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The alarm woke us at 4am just minutes before the cockerals started their usual wake up crowing. Still pitch dark we had to make our way to the road in order to catch a bus going towards Venezuela. Getting there meant walking down the muddy track that we came in on. Rather than trying to retrace our steps we had the bad idea of following some other vehicle tracks believing that it must end up at the road also. It all ended, not in tears, but lots of mud and a wire fence blocking our way.
We walked back for a beautiful sureal image of the sun rise through the surf spray - but we were in too much of a hurry to stand and stare.
The other track was not much better being covered in ankle high water with the occasional invisible pot hole to keep you on your toes.
Making it to the road we tried to find something to eat at the road side stalls but ended up buying crisps. We ate breakfast or is it yesterdays dinner at the side of the road whilst waving at the buses going past. Buses here are normally full so we were told 5am is the best time to find a space. The first three buses didn't stop so were probally full or didn't see us. We weren't standing long maybe 10 minutes before a small bus stopped and we were shown to the last remaining seats. Stage 1 complete.
The bus took us to the border town bus station where we had to switch to a shared taxi to ensure that it would stop at the imigration offices on the border. It was the usual frontier place with lots of litter and Arthur Daily type characters doing their business. Along one side of the bus station was a line of very battered 80's American cars - the taxis to cross the border and onto Maracaibo. Of course the instant you step out of the cramped bus for the first time in 5 hours they are straight away trying to get you into an even more cramped taxi for another 5 hours.
We managed a 5 minute break before the lack of bus station ambience and hounding drove us into the taxi. Stage 2 Complete.
The taxi was the typical big old American car with a speedo exactly like the ones shown in the 70's film 'Streets of San Francisco' to indicate in a cheap way that they were going fast in the usual car chase. Things were dropping off it in an amusing way but this was nothing compared to some cars we saw. Africa and India had luxury cars in comparison, I just couldn't believe that these cars acually moved.
Although the taxi looked massive most of it was bonnet and the remaining space was taken up by five people and their luggage. Loud salsa music on repeat completed the torture.
The border crossing went remarkably well except for some money changers trying to give us a really bad exchange rate literaly in the imigration office. The rate was brought into line once we confered with some locals - welcome to Venezuela and Stage 3 complete.
The route to Maracaibo went through some very flooded areas, which happened to be an improvement on the highly littered areas that followed. Simon amusingly said that Maracaibo was like Sheffield however Maracaibo has the better weather. The entire Venezuelan police force seemed to want to meet us, we were stopped 12 times from the border by police road blocks. They stop you repeatedly to do exactly what the last police officer did minutes earlier on the same road - simply look at our passports. I am sure if it had an Adoft Hitler picture with 666 as the passport number they wouldn't know anything was suspect.
Maracaibo bus terminal was a hotbed of money changers and do gooders trying to make the odd buck. Again the only thing we could find to eat was a couple of bags of crisps and the most pleasant place to eat them was on the Coro bus.
Poker on the iPhone took the edge off section 4 of the journey. I have been trying to win the WSOP title and I did it just before getting into Coro after weeks of trying. Concequently I was in a good but hungry mood when we caught the taxi in. We had to catch a taxi twice due to the first hotel being full. By this time I was almost passing out with hunger.
Coro does not get many visitors and it shows by the looks you get. This means we are back to meat with everything. After extensive walking around, as everything was strangly closed, we found a place serving food but they refused to give us anything without meat in. Another empty place didn't want to serve food at all so we ended up at a burger stall in complete desparation. We got a salad and cheese bun with chips specially made that I padded out with mayo.
Food in tums we went back to watch TV - there is zero interest at night here. Just got Caracas to get through now.
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