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Published: September 15th 2009
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happy days
a new colour AND a crossword! What a way to spend a final day in Brazil. Not caipirinhas, not samba, not anacondas, not even musical park fountains, just bank queue after bank queue trying to sort out our finances for Venezuela. Even still, it was with a touch of sadness that we were leaving such an amazing country. It blessed us with sunshine and rain, city groove and jungle adventure and more wildlife than you could poke a stick at - and we´re quite the stickpokers! But hey, this is supposed to be about Venezuela...
Santa Helena An overnight bus trip from Manaus took us through the northern Amazon basin along treacherous roads, steep ravines and over small rickety bridges. Perhaps it was for the best that in the dark of night we could only feel the danger and not see it! Thankfully we arrived in one piece (each) the next morning in the small town of Santa Helena, southern Venezuela. While there wasn´t a whole lot to this town, we both have fond memories of it. Perhaps because of the happy realisation of how much cheaper everything was compared with Brazil! Finally Jen could afford a new hair dye (and didnt she need
Casa del Congreso de Angostura.
where Simon Bolivar and friends declared the independance of 'Gran Colombia' it!), and neither of us felt guilty about that next beer breaking the day's budget - a beer here only costs about 50 cents*!
The other reason that we liked Santa Helena is that they put on a big street party for our arrival! On our first night (after Jen put her rinse through, of course) there was a big street fair where we sampled some of the delicious street meat and icy cold street beers, watched kids fall down inflatable slides - always amusing - and had our ears blown away by ridiculously loud sound systems. After several hours a salsa band finally took to the stage. Out of practice in the salsa dancing arena, we started off dancing somewhat uncomfortably, and probably looked pretty ridiculous. Even the 4 year old Venezuelans were hitting the groove better than we were.. And then, it began to rain ever so lightly. Most of the crowd began to take off, it looked as though they were all leaving because of a couple of raindrops! The band continued, and we weren't about to leave our own welcoming party so we danced on with a bit more space and vigour. Soon it was raining
are we in San Francisco??
the only bridge over the mighty Orinoco River a tad heavier but still just a sprinkle, and almost the entire crowd exited. We stood dumbfounded - are Venezuelans soft or what we thought!? A few drops of rain and they all go running home, haven't they ever been to an outdoor event?? And then it happened...
The heavens opened. It was a tempest. Within a split second we went from having a couple of drops in our hair to being completely drenched! So thats why all the Venezuelans went home...Oh no wait, they didn't go home, they're just all over there under shelter. Isn't that smart! And here we are, drenched, and now there's no more room under the shelter, and everyones looking at us, and our dancing isn't very good... Ahhh Dance harder, faster!!! And with that we pulled out some of the best dance moves ever to be seen on the streets of Santa Helena! As hundreds of mostly dry locals looked on, we danced on alone (save for one crazy local who stayed with us and tried to convince Jen that Australia was part of Europe) in the open square in front of the band. And now we were stuck - with everyone watching,
and the band still playing, we couldn't possibly leave. So we continued on, dancing in the rain. Finally we gave in, exhausted, drenched from head to toe, but laughing all-the-while we made a run for the only bit of shelter left in town - our hotel - getting the occassional thumbs ups as we went. We fell asleep soon after, waking up occasionally as the party, or in the least the sound system, raged on until 3 or 4am... Thankyou for the party Santa Helena!
An early setback - a month earlier we had picked up a pre-loved Lonely Planet guidebook of all of South America, aka 'the bible'. It wasnt until we reached Venezuela however that we realised that one of the countries was missing from the book. You guessed it, Venezuela! Somebody had torn the entire section out. Perhaps this was their way of advising other backpackers against the country. Or were they just short of toilet paper in Peru? We had planned to do a bit of outdoor activity from Santa Helena, perhaps a 6 day hike up Mount Roirama. However, a bout of organised tour / outdoor activity fatigue on my part
(sorry Jen!), combined with limited currency in our pockets meant this was all abandoned and instead we were heading for the city.
Ciudad Bolivar A night bus trip across the Gran Sabana brought us to Ciudad Bolivar, a colonial town on the banks of the massive Rio Orinoco. This town, like just about every main square in every Venezuelan town is named after El Libertador, Simón Bolívar. Simón was a well educated creol (South American of Spanish decent) who, amongst many others, became sick of the Spanish rule. So when Spain was busy dealing with all sorts of territorial conflicts in Europe, Simón and co fought for independance in Latin America in the early 19th century. In Ciudad Bolivar (then known as Angostura) the paperwork was all written out and liberation from the Spanish was declared. A new nation, Gran Colombia, was formed, however within several years this had split into the present day nations of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. A history test will be conducted in the next blog, so I hope you were all paying attention...
We had planned to visit several museums in town. Unfortunately though, we just couldnt find them. One of
bird art
you move the woodpecker so that it pecks at the tree. it's amazing... them had disappeared from where our map said it should be, while we walked inside another, to find that there weren't really any exhibits, just a room, a gate and some stairs. Our luck appearred to be continuing the next day when we attempted to see the botanical gardens. We found the fenced gardens without trouble, but finding the gate this time was a bit more difficult. Finally we came across one and proceeded to enter through it, only for a security guard to come running after us and tell us that we couldn't pass through. He must have sensed just how lost we felt, as he took us to a guide whom we paid a few Bolivars to show us through the correct gate and explain some of the plants and gardens. All in all, quite a nice garden once we got inside!
Now that we were getting the hang of the place we took a bus trip to the suburbs for the Museo de Arte Moderno Jesús Soto. We were clearly improving as it only took us five minutes to find the front door this time, and were soon stroking our chins in front of some of
pro Chavez street slogans are everywhere
and we see that they've taken from uh ah Glenn McGrath the strangest art from Venezuela and around the world. The highlights were the two last galleries, one with Jesús Soto's largest and most colourful installations, and the other a collection of wooden sculptures of birds created recently by local residents.
If anything our first week in Venezuela had shown us how much trouble we were having in the language department. Jen was a little rusty with the Spanish, possibly confused a bit by learning so much Portuguese in Brazil, while all I was able to offer to any situation was a whole lot of head-nodding. And it was hot, but there wasn't anywhere to swim. Let's go to the Caribbean coast and laze about on the beach. Oh and learn a bit of Spanish...
* Have since learnt that we were getting ripped of at 50 cents. Have since purchased beers for as little as 20 cents a pop!
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Erin
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Yippee for dancing salsa in torrential rain - you two are now even jumped up the already highly elevated cool scale! Those Venezuelans are way too soft - bah humbug to being dry and warm and comfortable! Shown up by the Aussie's I say! Although, we did start to realise the folly to some of these perceptions of ours when caught during monsoon season in Equador - and when you have gone through you 3rd saturated outfit for the last 2 days - there's not much else to wear! Plus, your backpack, handbag and daypacks are saturated, your one pair of boots are are giving you blisters because they are always wet when you put them on, you slipped over in your thongs and broke them, your hunched over your camera - stressing that its getting wet, and the bloody buses don't care that you shivering to the core from running through the streets trying to escape the downpour and speed up when they get near - sending a wall of water over the top of you! Ahhhh, so what was I saying again?