six ounces of espresso went into this blog entry

Consider yourself warned: I just drank a crapload of espresso.

We had a brilliant time on our little touristy death march through the jungle in Venezuela, and we´re now in Boa Vista, Brazil. So this entry has two separate streams of thought. I´ll rip through the details of our Venezuelan tour as quickly as possible, then I want to make one final series of wisecracks about Venezuela in general. This might be a long entry, and it also might get a little bit more acrid as it goes along.

As I mentioned in the last blog entry from a week or so ago, Amber and I firmly believe that organized tours are for lameass American numbnuts who completely lack creativity and independence. But since tours are the only way to see Angel Falls (world´s highest falls, if not the largest by water volume), we bought one.

Reluctantly, at first. It was hard even to get Amber to walk into the tour office.

Most of the normal tours take one of two forms. Either you fly over the falls and go home to Ciudad Bolivar in the same day, or you fly first to Canaima (tiny indigenous village-cum-tourist trap) and then take a one-night/two-day boat trip to the falls before flying back.

We were sold on a more adventurous route--five nights and six days, going from the city to the falls completely by ground and water. Good stuff. And it was only about 30% more expensive than the usual packages--well worth it for the extra nature time and the `badass points´ earned by trekking through the jungle.

We´re hoping that the badass points make up for the fact that we´re now certifiably dorky American package tour takers.

Here´s a quick blow-by-blow, one day at a time.

Day 1: In stereotypical Latin fashion, we were asked to show up at 7am for a 9am departure. We left at noon...sweet. Then we spent three hours riding in a sweaty old Chevy Astra van, until the road dead-ended in downtown Paraguas, Venezuela. It dead-ended straight into a river, with no fanfare whatsoever. The town´s only real restaurant was on stilts in the river.

After waiting an hour, we boarded a canoe with a portable motor. It looked like the canoe could fit eight people. All fifteen of us (eight foreign tourists and seven assorted guides/helpers/friends/drivers) and our gear crammed in. The boat sagged so far into the water that the edge of the boat was just a few inches above the water. We got wet quickly. Good stuff.

Somehow, a phenomenal meal of roasted chicken, polenta, tomato salad, bananas and rum appeared from the back of the boat. Good shit. After being mildly terrified by the damp and shaky start to the boat ride, we all calmed down. And every time the guide passed the rum bottle and yelled `Happy Hour!!!´ in adorable Colombian-accented English, we got a little bit less terrified.

By the time the sun started to go down, we were happily buzzed. I was crammed between Amber and a young Swiss woman who could easily pass for a late-1980´s version of Meg Ryan. (Poor me.) Amber was slurring slightly. Very cute.

We enjoyed one of those absolutely ridiculously gorgeous sunsets that I thought only existed in Photoshop-altered pictures. The water was completely still, glassy, and black; you could see a perfect mirror image of the forest, ghostly-dead trees sticking out of the water, and the ever-changing reds and violets of the sunset.

Then I barfed. But that came after the undercooked chicken at midnight, and after we put up our hammocks for the night under a buggy riverside thached-roof palapa. And of course, after another few bottles of rum vanished.

Day 2: Hardly any of the eight foreigners (four Swiss, three Americans, one Englishman) had ever slept in a hammock before, so nobody slept well. Which was perfect. Back on the boat for a two-hour cruise, followed by a six-hour march through the jungle. Absolutely great on zero sleep and rum-and-salmonella-induced nausea.

Actually, it really was an enjoyable hike. There were a couple of nasty uphill bits, and all of it was muddy as all hell, but really a pleasure for most of us. Our native Pemon guide stopped to show us bits of jungle wisdom along the way--spiders the size of your fist, edible plants, a poisonous snake (stupid Americans stared right at a small coiled one, not realizing it was deadly), giant poisonous ants, bright red tropical birds (guacamayas)...I am not making any of this up. Good thing our guide knew native cures for things like snake bites (suck out the venom, then put semen on the bite...I am not making this up, either, though I luckily did not see this in practice).

We probably made about 20 river/creek crossings over the course of the hike, and only one person fell in. We drank water straight from the rivers. Tasty. Lots of iron.

We slung our hammocks that night in an unused one-room hospital in an indigenous village. The landscape surrounding the village was gorgeous--something like a tropical version of Northern New Mexico, with table mountains (tepuis in the local lingo) dominating the skyline. Pictures might be coming soon. Bug Amber for those.

Day 3: After sleeping like dead people, we started hiking again. Two easy hours of hiking, another short boat ride, another short hike through the savannah, another indiginous village where few people even spoke Spanish...a bit more hiking, then we hitched a ride on a passing tractor to a highly-developed `camp´ in Canaima, the great tourist trap of the jungle, accessible only by plane, unless you´re up for several days of boats and hiking.

We had lunch, then hopped yet another boat for the first great waterfall experience of the trip. Wearing only bathing suits, we walked behind a waterfall, Salto Sapo (literally, Frog Waterfall). It was absolutely amazing--it´s hard to describe what it feels like to have a fat waterfall beating onto your head, or what it´s like to just stand next to the spray of something like that. Exhilarating as all hell--definitely a highlight of the trip.

A small bird managed to get caught behind the waterfall, and couldn´t get back out...Amber scooped it up, carried it out from under the water, and let it fly off. Amber was stoked. She saved a bird...straight to heaven for Amber.

Another boat ride, another short and buggy hike, then a wet, rapids-filled boat ride...then we slung our hammocks in yet another camp for the night.

Day 4: I´m getting tired of writing this. Another boat ride in the morning, then we set up camp at yet another site, then hiked for an hour. Finally made it to Angel Falls, the world´s highest, the thing that brings more visitors to Venezuela than any other attraction. It graces the front of virtually every tourist brochure and guide to Venezuela. It´s, like, beautiful and stuff. Not the least bit disappointing.

We hung out for a couple of hours, went back to camp for lunch, then went to a nice swimming hole on the river for a cold bath. Some goofballs (including a certain cute American chick I know) jumped off a big cliff into the river. One of those goofballs even hurt her ass by doing a `butt-flop´ into the river. There were photos of the red, raw butt...but they got deleted, somehow.

Day 5: Retraced our steps back to Canaima, ate food, drank more rum, got happily sloppy, went to bed.

Somewhere in there, we swam in Canaima Lagoon--an ugly name for a gorgeous place with seven small waterfalls. Cold, red water, but amazing. It´s rare to get the chance to swim within a few hundred feet of falls like that.

And the best part was....drum roll please...the little hut next to the beach sold Fernet. Fernet in the jungle in Venezuela. Who knew that was possible?

Special message for Joe de Leon: I got four fernet virgins in the jungle. Ha.

Day 6: Flight back to Ciudad Bolivar, itself a highlight of the trip. Imagine a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit. Now pretend that it has three rows of two seats each. Then give it wings, and send it flying over the savannah and jungle and tepuis at an altitude of about 10,000 feet, just barely under the clouds. Amazing.

Just don´t look at those three randomly-spinning gauges on the dashboard, or the fuel gauge that reads empty.

Only one person barfed after the flight, and it wasn´t either of us.


Sorry, that was really long. In case anybody reading this is interested, here´s the sales pitch: Total Aventura was the tour provider. Javier rules. www.totalaventura.com, I think. And we were also helped enormously by Javier´s friend in Santa Elena, another tour operator by the name of Francisco Alvarez, who accompanied us to Boa Vista. If you want a great nature trip in Venezuela, find these guys--wonderful people.


Part II of the entry starts now...this is where I rip on Venezuela a little bit.

I´ll start with the good stuff. I met some phenomenal Venezuelans on this trip, some of them at random. The country certainly has more than its share of friendly, open people who are quick to enjoy the opportunity to chat with some random foreigners. It´s also a country with more than it´s share of natural beauty, and we know that we barely scratched the surface.

Then there´s the fucked-up economy. I think that I already got into that enough earlier--most normal Venezuelans seem to barely squeak by. And what little disposable income exists in the country seems to get spent on booze--Venezuelans consume more whisky per capita than anywhere in the world...I find that amazing.

As soon as we stepped into Brazil a couple of days ago, we realized--in a completely self-serving touristy way--that Brazil is a hell of a lot more fun than Venezuela. The grocery stores in Venezuela are comparably barren, there are precious few good restaurants in Venezuela, and the street food is mostly greasy crap.

That´s all okay. But then there was a side of Venezuelans that we really didn´t like; if I´d been traveling alone, I never would have noticed.

On my previous trips in Latin America, nobody has even given me a second glance, since I don´t look the slightest bit foreign--at least, I don´t look foreign until I try to speak Spanish or Portuguese. Amber, on the other hand, is a lovely lily-white woman. She attracts a shitload of attention.

Of course, she´ll get stares and catcalls when she´s walking around alone. That´s just part of the deal in much of Latin America, and isn´t too big of an issue. As `wealthy´tourists, we´ll also get more than our share of people trying to sell us something or another. And that´s fine, too. No matter how annoying a salesman may be, I respect his right to be irritating in his quest to make a living.

But a disturbingly large minority of Venezuelans we encountered on the street seemed anxious to make complete asses of themselves. People would semi-mockingly call out to us in English, women would very openly stare at Amber´s clothes, and men would make kissing sounds at her from passing cars, even with me glaring right at them.

Men always make asses of themselves when women pass by alone, and I can pretty much accept that as a harmless part of Venezuelan culture. But much of the rest of the behavior is just hideously bad manners, regardless of one´s culture. I certainly expected better from the women, and I took to staring them down whenever they went too far in giving rude looks toward Amber´s hiking boots.

Again, this sort of stuff wasn´t exactly constant, but a sizeable minority of people we passed in some towns and cities behaved like fools. And after three and a half weeks of it, I think it tainted our image of the country, in spite of the dozens of wonderful Venezuelans we met along the way.

And for what it´s worth, we´ve felt 100% comfortable in Boa Vista, Brazil, in spite of the fact that we haven´t seen a single foreigner here. A welcome change.

Off to Manaus on the overnight bus tonight, then we´ll hunt for an Amazon jungle tour. Yep, we plan to continue being THAT kind of tourists.