Traveling through Venezuela to Colombia

I reluctantly left my Brazilian friends Andre and Vinicius on the beach and began to travel west along the northern coast of Venezuela towards Caracas. I arrived in Caracas later that evening and prepared myself to go out and find a place to stay for the night. Then I thought, 'why am I doing this'. I had heard nothing good about Caracas from travelers or even people living in Caracas. It was supposed to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world and it supposedly didn't have that much to see. I originally had wanted to visit Caracas since it was the capital and political epicenter of Venezuela but I had already heard and seen enough about Hugo Chavez and his political movement. I decided to dodge the expensive and dangerous Caracas bullet and hopped on another the bus continuing east to the friendly city of Coro.

Coro was a nice Colonial town with lots of crumbling old buildings. Near the town there was an expanse of sand dunes that looked like something more a kin to the Sahara than Tropical Venezuela. In Coro I met another traveler from Germany, Thomas. We took a short trip to the Medianos de Coro National Park where the sand dunes were.















After a couple of nights in Coro I set off towards Colombia with Thomas. We were hopping to get there the same day, but the trip took longer than we expected and we didn't want to cross the dodgy Venezuelan/Colombia border after dark. Just a day before Venezuela froze diplomatic relations with Colombia and tensions were high along the border. I always imagined Colombia and Venezuela to be similar to one another but they are worlds apart in a number of ways. Currently their national political ideologies are polar opposites. Colombia is probably the most Pro-US country in all of Latin America and Venezuela is the most Anti-US Latin America government behind Cuba.

I went to Venezuela with an open mind towards Chavez not trusting US media conglomerates to paint the most accurate portrait of the anti-US Chavez administration. Venezuela was the most politically heated country I had ever visited and the tensions were clearly apparent. Political signs and graffiti were everywhere showing support or opposition for Chavez and his socialistic movement. Regardless of political ideologies almost everyone I talked to didn't care for Chavez. His bombastic political style was wearing thin and despite Chaves' attempts to better allocate Venezuela's immense oil wealth things were getting worse instead of better. In general Venezuela appeared to be a fractured mess and people were fed up with it. Chaves had taken up the banner the Latin America's socialistic movement leveraging politically friendly countries in Latin America with Venezuela's oil wealth. Venezuelans wanted Chavez to focus more on solving serious problems at home instead of bankrolling pro-socialist countries in Latin America.









Thomas and I split up our trip to Colombia by spending the night in Maracaibo, Venezuela's second largest city and center of oil production. The city was a hole but we had a fun night out. Walking around one of the more upscale neighborhoods we were surprised to see a steak house that had a metal detector at the door. Later on we met some friendly people who welcomed us to a great bar and fun night out.


























The next day we continued on to Colombia by shared taxi to the border about two hours away. Leaving Venezuela we were stopped six times at police checks to show our identification. For some reason it was much less of a hassle to enter the country than leave it. With problems between Venezuela and Colombia there was a heavy military presence along the border.


Worn out Venezuela