Archive for June, 2004

Mérida, Venezuela, 2004-06-09

OK. I need to finish writing my last entry, I know.

In the meantime, I found these very nice pictures. If you look hard enough, you might see someone you know.

Thanks Graham.

That will be all.


Mérida, Venezuela, 2004-06-07

That sure was the most expensive bathroom trip of my life. Also I would say the most frightening one – though I could enumerate a few fairly scary runners-up.

I didn’t even get to piss. I just wasn’t in jail long enough to resort to pissing in the corners, and there certainly was evidence that some before me had. Of course, whether or not I did nearly piss myself, I had by that point completely forgotten that I needed to piss at all.

As I said, I took the mountain route into Venezuela to avoid all the horror stories of the coastal route. In fact, the border at San Antonio was even more sin problema as I had hoped. Taking a local bus from Cúcuta, I got off well before the border and hiked through the long horn-honking cloud of dust and deisel fumes. The traffic was bad, real bad, and I have a feeling I beat the bus across by at least half an hour. I was the only gringo in sight, something which can be a cause for caution indeed, but it also means that there was no noticeable “tourist industry” to hassle and or rob me. I got my Colombian exit stamp without being asked for a single exhorbitant exit tax, nor even having to wait in line. (Aren’t exit taxes a bit cheeky? It’s like, Come on, we’re such a nice country, we love visitors, have a great time! Only later it’s, Oh, you want to leave… ok, that’s fine, but, we actually did want to fleece some dollars off you. Yes, yess, in dollars please, our own crappy currency is useless. … Venezuela has a US$40.00 exit tax. Venezuela is kind of a shit hole.) Next came the bridge of doom. Both my guide book and fellow travelers had warned me of this, and it is honestly pretty impressive: apparently there’s a gang that hangs out on this bridge. They cause a distraction and some one bumps into you, knocking you off balance. Next thing you know your backpack is getting thrown over the side, and you’re going with it if you really want. Whoever is waiting in the dryish riverbed below will be happy to tell you the rest of what happens. Needless to say, I took the side of the bridge with the least traffic, walked very quickly, as far from the edge without being hit by the vehicle traffic as possible, and looked over my shoulder a whole lot. Whew! I made it.

Now, on to the nice big shiny glass building at the other end to get my tourist card and my entry stamp. Nope, I have the special priveledge to need to walk to some random office 4 blocks “pá’llá” and 6 blocks “pá’llá. This border crossing really wasn’t set up for gringos. That’s ok, because I found the office easily, got my entry stamp and my tourist card in under 90 seconds, and was on my merry way.

I changed $40.00 across the street illegally. These days in Venezuela Green-Backs change into nearly half-again as much money on the black market as they do by the official exchange rate. This is a sign of a very healthy, well-managed economy. What it also means is that Venezuela is an incredibly cheap place to visit, provided you bring US$ cash. I had stocked up in Panamá, where that’s what comes out of the machines whether you like it or not. I was pretty sketched about carrying a big wad of cash through Colombia, but that was do to pure ignorance. Colombia was totally tranquilo, what I needed to worry about was getting into Venezuela. You see: the Venezuelans, knowing their own situation quite well, have caught on quite easily to the fact the gringos tend to have lots of cash when they come in. This is why I took the less gringoed mountain route, and, in fact, the border crossing was fine as promised.

From San Antonio there aren’t any busses to Mérida, my only planned destination here in Venezuela. I had to take a bus to San Cristobal, about an hour away, and from there, should I arrive before 7:00ish, I can change busses and keep going. I got off, and right away I saw the bus for Mérida. It was the last one. It was leaving in 10 minutes. Perfect, I had time to take a piss, and so I entered the station. Scanning, scanning… yellow sign, “BAÑOS”, ok, there we go.

“Perdon, señor, passport check.” Huh? What? Ugh, cops. Fine, let’s play along so this is real quick and I don’t miss my bus. I gave him my passport. Oops, he walks into the little police office. He just needed to ask me some questions, standard procedure.

“OK, but my bus leaves in 10 minutes and it’s the last one.”

“Well, we’ll see how it goes,” he tells me, a look of really not caring on his face. “Sorry, we have instructions to search foreigners coming in from Colombia.”

I had heard about the number of times other travelers got searched entering Venezuela, so somehow I believed him. He searched all my things, and boy did he search them thuroughly. I was starting to think that he REALLY wanted to find something on me. He didn’t. So came the strip search. Since the police office was in full view of people walking past, he had to ask me to step into that little room, please. I was stupid, I am stupid, but I did it. I wanted it all to be over fast, I thought I still had a chance to not miss my bus. I took off my pants and my T-shirt. He searched them. Didn’t ask me to take off my boxer shorts, but he did need to see my money belt. I let him, and made sure to to watch very carefully. He gave every semblance of searching it for contraband, didn’t count my money or anything. That was a relief – I had heard of them trying to make up various taxes for bringing too much money in/out of Venezuela. He gave me everything back to put on. Everything was going to be OK. He even told me so. I was fine, no problems. He told me to put my clothes on and pack my bag all up.

“Just one last check of you name and all your data, and you’ll be out of here.” He leaves with my passport, closing the door to what was in fact the rather ugly, malodorous jail-cell he had searched me in. I got everything packed up, and then I was very pleased to find out that he had locked the door. Well, I’ve never been locked in a jail cell before, I thought to myself. I DO like to try new things, I mean, that IS that point of traveling. I was trying to stay calm, relax. Fifteen minutes later it was working less and less well.

They had my passport, I was locked in a jail cell.

J. Parandero, and I do believe that is what is name tag said, came back.

“I’m sorry, but where’s your visa?”

“What? Look, I have the stamp in my passport, and the toursit card. They didn’t tell me anything about a visa at the border. I thought United States citizens didn’t need visas.”

“Oh, no. This is bad. You NEED a visa when coming overland from Colombia. I don’t know why you didn’t get one at the border, but you need one. Just wait a minute, I’m going to see what I have to do.” He left again, locked the door again.


…TO BE CONTINUED…

(sorry, tired of staring a computer screen and thinking about lame things. probably best not to have read this now at all and waited for me to finish tomorrow. oh well, your bad)

Pamplona, Colombia, 2004-06-02

I caught a bus to Tayrona, accomapanied by Jeff, the Australian with a head of hair straight off Sideshow Bob. From the park entrance it was 10 minutes by jeep and 45 by foot to the beach. They really put a lot of work into the trails and everything, I was very impressed. The facilities at the beach were very nice, hammock space mainly, but they did supply good hammocks (so I didn’t have to use my dinky one). They probably could have accomodated 100X the crowd that was there that night. Might not have been able to feed them. They didn’t do too good of a job of feeding me, though I sure paid enough for them to. [Why is it that everywhere they charge SO MUCH for pasta? It’s probably the cheapest ingredients you could find, and the labor, well, tossing it in the water and then waiting can’t cost them that much either…]

After my Corcovado adventures I was worried that another national park on the coast would be a bit too much. But luckily it was very different landscape. Strewn around the hills and beaches were loads of well worn boulders, which exentuated the natural beauty of the beach and forest. Jeff and I took the 3 hour hike to ‘Pueblito’, the ruins of ancient city a few kms inland (…more like upland, steepupland…). It turned out to be a very small site with just a few crumbling walls, stairways, and circular platforms on which huts would be erected. There were, in fact, a few huts there erected and lived in by a family of authentic Tayrona Indians (with authentic mineral water and beer for sale). The part I liked the most about it all was that this family was the only other people there – that helped out the whole India Jones fantasy that had been started by the wild path up there; it was full of snakes (although all were way under 2 meters), flourescent lizards, bats, tunnels to climb through, and gaps between boulders to jump over.

If I wasn’t too lame, and wanted the REAL Indiana Jones fantasy, I would have done the Ciudad Perdida trek. The Ciudad Perdida was un-perdida in the 70s by grave robbers. Soon the word spread and other grave robbers came by. They didn’t all like each other and they were Colombian. In other words they had lots of guns and used them. Then the gov’t got wise and calmed that down a bit. I’m told that it is one of the best pre-colombian sites you can visit. I’ve also been told that it has similar architecture to Pueblito. The two reports seem to me to be a little contradictory. Of course, anything better seem good after 3 days hiking in the jungle to get there. The trek was higly recomended to me, but for right now it’s too much time, money, and too much jungle. Not to mention the inherit danger of hiking way out into the Colombian jungle. In fact, about 6 months ago a group was kidnapped on that very trek.* One thing I do regret is missing the visit to a little cocaine factory in which you get to see the fields and the whole production process. It’s not an advertised part of the package, but all the people who’ve gone speak highly of it. Yes, I asked, and no, there weren’t any free samples. They had to pay for them.

Anyway, I lamed out, and here I am on my way to Venezuela. I heard horror stories about the coastal route. One Japanese girl I talked in Panama City told of, after a terrible border crossing, having the bus stopped and searched ten times, one of which was a strip search. That sold me on the mountain route. Even if the border ends up being just as bad, I’m very happy I’ve come this way so far.

There didn’t seem to be any direct way from Santa Marta to Cúcuta at the border, so I hopped on a night bus to the nearest big city, Bucaramanga. Night busses are supposed to be nonoes in Colombia. Oh well, Scheiss drauf, if it’s a 9 hour ride and if there’s a night bus there’s just no better way to go. I did make sure to go with the company that I heard pays off various groups to leave their busses alone – something that must be reflected in the ticket price, and that’s ayokay with me. As soon as the terrible Hollywood action movie was over I slept like a baby, no fear in my soul. (No wonder there’s some many bandits here, they get paid to not do things!)

The guidebook informed me of a nice suburb of Bucaramanga called Girón. My plan was to spend the day there and look into getting to the border the next day. No point in rushing things.

Girón was much lovelier than it was made out to be. The whole place was just winding cobblestone streets lined with little houses, all of which were painted white and had dark red tile roofs. It was a great effect in the morning light with the mountains in the background. But, Girón was tiny and after I was lovlied out, there wasn’t much to do. So, I pressed on to Pamplona, 4.5 hours down the 6 hour road to Cúcuta. A road that no one told me would be so amazingly scenic. After winding precariously up steep green valley slopes for the first two hours we reached a high plane. It looked just like the Andean Altiplano I had seen in pictures. And then I realized it was Andean Altiplano. There was something strong about making that connection with a place I considerred to be such a distant foreign thing and what I was actually seeing. It was like comparing it to the pictures in my head really made me feel for the first time that I’ve gone such a long way from home. We stopped for lunch and I asked a food server the altitude. 3600 meters! The lack of trees had been suggesting to me the we were up-there, but whew! This close to the equator agriculture seems to do surprisingly well at that hight.

Next we descended to Pamplona. This is supposedly the oldest town in the northern Andes, and was a major base for Spanish expansion in the area. Doesn’t look like it’s grown much since then, something in its favor, I say. The university here takes up about a tenth of the city, so it’s got that young, smart, college feel. Along with some nice old buildings and a magical mountain setting, it makes for a pretty good stop over. Good capuccino too. How else do you think I could concentrate long enought to write all this crap?








*I do seem to remember hearing something about that in the news. Something about some British bloke escaping in some heroic adventure. Well, fascinatingly, I met a freelance reporter in Taganga who was here working on various stories about local Indians. In the process of her research, she found out from people who lived in that region that in fact the British guy was lying; what they knew, they told her, was that he actually either got sick or faked it well, and they let him go. Furthermore, various parts of his story, when compared to the actual terrain it is to take place in, simply don’t make sense. But that’s ok, everyone needs a story to sell the rights to.