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We've now completed our Venezuelan adventure and it's been slices of paradise interspersed with unrepeatable travel hardships... Venezuela has some way to go in developing both its transport infrastructure and its payment systems!We flew into the capital city of Caracas on schedule (for once!) at 4.30am after 14.5 hours of travelling - whilst not fraught with delays, this wasn't the most comfortable leg, with a 3-hour stopover in Sao Paulo and being accompanied by a herd of Religious Happy Clappy Singers - you might be able to imagine how we identified them as RHCSs!Of course nothing in the international airport of Caracas works at 4.30am, most notably the cash machines which are either broken or refuse to accept any of our plethora of UK bank cards.We did eventually find one ATM which allowed us to draw cash on our credit card... the maximum we could draw was equivalent to 44 GBP - great!!!Instead of forking over half our cash for a taxi to the bus terminal, we had a crack at Venezuelan public transport, finding an hour-long bus which dropped us at a metro stop, then negotiated a further two metro journeys to the bus terminal station, heavy bags in tow.
The bus terminal was a huge, imposing beast, which, from a distance, gave us hope that Venezuela had invested suitably in its bus transport (there's only one railway line in the whole country and its capital city international airport is, I suspect, one of the worst in the world).This impression was quickly smashed as we found ourselves separated from the terminal by 6 lanes of fast-moving traffic with no pedestrian crossing.We had these huge bags on our backs and were forced to run across these lanes of beeping drivers - safe!
The buses, too, proved something special.The driver of the bus from the Caracas terminal seemed to think that his passengers would enjoy the latest in South American hip-hop and rave at 9am, and accordingly overloaded his speakers to deliver this special service (bear in mind we'd been travelling for 19 hours at this point)!This bus at least had air-conditioning... it was broken but the thought was there.Our next bus was, I'd guess, a repair write-off - the suspension was completely knackered, the seats were falling through and barely bolted to the floor... in fact the only thing working quite right was the sound system, which was the latest model with MP3 stick loaded with hip-hop and rave, and this was hooked up to a custom-built wall of 10 multi-sized speakers.Once again, the driver felt it his duty to drown out all surrounding noise in the pursuit of forced ear-bleeding music appreciation.
After 3 buses and 2 metros, we'd made it to within 3 miles of our destination - great, we thought, until we tried to get a taxi the last part.Our first quote was more than we'd paid in total for the previous 6 hours of public transport!Dismayed and desperately fed up, we were partly reassured and partly horrified when the "taxi manager" (some bloke who sits on a wall near a post with a taxi sign) told us we could alternatively jump in the back of a van with 5 other people for a cheaper journey.After more than 24 hours of travelling, this seemed like an acceptable risk and it worked out just fine.Of course, when we eventually reached our destination, our booking had been mislaid and we were not expected - this final straw proved a little too much for poor Emma, who had to visit the bathroom to compose herself!
Unrepeatable (seriously: we're never going back!) travel nightmares aside, the Caribbean beaches of the Morrocoy National Park with their white sands and clear, 30°C aquamarine waters were amazing.In true Venezuelan tradition, we found that each beach had at least one power-boat which deployed nightclub-sized speakers to deliver thumping hip-hop and rave tunes to the captive audience!Fortunately, our Lodge supplied big cool boxes of decent lunches and beer, so all was soon forgiven!
When the time had come to move on to Los Roques (tiny islands in the Caribbean Sea!), we opted for a very expensive 5-hour taxi back to Caracas airport - even if buses had been available at 3am (not a hope, by the way!), we were, unsurprisingly, not prepared to do another 7.5-hour public transport journey to catch a flight at 9 in the morning!We only just made it to the airport in time (in true Venezuelan fashion, road networks have been designed to concentrate and grid-lock the traffic around the capital city) and were hurried onto a tiny 14-seater aircraft for a white-knuckle ride to the smudge of a runway that is Los Roques airport.
Flight survived, we found ourselves in unspoilt paradise!Los Roques is a collection of tiny white-sand islands popping up in the beautiful, clear, warm Caribbean waters.The photos should illustrate how unspoilt these islands are - each day we were taken by power-boat to a new island and it was not uncommon for us to be the only people on it!The islands also have some amazing coral and sea-life - we had a great time SCUBA-diving!
Onward from Los Roques, we made a 3-day excursion to visit the tallest waterfall in the world, the 983m Angel Falls, and walk through and behind the amazing waterfall curtain of the Salto Ase ("Axe Waterfall").The trek involved some rather hairy rapid and rock negotiation in a large, hand-made wooden canoe with a powerful engine.This got us most of the way up the River Cherou; the remaining mile or so was an hour-long uphill trek through rainforest, stepping from precarious tree root to sharp-edged and slippery rock - truly the concept of Health & Safety (even insurance and corporate liability) has not yet come to Venezuala!Em and I both slipped several times - very fortunately we recovered without injury every time as I fear a broken ankle in that environment would have meant being put down!One amazing thing we got to do was to swim in the plunge pool of the Angel Falls - the powerful flow of water was very impressive and the mountainous background gave this pool an enchanting view!
Ultimately, Venezuela has some unbelievable and must-see natural beauty.The cost of visiting this is very high, both financially and in frustration, sweat and tears.The financial cost is particularly high because, in an attempt to address concerns with the national currency, the government has banned the use of foreign currency for payment - as a consequence, foreign bank cards and credit cards are not accepted in most places; the larger establishments that do accept them apply a whopping 15% charge and actually take your money to a European or North American bank account for spending outside Venezuela.Counter-productive madness!
Our onward exodus journey from Venezuela will take a staggeringly painful 55 hours - we're looking forward to it!
All the best,
Chris (and Em)
- comments
Lin ohhh dear, a worrying read for a Mum !!!! But on a positive note, you've survived it and seen the sights - and as I have spoken to you both through Skype last night, I know you're both OK - so I can breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to you moving on !!! It's another brilliantly descriptive read, and as I read through each detail of your arduous trip I felt the frustration and upset, along with the beauty and pleasure !! Another notch on the world trip, now time to move on !!! Thanks for chatting to us last night, it was wonderful to see you both and catch up. Keep safe and dry !!! Love to you both. XXX
James Darlings, Just aweful... It must be just such a roler coaster of emotions throughout your experiences... such love always from the three of us x
selina Oh Christo & Emma - I feel exhauseted just reading about the travelling you had to do togetto your destination - you said that the hotel has "mis laid" your booking....not sure if they found it as you susequently wrote about The Lodge? What a see saw of emotions - hope the memories of the white sand beaches will go some way to erasing the public transport plus! Thanks for sharingit with us - as always, I enjoy being an armchair traveller! Lots of love toyu both. xxxx
Debski Wow what a journey (i have done a 26 hour before) and another to come 56 hours poor bunnies. Still the photos of the falls are most beautiful so glad you did not break your ankle(s) think of the cost of being put down. look forward to your next blog to share the pain and pleasure with you and your everlasting sense of humours. Take care love Debski (Debi Hall)
Jenna eugh. just horrible. I'm feeling drained from reading that miserable transport mare - and the 55 hours ahead makes me feel sick. I'm exhausted just going to Brighton! you poor things, but at least you don't have the weather we have here to top it off! xxx