Venezuela 11^th to 26^th Feb 2001

Sunday,

We arrived in Caracas at 9pm after 11½ hours airborne. We flew via Lisbon and the flight was reasonably pleasant, with room to sleep over three seats.

The arrivals lobby was warm and swarming with taxi touts. We stuck to advice and only accepted a taxi from the official rank just outside the concourse. Pick an unofficial taxi and you may be given a tour of a local barrio and charged everything you have on you, at gunpoint.

The journey to the Altamira district in Caracas took a good twenty minutes and cost $30.00.

Altamira is considered a smart residential area and somewhat less risky than the Central or Sabana Grande districts. We stayed in the hotel El Cid, which was fine, though not salubrious, but at $60 dollars a night, it was reasonable by Caracas standards and the staff were pleasant.

Altamira District, Caracas

Monday,

Next morning, we met Carol, a friend of a friend, who incidentally works for a local travel agent. She kindly took us to breakfast in a nearby shopping mall, popular with the trendily dressed police. There we discussed our plans for the two weeks.

Carol knows Jose Luis of Natoura Tours in Merida and recommended his organisation. We were going to fly to Merida that afternoon and meet Jose Luis to arrange our various trips.

After meeting Carol, we had a few hours to while away, so decided to explore the district. Altamira is a pleasant looking area, almost smart and laid back at the same time.

We wandered downhill and discovered a kind of arch at the entrance of what looked a charming street, the Boulevard de Santa Cruz. Near it's entrance, tethered chickens scratched around in large plant pots, which housed good sized trees. It has the appearance of a medieval village trapped in a modern city. The buildings are small and colourful, but we soon noticed dozens of suspicious eyes were watching us and caught swift darting movements inside the houses.

After 70 metres, the main boulevard gives way to tiny alleyways and shabbier houses. We turned around and nonchalantly strolled out, glad of the presence of a couple of policemen , questioning the members of a household nearby.

We had an idea that we wouldn't get fed on the flight to Merida, so we stopped at a place called the Areperia. I think it might be a chain. We ordered two pizzas and were pleasantly surprised to find they were made fresh, including the bases. They were excellent and quite reasonably priced. The arepas looked good too, but we weren't too sure about the fillings. Arepas are made from maize flour and are used like a bun.

We returned to the hotel and got them to call us a taxi to the airport. A good idea, as the taxis often charge less if the hotels use them. This time we paid 15,000 Bolivars.

The flight to Merida took about 1¼ hours and was a real spectacle, flying over and sometimes beside the Andean mountain range.

Between Caracas and Merida.              Plaza Bolivar, Merida.

My Spanish is pretty awful at any time, but the South American variety is something else. I knew the girl at the check-in in Caracas was trying to tell me something about our baggage, but I didn't find out until we arrived in Merida that it wasn't coming until the next plane. Luckily, Jose Luis was on hand and arranged to pick it up later.

We were driven to Posada La Montana, a friendly family run guesthouse. The interior has a colonial influence and is cool and leafy. There is an open area at the end with seating and a bar. The rooms are en-suite and functional. After a quick tour of our surroundings, we opted to eat in the posada’s restaurant that night. A bad mistake.

Jose Luis had recommended a couple of other restaurants. We couldn’t find Bimbo, which he reckons is very good, but we did look over Chipen, his other choice. It seemed very quiet, with just two or three local men inside, so we decided to give it a miss. He was somewhat ambivalent about the posada’s restaurant, but we were too tired to care or look further.

Service in the posada’s restaurant was extremely slow and inattentive. There were a few other posada guests dining there, but not enough to cause the staff to break into a sweat. That did not stop them from being visibly astonished to find customers sitting at the tables when they did make an appearance.

We did get served, but the steak and chicken were overcooked and heavily salted. The steak was really tough too, thanks to being pre-cooked in a microwave oven, and then finished off in the frying-pan.

We ordered a Chilean red wine (Gato Negro) with the meal and were mortified to find it cost as much as in a London restaurant. At 12,000BS, roughly £12.00, it was good, but more expensive than the meal.

Tuesday.

The four hour gain in time meant we could get up early for a planned trip to La Mucuy. I’d had a bad night, due to food poisoning. It had started in Caracas and can’t be blamed on the food in the posada, but it was a classic version of Montezuma’s revenge.

In spite of that, we made our way to Calle 19 to pick up a ride in one of the por puestos to Tabay. These por puestos are a great way to get around and extremely cheap. They can be anything from a car to a bus and wait at predetermined stops until they are full before travelling to their set destination.

Tabay is approximately 11km away and cost around 450BS each. This pretty little town sits above a river valley, surrounded by the Andes. The Plaza Bolivar is a nice spot to sit and watch the world doing the same. The trees are festooned with hanging lichen and an attractive church overlooks the plaza.

Church and Hanging Ferns, Plaza Bolivar, Tabay  Plaza Bolivar, Tabay

After a cup of tea in a café, we sat in the plaza, eating a banana and contemplating our next move.The intention was to get a por puesto jeep to Mucuy and then do the walk to Lake Coromoto, but my guts told me I hadn’t a hope in hell of getting there without humiliating myself. We got on the next por puesto back to Merida and not a second too soon either.

I spend the rest of the day in bed, while Louise got pissed off with me.

Wednesday.

Next morning I felt a little better. We had breakfast at the posada again and I really envied Louise her arepa criolla, (arepas with scrambled eggs, onion and peppers) while I made do with toast. The breakfasts here were fine, especially the various arepa courses.

Today, we were going to try out the telerifico. It is the easiest and most direct way of getting up into the mountains. It is the world’s longest and highest. There are 5 stations, Barinitas is the one at the start. At each station, you get out and wait around 10 minutes, before getting into another going further up. We got off at the 4^th station, Loma Redonda, and stayed there, walking a couple of hundred metres along some tracks.

  The start with the valley below Merida      The 4th station,    Louise, intrepid mountaineer.

The Spectacles Lakes                   Pack mules

It’s worth noting that the altitude here is around 4,045 metres. Altogether, we stayed there about 1 ½ hours and had a pleasant time overlooking the "spectacles" lakes. The weather was clear and very pleasant. We chatted with a local couple we met on the track and then made our way back to the cable car.

At a guard post near the station, an official came out and demanded to see our permit to the national park. Luckily, our erstwhile friends explained to him that we had only been in the local environs with them, so he waved us on.

To reinforce a point, we were asked for our passports before getting on the telerifico and again when we bought our tickets to return back down. Wherever you go in Venezuela, you need your passport.

The journey downwards came just as the mountains were misting up. Normally, clouds obscure the views after 10am, but we had good weather until 1pm. The next station down felt much colder and Louise felt unwell

We were both hungry and I had made a miraculous recovery, so we thought we would try Chipen for lunch. This time it was nearly full and had a mixture of customers, including groups of women.

We tried the menu ejecutivo (menu of the day) for 2,300BS each. This was an excellent chicken noodle soup for starters and pan-fried trout with great chips for Louise. My flame grilled steak was fabulous, so tasty and tender and accompanied by rice, yam and fried plantain. Trout is a local speciality in Merida and was really nicely done here. Jose Luis obviously has discerning taste in matters related to food.

We met him that afternoon to finalise plans for the rest of our stay. We were running short of Bolivars, so went to a bank to draw some out via cash point. I brought a debit card, which has Visa, and operates on the Delta and Link networks. The banks here don’t recognise either. Cirrus seems to be most popular network. Still, Louise had her credit card, and it would have worked, if only she could remember her pin number. Our next avenue was to queue at the bank and change our dollars to Bolivars. We waited to see someone whom we were told would be able to deal with our request. When she came, we were told we would have to return later, as she needed to get the daily rate from somewhere else.

We got around the problem by asking the helpful guy in the posada to change dollars into Bolivars for us. Folk aren’t keen to take dollars as the banks charge a lot for changing them.

Money is a problem here. Travellers cheques are not really welcome and trying to make any kind of transaction in a bank is a tortuous and frustrating business. Credit cards are fine for cash withdrawals from cash machines, as long as you realise you may have to pay a fee to your bank. Generally, it is not a good idea to get too many Bolivars at a time as they lose value quite rapidly.

We were still quite full from lunch, so were content to dine on papaya, apples and a kind of cake bread for supper.

Thursday.

The night was noisy with St Valentine’s day revellers coming in at all hours.

During the night, Louise began to feel really nauseous and dizzy. By 5am, she was feeling so bad, we got the night receptionist to get us a taxi to a local private clinic. He asked the driver to stick around and bring us back. I was surprised, but he reckoned most folk recover after half an hour of oxygen and a saline drip.

It was nearer to 1½ hours, but Louise was much better after that. We were due to go to Los Llanos that morning and I was going to cancel, but the doctor declared Louise was OK to go as long as she rested in the next couple of mornings. We figured the journey would not be that strenuous and were just able to make the trip on time.

There were five other tourists coming with us, three Germans and a Danish woman and her daughter, plus Lucio the driver and Guillermo, the guide. Transport was in a Toyota Landcruiser, which I found reasonably comfortable, but not everyone shared my view.

The route took us on the Trans Andino highway, the world’s longest highway amid breathtaking scenery. We stopped at a condor release program above the Trans Andino Paso some 4,000 metres up. I hadn’t counted on us going up so high and began to worry about Louise again, but she seemed fine.

The program has released a number of condors back into the region, where they had previously been exterminated. They have some success, but still need to educate some local shepherds to recognise their ecological and economic value. One of the released birds was perched on a cage and we did see it soar away into a distant speck. They are magnificent birds and worth the trip to see.

Released condor

We moved on and stopped at a National park at an altitude of 4,000metres. Guillermo took us for a ramble of about 3km through the park. The air was thin and so clear it was almost painful to breathe.

Everywhere, there were pine trees and lagoons with a backdrop of mountains We all felt light-headed, and it was a bit chilly, but were pleased to have a picnic lunch by a lake in such lovely surroundings. Andean National Park       The Black Lagoon    Picnic by the lake.

Continuing our journey, we stopped at the village of San Raphael to look at the chapel built by a local artist and artisan called Juan Felix Sanchez. The chapel appears to be made without mortar. There is an exhibition nearby of his work including clothes he made for himself. He and his wife are buried in the chapel.

The chapel that Sanchez built     View from the Trans-Andino Highway, complete with vulture.

A Belgian nun was keen to greet us in our various native tongues and was disappointed to find I wasn’t Dutch or Belgian. Why do they always pick on me? She had been there for thirty years and was clearly bush-happy.

We continued on the long drive through the Andes, gradually descending through a changing landscape and agricultural crops. We then entered the cloud forest and I saw my first Morpho butterfly. It was huge and a shining iridescent blue.

  High Andean farmland.  Lower Andean farmland.

The party stopped at a rock cascade and water chute. It was quite humid, but no one was keen to swim, but a number of local teenagers were making the most of it. A few more Morpho butterflies floated by and spiralled into the trees above.

There were banana plantations on the lower Andean slopes and we stopped at a roadside hut to buy three bunches of bananas at 350BS a bunch. Two bunches were the very small finger sized ones. The nine of us ate one bunch in about 15 minutes. Guillermo liked to roll these between thumb and finger before squeezing them out of the top like a paste. They became sweeter that way.

Banana shack.

Soon after, we reached the plains of the Upper Llanos, and the hot dusty road to Barinhas. We were treated to a flamboyant welcome to Barinitas. A wizened looking man on the sidewalk turned his back to the traffic, dropped his trousers and bent over. No one remembered their camera, but it’s an image none of us is likely to forget in a hurry.

Guillermo stopped here for half an hour for ice and a few provisions.

We shared out some iced water and drank as much as we could. When I’d had enough, I threw the remainder out of the window, which had everyone in fits of laughter. I had forgotten Guillermo’s window was open too and the water came back in through it and showered him.

Once through the large town of Barinhas, the road soon became more deserted and the landscape wilder. We saw our first cayman basking on a bankside, a Jabiru stork and a scarlet ibis.

Cayman basking on riverside.

We finally reached the first Hato (ranch) of our stay, Hato Madera at 5.30pm. It was a dusty, sleepy looking place with three rancheros playing a version of boules in the dust. After checking out our rooms and changing, we had a wander around the Hato, looking at the livestock, poultry and numerous wild birds in the vicinity.

A barbecue was set up and were treated to marinated steak done to perfection with yams, plantains, salad and rice.

After dinner, we sat around the stoep and chatted into the night. Mateus and his wife brought out a bottle of Cachique, theVenezuelan rum. She explained they wanted to get rid of any inhibitions about sleeping on dirty sheets. I checked mine and she was right, it wasn’t exactly pristine.

I made an interesting discovery here. After our arrival, I changed out of my trainers and socks and left them in a corner of the room as they smelt a bit ripe. When I returned that evening, a huge swarm of mosquitoes were buzzing around them. I left the trainers there and had no trouble from the mosquitoes that night.

Sleep was not that easy though. The dogs and guinea fowl spent the night baying and screeching, trying to drown each other out.

Friday.

Breakfast was a pleasant affair on the stoep again. The arepas in this region are thinner, unleavened and slightly uncooked in the centre. They are OK though and went well enough with the ubiquitous scrambled eggs, white cheese, cream cheese, ham, rolls and jam. Lots of iced fruit juice and coffee too.

After breakfast it was saddle up time. I had never been on a horse in my life, but there has to be a first time for everything. I managed to get in the saddle with not a trace of elegance and we moved off through some scrub interspersed with big trees.

First stop was to see a small troop of Howler monkeys. They have beautiful copper coloured hair, but seem quite inactive. Further on we stopped to observe a small group of Hoatzin, a prehistoric bird, the size of a turkey. A small pond nearby had four cayman in residence. Lots of wading birds explained where much of their food was coming from.

I got bored with the slow pace of the horse and asked Guillermo how to get it to move faster. It was fine just trotting and even at a fast trot, but the animal suddenly mistook me for an experienced hand, stretched out it’s body and galloped off into the distance. Within 50 metres, I was doing an impression of an Indian bareback rider clinging to the side of the horse. Just before I fell off, I managed to pull it to a halt. After that I got some instruction from one of the rancheros and discovered I was supposed to use my thighs to hold on too. I managed the last half mile back to the Hato at a fast canter, passing through a herd of zebu (the local white cattle) and even managed to restrain it from galloping again, without slowing it down.

Novice rancheros.

Louise skipped the ride to rest as she was still not feeling that great.

After chicken stew with the usual accompaniments, we headed deeper into the Lower Llanos on long straight roads, sometimes slowing for potholes.

The next Hato was in the middle of nowhere and we had to bring our own food, ice and fruit with us. This meant stopping in Bruzual, a real hick town for want of a better description. It had a pace befitting it’s station, epitomised by two pretty girls strolling arm in arm down the centre of the road, sharing a huge parasol.

The road got more potholed as we travelled on and we got hotter as a consequence of slowing down. One of the joys of this trip, were the many water-melon sellers on the roadside. Lucio stopped just after turning right at a road junction and we bought some melons. Borrowing a machete, we carved one up and ate it on the spot, sheer heaven.

Watermelon stop.

The road got worse still and lonelier. We began to see many more cayman, plus black and scarlet ibis, roseate spoonbills, white cattle egrets, caracara and more jabiru. A few capybara also made an appearance.

Cattle Egrets at roost.

Two great zebu bulls kicked up the dust, standing head to head, locked in a timeless battle.

Louise began to feel ill as the roads deteriorated and tried, unsuccessfully to be sick. as we entered the approach road to Hato Viviano. It was a dried mud track 2km long and extremely bumpy.

Once at the Hato, Guillermo realised she was dehydrated. Although she had been drinking lots of water, her electrolyte levels had been depleted by sweating. He made up a solution of three dessertspoons sugar and one dessert spoon of salt to half a litre of water and got her to drink it slowly.

During that night, I stayed beside her, making up more of the solution as she finished it.

Saturday.

Louise was much better and had a light breakfast. Guillermo brought her a herbal tea made up by the rancher’s wife. It was made up of mango and papaya leaves, the bark of a tree in the compound and the flowers of a plant with a citrus flavour. They use it for diarrhoea and dehydration and it helped her a lot. She spent the morning lazing under the trees in a hammock, drinking more herbal tea.

Hato Viviano is a truly peaceful place with few mod cons and certainly no telephone or electricity. Most lighting was by candle or oil lamp, but they did have a gas stove.

The main compound has large fruit trees shading it, with green parrots and other birds squabbling and hiding in their branches. A tame hind and her fawn wandered around with the chickens and begged bananas or even banana skins from us. Much more relaxing than lying by a beach pool with a hundred other beached whales.

The tame banana eating hind.

The rest of us spent two hours bumping along rutted tracks trying to find a boatman who had arranged to take us up the river. After calling at his homestead, we finally came across his son, who guided us to the well-hidden river bank.

The homestead, and a woman's work is never done.

While we were waiting for his dad to appear, we fished for piranha. My first catch was a small catfish, but before I could haul it in, a piranha had bitten off the lower third of it’s body. I used a couple of fillets of what remained to catch two piranha before the boat arrived.

Red bellied Piranha. Sorry, if you are admiring the hat, I donated it after seeing the photo.

The trip along the river was magical. The sheer numbers and diversity of wildlife in just a kilometre of it’s length was astonishing. There were ibis, caracara, herons, kingfishers, egrets, cayman, turtles, iguanas, freshwater dolphins, various butterflies and cabybara among others.

The dolphins were gathered in a large pool in the river and Lucio summoned them to the surface by banging on the side of the boat with a stone. They were difficult to photograph, surfacing very briefly in different locations, but they were only some 5 metres away.

Turning back we passed trough a section of weed carpeting the surface like a grass lawn, with pretty jacarandas (lily-trotters) delicately picking their way over the plants.

Jacaranas in Weed-choked river.  Capybara and concealed young.

At a quiet spot with deep water, we stopped to fish again. This time, I caught a big piranha, which put up a hard fight and threw the hook. Or so I thought. It actually bit through the hook 2mm below the eye. I was using a size 10 trout lure hook as the piranha are adept at stripping the bait off the larger hooks used by the locals. The predominant species was the red bellied piranha.

I next caught a small silvery fish rather like a European bitterling and several small piranha, including another species with a green back and yellow spots.

Somehow, I caught something on the bottom and dragged what felt like a log to the surface. As it surfaced, I could see a great deal of turbulence as a turtle about 36cm (14") across thrashed its legs about. Guillermo got excited and tried to beach it, but the hook was only just holding on a piece of skin on a hind leg and pulled free just as I got it on the beach. It was back under water before we could do anything. Guillermo was really disappointed. Not understanding why, I asked him if it was good to eat. He said no, but it is good to see. The guides like to show off the flora and fauna close up when they can. Just before we returned, I caught another piranha which was about two thirds the size of the one which bit through the hook. We took them back for our evening meal.

Lunch was a delicious chicken stew, yam, plantain and salad and wonderful melon juice.

If we thought the day’s sight seeing was over, we were wrong. The afternoon’s trip was to look for anaconda in a series of drying strips of water. A couple of small cayman were caught and let loose among us, one heading straight for Danilla, the Danish girl. Funny how they seem to know who will scream their head off.

Moving on to another series of ditches, we came across cabybara, deer and a large antbear in some brush by the water edge, but no anacondas. Cayman were everywhere, as were turtles, iguanas, jacarandas, ibis and jabirus.

Antbear.

The day was still not over though. Dinner was piranha and other local foods. Piranha is quite good meat. It has white flesh and tastes a bit like European perch.. The skin is quite rubbery and tough, but tastes OK otherwise.

After dinner, we were off again on a night-time cayman hunt. Louise came along too. The rancheros were hoping to lasso a large specimen to show us wide eyed tourists, but their technique had not been perfected. They tried to lasso the animals on the surface, but as soon as they heard the rope hit the water, they dived. Guillermo maintained the best way was to lower the lasso on a stick gently into the water and over the cayman’s head and I think he had a point. They did catch a small specimen before we all headed gratefully back to our hammocks.

Sunday.

We had an early start to get to Barinhas to drop off Mateus and his wife at the bus station for 1.30pm.

On the early part of the journey, large flocks of wading birds made a real spectacle, especially when scarlet and black ibis, white egrets and roseate spoonbills rose and wheeled together in a flashing of colourful wings.

The flock of many colours.  2 metres long cayman.

After another water-melon stop, we continued to Barinhas, dropping a girl off from the Hato at Bruzual en route.

Barinhas was a shock after the tranquillity of the empty plains. Mateus got his tickets and then we had a farewell lunch before they left. The meal was a grande parrilla in a local transport café. It was tasty, especially the sausages, but the meat was rather salty and tough. Guillermo muttered that it must have come from an old cow.

Ann-Marie and Danilla were dropped off at Caracas airport for a flight to Caracas. I’d intended to fly from Barinhas myself, but we couldn’t get a flight to Carupano that day, so we had to return to Merida.

Back in the Andes, because it was Sunday, we found few bananas for sale and none of the small ones. The journey up was pleasant, with clear skies and great views.

At the top of the Trans Andino Paso, we stopped for a break. Louise had trouble breathing. There was a first aid station 1km below us, so we bundled back into the jeep and rushed her there. Fortunately, it was still manned and the paramedics gave her oxygen, after which we continued on to Merida. When Lucio stopped for fuel, the jeep wouldn’t start again. We hung around for 40 minutes, while Lucio tried to fix it, until someone offered us a tow to the end of the town. From there we free-wheeled several kilometres down the mountain road, until the next flat spot.

Somehow, Lucio noticed a battery connection had come loose. After reconnecting it, the jeep was able to make it’s way back.

Jose Luis met us in the clinic in Merida and Louise was checked out by a cardiologist and had her cardiogram. She was given the all clear to continue her holiday.

We needed to eat and found a fairly up-market restaurant close to Natoura still open. Venezuelan’s don’t seem to eat late and Sunday is a bad day to find anything open anyway. We had a good meal with lots of melon juice and gratefully flopped into bed.

Monday.

Jose Luis met us next morning and another of his drivers, Raphael, drove us to the airport for the 7.30am flight. Would you believe it, delayed by 2 hours. We tried to find a café nearby, but after walking for 20 minutes, found nothing like one, so returned to the airport.

We did manage to get a good coffee in a stand in the airport and a kind of liquorice flavoured marshmallow to go with it. It was sweet and gives a burst of energy, but we couldn’t stomach much of it. After paying the departure tax (1,000BS each) at another kiosk, we finally got on the 3¾ hour Lai flight to Carupano, stopping at Caracas and Polarmar on Margarita Island en route.

In Carupano, we declined an offer from a hefty boy to ferry our bags on his trolley to the taxi rank. I suppose he must get some custom, but the rank is only 6 metres from the baggage carousel.

A nice lady took us in her taxi to the posada, La Colina, where we had a light lunch and rested that afternoon.

La Colina is a great place to stay if you need a rest. It is about 150 metres from the sea, has quite high standards and the restaurant has one of the best locations in the country, overlooking the town and the attractive church. The food is OK, but could be better. The oxtail stew was tasty, but the steaks were tough and the calamaries over salty.

The church from La Colina's restaurant terrace.

There are few seagulls about, but black frigate birds patrol the seafront in their place. Sometimes, brown pelicans show off their skills by diving into the sea for fish. Once, a long V formation of these pelicans hovered above the beach keeping station in the steady wind like undulating fronds of seaweed in a mild swell.

That night a folk festival started up nearby and the whole town seemed to be dancing or singing. We sauntered amongst them for a while and then went to bed early (11pm) and slept through the music.

Tuesday

We rose late and I tried the pabella criolla, the national dish for lunch, but thought it was better in Domingo’s in La Gomera. We later went walking along the promenade and visited the church in it’s lovely plaza, about the only pretty spot in town.

The stained glass windows and interior have a modern touch and are worth a visit.

Dinner was pollo suiza. Quite nice, once I peeled the cheese and ham off. Good chips and plantain too.

Wednesday.

Thought we would go to the market today. Not knowing where it was, we hired an ancient American gas guzzling taxi with no suspension, which flew along the pot-holed back streets at 5mph.

The market is excellent. Lots of fish, meat, dead and alive, vegetables and fruit. Bananas and papaya were 300BS per kilo. Fresh peanuts for 600BS a ¼ kilo.

Back at La Colina, we had a late lunch of Mar y Tierra (Surf ‘n turf) with octopus, prawns, squid ,beef and chicken before heading back to the airport to catch a 12 seater Cessna 208B to Tucupita.

It was a great flight with glorious views over plains, the rainforest and the Orinoco delta.

The short airstrip at Tucupita is at right-angles to the Orinoco and we flew low over the river to land there. Good exciting stuff.

Jose from Tucupita tours was there to meet us and drove us to the hotel Rivera.

Tucupita is a real frontier town, started as a mission by Capuchin monks. It is almost all single story architecture and bustling with life. There is a wildness about the place, very rough and ready, but with a few good shops too.

The hotel is a bit grim, more like a backpackers hostel, but the room had a shower. Alright, it had a single cold stream of water, but it wasn’t muddy.

The tariff was 17,000BS per room with breakfast included. The hotel's tasca was shut, so we asked the receptionist to direct us to somewhere else. His first recommendation was Mi Tasca on Calle Dalla Costa, about 2km from the hotel and 1½ blocks past the Plaza Bolivar. The other recommendation was Capri, but he emphasised that Mi Tasca was the dog’s bollocks.

Not expecting much, we found the tasca and were astonished to find a clean, air-conditioned bar- restaurant filled with groups of men, women, families and teenagers. The atmosphere was good and the waiter was very good too. You didn’t have to fire a pistol to get his attention.

The menu featured lots of dishes for something called lau-lau. It was under the fish section, but we were still clueless. As it was so prominent on the menu, we determined to try it out. Louise had lau-lau parrilla and I had the cazuela, a kind of fish stew.

The parrilla was actually fried, not grilled, but was done in the lightest tempura style batter I have ever seen and utterly fabulous. My cazuela was excellent too, perhaps a little salty. The dishes were good value at 3,500BS and 4,000BS respectively.

The walk back to the hotel was along badly lit streets and could have felt threatening, but we felt no sense of unease. Families and single girls walked about without a care, apart from big holes in the sidewalk and cyclists with no lights.

We slept well apart from a burglar alarm going off at 2am.

Thursday.

We went down for desayuno (breakfast) around 7.15am, only to find the bloody restaurant was still closed. Instead, we headed for El Rey, a nearby supermercado and panaderia and ordered 4 saffron and aniseed buns and some good café marron. These we ate at a kind of stand up bar in the joint along with workers kicking off the day.

There was just enough time to pack before meeting Jose at 8.30am. Our bags were loaded onto his pickup again and we were driven to the river to join a group of tourists who had just flown in from Margarita Island, looking like a bunch of Saga louts.

Two fibre-glass boats with twin Yamaha 75hp engines sped along the river at a good 30 knots plus.

En route we stopped to see some howler monkeys and passed a few settlements and Indian huts.

The boats reached Tucupita Lodge in 1 1/2 hours, keeping us cool in the humid atmosphere. We had 10 minutes at the lodge, before being bundled into canoes for a paddle through channels fringed with a kind of mangrove.

Several hoatzin screeched a couple of metres above us and clambered clumsily over the foliage, flapping like turkeys. Butterflies and kingfishers dashed about us and I almost capsized the canoe swivelling around to photograph the scene behind us.

One of the canoes was visited frequently by a giant otter, slipping into the boat to drench the occupants and back into the water. Three of these otters are semi-resident at the lodge and turn up to play with visitors, a young anteater and the dogs.

Tucupita Lodge.  Hoatzin silhouetted.

Back at the lodge for lunch, I met Tony, and his friends, all Poles. Most of the group from Margarita were Germans or Poles, with a one or two French and Italians. Tony was a vivacious chap, who had no intention of setting foot in the jungle. His wife wanted to see the delta, but his intention was to get totally bladdered on the local cuba libra. As he explained incoherently, "I can see all that wildlife on my video at home and in comfort." It transpires the group really were from Saga tours.

Lunch was not the highlight of this trip, beef goulash and small portions. The boiled potatoes were pretty old too. Watermelon for dessert.

An hour after lunch, we were issued with rubber boots, chivvied into the boats and deposited onto a slimy jungle path. One of the lodge reps and a couple of Warao Indians hacked a trail and we stumbled after as best we could.

The jungle trek.

It was quite interesting with our guides showing us how they use the various plants. The moriche palm is also known as the tree of life. The Indians use it to build their huts, and canoes. It also supplies thread, beer and food. We also tried fresh palm hearts from the heart palm, much slimmer in profile.

A number of other plants are a source of water when cut open, like the water cacao, lianas and temiche palm nuts. Others, like the curare are used to make poison for hunters' blowpipe darts.

We were surprised to meet another English couple on the trail, David and Susie. They had only arrived at lunchtime and were making a short stopover after sailing to Venezuela via Trinidad and other parts Caribbean.

A lot of rum flowed during and after dinner and my erstwhile friend Tony was a happy man. He insisted on writing down his e-mail address for me, but it was as indecipherable as he was incoherent.

Our sleeping quarters for the night, just past an enclosure shared by a puma and large cayman, was a wooden hut thatched with palm leaves and enclosed by insect proof mesh. Boasting an en-suite bathroom it was quite the palace in paradise. Looking onto the jungle, it is an idyllic setting. At night, dozens of fireflies weaved around the trees like fighter planes in a mesmerising dogfight.

Our luxury hut.

Friday

Tony and the other Saga louts left early to fly on to Canaima and the Angel falls, We had already planned a trip deeper into the delta and after breakfast David and Susie elected to join us on this trip.

Another long trip of about 2 3/4 hours in a fast boat and we were delving into narrow channels fringed by lianas, water cacao and the flying buttresses of the balsa tree and half choked by the Bora bora plant. Just 200 metres from the new camp, the clouds opened and threw buckets of rain at us. It was short-lived and furious, but we were soon dry again.

This second camp was very different and a lot smaller. A group of young backpackers were about to leave as we arrived, so we were the only guests for the night.

Narrow channels.   The second camp.  Communal sleeping hut.

There were a few huts, open at the sides and built on stilts over the water, Indian style. Our sleeping accommodation was a shared open sided hut, strung with hammocks overhung with mosquito nets. Speaking of which, we saw barely more than half a dozen mozzies during our whole stay in Venezuela.

After a nice lunch, we were taken on another jungle walk and experienced more of the flora and fauna.

Susie got really intimate with the leeches when she almost disappeared into a black slimy bog. It took three men and a lot of effort to haul her out. She took it all with good humour and David looked quietly amused. I suspect she is the sort of gal who habitually gets into scrapes like that.

Back on the river, we entered a long narrow channel around 6 metres wide and passed a pleasant hour fishing for tarpon. The water here is brackish and the tarpon follow the tides deep into the Orinoco basin. First our young guide Jemal caught a fine specimen, while I used my telescopic rod and a popper plug. After 20 minutes or so, I switched to a Professor spoon.

David and Jemal were also using spoons, but on hand-lines. A while later, David hooked an even bigger fish and it cleared the water, before he hauled it in. I swapped rod for handline and still caught nothing. Ten minutes later, David caught another tarpon about the same size as the other. Now that sort of behaviour could get you banned on the Test, but I bit my quivering lip and managed to stop myself blubbing. Completely gubbed by a non-angler too.

Jemal with the first (and smallest) tarpon. Orinoco reflections.

Once out of the channel, we passed Warao men and sometimes families in their dugout canoes and stopped at a few huts to buy carved balsa animals and birds and bead necklaces. We also left the tarpon with them. Children play in the canoes before they can walk and look confident in them.

At one settlement, we saw a woman being dipped in the water before being pulled into a canoe. She looked as though she had a fever. When we asked what was wrong, we were told she was a back-slider from the church and God was punishing her. There seems little point in converting Indians to a religion, which has less rational superstitions than their original beliefs.

The Indians here are desperately poor and far from keeping busy sustaining life, most of the women and children appear to spend their time sitting around the huts looking totally listless. A few do keep up their crafts and they also make particularly fine hammocks from the fibres of the moriche palm.

Warao men in canoes. Warao camp. And another.

Warao children. Warao woman weaving a hammock.

In the camp that evening the sticky humidity of the jungle was getting to me, so I asked Jemal where the showers were. "The showers?" came the reply. "It's the river." It seemed reasonable to me. This was almost a proper jungle camp after all. I got my mask and snorkel on and slid into the cool, refreshing water. It was wonderful and I was a little surprised no one else wanted to join me. I swam across the river to some reeds, but couldn't see a thing. The water looked black, but was actually the deepest mahogany.

Jemal brought me some eco soap and had a wash at the waters edge himself. Susie thoughtfully brought me a cuba libra and I sipped that very gratefully in the river. It was such a tranquil spot.

The best bath in the world.  Wildlife in the Orinoco. Balsa tree and ants nest.

Before dinner, we sat on the stoep looking onto the river and drinking our cuba libra sundowners. Toucans, parrots and macaws flew overhead to their roosting perches and a stillness fell over the jungle.

It was one of those enchanted moments you cherish for life.

Dinner was beautifully cooked catfish. It probably wasn't Lau lau, but it tasted very similar. The guys at this camp are excellent cooks.

As darkness fell and the sun replaced by millions of stars, we sat outside with our cuba libras, drinking in the stillness and the glittering sky. David shared his knowledge of stellar navigation to show us the false Southern Cross and other Equatorial constellations.

An hour later, we got into a canoe and paddled silently into a narrow back-water near the camp. After 200 metres, the lamps went on and we saw several red eyes reflecting the beams. Gliding past a stand of rushes, Charlie lunged out and grabbed a baby caiman. We were unable to get close to the larger beasts, but they were there. I suppose that's why no one wanted to join me for a swim.

The night turned quite cold and we all woke in the early hours having to get more clothes. Louise never did get used to the hammock and lowered hers onto the wooden hut floor and found that OK.

Next morning, the whole camp got ready to evacuate. We discovered later that they were closing up camp and returning for Carnaval. Jemal made a superb breakfast of scrambled eggs and freshly cooked churros and we reluctantly said our farewells to that magical place.

The trip back was much quicker, about 1 1/2 hours and we were back at Tucupita Lodge again. There were many fewer guests this time and unfortunately, David and Susie had to leave after lunch.

Before they did, the otters arrived causing mayhem, chasing each other around the dining room and jetty. Then Charlie tapped them on the shoulder. As they turned, they froze. On Charlie's chest was a big hairy tarantula, another of the Lodge pets. He enjoyed the joke hugely, but Susie looked very pale for a while.

Before we waved them off, we exchanged e-mail addresses and each month since have had very entertaining accounts of their meanderings around the Caribbean.

Louise wanted to rest, so Charlie and a couple of local boys took me out fishing in one of the boats. We had raw chicken for bait and I also brought spinners. We moored up close to a bank and fished hard by the reeds. For a while nothing happened, so I tried a cast further out towards a flotilla of Bora bora. As soon as my baited hook landed, I was into a small fish. It turned out to be the prettiest catfish I have ever seen. It was silvery white, with large black spots down each flank.

I caught several more, before hooking something bigger. It didn't stay hooked long enough for me to identify it, but it had bitten clean through the hook itself in the same manner as the big piranha in Los Llanos.

Shortly after, I had a few small piranha and then the fish stopped biting. A series of whistles neared us and then we saw the camp's three otters. Without ceremony, they dived into the boat and helped themselves to all the fish.

Giant otters.

We were forced to move as not even a piranha hangs around when those otters are in town. They are as a big as a labrador dog and a lot more powerful.

The next location was very scenic and we were soon joined by a pod of dolphins. They were wonderful to watch, but they also put paid to any fishing, so we headed back to the Lodge for a shower and dinner.

The night was cold again, but we slept in our clothes this time and were fine. We did get up during the night to look at the fireflies again.

Next morning, the boat took us back to Tucupita very early to rendezvous with Jose. He was there to take us on to the bus station. Once there, we bought a ticket for 50BS, which was for some kind of registration. Then we discovered that the bus was full. Carnaval is the worst time to travel anywhere in Venezuela.

We had a plane to catch in Maturin, wherever that was and found a por puesto taxi which would get us to Maturin. It seemed expensive at 7,000BS each, but it was one of those big American cadillacs and the suspension was in good order. It wasn't until we arrived in Maturin 100 kilometres later that I realised what a bargain it was. We shared a taxi to the airport from there with one of the other por puesto passengers and caught our flight in plenty of time.

The flight was not too bad, but as we flew along the coastline, the devastation of the previous year's mudslides was all too evident.

Back in Caracas, we took the free bus from the national terminal to the international. It is only about 300 metres away, but there is no obvious pathway.

Our last hours in Venezuela were spent watching air traffic from the observation balcony and having a very good meal in a restaurant overlooking the runways.

A last tour of the duty free and we just bought a bar each of El Rey dark chocolate, 50% and 70% cocoa solids. If we had known how good they were, we would have dumped some of our clothes and filled our cases with loads more chocolate.