A Venezuelan wacky guy living his Australian dream

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This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.

Long time ago, I was talking to Kathy explaining the good feeling and experiences anyone could have when travels outside the boundaries of their country. Venezuela for so long was her home and only experience and somehow I was scared if she would ever going to like leaving her world behind for something yet not tasted.

Someone told me once, “visiting a country is one thing, living it is totally different; tourist could and would see everything with kind eyes, flawless and timed, meanwhile a resident will complain about several daily things as people parking were it shouldn’t, weekend drunk people or maybe irresponsible politics attitude regardless citizen rights or wishes” but what about if she didn’t even had that candy eye before traveling? Comparisons could be easy to make against Venezuela which is suffering of so much hatred and intolerance, suffering a poor politic process that doesn’t give the proper treatment to corruption or felony because is deeply rotten with those diseases. Colombia offered us a perfect comparison with Venezuela, why? Its situations are totally opposed yet suffer same diseases such as corruption and felony.

As days went by, we called or chat with our mate Alex in Bogota; she kindly offered to be our host during those days and go to shop with us. With tickets in hand we went to sleep at the Simon Bolivar Airport, mainly because it was the earlier flight at the airport and the check-in was supposed to be made at 4:00 in the morning. Once checked-in and waiting for the immigration check I could not helped to be worried.

“What if I had yet again another issue? What if the officer just wants to mess me?”

Then the officer called us, asked for our documents and took a deep look into our passports... Gave me my passport but turn his sight to Kathy and asked her “Mrs, why do you have an amendment on July 30?” She explained at that moment that my passport had an issue so we were unable to travel and the cancelation was necessary as she didn’t leave. The officer gave us the go without any other second thought. At that moment an old lady asked to us where the gate 17 was (the one pointed at our passages) and after she watched our tickets asked to stay with us; 30 minutes later we were heading to Bogota via Cartagena.

Once in Bogota, Kathy had mixed feeling between excitement and supreme rush, like being electric; after picking up our bags and setting off last couple of things, we meet Alex to go to her home, leave things there and go to a mall. As the day went out Kathy and I were shocked of how different things were; daily costs as food or anything else, compared to Venezuela were so low and so, we realised our choosing was right, we needed to leave Venezuela behind in order to have a nice family with high standards of life. Next couple of days were shopping and the final day, we headed to the salt cathedral. I must confess I didn’t imagine being in such a magical or beautiful place, something worth it to visit whenever someone go to Bogota.

Was it everything ok? No, even though we request permission to the government to use dollars through our credit cards, it didn’t work. We spend time and money calling back to our banks in Caracas just to be mocked by the bank representatives, didn’t do anything to help us or trying to solve our issues with the credit cards. The reports at stores were “oh, your credit card has problems with our credit card point... do you have other payment type?” thankfully we were prepared to pay in cash every single time.

Now, how has the fault? Is it government or bank fault?

Several days ago I was chatting with a forum member (who is going to Australia to study English) and he told me that after long conversations with CADIVI (the responsible of approve dollar requests) he had its courses approved and “paid” in dollars through a bank entity, but when he call the bank where he holds his account, they told him that there isn’t such money ready to go. As usual, he thought the bank was telling the truth and all the fault was CADIVI’s so he called back his officer just to find the bank was playing fool just to keep the dollars for its own benefit.

Our case, whose fault? Don’t know and seriously don’t want to know neither, leaving these things behind will be the best and keep moving forward. All we know is, it was delightful and we really appreciate to Alex and Stef having us as such magnificent hosts. Thank you guys for everything you were the best.

Next? Jump into the plane whose waiting to make our dreams come true.