The 14th of October Simon and I started our trip in Santa Marta for the Final Destination: Ciudad Bolivar 48hours later. It is modest to say that this trip was epic. After the first 20hours with a buschange in Bucaramanga (Colombia) we arrived in Cucuta. As some of you may know the major reasons why there are no tourists in Venezuela are the money exchange and black market problem, the security that is nihil and the corruption of police and military. So before we started our trip we tried to figure out how to solve the money issue. We pulled outtwo million pesos out the ATM and went exchanging half of it on the street into dollars, very dodgy and fast transaction, but the bills were real and the rate was good. The other million we exchanged into Bolivars inCucuta in an official exchange bureau at a very nice rate.

With way too much money in our pockets we headed to the border and stamped perfectly out of Colombia, but after crossing the bridge that separates the two countries we already felt not so welcome when seeing the tourist information bureau totaly burned down.. After the necessary paperwork we were happy to walk into Venezuela! The border police was friendly to help us explain how to get to the airport and busstation to compare prices,(bustrip was eventually way cheaper) but after walking a couple of meters further into Venezuela we entered a buscompany office and a guy came out of the backdoor pulling out/in a gun of his pants, but luckily the guy from the border arrived and the strange situation ended without knowing what might have happened. We took a local bus from San Antonio to San Cristobal and were held up three times by the military roadcontrols in the first hour! each time we had to open our bags, empty them on a table, let a dog go through our stuff and survive the millions of questions that they asked us! 'Why did you go to Colombia? With whom did you travel? Why are you in Venezuela, for how long? How much money are you going to spend? ... and they kept asking these questions at a lightning speed in Spanish.. Horrible! I was kind of tired of the first 24 hours in these buses and on a point of a mental breakdown of these intense controls! But it went even worse. At the second control a officer came on the bus and checked everyones ID and took our both passports with him and left the bus. The locals told us to run after him, because it often happens that they threaten to tear your passport in to in exchange of a bribe. And to whom can you complain if this happens, because they are supposed to be the ones that protect you! So we ended up sponsoring corruption with 100$ and could 'safely' continue our trip. During the last 24 hours of busride between San Cristobal and Ciudad Bolivar we were controlled a couple of times more at any hour, even in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere!

We were exhausted when we arrived at destination and decided to book our tour the next day to the Angel Falls. We flew with a little Cessna over the Gran Sabana to Canaima, a little village in the middle of the jungle along a brown lake that is only accessible through planes. The first night we went with the group to the local bar and around midnight went back to our rooms, but Kevin(acool UK man who was on honeymoon) and I stopped at the soccerpitch and played a little two on two game against seventeen year old boys. They played like Ronaldinho, but made too many nice moves and eventually always lost the ball and the european style of 'straight to the goal with no nonsense' overcame them and we won the game at 3-5 in our favour. Because we both had huge blisters on our feet we decided to head back and call it a night.

The next day we took a little boat for 20 minutes upstream to some rapids, we hiked one hour through the gran Sabana and took another kayak-like boat again for the last two hours of upstream ride. The driver was insane and went straight through low-water rapids and when we got stuck, the men(we) had to jump out and push the boat through the rapid. Eventually we had to hike one more hour uphill to the bottom of the Angel Falls and yes, the trip was totaly worth it!

Back in Canaima the group flew back to Ciudad Bolivar, but Simon and I had decided to take a plane to Santa Elena de Uairen the next day. The only problem was that we ran out of money, so we had to borrow a tent from another traveller and slept for free on the beach along the lake and had just enough together to buy ourself two bananas and dinner.

The next day we flew out of Canaima over the beautiful Gran Sabana and its table mountains and had a taxi stop with our Cessna in this very remote village before we continued our flight to Santa Elena. Once there we had to find a place where we could exchange some dollars into Bolivars, because as you might know: if you take out Bolivars at the ATM, you get a rate of 2.5 Bolivars a Dollar and the black market gave us in Cucuta 5.7! This black market rate constantly changes, and is lower inside the country, so we asked around and we eventually found the best rate in a Panaderia(bakery) where they wanted to exchange our 100 and 50$ bills at a 4.8 rate. With this money we bought ourself some fine pastries and booked our trek to the famous Roraima table mountain. It is the highest of its kind and lays right on the triple point (Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela).

The group was very cool and the night before we left we had a breefing where the tourmanager explained us how special Roraima is. He wrotethree books about aliens, the positive energy that came out of the mountain, the feng-shui spirit of the mountain and much more funny/crazy stories. With the whole group we went eating and discussed all the UFO stories he told us and how it was not possible to explain the fact that a lot of rocks on top had a special shape like a flying turtle, monkey eating icecream, rhino, Fidel Castro,.. There are millions of rocks and with a lot of imagination and the effect of years of erosion everything is possible, but for him it was the work of aliens..

Anyway the next day we left full of energy and eager to see these strange shaped rocks! The two first days we hiked over the Gran Sabana to the foot of the mountain and the third day we hiked up the 2800m high rock! It were three intense and fast hiking days, but the team was in very good shape. On top we saw some hummingbirds, small black frogs with a yellow belly and other animals and over 1000 kinds of flora that is unique in the world. The top of the mountain looked like a moonlandscape. Rocks, rocks and more black rocks with stunning canyons inbetween.

Three days later we were back in Santa Elena and after some necessary laundry, ashower and a goodbye of Simon, I left the next day to La Linea (the border between Venezuela and Brasil) with David (UK boy that was on the trek and with whom I'm here in Manaus and going to Tabatinga by boat) and Heidi (Belgian woman from Ghent). Once there we had immediately some army-men jumping on us as vultures and took David and I into rooms and again a full backpack control, pants down, shirt up and the series of questions. (luckily no fingers up cavities) I answered everything well and we could finally stamp out of this crazy country where I wont return in the next eras!

I previously said that I might go to Caracas, but after hearing that almost every tourist that goes there gets mugged and robbed by armed Venezuelians and the police, I wisely decided to avoid that suicidal city! So I only phoned to the family and told them about my findings about the country they lived in and they totally agreed that is was an anarchy where everything is corrupt.

The cab had abandoned us at the Venezuelian border, so we had to hike 2km to the Brazilian immigration. Immediatly I got confronted to the fact that everything works here in Portuguese.. It is understandable, but impossible to talk. I'm trying hard, but I will need a lot of practice.

We took a cab to Boa Vista and from there we took a nightbus to Manaus, a huge city in the middle of the Amazon where the Brazilian vibes are hard to ignore! Music everywhere, but also the tropical heat is hard to ignore.. The moist heat is heavy on my lungs!

Venezuela is known for its cheap fuel, but it is insanely cheap! 100 liters of gasoline cost only 2 USD!!! Water is 50 times more expensive! You can see at the Colombian and Brazilian side of the border people with a lot of jerrycans selling fuel. Venezuelians cross the border with 90liter fueltanks, syphon them and go back. After doing that three times a daythey can earn up to 300$..

This story is long enough fornow, so I'll post the Manaus shananigans next week!

Hasta la proxima gringos!

G. on the road on the SOUTHERN hemisphere!!!! woohooooo!