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Published: September 14th 2009
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We arrived in Puerto Lopez after a hard slog on the bus. We arrived in the early hours of the morning in the bus station and asked a cab to take us to a hostel we picked out in the lonely planet. He charged us 2 dollars each and although pretty expensive we were too tired to argue. The taxi took about 15 minutes, ahh 2 dollars isnt so bad we thought.
We arrived at the hostel and asked the night porter if they had space. Half asleep, she told us that we would have to return in the morning. No idea why, probably because she was sleeping. we roamed around the streets trying to find somewhere to sleep. Not cool, especially in Venezuela and with all our belongings with us. After trying about 4 hostels we decided to head back to the bus station for the night and try and find something in the morning. Low and behold, we were right next to it. The cheek of that taxi driver to drive us round for 15 minutes to make it seem worth the money.
Anyway, i ended up just finding a spot to sleep, whilst raz and conor
met an older American couple who told us not to stay in Puerto Lopez, but to go to a nearby fishing village of Santa Fe. They said it was much cheaper and alot nicer. We took their advice and headed off as soon as it got light. What a great shout this was to be. We found a hostel, right on the beach. Asking for a room for 4, the owner a nice old gentleman told us he had a house which we could rent for a few days, a minute down the beach. We took a look, perfect! It wasn't the nicest, but we each got our own room and cooking facilities.
We unpacked our things and took a stroll round. The fishing market is open until 11 in the morning, so we knew we had to get our shopping down early for dinner. On the menu, Fish. What else you going to get in a fishing village. We picked out some fish recommend to us and the nice fisherman cleaned it. Food shopping done for the day, it was time to relax. As the villa was on the beach, was literally 5 metres from the water, we
wondered in and out at our leisure.
Palms line this gorgeous beach and the sunset was spectacular. Pelicans, swallows and frigate birds are always soaring overhead. The place was not swarming with tourists, but there were enough people from Australia, the UK, France, Switzerland and Germany that we are not feeling too conspicuous.
Getting a bit bored of lounging around, we decided to do a day trip to the local national park, Mochima. It was a pretty spectacular place, with iguanas scattered all around the main beach. It was pretty cool at first, they were a bit timid, but after another tourist started feeding them some fruit, they swarmmed the beach trying to get things out of our backpacks. It was like a scene out of Godzilla. The beach did not disappoint, the water was turquoise and the visibility for snorkeling was pretty good. There was beautiful soft coral, hard coral covered in colourful Christmas tree worms and lots of fish.
After spending a few days on the beach, and everyone getting pretty badly burnt (especially John) we decided to move on. We all brought around 200 dollars with us to venezuela. It is advised to bring
cash, as the rate at an ATM is 2200 for a dollar, or you can change it on the black market for 5000 bolivars for a dollar. By taking money out the cash machine, would make everything doubly expensive. So with limited cash we decided on one more place to visit before heading off into Colombia.
Merida is a town situated two of Venezuela's Andean mountains. It is quite a popular destination with backpackers, due to the number of activities to do. Alot of safari tours are down from here to Los Llanos (the plains). The area is typified by extremely flat savanna scenery, isolated woodland and thin strips of jungle along the edge of rivers and streams. Animal life is abundant, with 350 species of birds and 50 types of mammals. Due to our insuffienct funds we were unable to take the tour, which is something i regret.
Merida was a cool little town, full of university students. We stayed here for a few days, which included Johns birthday. It wasn't a bad place, but unless your doing tours, there isn't that much to do and due to our lack of funds we didn't do any.
Off to Colombia.....
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