Ciudad Bolivar to Santa Fe

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We headed further north to Cumana, a city on the coast not really knowing why we headed there! We were just heading closer to Caracus and hoping to see some nice places on the way.

One thing I was hoping to see was the Guacharo (oilbird) which is a nocturnal bird and every evening about 10-15,000 leave the cave similar to bats looking for food and can imagine this being a amazing sight. Unfortunately we checked around a few hostels and with it being off season nobody was going there and it would be too difficult for us to try and arrange on our own so it's something we would have to miss.

We headed to a small fishing village called Santa Fe to chill out for a few days. The place had an o.k beach but everywhere was so quite, we were lucky to get somewhere to stay as there was not many places open and a choice of 2 places to eat from?!

Not everything went to plan here. Again it was very quite so not much to do and the beach was not the best, it was o.k but nothing compared to some of the paradise beaches we have been on. One thing we will always remember from this place was it was the first time in the 17 months of travelling that we were robbed!

The cleaner from our hotel managed to bend the zip over the padlock on one of our backpacks. They were kind enough to not take the full amount but did take about $50 not a huge amount of money but enough for us as we were very low on money after booking lots of trips and flights in ready for my mum and sister so we literally only had enough money to get by until they arrived in a few days. We could always go to the bank but like I have mentioned before didn't want to lose out because of the poor official rate. We complained to the owner and he could see we were telling the truth as the theif had tried to cover their tracks by fixing the bag and making it look like nobody had been in it, unfortunately for them they put the zip on upside down! Not very smart. The owner seemed very sincere and said he will speak to his staff and also phone the police. We needed to get this sorted quickly as we were leaving the next day. We came back a few hours later to no avail, still nothing sorted and the police still hadn't turned up and their office was only 200 meters down the beach. for the next few hours it was back and forth too the manager to chase the police. We finally had enough and said we will go ourselves, he then looked a bit worried and within the next 30 mins we had the money back paid from his own pocket as he said one of the cleaning girls has finally admitted stealing it. All turned out good in the end but was not worth the hassle and we probably wouldn't have bothered if we were not so skint ourselves.

The next day we left sharpish to the capital Caracas which has been dubbed one of the most violent cities in South America, not a good place to go after just having our confidence knocked!

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Photos

Huge Crabs
We heard tapping on the door and opened it to find these beast trying to get in!