NADJA DROST:

With Colombia's 50 year civil war having reached a truce last year, many Venezuelans see Colombia as a safer bet than staying put.

For decades, Colombians fleeing the armed conflict crossed this bridge in droves into neighboring Venezuela to seek refuge. But now the traffic is going the other way. Every day, tens of thousands of Venezuelans walk this bridge into Colombia — seeking medical attention, buying basic goods, like flour and toilet paper, or to move their entire lives across the bridge and try to start new ones in Colombia.

On the Colombian side of the bridge, vendors and small shops have popped up next to money-changers, where Venezuelans exchange wages paid in their devalued currency — a week's worth of wages gets them a few bags of cornmeal, rice and bars of soap.

A few minutes walk from the bridge, there's a line down the block for a soup kitchen run by a local church. It opened in March to respond to the influx of hungry Venezuelans. It serves 500 to 800 lunches a day. Some stay in Cucuta indefinitely. Others, like this woman, go home to Venezuela after spending the day carting migrants' belongings across the bridge for cash.