Day 27 Costa Rica – Panama - Caracas, Venezuela (12 August)

(Written at Rosita and Monica´s house in Cartagena on 16 August)

After a hurried breakfast and some last moment stresses about the family´s baby dog that was momentarily missing, Maggie and Lilliane took Jansie and Eugenie to the airport. It was a sad moment when we greeted each other at the drop-off zone. Absolutely no question was asked about how we were planning to leave Venezuela and we checked in without any problems.

The 50 minute flight to Panama brought us to our 1 hour moment of truth at the Panama airport where we had to find a stone in the sparkling clean, plantless transit hall. We found a big glass sliding door on ground level that led to the bus pick-up point from where passengers were taken to the smaller planes. There were no other passengers around, but there was some security. Jansie walked out and found a stone in pot plant. By the time she got back two security officials were shouting at us. They inspected the stone and decided we could keep it, and let us go. We boarded our onward flight directly after.

At the Caracas airport entry was smooth, and Jansie and Eugenie only had to wait half an hour before Ethie also landed and we all sat down to have a celebratory coffee and snack. We made a policy decision not to change money on the black market for righteousness sake. This resulted in us changing at a rate of $1:2 rather than the black market rate of $1:6! This left us VERY POOR in Venezuela.

We took a taxi to the Hotel close by that Ethie had booked and we took a stroll to the Caribbean coast at sunset. And had the cheese and bread we could barely afford for dinner.