x4´s of the BIG kind, like metal dinosaurs looming over my little Ford Ka...... family cars straight from the assembly line, new buses, lorries - it all came down like an avalanche and flooded the streets and avenues of Caracas within one year. An infrastructure, designed for no more than half a million cars, is regurgitating two million cars on a daily basis, seven days a week.

Now sum up: too much cars, too big cars, a deficient and ageing infrastructure, gasoline which is ten times cheaper than mineral water, and an anarchic spirit found behind two million steering wheels with no regard whatsoever for the fellow driver, nor any respect for traffic rules - and you have a rather interesting traffic experience. A friend of mine commented: put a monkey in a car (not my words!) and within a week he will drive like the average Caracas commuter - keep on stepping on the gas pedal, try not to bump into other loose cars and try to keep a general direction.

A bit exaggerated, but it could nicely sum up a general impression of Caracas during rush hour. Let me however say something in defense of those tortured caraqueños: generally drivers try to avoid bumping into each other - spare parts are a rarity nowadays and you have to wait months for a garage to fix the damage. Other thing: if you do something unheard of in Caracas, like stopping for 5 seconds and giving a fellow driver the priority he actually deserves, you will always receive an incredulous smile from the person in front of you and then a wave from his hand - gracias, pana!

It pays off being nice in Caracas. Just try to avoid those loose cars flying around you. Have a nice evening.