Must all good things come to an end? as we ...
Trip Start
Feb 01, 2001
1
6
7
Trip End
Sep 05, 2001
London,
United Kingdom
Monday, September 17, 2001
As we watch another magnificent sunset from the island shores of Margarita, I shift my mind back six weeks to where Dave and I left you last, about to embark on a tour to a glacier outside Huaraz, north of Lima in Peru.
Huaraz itself is quite a touristy town being the climbing, trekking and backpacking center of Peru due. Unfortunately for us we were running out of travel time and had to be satisfied with a one day tour before moving on. We stayed in a wonderful family run hostel in a quiet part of town just 5 minutes of the main square. The evening we arrived, Huaraz was celebrating it's 144th anniversary so we walked the streets trying to stretch our $2 budgets as far as possible
a) Icy snow hike near Huaraz, Peru
!We booked ourselves on a glacier tour and set off to meet our tour agency at 9am the next morning, as asked, only to waste half the day picking up other tourists, equipment, petrol and then, just when we thought we were finally on our way, a quick stop for lunch at 11am! We should have known by then that in Peru a full day's tour includes a free lesson on how to become patient!!
On arrival at the start of our walk it began to snow and as we climber higher we soon realised that this must be what people call a snow storm - being ignorant sun worshippers from the south we had yet to experience this kind of weather. Our guide was not around so we climbed on into the blizzard, and came across a Peruvian who was entrepreneurial enough to try charging people to use a rope for support to climb a steep snowy slope. (The Peruvians have an amazing ability to squeeze every last penny out of you!) We kept walking higher and higher with the snow thick on our coats until we found ourselves alone following what we thought were footprints from people ahead. In the end we saw some ice caves in the distance but realised that we were the only people up there so we decided to turn back before our fast fading footprints vanished. Visibility was only two meters at the time and the cold started to bite - walking through ankle deep snow in a pair of joggers and cotton trousers was not what one would call exceptionally prepared!
We eventually found the rest of our group near the bottom of the mountain, some of whom were using plastic bags as toboggans to race down the hill. We inquired where the ice cave was only to be told that they were far away
b) The start of the Amazon, driving to Yurimaguas
. Apparently we had come only to see the glacier 10m to our right! We consoled ourselves with the fact that we'd seen more than everyone else but our overwhelming desire was to get our freezing bodies into the warmth of the minibus! Three hours later we were standing in central Huaraz enjoying the hot sun in T-shirts and jeans and viewing the snow capped mountains in the distance like we'd never really been there at all. Quite an odd feeling. Due to time constraints and the desire to get out of the chilly Andean region, we left almost immediately for Trujillo on our way to the Amazon. Our mission was now to cross the Amazon jungle from West to East through Eastern Peru and Brazil finally ending in Venezuela where we hoped to find a cheap airplane ticket to the UK.
The first part of out journey was unavoidably another night bus but by then we thought we were out of the high crime areas we'd been warned about. I was very close to having my watch stolen in Lima but somehow I managed to wrench free from his grip on my wrist and shout obscenities loud enough for him to give up and walk on (yes he actually walked on like nothing had happened!) I wasn't so lucky on our night bus to Trujillo. My bag was padlocked and placed under my seat to prevent someone from picking it up and leaving the bus on the many stops during the night. Alas this ended up being my undoing as the bleep behind me (who even had the seat next to the bus hostess), had something to cut through the piece of metal locking my bag, and managed steal away with my camera and walkman, leaving the bag behind. Needless to say I was a tad shattered, angry, depressed and any other negative emotion you could feel at such a time. Luckily I had my trusty Mr Mood Changer who filled me with so many positive thoughts that I even enjoyed our afternoon
c) trees, trees, trees. Bus drive to Yurimaguas.
! If we had had more time we would have visited some of the major archaeological sites in the area belonging to various ancient cultures, two of the most prominent being the Moche (0 - 700AD) and the Chimu (1000 - 1470 AD). Both cultures left behind wonderful temples, cities, burial grounds, and pyramids. It has to be noted that there are wonderful ruins to see all over Peru and it was clear that the great Inca Empire that everyone knows so well was surely not the greatest - it existed for barely a century.
The theft managed to hold us up an extra day filling out police reports, so we left the following day on a 30 hour bus ride to Yurimaguas - the start of the Amazon. I for one was exceptionally glad to leave the dirty, crime-ridden cities (as I now viewed them), and head into the jungle!!!!
In the 32 bus hours that followed we left the desert coastline and crossed the Andes for the final time and, as the morning light broke, we watched the mighty rainforest wake and the mist lift from the valleys. We breathed a sigh of relief as we could finally pack away our winter clothes and search the depths of our backpacks for shorts!
As the 2nd day wore on we were amused by Jacki Chan videos (I think we may have seen the whole series of them now!!) as the bus wound its way round some narrow roads high in the jungle hills, finally arriving at the lush river port of Yurimaguas in the late afternoon. We were anxious to get going down the river to the jungle city of Iquitos so after finding our accommodation for the evening we took a funky motorcycle taxi down to the harbour where we managed to find a boat departing the next afternoon
d) Loading a bull onto a river boat, Yurimaguas.
. We spent most of our time in Yurimaguas shopping for supplies for the three day journey ahead. It's a nice little town filled with friendly people and practically no cars - only motorbikes. The markets as always were interesting although the number of wild animals on sale as pets was disturbing. We passed lots of baskets carrying around 30 young parrots in each all crawling on top of one another. I thought they were being sold as pets but in actual fact they were being sold for food! If there is one thing you learn not to question when travelling it's what people eat. We walked past many stalls selling hammocks which was slightly annoying considering we had lugged ours all the way from La Paz in case we couldn't find one in Yurimaguas. In the end there was a bright side - our brightly coloured Bolivian hammocks were quite a talking point on board the long boat journeys.
The boat was supposed to depart at 12 noon but we were warned of delays and weren't too surprised when it left only in the early evening after spending most of the afternoon watching an animated display of locals herding huge bulls aboard and watching how they reacted when forced together in a confined space! One guy had to bite down hard on a bull's tail after it refused to move on countless occasions! Better him than me!
The boats are generally cargo boats between 100 and 150 ft in length consisting of three levels. The bottom level is the engine room and cargo hold and the middle and top levels are for passengers to hang their hammocks. There are also a couple of small hot cabins which you pay a lot extra for - the only advantage of having a cabin is the security and privacy they offer
e) Tranquil river life. On our way to Iquitos.
. Basic food is provided on the boat, usually rice and beans, but we also took extra provisions and bottled water. At night the temperature can drop quite a bit and we were rather surprised to be snuggling in to our sleeping bags in our hammocks on the first couple of evenings. The boats stop often to pick up and drop off cargo and passengers, so throughout the evening you have to wake up and check your luggage as theft is pretty common and a bag could easily be picked up and carried off. The other major preparation for the journey is to arrive several hours before the boat leaves to get the best spot for your hammock, ideally in a cool spot, away from the engine and the toilets! The importance of this was emphasized on our second day aboard.Our first evening was relaxed, with only 5 people sleeping on the top deck and the middle deck lightly filled. We had to share the top deck with a few hundred baby chickens which, when we awoke on the second morning, had all disappeared in the dead of the night. Amazing what you can sleep through!! Our relaxing cruise was to be short lived. That afternoon saw a couple of hundred people converge on the boat. We sat back in our hammocks and watched in amazement as the people put up their hammocks everywhere. It was packed!! All three levels were crammed and you had to feel sorry for the poor buggers squashed next to the engine - it must have been bloody hot and noisy down there
f) Meeting of 2 rivers. On our way to Iquitos.
. The conditions were a good test of your nerves at times as we found that there is no such thing as personal space on these boats. Every last inch is taken up by another hammock and the only way to ensure you save enough space for yourself is to remain rooted to your hammock for the majority of the journey......especially when the boat stops. We did find ourselves in some all out hammock wars.....these people are sneaky.....leave your hammock unattended and your hammock has been shifted up a bit to make room for yet another hammock!!
You soon get used to the lack of space and spend much of your time engrossed in a book to escape. I guess you could liken it to the London tube at peak hour.......anything to escape to your own private world sometimes!!
The jungle itself was fantastic. Little settlements on the banks of the river always looked such a wonderful place to live.....especially at sunset when the surrounding jungle envelopes you in the sounds of birds and insects. Idyllic as these villages were... piranhas are a bummer when it's hot and you live by a river...
g) Riverboat. Amazon River.
Where the Rio Maranon meets the Rio Amazonas we saw the amazing mixing of the waters: one clear dark river meeting a brown muddy one. We also saw the infamous piranhas whom we fed our scraps to and pink dolphins frolicking in the water from time to time. Finally after three days on the boat we made it to Iquitos.
Iquitos is the largest city in the Amazon Basin that is accessible only by air and river. It was founded in the 1750's and became a rubber boomtown in the late 1800's. Oil is probably the largest industry in the area now. It's extremely humid which is probably why we started taking five or six showers a day!! To celebrate our arrival in such a landmark town, we found this great little pub at the end of a popular boardwalk, overlooking the River Amazonas and built high on stilts. It was like having a beer sitting in a tree house - with meter long iguanas watching us from the tree tops where they lay to keep cool. The beers were exceptionally refreshing and I remembered why Aussies drink their beer so fast - it warms up so quickly! Feeling giddy we left the pub and sauntered around town until we found somewhere to fill our bellies.
Later that day we searched the city for the Brazilian embassy which was supposed to be there but found out it had since closed
h) The sun sets over the Peruvian Amazon
. Major problem for us as I needed a visa to enter Brazil. We had been hoping to apply here, closer to the border, as the officials in Lima would not even look at my application without proof of entry and exit tickets (i.e.. a plane ticket). Pretty ludicrous when you are travelling by land the whole way. I didn't require a visa for Columbia (our only other way of getting to Venezuela) but Dave did, so we headed off to its embassy to try to apply for one. Apparently you could not apply for a visa there but only in your home country. Well fat lot of good that was to us so, disheartened, we went back to the hotel to think through our options. To get to Venezuela by land we had to go through one of the two countries and we did not want to fly so in the end we decided to take the risk and head for the border and try get a visa for me to enter Brazil on the spot - perhaps paying off a local border official. If worst came to worst, we would fly back to Lima and work things out from there. It was another two days before we could start the next section of our journey - Iquitos to the tri-border area where Peru, Colombia and Venezuela meet. We explored the markets where the stench of the fish stalls was so repugnant that our exploration was a short one and spent enjoyable evenings wandering round the tropical plazas where chess competitions and impromptu theatre and snake shows seemed to be popular
i) Some of our fellow passengers were real monkeys
. Iquitos is another city with few motor cars and it makes such a difference to the feel of the place. You can take a motor-cycle taxi pretty much anywhere for a few cents and they are so abundant that you don't have to wait for one, ever. Such a great way to get around. One night after sinking a few beers on the boardwalk filled with eateries, pubs and strange artwork, we met an American from Colombia. He was a quality controller for all the radar systems for the USA's Drug Enforcement Agency that tries to control the smuggling rings that bring the drugs to America (doesn't seem to be working very well!!). He mentioned that a few weeks before that they had accidentally shot down a plane of missionaries who had not responded to the calls on the radio to identify themselves - oops!! He was throwing around his money like it was of no value and consequently had an entourage of admirers. We joined the odd group and spent the wee hours of the morning enjoying beers at the poshest hotel in town around the swimming pool, learning how to dance salsa and trying tactfully to debate the ins and outs of government interference in other countries affairs. We caught up with them all again the very next evening, picking up a few of our own admirers, one of whom, in his drunken bliss, offered to take us on a tour "for free" into the jungle. We tried to protest but to no avail. As promised he arrived on our door at 10am
j) Jungle village on the Amazon river bank
. We were all hungover and tired and Dave and I had to organise our supplies as the boat was leaving that evening. We sipped some lemonade together and after half an hour of fruitless attempts to communicate in Spanish in our hungover state, we aborted the mission. Our guide seemed secretly relieved and we suspected he had driven up the price of the boat ride somewhat to make it exceptionally unappealing to our low budget pockets. Later that day we headed down to the boat to stake our claim for hammock space before heading off again to buy supplies. When we arrived back the place was mayhem!! There were people crammed into the boat like sardines. It was so hot that we dumped our bags and wandered around the docks until we were ready to leave. We returned to our hammocks only to find that if we'd thought the boat had been full before, we were very much mistaken. The area where our small hammock spaces once were had now been replaced by some rather nasty women who basically said "tough shit" to losing our hammock spaces......we should have been there guarding them! We tried arguing but nothing was going to move them and in the end we started a second layer of hammocks above them.
Apparently there had not been a boat leaving for a week, hence the overcrowding
k) Arriving at the river port of Iquitos, Peru
. The boat was so low in the water that on the first night we had to move slowly through the water to stop it spilling over the front. There really wasn't anywhere to hang out but we managed to find a spot amongst the big containers of fish where we met up with an Italian gentleman, Hugo, and his Colombian wife and shared in a bottle of rum... neat. It made sleeping a lot easier! So on the second day we bought another bottle. After the second night the crowd thinned out a little and we spent quite some time talking with the locals on board and playing with the kids. There were a group of Frenchies on the other side of the boat, one of whom was the cause of great amour among the Peruvian ladies around us - and we had to explain repeatedly how to say "I love you" in English!!
We didn't really get chatting to the Frenchies until the last day when we docked as Santa Rosa, the Peruvian portion of the tri-border area. We sat together waiting to get our passports stamped at the Immigration Office but gave up after waiting an hour and a half without any immigration officials to be seen. During that time we met an American gentleman living in Colombia and working as an actor and producer - his current project was an X Files type program for Spanish cable TV called Phenomenon
l) Riding a motorbike taxi, Iquitos, Peru
. He mentioned that he'd been to the Brazilian Embassy that day and was quoted $50 for a visa which he regarded as a rip off. In contrast this was great news for us as it meant that it might be possible for me to pick up a visa without any bribery which is always risky (and, in Brazil, apparently not easy) That put a positive mood on things. All six of us caught a water taxi over to Colombia (less than five minutes away), where the best eateries and accommodation is to be found. As long as you stay within the tri-border region, your passports do not need to be stamped and you can move freely between the three countries. The Colombian town is called Leticia and the Brazilian town, Tabatinga. Tabatinga and Leticia have grown into one another now and the only way to tell where the official border line lies is the currency exchange booth on the side of the road. It's quite a bizarre concept to walk down the road, one minute having to communicate in Spanish and the next minute in Portuguese. On the way to a our hotel we passed the border official who was supposed to be in Santa Rosa and we were ordered to return their the next day before 12. When we rocked up at 10am the next morning, we only just caught them as they were heading out the door and back to Colombia!!
We really enjoyed Colombia
m) Iquitos' riverfront boulevard
. The people were very friendly, the facilities excellent and thought of what a shame it is that the country has such political problems. It discourages most tourists from going there. The people who we met on our travels only had great things to say about the place - a beautiful country filled with fantastic people. Hugo, our Italian friend, told us stories of how the drug barons used to spend a lot of their money in Leticia until the government put a tighter control on the area. This might explain why the infrastructure seemed more developed here. Columbia might also be the only country which has a law against wearing a bike helmet because of the threat of armed robberies perpetrated by biker bandits using helmets as masks. This is a town where everyone gets around on scooters - whole families will cruise by all squashed on to one scooter. Quite a cool sight! The heat here was extraordinarily hot with humidity at 90%. Hugo told us about a park with a swimming pool so without further ado Dave and I plus our new French friends spent a fantastic afternoon swimming and playing beach volleyball!! We really felt like we were on holiday that afternoon!We located a boat to take us on the last leg of our journey through to Manaus in Brazil now all I needed was a visa. The first day the Brazilian consulate in Leticia was closed due to a public holiday in Colombia but the next day I showed up at 8am and by 8.30 I was happily walking out the door with a visa though minus US$35
n) Iquitos architecture
. The Frenchies were on the same route through to Manaus and up to Venezuela so we all pretty much hung out together from there on in. The Brazilian boat was a huge step up in standards from our last two. Plenty of showers, a huge upstairs deck with a brilliant stereo system, a live band, a machine that dispersed cold drinking water and the best thing........coffee in the morning!! The food was fantastic......still mainly beans and rice plus spaghetti and fish or meat. We even had a table to eat at!!
On our first night on board we all got pretty smashed on rum and beers and crashed out in our hammocks. At about 2.30 in the morning we were rudely awoken to partake in a police raid (apparently infamous on these boats). They checked everyone on board's ID and searched our bags. Apparently it is common for travelers to have drugs planted in their bags by a fellow passenger so if there is a raid you get busted instead of the smugglers. Nice huh? Just another reason to keep an eye on your bags (and not to drink too much rum)!! The trip was again filled with beautiful sunsets, never ending jungle landscapes, stimulating conversations and peaceful towns filled with happy smiling people. Over those three days we got used to the constant music from 6am to 10pm
o) Central plaza and church, Iquitos, Peru
. It amazed us again, how little respect there seemed to be for other peoples space/sanity: an example would be for a passenger to turn their radio on loudly at 5.30 in the morning. Well I guess that is how a westerner sees it but it doesn't seem to bother the Brazilians. It's more of a sharing and caring environment than how we are with strangers - our societies seem a bit stand-offish and intolerant at times. On the fourth evening we finally arrived in Manaus - the giant Amazon jungle city - but as it was late we decided to spend the night on the boat. We were anxious to use our time in Manaus well, so the next morning found Dave and I heading off to see some Botanical gardens and a zoo run by a research institute. It was a great place with only a couple of water creatures (manatees, otters) in caged off areas. The rest including parrots, monkeys, sloths and tortoises were only as enclosed as the grounds of the park. We even got stalked by dozens of turtles which had spotted us walking past the lake and probably thought we had (were?) food for them... we counted over 50 of them swimming alongside us as we strolled by.
On our way to see park we had managed to get on the wrong bus that took us to a great resort area on the Rio Negro (Black River)
p) the battlegrounds for the hammock wars
. It looked a lot like the Mediterranean coast lined with bars and eateries. We took the Frenchies down there the next day - the heat being oppressive - and spent the day swimming in the dark black river, guzzling lots of beer (which is cheaper than water - an Australian's dream!!), and watching the parade of scantily clad bodies (of all shapes and sizes) as they moved and grooved to the sensual salsa sounds emanating from the loudspeakers. What they can do with their hips it truly amazing! Also lining the boulevard was a huge outdoor stage for concerts and a number of beach volleyball and soccer courts. A great idea!On our final day in Manaus, we toured the great Opera House where almost all materials were brought exclusively from Europe at the height of the great rubber boom. All the famous opera singers of the day would have traveled here to perform during this time. This region used to be the only source of rubber until someone finally smuggled the seeds of the rubber tree out of Brazil and planted them throughout Asia. Following that, the city experienced a stage of rapid decline until very recently, when the government declared Manaus a free trade area which has resulted in a massive increase in the population from 250,000 to over one million people today.
The rest of our last day was spent shopping
q) Another Amazonian sunset.
. Whether it was hammocks or music or clothes, everyone came back with a number of items. As a backpacker, it's not every day that you get to shop because invariably you have to carry all you buy unless you can afford to post stuff home (very expensive). We were all heading home within a month so we all went a bit crazy!!That night we had to leave Manaus. It's a sprawling metropolis but it has a great energy, the people are the friendliest we've met in South America and the clothes are wonderfully vibrant. Sadly our week in Brazil was up and we once again boarded a bus to take us across our final land border crossing on our way to Venezuela. The bus was so cold from the air-conditioning that I was forced to cover myself in newspaper like a hobo but I was surprisingly well insulated so I was happy in the end. We had one change over in buses at a place called Boa Vista and had to hang out in the park and sleeping on the benches until our bus to Ciudad Bolivar departed in the early evening. I tried to do some shopping but it was a tad annoying. The sales assistants' way to get a sale is to follow you around the store like a shadow and when you want to buy something they take it to the counter for you. There is never any sizes but what is on the shop floor so in reality they do nothing - but they call it customer service nonetheless. Bizarre.
r) Some amorous boat babes, Peru.
The countryside between the border and Ciudad Bolivar is strikingly beautiful - you drive all the way through a national park - but alas being on a night bus ensures you see nothing. In the middle of the night we had two police searches and passed by a terrible car crash where we were forced to stop and we got out to have a look. A person was lying on the road, covered by a plastic tarp with only the hands and feet showing and there were several people searching the sides of the road for more bodies that had been thrown from the back of the truck on impact. I wondered about the person under the plastic - what reality was he experiencing...if any? (Having just read The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada probably put me in that frame of mind). They cleared the road and we continued our journey... everyone went back to what they were originally doing... like it never happened.
We arrived in Ciudad Bolivar early in the morning. The town was originally called Angostura but when Simon Bolivar used it as a base for the military operations against the Spaniards which was the start of the liberation of Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, it was renamed Ciudad Bolivar in 1846 in his honour. Ciudad Bolivar is also the gateway to the famous Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall at 979m (abut 16 times higher than Niagara Falls!) and many other waterfalls in the surrounding national park
s) Macaws in the wildlife park, Manaus, Brazil
.We caught up with Stephan, one of our French friends who had left Manaus a day earlier. He had stayed the night and found the accommodation to be too expensive so instead of having a day of rest from travel, we continued with him on to Puerto La Cruz on the Caribbean coast. The ocean at last!!
Unfortunately the place proved a bitter disappointment. The prices of everything were exorbitant! McDonalds was cheaper in London, we couldn't find a hotel under US$12 (bearing in mind our daily budget is $15 and the usual price we have paid in every other country was between US$3 and $6), the beach was contaminated so you couldn't swim, big ugly gasoline sucking American cars made traffic a nightmare, and to top it off with every monetary transaction we made some bleeper would try to short change us or charge us extra. We couldn't stand the place so the next morning we moved down the coast into the Mochima National Park and a little fishing village called Santa Fe where we could chill out for the weekend.
We found ourselves a beautiful room on the beach with stunning sunset views and thankfully rested our travel weary bones for a few peaceful days. Venezuela unfortunately was proving much more expensive than the rest of the countries we'd visited so our budgets were severely stretched... gone were the days of eating 3 meals a day in restaurants! Reverting back to a diet of avocado rolls, bananas and cornflakes we managed to save some money - enough for beers at sunset. Santa Fe is a nicer family place with heaps of beachfront houses for rent - I imagined a whole bunch of friends spending a week or two here
s) The Opera House in the jungle, Manaus, Brazil
. Nice! Our last remaining concern was that we had no ticket out of South America so after a few days relaxing on the beach we headed off to Caracas, the capital. Conveniently we left our bags (which were exceptionally heavy at this stage) in storage in Santa Fe, and took a day bag each to the big city.
Caracas is set in a beautiful fertile valley with one of the valley walls having been set aside as national park of surprising beauty. It doesn't have a great reputation as a particularly safe city so I think we were imagining something closer to Lima. We didn't stay in the central area but chose to stay in an area called Sabana Grande in a hotel that had many comings and goings of "ladies of the night"! We only spent one full day and two nights so didn't see a huge lot but enough to get a feel of the place. It has the usual hustle and bustle of a city, a reliable and cheap underground Metro service, some wonderful old housing areas and slum areas to match. The central city was unusually run down but looking back on recent history it's no wonder why. Venezuela is one of the world's main oil suppliers. Unfortunately its economy has relied to heavily on oil with the result that other industries are underdeveloped - only 4% of arable land is cultivated... which would explain the exorbitant food prices (most food is imported). The 1988 drop in world oil prices cut the country's revenue in half and in the 90's the collapse of over a dozen banks cost the country over US$10 billion. In 1998 three quarters of the population were below the poverty line. On a brighter note they have great coffee! A cafe grande and a pastry for breakfast has become a favourite.
t) View from our room, Santa Fe, Venezuela
In the end we didn't manage to buy a ticket in Caracas - the cheapest one-way ticket to the UK was US$800. However we did manage to book a cheaper (though not cheap!) flight via the internet and so we left Caracas and returned to the coastal village of Santa Fe where we spent our last night on the mainland. Ever since those freezing nights in the Andes we had promised ourselves to end the trip with two weeks of idle bliss in a tropical island paradise. Destination: the island of Margarita.
Isla de Margarita is only a four hour ferry trip away from Puerto la Cruz. It is Venezuela's largest island at over 1000 sq. km in area and is the gateway to the Caribbean. It used to be two islands which are joined now by a narrow sandbank. One end is dry and barren, the other, fertile. The largest town on the island is Porlamar which seems to be a shopper's paradise as the island has been declared a duty free zone. Alcohol prices are an exceptional bargain - you can pick up a cheap bottle of rum for just US$2. We stayed our first night in Porlamar, where we had a wander around the bustling stores.
The next day we escaped the hecticness of Porlamar to a town on the other side of the island called Juangriego
u) A plaza in Caracas, capital of Venezuela
. There, being on the north west side of the island, we were able to enjoy nine wonderful sunsets. We tried our best to see other areas of the island as there are about 20 different beaches to choose from - all with various facilities and activities. We were also lucky to experience one of many wonderful walks through the interior, in the national park which has hills with peaks as high as 1000m. Our walk took us up a dry intermittent stream with what must be amazing waterfalls in the rainy season. Lining the banks are huge coconut palms and mango trees. We stopped to eat a couple on the way. Yum!! Apparently there is a crazy man living at the top of one of the hills that carves penises out of any material he finds. Interesting hobby! We tried quite a few of the beaches, Playa Caribe being our favorite with a long clean sandy beach and some decent body surfing waves. On our last day we visited the crazy waterpark where we were probably more frightened than at any other time on the whole trip! Awesome! But most of the time we just spent as lazily as possible on the beach watching the countless pelicans dive bombing for fish and being enthralled by the most amazing sunsets - sundowner drinks in hand...
And then, all too soon, we found ourselves at the end of our adventure
x) Another pelican sunset, Isla de Margarita
. In the blink of an eye we were on a plane destined for London, our days playing beach bats and running in the surf seeming like a vague dream. Seven months of oceans, lakes, mountains and sun; salt pans, Incas, kombis, llamas; buses, ferries, piranhas, elephants... snow, desert, jungle... Malawi, Bolivia, Lusaka, Manaus.... a mish mash of incongruent memories all melted together in a hazy bubble of separate reality. It was time to leave the fantasy world of travelling to return to London, to tubes, to work. But, only for 6 months... next stop: April Asia! Thanks to everyone in Africa and South America who helped to make our trip so beautiful, interesting and fun. We hope to meet you all again somewhere in this wide wonderful wacky world.
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