| Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020 | |
Finding a bicycle in Venezuela and riding beyond...Interest forums / On Your Bike | ||
Hi everyone, I'm currently in Trinidad and hoping to finally reach South-American firm land so I can start my dream-bicycle-and-camping--trip around South-America (most of it, if not all). First challenge has been finding an old, simple, trusty and cheap bicycle, which seemed pretty easy in other places of the world, but I have failed miserably so far in Cuba and Trinidad (they keep asking me for hundreds of dollars). Any tips for Venezuela bike-shopping? any local trading websites? any bicycle-recycle associations? I would rather not get into big cities like Caracas, but if it's for a bike I would go anywhere! :-) Thanks and safe travels to everyone, | ||
Cuba is obviously a terrible place to try and buy imported things like acceptable quality bikes, because of the economic system and trade sanctions. Trinidad should have been more promising, but perhaps acceptable bikes just don't get imported there because of the lack of a sufficient local market. Venezuela I'm sorry to tell you could be as bad as Cuba. Due to increasingly soviet style policies, the country now has a shortage of foreign currency, a black market currency rate that is plummeting, very little local industry, and lots of shops with empty shelves: even toilet paper is in short supply. Thus the chance of finding an acceptable quality new bicycle at a sensible price is nil. Though you may find a second hand bike bought in better times and a seller happy to accept cash dollars, but it would be a private transaction out of sight of the authorities, not some organised trading area.
Fancy starting in Colombia instead? You'll get a bike no trouble there, cycling is practically the national sport. Also, provided you stay away from the militia-controlled areas, these days it's a lot safer than Venezuela, where even the security forces are willing to shake down tourists. Also Venezuelan visas have become a bit of a problem these days, depending upon your nationality. | 1 | |
Thanks a lot for the info, iviehoff Fortunately, I've just checked and as a Spanish national I don't need a visa to enter Venezuela (up to 3 month-stay). Unfortunately, everybody's talking insecurity, muggings, armed robberies, corrupt policemen and a shortage of even the most basic things like deodorant, shampoo or toilet paper! :-) So finding a bicycle logically is going to be tougher than ever now...or maybe not ;-) But I had understood the black-market dollars made things even cheaper for those of us who can bring foreign currency inside Venezuela?? Just to clarify, what I'm looking for is an OLD, second/fith-hand bicycle, the kind that don't have much paint left on them anymore, with very simple brakes and gear-shifts...that's all. For sure, imported bikes in Cuba where cheap-plastic-from-China and I wouldn't even use these type of bikes even if they were given to me for free! Anyway, thanks again for your help and I'll keep on searching, but maybe it's time I start looking at other ways of transportation...motorbikes maybe? ;-) | 2 | |
I biked thru Venezuela back in '99. Your comments about empty market shelves and muggings and robberies bring back the memories. Yes, even back then the story was the same - there wasn't much food selection in the little markets and we were warned constantly about not biking on this or that road due to being robbed (we never encountered a dangerous situation except once with children raising a rope to try to stop us (be careful of this!)). But the one thing which shocked me, as I recall, was the long shelf full of toilet paper! And not just in one town. As for your question about the bike, it's a poor country where you won't see any on the roads. Caracas would probably be your best bet, but no doubt it still has the same reputation as back then. I would suggest searching on line for local bike clubs and sending them an email. Colombia might be your best bet, tho I'd hate to suggest skipping a country. | 3 | |
Hugo Chávez came to power in 99, so you saw the place when it was still (relatively speaking) thriving. He didn't get his sovietification going for a few years.
But you won't get very far unless there is enough wear left in the components. Bicycles stop working when there's no metal left on the rims, or the teeth on the gears are so worn down the chain fails to engage with them. Someone once (famously?) rode the length of South America on a Venezuelan postman's bicycle, but it didn't have gears, or only a 3-speed Sturmey, and solid and heavy like a tank. I doubt you are willing to ride such. Probably from former times there are some tolerable bicycles in the country to be bought second hand, but what I am saying is it may be tricky finding them. Shortage may also make them curiously expensive, even for cash dollars. | 4 | |
Hahaha yes, this has happened to me more than once :-) But I found it easy to fix and spare parts for this type of "simple" bikes readily available (at least in other countries).
You're absolutely right, that's exactly what happened in Cuba...I guess the situation in Central/South-America is very different to Europe or Asia regarding second-hand bicycles. Thank you both for your answers, I will try my best to find a bike here in Trinidad before leaving!! And of course I won't miss or skip Venezuela for nothing, even if I have to walk/hitchike all the way to Colombia :-) | 5 | |
Ah yes, this is always the case in most countries, it is well-intentioned local advise but it usually comes from people who only have newspaper-experience about crime/danger. Interesting hobby that of some kids in rural areas, reminds me of those other children who threw stones at us in Morocco (a classic!!) because we didn't give them any money -- thanks to whoever passed before on a bike throwing money around... Thanks for the tip, travelinghobo, I've just sent an email to a few bike magazines/clubs in Venezuela :-) so far the most promising is this one in Caracas: | 6 | |
There are two kinds of issue. (1) Poverty. Reasonably acceptable bicycles are not imported because of poverty. This can become less of an issue as incomes go up, at least locally in a capital city for example, but a history of poverty may mean that there are not many second hand bicycles of quality to be had. For ex, you can now get reasonably nice bicycles in La Paz, Bolivia, the poorest (large) country in South America, but you couldn't when I was there 15 years ago. In Central America, there are some very poor countries, though there were some reasonably nice bicycles in Guatemala City even 15 years ago because cycling is popular there. Though "cycling is popular" can translate to "you can buy reasonably OK racing bikes". (2) Economic system. Countries with capital and/or forex controls reserve their scarce forex for importing very important things, like equipment and machinery for enterprises, not consumer goods. Thus it can be difficult to get decent foreign bikes and spares. This is the issue in Cuba (which is also poor), Venezuela and Argentina, possibly Ecuador. Spare parts is another issue. As you noticed, you can get basic "international" spares. But nicer bikes sometimes demand Shimano-standard spares, which can be trickier in places where Shimano-standard bikes are rare, or the economic system impedes import of them. Touring accessories is another issue. Reasonable quality panniers and racks tend to take longer to arrive in a country than bikes. Eg, you can probably only get them in Chile in all of S Am, other places you'd mostly have to import them, or they'd be very diff to track down. | 7 | |
There is that. But there are also unfortunately bits in parts of Lat Am which can result in an unpleasant experience for the tourist. There are locations in Peru, Guatemala, etc, where cyclists are quite routinely separated from their valuables by bandits. You need to know about this if you do not wish to be so inconvenienced. There are bits of Colombia where tourists are still kidnapped. Parts of Mexico are rather dodgy too, the bits infested by drug cartels. Colombia is much safer than it used to be, but there are still some bits you don't go to that are run by militias, and the displaced population who have left these places is still measured in the millions. You do need to know where not to go to in Colombia. I know a cyclist who went to one of the parts of Colombia you don't go to, and he got kidnapped. He managed to escape within a couple of days, he was lucky. One of the rare occasions where being a useless idiot (he wasn't very useful to the kidnappers) saved him from the trouble being a useless idiot had got him into. I know another cyclist who went to another part of Colombia you don't go to, who realised what he was doing and took the precaution of travelling that bit on a bus. The other travellers on the bus insisted he get off the bus 10km before town as they didn't wish to arrive in town with a gringo on board. As he was cycling the last short distance, he went past dead bodies lying by the road side. He was advised at his guesthouse to eat early and stay in. He got up early in the morning to take a river ferry and heard shots being fired worryingly close by. I know another cyclist who goes to Colombia frequently, and stays away from the bits you don't go to, which have fortunately greatly reduced in recent times. He has still had a gun pulled on him, but it was stuck out of a car door and he pushed the car door shut, cycled off, and they didn't follow. Venezuela meanwhile now has a much higher murder rate than Colombia. It's difficult getting reports of the impact on tourists, because few tourists go there any more, in part because the fiddled currency etc makes it ridiculously expensive for tourists to go there, and because the place, being sovietified, has become rather dire for pleasant tourism like it used to be. But a work colleague told me that her brother went to a wedding in Caracas, and got shaken down by the army at Caracas Airport - they picked him up between taxi and terminal door, drove him offsite to a rough building in a dodgy part of town, put the frighteners on him, which all boiled down to extracting money off him if he wanted to catch his flight - he got back to the airport just in time and a couple of thousand dollars lighter. He'll never go back there until there are some big changes in society. | 8 | |
Iviehoff, I know you've been on this forum for years, and as I recall (from when I used to bike and hang out here) you usually had worthwhile info to report. However, long time travelers know not to listen to the friend-of-a-friend story and seeing as how you're a long-time traveler, I wonder why you're reporting these friends of a friend stories. If it isn't first hand, almost always there isn't anything to it. If I join in on the game, then I could say that they guy I biked with in Venz. carried on into Colombia and nothing bad happened to him. Then again, he chose not to go into the bits one shouldn't be traveling in. I still travel extensively, tho not by bike, and can assure you that almost always when something bad happens to a person, they're leaving part of the story out (usually the part wherein they did something stupid to get themselves into the situation). If the OP has common sense and maintains his awareness of what's going on, he'll most likely be okay. And I went to Venz. 6 months after Chavez became president. Half the people we spoke with supported him, the other half didn't think it was going to go well. | 9 | |
Nice, very nice discussion :-) As much as I agree with iviehoff about the mentioned dangers for tourists (those were some really scary horror stories!! but pretty similar to the stories told in other countries/continents ;-) it seems to me that at least the three of us here on this thread are what travelinhobo called "long-term travelers", and with this experience in mind I must confess I am right now watching Venezuelan TV and it looks like a pretty normal place to me -- by this I mean it's not a war zone with constant crossfire. From my part, this is one of the main reasons I'm looking for a run-down, old-looking and simple bike and not the latest titanium-alloy, disc-brakes type of ultra-expensive machine. I also travel with one very small backpack, no electronics whatsoever and my clothes are usually so badly sewn (by myself) that it is easy for me to fend off beggars just by comparing my shoes to theirs. Also I'm pretty much always sober and my first sentence when meeting locals is usually where can I eat/sleep the cheapest, so I have had the privilege (and good luck, of course) of having never been robbed, assaulted, threatened, kidnapped, etc...in the past 8 years of tripping off-the-beaten-track :-D This topic reminds me of a few months ago in Dominican Republic, where somebody told me a spanish guy had just been shot dead by two teenagers in Santo Domingo -- news like this are obviously frightening (ask my mom about it) but then I get to thinking: "How did it exactly happened? I heard the guy was a 40-something businessman, and I could picture exactly the type: single-while-on-business male, with money to throw and flash around, probably drunk or high on hard drugs, walking alone at night in the city back to his hotel when he meets these two nervous kids and instead of "cooperating" gets typically spanish-cocky and gets shot". Now, that looked to me like a much more realistic and sad picture of what tourist tend to do over there -- in my limited 2-month experience of that country -- than a place where people go around shooting others all the time for nothing. I also met an Austrian guy who had live there for 20+ years and claimed shooting at some local from his car one night, while high on alcohol and coke, because he was frightened the other guy was going to assault him...an endless circle of fear and violence. I once read somewhere if you give people a "bad look" or a "frightened" one you might be just attracting or provoking the very same violence you were trying to avoid. I certainly wouldn't like being sat with my friends in a park in Madrid while tourists hurried by looking afraid of me...it may even make me feel angry x-( Of course, it all comes down to personal fears, choices and life philosophies, but accidents do and always will happen. Such is Life, as they say! By the way, I'm curious now -- which places are those that you do not go to in Colombia? :-)))) Darien Gap by any chance? | 10 | |
Quite so. The point is, there are still some parts of Colombia, rather more than Darien, you don't go to. I'm warning OP against switching off his common sense. Nigel (see below) switched off his common sense: he was enjoying being in Colombia so much, with the warm welcome foreign cyclists usually receive, he found it hard to believe that not very far away there was a high risk of getting kidnapped, despite what everyone said. So he just followed an attractive looking remote road on the map and got kidnapped. But fortunately, the areas where this happen in Colombia, are a lot less than they used to be.
These are not friend-of-a-friend stories. The most remote was brother-of-a-work-colleague, and was being related with quite considerable distress as "what just happened to my brother yesterday". Disbelieve if it you like, I don't. The rest were all people I know directly, and I believe them. The kidnap I mention was reported in the mainstream British press, the sufferer was Nigel Breeze, you can check that out, here's one report http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-110873646.html there are others. The chucked-out-of-the-bus and dead bodies by the side of the road took place in/near Puerto Asis, or on the road to Puerto Asis. The person who went on that journey used to post on this forum under the moniker Backyarder or similar, and published a weblog of it at the time. The person who had a gun pulled on him is a friend who gave a slide show about his cycle travels in Colombia to the Anglo Colombian Society in London, and who is happy to be introduced to people who wish to talk to him about proposed travels by bicycle in Colombia; he is an executive at BP who lived in Colombia for some years and seeks to minimise rather than exaggerate the dangers of travel there. I haven't told you about how my wife got the scar on her hand because someone cut into her tent with a knife while she was in it, in Peru. Or my close friends whose D-locked bikes were stolen from outside their tent in a snowstorm in Peru, it recorded on their website. Because those are Peru stories.
I don't tell you because it changes all the time, and you need to do the research and get the latest info. It's a lot, lot more than Darien, Darien alone doesn't explain several million displaced people. The referred kidnap above occurred in some remote part of Meta province, which is not far east of Bogotá. I don't know how unsafe Meta is these days, a while back it was definitely a no-no. Almost certainly going to Villavicencio by major routes has long been completely safe, as in general are most major routes. It's the remote little roads through the national parks and other attractive regions that look so tempting on the map that need a little research before you just cycle off onto them. Puerto Asis is in the far south of the country. The recent kidnap of a general in Colombia took place in the western highlands, which has long been a favourite area for kidnaps. But this is not intended to put the frighteners on you. Colombia is a much safer place than it used to be when Nigel was kidnapped, and perhaps as much of 80% of the country is now reasonably secure. There are places in Guatemala where you can rely on the fact that you will meet a bandit who will separate you from your valuables if you go there without someone who has paid them off. But most places it is a bit more complicated than that, bandits usually don't have a sufficiently reliable business to be there all the time and quite often people get through, but they are taking a risk. Murder and kidnap rates in Colombia, although now lower than several other countries in the region, are still many times higher than well-governed countries. | 11 | |
So, I posted this a month ago and now...I´m in Tucupita, Orinoco Delta, and have been bike-hunting for over a week! :-) The good news is that we´ve managed to find lots of cheap/free frames just by talking to everyone on the street. Most people in Venezuela are very nice, hospitable, generous and eager to share what they have just like anywhere else in the planet. It also came as a pleasant surprise the price of brand new spare parts (not Shimano or anything very high quality, but unused nonetheless) in such a small town, with at least 3 dedicated bicycle shops, in fact we are building our bikes with old 26" mountain-bike frames and just buying and assembling all the rest with the help of some friends -- all for around 35 EUR/ 50 USD per bike! Just to give an idea for anyone else coming to Tucupita with the same idea:
Comercial Manamo (Aurelio's shop) by the riverwalk front, Tony's Bikes right on the corner of the main square and Lino's Bikes close to the public market are all worth a visit and if there's a shortage of anything in one of them, the other should have it. And as a bonus, Tucupita is the home of a local legend, national cycling champion Ernesto Bueno "El Sapo" who has given us lots of free spare parts, invaluable mechanical wisdom and the warmth of his home, family and friends -- a true bicycle lover :-) | 12 | |
There are places in Guatemala where you can rely on the fact that you will meet a bandit who will separate you from your valuables if you go there without someone who has paid them off. iviehoff | 13 | |
They change. You need to research it yourself. | 14 | |
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