Backgammon in the Gran Sabana

After Angel Falls, we did not think that the last few days of Venezuela travels would amount to much. We were so wrong, the area just north from Brazil is superb for overland traveling. The area is called the Gran Sabana, and while it’s largely a flat area, it holds some stunning table top mountains and waterfalls that you can visit, and you can camp in indigenous Indian villages. Mind you, these villages looked like any other, but the people were certainly the friendliest we had seen and the most open. And had no worries in asking for any old clothes or tools that we might have that we might not want.

We also got to repair a boat for some Indians, they had mainly got older timber boats, but had one aluminium one with a few bad cracks and holes. since we carried some silicone, drills and a pop rivet gun, we managed to patch it up for them. I got a gift of a blow pipe with a few nice darts for my efforts! I’d love to know if the boat is still floating!

Supplies at the ready. check.

Tom Cruise, eat your heart out.

Plastic bottle of ice, fresh from the freezer

Limes, expertly cut by Jurgen.

Crushed ice, from the aforementioned plastic bottle and a large lump hammer.

Cheers!

Cocktails and backgammon. not the worst way to pass a sunny afternoon

 

Honey with Chocolate anyone?

We stayed in the camp ground near this house, a french lady who lives here with her Colombian husband makes the most amazing honey based products you have ever seen! Even better for tasting. On the map on the previous post, it was campsite6.

Bootleg diesel in Venezuela, not always worth it

Good diesel, bad diesel and worse diesel

Rainforest burning in Venezuela

Rainforest on fire

After the rainforest is gone, this is the farm for the next few years.

 

Camping breakfast in Venezuela. Times were tough.

We could not read what this sign said outside a restaurant, but we worked it out.

Venezuela waterscape

Evening view from our window

Morning view from our window

Group shot over the Venezuela rainforst looking out towards Brazil and the Amazon

 

And so ended our Venezuela adventure. It was off to Brazil, to see what it had to offer in a world cup year….

One of the big attractions in Venezuela is Angel falls, and at a kilometer tall, it’s a pretty big attraction indeed! This is the tallest waterfall in the world, and its hard to say which we preferred, Angel falls or Iguazu falls. We had decided that was a “must do” type of thing for us. We had heard of Angel falls for quite a while and strangely we had not met too many people who had made it there in person. It’s not the easiest thing to get to see, but well worth the trek.

Everywhere we went, Chavez was there. Everywhere.

Since visiting Morrocoy National park, we drove though the centre of Venezuela. We did this carefully to avoid as many cities as we could due to the protests and blockages, and we ended up picking a pretty peaceful route. We made our way to Cuidad Bolivar, one of the few towns where you can base your trip to Angel falls from. There are a few agencies in the Airport building, so that’s a good place to start. We chose Gekko Tours, who also own the Posada we stayed at.

In peak season, you just need to organize your flight to the town of Canaima where the boats to Angel Falls leave from and then book with a local operator, but as we visited in the off season, we decided to book the whole trip including flights from Cuidad Bolivar, overnight in the town of Canaima and a boat trip to the falls themselves. It turned out we were very lucky we did this as most operators did not want to visit the falls by boat as the tourist numbers were so low, they were loosing money by only half filling boats. Some days the boats could not run as the water levels were just too low. On our trip we had to get out of the boat and walk along the bank a few times to allow the boat guys to get the boat over some rapids.

Group photo in Cuidad Bolivar Airport before we left

We parked the trucks in Posada Casita, which is a popular stop with overlanders, especially popular with Germans as they have Curry-wurst on the menu, which seems to be sausage covered in Tomato Sauce, which is then covered in Curry powder. They taste better than they sound! In Posada Casita they have a pool, can do your laundry and have a large fridge constantly stocked with cold beer. Kind of hard to leave!  They stored our trucks while we went to Angel falls which was great.

Selfie in the plane. and yes, we each had window seats. And yes, we were sitting beside each other.

In Canaima, you have the option to stay 2 or 3 nights, and 3 is plenty. We had this option, but once we got sorted as to our boat trip to the falls, it worked out that we needed to spend a night up at the base of the falls in hammocks, and come back to Canaima the next day. This was a brilliant option as it meant we were not stuck in the small boat for over 12 hours on one day. It was in Canaima that murphy’s law hit, we had just brought one dslr camera with us due to the weight limits on the small plane, the Canon 7d and of course as soon as we arrived the battery failed. It was just gone magically flat, but completely knackered and has not worked since. Luckily we had a gopro with us and while not ideal, it did the job for us.

Taking photos inside a waterfall can be tricky

From behind a waterfall

one of the smaller waterfalls near Cainaima

 

on our way upriver to see Angel Falls

The boat ride up to the falls is great, it’s a narrow canoe with an outboard motor on the back. They can take up to 8 passengers, and require a captain at the back, and a guy at the front with a paddle to steer in the really tight spots. He works pretty hard! The trip up river takes between 5 and 8 hours depending on the water level, and took us quite a while.  We did get to see the falls from the river as we got to the base camp where we slept in hammocks, and the guide knew exactly when we would see the falls. So much so he had us all do a count down from 10, he knew exactly which turn in the river we would go round and then see it. Once we got there, we made about an hours hike up to the lagoon at the base of the falls. There are a few cascading into each other, and it’s quite pretty. As it’s the dry season and not too much water is falling, we got to soak our feet in the lagoon at the bottom of Angel falls.

even our guide had to hop into the water to guide the boat through some shallow water

Some of the guides really go for it

Lifejackets all the there and back.

Merv and Jurgen standing on a rock in the lagoon under Angel Falls

Angel Falls, and no clouds!

The trip back downriver in the early morning was stunning

Angel falls from the air using a gopro. Not the right camera for this shot!

friendly Venezuelan painters.

Not sure who looked grumpier, the car or its owner.

This guy was fixing old watches, replacing batteries etc.

Some street traders ran out of stuff to sell, so just played cards.

Cake decorations were popular.

What we bought in one supermarket.

Hair gel anyone?

some of one thing, loads of nothing else

No shortage of Special K

Cuidad Bolivar had some great color schemes

Once back, We decided to spend an extra few days in the Posada sorting ourselves out, and getting blog posts done. The Posada had no wifi, but we got the ground work done. We spent a day in the historic centre, and it’s not a bad town to potter about in. There is not too much here to keep you too long, but it’s pleasant, and safe.  We attempted to do a bit of shopping as the stores in the kitchen were getting low, but it was slim pickings. What is strange in Venezuela’s shops and supermarkets is the extremes. They either have none of a given thing, or too much of it. Unfortunately they had none of the things we really liked. We could not get Muesli for example, so we bought some Kellogs special K. However, what is actually in the box is some kind of all-bran high-fibre cardboard, so that did not stay with us long.  None the less, we did get stocked up well enough for the third leg of our Venezuela adventure, our trip through the Gran Sabana.

 

 

 For future overlanders, this is the route we took.

[google-map-v3 shortcodeid=”9f859698″ width=”500″ height=”400″ zoom=”10″ maptype=”hybrid” mapalign=”center” directionhint=”false” language=”default” poweredby=”false” maptypecontrol=”true” pancontrol=”true” zoomcontrol=”true” scalecontrol=”true” streetviewcontrol=”true” scrollwheelcontrol=”false” draggable=”true” tiltfourtyfive=”false” enablegeolocationmarker=”false” enablemarkerclustering=”false” addmarkermashup=”false” addmarkermashupbubble=”false” kml=”http://moglander.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Venezuela1.gpx” bubbleautopan=”true” distanceunits=”km” showbike=”false” showtraffic=”false” showpanoramio=”false”]

If you click on any of the little flags, you can zoom in to see the detail where we stayed, and some notes about them.

There are still pictures of Chavez all over Venezuela, he may be more popular now than when he was alive

As we hinted before, we decided on going through Venezuela from Colombia to Brazil. Even though the country is going through a lot of turmoil right now, we felt that it was a journey that was worth taking, and that by traveling with 2 trucks that we were always in sight of each other we would be in a safer position than many solo travelers. If we had gone from Colombia back to Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia and then to Brazil, it would have been a huge backtrack as we had explored those countries to a degree that we felt we had seen them in enough detail. By backtracking, we would be just zooming through six or seven thousand kilometers of roads and countries that we had already seen. Sure, there were a few national parks and museums that we had not seen, but at this stage we have Museum, Church, Mirador (Lookout point) and “quaint colonial/indiginous/rural town” overload. Traveling north to Panama, and on to Alaska would be super, but then we would never have seen Venezuela or Brazil in the same detail that you can when you spend a few months driving through. We doubt we will be back this way (South America) anytime soon as we need to get back to jobs, earning income, replacing full passports and refilling our piggy-bank. So, on 18th of March  we crossed the border at Maicao from Colombia to Venezuela.

Strange stores with HUGE areas of nothing. This one just sold shoes, and this is less than a quarter of it

Entering Venezuela was slow and frustrating, it was probably the slowest and most manic country entry we had done. We were in “super cautious” mode so no photos were taken as all our cameras were locked up safe. Looking back now, it was a bit over cautious, but better safe than sorry. If you are going to enter Venezuela this way, give yourself loads of time, and double check the paperwork as both ours and Jurgen & Ruth’s were wrong and we had to get the Venezuelan Aduana to re-do it, and they still got ours wrong the second time, but close enough to be ok.

We were in Venezuela! The country where even Venezuelans had told us not to visit as it was so dangerous. We had noticed a pattern as we traveled, when we were in Europe, everyone said South America was dangerous. When we landed in Uruguay, they indicated we should be careful in Argentina. When in Argentina, the Argentinians told us to be careful in Chile. The Chilean’s told us that Bolivia was wild, and a dangerous place to visit. The Bolivians were not too worried about Peru, but the Peruvian’s warned us about the Ecuadorians. In Ecuador, they told us to be on our guard in Colombia as it was a very dangerous place. In Colombia, they thought we were mad to want to visit Venezuela. When we were way back in Argentina, we met a Venezuelan guy who told us that all of South America was very safe, but whatever we did, do NOT visit Venezuela as it’s so dangerous. Needless to say we were a mixture of skeptical, and careful all at the same time.

Plaza in Sinamaica

Our first night after the border brought us to a small town called Sinamaica. We went to the police station to ask where was safe to park, and we were allowed to park right behind the station house in their parking lot. This was right beside the main road, and would be noisy, but we were sure it would be reasonably safe. After 30 minutes of walking about the village (Downgraded from town to village due to the lack of anything in the town), we felt really good about it, and decided to park for the night at the side of the Plaza. We usually like to park in remote places where the remoteness makes us safe, or if that’s not possible, we park in the most visible place we can which gives a sense of safety as so many people are watching the trucks. We had a grand quiet night there, and ended up having a short conversation with a student who was home for the weekend. We asked was he protesting during the week, and he was almost surprised that we had to ask, of course he was. He went on to explain it was for the future of Venezuela as he could not see that it has a future the way things are now. This was a message we were to hear a number of times during our overland travel in Venezuela.

We met a student protest march in Maracaibo

The next day we went through the city of Maracaibo. It was the only city we had no choice but to go through. We stopped off to get some Venezuelan SIM cards for our phones, and to buy the local road insurance. We were advised on a route through the city by some police who were fascinated with the trucks, and despite (or because of?) their best efforts, we ended up meeting a student protest coming towards us on a pretty large road. They were really relaxed and peaceful, and when they spotted that our trucks were foreign we got a huge cheer and loads of waves.

The detour around the march brought us to a roadblock, but it was abandoned by whoever built it and set it on fire. Jurgen cleared a path for us (I was busy with the camera…) and we passed by without incident. That was to be the only sight or sign of protests we experienced first hand in our 4 weeks in Venezuela.

Stopped at a blockade

We were cheered on by the folks working at this juice stand while stopped at a blockade

Jurgen inspecting a road blockage

Jurgen clearing a blockade

Our town camp in Coro.

After this, we were on our way to our next overnight spot, the town of Coro. This was a nice town, and we felt really safe there. We parked for the night outside of a Church, and right beside a small craft market. They were really friendly, and had some weird biscuit things for sale at breakfast time, which I tried. They did not last long enough to take photos, Sorry….  Our real purpose in this town was to change some cash, US$ into Bolivars. There are 2 rates, the official and the black market. The official was in or about 11 Bolivars to the Dollar, but the Black market floats up and up from that. We exchanged at a rate of 60 Bolivars for the Dollar, meaning that everything we bought from then on was almost 10 times cheaper than it should have been. Crazy.

They do have a load of really nice looking old american muscle cars still in use, mainly by taxis. As fuel is almost free (more on that later), the size of the engine does not matter. Some of then are stunningly well maintained, and some look like they were robbed from the scrap yard after they were almost finished scrapping them!

Stunning

Getting older

That will polish right out

Old Toyotas were everywhere

New flip-flops

From here we went to the coast to the small town of Chichiriviche which is a little seaside town. Sarah was on the lookout for a new pair of flip-flops, and this was a good place to look. We had a bit of a walk along the promenade, lunch in a restaurant, a bit of shopping, and then parked on the quiet end of the seafront. It was quiet until 10 or 11 at night, when every radio, cd player and motorcyclist who thought he could do a wheelie turned up, along with everyone else in Venezuela who wanted to watch and drink beer. We could not even have a conversation in the truck it was so noisy! Everyone was friendly enough, but we wanted to get to sleep before 6am, so decided to move. We then parked outside of David and Mireya’s Posada, and had a great night’s sleep. David had looked us up earlier in the day as he heard from another overlander we were in town. The next morning we had a look at their Posada – wow!

David and Mireya

Posada Arena Mar

Ice cream on the sea front

Fuel station queue

After here, we headed for Morrocoy national park, which is a set of sandy islands that you visit by boat. They were really pretty, and we enjoyed a few days exploring them.

Some of the boats were stunning, quite a few well loaded people here.

The showers left a bit to be desired in the privacy department.

Chillin on a Morrocoy beach

After there, we bet a track for the big one – Angel falls.  But first, we had to get through the center of Venezuela

Kids wondering where we were from

Toll booth stations with no toll booths. All free now.

The whole concept of drive through shopping has taken a major step forward in South America

Our route though Venezuela skipped the big cities, This map brings us right down to northern Brasil.