The archipelago adventure - Venezuela

Arriving at the airport in Caracas at 6.30am (remember we have had very little “sleep” at the airport) we are immediately faced with the biggest problem in this country!!! We have no local currency or dollars with us and the cash points at the airport do not accept our cards. We had read that there are two exchange rates used in the country - the official at 3.7 and the unofficial - what ever any one wants to use!!!! We swiftly discover that holding pounds means that we will get stung as Venezuela seems to have a grudge against our currency. The Euro trades at 3.2! Obviously no one can do maths here!

We know we are getting screwed but we have no choice to exchange money from a local tout (common practice here) and manage to get 4.5 to the pound. Unofficial dollar rate is 3.5 so we are still getting done.

We are half asleep so we don’t care anymore as we just need a good bed to sleep in and thankfully our years of service at E&Y have paid off - Marriott reward points means we have a free night’s accommodation. Crawling into our huge beds with duvets (a huge luxury as we usually sleep under sheets) we fall asleep immediately not worried about wasting the day in the hotel. Caracas is apparently a very dangerous city so we have been told and that’s our excuse for staying indoors.

The next day we have booked ourselves on to a flight to Los Roques Archipelago, consisting of one small inhabited island and thousands of quays of white sandy beaches and beautiful turquoise waters. Unfortunately the only flight available is at 5.30am so we are up again at 3am. We are supposed to be on holiday! When we arrive the weather takes a turn for the worse and its pouring down, no one meets us at the “airport” ie a shack and we wonder around the sandy streets (there are no cars on the island) looking for our pousada. Thankfully a local takes pity on the two drowned rats and takes us where we need to be. It appears that our flight is normally never on time and we were not expected until 8am (its 6.30am!). Great - thanks for the hospitality ;-)

Day 1 is spent lazing around the hotel, walking around the island (which takes all of 30 minutes) and meeting the group of American fishermen who are staying in our pousada in the evening as they return from fishing….half of the dinner conversation goes right over our heads as the technical terms are being dished out, but we are so happy to hear English language and have 10 guys to talk to that we don’t care…quite pathetically everyone (including us) retires to bed at 9pm! Well, we have been up since 3am and plan to go diving next day at 9am, so not allowed to drink that night anyway. (We should probably mention here that the group from California are serious fishermen that spend all day out at sea catching 10pound fish - not that that means anything to us. We were also not able to prove their conquests as its catch and release so the lucky fish get to live another day.)

Unfortunately, the next morning starts with another downpour and our diving gets cancelled! So we read another 3 books each, watch the football and Wimbledon and when the boredom gets to us, we end up re-jigging our trip and are now in possession of flight tickets from Miami to New York prior to returning to London…ooops! Going to bed, Heenz prays to all of her 12 gods and Innz is ready to light candles in any church she d find, just for it to stop raining the next day!

Allelujah, the next morning the sun is shining and we head out to our boat where we meet the other couple diving with us, as well as our guide, who thankfully is coming down with us. All our equipment is put together (phew - we really don’t remember much from all these months ago in Australia) and we are thrown overboard with our tanks on. We do 2 dives in that day, going along a deep coral wall at about 15m deep, observing loads and loads of different kinds of fish we have never seen before, spotting a very ugly moray eel, massive lobsters, crabs, barracudas, etc.

After diving, we stop off for lunch at a shack that is literally held together on 4 sticks sticking out in the middle of the ocean! There is old furniture and all and this would feel like a scene from a horror movie if the scenery around wasn’t so spectacular! The water is every possible imaginable colour of turquoise blue, the sand is white as sugar and the water is so see through, you can see shawls of fish, starfish and piles of sea shells….for miles and miles around, there is nothing and no-one but us in this paradise.

Feeling pretty exhausted we return to the pousada on a high, and Innz isn’t even that upset about Russia losing the football (sorry Tash!;-)). 4 Cuba Libras (rum and coke) later and we are barely able to walk - we are becoming lightweights. However, we persevere and manage to persuade our pousada manager Olga and one of the American guys, John, to come dancing with us to the local night spot…oh my! We are the only tourists here and almost the only girls. As a result, within 5 minutes, both of us are being whirled around by locals, trying to teach us how to shake our hips - don’t they know London girls cant do it the south American way??? They are persistent and soon we are wiggling around like locals. Oh so we think! As few of the local girls take to the floor, we quietly retire into a corner and watch in awe as they shake their booty (there really is no other expression to describe it!) - wow!!!! We come back home at 2am, our clothes are soaked (a/c - what is that??), drinking beer out of cans (Laurent Perrier Rose champagne - what’s that??) and are very happy we haven’t booked another day of diving for the next day - poor John has to be up in 4 hours to go fishing (we later find out he didn’t do so well that day;-))

We spend the last 2 days in Los Roques doing pretty much nothing - every morning we are taken out on a boat to some nearby deserted island (island being a grand word to describe a patch of white sand 50m*20m) where we are left for the day with deck chairs, umbrella, lunch box and books - basically we are playing Robinson Crusoe in luxury!

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