I had quite some work to do here in Santa Elena de Uairen, I needed my jeans to be fixed, I needed the broken tire to be fixed, I need my clothes to be washed, I needed to work badly again to upload posts to the site, I needed money, I needed more people in my group and I needed to practice walking. The most important task for the day was first to get money and second to find the most economical way to go up to Mount Roraima.

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I drove to the border but left the car at the parking just twenty meters away from the Venezuelan military staff on duty and their border office. I knew from the day of my entry that you could actually drive easily between the cities of Santa Elena de Uairen in Venezuela to Pacaraima in Brazil or vice versa and usually without any problems, the daily border traffic which had hardly serious controls. I did not want to take a chance and have later problems with the car and walked across the border. I told the officer that I will just withdraw money and come back within one hour latest. The Brazilian border control was not staffed at all only the federal police office was open to attend the official administrative requests. The walk was actually short, like the message from the money teller from my house bank, “no withdrawal”.

I knew from my first visit to Venezuela earlier this year of a small one woman office of my house bank within a small supermarket at the end of the shopping rows. I walked to the supermarket and to the woman; the short message was “no money”. I had to wait that someone would deposit money or pay a bill so that she would have money to pay out. After half an hour a man came and paid two bills, together more than 250 Brazilian Reals. The woman called me handed the 200 Brazilian Reals that I had requested and I walked back to the border. The Brazilian border control was still not staffed, the Venezuelan officer was busy on the phone and I pick up the car and drove back to Santa Elena to look for a cyber.

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I parked the car at the main square and notice the art sales people at the corner. I took one of the shells that I had found at the National Park Morrocoy and negotiated a price with one of the guys to make a neckless for my baby Matilda. I found the perfect cyber in the center of the town in a commercial center on the second floor.

I entered, explained my requirements and received the most professional and straight forward answer that I had received in the last two month in whole Venezuela and he pointed to the corner computer number 15. I sat down and plugged in my electricity cable, plugged in the internet cable and I was ready.

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I had my lunch break and drove to the terminal to have a look for backpackers and find out about arriving buses for today and tomorrow. I had a drink and a Pastel and the prices were half of the prices in the city. Santa Elena in general was quite expensive compared to the rest of Venezuela. I picked up my neckless and was very happy with the work. I am sure it looks fine on the neck of my baby Matilda.

I worked up to sunset at the cyber and went again to the house of Luis to see if he was lucky and had found some backpackers with the same interest like me to climb Mount Roraima at a reasonable price. The house was actually his mother’s and he was waiting for me outside with his wife. Luis is a very sympathetic person and always has a smile on his face. I could not tell by his looks if he was lucky or not; he had asked at his contacts but with no positive feedback. Only the operators had vacancy at the normal price of 150.000 Bolivares. We agreed to see each other again on Monday.

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