Day 14 - Margarita - Upata:
Fact Sheet: 538 Km
Isla Margarita - Puerto La Cruz - Barcelona - El Tigre - Ciudad Bolívar - Ciudad Guayana - Upata
Hotel Andrea (Upata) - twin, std: aprox. USD 15
We are up early: at 04:30 we leave the hotel, and by 05:30 are at Punta de Piedras, in a cue of cars headed for the mainland. The trip was much worse than the inbound one, as this old rusty ferry took nearly 5 hours to dock in Puerto La Cruz. At last, we are rolling again, and to our distress, it is close to noon. That means rush-hour in Puerto La Cruz and Barcelona. After Barcelona, our average speed picks up to 120Km/h, and the road is clear through to El Tigre. Traffic is relatively light, though tricky at times: after El Tigre, the highway is single-lane until Ciudad Bolívar, which we break by 16:30. No time for nonsense, as we lost too much on the ferry, and we speed on to Ciudad Guayana, and then at dusk, head uphill to Upata. We arrive nackered, but pleased, at the Hotel Andrea in Upata: it is a familiar sight. We have dinner at the chinese restaurant next to the lobby: our last dinner in Venezuela!
Events:
| Beware: the conventional Ferry did not open the snack-bar, and the restaurant had nothing: it is a gruelling 5 hours without any food or drink, and the diesel smoke was seeping in from everywhere. We concluded that it is better to pay twice as much, and take the Margarita Express: they seem to have given up on mantaining the conventional ferries. |
| Another important advice: Be careful crossing Barcelona, and Ciudad Guayana: at times, you loose all drift of direction: the signs advising you how to get to the motorways suddenly dissappear at major junctions, and you can easily wander and meander for 30 minutes, until you pick up the scent and carry on the chase! Despite maps and some previous experience, we lost some time in both cities. I guess hitting them at the lunch and evening rush did not help things either! |
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