The way down Roraima is exactly the same way you get up, except instead of climbing up 6ft high rocks you have to slide down them and hope there’s something solid to land on. Also you have to do the last two days of the ascent in one day. We set off at 6am and [...]
Posts Tagged ‘venezuela’
Top of Roraima – Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana
Once we’d reached the summit there was barely a pause for breath or photos as we made the painful 40 minute walk to the campsite. Unlike our expectations the top was far from flat, with strange shapes eroded by both wind and water forming peaks and troughs, the latter occasionally filled to become streams. The [...]
Roraima Trek – Santa Ana, Venezuela
Arriving weary after the overnight bus we transferred to the Backpacker Lodge in Santa Ana. Our rooms wouldn’t be ready for some hours so the owner gave us a suggested shopping list gleaned from years of experience of the demands of groups of unfit would-be mountain climbers. Inevitably we ignored this and went for a [...]
Angel Falls – Canaima, Venezuela
From Cuidad Bolivar we took an early morning flight to Canaima, a remote town near the Angel Falls, only reachable by a 25 minute flight or a 5 day hike through the jungle. Flight it is then. At the airport I was given everyone’s tickets, and strode off through security. Unexpectedly no-one followed and I [...]
Closed town – Cuidad Bolivar, Venezuela
New Year’s Day was spend driving about 14 hours across the country, culminating in a bush camp where we pulled over and camped next to a farm, all the while watched over by a suspicious man with a shotgun. The following day was spent driving yet further until slightly smelly after our wild camp we [...]
Spare a Bolivar for the Guy? – Los Llanos, Venezuela
The following day was a relatively short drive that took all day as we seemed to stop every time our enthusiastic spotter saw a duck or ibis that he thought was of interest. The first few were quite nice, but after a while everyone just wanted to get wherever we were supposed to be going. [...]
Mild Racism – Los Llanos, Venezuela
The next day we drove a short way out of town to a festival to celebrate the countries only black saint. For some reason this entailed blacking up, minstrel style and marching the streets shooting firework guns into the air. Quite entertaining, but not very PC. The guns were incredibly loud and the recoil enough [...]
Activity town – Mérida, Venezuela
The university town of Mérida is described as the adventure activity centre of Venezuela, but most of it seemed to be closed for the holidays. As a result the only three activities on offer were paragliding, canyoning or horse riding. I’ve never fancied paragliding and $43 seemed a bit cheap to me to expect much [...]
Christmas in Venezuela – El Dorado, Venezuela
The first thirteen hours of Christmas day were spent driving, punctuated only by the girls’ first visit to a dirty foreign toilet, which was quite amusing, and a trip to the supermarket. We stopped to buy lunch, but rather than work together people bought huge quantities of meat and cheese and bread and let it [...]
Wipe out – Puerto Colombia, Venezuela
The road from Caracas to the coast wound sharply left and right over beautiful pass through the lush rain forest of Henri Pittier NP. Thanks to the night before we missed all of this, sitting at the back and bouncing our way through a spectacular hangover. Just before rolling into town we stopped at a [...]
