The Venezuelan Border

Nowhere, I repeat nowhere is a bigger shit-show then the border of Venezuela.  Holy.  Shit.

Don’t go there.  Don’t go there girlfraaaand (*snaps twice*).  I mean, by all means, go to Venezuela.  Interesting place.  You can read my thoughts here: Venezuela

But don’t go to the border.  Here are two GOOD reasons why:

When I needed to renew my Colombian visa, I chose to go to Venezuela.  I could get there by bus in about a day.  Plus I had a friend from Brazil living in Maracaibo, so I decided I’d turn this obligatory visa run into a vacation.

My bus left Bogota, and it took about half a day to get to Cucuta, the last town in Colombia before crossing over.  Hey, remember that show “Crossing Over” with that paranormal ghost guy?

Yeah that was a good show.  Getting off track here.

In Cucuta you are told to exchange your pesos for the Venezuelan currency, bolivares, which look like little monopoly monies.  Teeny and green as fuck.  Like, a little too green…  Wait a sec, this is monopoly money!  HEY GUY GET BACK HERE!!

Following that, we transferred onto another bus and made a short trip over the border, where the terrain visibly altered (in the kind of “where’s my fucking gun” way), and then we were there.  Venezuela!  I did it Mom!

Barely within the country, the bus pulled over and I followed everyone off the bus, grabbed my bag, checked for missing items, and then began to observe my surroundings.  The first thing I noticed was a ridiculously long line of people waiting to get into the immigration control place and get their visas and entry stamps.  I joined them in line and waited.  Surely it wouldn’t be too long.

Three hours.  Three hours in that fucking line.  Finally I get inside, get up to the officer sitting behind the window, and present him with my passport.

He does a quick flip through the pages, and without stamping it or altering it in any way, slides it back to me.  He tells me, what I think translates in English to “you have to go back.”  I have no idea what he means, so I shrug, which speaks volumes over my limited Spanish skills.  Then another officer comes over and uses a combination of words, hand signals, and pointing to indicate that…

I was supposed to get an EXIT stamp before leaving Colombia.  Which is a rule I totally know about, but my bus never stopped there, probably because everyone else on my bus was Colombian, and they are exempt from needing a stamp.  Or maybe I fucked something up?

Well, it didn’t really matter “why” because, the point was, I had to go back.  I went outside the building and started trying to explain to a 14 year old motorbike taxi driver that I wanted him to give me a ride back into Colombia, have him wait for me outside while I got my stamp, and then have him drive me back to this very spot.  Hard to convey when your Spanish sucks.

But eventually he understood.  I asked for a price, prepared to offer 25% of what he wanted.  Colombia had turned me into a cynic, and I assumed that everyone was out to rip me off.  Plus, I had no idea how much these little green monopoly monies were worth.  In the end, I got what I wanted, and he… didn’t.  He seemed really upset by my final offer.  Fuck it.  Once I get my stamp, I’ll never have to see this guy again.

And so after a 10 minute ride over the border, we were back in Colombia.

We found the Colombian immigration center with ease.  The building was huge, and I could only imagine how big the line at THIS place was.  When I walked in, to my utter and complete dismay, there was…

Only one guy in line.  I had my stamp in 2 minutes.

Why couldn’t the Venezuelan side be more like this?

I dreaded going back there, and having to wait in that three hour line again.  The line where people were screaming “HOLA!!”  but not in a good way, in a “We are gonna bum-rush this motherfucker and KILL everybody” kinda way.  Maybe the line had shortened?  Maybe all of the window people had finished their lunch break, or awoke from their nap…?

NOPE.  THE LINE HAD FUCKING DOUBLED.

I was NOT waiting in line for 6 hours.

It was time to get creative.

I lingered near the front of the immigration building and scouted it out.  The crowd was fiery and furious.  There was a lot more shoving and shouting going on.  I thought that maybe, amidst all of the chaos, I could somehow cut everyone in line.

So I did what I do best—faked being a mentally retarded person—and then combined that with some pathetic leg limp to show them that I was completely broken as a human being, and tried to squeeze in the place at the head of the line.

I won no one’s sympathy.  All of those angry hola!’s again, now directed squarely at me.  I needed to get in fast.  They were gonna skin me alive.

I tried to force myself through the doorway, which was about two feet wide and had about ten people trying to claw their way in simultaneously.  But the guy right next to me was NOT having it.  We spent a whole 15 minutes battling each other with hard, stiff elbows lodged into each others guts.  I finally boxed him out, slid right on by, and was back inside.

But I wasn’t safe yet.  A group of people started complaining about me to the military guard on duty.  When he approached me, I kept the retard act going, twice as hard, all the while speaking to him in rapid-fire English and pointing to the window.  Anything I could do to throw him off.  The guard was overwhelmed and eventually gave up on trying to throw me out.  I reached the window, got my stamp and I fucking ran outta that mother.

I was now legally allowed to be in this country, but I was still nowhere near my destination.  I needed to get to a bus hub in San Cristobal, and then take a night bus from there to Maracaibo.  This was not San Cristobal, this was Tachira.  I found out San Cristobal was 90 minutes away… by bike.

I went and found my 14 year old motorbike driver right where I had left him.  I was going to have to offer him more money this time around.  But he kept rejecting my offers.  Finally I just reached into my pocket and pulled out a big chunk of my budget (of which I still had no idea its value), and he complied.

I got on the back of the bike and we were off.

Whether it was vengeance for me having stiffed him the first time, or he was just a little 14 year old thugchild, I’m not sure, but he drove this bike like a fucking human asteroid.  He never let up on the accelerator, once.

The roads were already laughably narrow, with just a knee high guardrail separating us and the pits of the picturesque valley thousands of feet below.  We spent the majority of this trip in the incoming traffic lane, dodging trucks, potholes, and…

Oh.  I’m sorry.  This is a story about the BORDER.  Isn’t it?  Yeah.  Or do you want to hear about the fight I had with the Venezuelan woman on the night bus over leg space?  Which involved me using naughty Spanish words on her and causing everyone on the bus to jump in and take a side in the battle?

Yeah, I’ll spare you all that goobly gook.  Let’s get back to the border.  Because so far, you’ve only heard one side of it.

(Call me the Pun Master.  Do it.  Call me the dirty little Pun Master, you nasty little slut.)

The OTHER side of the story takes place when I was—you guessed it—leaving Venezuela, two weeks later.

I decided to take a cheaper alternative than a bus.  Not the flashiest but… well it was just some dude driving a regular ol’ car.  Like, an ugly boxy beige one from the 80’s.  With five other strangers in the car.  And me sitting bitch in the backseat.

The car was stopped by the police at least six times on the trip to the border.  This trip was shorter, too, since I was going to pass through the Northern part of Colombia, which would in effect make my bus trip through Colombia much longer.  Like close to a day, I presumed.

When we got to the exit point, there was another immigration center where I needed to receive my exit stamp (I had learned my lesson about stamps).  I was the only one in the car who needed this stamp, so the car pulled over and the driver and everyone in the car sat there waiting, watching me from the windows, like “WHO THE FUCK INVITED THIS GUY!?”

The line here isn’t as long as the other one, but there’s still a line.  And it’s hardly moving.  What the fuck is with these desk people in Venezuela??  Are they all blind assholes!??  HOLA!??

I get closer and closer to the window, and that’s when I see the driver of my car.  He’s signalling for me to get out of line.  Like… what nigga?  He’s trying to get me to follow him behind the building.  I reluctantly step out of line and follow him to the back.

There is another guy waiting back there, a guy in jeans and a nice white dress shirt, a little shiesty looking, not in the “I’m gonna rob you” sense, but the “I’m gonna accept a bribe to let you over” sense.

So yeah, that guy wanted a bribe.  I was willing to pay.  Just no more lines, for the love of fuck.

He takes my passport, the remainder of my monopoly money, and then asks me this question in Spanish:

“What is your hotel name in Colombia?”

I don’t have a hotel.  I live there, I explain in my marginally better (thanks to this trip), but still pretty wack Spanish skills.  I recite my address in Bogota, but it’s not sufficient.  He needs something… official.  Then he asks my for my flight number…

Bro.  I’m taking a car across the border.  Right NOW.  The driver is standing right next to you.  What the fuck are you thinking?  I try and explain this to the guy, but he just shakes his head, unsatisfied, and then he hands me my passport and cash back.  They can’t let me leave, he says.  Not through this border.  Not like this.  And then he starts walking away.

What the fuck???

I try and chase him and reason with him, but he walks back into the immigration building through a back door.  I spin around to try and elicit help from my carpool driver, but now he is gone too!

I’ve been left for dead!  At the border of broken dreams!  Oh my fucking FUCK!!

I run out front and look at the actual border point, a mere 100 feet away, a towering wall with about 5 lanes, cars being interviewed and scrutinized by HEAVILY armed soldiers, and right beyond that… just a little past that, on the Colombian side of the border, I see… my driver, pulled over, waiting.

The only thing that separates me and him is… a lot of guys with guns.  Meticulous about everything, and everyone crossing through their country.

What was I to do?

There was no way I was going back into Venezuela to straighten out documents or that shit.  And there was no way in hell I would be able to sneak across the border.  I mean, I could try it, but getting caught meant jail or, you know, getting shot.  What was I to do?  WHAT WAS I TO DO?

I walked over the border, to my car, opened the door, and got in.  I didn’t acknowledge the guards at all, and they didn’t acknowledge me.

I’m not sure if nobody had seen me (highly unlikely), or if I strutted by them so confidently that they assumed I legally cleared to do so, but nobody said a thing.  That moment though, when I walked past all those guards, and came within inches of their assault rifles, I felt a tingling sense in my brain unlike anything adrenaline or drugs have ever given me.

I’m not sure what would’ve happened if somebody had caught me… Those guns can’t just be a decoration.  Surely somebody has gotten mowed down there recently.

Well!  It didn’t matter.  I was alive.  Fate was on my side that day.

Except it wasn’t.

My driver kept reassuring me that he was going to take me to the Colombian immigration to straighten everything out.   It was just a few kilometers ahead, he reassured me.  But when the car stopped, everyone got out.  And then I realized there was no Colombian immigration center.  We were at a bus station, and everyone was getting on their respective buses to different parts of the country.

I was fucked!  I didn’t have an exit OR an entry stamp.  I was technically still in Venezuela!

My only option was to deal with it right away when I got back to Bogota.  I purchased my bus ticket and convinced myself that the authorities in Bogota would sympathize with my cause.

The bus took a full day to get back, made very few stops, and I got food poisoning from a tainted empanada on the way.  The food poisoning was SO bad, I couldn’t go to the immigration station in Bogota right away like I should have.  I was out of commission for about 5 days.  When I finally went to immigration and explained my situation, they told me, that I was an illegal alien in Colombia, and that I would face a serious fine and/or jail.  And so I…

Oops!  Sorry!  This was a story about borders, wasn’t it!?  I got carried away, again!  Tsk tsk, shame on me.

The moral of the story?  If you ever go to Venezuela (and you should), fly.  Fly there, and hope you never deal with the type of lethargic, logic-lacking warzone that is the border of Venezuela.