Travel, Photography, Life.
Venezuela
My travels in Venezuela.
Almost Out
Jan 29th
January 2-3, 2008
Days 768-769
Now that New Year’s Day had come and gone, it was finally time to start heading out of Venezuela. While waiting in line to board the ferry to the mainland, several kids were swimming near us and begging for people to throw coins to them. Occasionally someone would oblige and the kids would all go diving after the money. They had no pockets, so they stowed the coins in their mouths. Venezuela’s money had taken such a nosedive, however, that the biggest coin was only worth ten cents, and most of the coins actually being thrown into the water were worth far less. I found it a disgusting display of the have’s having a bit of fun at the have-nots’ expense, in the same way one would throw bread crumbs to the pigeons in a park for a bit of entertainment.
The ferry was more expensive than the speed boat I had taken to the island, meaning that its patrons had a bit of money. Consequently, the people actually waited in line rather than pushing and shoving their way to the front the way they normally would. In fact, the ferry left right on time and was the only experience I had in all of Venezuela that felt somewhat organized. Back in Puerto La Cruz, I got an overnight bus to Valencia, followed by another bus the next day to Maracaibo. Unfortunately, Venezuela had cities called “Maracaibo” and “Maracay” near each other, so it was difficult to convince the ticket vendors that I actually wanted to go to the former, despite the latter’s supposed importance.
I arrived in Maracaibo late in the afternoon and could have tried to get another bus to the Colombian border right away, but didn’t want to risk the crossing at night. There was a hotel perfectly located next to the bus station, and when the lady at the desk asked how much time I wanted, I said “Just one night.” While she was writing down my information, I sneaked a peak at the registry and saw that everyone who had come there before me only paid half as much as I did. I complained, but the lady at the desk told me that they had only paid for one hour. So it was one of “those” places. Still, it was cheap, clean, and you couldn’t beat that location, so I stayed there and got a decent night’s sleep on my last night in Venezuela.
Drowning My Sorrows with Twenty-Cent Beer
Jan 7th
December 29, 2007-January 1, 2008
Days 764-767
I took the hotel owner’s advice and took a boat before dusk to Isla Margarita. The trip was a little rough, and a girl puked onto the floor before she could access a plastic bag, and it immediately ran directly under my backpack. Otherwise, the trip went fine, and by the time I got to the island, the line for the boats was at least three hours long, so I was glad to have gotten an early start.
I started in Porlamar, the main city on the island. Despite being located on a tropical island where thousands of people took their vacations every year, it was not a pleasant place. Huge piles of garbage were everywhere in the streets, and the few garbage cans were only half full. Venezuela was by far the dirtiest country I had ever visited. There’s garbage on the streets in every country in South America, but only in Venezuela do the people there actually live like wild animals.
Shortly after it got dark, I walked around a bit, but everything was closed and there were only a few lowlifes on the streets. The night scene in every city in Venezuela reminded me of a cross between Mad Max, Night of the Living Dead, and that scene from Back to the Future II where they accidentally go to the alternative 1985. The guy at the hotel warned me not to go out anymore or I would be murdered. So much for having a nice vacation to ring in the new year.
Later I went to the creatively named Playa el Agua (The Water Beach), the most popular beach on the northern part of the island. It didn’t compare with the beaches in northern Brazil, but it was much nicer than anywhere else I had been in Venezuela nonetheless. The weather was hot and sunny, there were plenty of shady palm trees, and lots of people to hang out with.
The best part of Isla Margarita was the cheap alcohol. Being in a duty-free zone, Margarita was mainly famous amongst Venezuelans for cheap deals on electronics, but I didn’t have enough cash left to look into it. However, when beer is twenty cents per bottle, a bottle of cheap rum costs $1.50, and a bottle of six-year scotch goes for $9, you can’t go wrong. Indeed, Isla Margarita did have a lot to offer to ring in the new year properly.
The photo album for this entry is here.
Another Nasty Place
Jan 7th
December 28, 2007
Day 763
I wanted to go to nearby Corumba today, but I couldn’t find any buses going there despite its close proximity. I think I’ve already mentioned enough how unpleasant the Venezuelan people are, so suffice it to say that I got the first eastbound bus out of town that I could find but it still took two hours to leave the bus station, making for yet another long day in the unrelenting heat of the Caribbean.
Once again, I didn’t get to my destination of Carupano until dusk. Only then did I find out that the bus actually passed through Corumba on the way there, but I couldn’t tell from my map beforehand that that was the route we would be taking. But that didn’t really matter because different people had told me that both places were nice, so I just picked one and went to it.
My hotel owner was the first person I encountered in Venezuela who not only knew what he was talking about, but was also willing to share some information with me. Unfortunately, the prognosis was bleak. Once again, despite being located on a peninsula on the Caribbean, Carupano didn’t have any nice beaches and was a boring town to hang out in, but still somehow managed to be far too dangerous to go walking around at night. “This is Venezuela,” was his explanation for the dangerous streets. He practically forbade me to leave the hotel without calling a cab first, so I decided to stay in my room because everything closed at 6:00 anyway.
The owner mentioned Puerto La Cruz as a nice place to go, but I had just come from there, and it sucked. The other place he recommended me to visit was Isla Margarita, a large island nearby which was normally a vacation destination for the wealthy people of Caracas. I had heard the island was expensive and I was running low on cash (and as discussed previously, 60% of my money would evaporate instantly if I withdrew it from an ATM), but I just wanted to find somewhere nice to go for New Year’s, and Isla Margarita seemed like my only decent option remaining. I’ll head there in the morning.
Slow Buses and Sewage Beaches
Jan 7th
December 26-27, 2007
Days 761-762
I had a bus ride northbound that took way too long to go the short distance to the coast. The roads were actually in better condition in Venezuela than in most countries in South America, but a combination of a lack of any semblance of organization at the bus stations, tollbooths, police checkpoints, speed bumps, and broken glass causing flat tires meant that it was impossible to drive more than ten minutes without stopping. Despite my best efforts to leave Ciudad Bolivar early this morning, I didn’t get to Puerto La Cruz until dusk.
Puerto La Cruz was located on the Caribbean Coast, so I figured I should stay one day to check out the beach. It looked like a nice place at night, but I soon found out that the city’s above-ground sewage system emptied directly into the ocean, making the water unswimmable. In fact, I only had to walk around for a little while to realize that the entire city smelled of festering shit. That was too bad because the natural setting was nice enough to make Puerto La Cruz a tourism destination for foreigners, if only the Venezuelans could clean up their act.
My Shortest Layover Ever
Jan 7th
December 23-25, 2007
Days 758-760
My flight back to La Paragua started out just like the one to Canaima. One Venezuelan guy was in the back seat, and I was the co-pilot. The plane was much older than the first one, but that didn’t bother me at first. I knew the flight was going to take thirty minutes, but after fifteen, I noticed that one of the gages indicated that we were descending at a steep five degrees. The trees and river below us started getting bigger and bigger, and I started to panic that something was wrong. My heart was pounding, my palms were getting sweaty, and just as I was about to start screaming at the pilot, we turned a corner, and suddenly there was a strip of dirt in front of us. Before I knew it we were on the ground and the guy in the back left the plane and paid the pilot 100,000 bolivares ($20). The pilot shouted in the direction of the three houses that the village consisted of if anyone wanted to go with him, but there were no takers. We had a short one-minute layover, then took off again. It was fine that we landed in the middle of nowhere, but I sure wish the pilot would have told me about that beforehand.
I went to the same hostel as last time in Ciudad Bolivar. Not much was happening in town, but I figured I might as well stay there for Christmas because it was already late on the 23rd. Sure enough, everything in the city was closed for two days and it got very boring.
But a lot of other backpackers showed up and I spent a lot of time getting to know them. There were the two Irish friends who wanted to come to Venezuela from Guyana, but found out that there were no border crossings because Venezuela laid claim to about half of Guyana’s territory (I think Chavez just wants Venezuela to look like an elephant). They ended up taking a rickety old boat through the ocean where they were sure they were going to sink and were praying the entire time. When they got into Venezuela, one of the military guards found out that they were hiding in the back of a truck and demanded a large bribe as soon as his boss went to sleep. They didn’t have enough money for the bribe, so they ran for it, jumped into the first taxi they could find, and made a beeline for Ciudad Bolivar. When I last saw them they were about to try to head to Brazil, but they didn’t have the necessary passport stamps from Guyana or Venezuela because of the illegal transfer. I have no idea how things worked out. The craziest part of that story was that they could’ve come to Venezuela legally via Brazil in less time than the illegal boat/taxi ordeal took. At least they had a lot of adventure in them.
I also got to meet an American Vietnam veteran who was too mentally screwed up when he came home from the war to hold down a job. He’s been a loner most of his adult life, but started traveling a few years ago and found that it helped him socialize a lot better. It was a really sad story, but at least he found a makeshift support group with all the backpackers he’d been meeting.
There were also some Slovaks (the first ones I’d met) living in Germany, some Germans living in Canada, a well-traveled Italian woman who spoke perfect English, Spanish, and French, a Chilean who had smoked enough weed in his life to put a permanent smile on his face, and a old German woman who smoked, drank, and used drugs, but that was understandable considering she was a widow and had barely survived the Tsunami in southern India exactly three years ago. A few other random world travelers rounded out the rowdy bunch at the hostel. There wasn’t much excitement around town, but it was still an interesting Christmas.
Getting Kissed by a Toad
Dec 28th
December 22, 2007
Day 757
Angel Falls Trip Day 3
The first thing we did today was take a boat back downstream to Canaima. The rain barely let up before we left, but the sky was still really cloudy, so there wasn’t much to look at. It was amazing how different those boat trips could be depending on the weather conditions.
My tour would have been over, but I still had to go to Sapo Falls because I missed it on the first day. Once again, I had to wait at the house, this time for four hours. The reason given was that fuel was expensive so they wanted to wait until enough people showed up that the boat was full. Regular gasoline in Canamia costs 1000 bolivares per liter, which was indeed far more than the normal price, but that still only equated to $0.75 per gallon, so I think it was just an excuse. Finally I was joined up enough people that we were able to leave.
I piled into another boat with a bunch of random tourists and was driven once again across Laguna Canaima. It still was a jaw-dropping view with its seven massive waterfalls, behind which were forests and tepuis, with the occasional bush plane making a flyover. We were led around the set of rapids that the lagoon drained into, then upstream a bit to reveal Salto El Sapo (Toad Falls). It was far wider than any of the other waterfalls, and behind it there was a secret waiting for us. Instead of flowing down the rocks and into the lagoon, the toad leaped over a cliff, creating a pocket with a makeshift walking trail. We carefully made our way to the other side and got drenched by the awesome power of so much water crashing down right next to us.
One we had gotten across, we were able to take a quick breather near the swimming pool, then walked to the top of El Sapito, the toad’s little brother. It was another great place, with a panoramic view of the lakes, waterfalls, and tepuis. It would have been the perfect place to have lunch and relax all afternoon, but unfortunately, we only had a few minutes to enjoy it before it was time to leave.
I spent the night in Canaima and got to know some of the local people. A few were farmers, but the village mainly existed for tourism. Everything was expensive because there were no roads leading there, but it seemed to be a prosperous and tranquil place. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to do anything, but after witnessing that slow pace of life the last few days, it started to make sense. Why hurry when you live near Angel Falls?
The trip to Angel Falls was filled with slow parts, but still worthwhile. For me, the journey was even better than the destination. Flying over the jungle, boating in dugouts, meeting the indigenous Pemon people, and seeing nature at its finest were the highlights of this trip.
The photo album for this entry is here.
Don’t Talk to Me About Waterfalls
Dec 27th
December 21, 2007
Day 756
Angel Falls Trip Day 2
Last night we learned that we wouldn’t be able to camp at the high camp near Angel Falls because “It was flooded.” However, we met another tour group coming down from that camp early in the morning and confirmed that it wasn’t flooded at all. All was well, though, because one of the tourists told me that camp sucked anyway. “Why was that?” I asked. “Because the toilets were gross and there was no coffee.” “But what about the highest waterfall in the world?” “Oh yeah, that was nice, but at some point you still have to go to the bathroom.” Everyone then proceeded to discuss that quality of the food that had been served to them so far. Some people I will never understand.
The boat ride up to the high camp took a couple hours, but it was too cloudy to see anything. From the campsite (which looked just like the other one to me), we walked without any coffee for about an hour through the forest to the waterfall’s viewpoint.
Despite what you would understandably assume, Angel Falls was not named after anything religious. Instead, its name comes from an American bush pilot named Jimmy Angel who crashed his airplane on top of Auyan Teupi in 1933 and had to walk for ten days with his wife and two other companions to the bottom. Eventually people figured out that the waterfall that flowed over the top of the tepui was 979 meters high, making it the highest in the world.
When we reached the viewpoint for Angel Falls, it was cloudy and we were constantly sprayed by the waterfall’s mist. After some patient waiting, though, the sky cleared and we got a good look at it. It was hard to believe the waterfall was really 979 meters high (more than twice as high as the Empire State Building), but then again it was pretty far away and there was nothing near it to give it scale. I was certainly impressed by the sight of it, and now I can say that I’ve been to all of the great waterfalls of South America: Iguazu, Kaieteur, Gokta, and now Angel Falls. So don’t even try talking to me about waterfalls.
We walked back to the campsite for lunch, and I realized that it was definitely better not to camp there, not because of the toilets, but because it was only 3:00 and there wasn’t much to look at there. We took the boat back down the river, and the sky was perfectly clear this time, allowing us to see all of the tepuis in the region. The scenery was absolutely incredible, some of the best stuff I had seen in South America. We didn’t see much wildlife on the trip, but there were a few birds singing to us when we got to the lower campsite, and a rare cock of the rock flew past us at one point.
The daily tropical storm hit us early in the evening and didn’t let up all night. The rain here is far more powerful than anything I’ve ever experience in the US, and I was really grateful for the protection of the campsite’s tin roof.
The photo album for this entry is here.
Like Watching Paint Dry
Dec 27th
December 20, 2007
Day 755
Angel Falls Trip Day 1
Today started off on a slow note as I had to wait for two hours just to leave the travel agency, and another hour at the airport in Ciudad Bolivar. I was then driven all alone for two hours in a cargo van to La Paragua, the closest town with road access to Angel Falls. On the way there, we passed several illegal mining camps, which were a harsh reminder of my visit to the gold mine at White Man’s Camp last year, not too far from here on the Essequibo River in the jungles of Guyana.
Once in La Paragua, we loaded a small airplane with lots of supplies, and I was flown solo to Canaima. It was a short flight, but a beautiful one over lots of jungle and rivers, including the sight of black-water and brown-water rivers coming together, the same natural phenomenon that famously happens at the confluence of the massive Amazon and Negro rivers near Manaus. I got a view of Canaima when we were about to land with its big lagoon filled with waterfalls and surrounding tepuis. Seeing how amazing the area was got me excited about the rest of the trip.
The main problem I have with tours in general showed up right away as I was made to wait for some other people inside a house, despite the fact that there was so much exploration to be done outside. A group of four Germans on their year-end holiday showed up, so I finally had some people to talk to, but clearly the whole operation was lacking organization. I could say a lot of things in that regard, but the best way to sum it up would be to point out that we literally watched a kid paint the house while we were waiting.
Eventually, we were joined by Marcos, a Chilean who had been living in Venezuela for the last twenty-five years. We were supposed to see a waterfall called El Sapo (The Toad) this afternoon, but after waiting for so long, there was no longer time and the waterfall would have to wait until the last day of our trip. So the only thing on our itinerary today was getting to the camp up the river.
First we rode through the lagoon and walked past a hydroelectric plant to the top of the seven waterfalls that emptied into the Canaima Lagoon, where the sun was bright and the view was great. Next we were led further up the river where several large dugout boats were waiting. The motor had to be driven to us, however, so we waited outside a house that really could’ve used some painting. Once the motor arrived, we had a short ride upstream until we got to a set of rapids. We were told that they were so big that according to safety regulations, we would have to walk around them and the driver would thrust the boat to the other side. But while us tourists had to walk for safety, the three five-year-old girls without life jackets had no problem staying in the boat. I felt like such a pansy.
Once we got around the rapids, we had a two-hour ride up the river to our campsite. This part of the trip was incredible as there were dozens of tepuis poking through the clouds in the distance. They were all surrounded by thick vegetation at their bases, but nothing grew on their sides because the sheer cliffs jutted out of the ground so steeply. Seeing the tepuis brought back many memories of climbing Roraima in Venezuela’s Gran Sabana last year.
We got to the camp near dusk and just before the rain began falling. It was a huge shelter big enough to hold 150 people with a corrugated tin roof, full kitchen facilities, and flush toilets. Our group of six were the only ones there, so there was plenty of room for my tent, while everyone else slept in hammocks. So even though I spent six hours waiting for the tour company to get their act together, the flight and boat rides made today quite exciting.
The photo album for this entry is here.
What Time Is It?
Dec 27th
December 18-19, 2007
Days 753-754
My bus pulled into Ciudad Bolivar at dawn, and right away I knew I was back on the tourist circuit. Two guys working for different tour companies grabbed my arm and offered me deals to Angel Falls before I could even catch my breath. The really good news was that they would both buy dollars for about 4500 bolivares, and I might even get 5000 elsewhere in town. That meant I could finally change money and afford to travel through Venezuela.
I found a hostel in the center of town with lots of other backpackers that proved to be a great place to relax for a couple days. The black market was on everyone’s mind, and I guess I was lucky because at least I knew about the situation before entering Venezuela. A lot of people that I met didn’t have cash so they had to change money at the official rate and could barely afford to breath. The financial situation was so unbalanced that I was able to get my own huge room and eat three big meals per day for less money than the people on the official exchange rate were paying just to sleep in a hammock in the hostel’s courtyard. For people who wanted to go to Angel falls but didn’t have cash, the travel agencies were recommending making the eleven-hour trip to Brazil just to get dollars and come back.
The other thing people were talking about was Chavez. It turned out that he had done a lot more weird stuff than I knew about. He changed the name of the country to La Republica Bolivarana de Venezuela, he added a star to the country’s flag to reflect Caracas’ importance, and he even changed the time zone so now it’s half an hour ahead of Colombia “to give everyone more sunshine.” Chavez must think he’s God, but now absolutely nobody knows what time it is because every clock is either half an hour behind or ahead. That stuff sounds relatively harmless, but Chavez also increased taxes on certain food items to the point where it was no longer possible to turn a profit on their production. Consequently, it’s difficult to find products like sugar, flour, and especially milk anywhere in Venezuela, or whatever it’s called now. Despite all of this, he still has a lot of political support, but I guess that’s not too surprising considering that if you can’t afford cable TV (like the majority of the country), all you can watch are the state-run channels that broadcast Chavez spewing out his propaganda for at least six hours every day.
Despite the shaky (that’s an understatement) political situation in Venezuela, there still are a lot of great natural attractions to see such as Angel Falls, the world’s highest waterfall. Until recently, I had been hearing mixed reviews about the falls, but the bad reviews were coming from people who went during the dry season. The daily downpours the region is currently experiencing and the positive reviews I heard from people who just went there convinced me to make the splurge and sign up for a tour. The only problem was, of course, the ever-changing black market exchange rate. The rate was fluctuating so rapidly, the price for the Angel Falls trip could change by as much as $50 in a single day. I figured out that I would only have enough cash to last a couple weeks in Venezuela, but that was fine because I couldn’t wait to get out of the country anyway.
Lucky Me
Dec 27th
December 17, 2007
Day 752
I got so San Fernando de Apure from my overnight bus at dawn and immediately went in search of a hotel. I found about five of them, but they were all full. It turned out that there was some sort of soccer tournament in town, so all of the hotel rooms were booked for the next week.
I figured since I couldn’t drop my backpack off in a hotel room, at least I could leave it in a storage room at the bus station and go in search of the black market. There was nobody at the storage place’s desk, and in the adjoining room, a lady told me that there was a party last night, so the lady that ran the storage place wasn’t there yet. When I asked when she might show up, the only answer I got was “later.”
The inability to leave my backpack anywhere didn’t affect me too much because I could walk around the whole city in half an hour. It looked like a major urban center on my rudimentary photocopied map of the country, but it was actually even smaller than San Cristobal. And you guessed it, there was no black market to be found.
There were two main reasons for me to map my route through San Fernando de Apure: To avoid having to pass through the hell-on-earth of a capital known as Caracas, and to try to take a boat down the Apure River, which eventually connects to the Orinoco. Nobody would give me any info on the boats, if there even were any, but that didn’t matter because I had no money, no way of getting money other than at the official exchange rate, and nowhere available to stay for the night.
The people of San Fernando de Apure were once again completely unresponsive to my attempts to strike up a conversation. If you want to go to a cheap, safe country where the people will welcome you with open arms and there are few tourists (because of an outdated bad reputation), go to Colombia. If you want to go a country where the people won’t even say “hello” to you, where you have to worry about the military robbing you as much as the everyday thieves, where everything is expensive because the economy is collapsing before your eyes, and where there are few tourists (with good reason), head to Venezuela.
I decided that my only option would be to take enough money out of an ATM to last me the rest of the day, and skip the river segment of my plans by busing it to Ciudad Bolivar. I withdrew 100,000 bolivares, and sure enough, when I checked my bank statement online, I got charged $46, whereas I could’ve gotten the same amount for only $20 on the black market, if I could only find it. Man, Venezuela sucks.
There were no direct buses to Ciudad Bolivar, so I first had to take a bus north to Dos Caminos. I thought it would be a town, but it was just a place where two major highways crossed. I waited under a makeshift shelter with a bunch of hobos (don’t get worried; they were the most jovial people I met in the country so far) for any bus heading eastbound, and eventually got one that took me to El Sombrero, a town consisting of a tiny park, a few houses, and a truck stop thirty minutes up the road. Tonight I got my first stroke of good luck in Venezuela. I got to El Sombrero at 5:30 and was told I’d have to wait until 10:00 at the truck stop for the next bus to Ciudad Bolivar, but I only had to wait until 8:00. Lucky me.