Santa Elena!!
Awoke early to have breakfast with Amanda and chat with her before she left for work - Amanda has become a great friend in the space of 3 days and she has a beautifully positive energy that is so contagious. Po & I made some Acai for breakfast with banana, papaya and honey - our last time to drink Acai before leaving Brazil. We then headed into the city so I could change some Brazilian currency for dollars. On the walk back we were met with a torrential downpour and had to take cover under a tree for about 20 minutes - we met and chatted with a kind old Peruvian man before making a dash for the house when the rain eased. Amanda returned for lunch and we had a couple of hours to chat and enjoy some food before we had to make our way to the bus station. Amanda kindly dropped us off at the bus terminal and we brought our tickets to Pacaraima (boarder town of Brazil before entering Venezuela). The bus left at about 3pm and just before we were to board the bus we met these two really interesting and friendly Venezuelan guys. Po can speak Spanish really well so she got talking with them and I did my best to follow along but found I barely understood anything. It was hard to sit and understand very little and not be able to join in the conversation but I will use this as motivation to learn and improve my Spanish. The Venezuelan guys taught us a lot about Venezuela; the culture, the dangers, the situatuation and everything else - an untapped resource: friendly locals on the bus. The bus arrived at the boarder very late and on arrival we found out that immigration was closed. Amazingly immigration let us through to Venezuela and informed us to return tommorow and get our exit and entry stamps. We said goodbye to our new Venezuelan friends and entered Venezuela. We grabbed the first taxi to Santa Elena and straight to Posada Michelle - the cheapest accomodation in town. Straight away I realized no one is going to speak English here and I better brush up on my Spanish quick smart. The accomodation was basic but quite cheap at $5 each for a shared room.
The first thing we had to do was change some money and find something to eat as it was getting late. Very strangely in Santa Elena the time is 30 minutes behind Brazil time. We walked into the city that was very quiet at this time of night and tried to find some food and a place to change money. Food was far more expensive then I first thought and Black-market exchange rates were not quite as great as we had expected. We grabbed some food and I changed just a little money (enough for a few days) and then wondered around some more. Po had agreed to change a large amount of American dollars with a guy we met on the street who we would meet later at the hostel. The guy changing the $ for Bolivars turned out to be a human rights worker and after changing money for Po chatted with us all night about Venezuela. People are very friendly here and love to talk - something I wasn't expecting and something I must embrace. As we have to be up early tommorow I called it a night just after midnight.

OBSERVATIONS:
- sad goodbyes to Amanda
- bus from Boa Vista to Pacaraima
- Met very cool Venezuelan guys on bus
- Realize my Spanish is terrible and need to improve and practice
- boarder closed when we arrive but we were allowed to go through and return tommorow
- Arrive Santa Elena - Venezuela - lots bigger then expected
- Black-market dollar and Real confusing - 1real = 26 Bolivars and $1 = 65 Bolivars
- Food and hostel more expensive then first imagined - hostel $5 and food $3 - cheap but not crazy cheap
- Posada Michelle - ok but very basic and not many people staying