We left Maicao early in
the morning and after less than 30 min we reached the Colombian side of the
border. Once there we stood in line to get stamped out of the country, but the
girl behind the window told us: “do you guys have a hotel reservation for your
whole stay in Venezuela or a letter of invitation from a Venezuelan citizen to
visit the country?”. At first we had no idea what she was talking about,
because we didn’t have any of those things of course. Apparently there was a
new law (not even a month old) that requires ALL US citizens to have one of the
two things mentioned in order to visit Venezuela. They call it reciprocity and
many countries are doing it because we make it really hard for many countries
to visit the US, so they are doing the same thing to us. Shit!
The lady said to go
talk to the Venezuelan border agents first, because it was a very new law, and
see if they would let us in without those things. If they say yes, she will
stamp us out, because if she does it first, and they don’t let us in, it is a
pain in the ass to get that stamp lifted and get into Colombia again after we
have already left. So we ran to the Venezuelan side of the border and stood in
line for about 2 hours. Once we talked to the agent, indeed he told us that
without a notarized letter of invitation or a paid hotel reservation we could
not enter their country. We argued for a while but to no avail. Their boss, a
really nice lady actually, finally talked to us and explained why they have
that new measure against US citizens, and deep inside, you can’t but agree that
we deserve it, and it was not really a big deal, because she said all we need
is a hotel reservation for 3 days and we can enter.
We left the border and
came back to Maicao for the night and to find an internet place where we could
book a hotel and print out the reservation. Well, this was “Semana Santa”, and all the damn hotels were booked!!! The only ones that were not
totally booked were the ones that charge you more than 100 bucks a night. After
several hours of unsuccessful searching we gave up and called my mom in Chile. She
has a hostel there and we thought that maybe she knows somebody in Venezuela.
Well, she didn’t know anybody there but she said that she could find us a cheap
hotel. She is very good at these things! 20 minutes later she calls me back
with a hotel reservation, which she sent to my email address so I could print
it. And she found a hotel that charged less than 10 bucks a night. Thank you
mom!!!! I really don’t know what I would do without her!
The next morning we
went to the border for the second time and we got stamped out of Colombia. Then
we went to the Venezuelan side and stood in line for more than 5 hours, in the
sun, to get stamped in. The line was more than a block long!
People in line
waiting to get stamped in, and it was a very hot day!
Once at the window, the
asshole remembered me from the day before, and said that we could not get it! I
handed him the hotel reservation and all our papers and told him that yes, we
can! He called another guy and after arguing with both of them for a while, and
mentioning to them what their boss told us, and also after hearing everyone in
the line yelling “let them in!” once they saw that we were having problems (the
people in line were really nice), they stamped us in and we were allowed in
Venezuela!
We ran to get Pichula
and Cubby and drove through the border line. I think because it was Semana
Santa, it was really busy.
Look at all these old cars trying to get into
Venezuela!
By that time it was
getting really late, because we spent so long at the border. Jocelyn went to
change some money with some people that had a food stand and got like 3 times
more money than we thought we would (we learned that quickly. It is called the
black market). Then we drove for like an hour or so, which doesn’t mean much
because the roads are so bad that we only went like 15 miles in that time. Then
we saw these little kiosk thingies with gasoline bottles, so we
stopped there because we were running low, and in the border towns, as a
tourist you cannot put gas in your tank, because each car has a magnetic band
that is passed in front of a machine, for the gas pump to even work. It is a
problem because many people cross to Venezuela to fill up with gas and then to
back to Colombia. So in other words we were out of luck until Maracaibo, which was
still a few hours away.
Roadside kiosk selling
gas.
I pulled over and
talked to a lady that told me she was Guajira (the local indigenous people
there). They know that you are shit out of luck so they sell you the gas REALLY
expensive! Go figure, expensive gas in Venezuela! Anyway, she charged me $30
for 5 gallons of gas. Yeah, that is expensive even in Europe. At the exchange
rate we got at the border, it was more like $10, so I just paid her because with the gas we had I
was never going to make it to Maracaibo, where the gas pumps are open to
everyone.
Then she said that
driving at night in Venezuela was very dangerous and that we should stay at
their village, in front of their house, for the night. After weighing my
possibilities I agreed and drove the rig to her house, where I first puncture a
tire with a piece of glass that was on the ground. It was too late and dark to
fix it so we just parked right there. They came later with coffee and chairs
and the whole family sat with us and talked for several hours about Venezuela.
I learned a lot about what the local citizens think about Chavez (who had just
died a few weeks before we arrived there) and about life in Venezuela. We had a
very nice conversation and then went to bed.
The next morning I
started to fix the tire, and two of the kids showed up to help me. The
smaller one was trying really hard to help!
Two local kids
and my ass, replacing the tire. By the way, now, more than 2 months after I
broke it crossing Panama, it still hurts and I have a bump where it cut the
muscle!
After like 20 min we
got everything done and then the family called us to their house for some
coffee before leaving. Except for the price of the gas, these people were
extremely nice and friendly, and I had the greatest time talking to them!
The whole
family. Jocelyn bent her knees so I could be seen in the back.
We said goodbye and
continued our journey on that very crappy road! It took us quite a while just
to go a few miles.
In English, this sign reads "GOD HELP ME FRIED FISH"
We filled up with gas
in Maracaibo and continued towards Merida. Oh yes, the gas in Venezuela is
extremely cheap. We filled up the tank (about 20 gallons) for roughly 50 cents!!!
On our way to Merida we
passed through the highest highway point in the country, and there were a lot
of people on the road as well.
Driving against
traffic? And is cubby sleeping???
This point is at about
4200 meters, which is more than 12000 feet! Until that moment, it was the
highest we had been on this trip, and with my panic attack issues, I was
feeling a little uneasy, so I didn’t really want to stop there for long at all!
Highest highway
point in Venezuela
Parque Beethoven
We went to the local market that evening and saw a stand that was selling the most disgusting shit ever! It was a milkshake with all kinds of things in it, fruit, alcohol, milk, fish eggs, and lots more. Here is a pic of the sign with all the crap it contains:
The next day we
realized that the town was so busy because of Semana Santa, so we decided to get the hell out of there and go to a national
park nearby called Sierra Nevada for the rest of the week.
We drove there but the
road to the park was really steep and narrow, so many times I had to stop and
move over almost to the edge of the road to let other vehicles pass from the
opposite way. That was very stressful and even a bit scary at times, but we
finally made it there, paid out $4 fee for both of us to get in, plus $1.5 to
for every night (really cheap) and found a really nice spot to park the rig.
We ended up staying
there for about 5 days, hiking the park a lot, talking to other travellers, and
just enjoying the piece and quite that sometimes I need after stressful
driving. This park is amazingly gorgeous and it was the highlight of Venezuela
according to me.
A beautiful
view of the Sierra Nevada
hiking in the park
But we could not stay
there forever so after the 5 days we returned to Merida for one more day
and spent one last night at the
Beethoven park.
The next morning we
left Merida and headed for another park that we heard was also really pretty,
and with nice beaches: Morrocoy. The drive there was to take most of our day.
Driving on that road was another thing though, there are holes everywhere
warned by signs as: “Geological faults”, which literally means just a gigantic
hole in the middle of the road. And I don’t mean a big pothole; I really mean a
hug ass piece of the road missing! Sometimes I thought the camper was not going
to make it, and that one of the tires was going to fall in the hole, and down
we would go, ending our trip and our lives there!
an average
example of a geological fault
In Venezuela, if you
are driving with a camper behind, you will get stopped by the police about
every 15 minutes; sometimes to ask you for all your papers, and inspect the
camper inside, and sometimes just to ask you what the hell you are towing. So,
in reality, a trip that is to take 2 hours, ends up taking about 4, because of
these constant police check points! And in this particular district, they had
even more police checkpoints than usual and probably different laws as well. I
was in the middle of driving, and the road in this particular section had two
lanes going each way, so it was much easier to pass. I passed a couple of
trucks on the left and then came back to the right lane. There was a police
check point and the cop there saw me doing this maneuver and pulls me over. He said:
“I don’t know how you do things in the US, but here in Venezuela you have a
trailer and you cannot drive on the left lane!”. Now, I know I am not
considered a heavy vehicle and even when we entered the country and were issued
our vehicle permit and insurance, in both documents we are classified as a
light vehicle. I tried to explain that to me but he would not listen. I also
tried to explain that I was not driving on the left lane, but just passing a
few vehicles and then going back to the right lane, which is exactly what he
saw me do and I even signaled the whole maneuver! There was nothing I could
say, he was just acting like a jerk and was going to give me a ticket. I got out of the car and went into their
mobile office (a trailer) and there the discussion got heated. At some point he
told me I was innocent until proven guilty, so I said, ok, I want to see the
judge. He said that there was no judge, and that he would give me a ticket and
then I had to go pay it! That’s when I lost it. I yelled at him and said that
how dare him say that if there is nothing I can do to prove my innocence, and
that I was guilty from the moment he stopped me and that there was no innocent
until proven guilty shit! We started screaming at each other and at some point
the argument shifted to how much the US sucks and this and that, until I thought
we were actually going to get physical! At some point he said something about
the US that I agreed with, so I told him that in that particular subject he was
right and that I wasn’t going to argue with that. He suddenly calmed down,
looked at me, looked at the ticket he was going to write, took a deep breath
and said: “Well, I will let you go this time, but please don’t drive on the
left lane”. The whole thing was really like out of this world, and even as I got
back in the car I was thinking: “what the hell just happened”???
A few minutes later I
was passing another set of trucks (they drive amazingly slow!) and to my dismay
there was another police control point! They saw me doing that and the ask me
to stop. Now, there was a cross walk there and I thought first he was asking me
to stop so people could cross the street, which is what happened, but after
that he points to me and moves his arm towards his back, like telling me to go. I wasn’t
sure, so I stopped after I passed by him and looked on the rearview mirror. He
didn’t move, so Jocelyn said that she was sure he was telling me to just keep
going. So I sped up and left. Not 10 minutes later, as we are approaching another
police check point (yeah, they literally are everywhere!) a police car with the
lights on gets in front of me and asks me to pull over, where the check point
was. I did and a cop comes over screaming:” A police officer back there asked
you to stop and you did not obey and drove off!”. I tried to explain that I did
not understand his hand signal, and that were I come from, when a cop wants to
fucking pull you over, he makes it VERY CLEAR that you have to stop, and doesn’t
do confusing hand gestures that you can take as “keep going!”. By that point I
was getting sick of all that shit. He said that they would take my license and send
me to the command office or some sort of crap like that. I told him to do
whatever the hell he wanted. He left and went to where all the other cops and
police cars were. We waited like 30 minutes and nobody ever came back. After
another 15 minutes or so, I saw the cops taking the cones off the road and one
by one the police cars were driving off. I got out of the car, walked to the
last police car, and asked one cop about my situation, about what was going to
happen with us and shit. He said: “why didn’t you stop when the police officer
asked you to?”. Once again I repeated the story that I thought he was telling
me to go. From inside the car, someone said: “please follow us in your vehicle
and we’ll drive to where that officer is, so you can explain to him that it was
a mistake”. I thought “you got to be shitting me!”. But as it was a chance to
get out easily I said sure, let’s go. I followed them for about 5 minutes when
they pull over on the side of the road, me behind them, and one of them comes
to my car with all my papers and said that it was all a mistake, that they
understand it is two different countries and that hand signals are different
and shit, and that it was all cool, and that I could go, and gave me my papers.
Well, that was just too much, so I laughed, thanked him, took my papers, and
drove away!
Later it became clear
to me that, as a tourist, I don’t have a local ID number (like a social
security number in the US) where they could find me in their system and give me
a ticket and a trial or whatever, so there was just nothing they could do! And
to not go through all the trouble, for nothing really, they just gave me my
crap back. This has been probably the one day in my life when I get pulled over
so many times, and escape the police, and don’t even get a ticket!
We finally arrive to
Morrocoy, which ended up being a very ugly place. It was next to a petrochemical plant and a sewage treatment plant, and the beaches were full of
brown sediments and you really didn’t want to swim there. So we did not stay
there to enjoy the beach or anything, just continued on to Coro.
Coro was awesome!!! The
colonial town is a world heritage site and it is simply amazing.
entrance to the
old town
There was so much to
see here and there was so much history and beautiful architecture! Many famous
heroes lived there, like Simon Bolivar and others. You could feel it in the
air. Coro is a must-visit for all
travellers.
Cubby in the
old town
View of the town from Bolivar’s house.
Later we stopped at a town called Adicora for
a couple of days of beach and sun, but before arriving there we stopped on the
side of the road to pick up some sea salt!
Collecting sea
salt. Best salt ever!
In Adicora we didn’t do
much of anything but to just chill and enjoy the beach, except maybe when I
helped a crab that was wondering in the streets, to go back to the ocean.
There apparently is the
parasailing paradise, because we saw many people doing that, and it was funny
to see them fall, hahaaa.
On our way to the
border to exit the country, we were stopped at another police check point and they
asked us if we could give 3 cadets of the National Guard a ride to their home
town, which was near the border crossing. We did that and talked with the kids
about many things along the way. People in Venezuela were nothing but friendly
and Venezuela does not deserve the bad reputation it is given in the US. What governments do,
it is not what the people are, it is just that simple. Venezuela was amazing,
and I really want to go back there sometime.
Crossing the border
back to Colombia was quite an adventure, because we did it not even knowing we
were crossing, and nobody told us, so we were illegals in Colombia for a couple
of days, but all that is for the next post, so stay tuned!
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