Venezuela Hike Part I

Monday, 02 April, 2007 Best Hikes Continued...

Venezuela, Venezuela. Ohh the long bus rides in Venezuela. Here’s a good tip for traveling in Venezuela. Don’t use the British travel guide (the only in existence when we went). Somehow in the translation from Spanish to British to American English and the money going from ? to pounds to dollars everything was way off. A 6 hour bus ride turned into 12. We did this 3 times. Yep, 12 hours crammed between chickens, food, people and way too much luggage we brought stuck on our laps ( I knew I should of packed lighter). Sounds like a movie? It was like that except for real. We tried to shrink way down in our seats when the bus pulled up in the middle of jungle for a "routine" police check. They made everyone get off, one by one, checking papers and passports. Guards with guns pointed and rambling so fast we could not catch a word. I think it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I thought, this is it. They were obviously most interested in us the only young gringos who were on a local bus traveling through dense country where tourists do not usually frequent. God heard our prayers and we all got back on. The worst that happened was our backpack in the rear being throughly gone through and our new binoculars being taken. My favorite part of that bus ride was the native Indian couple who got on, rode for a while, got off and disapeared walking into nothing but pure jungle. Their dress was nothing but loincloths. I kid you not. A lot of beautiful, handmade jewelry and long black hair. An absolute delightful surprise for our bus ride.

That trip was a procession of errors or decisions that just made the trip get harder and harder. We did the entire trip, plane tickets and all for the BOTH of us for the grand sum of $700.00. That explains a lot. We did not go to the common tourist destinations like Angel Falls (tallest in the world) or the gorgeous islands at the bottom of the Carribean chain. I am sure those are quite nice places to travel. At the time I was fairly fluent in Spanish and Jim spoke Spanish as well. The dialect where we traveled was so different however, we could hardly understand a word. Very few spoke english and everyone looked at us with suspicion and curiousity at what we were doing there. It was clear they thought we were there to either try to take advantage of them in some way or mess around with drugs or something. We were careful to bring travelors checks. Only here's the thing with those and small jungle towns; t.c. only work where 1. There are banks to cash them in or 2. Hotels and Restaurants etc. accept travelors checks. Neither was the case where we went. Or the Bank would be open again "in a few days." We lost a lot of weight on that trip.

It is a beautiful country and we took a unforgettable journey up river by dug out canoe, slept in hammocks and hiked to the top of an amazing rainforest vista. We saw toucans flying and lots of big strange bugs. That’s because besides our tourist Spanish guide and his hired native Indian guide we were with 2 family members from France. The daughter was a medical doctor and the father was a bug doctor. He was elated when he found a rare cobra catepillar and dejected when our guide barbequed some tarantulas for a treat. He was also quite obviously antagonistic to God and or the church, both of which we represented. This made for interesting conversation or lack thereof for a close quartered 3 day journey. About 2 days in he finally seemed to breathe when we convinced him that we were not there to convert him.

To be continued...