Last Minute Adventure…..

When will we learn that we should NEVER underestimate the glitches that may come up while travelling?

As we sat on the restaurant’s patio Friday night, enjoying our last dinner in Taganga and thinking that we would have a relaxing evening because we were packed and ready to head out the next morning, we inadvertently learned that the Venezuelan border had been closed. Apparently, in their effort to minimize the spread of the Swine Flu, the Venezuelan Government had made a decision to prevent all foreigners that had not received the “Swine Flu Vaccine”, from entering the country. Recognizing that we were booked on a bus to Caracas the very next morning, and with our flight from Caracas leaving at 7:30 am on Monday, our lives were suddenly getting complicated. Add to the fact that the antiviral injection was only available from the Red Cross - which was closed all weekend - and the charges for any changes in flights would have required us to mortgage on our house (which we no longer have), and our “relaxing evening suddenly turned into a “sweat-fest” trying to stay cool while frantically making Skype calls. (I need to thank my sister again for spending her Friday evening on the phone to us and making call after call to the airlines for us as we couldn’t access any of the North American 1-800 numbers from Columbia.)

Eventually, after none of our initial options looked like they were going to pan out, we agreed that we would take a chance and make the 6 hour trip to the border and see if we could somehow “bullshit/bribe” our way across. Not having much confidence in our plan, I was lying in bed trying to figure out how you even go about trying to bribe a border guard when Ian stated “We’ve lived in South America for over 3 years and the one thing that we have learned is that things are so much easier if you just show people what they want to see”. I said “Yes, but we haven’t received an antiviral injection so we have nothing to show them.” “But they don’t know that we haven’t received it” he replied with a grin”… After a few moments to allow Ian’s comments to sink in, I realized that we may just have a slightly unethical but feasible solution to our problem.

While I was up all night sweating about the documents, Ian slept. First thing the next morning - knowing that we hadn’t been in contact with anyone with viral symptoms and feeling 100% ourselves - with an extremely guilty conscience and oh so slightly adjusted health/vaccination records, we started our trip to the border..

At the border, the Colombian officials pulled us aside and grilled us – and the only other gringo on the bus - for 10 minutes, “Where have you travelled, how long have you been gone, have you got any flu symptoms, etc., etc. Recognizing that this was the process required just to exit a country we where beginning to have doubts about how successful we were going to be in our attempt to enter Venezuela, but now we were in no-mans land, a little strip between the two countries in the middle of nowhere, no point in turning back then as we had no back-up plan.
After waiting in a long line outside the Venezuelan immigration office, Andrea went first… she slipped through without even a question… welcome to Venezuela. I was next, my passport was handed to him, he scanned it, and then, the fateful statement “I need to see your proof of vaccination” (in Spanish of course). Calmly producing my newly revised vaccination record with a quick explanation – in Spanglish – the guard barely glanced at the English document, stamped my passport and we were both in… nothing to worry about. Caracas, here we come…