The goal of this trip was to see Angel Falls. The secondary objective was to see the rain-forest, and third, was to see as few other tourists as possible.
- Friday 29th June
No work today.
Fly to Maturin a meet the other two.
Caracas airport. That is the only thing to say. An amazing place. Sometimes they announce things in English, but mostly just Spanish. Fast spanish. Over a very echo-y PA system. And not just little things. But things like, "your flight has moved ahead 30 minutes and down 4 gates". And there are no clocks on display. Well not enough anyway...
Drive to Cuidad Bolivar (Bolivar City)
One flat tire, and a few surprise extra payments later, we arrive in Ciudad Bolivar and check-in to an average 3 star hotel. Apart from the loud sex coming from next door, the hotel was a standard cheapy.
A quick Snickers bar and its bed time for an early start tommorrow, 7am for breakfast.
- Saturday 30th June
Breakfast
Heh. 7am huh. That must mean when people start to think to start arriving. No matter, we get a few empañads and some un-believably strong coffee. This was real spoon-disolving stuff. Our guide had like 2 cups. I could only manage one, and I was zinging.
Fly to Kavac
Man, this was like LLLLOOOOUUUUDDD!!!!!
Good grief my ears were ringing for what seemed like forever when we made it to Kavac. Now Kavac is a very remote and therefore very quite town. We were all deaf from the plane, so I suppose we must have been heard from a mile off:
"Hey, it sure is quite here!"
"What?!"
"I SAID IT SURE IS QUITE HERE!"
"Oh yeah! Sure is! Where are all the local indians?"
We had probably scared them away.
(Thumbnail of the view from the plane.) This is what we saw when we got out of the plane. Kavac village (the whole thing) is in the foreground. The Ayuntapui is the big thing in the background.
Kavac
Introducing the hamaca (pronounced ah-mah-ka, or in English, Hammoc). This was bed for the next few days. We aquanted ourselves with these, and the amazingly viscious little flys (whose bits last for weeks later, I still have itchy remnants of them now, 16 days later).
From here, we had our first shower and introduction with a spider that walks on water. (tell story here about phillipe pushing one into the water and it ended up crawling on him and we all freaked out.)
Dinner was held by candle-light in an absolutely quite mess-hall. Well quiet except for the Swiss-German trekkers on the other table. They were nice. We gave them some of our coffee. They were on a 9 day hike to the top of the Tapui, and this was there first night too.
Phille introduced me to Rum this night. Mmm rum. He took white rum, mixed it with some sugar cane syrup and lemon juice. Wow - very nice. All 4 of them :)
First night in the hammoc. Interesting experience. You have to actually lay in them sideways, otherwise you wake up in the shape of a banana.
- Sunday 1st July
Breakfast
One word, coffee.
But before the coffe, was the morning swim. Now this wasn't a snow fed river or anything, but it was still cold.
From here, we drive to Kamanatra pick up the crew and get on the boat.
This started the journey proper - as this was what we would be ding for most of the time from now on - sitting in the boat.
During the day on the boat, we were able to see the jungle close up. The sheer number of trees and different shades of green was incredible. It was like a color selection pallet in GIMP set to green and showing all the shades of green from black to white. Every now and then we would see some bright coloured flowers, and birds.
The most common bird we saw was the vulture. We also saw many water birds, and there were 2 water birds that we chased up the river for about an hour. They would fright and take off up the river, and settle down again. Then we would round the bend and they would take off again. Repeat. I woner how far up the river they were prepared to go. We eventually turned off htat river onto another, and left them alone.
Parrots, sparrows, and more that I dont know the name of.
Not much aquatic life except for the odd turtle. And fish, which we didnt' see of course untill the boat crew returned from their fishing excuersion with them.
Lunch
Lunch was always simple, and usually consisted of sandwiches. We stopped at a village that had noone in it. It wasn't abandoned, it just didn;t have anyone there. But that's OK, the boat crew knew what they were doing, and anyway, these people have a very open kind of life. On the last day we needed some more gas, and so we stopped at a village and got some. I pretty sure we didn't pay for it, but the boat man probably had done this guy a favour before, or would later.
The village had a strange structure in the middle of it. And I could not figure it out. It turns out to be a yucca press.
Yucca is a very important thing for the indians here. They rely on it for almost everything. One of the things they use it for is to make a drink. Its basically just fermented yucca, and tastes terrible. Ever tasted something that had gone off and tasted rancid? This tasted like that. It had a shard acidic twang to the taste and it was amazing bad. The indians love it, and on occasions have been known to drink liters of the stuff. They story goes that there is a festival were they all dance around drinking this stuff. Aparantly they drink so much that they start throwing up. No surprise there.
Camp
Soccer.
On foot excursion into the jungle.
More rum.
Rain.
- Monday 2nd July 2001
After the morning heart-starting coffee, the other guys had a morning swim, but I had had a cold night, and wasn't up for more coldness just yet. So we had breakfast and watched the children of the village go to school. Oh yeah, the real world. This was the first time we thought about what day it was. Monday.
The children all lined up in front of the Venezuelan flag, which was then raised and they sang the anthem. Then they all trooped inside, and after a short while, all trooped out again and off to the church.
On the boat again. By now our asses were pretty sore, and steps were taking by Erol and Richard to ease the pain. Fans of hitch-hikers guide would be happy to know they did this by sitting on their towels.
Mostly this day was used to put alot of miles behind us, and get to our "base camp" where we would stage our attempt on Angel Falls. Sounds dramatic huh.
The camp itself was the most sparse yet. A single roof. But hey, all you need is somewhere to hang you hammoc.
The boat crew took the rest of the afternoon to go fishing, and we had a shower/bath/swim.
That night, more rum and more global politics. You know, standarn issue for night time discussion on an outside excursion.
- Tuesday 3rd July 2001
Arrive in desolate camp - noone else around.
Indians fish for their dinner
Warm beer.
Rain
- Wednesday 4th July 2001
Early start for Angel falls.
More rapsid, river level higher than last time for Phillip.
see falls after 4 days journey.
half hour walk through jungle to get to falls.
get to lookout (tourist picture)
no sound from first falls. 987m drop, water is just mist by the time it gets to the bottom
5 minute walk to base of second falls.
swim in second falls.
fall on american girl - erol laugh.
very relaxing time lounging in water.
walk back, phillip demonstrated an ant that had picers so big, people used to use them as sutures for wounds. You place something between the pincers, and they close. Just when the pincers close, you rip the head off and the pincers stay closed. Amazing.
