Pacaraima, Brazil.
The bus arrived late into Pacaraima so we just missed the border control office by 20 minutes, which meant that we couldn't cross the border into Venezuela. Luckily, we were with a Spanish guy who had been there before and he recommended a hotel to spend the night. He was also planning to go to Santa Elena the next day.
Pacaraima is a typical small border town with nothing much of interest, so we found a pizzeria and had an early night. Our hotel was very security conscious which should have made us feel safe but instead made us wonder what kind of people normally stay there... the air-con unit was chained and padlocked to the wall and the TV was enclosed in a steel case - so there was no getting that either!
After chatting with our Spaniard friend, we found out about the black market operating in Venezuela. In 2002/2003, the Chavez government fixed the official exchange rate at 1600Bs to the US dollar. This made it impossible for Venezuelans to exchange Bolivars for US dollars leading to a thriving black market. We took the Spaniard's advice and decided to stock up on Brazilian Reais and exchange them once we crossed the border. However, it wasn't an easy task! There was only 1 Bank in Pacaraima and it wasn't the most tourist friendly place in the world! Despite having about 10 ATM's, none accepted foreign visa cards for cash withdrawals. Failing that, we tried to cash traveler's cheques but they wouldn't do that either. So in a last minute dash to beat the Chavez system, we decided to go all the way back to Boa Vista - a 3 hour drive back to where we had just come from the night before!
In order to save time, we got a 'shared taxi' with two Colombian women. They were as mad as hatters - as was the taxi driver! Booting along the road at top speed, swerving to avoid the massive potholes, watching and listening to Bon Jovi on DVD attached to the dashboard - it was a journey to remember! The 2 Colombian women were singing away to their hearts content and gave us cans of 'Maltin' - a gross malt-based energy drink... as if we were going to fall asleep in that taxi!
Anyway the trip was a success. We got enough money to last us for a month in Venezuela. We knew it would be worrying having to carry so much cash around but hopefully he risk would pay off! After 8 months traveling we thought we knew our rucksacks pretty well, but it's amazing what ingenious hiding places you can come up with when the need arises! Next day, we crossed the border into Venezuela keeping a much tighter reign on our rucksacks that ever before!
Santa Elena de Uairén.
We had mixed feelings about crossing into Venezuela. Firstly, we were looking forward to being able to speak Spanish again and being understood occasionally! We had gotten by in Brazil with a mixture of Spanish / English / sign language! However, we instantly found it difficult to understand the Venezuelans - more so than in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. We put it down to the people themselves!
The Venezuelans didn't make any effort to speak ¨mas despacio¨ (more slowly) to help us. We also noticed that the people we met (taxi drivers, hotel staff, restaurant staff, internet places etc) were far less friendly than anywhere else we had been in South America. They didn't seem to want our business and we got the distinct feeling that tourists were not welcome. We didn't want to base our judgment of Venezuela on just a couple of days in the first town we visited, but so far the Venezuelans we've met are unfriendly, rude and unhelpful. Of course, there were some exceptions like Freddy, our driver for the Gran Sabana tour (see next section).
On our first night in Santa Elena, we feared the worst for our time in Venezuela. We were awoken suddenly in the middle of the night to the sound of smashing glass somewhere in our hotel. We sat up frozen in bed almost waiting for an armed robber to break down our door and demand our cash! We never found out what it was but the next night was peacefully quiet... nevertheless we still jammed a chair under the door handle to be sure! Maybe it was just our paranoia about carrying around a month's supply of cash or maybe it was as a result of all the horror stories of armed muggings, theft and rape that we'd heard from other travelers. However, most of those stories are centered on Caracas, so we changed our planned route to give Caracas a big miss!
Before moving on, we had to face the black-market money changers that are everywhere in Santa Elena. Although there were plenty of police around, they turn a blind eye to the black-market in the border towns. Our Spanish friend had changed money the day before so he advised us where to go for the best rate and the most security. He was a very handy contact because of his Spanish! We managed to get a really good rate for our Brazilian Reais, somewhere in the region of 60-65% more than if we had waited to withdraw from an ATM in Venezuela.... so the extra trip to Boa Vista definitely paid off!