... to the other side of Venezuela

My time completed in Mérida I headed to the far eastern side of Venezuela. Because there was no direct bus, I first took an overnight bus to Maracáy and from there I could get a bus to Cumuná. This way I would avoid Caracas. It has a bad rap with foreign tourists as being a chaotic transportation hub as well as being a good place to get robbed.

I arrived in Maracáy early in the morning and the bus for Cumuná wouldn´t leave until late in the evening. The bus station here was dodgy (probably because it did not charge a usage tax) so I found a hotel in town. It was interesting because the owner grew chickens and turtles to eat.

In the following picture I try to capture the chaos of the bus station here. Six long-distance busses would pull in at a time and 100s of passengers would mingle as they unloaded and loaded. Given the extra anxiety of busses arriving hours late and not having identification of their destinations only added to the circus. Of course there were the vendors and drunks crowding through as well - I was very very glad to get out of here.

The overnight bus dropped me off early Sunday morning at the tiny bus station in Cumuná (check out the taxis.)

There was supposedly a bus from here to the inland town of Caripe but, after some haggling to get info out of the locals, I learned there was no bus and that I would need to take a por-puesto (a taxi that acts as a small bus) to a cross-roads 1.5 hours down the road. Off I went down the Caribbean coast with a young couple and their baby. They kindly woke me up - I don´t sleep well on long distance busses - when we reached the cross-roads and I blearyly stumbled out.

At the cross-roads I was able to hitchhike inland through some cool (low-temperature) mountains for a couple of hours in the back of a late-model dodge truck. Than a lady took me another 30 minutes in her truck with all her nursery plants she was buying at intermediate stops from the local campesinos.

From there I was able to catch a local bus. Here is the driver filling up with super-cheap gasoline - 70 Bolivares per liter (2500 Bolivares per US dollar).

Caripe is a wonderful small town in which I felt perfectly safe walking around day and night. I stayed at a hotel right on the central park and everyone came out at night to walk around and drag the local mainstreet in their cars. It is frequently mentioned that the South Americans live in the streets - eat, sit, walk... very pleasant.