Isla Margarita

Isla Margarita is one of the top tourist destinations in Venezuela, and it really shows. Everything's far cleaner and smarter than most of the rest of the country, and there are loads of proper brand-name shops dotted around the streets. For whatever reason, it's a tax-free zone, so in theory everything's cheap, but we didn't end up buying anything!

Actually, getting there was a real pain. We haven't had too much luck with boats / ferries thus far. Naviarca operate the passenger ferry from Cumaná to Isla Margarita - unfortunately it broke down a couple of days ago and wasn't fixed, so we had to take the car ferry instead. Whereas the passenger ferry operates on a schedule (departures at 2pm and 7pm I think), the car ferry is somewhat less exact. Indeed, "any time between 1pm and 5pm" hardly constitutes a schedule at all! We turned up nice and early (being English), and so of course were stuck waiting for four hours until the thing finally left at 4pm. Sounds bad, but we've grown used to this sort of thing by now!

Anyway, we finally arrived in Margarita at about 8pm. We took a por puesto (small bus) from the port to Porlamar, the island's main city, and found a nice, cheap hotel in which to stay.

The next day we took a por puesto out to La Asunción, the island's tiny capital city. It's a pretty place, all Spanish forts, ancient cathedrals and tidy Plaza Bolívars, but very quiet. We stayed a couple of hours, soaking up the Caribbean atmosphere, and then returned to Porlamar.

After a quick lunch we took another bus to Pampatar, a small city on the island's east coast, with another fort. By chance, someone else decided to visit Pampatar that day, namely El Presidente himself, Hugo Chávez. We stood by the side of the road in a throng of Venezuelans with MVR flags and red berets - after an hour a huge fleet of jeeps and luxury cars zoomed past us. I was busy taking pictures with my camera, and therefore didn't see anything (doh!), but Katherine claims she saw someone's hand waving, so that was probably him... Turns out Chávez had been giving a speech inside the fort in the city, and it was all broadcast live on TV. The newspapers on Margarita were full of it the next day, so we bought one and read all about it!

After all that excitement, we cooled off with a drink of chicha (drink made of rice and milk, sounds weird but very nice) and Katherine swam in the sea for a bit. We returned home in the evening and had dinner in a swish Chinese restaurant.

The next day ended up being devoted almost entirely to tasks. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to confirm a flight with Avianca. The number we got from the website wasn't the right one - I rang it and was given a different one. We tried that from a payphone, but for whatever reason you can't make freephone (0800) calls from payphones, even with a phone card. In the end we went into a centro de communicaciones, but of course you can't ring 0800 numbers from them either. After a lot of frustration we found a New York number for Avianca, and made an international call to America to confirm the flight. Weirdly, it's cheaper to phone USA (about Bs129 a minute = 5 cents) than it is to make a national call to another state in Venezuela. Something to do with competition between phone companies I guess.

So, our flight was confirmed eventually. Next job was to get tickets for the ferry back. You can get to Cumaná and Puerto La Cruz from Margarita. Since we were heading towards Caracas, west, we got the fast ferry to P.L.C., departing 10am the next day. We double-checked that we knew where the buses to the port left from (not an easy task, believe me!), and eventually got back to our hotel in time for an early-evening swim in the Caribbean, from Bella Vista beach in Porlamar.

So that was our time in Margarita. It was really nice, and not as expensive as you might have thought, so we could have done with a couple more days there. Maybe next time! We got the ferry the next morning with no problems, and ended up in P.L.C. at about 1pm. After a brief panic (from me...), we found a bus from P.L.C. to Caracas that left at 2pm.

The bus dropped us off in Caracas' La Bandera terminal (by far the more convenient one, as it's near a Metro station) at 8pm. We took the Metro to Sabana Grande - downtown Caracas is not particularly safe or salubrious - and got a room in a good hotel (1 star! the luxury!).