Day 101 - In Search of Money... for 9 Hours

---

Unfortunately, Santa Fe has no cash points, no banks and no change houses. So this morning we decided to catch a mini bus to the nearest town with a bank - Puerto la Cruz 45 minutes away. Using some of our last Bolivares to get there, the morning consisted of trying 3 cards in 5 different banks, 10 different cash points, with no success. One of the machines told us to see their representative, who told us to use our passport number, so we tried that too, but no luck. We had some back up travellers' cheque, but we hadn't even seen anywhere to change them and the banks would not. Our closest option came when a black market changer suggested he could change cheques, but we definitely had a reluctance to give them to him. So in desperation we headed for a phone centre, having read on the foreign office website about a Western Union affiliate "Zoom". With my parents in holiday in Majorca we phoned Sophie's parents in the hope they could transfer some money to a Western Union, which we could pick up as cash from Zoom here. We set Soph's dad on the case, and headed off in search of Zoom. On discovery, it was typically closed for an extended lunch, but their our brains started to work... maybe we could transfer the money online to ourselves. Logging in online, we discovered that at a cost we could transfer money in minutes via credit or debit card to be collected as cash in a designated country, but not after Sophie had her photo and fingerprint taken, along with many signatures, by Zoom. Our treat, a bag of crisps and a carton of juice for lunch, plus some relief!

Back in Santa Fe 9 hours later, after a rainy season downpour, we had our second treat, a bottle of wine with dinner! Bottle of wine and corkscrew that is, we had to open the bottle myself.. still got charged 10%!s(MISSING)ervice though! Now... time to relax in the sun!!

How Sophie Sees It

I should note that when we called my parents, we didn't know there was a "Zoom" in Puerto la Cruz. We were anticipating having to abandon our beach stay and travel 6 hours to our next planned stop Ciudad Bolivar (from where we would visit Angel Falls). Whilst relieved to stumble across a Zoom in Puerto la Cruz (I say stumble across.. what we actually stumbled across was a sign advertising the branch and its street name, which turned out to be a 1km long street, which we walked up and down twice to no avail, only to find out that it was located in a small shopping centre on the street). The discovery presented us with a conundrum. What if the transfer (still assuming it would be a cash deposit form my dad) wasn't instant? Tomorrow was Friday, so with the UK 5.5hours ahead it was evening time by now, we might not receive the money until after the weekend. Did we have enough money to survive the weekend? No, and we couldn't afford a beach towel despite being on the beach! And if the money was late or didn't arrive we would be stranded. Did we take that risk? To make matters worse and fray tempers (mine) it was a roasting hot day (we broke a sweat as soon as we stepped outside at 8am!) and we were hungry since we couldn't afford lunch. But the relief to have that money in our hands after an 8 hour search was bliss! If not a little concerning since we now had to carry £400 cash around...!

---

Photos

DIY Wine
But they still charged us 10% service!