We arrived at this Brazillian border town after a 14 1/2 hour bus ride from Ciudad Bolivar, fresh from being robbed (see the Angel Falls write up). This was another in our awful bus journies list as this one was peppered with military check points which means members of the military coming on board and checking your passports etc. On this one they excelled themselves with four seperate stops including a 4am one which involved leaving the bus, getting our luggage ...

We arrived in Ciudad Bolivar on the 6th February after a two stage, 18 hour bus journey from Merida which featured a Venezuelan special, the utterly freezing night bus. They really go over the top on the air conditioning here and it's quite amusing to see all the Venezuelans with hats & coats etc on in such a hot country. We had to wrap up warm too. The excuse we've heard for this is that the cold temperatures minimise the smell from the toilet!! Ciudad Boli...

We arrived in Merida, in the South West of Venezuula via a 11 hour night bus from Maracay on 31st January. Our first job before anything was to sort out our money as we have encountered an ATM problem which has dogged us since we arrived in Venezuela. Basically not one single ATM will accept either of our cash cards since we arrived in the country. Not in Caracus airport, not in Maracay and not here either. It's an absolute nightmare as having no money is th...

We came to Maracay which is a sizeable city around 60km`s south of our previous destination, Puerto Columbia to stay in a posada, 8km's out of the city centre, recommended by some friends or ours, Neil and Kelly who were here last year. It is indeed a very nice place and we enjoyed staying here for 4 nights. It's a very homely feeling place ran by a really nice Dutch guy called Bart and we loved having dinner on the outdoor terrace every night. We managed a ...

We arrived here after a rather fraught and exhausting journey from Quito on the 20th January. We took a night flight out of Quito on the 19th which involved an initial one hour flight then an utterly tedious 5 hour stopover in Bogota, Columbia. The next flight was only around an hour and a half which meant we had only around an hour of sleep by the time we touched down in Caracus at 4.30am. Caracus is not the sort of place where you want to go venturing into...