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#Maybe tomorrow, I'll wanna
settle down... - 23/07/04
...Until tomorrow I'll just keep moving on.# (1)
As most of you know, I have started on another expedition
into uncharted territories. Or at least for me anyway.
I nearly didn't get out of Europe however as fate conspired
against me in more ways than one. First, a systems
breakdown at the boarding gate a Heathrow and a French ATC
strike delayed my flight (Up the workers!) and forced it to take
a most circuitous flightpath into Madrid. As a result I
missed my connecting flight into Caracas. Not to worry, BA
revalled my ticket for UX flying the same day, except that
flight was full. In the end they put me on UX the
following day (rather than IB who I was originally booked on),
and gave me a free night in the Auditorium Hotel in Madrid,
Europe's biggest, and surely most plush hotel. Full board
and free drinks fuelled a plane load of disgruntled British
tourists and we dealt with it in that most quintessential of
British ways, got drunk and complained bitterly,after the fact!
Oh yeah, they lost my luggage as well! In the end I complained
the next day and got re-valled
again (my ticket was starting to look like a First Day Cover at
this point) back onto IB and they informed me that my bag had
been found, on the same flight to Caracas. I had just 45
minutes until departure when the check in girl told me I
couldn't board without an onward ticket, so I had to buy a
ticket ex-Venezuela, pick up my boarding pass, go through
passport control and get to the gate. I did it...just.
So I made it to Caracas, a day late but I made it. Caracas
was far nicer than I imagined, its standing as 2nd most
dangerous city in the world (afterJo'burg, SA) had preceded it.
I found a bustling metropolis, but one in which one still saw
old men playing dominoes on their market barrows and stalls
selling wares ranging from donuts to digital watches and window
wiperblades to washing powder. One of my favourite places in
Caracas was Parque del Este, obviously in the East of the city.
With the exception of the horrid suburb of Petare, Caracas gets
nicer and safer the further east one travels. The Parque
included a boating lake (a la Wensum park), and a variety of
animals and birds within the trees, shrubs and grass.
Other highlights of Caracas for me included the twin West and
East towers (Venezuela is great for creative names!) and the
Museo de Arte Contemporario, which housed an impressive Picasso
collection amongst many
Venezuelan and Latin American displays.
Escaping Caracas I headed straight for Ciudad Bolivar, on the
banks of the Orinoco. There is not much to the city but
most travellers visit it as a base for tours to Angel Falls.
It has the distinction of being one of Venezuela's hottest
cities and the upshot of this is that you find yourself taking
your first beer at 10:30am and not really stopping until late at
night. In order to find something to do we took a boat
across to the other side of the Orinoco where all there was to
do was drink more beer and then come back. To compound
matters there was an explosion at the nearby hydroelectric plant
(the worlds second largest) and the entire city was subject to
candlelight for three days. Amidst this confusion I found myself
entwined with a German girl called Lisa who later invited me to
go to Brazil with her.
Waking up in my hammock I immediately regretted not going to
Brazil with her but this was soon forgotten as I embarked on my
three day tour of Canaima National park and Angel Falls. With no
road access we were flown in aboard a Cessna with a 73-year old
pilot who needed a walking stick, I thought we were getting
buffeted by the wind on the runway, it was actually his legs
shaking on the rudders! Arriving safely the National park was
quite simply the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life.
The first set of falls are spewing an immense amount of water
over the edge every second and walking behind Salto Angel as you
are deafened by the roar and soaked by the spray is incredible.
After this we started trekking through some jungle, very
evocative of being on patrol in the Mekong Delta! The next
day we continued upriver to Angel Falls, climbing through jungle
rain forest (I barefoot) for an hour up to the lookout, and
spying the worlds highest waterfall, crashing down from over 979
metres (16 times the size of Niagara), pretty cool. Even
better was swimming in the pool at the bottom of the falls ,
just looking up at the water as it seems to take forever to
reach the bottom! Coming back I got chatting with a Polish guy
called Tomic and we thought we were lost (proving men can only
do one thing at a time) we ended up just walking up and down the
ONE trail until we were rescued by the guide. On our
return to the camp we celebrated in the only possible way
especially for someone from the former Eastern Bloc) by toasting
with Vodka.
Coraima National Park
Spending the nights in a
riverside camp (safe from mosquitoes due to the tannic acid in
the river), drinking immensely cheap rum and playing Uno
completed a very enjoyable tour for me. Oh yeah, and perhaps
most importantly, I tried the hottest chili sauce ever, in fact
there is some sort of proverb in Venezuela that goes something
like "Mexicans wear pink shirts".
After returning to Caracas for one day - walking around the old
centre, visiting the house of Libertador Simon Bolivar and
stopping in the Plaza de la Revolucion with its murals of
Guevara and other Latin American heroes. I left the same night
for Merida, meeting a friendly Venezuelan woman on the bus named
Tania.
Installing myself in an apartment with a kitchen and lounge
area, sharing with a guy called Miguel, I spent the next four
days in Merida, wandering around the town (very pretty, set in
the Andes), drinking coffee, and eating ice-cream from an ice
cream parlour in the Guiness Book of Records for most flavours
(I had spaghetti with cheese, hamburger, Viagra, tutti fruti,
beer and red wine, oh and chocolate and pineapple as well!) and
meeting up with Tania for a meal in my apartment or going out
for something at night. I also visited her parents house
on Sunday and spent hours talking with her father about music,
as you can imagine his collection of 8000 vinyls impressed me
immensely. Erm...I also met (one of) her kids as well.
Escaping this steamy encounter I headed for Maracaibo, which
isn't much more than a hot town rich with oil. The centro
has some of the most ugly colonial buildings ever but the
lakeside is quite nice for a stroll, if you ignore the tankers
just offshore! I found myself spending the afternoon with
a girl I met in the "cyber" (Venezuelan slang for
internet cafe) wandering round a mall and hanging out in her
apartment with her and her two flat-mates. I left early and
prepared for my early morning bus to Colombia.
1. Maybe Tomorrow - music by Terry Bush and lyrics by John
Crossen
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