Guyana, Venezuela and Colombia.

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After going to Rio and Salvador, I needed somewhere to go and not spend money and charge the batteries a bit. So after 4 flights, I finally got to Georgetown, Guyana, which is on the north tip of South America. Guyana borders Venezuela to its west, Brazil to the south and Suriname to its east. For the whole time I was staying in Guyana, I was staying with family, so that meant not having to find my own food, washing being done for me and most importantly, not having to spend money on accommodation.
My daily routine was very simple in Guyana. Everyone gets up he with the sun, so at 5.30am - 6am,people are waking up, getting ready for work etc, and that meant most days I was up at 7am, which seems very early, as I am supposed to be on an ‘extended’ holiday, but all it meant was that I got out of bed, walked 10 metres or so to get a coffee, then lay on the veranda in a hammock for a couple of hours, planning what I was going to do with my day. If I decided on that day I would head into Georgetown, I would then jump into one of the minibus which passes in front of the house, from the West Bank Demerara, to Georgetown. They squeeze you onto to these minibuses, drive at crazy speeds and then kick you off when you reach Stabroek market in Georgetown. The journey is about 25 mins and costs 40p for the pleasure.

If I decided not to go into Georgetown, then I would lounge around the house, read a book or watch a film on the laptop. As exciting as it sounds, I just needed to relax for a couple of weeks and Guyana gave me the perfect opportunity to do that.

I did go for a night out in Georgetown on one of the Sat nights I was there. I was taken out by a couple of ‘old’ cats. They took me to a couple of drinking establishments in Sheriff Street, and then onto a club, which I was the youngest person in there by some 200 hundred years, so whilst everyone was dancing / waltzing away, I was getting friendly with the local beer, and also some Guinness Foreign Extra, which turned out to be nearly 8 per cent alcohol.

During my time in Guyana, I decided to make a visit to Venezuela. Venezuela wasn’t on my initial list to visit, but after doing some reading up on Angel Falls, whilst in Guyana, I decided it was worth at least a week of my time. So, when my time in Guyana came to a close, my next place to visit was Venezuela. The only problem is that due to land dispute, there are no legal borders between the two countries. The amount of times family said to me, I know someone who can get you into Venezuela easy, it didn’t inspire confidence, so the most logical solution would be to head back to Brazil for one day and then get a coach from Brazil to Venezuela. This was the plan anyway.

I had booked a bus ticket to leave Georgetown on Thursday 25th June, and arrive in Lethem, which is on the Brazilian border. It should take about 14 hours and the coach left at 9pm, so I thought, grabs a few hours sleep on the coach and then before I know it I will be at Lethem. It all sounded too easy. The road to the border is a single road, which after you have left Linden, about 20 miles from Georgetown; you are on this road for the whole journey to Lethem. This road, words cannot describe how unkept, dangerous and if there is one thing I have promised myself so far on this trip, well apart from trying to scrap 3 days out of a pair of D&G’s, is that I will never take that bus journey again. My sleep idea when to ‘pot’ when after only the 2 hour of travelling we had stopped 3 times at the local police stations to identify ourselves. It was the most nonsensical routine ever because they didn’t want to see your id or passport, they didn’t ask your name, they only asked which seat you were sat in. I can see how they get a high conviction in this country now, no your honour I wasn’t sat in seat 12, I was in seat number 8. It was that comical. Anyway, back to the journey. It wasn’t possible to sleep as the road had so many holes in; I spent half my time in the air off my seat. The road started to get better when the journey had reached the Interior (rainforest). As I mentioned earlier, this is a single road, and it was going straight through the jungle, trees on one side of the road, trees on the other side of the road, along with a lot of wildlife noises to go with. About 2am, the bus suddenly grinds to a halt, great, I thought, the police have got a jungle checkpoint. As I stand up to see why the bus had stopped, it was then clear what the problem was. A tree had fallen over and was blocking the road. So picture the situation, 2am, dark, in the middle of the jungle, no way forward, and the only way to go forward meant moving this tree. If I was being honest with myself, there was no way I was going out there to move that tree if there had been enough men on that coach. I looked around, and counted, including the driver, 4 men, not including me. Shit... Then I thought, I could pretend to be asleep, but that wasn’t going to work either, everyone had seen me go to the front of the bus. So, it was with great regret that I ventured out with the rest of the guys to try and move the tree. The first thing the driver said was, ‘it looks like a tree has fallen in our way’’. Err, no shit Sherlock. I am glad that my life is in your hands for the next few hours, as you are really inspiring confidence. Two things were crossing my mind as we were moving the tree out of the road. The first, which seems the most important, was that I had read that the coaches from Georgetown to Lethem were liable to the odd highway hold up and a tree falling down in the middle of the road seemed too much of a coincidence. At any minute I thought, I was going to see the West Indian version of Dick Turpin jump out with his merry band of rastas and fleece everything I had on me. Secondly, if Dick Turpin didn’t clean me out, then I was stood in the middle of the jungle at 2am. I knew for a fact that on the food chain at that moment in time, I wasn’t at the top. The quicker we moved this tree and got back on the bus, the safer I would feel. In the end, it took about 15 minutes to get the tree moved. Some old boy even whipped off his top for the task in hand, which cracked me up. The guy must have been at least 60, but when there was a job to do, he whipped off his shirt to reveal a fetching string vest and mucked in with the rest of guys.
After moving the giant redwood out of the path of the bus, we carried on the journey to Lethem. The road through the Interior was a little smoother so, I though, it would be a good time, if any to grab 40 winks. I was in one of those, not asleep, but not awake moments, then I felt something crawling up my leg. I reached for my lonely planet and gave whatever it was a whack, and then thought nothing about it until the morning. When it started to get light about 5am, I look down at the floor and what I’d exterminated a couple of hours early looked to be a giant cockroach.. Nice...

The rest of the journey passé without too much of a hitch, and I arrived in Lethem around midday on Friday. After the worst bus journey on record thus far in South America, I needed some sleep, a shower and a sh-ave, you guessed it, so I checked into a hotel for the afternoon/night to get some rest and I was going to continue my journey in the morning.

One thing I will remember about Guyana is that the people there cannot do enough for you. Nothing is too much trouble. Even on my last night in Guyana, when I booked into a hotel in Lethem, I didn’t have any Guyanese dollars, so the owners son offered to change US dollars into Guyanese for me at the market rate. He offered to take me out to for a night out in Lethem, and offered to drop me off at the border in the morning.

After getting my exit stamp from Guyana, I walked across the bridge from Guyana, on one side, to Bonfirm, Brazil on the other and got myself a day visa for Brazil. I needed to get a coach from Bonfirm to Boa Vista, which was 2 hrs, and then get another coach from Boa Vista to Santa Elena Di Uairen, which is in Venezuela. When I got to Santa Elena, I checked into a hotel for the night and headed out to see the local town. This was only going to be a one night stop so after grabbing some food and changing some money I called it a night.

When changing money in Venezuela, there are 2 ways to do it. First is to take money out with your card, which is set at one exchange rate by Mr. Chavez himself, or the second way is on the black market. All the towns in Venezuela will have people who will change money for you o the black market. This makes Venezuela a fairly cheap country as the black market rate was 6 B.S.F to 1 USD, but the rate to £1 if you take the money out of the wall, is around 3 B.S.F. I changed what I thought was enough money, as I needed to survive about a week in Venezuela, and also pay for a trip to Salto Angel (Angel Falls), which is 3 days and 2 nights. The following day I boarded a coach from Santa Elena, to Cuidad Bolivar, which is the main place you can do the Falls from. The coach itself was another 12 hour one, and I got into Cuidad Bolivar for 11pm. The first Posada (type of hotel) I tried didn’t answer the door. Oh no, I thought, I am going to have to start looking for places to stay at 11pm at night. Anyway, there was another posada around the corner, which was amazing. As I turned up late, I got a room instead of doing the traveller thing and getting a hammock. The room I got had two levels and 4 beds. It was completely waster on me, although, I did sleep in 3 out of the four beds. Why, because I could and because I had paid for it. The following day I walked into the centre of town and booked a tour to Salto Angel, leaving the following day, Tuesday. I came back to my posada, regretfully checked out of my room, as hammock were a quarter of the price (oh but the room was so worth it) and found myself a hammock for the night. I wandered around the town for a bit, grabbed some food and came back to my posada. I met a couple of girls from London, Jo and Jenna, who were doing the Falls also the following day, so we mentioned to each other that we might see each other at the Falls. Sure enough, we met each other at the airport.

The only way to get to Salto Angel is to fly on a small plane (about 6 people) from Cuidad Bolivar into Canaima National Park. From there, it is a 3 hour canoe trip to get to the Falls itself, but within the park there are other waterfalls you can visit, swim in and also walk behind. The first day involved doing a bit of swimming by the beach and visiting the waterfalls which were near us, then back, early night and ready for the trip to Salto Angel in the morning. I didn’t know then that the Falls were so far away, I thought they were a 30 min trip there and back. The whole journey was like this. 30 mins in a canoe, until the rapids got too dangerous for 12 people in a canoe to go through, so we walked over land for 30 mins and met the boat further downstream. Then it was another 2 hours in the boat (with no cushions or donuts may I add). By the time you get to the falls you are picking the splinters out of your bee-hind. Then when you get to the Falls, you have another 1 hour trek through the jungle to get to the base of the Falls. Angel Falls is the tallest waterfall in the world, at 979 metres. It was discovered by Jimmie Angel who crashed his plane on the top of the falls back in 1937, and is Venezuela’s top tourist attraction. After taking lots of pictures and swimming at the bottom of the Falls, it was time to head back to camp. Nightfall quickly set in and we spent 30 mins in the jungle in the dark making our way back to the camp. Not the way I pictured finishing off this great trip. When we got back, it was time for food and then everyone slept in hammocks for the night. We were advised when we got back to camp that there weren’t any toilets and no hot showers, great so it was change out of soaking wet clothes into dry ones, food and then retire to your chosen hammock for the night. Luckily, I had my IPod with me so I fell asleep listening to Harry Potter (I will take the shit for it, the audio books are very good) and then woke up at sunrise. Breakfast was served at 6am, and consisted of an arepa (corn bread) and scrambled egg, then people packed up and we set off back for Canaima. I got a flight from Canaima to Cuidad Bolivar straight away and was back for just gone midday. I had a 23 hour coach trip leaving Cuidad Bolivar for Maracaibo at 7.30 that evening, so I grabbed some food, wandered around the town for a bit and then picked up my bag and headed to the coach station.
About half way through my trip, a lunatic woman who had been sat across for me started speaking to me. It seemed she wanted to improve her English, and for some strange reason she thought I wanted to improve my Spanish. I guess her heart was in the right place, but when you have a coach full of Venezuelans listening to you pronounce everything wrong, it wasn’t the place I thought I would be improving my Espanol. She was asking about my trip, what I did in London, my family, the full caboodle. I was on a roll at one point until she asked me to describe 3 meals I have in a day, and they all had to be typically English meals. The first one I used was porridge, trying to explain oats, water/milk, with honey, banana etc was making me laugh. The whole bus was listening to me describe what I have on my porridge. Then I went for Fish and Chips which was easy enough, but the final meal had me stumped a little bit, so I went all out and tried to explain the 2am doner kebab to her. I think she understood what I meant when I said that you needed lots of cerveza to eat one. After about 2 hours of grilling me, and me telling her my name about 12 times, but she still called me Londres, she went to get something out of her bag. Great I thought, the loon has gone to pop some sleeping pills, she will leave me along now. She some back with her video camera and starts asking me more questions about myself. I was dumbstruck. If I was in England, then I could have got the police to cart her off the bus, but I guess this is a normal thing in Venezuela and my Spanish had gone from very basic to just basic in the length of a coach journey, but I didn’t know the words for loon with a video camera, so I just sat there, smiled whilst she asked me to describe my trip so far. If anyone sees this video on YouTube then don’t tell me, I don’t want to see it.
I got into Maracaibo early evening after 23 hours on the coach, and checked into a hotel, which, the room was so small there wasn’t enough space for my rucksack, bed and cupboard. I had to put my rucksack in the cupboard. It only cost me £6, and was only for the night so I suffered it. I wandered out to get some Parilla, and some cervezas, which at 20p each, I sunk about 10 after my traumatic experience which the female Venezuelan version of Beadle. I called it a night about 10pm, as I had to be up early because I had to get from Maracaibo, across the border to Macaio and then from Maciao to Santa Marta, I knew that my work was cut out for me.

I got to the bus station about 7am, ready to get a por puesto (shared taxi) across the border. The car I got was so typically South America death trap. The driver used a knife to get into his boot. The drive to Macaio takes about 2.5 hours and takes you over the border into Colombia. The car is full of complete strangers who take the trip, which cost 60,000 B.S.F (about $ 10 USD) for 150km. As I was first, I thought as shot gun rule apply, I would roll next to the driver Juan, but oh no, this gringo was tossed in the back and told not to touch anything. The cheeky bastard, if I touched anything the door was going to fall off. Oh by the way, rewind the story back about 20 mins, I needed to change some more USD, so I had a $50 USD which I changed as I needed coach money, and I needed to pay Chavez money for leaving his beautiful beautiful country. The guy I changed money with at first offered me 4,000 B.S.F to $1USD, I laughed at him took my fifty and started to walk off. We managed to agree on 6,000 B.S.F and after we had done our bit of black market business he kept sniffing the USD dollar and smiling at me. If hindsight was foresight, we would all be millionaires, but if I knew then that he would be sniffing that 50 USD as much as he did, I definitely would have given him something to sniff about.....

Anyway, back to the car journey, there I am sat in the back seat trying to pick up bits of the conversation that people are having around me, and the guy I am sat next to, Arturo, is a Colombian, who lived in Caracas, and was going home back to Cartagena started talking to me in English. Sweet. We chatted for the whole journey, and it seemed longer because of the amount of military checkpoints there were. I counted 10, and on some of them, you can pay so your back doesn’t get checked (about $1) a time. We paid just so we could get to the destination quicker. After getting to the border, there was some form of protest on, which meant vehicles couldn’t get across the border, so we hopped out of our taxi and jumped onto another coach, this one would take me to Santa Marta and Arturo to Cartagena. The trip to Santa Marta was about 4 hours long from Macaio, and I arrived about 3pm local time after travelling for 2 days to get here. I am going to spend 4 days here, learning to dive, take in some sights etc and then move onto Cartagena. BTW, the ocean he is as clear as I have ever seen it, it is going to be hard diving in it whilst all you guys are back at work. Drop me an e-mail guys; let me know what’s going on, on that side of the pond [e-mail].

Take Care xx

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