Los Llanos, visiting the venezuelan sabana

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  Los Llanos, Venezuela
Sunday, June 29, 2008

Just got back (strange way to start as not really sure where it is we are "back" to!) from a 4 day trip to visit Los Llanos, which is apparently spanish for flat. It´s hard to beleive that all the places we are visiting are in the same country: we passed through the Andes to get there, making a few stops en route, including to do a walk though the Andean highlands down  to a lake, birdwatcher´s paradise and also full of wild horses, very much lord of the rings territory. It was also pretty wet and cold, which meant we massively appreciated the rediculously sweet hot chocolate we drank.

The first evening, we stopped at a posada in the Andean foothills, where we went rafting down a very full (and pretty cold!) river. I say we went rafting. In fact, they took one look at Imo and I and clearly decided that we would not be up to much rowing and plonked us in the middle of the boat

Andean highlands

. I think Imo especially was a bit bummed and spent much time musing over why we had been put in the middle rather than the other girls on the tour. Meanwhile, I just sat there nodding saying "oh yeah...really annoying. yup. deff really wanted to do all the really wet and hard rowing stuff. uhun". It probs would have been fun to have paddled but this way we got to look around rather than rowing for our lives as sometimes it got a bit hairy!

The next day, we got back on the road and pretty soon got our first glimpses of the Llanos, and some of the wildlife. There are hundreds and hundreds of species of very brightly coloured birds (I actually caught myself wishing I had a bird book and some binoculars - no one said finding yourself made you look cool!) as well as giant ant eaters, anaconda (world´s largest snake), Caiman (mini crocodiles) and Capibara, the world largest rodent. If anyone reading this has watched ricky gervais "animals", I was strongly reminded of the bit where he talks about the unnecessary number of species there are. For instance, on our night safari, we were introcuced to the "greater night hawk", that our guide sort of snatched out of some shrub. It looked very much like a sleepy "greater day hawk" that had just been poked awake.....

On our first afternoon there, we went on a horseride

Church we visited

. Anyone who knows me is no doubt aware of allergy issues, but I was determined to give it a try, so I bought myself a surgical mask and gloves, and set out, looking like I was expecting iminent nuclear disaster or something (espec. as i was also wearing my swimming goggles). I had also taken a generous dose of antihistamines, but as it turns out, I didn´t actually suffer from any kind of allergy at all. Dunno, maybe I had the first every hypoallergenic horse? The first hypoallergenic and also the first duckfooted horse (mine seemed to trip up alot) but it was pretty cool, literally ridding off into the sunset. I even got up to a fast trot, but wasn´t so sure about the gallop (though Imo did)

I´m going to leave it there, Imo can tell you about the rest of the days, involving more hunts for giant snakes and "slightly larger day hawks", the wettest boat ride ever (FACT) and pirana fishing, though the latter may be a sore spot for miss Imo "the piranas in my part of the lake dont like chicken" Ainsworth. Baha. sorry bim.

Tonight, we are getting a bus back to Caracas and then hopefully tomorrow, a flight to Quito. All very exciting if it all goes without a hitch!

lots of love !

penny xxxxxxxx

We couldn´t decide whether or not we wanted to do the Los Llanos trip before as it was pretty expensive and also we thought it might all be a bit touristy for us (now we´re part-found we can´t be doing with that kind of stuff) but was definitely a good call in the end

Condor

.  It would have been a real shame to miss out on seeing one of the Savanah areas of Venezuela, it was very very beautiful and in a completely different way to the andean mountain villages we drove through on the way, the rainforest and beaches we saw in choroni and the hills and cloud forest around merida.  It has been amazing to see such a variation in landscape and climate in one country. 

Los Llanos were as Barbs mentioned very flat (formed during previous glacial periods for anyone who´s interested...no?) and also very green as it is (most definitely) the rainy season.  The camp were we were staying was really nice and the food we got was amazing... a bit of a change from crackers and jam, or even the vegetable and cream cheese concoctions we´ve been rustling up recently (highly reccomended).  The horse riding was excellent, the night safari a little less so, more driving along in the minibus in the dark (there were too many of us to fit in the jeep) and poking a couple of animals awake so that we could take photos.  There were ten of us on the tour and most found this bit a little odd (especially as they had to tie the mouth of the cayman shut so that we could look at it more closely).Not all of us however... one of the things that added something to the whole tour was the strange mixture of people on it with us, including Excitable, an appropriately nicknamed Venezuelan lady who spent the whole trip shreiking about how everything (from termites to beautiful birds) was ´precious´

andean highlands

.

The next day we went on a day safari on which we saw some of the amazing birds and were told all about them by our legend tour guide, Luis (who also caught a massive annaconda out of the river so we could look at it) and went pirhana fishing, indeed a sore point.  To be fair, Barbs only caught the thing with the last line she threw out, but there´s no getting around the fact that I am a failed Pirhana fisherwoman.  We also went on an extremely wet boat trip on which we saw some more really amazing birds, including some that look like phoenix.  The trip ended at a shack in the middle of nowhere where Excitable managed to get very excited indeed about a scrawny chicken while it and the rest of us tried to shelter from the rain, and the journey back was spent with Barbs and I singing classic disney tunes from the front of the boat.

A really good few days and an excellent way to spend our last ones in Venezuela before moving on to Ecuador!
xxxxxx

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Briget and Barbara	Ditto	Spookylooking lake	Imo on horse
Rainbow	Legend	The savanah	The horses
Penny on horse	Imo on horse	Sunset	Anaconda
Giant anaconda

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