HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Arriving into Colombia
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Feeling blue
WORD OF THE DAY: I wish I was back in Africa
DISTANCE TRAVELLED:
We leave Venezuela after a great 13 days in this amazing country. Full of natural wonders, it was all I expected and more, except for Angel Falls, but I think I may have been a little too judgmental on that for some reason. But I have enjoyed my time here and if you are into birds, a “twitcher’, then you would love this country. We head into Colombia today, and this was going to be a highlight for me. How many people do you know have come here? It is a little mixed bag of the unknown except for coffee and cocaine which I don’t use either, but it just sounds ‘exciting’ doesn’t it! It is the last new country for me, as the tour finishes in Quito, Ecuador-where I have been already, so after 9 South America countries, this makes number 10.
With a border crossing today and a large distance to travel we leave the Adventure camp at 7am. It is a shame we didn’t get the free time we were supposed to here yesterday afternoon, but that is just the way it goes sometimes. They had a cute little puppy running around that was loving all the attention. It reminded me that Zeme and I are going to get a small dog when I move there and also of my baby puppy I left at home- Mr. Scooby Doo. I do miss that little guy.
On the drive this morning I started to look at options for my 4 weeks in the UK in August. I have Paps and Ems to catch up with and I am very thankful that I will be staying with them over some of the Olympic Games period, so I am saving a fortune not having to pay for accommodation which would be massive prices. To give me some ideas I pull out my Harrods 2012 hand diary, they have amazing maps in the back of the world and I just look at where I haven’t been and where I would like to go and somewhere that is feasible. So with that in mind I am looking at doing Greenland for 3 nights, back to London to visit Paul and Liz in Brighton for the weekend, another 5 days in London for visa’s and then on my way to Ethiopia I will go via Belarus, Moldova and Rome if I can see Massimo and Josephine and then finally into Ethiopia 4 days later than first anticipated on the 3rd September. I just need some internet to check how the flights would work, but I can’t see that being too tricky. So I will also need to check with everyone that they are still okay to have me stay and then I finally have the last of my world odyssey all wrapped up and hopefully booked in the next few weeks. It is hard to believe I will be home in 10 weeks. It is exciting. I get to see my god-daughters, my best friend and friends that I have missed every day I have been away. It gets me closer to Zeme’s arrival in Brisbane and then my departure again for my new life in Ethiopia. It is also sad. I have loved every second of my trip (well most of them), the freedom, the experiences, the meeting of new people and discovering new places, but reading that back I will be doing all that in Ethiopia anyways and with Africa on my doorstep, I can visit all those funky little countries from my new home, this travel bug will never die, mark my words on that. But Bernie’s World Odyssey will always be remembered and the reason it was undertaken in the first place and how it also could have been done. My mum is never far my thoughts and I still miss her every day.
We had one more stop before hitting the border controls today and Mark told us that once we leave Venezuela that their currency will be useless and not exchangeable, so at this stop we all had a mission to spend every last bolivar we had. I still had 320BOLS which is like 32AUD. I don’t mind leaving countries with a bit of the local currency, but even 32 was a bit too much for me to take, so with that in mind we walked the few shops that were there on the hunt to buy things without seeming like we were just wasting our money. In the end I bought 4 Eveready batteries for my head torch (that was genius), 2 bottles of 1L waters, 3 bags of Doritos (chips of choice on my Odyssey), 5 packets of look-a-like smarties, 2 cans of Pepsi, 2 packets of glitter, a 24 box of Ferrero Roche and a piece of pizza for 15AUD. Man I gave it a good crack and I was still left with 15AUD. Well that is better than 30AUD so I was happy to just take the notes as souvenirs and wear the loss.
The cracks are starting to show with the new group. We have had a tough last week. Long travel days, traffic jams, flat tyres, it’s really hot and things do start to take their toll. But this is where it sorts out the travelers from the tourists. There is a lot of complaining and whinging going on, to no fault of anyone’s and it is driving me N.U.T.S. There’s no use complaining about things that you have no control over (road conditions, traffic jams, weather) it is just plain craziness and not only are they ruining their own holiday but dragging people in with their negative thoughts. It feeds and grows and there is a magnet on the truck fridge and it says ‘never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups’. Need I say anymore? So much so to the extent that I have started to withdraw from the group and I am just biding my time till the end of the tour. If I didn’t do this I would be having a few things to say to people and this would just make things worse. I have tried to ‘offer it all up’ as some wise Irishman taught me in times like this and this time it just isn’t making the cut. I am fed up and I am ready to move onto my next section of the trip. It saddens me that after 130 odd days on tour, I haven’t made any lifelong friends or people that I would book a trip to see again (excluding Paul and Liz and a few exceptions, you all know who you are). I hate comparing this trip to Africa, as I think in some way it has made my expectations so high, that maybe no one could even get a look in anyway? But I miss my Africa crew. We had great people, considerate people, and I have made friends that I will never forget. I read in my Globetrotters book the messages that they wrote at the end of the trip and it gives me a heavy heart. Things could be worse, I could be at work, living a boring life, so I know I need to suck it up, but it is hard-really hard.
We had one more security checkpoint 20km before the Venezuelan border and they saw that one of Rosita’s tyres had a hole in it and we were losing air. So they would let us drive on till the tyre was changed, so we used this as a lunch stop and for those that still have BOLS could try one last time to rid of them. We arrived at the Venezuelan border town of San Antonio at 3pm. We parked in the city center and we were all wondering what was happening when Mark and Gray came back and said that you have to get stamped here in the city and then cross 15KM down the road for the crossing. Weird. But things had also changed and we all now had to also pay a departure tax of 90BOLS. I still had 130BOLS sitting in my purse. Well imagine the uproar when everyone had spent every last BOL! It was a little funny but you could also pay in USD, so it wasn’t a big deal, but it was funny all the same as it gave people something else to mouth off about. So we all had to walk to the departure tax office (small cubicle room facing the street) and once we had paid we got 3 stamps that totaled 90BOLS and then we had to walk across the road to the immigration office, stand in line, hand over the stamps and then they ink stamped our passports and back to the truck. I asked them if they would ink stamp my Globetrotters book and after some jib jabbing in Spanish the lady went away and came back with one of the departure tax stamps. It was too big to fit in the allocated spot, so she folded up into a small square, ripped out a glue stick and stuck it in. Well not exactly what I had in mind, but as Heather said it adds to the story, so I didn’t end up getting an ink stamp but I have something to show for my Venezuela box.
I’m not sure how Venezuela monitors the people departing as we didn’t get checked if we had stamps for the exit of their country. We pretty much just drove straight through to the Colombian border control where we had to line up for an hour to get us stamped into their country and we were on our way. As it was now past 5pm, Gray couldn’t clear the truck, so he will have to come back in the morning to complete that, which in turn means we will get a bit of a sleep-in tomorrow, so there’s the upside to the downside for today. The Colombian officials also wouldn’t stamp my Globetrotters Book. They were nice enough about it, but it was still a no. That’s okay, I’m hoping I will have time for a post office here and I can at least get a lick lick stamp in any case.
WELCOME TO COLOMBIA.
The geography of Colombia is characterized by containing five main natural regions that present their own unique characteristics, from the Andes mountain range region shared with Ecuador and Venezuela; the Pacific Ocean coastal region shared with Panama and Ecuador; the Caribbean Sea coastal region shared with Venezuela and Panama; the Llanos (plains) shared with Venezuela; to the Amazon Rainforest region shared with Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. Colombia is the only South American country which borders both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Colombia is located in the northwestern region of South America bordering to the east with Venezuela and Brazil; to the south with Ecuador and Peru; to the North with the Atlantic Ocean, through the Caribbean Sea; and to the west with Panama and the Pacific Ocean. Colombia is the 26th largest nation in the world and the fourth-largest country in South America after Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. Despite its large territory, Colombia's population is not evenly distributed with most Colombians living in the mountainous western portion of the country as well as the northern coastline, most living in or near the capital city of Bogotá. The southern and eastern portions of the country are mostly sparsely inhabited tropical rainforest and inland tropical plains containing small farming communities and indigenous tribes.
We arrived to Cucuta and the hotel just after 6pm and from the outside it looked like it was still under refurbishment, but once we walked in it was a small oasis. It had a lap pool, a large courtyard plus a great looking restaurant overlooking the pool and free WI-FI in the rooms. This is my kind of place. We have decided to shake up the rooming lists a little and tonight I was sharing with new Heather (there are 2 and the other one is now called Blue Heather) and we headed to our rooms to ‘jackin’ as H calls it for the spare 45 minutes we had before we were to meet the group in the lobby to cash up on Colombian Pesos and to get something to eat from the shopping center that was 6 blocks from the hotel. So anew currency and I am not that good at my 1750 times tables which is what we get for 1USD, so I will be rounding up to 2000 and that will make my life so much easier.
Cúcuta is a Colombian city, capital of Norte de Santander, in the northeast of the country. Due to its proximity to the Colombian-Venezuelan border, Cúcuta is an important commercial center. It is located at the most active international border in South America and is connected by roads with Bogota, Caracas and Cartagena. Its air terminal, the Camilo Daza International Airport is one of the most traveled in the country. It is situated in the Cordillera Oriental in the Andes and is connected with Venezuela through the Pan-American Highway. Its altitude is 320m above sea level. The city of Cúcuta was called San José de Guasimales from 1733 to 1793,[9] the year in which the name changed to San José de Cúcuta—"San José" (Saint Joseph) denotes the Virgin Mary's husband, and "Cúcuta" means "The House of Goblins", from the language of the Barí indigenous group.
The shopping center was just like home and we had 1.5 hours to get what we needed. I had Mark on the case with hunting down the Colombian sim cards for our phones. My German sim card doesn’t work here, so I will try one last time to get a South American sim card to work. Besides that I really didn’t need to get anything else so headed straight for the food court where I caught up with Sharon and Marina and got a mix grill of chicken and pork and it was the best damn meat I have had in weeks for the grand total of 22,000 pesos!!! Sounds a lot right and probably for South America it is but back home we would pay more than 11 bucks for what I had. I headed back to the hotel with Danielle earlier than the group meeting time of 9.30pm and got onto the internet and did some emails, uploading photos to Facebook and I have finally booked my accommodation in Barbados. Considering I am there in 3.5 weeks, I really needed to get that sorted so one less thing off my travel list booked with only flights and accommodation in Darwin and Melbourne to secure and my European component to sort I am more than halfway there.
A new country, a new roomy and I need to find my new lease of life for the next 18 days for the sake of myself and the group. Tomorrow is a new day; maybe things will look better then?
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