Central America - Medellen to Mairicaibo

Have two nights booked at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Mairicaibo Venezuela in the Presidential Suite for 5,000 priority club points each night.

Now, how to get to Mairicaibo?

Spirit Airlines has announced low cost flights from Ft. Lauderdaile to Medellin Columbia. Medellin looks to be the closest airport to Mairicaibo served by an American air carrier.

ANyone know how to get from Medellin to Mairicaibo by rental car, bus, rail, or commuter airline?

on a friendly note (not smart ... ... note) its Medellin and Maracaibo

looking at the webpage of the airport (A very useful trick to see who flies to/from any airport)

it seems that among the airlines that fly there you can use AA from Miami or Copa from PTY (which gets you miles in onepass...same program used by Continental)

Why would you want to go to Medellin first?
If the AA and CM flights aren't convenient for you, just fly to CCS, from where you can get loads of flights to MAR.

By the way, both Colombia and Venezuela are firmly in South, not Central, America.

I found the above two posts extremely helpful advice. I had not realized that you could get to Venezuela on American Airlines and for only 35,000 points (I have over 160,000 AA points available). And there appear to be low cost carriers shuttling between Venezuela's two largest cities. Previously I thought my only real alternative was to buy a ticket on Santa Barbara Airlines from Miami (a thousand dollar purchase).

The next question becomes: which of the low cost carriers to use ex Simon Boliver airport in Caracas? If I might want to include a visit to Margarita Island as well as my visit to Maracaibo, does that suggest one particular low cost carrier?

there seems to be 3 airlines that land in Margarita

Laser (which only seems to fly Caracas-Margarita)
Aserca (more destinations including Maracaibo)
and Aeropostal

out of those 3 I have only heard of Aeropostal before (which seems to have its site down at the moment), it seems that they've had a severe fleet reduction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeropostal_Alas_de_Venezuela )

so luckily (or unfortunately) you have only 2 options

I don't believe there are any low-cost carriers based in Venezuela. OTOH, there are at least 3 full-service airlines.

I've flown Aserca on CCS-MAR-CCS, and they were fine (the plane was old, but it looked in great condition; service was courteous as well as efficient).

As for Margarita, I've not been there but I've been repeatedly told that it's too touristy. If you want to do the beach thing, I would recommend checking out the NE part of Venezuela (in/around Barcelona/Puerto La Cruz, Cumana, Mochima).

According to wikipedia, Aeropostal fly direct to BLA from both CCS and MAR.

I will be using an AA award to fly directly into Maracaibo
for this pres-suite PB "promotion".