Across Venezuela

“Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it.”

We left our last magical ceremony in a hurry - 30minutes to the bus station, 2hours to Bogota, 15minutes to the bus terminal, we made it! Our bus to Venezuela was leaving at 9am, or at least that's what the website said... Turns out there are no more buses that go from Bogota to Venezuela. There's one that goes to Cucuta, which is at the border, then you have to cross the border by foot, and take another bus wherever you want to go. And the bus to Cucuta doesn't leave at 9am, it leaves at noon. So we waited... And after 14 hours of bus ride we arrived in scary border town. We took at taxi to Venezuela, and after waking up all the possible border guards we finally got our passport stamps.

We spent the next few hours at a dirty bus terminal waiting for the first bus, that would get us closer to Guiria. We had no Venezuelan money, so we tried to exchange some at the black market (the official exchange rate $1=2bolivars, and on the black market it can even be $1=5bolivars). Unfortunately the best rate we could get was $1=3bolivars, and since we needed money for the bus, we had no choice...
We ended up taking about 3buses, and a collectivo cab, which all lasted more than 30hours... People directed us to wrong bus terminals, and confused us, they tried to cheat us on the exchange rates, and in general it was a tough tough trip...

We were in a big hurry, because there's only one ferry that leaves Venezuela for Trinidad, and it leaves on Wednesdays. And on Friday we had a plane from Trinidad to St. Kitts.

We finally arrived in Guiria, overpaid for the night at a hotel, and woke up ready to leave Venezuela... Only that it turned out we didn't have enough cash to pay for the ferry!! What are we gonna do? Charging the tickets to our credit cards would be nonsense, cuz instead of paying about $120 for each ticket we would have paid $300... After one very stressful hour we convinced the cashier to issue us tickets, and let us pay in Trinidad, where crazy exchange rates are not an issue

Adios Venezuela!