I was at a bit of a loss as to what time to leave. Colombia was having a countrywide earthquake alarm drill at 9:00am and I didn’t want to be stuck trying to cross the border when it was on. Not that I had any idea about what happens. I decided to leave at 8:00am and get out before it starts. Turns out it was 8:30 by the time I left and with a wrong turn and a big miscalculation of the time it would take me to get to the border I turned up there at 9:00am. Business as usual. It took about 15mins to check out. Just me. As the bike is Colombian.

I then rocked up at the Venezuelan border checkpoint of San Antonio. I remembered it clearly as it was where I had checked out when I left the country after my accident. I don’t have any photos of the border because I didn’t want to complicate my entry by photographing things. There was only one person in front of me. You have to squat down and talk through a tiny little hole in a one way glass window. It’s just big enough to fit your hand and passport through. With all the street noise and only Spanish I was finding it quite difficult to converse. The lady signalled me to the door and then came out and talked to me. That was much easier. She pointed across the road to another door with half a dozen people lined up outside. She said that I need to go over there with my photocopy of where I was staying in Venezuela. 

I had booked a place with a same day cancellation because I was hoping to stay with the guy who helped me leave the country, and I only had the booking on my phone. A lady appeared out of nowhere and said if I needed a photocopy then she could take me to a shop. So we wandered into town to a small shop and after a short while I was able to buy a printout of my booking.

I returned to the line and it was unchanged. It was now 9:30am. Eventually a guy came out and the first person went in. I managed to sneak a peek and saw the door was just the entrance to a passageway. I asked if there was a room inside with chairs and more people queued up but the guy next in line said no. He’d been through many times, and said this was the line. For foreign passport holders. It was against a wall and alongside the busy road. Not particularly pleasant. It was hot but I was grateful we were on the side shaded by the building. After half an hour that guy came out and someone who had been just milling around outside was called back in. After 10 minutes or so they came out and went back across the road to the original window. And that’s how the next 3 hours played out, until it was my turn to go in.

 Off the entry passageway and parallel to it was an even narrower passageway with a small bench on one wall and a chair which the immigration guy sat on. I gave him my paperwork and he started photographing it and asking me lots of questions. He was typing his questions and my responses into WhatsApp on his phone. He then sent all that info of somewhere and asked me to open my phone and give it to him. He then leant back on his chair scrolling through my phone and asking more questions.

He asked me lots of questions about my work and what work I did for the government in Antarctica. And about my time in the army? What army? I’m sure his work questions rolled over into personal questions about living in Antarctica. After three quarters of an hour he asked me to return outside and wait. I’d become friends with the people in the line and so it was nice to see them all again. Things then slowed down. I guess it was lunch time? No one was particularly happy about the wait but no one got angry. It’s just how it is. There were no toilets and not even a tree. So I drank water sparingly and was afraid to leave in case I was called back in.

About 3:00pm it was my turn. He said everything was okay. He had been taking pictures of penguins and things on my phone and liked the Antarctic Logo. I had a few Antarctic logo stickers and so I gave him one. He seemed quite pleased. Some might call that bribery. I call it phycology. I then had to return to the original window across the street. The line there was short and moved quickly. Until my turn. He went to stamp my passport and the stamper was jammed. He then spent half an hour pulling it apart. He got it working eventually but it was now out of ink. So he wandered off somewhere and returned with some ink. Eventually he was able to stamp my passport and hand it back. It was now 4:00pm. No it was 5:00pm because of a time change.

The next step was to get the bike through. I was hoping that the office would still be open. The lady who took me to the photocopy shop appeared again out of nowhere and took me to the vehicle import office. I’m sure she just hangs around for tips? Then my luck changed a little. One of the young guys in the office spoke a bit of English. He was very happy to help me and to practice his English. He also seemed to be getting praise from his bosses for his translations. It all went pretty smoothly. I had a seat, in aircon, with water (and tea or coffee if I desired). And it only took 2.5 hours. Like the immigration office it seemed like everything had to be sent somewhere else for approval and then they just wait for it to come back. After an almost ceremonial handover of the paperwork in front of my bike with photos, I shook hands with everyone and I was allowed to leave.

It was almost 8:00pm and dark. And all I’d eaten all day was a muesli bar which I carried for emergencies. I had wanted to get to San Cristobal which was only 40kms but over an hours ride. I had accommodation booked there and this little border town I was in looked dodgy. The young English speaking guy said the road was good and not many trucks. My first real ride after 6 months. In the dark. I wasn’t sure. In the end I decided to give it a go and promised myself that if it looked dangerous then I would come back.

I had fixed up my phone holder and had downloaded an offline map and because it was dark my map showed up well. Decision made. I was off. I passed a hotel and questioned myself. Was that a sign to turn back? Or maybe it was just a reminder of where to come back to if I wasn’t comfortable. I followed my map and was grateful it was well lit and easy to follow. After half an hour I ended up in a large town but I didn’t remember seeing any towns on the map and google said that I still had 30 minutes to go. I stopped and zoomed in and found that I’d gone the wrong way (on the red line). For some reason google had taken me the long way. It was annoying but I was stopped outside of a small restaurant that was barbequing fresh meat.  It smelt so good. I stopped and had a feed and a bottle of water and a bottle of coke. And I could pay in $US. Five bucks.

I continued on. The road was very quiet because who would go this way anyway? I made it to the Hotel Dinistia in San Cristobal just before 10:00pm. I was hoping to be able to pay by card but they wanted $US. And then they didn’t have change. They said they would give it to me in the morning. The parking was good. The room old. The aircon was either Antarctica or off. I was really tired but grateful to be there.

Next morning I sent a WhatsApp to the local guy who had helped get my bike over the border. He sent me directions to his house. I checked out but the guy from the night before and my change were nowhere to be seen. It was about $10AUD. A cheap lesson.

The guy I went to see was great. He’s one of a network of people in a whatsapp group all over Venezuela who want to help out fellow riders. He had a spare room and bathroom and safe parking for the bike. He got me settled and then left for work. I was able to do a load of washing and wash my riding gear which was a huge bonus. I met him for lunch in town and went to his workplace. On my ride into meet him I had stopped because people were pointing at something on the back of my bike. I stopped to check it out and a guy pulled up next to me and it turns out he was the guy that rode my bike from the warehouse when it arrived on the truck. I remembered him but not his name. We had a brief chat and I said that I would catch up with him and his family later. I forgot to check out what people were pointing at. While I was in town I went for a walk around the city.  Saw a few interesting things and a pretty church.

We rode home together and stopped off at the place that I had stayed the night before I left Venezuela the first time. Just as we got there someone pulled alongside and was pointing at something on the back of my bike. Fortunately, the place we were going was just around the corner and he was a mechanic and the father of the guy who I had seen earlier. After greetings we looked at the bike and saw that the chain tensioner was loose and just flapping around. He fixed it up straight away which was great. We grabbed a couple of beers and had a nice chat. We then headed home.

We had the rest of the beer and a nice long chat. He speaks pretty good English and had lost his wife a couple of years ago to cancer. We got along well. I had a great sleep and next morning he made arepas and egg for breakfast before he headed off to work. He also apologised that I would have to move out of the room that night because a female rider was coming and she would need the room. He had a suitable spot available in the lounge with an air mattress for me which was fine. We went into town again for lunch and meet a tourism couple from a nearby town. He also took me to a place where I needed to go to buy third party insurance for my bike. It was 55Euro. But he paid it for me and I paid him back in US dollars. The Venezuelan government is trying to get away from the US dollar being its default currency and so uses the euro for government business where it can. I’m glad he was there with me as it made it so .much easier.

After that we went home and the female rider was waiting for us. She is fairly Instagram famous. A good looking Argentinian woman with a big triumph 900 bike and a three legged dog.  She was nice and was going down the road to buy some things and so I tagged along. She bought fruit and veggies. I bought a sixpack of beer. Her English was probably worse than me Spanish but we got along fine. That night the three of us chatted in mainly Spanish but I sneaked away as I was Spanished out. I was talking about my route for the following day and was ready for bed, when she produced 3 meals. So I had to eat. It was nice but also very late.

The air mattress wasn’t overly comfortable but I got some sleep. More than on the planes. She was also leaving that morning and so we were all up reasonably early and ready to go. I went to load my bike and found it was raining. And it really looked set in. My first long riding day and it was raining. Not a great start. But my start was better than the other rider. Her battery was dead flat. We tried to push start it without luck. We were on the top of a long hill so the local guy said he take the bike down the hill and try and jump start it. He was gone for over five minutes and we were beginning to worry but then he arrived back at the gate with the engine running. We both needed fuel and so he borrowed 20 litres off a neighbour and we filled our tanks in the shelter of his bike cage. She then loaded up her dog and put on its safety googles and we all headed towards town. I was first to peel off and waved my goodbyes to the other two. I was on my own again. Just me and google maps and the rain and 300kms to ride.

San Cristobal is set amongst hills and probably get a lot of rain. My plan is to ride across the southern part of Venezuela about 1700kms to get back to the city of Porto Ordaz, where I had my accident and continue on my trip from there. I was hoping to get about 300kms a day if my shoulder and butt were up to it. We had discussed the route and google kept redirecting me to other roads and saying that a particular bridge was closed. My local friend assured me that the bridge was open so I just believed it was. My plan was to ride to Guasdualito about 265kms and 6 hours and maybe a closed bridge.

The road out was winding and I was glad to just follow the arrow. I’d been told there’s not a lot of traffic and that was true. I went through a few small towns but after a couple of hours the road was getting worse and there was no traffic at all. Google said to keep going and that I only had 3 hours to go. It was still raining and was mountainous but in the clouds and without the views.

I seemed to have summited the mountain and was heading down but then google started saying my arrival time was getting later and later. I was riding much slower and the road had deteriorated a lot. I was now crossing rivers but they had concrete bases so that was okay. Then the rivers got deeper and flowing much faster. I paused before I crossed them. I then realised that google had taken me on a long detour away from the main road. I was pretty annoyed but could see that I only had about 7kms to go and then I would be back on the main road (see green circle in map below). So I continued and was glad that I didn’t have to go back on the same road. And then with less than 5kms to go I came down a hill and the road was gone. It was washed away be a landslide and was now a river. And flowing fast. I parked the bike and walked through it. It was deeper than my boots, rocky, and brown water flowing fast. It was hard to walk through.

I thought if I took all my luggage off and carried it across that I might be able to ride across and along it, but I doubted that I could ride back the other way if I went further and came across something worse and had to turn back. I walked for half a kilometre on the other side in my wet boots to see if I could see the main road or see a house, but it was too cloudy and I couldn’t see far. I went back to the bike. If I had been with another rider, or knew for sure that it would only get better after this then maybe I would have tried to cross. But if I dropped the bike with my dodgy shoulder then I mightn’t be able to lift it up and I hadn’t seen anyone for over two hours. Begrudgingly, I made an adult decision and turned around and went back.

The ride back seemed a little better than I had thought. The rain stopped and I could see how beautiful it was. I caught myself going a bit too fast a couple of times as I tried to make up lost time. I cursed google a lot. And to top it off I somehow snapped off the cord from my battery to my phone and the broken connection piece was jammed in the phone and it was almost out of battery and no way to charge it. The sun peeked out and so did a few locals and so I just went old school for a while and asked directions. I also remembered a few spots from the ride in. I made it through all the bad stuff and stopped in a town and got out my good phone and looked at google maps. It kept telling me to go on the crap road that I had just turned back on. In the end I had to ride almost all the way back into San Cristobal. After a 6 hour detour I found myself back on the main road, which was lovely but I was only 20kms away from where I had started that morning.

Looking on the bright side, it had been a great technical ride and I guess it showed me that I still had my skills and that my shoulder was up to the ride.  It was now late afternoon and I had to decide whether to continue on or just go back and start again tomorrow. I felt I need to go on. The road was great and as I was cursing google for the umpteenth time as I arrived at a toll. Then it hit me. Yep. I had the avoid toll roads ticked on my phones. Sorry google. It was just doing what I asked and taking me on non toll roads. And what is worse is that motorbikes don’t have to pay tolls in Venezuela anyway. You just ride through.

I made it into La Pedrera just on dusk (see red pin on map). One hundred kilometres from where I started. There was only one hotel, Hosteria La Pedrera, which didn’t have great reviews but had lots and lots of parking inside and outside and was $25US. I unloaded my stuff and then went for a walk. A small town. Not overly exciting. The only petrol station was closed but I saw a shop selling 10 litre plastic containers. They were used containers and only a couple of bucks. I asked the guy if he could sell me one and put fuel in it. Yep. $10US. So I paid and then went back later and picked it up.

I saw a nice little hamburger cart and so I had a burger and coke and a chat to the friendly young lady working there. They accepted Colombian pesos which was good as I still had a few hundred dollars worth of them. San Cristobal also accepted pesos.  I enjoyed my burger, got my fuel and headed back to the hotel. I put the fuel in my room which was a mistake as it had no ventilation so it then spent the night out next to my bike in the car park. The aircon here was also only on or off. I had a cold shower, not that I had a choice and then climbed into bed, grateful that I was on my way and I had a ten litre tank of fuel. Hopefully tomorrow would go a bit more to plan.

KMS 44730