Maturin Hotels
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Orinoco Delta - not in Japan
Entry 58 of 74 | show all | print this entry |
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After a week of lazing around on the beaches at Puerto La Cruz and Santa Fe, fate came and tapped me on the shoulder as if to lead me on before I came too entrenched in the good life. I had bumped into Christian in the morning, he'd offered a tour package for the following day but I was on the way to an ATM in Puerto La Cruz (1hr on the bus) so didn't feel like bargaining in the sweltering heat. Later in the evening he appeared at our hostel for an unrelated beer, but was soon pushing his agenda again. A snazzy laptop presentation and a few discounts later, I found myself booked in for a 6am start the next day. He may also have mentioned that the other 6 tourists were all young women. I managed to talk him down from US$180 to US$80, for the simple fact I knew he had enough people on the tour to be profitable, so I would just be a bonus for him.
It was sad to say farewell to the German boys, Bjorn & Jan, because not only had they been top travel/beer buddies, but they'd also saved my arse several times by stepping in as translators. I made sure I woke them up at 6am so that they didn't miss one last hilarious joke by me - leaving them the bottle of $2 rum that I couldn't carry (let alone stomach)... and then I was away to the awaiting 4WD.
The first day was spent purely travelling to the Delta region. It's best not to keep checking the time in these situations, but there were definitely many hours spent crammed into the back of the 4WD, and then many more hours spent on the wooden planks of our river transport boat as the sun set over a barmy evening. Day 2 was when the real action started, beginning with a 4am wake-up for a dawn paddle into some jungle-riddled channels. Of course, we all hit the rum a bit hard the night before so it was actually more of a 5.30am start. Not ideal for seeing the wildlife, and also not ideal for the paddle back against the current and slight breeze. We did manage to see a number of monkeys leaping around of course, and showering their fruit peels and seeds over us as we paddled beneath them. They seemed curious to have a browse at us, but we were unfortunately plagued with a particularly loud and stupid English girl, who no doubt scared them all away with her uninteresting rantings and observations on life in London, as well as the loudest attempts in the world at swatting mosquitoes. I say attempts, because judging by the number of bites she (mercifully) received, she certainly didn't seem to be stopping the onslaught. Luckily she also had shithouse balance, so my canoe's 3cm clearance from the water was not hard for her to conquer, and consequently only continuous bailing by our Indian guide kept us afloat.
After a quick feed, the warriors of the group assembled at the pier again, to not only punish ourselves with yet more sitting on hard wooden planks in a boat, but trying to catch fish at the same time. We spent a few hours in the mangroves, dodging the piercing sun as we went, but nobody was having much luck. I'm not even going to bother suggesting I caught something, because obviously I would have had a photo of it so you'll all know I'm bullshitting. I will, however, testify that out of the hapless tourists I was by far dominating the stats for bites and near misses. Our guide caught 3 small piranhas so we got to have a look at them close up and pretend they were biting our fingers etc. I must voice my disappointment here at the realisation that not all piranhas hunt in packs to rip the flesh from your bones. All the rivers we swam in contained piranhas, but were still considered "safe". Average.
Back at the camp we had another feed before getting back on a bloody boat at dusk to go spotting the Howler Monkeys. Incidently, these monkeys are pretty cool and pretty noisy. They live in little families, perch themselves right at the top of a tree, and then in the mornings they combine forces to make a serious racket that can be heard over a kilometre away. Their arch nemesis is the parrots, who also have a knack for producing noise from their giant flocks (10s of thousands) that seem to congregate at exactly the same time the poor Howler monkeys are trying to hit the sack. Back at the camp we got stuck into the rum again just for good measure, and the (completely blind) English girl managed to injure her leg jumping into the water from the pier. She received no sympathy as we'd all been suggesting she stop jumping in several hours earlier, once we'd noticed the dropping water level.
Next day, jungle trek time. Probably the most enjoyable and interesting part of the tour. Sure enough, our silly English cripple was still trying to squeeze some sympathy by limping around and making little noises, but still nobody seemed to be having a bar of it. To compound things, she refused to follow suggestions from some physios we were lucky enough to have in the group. To our dismay she bravely came along to the jungle trek anyway, and constantly had us waiting for her to catch up. Jose, our local Indian guide, was a bit of a bloody champion. First stop were some tree grubs, and he insisted everyone eat one or find their own way back to camp. They were not too great to look at, but once he popped their head off and squeezed out their guts it was a whole lot more appetising - so I tried one. Tasted like eating grass. I was one of the first, and the crunching sound was enough to have a few of the others backing down like a bunch of... well, girls. Nearby was a termite nest, so I also tried out the mint-flavour they produce by letting a bunch of them run onto my hand before licking it clean. Next he showed us a palm that produced hollow seeds for a drink of coconut-flavoured water. Then another palm was chopped down to eat some of the trunk section for a snack, as well as to use the soft layered bark as a form of paper - scratching it with a stick would produce a red mark after a few seconds. After that I got stung by a wasp, then we swung on a vine Tarzan-style. At some stage Jose even trimmed his toe nails with his huge machete. No shit. One of the coolest tricks up his sleeve was when we found a bolser tree and he hammered the back of his axe against one of the roots. It created a booming sound through the jungle, which was then reciprocated by one of the blokes waiting for us back at the boat. They use this method to communicate when hunting parties become separated etc. The way the Indians have found a use for everything around them is quite staggering really. Certain bigger, straight trees are carved over a two month period to form canoes. On their 3rd birthday the children receive one of these canoes, as if being handed the keys to a car.
Covered in mud, we headed away from the jungle and mosquitoes to basically the middle of the river, where we all piled over the sides of the boat to wash the muck off. For me, it was the first wash a certain pair of pants and a t-shirt had received after about two weeks of constant use. Back to the camp for a bit of lunch and relaxing, but then back on the boat to go visit the largest village of the area. Interestingly, the Indians are actually nomadic so for a village to form it requires a bunch of families to all think the chief is such a top bloke that they want to settle down next to him and follow his leadership. Larger villages are then identified by the Venezuelan government and funding goes towards power generators, clinics, tools and buildings to hopefully make their lives a little easier. It also meant that while we sat dangling our legs over a pier in the village, at dusk, munching on our authentically cooked (and delicious) fish and maise-based bread, that rather than silence there was the hum of a generator and the voices of numerous TVs and radios floating on the air. That's progress.
For our last night of the tour we decided to do something different, so we got stuck into the rum again and someone cracked out a deck of cards. I was REALLY hankering for a game of Texas Holdem Poker, but I didn't want to seem like a shark so I decided to just go with whatever crappy game they decided on. Christian came literally springing to my rescue, telling everyone how great Holdem was and he even had some bags of pasta to use as chips. I tried to look non-plussed. The girls all received a crash course on how to play, and for some reason were talked into paying 5000 Bolivares ($2.50) to make it interesting. Realising they were all pretty shit, I attempted to take command of the table with some sparkling play, but instead I was soon reduced to what's commonly known as "fuck all chips". My straights were being beaten by better straights, my full houses were being shafted by quads, and everyone was taking turns hitting their flush on the river against me. I decided to change my game plan to psychological warfare, so I retrieved a shirt from inside with "podiumpoker.com" emblazoned across it (a gift from MC in Cancun). This caused a commotion (exactly as planned), and suddenly there was talk of me deliberately losing all my chips (exactly as planned). Needless to say, I became Bluff Master and soon swung the whole game around before eventually taking all the cash. It paid for my ride to Ciudad Bolivar. We had to play the last few hands in the dark because the generators had shut off, and during this time Eder (our trainee guide) managed to walk fully clothed straight off the pier where we were playing, grazing his arm and proving just how pissed he was in the process.
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