Into the rain forrest
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2008
1
2
25
Trip End
Aug 15, 2008
Choroni,
Venezuela
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A "holy place" (where we had lunch)
. After that, we turned downhill and walked to our guide´s house where after some cold drinks, we went swimming in the stream lower down the valley. Pretty perfect all in all. Claudia´s knowledge of the plants and wildlife was amazing, and she seemed to know everyone we passed. Apparently, in puerto colombia, because there is only 1 road leading to the village, everyone knows everyone and this makes is one of the safest places in the country. By the sounds of things, about the most exctiting thing that happens here is the occasional bus break down, something we experienced today when ours got a very flat tyre. Imo and I were imagining the scene if a bus broke down in London, everyone would grumble and complain, the driver would get all hot and bothered and stand around on his phone looking miserable. Here, everyone got off the bus, no complaining and did what they could to help fix the tyre, with almost every car that passed pulling over to make some joke or or offer a hand/lifts back to the village. There seems to be little in the way of schedules here, every thing happens quite slowly and at everyone´s own pace. At the same time, you couldn´t describe puerto colombia as "sleepy", because the blaring venezuelan music and number of people wondering around makes it feel very "awake"! There are also mango trees everywhere and a huge number of mangos which taste absolutely incredible (claudia provided a massive selection of lots of local fruit for lunch inc guavas, which made us miss nicki!)
This has been a long post, sorry if im being boring
Barbara, doing some exploring
. Tonight is our last night here, we are probs going back to a fish restaurant where yesterday we had some amazing generic "white fish", and then tomorrow we are spending the morning on the beach before heading onwards overnight to Coro, a bigger town further west. ¡Hasta la vista, (bebe)!Penny xxxx
Penny has pretty much said it all so i have very little to add.
Claudia was amazing, the micro climates (increase niche diversity and therefore increased number of species... sure. some good examples of tree fall disturbance also... wonderful) were interesting, but as penny demonstrates, not quite interesting enough to write here, the fruit was incredible and we also got to taste sugar cane and some of the sugar made in the factory on the outskirts of the jungle. the walk was really fun and chilled out and very beautiful, as was the beach. so yeah... generally i think we are both massive fans of puerto colombia and were sad to leave but excited to see more of venezuela after a bit of a shaky start in horrible littoral central (where we spent our first night just outside of caracas) which was dull, dirty and not very friendly or picturesque.
lots of love to everyone.
imo xxxxxxxx
