In mid October, I traveled to Maracaibo, Venezuela. From there my destination was to Cartagena, Colombia. Originally, I was going to fly back to Miami and then take a flight to Cartagena. However, the bus ride there is about 8 hours on express bus. I talked with several people and decided to go by bus. The cost was relatively cheap.... 20 dollars US. Here I went through the frontier zone with Colombia and Venezuela. The area itself is beautiful but the people are poor and there is a lot of poverty. There are several stops where soldiers come on the bus. I had no problems and the people riding with me were wonderful. I made friends with one man from Cartagena who helped me a lot. His name is Eduardo. We stopped afew places along the way and had a wonderful lunch of fish and rice with beans shortly after we crossed the border into Colombia.