Blogs from Venezuela, South America - page 5

A wonderful discovery was made this Friday: Every Friday, the PTA will have a bake sale where pizza, pancakes, donuts, empinadas, and much more will be available during morning recess and lunch. Each week! Now for the second part: Usuaully, I feel, the goal when living in or traveling in another country is to blend in, to assimilate. However, when you seem to be the only blonde person in the city (or perhaps the country) this becomes much more difficult. Add height to being blonde, and the "sticking-outness" only increases. It is also customary here to wear jeans ALL THE TIME, no matter how warm it gets. Coming from Minnesota, 70 degrees is about my limit to wear jeans, or long sleeved shirts for that matter - unless I am camping and it is night around ... read more

An other trip brought us to Caripe, which is an around 5hours carride from Playa Colorado and located more in the middle of Venezuela. This time we were only 6people in the back of the jeep, which was way more comfortable. There we stayed in a campamento of a 35years old hippi-venezolani! Our group had a small wooden cottage as sleeping room. The campamento was very small and built in an easy way, but very cosy! Most of the time there was no electricity ore running water, but you get used to that. Around the house was a big garden with loads of oranges and manderins, from which we could eat as much as we wanted! The first day we hiked to a 90meter high waterfall where we took a bath in the pool under it ... read more

We just arrived yesterday from a very big trip to the national park called Gran Sabana, in the south of Venezuela. We started driving to there at thrre o clock in the night. It was a horrible 10 hours ride, on two small benchs sideways in the back of the jeep! Our group (10pers.) probably looked like sardines in cans! The first night we stayed at Bruno's campside, an old swiss guy who felt in love with the venezoelan lifestyle and decided to spend the rest of his ligetime there! It was quiet strange to speak swissgerman with strangers, watching to swiss TV and listening to him playing the alphorn! It made me feel like home, but then in very different surroundings... As we found out the next dat, that place is very dangerouse.. Bruno had ... read more

Our first trip organized from the lodge I'm staying at, was a little kayak tour. With two people in one kayak we paddeled out to Caracas island, where we stayed for two nights. As you probably know, there's not a lot of space in a kajak, what means we had to fit everything in a 13 litre drybag. Our camp was a roof where we hang up out hammocks and mosquito nets. The roof was about 5 metres from the sea. It was just wonderful to fall askerp with the sound of the ocean and to wake up seeing the sun rising over the sea. We drank rain water and water from the rivers with clore tablets and ate quite delicious food out of pots on campfires! The program of the first day was paddeling to ... read more

und wenn nicht alles gut ist, dann ist es auch nicht das Ende. Passenderweise ist dies tatsächlich nicht das Ende, sondern der Anfang meiner Reise, und so stört es kaum, dass derzeit wenig mit dem Attribut „gut“ versehen werden kann Bei nicht allzu besonderer Gesundheit am Flughafen ankommend konnte ich zunächst feststellen, dass meine Kreditkarte nicht mehr funktionierte – das eigens für die Reise heruntergesetzte Limit war scheinbar überschritten. Ein kurzer Anruf bei der Bank sollte das ganze eigentlich beheben. In Caracas angekommen konnte ich jedoch feststellen, dass eine Limiterhöhung wohl grade doch nicht mehr drin war. Budget-Reisen par force majeure also! Nur gut, dass der Flug dafür überbucht war und dieser daher mit einer halbstündigen Verspätung erst gen Caracas abhob. Meine Spanischkenntnisse hatte ich scheinbar auch überschätzt – zumindest verstand ich kein Wort der u ... read more