Blogs from Llanos, Venezuela, South America - page 2

Premier campement Départ à 8 heures avec 4 autres personnes + le guide chauffeur. Beaucoup de millage au travers les montagnes, c’est fantastique, arrêt pour prendre deux autres personnes. Il y a avec nous, un couple d’Hollandais vivant à Ste Marteen, deux jeunes suisses allemande et s’ajoute deux américains le père et le fils de Seattle. Plusieurs arrêts successifs pour certains achats comme fruits, légumes, eau potable, viande, fromage et sans oublier la bière. Aussi plusieurs arrêts pour prendre de l’essence à 93 d’octane, .03 cents du litre pour nous (.097 bolivar) Donc pour 19 litres d’essence le coût était de 1.92 bolivar pour nous .64 cents, imaginez maintenant un plein, une vrai aubaine. Nous avons subi une crevaison et la réparation pour plusieurs heures de perte de temps. Nous arrivons finalement au campement vers 3 ... read more

Following a night of sleeping in hammocks, we all woke up at 6:30, stuffed ourselves with amazing food, and headed out on another safari. We rode in the jeeps for about fifteen minutes until we reached the river. We hopped into a huge canoe, and our guide began to paddle away. Once it was deep enough, one of the local boys started the motor- but we still had to maintain our balance so as not to fall into the piranha-filled water. The ride was amazing- we saw howler monkeys, iguanas, caiman, birds, piranhas, turtles, poisonous snakes, pink freshwater dolphins, and capybara (the world’s largest rodent- basically a four-foot rat without the tail). Our guide even jumped off the side of the canoe into the water-yes, the water filled with piranhas-to catch a turtle for us! He ... read more

It´s been an interesting week of ¨vacation¨here in Venezuela. I only wish I had some pictures and video to go along with the story...it really deserves illustration. I hopped on the buscama with Sharlene and her girlfriend Yaneth on Friday, November 30th and headed to Puerto La Cruz. It was about a 20 hour bus ride so we got comfortable and waited patiently to arrive. The scariest part of the trip was that the National Guard stopped us three times to check everyone for identification and look through our bags. It seemed like everytime I fell asleep only to wake up with an AK-47 in my face. Very annoying and a little bit scary I might add. The second time we were stopped really made me nervous because the guard was quizzing me about how long ... read more

The bloody mosquitos! I have been eaten alive - and in fact its not just mosquitos its ants as well, depite the deet..... For some reason they seem to have much larger appetites for me than for either Ida or Emma - especially the soles of my feet - nightmare! Its not bad during the day but I can't sleep at night... We have our breakfast and head off for a leisurely stroll, the heat is intense, a bit too intense and our planned 3 hour walk is cut short because Emma is not feeling great.... We all got a bit too much sun though - despite our precautions the tops of our shoulders are slightly burnt... I'm driving everybody a bit nuts by taking photos of everything, insects, butterflys, birds - but I just find ... read more

Arrived at Barinas picked up by Freddy our transport person - just to take us from the airport to Hato Cedral.... Not the most talkative of people, although we tried... well mostly Emma in fact prompted by us now and then... we gave up and basically took in the scenery for the next three hours... Some of the houses lining the sides of the road appeared to be pretty makeshift as though they were put together by anything that came to hand. There is a lot of colour not from the landscape necessarily which is surprisingly green (wet season), but the material used to build the houses and the clothes the people are wearing..... bit of an unfortunate incident on the way there - we stopped to buy water and not being used to the currency ... read more