Essential Spanish phrases

'What's up, cousin?' — the standard Cúcuta greeting, and 'primo' here is genuinely warm rather than ironic. The accent sits between Colombian and Venezuelan and locals hear the difference instantly.

Thing, business, problem, whatever — the most flexible noun on the border, used identically on both sides. '¿Qué es esa vaina?' will get you understood anywhere from here to Caracas.

Cool, great. 'Chévere' is the Venezuelan-inflected one you hear constantly here; 'bacano' is the interior-Colombian equivalent. Which one someone reaches for tells you a lot about where they grew up.

To be broke. Heard constantly and meant literally in a city where roughly six workers in ten are in informal employment with no contract, no pension and no sick pay.

A Táchira and Zulia exclamation of surprise that has crossed the border wholesale. Harmless, ubiquitous, and one of the clearest markers of how thoroughly the two sides have mixed.

To cross by an informal path rather than a bridge. The trochas are controlled by armed groups, carry robbery and extortion risk, and are never the right answer for a foreigner regardless of what the queue at the bridge looks like.

Literally a 'vaccine', locally an extortion payment demanded from shops, transporters and building sites. If anyone uses this word about your business, call the Gaula on 165 rather than paying.

Help! Dial 123 for any emergency nationwide; 119 reaches the fire brigade directly, 132 the Red Cross ambulance service and 165 the army-police anti-extortion and anti-kidnapping unit.

'The bridge' — always the Simón Bolívar unless another is named. Half of Cúcuta's conversations about logistics, family and business route through this one word, and its opening hours are civic news.

A Venezuelan cheese stick in fried dough, sold on every corner here. Cúcuta's street food is genuinely half Venezuelan — tequeños, cachapas, arepas rellenas and pastelitos are local food now, not foreign food.

The maize parcel steamed in plantain leaf, eaten at Christmas on both sides of the border. Norte de Santander makes its own version and will tell you at length why it is better than the Venezuelan one.

'The city of trees' — Cúcuta's own name for itself, from the wide tree-lined avenues it was rebuilt with after the 1875 earthquake flattened it. In a city this hot, the shade is not decorative.