Hola one and all.
It's been a little while since our last written update, so I would imagine you are all salivating at the thought of a fresh glimpse into our lives. We've now long left Venezuela, and (when I wrote this!) were in Bogota, Colombia, which is a really great city that I would heartily recommend to anyone- nice colonial architecture, cool cultural scene, and the most awesome bowling alley I have ever been to (no automation- they actually have real-life pin monkeys!)
We thought the time was ripe for a little look back over our time in Venezuela, so here goes. A few general points first:
- Venezuelan cities are almost universally awful. The Venezuelan countryside is incredibly beautiful. Since you have to go through the former to get to the latter, this is unfortunate.
- The current situation with the Bolivar/dollar exchange rate is a real pain in the ass. (Basically, Chavez has decided that the Bolivar is worth about a quarter of a dollar, but the rest of the world somehow persists in believing that it is worth more like an eighth of a dollar. As a tourist, this means that you can either get completely rinsed on a stupid, made-up exchange rate, or carry large amounts of US dollars in cash into the country and change them on the black market. We did the latter)
- Probably as a result of the shonky security situation in the country, and the tedious currency issues, there are
no foreign tourists in the country. We probably saw about 8 in the space of a month.
General points aside, here are some specifics on the various places we went.
1) Caracas: Oh. My. God. What a massive crap-hole. We managed to get through a week without being mugged, stabbed or finger-probed by corrupt policeman, but that was only because we were well-prepared and very careful. It is unsafe, ugly, polluted, expensive and there is nothing worthwhile there for tourists. As you can probably guess, I wouldn´t recommend it.
2) Los Roques: This was more like it- a beautiful Caribbean archipelago about 40 mins flight from Caracas (in a small sardine can with wings), complete with fresh fish, pelicans and amazing empty white sand beaches. Highlight: snorkelling with young green turtles off Noronqui. Although try as I might, I couldn´t get any of them to say "dude" and eat pizza. Television
lied to me.
3) Puerto Colombia/Choroni/Henri Pittier National Park: The most beatiful place I´ve ever been in my life? Not sure, but certainly in the top 3. An amazing national park consisiting of a mountain range spilling down to the coast- driving to Choroni from Maracay you climb up through cloud forest, then down through rainforest and end up at beautiful Caribbean beaches. Puerto Colombia is also a lovely, chilled-out little town on the coast.
4) Occumare de la Costa/La Cienaga: Hmmm. Not so sure about Occumare- bit of a grotty little seaside town, but La Cienaga would make almost any trip worthwhile. Absolutely stunning lagoon, which we stayed on the shore of in a really nice eco-lodge (and during the week, so there were virtually no people there). First thing in the morning you can go out on sea-kayaks to an area of sea grass and watch loads of hawksbill turtles feeding. If I had the money, and if the country wasn´t corrupt, and if it wasn´t so obviously an impractical fantasy, I would buy a place here.
5) Chichirriviche: Yuck. We arrived during a blackout in a tropical rainstorm to find all the hotels shut and a load of ropey people on the streets. Not fun. It got marginally better during daylight, but not much. We left pretty quickly.
6) Coro: Nice on paper- a UNESCO world heritage site colonial city in northern Venezuela. Sadly, at the moment it is pretty down on its luck and the lack of tourism seems to have hit it particularly hard. Lots of restaurants and other shops were shut when we were there, and the whole place felt a bit downbeat. I did get to eat goat for the first (but not the last) time though.
7) Merida: Now we´re talking- lovely university town up in the Andes, where you can do loads of trekking and adventure sports. We tried parapenting (like paragliding, but with a parachute instead of a rigid wing) and zip-lining (basically fannying around on a glorified flying fox), and did a couple of really nice walks up in the
paramo (a particular type of mountain habitat endemic to the Andes)
8) Los Llanos: This. Place. Is. The. Awesomest. A vast area of plains that spreads across Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil, covered by huge cattle farms, and which gets flooded in the rainy season. It has a reputation as the "Serengeti of South America", because it is supposedly one of the best places on the continent to see large wildlife. And we found this reputation to be deserved: we saw caiman, giant anteaters,
tamandua (a type of arboreal anteater), anacondas, river dolphins, capybara and loads of amazing birds. We went with a really good guide called Tony Martin (like the famed vigilante farmer of yesteryear), who fancies himself as a Venezuelan Steve Irwin. I was a bit sceptical about this, but after watching him dive off a boat into the river and emerge clutching a
mata mata (a type of side-neck turtle), and then watching him catch an anaconda with his feet (the favoured method, apparently), I was convinced.
If you ever get a chance to go here, do. It is absolutely brilliant.
9) Valencia: We didn´t have long here- just one night whilst waiting for a flight the next morning, but it was noteworthy because we ended up staying in a hotel near the bus station which, how can I put this... specialised in a certain type of "amorous" client. Basically it was a love motel. This meant that the only contact with the staff was a conversation with a woman behind a blacked-out window by the entry barrier, and that one of the speed dials on our phone was to the "sexy shop". That being said, it was safe and clean, which was all we wanted at the time. In fairness, those perverts ran a pretty tight ship.
Apart from the three separate full luggage searches we got at the airport (Interpol,
Guarda Nacional and Airport Security. Bingo!), that is pretty much all for Venezuela. Not the easiest country we have ever travelled in, but certainly interesting and worth the effort.
More to follow on Colombia soon....
Rhod
