TRAVELLING FROM CIUDAD BOLIVAR TO SANTA ELENA. (11/04/09)
We both know how lucky we are having the opportunity to travel the world for a year. However we thought we would share with you how sometimes it is not all waterfalls and wildlife.
In Venezuela especially travel by bus can be very confusing and very frustrating. The bus terminals are noisy, dirty, chaotic and to make it worse there are at least 20 different bus companies, none of which have permanant timetables and don´t let you book tickets in advance of the day you are travelling.
Anyway we had been to the bus station on the Tuesday before we visited Angel Falls and found a bus company running a bus to Santa Elena, our next destination, on Easter Saturday. Being that Easter is a very busy time we turned up early on the Saturday to buy our tickets despite the fact that we knew the bus did not leave until the evening. There were hoards of people around forming huge queues to closed ticket offices but we were confident which desk to approach and asked for our tickets in our best spanish. To our shock the lady behind the counter after ignoring us for 5 minutes just said NO! despite what we had been told on Tuesday.
This sparked a mad rush around the other desks claiming to have buses gong to Santa Elena but they all said no as if it was a rediculous question for us to be asking. In desperation Liz joined one of the big queues whilst Adam continued running around the other desks. After 45 minutes Liz´s queue had still not moved and Adam had got nowhere. Getting to the end of his tether Adam again approached the 1st ticket office to try to find out what had changed since Tuesday. Only to find a local buying a ticket for the 7.30pm bus. After that he was inexplicably able to buy two tickets for the evening bus with no problem whatsover.
We then returned to our hotel room, packed our bags and checked out. Having all our bags it was impossible to do anything else apart from go and wait for six and a half hours at the bus station. We managed to find a quiet, reasonably unused corner of the bus station but this didn´t stop us being harassed by various beggars, taxi drivers, tour operators and an insane ice cream sellar who tried to steal our bananas!
The hours passed very slowly and the paranoia grew as to whether the bus driver would accept our dodgy looking hand written ticket. One reassuring thought was that we had heard of the superior quality of the long distance buses in Venezuela, although we had been given the advice to take plenty of jumpers as the air conditioning was so fierce.
Once the bus arrived our relief from having our tickets accepted soon turned to dismay when we realised the bus was filthy, boiling hot and the air conditioning was broken. Having frantically tried nearly every window we found one that we could open, sat in our seats and were on our way. As we pulled out of the bus station and started to retrieve our books from our bags to entertain ourselves on our 12 hour journey all the lights went out on the bus and left us sweating in the darkness.
The bus stopped every hour for the 1st six hours for various reasons, which meant every time we managed to fall asleep we were soon woken up again by all the lights coming on. The worst of the stops was a military checkpoint at half past midnight when a soldier with a huge machine gun looked at our passports on the bus, then announced he had to take them off the bus. When he returned he ordered us off the bus to be checked by his superior. In the middle of the night and the middle of nowhere this was pretty terrifying but we did as we were told and everything went smoothly without even having to bribe the officials!
Finally getting to sleep after the buses last stop around 2am we were again woken up by another military check point at around 6.30am but their lack of interest in us and the daylight made it much less unpleasant. Unable to sleep again we watched the scenery go by until about 8.30am when tired and dirty, we finally arrived at Santa Elena 13 hours after we set out.
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