Snow is not common in the Caribbean and apart from me, none of us had ever seen it. And although I had the photo to prove it, I couldn’?t really remember what it was like. So when we heard there was a cable car that went high into the Andean mountain chain, we couldn’?t resist and set about making the arrangements to travel to Meriden in Venezuela. This involved a night bus, something we were able to arrange with little trouble. We boarded the bus in a state of high anticipation and we were the only foreigners on board. It set off, rolling smoothly through countless little villages.
Suddenly, we felt the bus start to slow and looked at each other in alarm. The bus rolled to a stop and two soldiers got on the bus. It was passport control. When we saw the soldiers we felt very afraid. We normally think of soldiers as big and bad, but these soldiers weren?t. Instead, they were very, very young, looking 16 to 18 at best ? and they had guns. As they moved through the bus, our worst fears were confirmed. They picked out the foreigners (us) and motioned us off the bus with their guns. Was this the time we were going to be ?disappeared?? I had a particular problem ? two British passports ? one expired, one current. The reason was simple. The expired passport had the stamp that showed I was a resident of Barbados; the other one allowed me to travel. I couldn’t go anywhere without both of them. You try explaining that situation at midnight in a strange country to a teenager with a gun. It wasn’?t looking good, especially as they claimed not to understand our Spanish and didn?t speak English. After a while, we persuaded him to call his boss and managed to explain the situation. It had taken an hour, but finally we were allowed to re-board the bus, to the disapproving looks of all the locals who had been forced to wait for us.
We were glad to leave the bus when it finally arrived in Meriden the next morning. However, it turned out that the trip had been in vain. The cable car was being repaired and would not be fixed before our departure from Venezuela. As there was nothing much else to do, it was back to Caracas by the next bus. What an anticlimax!
This is part of my Travel Tales in Venezuela series. In the final instalment, more travel troubles.
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