Backpacking in 'no-go' Venezuela

During my recent 16-day visit to Venezuela, I had a host of people asking me, "What's it like 'for real'?" I'm still getting asked that since my return.

Via an article in The Irish Times I did touch on a number of the everyday issues that Venezuelans are currently facing.

Party border.

Here, I want to describe things from the point of view of entering the country overland as a tourist, which is effectively what I did.

Visa issues in Colombia meant I had to do a border-run and while I could have opted for Ecuador, Venezuela appealed far more to the adventurer/journalist/reporter in me. From that perspective it was like having the World Cup on my doorstep. I couldn't not go, especially now that I had the visa excuse.

Don't go

For sure, it wasn't a decision I took lightly. Not only was I strongly advised against it by a high-up diplomat friend at our Irish embassy in Mexico, but even some Venezuelan acquaintances here in Bogotá thought it wasn’t the best idea.

On top of that, there were the daily news reports on Colombian media that made the place seem akin to hell on earth. Only a lunatic would consider a holiday there, especially doing it overland.

What made me feel a little bit more relaxed about going were the messages from my friend Yessi in Caracas. I'd stayed with her and her family for my previous visit back in December 2015.

This time Yessi told me that while the situation for Venezuelans on the ground was more desperate due to, amongst other things, the hyperinflation and food shortages, in terms of security it wasn't much different. And it was this, safety, that concerned me most.

So with Yessi's somewhat reassuring messages and, more importantly in terms of giving me the final push to go, an arrangement that her cousin living in the Venezuelan border town of Colón would accompany me from Cúcuta across the wild frontier, it was, 'Venezuela here I come'.

A cash-laden sitting duck

I was, I have to say, quite nervous thinking about what lay ahead during the 15-hour bus journey from Bogotá to Cúcuta. Arriving in Cúcuta, that apprehension worsened on receiving WhatsApp messages from Yessi's cousin informing me that she couldn't meet me in Cúcuta.

What's more, she asked me to go to a different border crossing to the one I was familiar with in San Antonio. It all sounded a little too complicated.

In any case, Erika from the money exchange office I used at the bus terminal in Cúcuta wasn't sure if I could get my passport stamped at this other border crossing.*

I decided I'd go it alone to San Antonio.

Getting the Venezuelan entry stamp.

The 'What am I doing?' thoughts ramped up further still at the money exchange. On discovering I had emergency US dollars and euros on me, alongside a decent amount of Colombian pesos, Erika told me I'd have to hide everything exceptionally well.

She relayed stories of Venezuela's infamous Guardia Nacional (National Guard) recently strip-searching people, looking for their hidden foreign currency, pretty much essential for any visitor to survive economically in Venezuela. I'd faced the intensity of the Guardia Nacional before, but the way Erika was speaking, it seemed like things were far worse.

My suggestion to hide the cash in my shoes, as I'd done before, was "too obvious" she said.

Thus, for the good part of an hour we carried out surgery on the Lonsdale tracksuit bottoms I was wearing in order to make places to hide the cash.

Incidentally, based on Yessi's advice, I only changed a small amount of cash, 50,000 Colombian pesos (COP), into bolívares. I received slightly less than 10 million, about 60 per cent of the value you'd get for doing a black market bank transaction, which is what most Venezuelans exchanging foreign cash do. 

They send the money to a Venezuelan bank account. Due to the shortage of bolívares, you don't get the full value making cash-for-cash exchanges. 

That aside, with the foreign currency hidden on my body as best we could, I took a shared taxi to the border.

Fiesta frontier

The first thing that struck me on arrival was how lively it was. Street vendors and tiendas blaring out music catering to thousands of people. It was like a little city of its own. 

This was completely different to the last time I crossed. It was more like a funeral procession back in 2015. The liveliness of it put me at ease, even if I did seem to be the only foreign face about.

After queuing for about 90 minutes to get my Colombian exit stamp — unfortunately on the Colombian side it's the same queue for those entering and exiting, so I was lumped with all the Venezuelans going the opposite way — I walked across Puente Internacional Simón Bolívar, the bridge over the River Táchira, the divide between Colombia and Venezuela.

On my previous visits, the office to get the Venezuelan entry stamp was in the middle of the town of San Antonio. Keeping myself to myself, I headed that way, but not before a Guardia Nacional checkpoint. I mentally readied myself for a very thorough inspection.

To my pleasant surprise, the rather pretty lady officer barely opened my backpack. A more chilled-out Guardia Nacional, I couldn't believe it. She was even quite friendly! 

When I asked her about my entry stamp, she told me that I'd already passed the place, and I better hurry as it would soon close (it was getting late). The office is now right on the border, just as you come off the bridge; much more conveniently located.

On the Venezuelan side there is a separate queue for those entering as opposed to those leaving. There was, unsurprisingly, nobody in the queue for entering, so I got my stamp in seconds. (It's important to note here that there wasn't much of a queue for leaving either. Two weeks later, when I was leaving, this had dramatically changed.)

With my passport stamped, I passed by the Guardia Nacional checkpoint again where my friend waved me on. OK, I'd only just entered the country, but I was already beginning to think, 'What was all the fuss about?'

On failing to reach Yessi's cousin from a minutos stand (a person on the street with a mobile phone you can use, charged per minute) I decided I'd go to San Cristóbal that night, a place I knew relatively well.

All this time, the fears I'd had about visiting Venezuela were decreasing. As in previous visits, a big factor in this was down to the friendliness and helpfulness of the locals.

For example, the minutos guy helped me board the right bus to San Cristóbal and told me exactly how much I had to pay. Laden down with over ninety 100,000 bolívar notes, I was still trying to figure out its value. (As it turned out, the bus from San Antonio to San Cristóbal cost 250,000 bolívares. Using the exchange I got, that worked out at about 1,200 COP, or 35 cents in euros. Pretty cheap for a 90-minute bus journey.)

Crazy currency

It was well into darkness, about 9 pm, when I reached San Cristóbal. Bus terminals pretty much anywhere aren't the safest places, especially at night, but I'd always stayed close to the one in San Cristóbal on previous visits and I'd had no problems.

Considering the time, I took the first place I found. "How much?" "5,000,000 bolívares." 

With the exchange I got in Cúcuta, that was over 25,000 COP, expensive for what was a very basic place. I'd basically spend more than half my bolívares on one night and I still needed cash for my bus ticket to Caracas. "How much is it in Colombian pesos?" "5,000." "What?!"

I obviously paid with my pesos! I'd soon discover that when paying in cash with your Colombian pesos, one million bolívares equals 1,000 pesos. So it was much better for me to use my pesos for everything save transport, which was either cheaper in bolívares or more or less the same.

Take a 222 ml Polar, the tipple of choice for Venezuela's beer drinkers. It costs between 800,000 and 1,000,000 bolívares. With the exchange I got, that would make a bottle cost about 5,000 COP, pretty expensive for a small beer. Yet paying in pesos, it's just 800 to 1,000 COP. Madness.

Once I'd got my head around the money, knowing my pesos made me rich in San Cristóbal and meeting yet more friendly locals, I ended up staying three nights there. Even though many employees in the food stands and bars around the terminal told me to be careful, I never felt anything untoward.

On the contrary, I was having a great time being the 'only foreigner in the city'. At least it felt that way anyway.

Facing down the Guardia Nacional, Irish style

In fact, the most, nay the only, intimidating, uncomfortable experience I had was on the overnight bus from San Cristóbal to Caracas. 

I was preparing myself for it in fairness. Experience had taught me that Guardia Nacional checkpoints on busses heading deeper into Venezuela are where you tend to meet the meanest officers.

Thus, just after the city of Barinas, half-way on the journey to Caracas at about 2 am, came the Guardia Nacional treatment I'd been expecting. You might avoid them on the street, but there's no hiding on a bus.

Being a foreign-passport holding man (I'm not sure how women fare) means automatic selection for a bag and body search. Unlike other times, I actually had Venezuelan company on this occasion. With the other four lads, it kind of felt like safety in numbers.

Wearing the remodelled, money-laden Lonsdale tracksuit bottoms again, before alighting from the bus, I hid a 'dummy' 40,000 COP in my boxers. The reason: I figured the young officer would expect to find foreign cash on me, so I thought I'd let him do so with some relatively easily.

After meticulously revising all our bags followed by an equally thorough frisking, especially around the groin and hip areas (but not my shoes, damn Erika!), the officer let the other guys back on the bus. I was held back.

"What's the money you've got hidden around your boxers?", he asked. "Has he felt my neatly concealed dollars and euros?", I wondered, the heart beating a little more intensely. "Surely not, but they are in that area."

I pulled the 40,000 COP from my boxers, explaining that I live in Colombia and this was left over cash.

He walked me to a different area, where another two guards, one clearly being the head honcho, were waiting. I felt like it was a scene from a Tarantino movie. All the seated sergeant was missing was a fat Cuban cigar. I was asked yet again to empty my pockets.

"What do you think of President Trump?" the boss man asked with a grimace. "I'm Irish. Trump means nothing to me." "Ah, you're Irish. Ireland is a friend of Venezuela, isn't it?" "Of course!"

With that, he let me on my way, but not before taking a small packet of chewing gums I had. I didn't protest about that. 

My next Guardia Nacional experience would come at the border back in San Antonio, where I stayed for two nights waiting, in vain, for the ridiculously long (a 10-hour wait at least) exit-stamp queues to die down. And I can happily say that those who I dealt with there were cordial. One even let me film the queues on my phone on my first evening there (officially, recording was prohibited). 

On the return journey from Caracas to San Cristóbal there was a Policía Nacional, National Police, checkpoint. 

This arm of Venezuelan law enforcement was far more even-handed than the Guardia Nacional. Everybody on our overly-crowded minibus (transport options departing Caracas were thin on the ground; it was a case of taking whatever you could find), women included, was asked to get off and we all had our bags searched, but not our bodies.

Beer: Payment in kind

As for Caracas, staying with my family in their working-class barrio, I had a great time. The only inconvenience was not really being able to spend my own money.

It wasn't all hard work in Venezuela.

The Colombian peso is less accepted there compared to the border regions. Also, with hardly any bolívares available, alongside needing bag loads of them to pay for just the cheapest of items, the majority pay for things by card. Without a Venezuelan bank account, that option wasn't open to me.

So my hosts pretty much paid for everything. On departure I paid them in dollars, money they can get very good value for on a street market transfer or the like (one dollar is currently at 3.8 million bolívares on the black market).

I did also buy three crates of beer — to share, of course — from the local tienda, the owner there was happy to take my pesos. 60,000 COP in Colombia is just one good night out in the local barrio. The equivalent price of the beers in bolívares, 60 million, is twelve-times the monthly minimum wage.

In terms of security in the capital, I never felt uneasy. 

Now, it is important to note here that at practically every moment I had someone from my Caracas family by my side. It might be a different experience for a foreigner wandering around the place on his/her own, taking public transport, availing of the free metro, that kind of stuff. But maybe not.

Of course with no end in sight to Venezuela's major problems, there are similar, less complicated places to visit. There's Colombia, for one. It's just the Venezuelans are friendlier. Relax, it's a joke!

*Erika's money exchange office, located in Cúcuta's main bus terminal at Local N1-90, is called 'Luna' and she can be contacted on +573163228453.
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2015: finding the positives from a difficult year

2015. Best summed up as a year I'd largely like to scrap from the memory bank. Any time you lose a loved one is never easy; this is made even more difficult when it's someone who left this earth way before her time, someone who had so much more to give.

Yet, in some small tribute to my sister Lynda, a person who could find the good in the bad and who displayed great mental strength and positivity where others would have wilted, here I'll go through the personal and not-so-personal plus points of the year as we prepare to bring it to a close:

Happier times ...

Family first

We weren't to know the hammer blow that was coming, but a family reunion in February to celebrate our parents 40th wedding anniversary provided the opportunity to get all of us together.

 

It also coincided with a belated 30th birthday for yours truly. Considering what transpired a few months later, this happy get-together has taken on an even greater significance. We'll always have the memories.

IQuiz holders going into 2016.

IQuiz Bogotá is born

The seeds of the idea to get this going actually came from the February trip home. A night at a pub quiz during my two weeks in Ireland reminded me of how much I enjoy them — even if I seldom win. 

So on return to Bogotá, in partnership with my Dutch mate Pieter, we set about creating our own quiz night in the Colombian capital. So far it's been eight down and not out.

OK, Pieter may have departed the Bogotá scene, but the hopes are that IQuiz will return in 2016 in some shape or form — minus the promotional videos that is.

Extending the extended 'family', Venezuelan style

It was with much curiosity and a touch of apprehension that I took up a friend's invite to visit her and her family in Caracas. Yes, I've been to Venezuela before, but not to the 'bloody' and 'dangerous' capital city with a heated election taking place.

What I found there was what pretty much felt like a home from home. My hosts were extremely accommodating and great fun, representing in a way all that's good about Venezuela and its people.

The country may be in a bad state politically and economically — the latter making it cheap to visit when entering with foreign currency — but if you are willing to take the security risks there are decent rewards.

The Venezuelan family!

Come on you boys in green

Europe's big international summer football (soccer) fest returns next year and Ireland, for the first time ever, will be represented on the double. Both Northern Ireland and the Republic, in varying degrees of impressiveness, booked their places at Euro 2016, so what could be seen as a D-Day-esque invasion of green-clad supporters awaits France in June. 

Now, while the Republic really only made up the numbers at the previous renewal in 2012, and did so very badly at that, it's nice to have the chance to mix it with the 'big boys', times two as it is, all the same. Just ask the Dutch (or Scottish).

There you go. There's not much else to do with 2015 now but to move on from it. Of all the uncertainties there are, what we do know is that time will continue to tick on, however we measure it. Happy New Year to all.
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Venezuela: Killing with kindness

If you're to take your lead from most Western — including Colombian — media, going to Venezuela these days without solid reasons is a very risky undertaking. 

Throw in a hotly contested and potentially era-ending national election, as we just had, and the advice is to give the place a wide, wide berth.

This used to be packed with cars on a daily basis ...

Yet, having had a pleasurable experience visiting the country in 2013, the constant invites to return from a Caracas-based friend mixed with a curiosity to see if the current situation was as bad as some would have you think, led me to return. 

Well, that and the desire to spice things up a little by venturing, for the first time, into 'dangerous' Caracas with that aforementioned election looming.

It might sound a little devil-may-care, but the fact that my friend would be hosting me in the Venezuelan capital reduced, I figured, the risk factor considerably.

The first major difference from 30 months ago was encountered before actually entering Venezuela. 

From previous experience, to get the best price for my Colombian pesos to bolivares (or so it used to go anyway), I changed the best part of my cash in Cúcuta.* The number of notes I got this time for a similar exchange as before was at least 10 times more. Hyperinflation placed right before your eyes. I felt uneasy to say the least, like a walking cash machine.

You need big pockets in Venezuela these days ...

Then at the border itself, the hustle and bustle of what had been the busiest frontier crossing between Colombia and Venezuela has been replaced, for now anyway, by an almost eerie silence. (Puente Internacional Simón Bolívar, as it's known, has been closed to vehicular traffic for months following this year's border dispute.)

For any tourists making the journey either way this is great; it must rate as the least time-consuming nation-state crossing in Latin America. In fact, the most inconvenient thing is trying to find the office to get your entry stamp in San Antonio, Venezuela; it's not done right on the border as it is in Colombia.

The lack of human traffic might be good from a personal viewpoint, but for merchants on either side of the divide, it's having an adverse effect.**

With the inflation, I expected my big bundles of notes to disappear quite quickly. In reality, while everything appears to have an extra zero added to it compared to 2013, the converted pesos seemed to last longer, a good bit longer. 

In fact, with the almost unfathomable black market exchange rates, it turns out I could have got even more bolivares for my pesos. I'll get it right yet.

I'd also prepared myself for the usual heat foreign visitors to Venezuela can expect from the military and police, especially at checkpoints. This time around only once did I have to step off a bus, along with all the other passengers and have my stuff searched, half-heartedly as it was.

In one lapse, what you might call a testament to the regard I hold Colombian police in, I asked state police in San Cristóbal for directions. Not the best idea. I was escorted to the nearest station where officers went through everything I was carrying. Pleasantly surprising, they didn't take any of the wads of cash stashed in my bag.

Impressive sights abound around Caracas ...

It does, however, seem a little ironic that the police told me to be careful after it was them who, without wanting to sensationalise this, semi-interrogated me whilst making jokes about robbing me and calling me rich. 

They generally made me feel uncomfortable and more at risk — with a smile albeit — when all I'd done was ask for directions. And you couldn't but be bemused by some of the things they asked: 'What's this?' 'Um, bread.' 'What do you have a camera for?' 'Eh, you're asking what now?' 

It's a case of, as many of the locals will tell you, trusting more those not associated with the upkeep of law and order. Playing the innocent gringo/foreigner doesn't get you far.

To add to this, a friend of the family I stayed with told me of an incident that happened in a downtown shopping centre the week I was there where two police officers robbed a couple of foreigners of all their belongings in the middle of the day.

No doubt there are decent, trustworthy police and military but, in general, it seems the nation's 'protectors' could learn a thing or two from the civilians. 

The friendliness of the ordinary Venezuelans I dealt with was up there with the best of them. 

Little things like the bus company employee in San Cristóbal phoning my friend in Caracas to tell her what bus I was on and what station I'd be arriving at. 

Then, when I got to Caracas, a stranger lending me his phone to call my friend to say I'd arrived. 

In some other Latin American countries, even friends are reluctant to hand over their phones for a quick call.

My hosts, who live in a part of Caracas where a Western face is seldom seen, were, to say the least, hugely accommodating. It very much felt like a home from home.

Getting around election-day prohibition, Caracas style ...

Yet, even though I was staying in a potentially dangerous barrio (you might ask, with reason, where isn't in Caracas?), with locals by my side I pretty much felt oblivious to any dangers, dangers that my friends were quick to tell me do exist — gunshot fire was a regular enough sound. 

Even on election day, passing by fanatical Chavistas (supporters of the current 'socialist revolution'; my host family are not), it felt more like a carnival than a country experiencing political polarisation that is crippling it in many ways.

Tellingly, though, I went nowhere without one of my Caraqueño (Caracas natives) friends by my side. For the nine days I was in the city that was fine, but I generally like to wander about places on my own. With my foreign face, I was told that's not the wisest move to make in Caracas. 

In any case, the tienda-drinking culture you get in Colombia that I enjoy is largely lacking in Caracas' barrios. It's more a style of home drinking or on the street outside your house or nearest tienda.

With political change potentially in the air following the opposition's victory in the parliamentary elections, Venezuela's officialdom might start becoming a little less insecure and seemingly suspicious of all outsiders.

There's a lot of work to be done on that front. For the time being, there's always the friendliness of the locals to fall back on for those willing to visit this beautiful country.

*To get a fair idea of what your pesos are worth against the bolivar on street exchange bureaus, a good website to check is bolivarcucuta.com. For the street price of dollars and euros versus bolivares, see dollartoday.com.

**Alas, it was far from an efficient border crossing on the Venezuelan side on the return journey; the Christmas rush had begun.

To listen to a radio interview I did on the situation in Venezuela, check out this link: http://bit.ly/22iwq97 (the interview starts about 10 minutes into the playback service, a couple of minutes after the news and sport).
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