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)

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