The bus from Santa Marta for some reason stopped after just 40 minutes at a truck stop for a little over an hour, presumably so our over sized driver could get his fill, before heading to the border. Despite what we had heard the crossing was suprisingly fast and straightforward. After stamping out of Colombia we changed a few US dollars into Bolivars with a man with a huge wad. He gave us 3 to the dollar, but we had been told that between 3 and 4 on the black market was good, so we changed a small amount to get us by for now. We then walked across the border to the Venezuela side for processing.

It was strange but simple, three teenage girls sat on chairs in the open air, no tables, wrote out the tourist cards (DEX) and handed them to us with our passports. We then went to a blacked out screen with a small hole at the nearby concrete building and handed our passports through with the tourist card. If there was going to be a problem it would happen now, but no our passports were routinely stamped the tourist card taken and we were ushered on. The Lonely Planet said that you are given a copy of the tourist card to keep during your stay, but we weren't and neither was anyone else, just a stamp, yet considering the misonformation we have gotten from that book in the past we weren't too suprised. It claims to be the 'travellers bible', well if so it is enough to make you turn Atheist - ok that is slightly unfair....

Our bus arrived more than two hours late into Maracaibo, the second largest city in Venezuela, and dropped us in an industrial estate on the edge of the city. Unbeknownst to us the bus driver has canvassed the people on the bus and this was the 'drop off' point of choice. We hadn't heard him as we were at the back of the bus and in our broken Spanish we probably wouldn't have understood anyway but god only knows why and how you the destination can be changed by deomcracy on a scheduled bus... We were some way from the bus station, it was 9.40pm, we didn't have any idea where we were and we didn't have any taxi numbers. Julie got talking to a family as our luggage was being unloaded and their teenage daughter, who spoke some English, provided help with where we were. They said that the bus station was 20 minutes away and would probably be closed by now. Before we knew it they loaded us into their huge truck and agreed to drop us at a nearby hotel. It was so kind of them and they even got out at the hotel and talked to the reception desk to ensure we were ok. We had already been told that apart from in Merida there are no hostels in the country and that it is worth getting cheap hotels. The Costa Real (Avenue Circunvalacion) was very nice, the air conditioning was baltic but it was what we needed. By that time we were dog tired and in need of getting our bearings, so we paid and headed to the bar for a sandwich and then to bed. It cost the equivalent of 80 US for both of us for the night.

We were up early the next day at 6.40am and headed for the bus terminal shortly after, arriving at about 7.30am courtesy of a taxi driver who doubled as a black market money man, who gave us 4 US to the Bolivar. We changed about 150 US with him and thought our luck was changing, we were wrong. At the bus terminal it was chaos. It was Sunday, the last day of the holiday season and everyone was headed back home for work the next day. Despite the hour there were queues out the door, I haven't seen things so crazy since I took a train in Delhi. We got to the front of one queue for a particular bus compay and all buses for Merida were full, including their night bus, until the following day. Again the joys of not being able to book in advance. We had the same experience at the next one, which actually closed almost as we joined the queue saying it was full for the day. Fortunately a third company had two spots on a bus that night leaving at 9.45pm, we bit their hands off and got our tickets. Looking around we realised that numerous night buses went much later than we had been told in Colombia, as late as 10.45pm, we felt a bit frustrated as if we had been dropped off at the station the night before we would have had a good chance of getting one as few people travel on Saturday nights. For anyone who needs to know the buses to Merida from Maracaibo either go early in the morning between 7am and 10.30am, or they are night buses in the evening (nowhere could we find this out online, so we hope it helps someone!) with three different companies. Of course this has left us in Maracaibo for the day.

We stored our bags at the station and went for a walk around, the old centre isn't too exciting but its a big city so after a couple of hours we headed to the new centre to find a shopping mall, an internet cafe to sort some future parts of the trip and a cinema to kill some time. After taking our lead from the Lonely Planet's information section we headed to an identified internet cafe, which didn't exist, and then the tourist information centre, which also didn't exist. We stuffed the devils book into the day sack and asked a local. We were directed to the Lago Mall on Avenue El Milagro (far end of the lakeside from the Bus Terminal, a short taxi ride), which was far bigger than it looked from the outside and has a great spot on the edge of the lake from where you could laze and read a book. We tried to make the best of our day stuck in Maracaibo.