Venezuela to Brazil

Rodman took us to the bus station the night we left Ciudad Bolivar. He pointed out some key factors that we would need to identify our bus, and went on his way. While we waited, several buses came and went, including one bus that had been converted into something of a party bus. It was fully painted in bright graffiti style images of Jesus. There were no lights inside the bus, except for some neon green emergency lights. It was missing all its windows, and there were huge speakers blasting very loud techno. Luckily for us, our bus proved to be a relatively normal one, and we started out 10 hour bus journey to the border town called Santa Elena.

No one tells you, but the buses are freezing. Well, some people did say that in the online forums, but I don't think we were prepared for how cold it was. It seems really silly, that they compensate for the extreme heat outside, by making it as cold as possible in the bus. No one was comfortable, and we got no sleep that night. I'd pulled my leggings down my calves, and wrapped spare clothes around my exposed ankles, put a heat pack on my knee, was wearing my jacket, and was still shivering through the night. When we finally got off the bus, we swore to never be left unprepared again.

We took a taxi from Santa Elena to the border crossing between Venezuela and Brazil, and were pointed to a long line. The Venezuelan border doesn't distinguish between entering or leaving the country, so everyone was standing in one long queue in the heat of the day. We stood in line for about an hour and a half, before we got to enter the building, and queue in another line. At some point, in the middle of the wait, the Venezuelan border officials decided to have a team meeting for 10 minutes, so they shut the door to the crossers, and had a chat while one of the team members took pictures. It seemed like a strange time to have a meeting. We went through the security questions, and got our departure stamps, and headed for the Brazil side, which we were dreading. Since Brazil required me to get a visa, and it was a complicted enough process, we were expecting a rough couple of hours getting into Brazil. We walked the 200 meters from Venezuela to Brazil, and stopped at the first security check point, where were filled out some paper work, got some stamps and headed to the next check point. But, there was no other check point. We were walking through the middle of a little town called Pacaraima, when we realized we were in Brazil, on our own.

In comparison to Ciudad Bolivar, Pacaraima is an extremely safe town. Since it lies on the border, and is patrolled by police, the people walk around with big wads of cash to change with tourists, and leave them unattended whenever they please. We were approached by several people, before a man named Joachim, who spoke English, came up to help us. We traded some money with him, and he helped us purchase our tickets to Manaus, with a bus change in Boa Vista. They had to sell us tickets for a later bus, for some reason, but told us they'd help us get on the next bus, which was due to arrive in 20 minutes. Then, both Joachim and the bus ticket vendor disappeared. The bus arrived, and after waiting for a while, we decided that we'd been had. We were working out how to get our money back, when the bus ticket vendor reappeared and put us on the 3 hour bus to Boa Vista, as promised.

We only had a few hours in Boa Vista, but we were going to grab some food from a market, if we could find one. Boa Vista, whose name means beautiful view, is a dump. Just walking across the street to the "market" which turned out to be a liquor store, felt dangerous. We hurried back to the bus station, where we waited for our bus. They called our bus an hour and a half earlier than we expected, so we checked our luggage into the hold and started to board. They'd sold us upper deck tickets...but there was only one level to the bus. Rich went back to ask, and the ticket checker, who looked confusedly at our tickets, then informed us we were on the wrong bus. We re-collected our luggage, and went back into the waiting room. We tried to board every bus from that point on, until the security guard told us to just come back in 20 minutes. We finally made out connection to Manaus, and had another 12 hour journey. When we arrived in Manaus, it was 7 AM and already scorchingly hot. Somebody called us by name, and we turned around to find some friends of Joachim who had come to help us get safely into the city, and get our Amazon ticket sorted out. People in Brazil are nice, afterall.