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Published: August 19th 2007
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After meeting Will in Ciudad Bolivar (a blog entry that was lost and i cant be bothered repeating) we meet a German girl, Romy, who we took under our collective wings and embraced as the fourth member of our group and better bargaining power when it came to booking trips! We decided not to do the Angel Falls and opted instead for a 6 day trek to and up Roramia. Roramia is a tepus (look it up for more info if ure interested i wont bore you). we managed to get a price we were happy with, unusually will ended up paying nearly 40 euro less because he had euro notes to trade with while me and emma were stuck with very shitty Bolivars (if you ever come to venuzeula, bring a ba of dollars/euros, youll get 50% more on the black market trade price. Anyway enough whinging back to the trip!
This is emmas entry in our diary so i take no responsibility for bad jokes etc. the misspelling are, im afraid, all my doing, onward.
We were met off the bus by roger - our indian guide who would also assume the roles of chef, weatherman and snake killer! We left in a jeep at around 11ishand were driven to the starting point, a small indian village high above the Gran Sabana in southern Venuzuala. Our first few hours of walking seen rain, shine and the questions of "what the feck have we let ourselves in for?". After 4 hours of fairly flat but painful (because of the 6 days of lugage on our backs) trekking we arrived at camp 1. We went down to the river and had a swim, not knowing what lay before us on day two.
We woke from our first night in a tent rather refreshed and ready for what roger said was a tougher day, he was correct (something he excelled at). Talk about being thrown into the deep end, we had to cross 2 rivers, knickers and vest top (i repeat, emmas words not mine). We continued on for another 4 hours of pain with the help of oreos. Me and david were really sunburnt and spent the night rubbing calmoile lotion into oneanother. The third day, and again roger informed us that it would be harder again, correct agin! It started with a 70 degree walk up a river bed, exhausting but great fun, until....
stop!!!! snake!!!! bollox!!!!!
Roger told us to stay where we were and he back tracked to find a suitable killing utensile. He returned with a big stick WHACK WHACK dead snake, (steve irwin turns). Seemily its OK to kill these snakes cause they are really dangerous and they scare tourists (good enough reason for me). We continued on soaked to the skin, our toughest challenge lay ahead, a 200 meter climb behind an angry waterfall with uneven stones and the location for an accident the previous day where a porter for another group had slipped, ghasing his face and suffering concussion. It was a struggle but eventually we made it to the top. The top was really amazing, like nothing ive ever seen, huge rock formations and crazy plants that dont grow anywere else on the planet.
The first night up the top was absolutly freezing, toilet formalities were awkward especially seen as though david had contracted some sort of bug and was needing more trips than others. The next day we were taken for a tour of the top, cool rock and amazing views from the edge. On our return leg to our cave roger suddenly ushered us all in the direction of a huge rock overhang, as we reached it the clouds opened spilled like crazy for 20 mins. we were very pleased as it got so cold at night up the top and 20 mins worth of soakage would not have help the heat retention.
The coming down we thaught would eb abreeze compared to the torture of getting up. wrong, our legs suffered for the last two days like never before, its seemed that running down the side of the passes was easier on the legs??? When we finally reached the indian village at the start of the trail we were axhauted and well near dead, Roger had arranged for lunch and beer (something that was not supposed to be included on the trip) he was handsomly rewarded (tip) as were we for decideing to take this trip, four big stars.
note : alot of emmas words are paraphrased so i take 50% credit!
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