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Other entries in Santa Marta

Bumpy roads, a bribe and a new country

At this point I should just quickly sum up Venezuela. It´s a cool country with some class sights and some wicked animals to see. Inland it´s great, but the coastal areas are not so sexy (too much rubbish and not great beaches). The other thing is that everyone drives around in big old Septic cars. The reason they can do this is because the petrol price is unreal. At the time of writing it´s between 2 and 2.5 pence per litre. Anyway, it´s well worth a visit.

However, with so many countrys to see and only six months to play with, it was time to move on. Next stop Colombia and a bit of a trek by bus. The first bus was an overnighter and it was chuffing cold on that bus. Thank God for travel towels or else the one hours sleep I got would probably have been halved! You see, this driver didn´t actually mind that the condition of the road was far from perfect, or that a bus sways if you chuck it round a bend too fast, hell no, he went for it. Also, the film they showed was strange. It was a soft porn film that was absolutely rubbish. Still, I arrived three hours from the Colombian border before sun rise.

Next was an hours wait whilst we found three more people to share a taxi across the border. The taxi driver was a right twat and wouldn´t stop so I could get cash, cash that I needed to pay the departure tax to leave Venezuela. I told him so too, which didn´t make for the best atmosphere as I was sitting next to him for the next three hours. I didn´t realise that I´d need more than the money for the tax, money to pay the border guard for his lunch.

When we got to the border it was complete chaos. You had to go from one place to the next to get this stamped, and that paper, etc. The first thing was this border guy stopped the taxi, looked in and smiled saying "ahhhh, Gringitos". I had to go into a little shed and empty all my pockets and money belt, whilst he shut the door. He was loving it and after searching me he requested money for food. Now, you´re on the border and am shut in a shed with a Colombian with a gun, what do you do? I tried to give him the last bit of Venezuelan money, but he wanted dollars. I threw 2 dollars on the desk and thankfully he must have got bored and let me out.

Just after that I met another English guy who had been in Colombia for 6 months. I kept seeing him walk past, only to find out that his bus had left without him whilst he was getting his stamps! With his bag still on the bus.

After leaving the border it was a simple job of finding another bus for the last four hours to Santa Marta. Santa Marta is on the Carribean coast and would be home for the next 5 nights.