Crossing the Border from Venezuela to Colombia

I live on Margarita Island, and in the past, it was utopia. Many changes have caused myself and other expats to search for the next utopia. This led to my good friend and myself to travel from Margarita Island, Venezuela to Bucaramanga, Colombia. Living on fixed income, we planned the most economical way , without enduring too much hardship. We were suppose to have several flight changes and a total of 60 minutes for time on the road in crossing the border between San Antonio, Venezuela and Cucuta, Colombia for the round trip.

After a several hour delay we arrived in San Antonio with about an hour and half to catch our flight in Cucuta. San Antonio is only about 10 miles from the border. It is a small airport with tons of taxis waiting to take you across the border. Remember this is the Venezuelan-Colombian border, not known for its safety for gringos. Bob and I had been living in Venezuela for 6 and 5 years respectively, so we were not totally green. But I forgot my money belt, so I put my greenbacks in my underwear. We chose our taxi, which is really picking the lesser of evils, and proceeded across the border. Our driver was pleasant, but he didn’t stop on either side of the border. We asked him about this, but he said, “Don’t worry, we will check into the country at the airport.”

The border is chaotic and ominous looking, but we passed thru with no problems and arrived at the airport. They told us we were in the country illegally, because we never checked out of Venezuela. Our taxi driver of course appeared dumbfounded, even though he makes this trip probably a minimum of 10 times a day and lives on the border. So we had to pay him double to takes us back across to check out of Venezuela, cross the border again and check into customs in Colombia. Yes, you guessed it, somewhere during this process I lost the money I had shoved down my underwear ($800)!

Naturally we missed our flight in Cucuta to Bucaramanga, so we were forced to take a bus. What was suppose to be a 30 minute flight turned into a 10 hour freezing bus ride through the mountains. We had packed for what was suppose to be a completely warm weather vacation, so we froze and I had those 10 to 30 minute nightmare naps for the complete journey. It was definitely a surreal experience.

On the return trip, due to fog we were stuck in San Antonio for 2 days. The third day we paid a taxi driver to make a 3 hour road trip from San Antonio to Santa Domingo to catch a flight to Caracas. Although it was a little scary because we were travelling along the border, it was a beautiful day and the scenery was beautiful. But this was not the 60 minute taxi ride we had planned.


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