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Published: November 16th 2005
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Even after a month in Venezuela I can´t say I know the place. First most of my time was spend waiting for the motorbikes and then their tyres. Secondly, the country is so vast and diverse that it deserves a full month going from snow areas to beaches to Savana. Quite an undiscovered destination with so many options!
The bikes were finally released after main efforts from the guys, the export dude and his lawyer (long story which I didn’t get involved in in case I felt like strangling a custom officer). Then there was the tyres… another long story which ended up costing 1 month delay to Grant’s travel schedule. Not to worry as we grabbed the opportunity to visit a bit of Venezuela in the meanwhile.
We headed West to Puerto Columbia and what a nice ride that was once we got off the highway (3 hours). First up through an enchanted forest and then down to this cute fisherman village. I didn’t had a camera at this stage (remember the stolen one…) so Ted has some photos on his web site (www.tedgrambeau.com). Spend a day at the beach there (finally after 2 weeks in Caracas city!).
A negative answer about the tyres’ availability meant that we continued on all the way to Merida (700 kms away), the heart of the Venezuelan Andes at around 5000m high. So out the jackets after a warm beach swim the same morning! We could even see snow at the top before getting to Merida. Again the bike ride was absolutely fabulous with great roads and wonderful views of green deep valleys with waterfalls afar. The conditions of the roads, the amazing views and the cheapest fuel in the world ($1.50 for a full 30 litre tank!) make it a motorbike rider’s dream.
The city of Merida in itself had limited attraction but access to good trekkings and the highest and longest cable car in the world makes it a top tourist destination. We didn’t do any of them in our limited timeframe (and the cable car was closed that fortnight) but the rides went on to blow my mind. Going higher the next day to pass the mountain range we travelled through thick mist dodging cows and buses on the way down (at 20km/hr cause we couldn’t see @#%!). Ended up staying in the cutest cottages with a fire
going all night but not before having tried the local trout (Ted) and their speciality of delicious strawberries and cream (me) !
Another riding arse-breaking day (get used to me saying that word cause there’s plenty of those long painfull day to come!) got us back to Caracas but not without getting lost in the night heading straight to the surrounding barrios (Venezuelan favellas)!
Which meant that we did spend Ted’s birthday in Caracas at the ‘Samoa’ restaurant in the posh neighbourhood of Las Mercedes where one of Ted’s surf contact had taken us for lunch previously (to interview him). (see photo of us). Ted´s web site has a few photos of Caracas from their teleferico with all the barios sparkling like christmas lights cascading down the mountains surrounding the city. Pretty.
We can safely guess that AT SOME STAGE we were able to resume THE RIP CURL SEARCH trip (bikes, tyres and services done) and made our way out of Caracas East to Leicheria (still the North coast) to visit a woman biker who’d just done Alaska-Caracas on her 650 BMW. After a swim at her resorty place (teaching abroad doesn’t look so bad), she accompanied us
on our way to Cuidad Bolivar where we booked a 3 day tour to the tallest waterfall in the world, the Salto Angels. All this in this surprising country! Now we haven’t heard me said much about the people and the music, cause there wasn’t enough of it for me to mention: it took time for people to warm up to us here, otherwise there was a nice park right next to our hotel with the opera performing once and other cultural musical events other times (sponsored by the OPEP, with the Venezuelan part now nationalised).
The 3 day tour was absolutley fantastic, in a small plane trip first, boat ride (ok this one was a bit hard on my ´sensitive´bum), sleep in hamac, and short treek to swim down from the tallest falls in the world. ahhh. The next day was mind blowing too with a ´wet´walk behind a big waterfall. It feel real there seeing that mass of water rushing down (with some of it crushing on our backs too). PS did I mention that we ended up with a great group of young people and managed a replay of Eurovision the second night (Norway, Ireland, OZ,
Germans, UK etc) and party until 2 am (I know, another night with little sleep but this time it was for fun!). At least Ted got a full moon pic out of it! and maybe a slight headache...
Back on the bike, we crossed the country in record times (750 kms? in one day) but I was surprised to see the Gran Savana region having little in terms of flora and fauna. the pic show a pretty deserted region. Which surprisingly changed once we passed the Bresilian border but later on that one.
Bill has probably more details on our impressions of the trip as my memory is failing me already and you can hear stories of people having their watch robbed at the red light in Caracas on his blog (´unpaid bill´ travel blog)
(A few technical problem with the jumpstick means that I´ll have to add more photos separately later on)
trip map: http://www.travelblog.org/gmaps/map_jR.html
www.ted grambeau.com
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Esther/Eva
non-member comment
I've gone green
Wow - looks absolutely fantastic. Even though we've gone from S. America to Japan to Thailand, our trips don't quite compare with yours! Great blogs - keep them coming! Esther/Eva