Day 100 - A Challenging Day

---

We set our alarm early and headed out to get more money before check out. We had brought more dollars than we otherwise would have after advice from American Dan on the Cotopaxi climb who suggested ATMs were difficult. Difficult!? More like impossible! We went to ATMs at 3 different banks, putting our cards in, some letting us put in our PIN codes and select amounts, others not working at all, but all ended in the same result: no money! The Venezuelans have an ID card and they have to enter the two first or last digits before obtaining cash. We, of course, don't have this. The foreign office suggests "00" could work. It does not. Neither does numbers from sort code, card number, bank account number, PIN number, passport number etc. We asked for help in one of the banks, but they said there was nothing they could do, which started to upset Sophie so I had to step in to stop her from crying. So no money!

After some comforting, we decided we would jump on our intended bus to Santa Fe and see if we could sort money there. We still had some Bolivares, some dollars and back up travellers' cheques. The journey should take 5-5.5 hours, so getting on one at 11am after a taxi 18km out of town, should be OK. The Lonely Planet warns to take care at night, even in quiet fishing villages like Santa Fe. Unfortunately 5 hours turned into 8, so we arrived in the dark. The bus pulled up in the middle of nowhere and Sophie asked the driver if he knew the way to the town centre, his helpful "I don't know" filled us with confidence when we were already short of money. Luckily a local woman pointed us in the direction of the beach and we found a room in Posada Cafe del Mar, a family run accommodation right on the sand. We settled in for the evening and had a delicious meal after breakfast and lunch of dry bread.

How Sophie Sees It

An extremely frustrating morning, not helped in the least by the foreign office advice not to carry too much cash on you (thus we, as always, were going to rely on ATMs to see us through our two weeks in Venezuela) and their apparent lack of knowledge that ATMs were useless. How does anyone travel here?? I tried to forget about it on the bus (distracted by the lack of aircon in the first one, which also had no windows despite 30-something degree heat, and ove rpowerful aircon in the second one which resulted in my glasses steaming up every time we got out) and held out hope that we would find an ATM in Santa Fe where the foreign office's "00" idea would work.

---