Venezuela - land of beautiful scenery, wildlife and...... ice cream!

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First stop in Venezuela was the border town of Santa Elena - nothing much to see here, but it was so exciting to be able to speak a few words of Spanish and be understood!! (I did try with the Portuguese, and thought that with 50-ish days in Brazil I might get somewhere, but was still getting mostly blank looks by the time we left!). Next stop was Cuidad Bolivar, the base for Canaima national park and Angel Falls. This was also the place where I discovered the joys of trying to use an ATM in Venezuela. Either they are switched off, or don't accept international cards, or if you get far enough, they will ask you what language you want, and then when you choose English, they give you instructions in Spanish anyway! By this point I could just about cope with the Spanish so it wasn't too bad. But then when you finally get cash, you realise the maximum amount you can take out is so small that you have to go through the process all over again! We decided that once we found a machine that worked, the best thing was to get out as much money as you felt comfortable carrying!

We got up early the next morning for flights to Canaima, stopping to check out the plane which Jimmy Angel crash-landed near the falls a couple of years after discovering them in 1935. This is on display at the airport after being recovered from the site where he crashed. We arrived in Canaima NP after about an hour's flight over some spectacular scenery and got taken to a lodge with the now standard hammocks strung up for us, and amazing views of Canaiama lagoon and waterfalls. We had to time to chill out and appreciate the scenery for a bit, then we got taken out onto the lagoon in motorised canoes, to see more of the scenery around the lagoon and go for a few walks. A couple of the walks took us behind the waterfalls - better than the shower at the lodge definitely! A few people stayed up sampling the local rum later, but I was ready for my hammock - and now getting good at sleeping in one! It is a bit of an art form - you need to make sure it's not too curved, if you have the space (ie. not on the Amazon ferry!) then pull it out so it is almost horizontal. Then the other trick (again requires space) is to lie diagonally across it - that way you can lie in it almost horizontally - very comfy once you get used to it!.

Got up early the next morning to see the sunrise over the lagoon - very beautiful and definitely worth getting up for. Later on, took a short walk to get a drink at a nearby shop and saw parrots overhead and monkeys in the nearby trees.... you don't get that from a walk to the corner shop at home! I was lucky though - another girl on the trip met the monkeys earlier on and one of them stole the drink she had just bought and then sat and drank it in front of her! I didn't let my drink out of my sight!

After lunch we had our flight over Angel Falls - the highest falls in the world at almost 1000m. What I hadn't realised before seeing them was that the volume of water is actually pretty tiny - it is basically a stream that tumbles over the massive drop! The amount of water was so small that in the dry season (as it was for us) it is not actually possible to get to the falls from the bottom because there is not enough water in the river to paddle there! Still the height of it was pretty impressive. I think I would like to go back in the wet season and do the river trip through the national park and see them from the bottom up as well though.

We flew back to Cuidad Bolivar after seeing the falls, and the next day drove to Caracas, the capital. I didn't see too much of Caracas unfortunately, as I wasn't feeling too well a lot of the time we were there. On the plus side the hotel room was very nice and had cable TV! ;-) So it was a good place to relax. The day I felt ok to venture out and see some sights was our last day and it really wasn't meant to be I guess, as we went to get a taxi and were told that there were demonstations going on in that area and we couldn't go there. I got the impression Caracas is basically just another city, so I don't think I missed too much. From what I've seen of Venezuela, it's the National Parks that have the best stuff!

Next stop was Barinas, where we picked up our guide for the LLanos National Park. Called Alan, this was a real Crocodile Dundee character, who could spot all manner of birds, reptiles etc from a distance and knew exactly where to find them all. We stayed at another lodge with hammocks and had a few trips out on the Apare river and its tributaries looking for (and finding!) allsorts of wildlife. In our first afternoon there we saw heaps of birds (including scarlet ibis, egrets, hoatzin, and red capped cardinal) plus more river dolphins, monkeys, and a brown tree boa. Alan was obsessed with finding an Anaconda for us, and would regularly stop the boat and go wading through the grass and mud on the banks in search of one...He did find one on the last night eventually but it was after I had already gone back to the lodge so I didn't see it. For me it was just as entertaining watching him look for one though!

We also had a safari driving along in the truck one morning - very early so as to catch more wildlife out and about. The theme of the morning was 'giant stuff' as we saw giant anteaters, gaint river otters and capybara which look exactly like guinea pigs but are the size of small bears! Sadly they weren't quite giant enough for me to get good pictures at the distance we were viewing, and I will definitely be getting a camera with a better zoom and / or binoculars before coming back somewhere like this again! Again we saw heaps more bird life too, including pink spoonbills and jabiru storks fishing in the pools. Also saw loads of caiman too - we have seen these before on the trip but never quite this many.

We left the lodge and went to a different part of the LLanos where Alan's company has a purpose built camp next to a section of white-water river. Here they do rafting and tubing - Alan advised that the river levels were best for tubing so that's what we did! This basically involved floating down the river on a giant inner tube, and holding on tight when it got to the white water. I have been on faster white water in a raft, but since it was just me and my tube, I was glad it wasn't faster here! It was good fun anyway, and although we all fell out at some point we all made it down to the bottom one way or another!

We left the Llanos and Alan after this and drove up into the mountains to Merida, where they have the longest and highest cable car in the world. As we arrived on Easter Sunday, it wasn't open but we hoped to be able to go up before we left Merida on the Wednesday morning (it was closed until then). Had a most entertaining time at the post office sending home a parcel - they don't have purpose built boxes to sell for this purpose like in Brazil and Chile, so we had to beg for empty boxes we could see behind the counter. Then we were sent across the road to buy white paper and tape to construct our parcel. Luckily at this point the lady behind the counter took over and built our parcels for us while we stood trying to be helpful but obviously failing badly. Then it came to the postage and we discovered they didn't have a franking machine and so the poor lady had to count out 65,000 Bolivars worth of stamps (about 20 quid) and stick them all onto the parcel - and each stamp wasn't worth too much so there were a LOT of them! Finally we said goodbye to our stuff, hoping that we see it again in a few weeks...!

The next day was almost as exciting as the post office as a large group of us went up into the mountains surrounding Merida for a spot of paragliding. For me, I think the scariest moment was on the drive up there in a 4w drive - I was in the front passenger seat and at one point we took a corner so tight and slanting so far downwards that I really thought I would be going down the hill early and without a paraglider. But we made it to the top, and got strapped into the chair thing that you sit in while the pilot does all the hard work. The scenery was amazing and it was great to swoop and dive over each other and stay close enough that we could see each other. On the way back to our hotel after we landed we stopped in at Heladeria La Coromoto which is in the Guiness Book of Records for offering 750 different flavours of ice cream in total, with at least 60 different ones each day. Some of the whackier ones included trout, garlic and spaghetti but I played it safe with coconut and Oreo flavours. Very tasty too!

The next day was the planned trip up the cable car - except that it was so cloudy when we got up that I decided there wouldn´t be much of a view and stayed in bed. I was very glad I did as a few people got up about 6am and went down to the cable car only to find that there was a special deal on where it was 1/2 price for the first 600 people. Most of the locals have never been up it, as it is so expensive for them, so this was a REALLY big deal and some of them had been waiting since 3am to be in the first 600, and so the queue was absolutely massive. Since we had to leave at lunchtime and the ride up the cable car was about 2 hrs each way, it became obvious that there wasn´t going to be time to fit this in. Oh well, something else to come back to Venezuela for!

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Photos

Top of Angel Falls
Basically, it´s a stream!

The largest coffe cup in the world...?
Skyscrapers in Caracus

Comments

[anonymous]

venezuela .... a hidden beautiful paradise!