What a beach!
Cruisin!
Salto Angel and its 983 meters of glory!
The crooked table mountain opposite Angel Falls
Como Estas Amigos!
Welcome back to our real and uncensored blog.
We have been bumming the Venezuelan country making some serious ground.
Everyone is always talking about Chavez and maybe even someone you know could be delusional and think that Chavez is doing a good thing here. I won´t turn this into a political debate, but rather I´ll give an example of good and bad.
Starting with the good - Gasoline: How much is a liter of gas in Europe again, something like $2 (meaning almost $8/gallon). It’s about $4/gallon in the US, well try and guess what it is in Venezuela. I can´t tell you the exact price because it’s never posted. I mean, do they post the price of breathing air in England or the US? No, do they post the price of crossing the street, no, why, because its free. Well you might be catching on. Whilst it’s not exactly free to fill up our bus (think a big passenger bus) costs less than a dollar, roughly about 1 cent US/liter or 4 cents/gallon! I´m not joking!
Now let me tell you about Chavez´s policy to help encourage foreign investment and help boost the country´s economy. His regime has an interesting policy we have been learning about, if a business is successful and making a lot of money, its nationalized! This has happened in a lot of instances in Venezuela.
What have we been up to: Caracas > Ciudad Bolivar > Canaima > Merida
Monday - Passing Chavez´s palace: We arrived several hours before sunlight at Caracas airport, not due to poor planning, but due to an airline scam (let’s not get started on this topic). When you get to Caracas airport at this time of the night - safety is a concern and considering we were to leave on the first bus out of town, we decided to just chill for 3-4 hours and then we took a taxi at first light to the bus station. In our taxi we passed Chavez´s "presidential" palace and then we boarded our 10 hour bus south to the Ciudad Bolivar (which translates to Bolivar City, named after the hero Simon Bolivar who liberated Venezuela from the Spanish). There we were happy to enjoy a rest after a long time of travelling and a lot of stress.
Tuesday - Beer Garden on the Orinoco River: Today was time for us to get back into a human form and to chill. We successfully planned our trip to Angel Falls this day and enjoyed being on the banks of the Orinoco River. Being both from river towns, me on the Mississippi river in Missouri and Marina the Volga River in Samara, this was a sublime place to enjoy a beer. You might even be able to call the place a beer garden if you had never heard of Germany or their beer gardens.
Wednesday to Friday - Angel Falls: We boarded our small aircraft and were on our way to Canaima, which is a tiny town in the jungle which doesn´t have any roads connecting it to the outside world. That day we didn´t head up the river to Angel Falls instead we visited El Sapo Falls which is kind of like a mini Iguazu Falls with many separate waterfalls. We were able to sit in the small falls enjoying a water massage on our backs and later we hiked under the biggest falls viewing the blanket of water which masked the sky. This was not a dry activity and we were utterly soaked! The entire area is almost out of a story book and easily could be the attraction rather than Angel Falls. I told our guide Angel Falls or not, this place was worth the trip. We later sat on the beach of the lagoon. Picture this, red water from the tannins of the trees, palm trees coming from the water in front, and huge cascading water falls to the right! All around a lush tropical area! Forget my description - enjoy the picture!
The next day we headed for the falls. We had a 4 hour boat trip upstream, but this was not uncomfortable in our little canoe with an engine in the back, this again was worth the entire trip. All around are Table Mountains decorating the landscape! If you’re unfamiliar with what one is, it’s a mountain that looks like a table, thus a table mountain! :D We took pictures the whole way enjoying the views whilst the time flew by. In fact, not too far away, is Roraima, the world´s largest table mountain. If we were to come back to Venezuela, this would be the reason, but certainly not in the rainy season. The rainy season is prime time for Angel Falls, but not for Roraima. As we approached the falls in our boat we could see what locals call Salto Angel in the distance with all its grandeur! We had an hour hike from there to see it up close. At this vantage point, I could have easily sat there for hours just watching it, which is really the first time I´ve thought that about a waterfall. Until, our guide Jorge told us we could swim at the bottom of Angel Falls! The water was cold, but it felt good and it was certainly one of the best places I´ve ever swam in my life! What a view. Angel falls is tall, but to clarify, its the tallest in the world and is 983 meters or in my hometown terms, you would need to stack 5 St. Louis Arches to reach the top! This thing is massive! We camped nearby in hammocks for the night and were able to go to a viewing point for the late evening in the dark and for the sunrise. This trip was one of the best we have taken in our entire trip and seeing Angel Falls is certainly a top three for our South America trip! On Friday we caught a flight back to Ciudad Bolivar, cleaned up, and took the night bus for Merida.
Saturday - Bariosca Carioca Bar: If you thought we had a long day travelling well it didn´t finish early as we hoped. We had a change at Barinas which is just by Hugo Chavez´s home town. There we learned the road was closed so we had a long long wait and change of buses to get around it. At one point we all had to carry our luggage climbing dirt hills to switch buses. This wasn´t bad for Marina and I who are used to trekking around, but the Venezuelans, many with kids, didn´t seemed so thrilled. By 9pm (over 24 hours of travel) we made it to our destination; the mountain, University, and adventure town of Merida. That night we celebrated our arrival by finding a fun bar, which had a lot of students and we enjoyed far too many cheap $0.60 beers!
So what’s next for our LAST week in South America, we are planning to do something adventurous in Merida, but we are not sure yet. Afterwards we head up to the coast for either Morrocoy or Henri Pittier National Park for some tropical beach time.
Until next time,
Ciao amigos!
Dan and Marina
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