Travelling by Bus in Venezuela

On Saturday December 17^th I began a search for bus tickets to Merida, a mountain town in southwestern Venezuela (the northern most part of the Andes). I knew tracking down tickets would be challenging given the holiday season. All forms of travel – flights and advance bus tickets - were in very high demand.

I first headed to the ticket office for Aerobus Ejecutivo which doesn’t have service to Merida. I crossed town to the office for Flamingo buses and posted signs noted tickets to Merida were sold out until December 27^th. At this point my level of anxiety began to rise. The thought of staying in Caracas for an entire week would be sub-optimal as a tourist both financially (it’s very expensive) and because I was tired off the concrete jungle.

I headed to La Bandera – the sketchy bus station that I was told to not go anywhere near – to check out the situation there. I learned that pre-sold tickets to Merida were sold out for every company. But I found that one company sells tickets only on the departure day.

On Monday December 19^th, I arrived at La Bandera again about 7am in order to beat the crowd. But I hadn’t taken into consideration that every bus for every destination would be on sale at the same time. The bus station was a spectacle of meandering lines from the 8-10 different companies doing day of sales. I found my position at the end of a ~300 person line for Llanos Express and settled in for the wait.

After 3 hours creeping slowly forward, I found myself at the desk and was rewarded with two tickets on the overnight bus. The next person in line asked for the same tickets only to be told the bus was now sold out. I smiled at the ticket agent, she smiled back and I left to find somewhere to stash my 40 pound pack.

I now settled in for a long wait for the overnight bus at 8:30pm (it was 10:00am). I also was left wondering if Sienna would arrive from her weekend trip to Los Roques (carribean islands) in time to catch the bus. Fortunately, everything went off without a hitch and Sienna and I were safely in the waiting area an hour prior to departure.

Not too unexpectedly, the departure area was an absolute mess. Hundreds of people in different states of preparedness were waiting in a variety of lines with little idea of what was going on. The system was designed to have 5 buses departing from one of 3 gates all at the same time every 15 minutes. Then they get on megaphones and tell people to form into lines by time slot of bus departure.

This system is built to breakdown if buses are late. Given the dramatic traffic problem in Caracas it was not surprising to be part of a throng of people as the 8:00 and 8:15pm buses failed to arrive. Sienna and I found ourselves in the middle of said throng as the temperature and the anxiety level of the crowd began to rise to uncomfortable levels.

Dripping with sweat we were fortunate to hear that the 8:30 passengers were being permitted to pass through to the awaiting buses. We literally pushed our way through the crowd and were finally catapulted toward the open doors.

Without an employee in sight – I ventured out into the parking area where I saw over 25 buses in various states of boarding/departing/looking for parking/etc. After asking a few drivers where bus 1054 was – I located our passage to Merida at the end of the line. Soon enough Sienna and I found our way into the cool, comfortable camabus and settled in for a 14 hour ride. Departing 2 hours late, we were on our way to the mountains at last.