VENEZUELA

VENEZUELA

Waking up early after a pretty awful nights sleep I was feeling far from fresh when Andy the Frenchman knocked on my door at 7.30am. Still the night before I had packed so I was pretty much ready to go once I had taken a shower. I was still rather nervous about the whole affair of going to Venezuela one of the most dangerous and corrupt countries in the world which was run by a verging communist military dictator with some old French guy who just seemed to sit around smoking a lot of weed and cigarettes all day! Still at least I wasn’t going on my own I kept telling myself. Andy had emigrated from France a while ago and was now living in French Guyana, one of the smaller countries in South America to the east of Venezuela. He was fairly knowledgable about the whole journey we were about to make as he had obviously done it himself on numerous occasions and was actually doing the exact same route as mine although I was planning on stopping to see a friend in Valencia which we wasn’t so that would be where we would part.

So off we went, we got the minibus as usual to get to Santa Marta for the excellent price of 1,200 COP like 20pence or something compared to the 8,000 charged by a taxi. On arrival at Santa Marta I relaised I had nothing for my friends family I would be staying with so I ran into the supermarket and got some nice Chilean red and Argentinean white just hoping that they were into their wine!

From here we went to the terminal and bought tickets to Maicao, the border town for 65,000 COP. It seemed pretty pricey but that was the going rate so we agreed to get on the 9.30 bus and take the 4 hour journey to the border. I had a nice sleep pretty much the whole way trying hard not to inhale the nasty stench of bio and fags from Andy. I shouldn’t be so harsh because he was a very nice guy but just smelt a little. On arrival at the border we had the small issue of changing up money so since I had no COP (Colombian Pesos) Andy advised me to hop on a motortaxi and get to a bank as it was better to do this than change it in Venezuela or go to a cash point so I hopped onto the back of a motorbike and got some money. This place was HOT, on the bike I could practically feel the sun burning through my clothes! Hopefully more heat like this in Venezuela as most of you reading probably know I loooove the sun! The place was not the most exciting of places I’d ever been but one thing that stuck out to me was the huge minaret! I never would have expected a place of Jewish worship on the border of Venezuela and Colombia but perhaps it was due to the huge influx of Israleis that were there travelling and then settling down in Colombia. On return to the the terminal we were almost ambushed by people trying to get us in theiir bus or taxi! First we changed up out money which seemed to be a good exchange (according to Andy is was good so I was just going to trust him on this one since I wouldn’t have had a clue!). We then decided to take a large cadillac taxi with a couple of other Venezuelans to the nearest city of Maracaibo which was about 2 and a half hours drive. First though we had to get the stamps out of Colombia and into Venezuela. The stamp out was a fairly fast process (although they were examining and questioning something in my passport for a while which I had no idea why but eventually he stamped it and I was on my way. Even though I was rather wary when I saw the no guns inside this office sign I just couldn’t wait to get into Venezuela now, into a new country and see some new places! The stamp into Venezuela wasn’t quite such a speedy process with a long queue of people all of whom seemed to have some big issue and argument with the immigration officers. I guess it was to do with the tensions between the Colombians and the Venezuelans but i couldn’t be sure. At one point money was exchanged so I think perhaps there was some sort of bribery taking place! Anyway so again after some moments of the guy looking and questioning my passport and going through the all stamps (yes I have half a passport full of them now) he finally stamped it and we were on our way. Well at least I thought we were!

Andy had warned that there were many many police check points (something to do with the potential civil uprising against Chavez and military coup) as well as the fact that they probably wanted to interogate any unwanted visitors. After just 5 minutes driving in Venezuela, we were stopped for the first time. After browsing our documents for a while we were told to move on. This occurred perhaps every 15 minutes during the journey so we just couldn’t relax or rest as we constantly had to be having our passports to hand and ready to answer any questions they fired at us. At one stop (I think it was the official national guard office) when the guy asked for passports after a while examining mine he began asking questions, like where are you from (erm excuse me for stating the obvious but he had my passport in his hand although perhaps he couldn’t read the English or French that my nationality was printed in)! I said soy Ingles (I’m English) Irlandese he repeated, no Inglaterra (even the guy next to me said it with me who himself looked like a shady character!) Then came the most stupid question, so you speak English, yes I said in Spanish, I’m English! It was very patronising and very intimidating to be honestan not what I was expecting although I wasn’t feeling in the mood for talking back when he had a huge machine gun on his shoulder that he was tapping with his hand every few moments. Then he said hablas espanol (mas o menos) more or less i replied. Mas o menos he chuckled to himself as if to suggest you’re in trouble! Then came the questions where are you going and why and for how long. I just said Valencia porque tengo amiga ahi. Ah tienes amiga ahi si! He just seemed to like to repeat what I said in a mocking way and I was actually getting nervous and angry at the same time about where this was going! Then he picked on Andy, with the same questions although he also asked if we were family! Another pretty silly question since we were of different nationalities and looked nothing like each other although I suppose it was possible. SO you speak Spanish oui he said and everyone laughed. Wasn’t this guy a joker! Eventually he let us go and again we were on our way until the next stop.

All in all we must’ve been stopped about 10-15 times! I mean it’s a bit excessive really I think but you just got to cooperate and be nice to these people since they are just doing their jobs. Between the stops however, I can honestly say that the landscape and countryside was simply amazing, very flat land and very tropical, at one point it felt like we were driving through something out of apocalypse now *those of you who haven’t seen it, (come out of your cave now) the war film in Vietnam with forests of tropical palm trees. I’ve literally never seen so many palm trees, as far as the eye could see! Then there were some amazing sand dunes with rows and rows of dead tree trunks submerged. Then more tropical forest and more plains. It was strange not to see mountains for the first time in a while but it was a nice change and was completely different to any other South American country I’d so far been in! It was so beautiful and so diverse, I just wanted to take photos but with this shady looking Venezuelan to my left I thought better than to get my camera out now. Passing through small towns and villages, I could see that there was a lot of poverty in the rural parts and many old fashioned low rider cars that you’d expect to see in Cuba or Haiti. I was loving the car we were in though, even though it was old it still had electric windows in the back, it was very powerful and very quick and very spacious and comfortable! Our driver was clearly confident driving in these terrible roads seemingly getting pleasure from avoiding the huge cracks, holes and bumps in the road whislt narrowly dodging other oncoming vehicles as well as cows in the road like he was in a comuter game or something. In fact at one point, he was so far across on the other side of the road avoiding a bump on our side and an oncoming car was so far across on our side doing the same that I thought they would simply pass on the wrong side of each other but at the last second they both swerved to get on the right sides of the roads and nearly had a collision but just timed it perfectly so they dind’t this guy was clearly a pro!

So after about 2.5 hours involving some near misses, about 12 police stops and sitting between a shady hooded Venezuelan on my left and a smelly old Frenchman we finally arrived in Maracaibo. What a relief! In Maraciabo the thing that caught my eye most was a couple of really impressive looking stadiums next to each other presumably one for football one for baseball (the countries two biggest most popular sports). I also noted on top of a tall building the huge words Patria, Socialismo or Muerte! Meaning patriotism, socialism or death! This was the first piece of propaganda (I was wondering how long it was going to be). I couldn’t believe they were saying you risk your life if you don’t comform to the country code! I’d never seen anything like it! Chavez really did mean business here!

On arrival in the terminal we were again mobbed by a group of loud and angry bus operators who almost seemed to want to fight each other for our custom! We eventually bought tickets to get the same bus which worked out well which stopped at both Valenicia and Caracas which left at 8 giving us time to get some much needed grub and drinks.

So off we set on the 8 hour jouney to Valencia and 10 hours to Caracas respectively (Caracas is about 2 hours further east from Valencia). This meant that I would arrive at my friend Vanessa’s house at some stupidly early time in the morning so for me the later the bus left and the more delays there were the better. The bus eventually left at about 8.30 which was good for me as it was an extra half an hour in the morning. On the way out of Maracaibo (just before the bridge over the huge inlet to Maracaibo lake where one of the longest bridges in the world was, we were stopped again and everyone was made to get off the bus to once again show documents. At the entrance to the bridge was more propaganda saying Your president Hugo Chavez wishes you a pleasant journey which seemed like a nice touch to me but as Andy said its just a ploy to keep people on his side! I was hoping that perhaps that might be our last stop and I could hopefully I could get some well needed rest after a full day of travelling but nope we still had one more stop at 2am but they didn’t make us get off the bus this time which was kind of them! I just showed my passport with half an eye open, took it back and went straight back to sleep. The next moment I woke was seeing the sunrise at about 5.30am over the mountains of what I assumed must be Valencia judging by the time. Yes I was sure this was Valencia and as we pulled into the terminal and someone shouted Valencia I was positive. I was here, nervous, apprehensive but also excited about meeting Vanessa and her family and seeing her home and city. After a brief goodbye to Andy, I set about getting a taxi to the address of Vanessa where I would be staying for the weekend.