Overland To Venezuela – The Saga

It should have been fairly straightforward.  Travelling from Colombia to Venezuela really should have been no more than a matter of getting on a bus at Santa Marta on the northern coast, jumping off briefly to get our passports stamped at the Maicao/Paraguachon border and jumping back on, but otherwise just sitting there for twenty hours until arriving in Caracas.  Not pleasant, exactly, but straightforward.

The first suggestion that it might not be that easy arose when a few rumours about recent trouble in the region drifted our way.  You know: paramilitary activity, murders, blowing up of border bridges.  The usual.  Some frantic googling turned up almost nothing about this – apparently it’s all too run-of-the-mill for any international papers to be bothered with – and certainly nothing about the border crossing situation, so we shrugged and headed to the bus station to book our absurdly expensive tickets to Caracas.

That was when the second problem reared its head:

“Where are you from?” asked the really quite efficient ticket man from the Amerluja bus company, one of only two that went directly where we wanted to go.

“Inglaterra,” we replied, expecting nothing more than a comment about the Beatles or David Bowie.

“To cross the border you need to have a flu vaccine,” the man said firmly.  “And a certificate to prove it.  No vaccine, no ticket.”

Obviously that’s the edited version, and it was all in Spanish anyway, but it took us a good long while to establish that he wasn’t talking about Yellow Fever, he wasn’t talking about Swine Flu (pork flu, I think was the term I used, but he seemed to get it); he really meant just a standard flu jab, and we would have to pay for it.  And he wasn’t budging an inch.

The reactions amongst the group were varied:

“I don’t want a flu jab!  If anyone’s going to get ill from a flu jab, it’ll be me!”  “I’m not getting a jab in bloody Colombia, of all places.”  “I had a flu jab two weeks ago; since when do you get a certificate for it?!  I can’t get two flu jabs in two weeks!”  “We have to pay for it??  No way!”

You get the idea.  The flu jab wasn’t going to happen.  Which meant that the direct bus, priced at 185,000 Colombian Pesos, wasn’t going to happen.  Which left us with doing the whole journey in bits, and taking our chances at the border.  But we took one precaution: the immoral and I’m sure highly illegal doctoring of our medical booklets.  I can tell you, searching for the exact brand of flu jab that you might have had in the UK isn’t easy, but in the end we went for Fluzone and, just in case, Pandemrix, the swine flu jab.

Off we went, in a taxi to a place on the outskirts of Santa Marta called Mamatoco.  Great name, hey? Taxis to here were 5,000; we took two – start tallying.  From here about a million buses were all headed to Maicao, and we jumped in a minibus for 28,000 each.  Three hours later we pulled up in Maicao bus termial; one of the dustiest, dirtiest and most manic border terminals I’ve ever been in, and negotiated a collectivo with what seemed to be about six different people who were tag-teaming at the peak of efficiency, for 20,000 each.  Still tallying?  Good.  Now, the collectivo was due to take us over the border and onwards for a few hours to Maracaibo, the next big city en route in Venezuela, and so we were quite surprised to find ourselves sitting in one of those gigantic American cars from the 80s, were the front seats are one long velvet-covered park bench.  All the cars out in this part of Venezuela are the same, and they are broken down, crumpled, bashed, battered and falling apart, and also frequently need hot-wiring to work in the first place.  Oh, and the floor was scalding.

So we arrive at the border and join the massive and slow-moving queue to stamp out of Colombia.  And here’s something I’ll say for this part of Latin America that I can’t say for anywhere else I’ve been out here: they do not take any rubbish from people trying to push in.  Oh, yeah.  If you think you can sidle into the queue at the front and no one will notice, think again.  You will be met with shouts of outrage and indignation, and then the security guard who you think is doing nothing more than power-tripping and smoking cigarettes will come along and push you to the back.  Fantastic stuff!  Is there anything more frustrating than queuing for two hours only to see people push in and be tolerated by others who don’t like confrontation?  Not okay.

Hours later, we reached the much quicker Venezuelan side where we all held our breath, expecting to be asked for our flu jab certificate.  I even had a bag of sterile needles with me in case our forging wasn’t good enough and we were pushed off to some dodgy clinic somewhere.  I’d heard a horror story about someone crossing a border on a bus and an official coming aboard and giving everyone a Yellow Fever jab – with the same needle.  But were we asked?  Even looked at a bit funny?  Nope, not at all.  We really didn’t need that jab, and anyone doing that journey shouldn’t feel like they should get it.  Maybe just indulge in some forgery, just in case.

Back in the old banger, our taxi driver was not happy at how long we’d taken.  Off we went to Maracaibo, sweating to death by the time we arrived and pulling into the most frantic bus terminal with the swishest buses ever.  There were hundreds of them – all doing the ten-hour overnight journey to Caracas, all of a really high standard, and all 70 Bolivars, which is about 30,000 Colombian Pesos.  We booked ourselves on one, and got some food.

That should have been the last of it, but in the end the bus was an hour late leaving, two and a half hours late arriving, and we had to change buses in some random town an hour away from Caracas.  Add to that getting our luggage scanned the second we arrived in the bus station and getting pulled over and searched in the taxi on the way to the hotel, and you officially have a drama, but we got there in the end.

So let’s just add that up, shall we?  That’s 80,000 pesos per person for the whole journey to Caracas, compared to the original ticket price of 185,000.  Frankly, the hassle was worth it just for that.  And of course we saved the 50,000 that we would have had to pay for the wholly unnecessary flu jab, and nobody got sick.  So I call that a win for us, and I’d recommend anyone to do it that way.  And really, when you consider the alternative, who wants to sit on the same bus for twenty hours, anyway?

Sophie Carville