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After 4 hours of much-needed sleep I was headed to the airport again for a flight to Merida, ready for my wildlife adventure. As you know, I hadn't had much luck to date with the old wildlife - saw nothing in any of the jungles I'd been to or the Pantanal in Brazil. Of course, the Galapagos made up for it all but that's not the point! So, I had high hopes for this little excursion. I was due to spend the day and night in the town of Merida which I was looking forward to - to relax, sleep and desperately get some laundry done! Anyway, I was picked up at the other end by Tillo who announced that we were heading to Los Llanos there and then as the next day there were no other people going. 2 hours later we arrived in Merida and I met Colin and Sheldon from Canada who would be joining me - really nice guys and we seemed to hit it off right away, despite me being half asleep. That was a long day. Having got up at 5am, we then had a long drive ahead of us, across the Andes (we crossed a pass at 3,600m), made much longer due to 2 landslides on the windy mountain road that we had to wait to be cleared. We then picked up another passenger, Iga from Poland, and our guide Junior. Iga was a little odd - very quiet and not overly sociable but Junior was great fun. The journey just seemed to go on and on until Junior livened it up a bit by serving us all rum and coke which certainly perked everyone up. We finally reached camp at 11pm after getting stuck in some mud and we still had to have dinner! As we were having dinner, a baby anteater suddenly arrived - so cool! It's a 'pet' and is less than a year old and lives in a hammock - totally free to come and go but chooses to stick around. I named her Anna and fell in love with her completely - so cute! I threatened several times over the next 2 days to kidnap her!
I had a great time in Los Llanos - it's definitely been one of the highlights, except for being thrown around in the back of the truck for 3 days - with sideways seats and nothing to hold onto! We were all sleeping in one hut - there was one bed which I got (mainly because I'd had the worst and longest journey!) and everyone else was in hammocks. It was nice though and we were sharing the space with a few tiny frogs and some very personable mozzies and flies who ate me alive both nights. The bathrooms were fine - toilets and showers, except on a night they were full (it was almost biblical!) with crickets - in the toilet, in the sinks, all over the floor! The food was fantastic - the best I've had in a while and all of the guides were very good. We saw a fair bit of wildlife - unfortunately I wasn't able to catch it all on film as I was either clinging onto the roof of the truck for dear life or clinging onto my horse and freeing a hand either time to take a picture wasn't really an option! We saw lots of capybaras which are just so cute, a ton of birds, we saw iguanas in trees from the boat and some very strange pink river dolphins which had funny long snouts and were really quite ugly! We also saw macaws, caiman, giant toads and we fished for piranhas which we ate that evening - really delicious fish. The boys also reckoned they had seen a huge anteater being chased across the field by 2 dogs during the afternoon - hmm, I was a tad skeptical as it happened when nobody else was around! The absolute highlight was definitely the anaconda that Junior caught in a swamp. It was a male, about 2.5m long (the females can be 5 times that size!). He put it round my neck and it was so heavy and so strong - you could feel the muscles working as it inched its way across my shoulders. It had also recently eaten as there was a big lump halfway down its body! Amazing.
After horseback riding on Monday morning (you know how much I love that - still maintain it will never be a hobby of mine although I was a little more confident but still wouldn't let the thing trot!) we headed to Barinas where we dropped the boys off to hopefully get a bus and then went to the airport to try and change my flight - no luck so I would be traipsing backwards and forwards across the Andes to stay one night in Merida then back to Barinas to catch my flight. We then headed to another camp for the night. The mood became a bit somber as Tillo went out to the local village to pick something up and on the way back he watched someone lose control of their car, hit a rocky mound, flip, roll and fly out of the car. By the time he got over there, the guy was dead. It turned out it was someone they all knew as it was the guy who owns a rival adventure company. We ended up following the car with his body in it all the way back to Merida the next day.
On Tuesday morning we did some white water rafting which was great fun. Only a grade 3 river so nothing compared to my NZ experience but there were some hairy moments all the same as the river was quite high. Towards the end, Junior was looking a bit suspicious and I just knew he was going to tip the raft. Just as I was yelling to him that I didn't trust him, he tipped it - the water was bloody freezing! Iga held on until the last minute and was then catapulted into the water, right on top of me which wasn't pleasant and then I got quite a few bruises from the rocks but was fun all the same! We then had the long journey back to Merida where we filled up the tank with 60 litres of petrol that cost less than a $! - what?!! Unbelievable!
I was staying in a nice (clean!) little posada and also managed to get my clothes cleaned although I will be shedding a number of them in the next few days and doing a mini shopping spree for more civilisation-oriented garb! There's not a great deal to do in Merida. I had planned to ride the teleferico which, at 12.5km long and travelling from 1,577m to 4,765m high, is the longest and highest cable car system in the world. Unfortunately it is closed for maintenance - boooo! So, needing to check out at 11am, I had 4 hours to kill and ended up sitting in a coffee shop for most of that (oh apart from the hour I joined the tramps on a park bench). I then had the 4 hour journey back across the Andes to look forward to!
Latest photos are on picasa. I've just realised that none of the videos have uploaded but my internet connection here is too slow so I'll upload them soon (tarantula and anaconda, amongst others).
- comments
Michelle Knox so you met Junior and driver who took a shine to me. Also your anna was the ant eater that molested my leg during the night, and you slept in my bed. Glad you got to see everything though. how is the baby macaw?