Brett just bit my face

1-28-06 (brett says:) We had four bus options headed from ciudad bolivar to the small border town of santa elena, two in the morning and two at night. we thought we´d save money on a hotel and take the night bus. this was a mistake. the bus itself was probably the nicest sleeper bus i´ve ever seen. the seats reclined almost completely flat and they even had leg rests that folded down from the seats in front. everything was fine until just after midnight. first we were stopped by the police and everyone had to take all of their bags off the bus and dump out the contents in front of this make-shift police station. that took about half an hour. Then as we were falling asleep again the bus pulled over at a rest stop and killed the engine. almost everyone filed off but we figured it must just be a routine stop for food so we didn´t bother. after almost two hours in and out of sleep i figured something must be wrong and we got off to find out most of the other passengers had hitched a ride on another bus a while back and we were stuck with a broken down bus in the middle of nowhere waiting to thumb a ride the rest of the way. disheartened, to say the least, we went back to our seats. The venezuelan slow jams playing way too loudly on the bus didn´t help and i sat awake waiting and sweating watching ruby sleep soundly next to me. luckily, another bus came by and we ran ahead of the others and got the only available seat for two. despite the new bus being a serious step down in comfort we fell asleep for a few hours until a screaming baby started its work before daylight. Between that and the recklessly fast driving pitching us from side to side, we didn´t get any more sleep and finally arrived about 830 am in the Santa Elena bus station, exhausted.

Spent the morning delirious putting together our brazilian visas at the "consulate" which basically amounted to a converted back section of someone´s house. The whole town is tiny and reminiscent of something out of the old wild west. I´d call it a one horse town, ruby would too if she knew expressions in english. The most curious part of this town is that it functions as the center of operations for brazilians who come across the border to buy cheap venezuelan gasoline to resell down south. There are lines hundreds of cars long at each of the two military controlled stations in town and people wait for hours, possibly even a half day or more, to get gas. i guess it makes sense at about 20 cents a gallon here and over $2 just a few miles away. Anything to turn a buck i suppose.

( ruby says:) Going to Brazil tomorrow. I´m not quite sure these portuguese cds are going to quite cut it.