Venezuela Crossing
 

Having ridden the bike through Caracas twice, I was determined to find a faster way to get to the Colombian border at Cucuta. On the way down I tried to find the turn-off to by-pass the big city, and to straighten the dogleg Caracas-Barcelona-El Tigre. I failed. The road signs in this country are pathetic. They only speak to locals, and they know where they are going in the first place. But the signs here are still infinitely better than the ones in Suriname and Guyana, for in these countries there are none, nada, nix. So on the way north I forgot my Martian attitude and asked, asked, asked, anybody that would listen to me, and I did find the turn-off. From El Tigre it leads west via Valle de la Pasqua, El Sombrero, Ticina, to San Carlos, and back to the autopista Caracas-San Cristobal, San Antonio, and over to Cucuta, Colombia. This shortcut is excellent, with only a few rough patches. In spite of the heavy truck traffic, it is by no means as hectic as going through Caracas. So I'm sitting in San Cristobal one day early, because, you guessed it, Venezuelan, and Colombian customs don´t work Saturdays and Sundays. Bummer.