Vote Si: A Nation Speaks

Looking back our first attempt at Anaconda hunting was somewhat inexpert, though what we lacked in experience we made up for in ignorant exuberance. Our guide was first into the swamp feeling his way with a large pointy stick, Zorba nabbed the one remaining stick and followed him leaving Ricky and myself to proceed stickless. Not a problem, we thought, no doubt we can feel any snakes with our bare feet. Our guide picked an interesting moment to tell us this might be a bit risky. He waited until Zorba had prodded a small cayman with his stick, jumped in the air, soiled himself and shouted for help before pointing out, somewhat redundantly, that we really ought to have sticks for this kind of caper. Sound advice no doubt, but hard to act on when you're in the middle of a swamp some distance from dry land and the nearest stick.

Fortunately there were no more close encounters of the reptilian kind that day and eventually Zorba stopped shaking. I fear, though, that his memory has been irreparably damaged by the shock as every time he recalls the incident the creature involved gets bigger. By tea time the guide's estimate of 1 metre had been doubled, the next day it was 2.5m and by the time he got access to facebook it was not even a cayman any more but a 3m crocodile. I haven't asked recently but I expect by now it's probably at least the size of a t-rex.

Other than that we were uninjured by our experience and the next day, having procured some large sticks, we set out once more on the hunt. This time we had more more luck and bagged ourselves a 5m specimen with minimal fuss and no intervening caymans (caymen?).

It was also in Los Llanos that the much vaunted Venezuelan birds started to live up to expectations having been distinctly disappointing so far. Amongst my favourites were the Scarlet Ibis and the White Egret, though, if only for its fishing abilities, the Black-collared hawk was hard to beat. Not that 'crocs', snakes and birds were the only things to see, the whole place just teems with wildlife and we were lucky enough to see capybara, piranhas and even the inappropriately named giant anteater, which in fact spends a lot of its time eating normal ants.

Next up was a trip to Lago Maracaibo to see the world's most consistent electrical storm and source of much of the planet's ozone: the Catatumbo Lights. It was indeed consistent, in fact it went on most of the night, but, perhaps due to the full moon, it was not as spectacular as I'd hoped. What was interesting was the village of Congo Mirador two hours out into the lake where people live on stilted houses in a manner the Spanish found similar to Venice, hence the name Venezuela.

Meanwhile, my inadvertent election campaign was gathering pace, our week long sojourn in the country having apparently done nothing to arrest the groundswell of public opinion. 'Vota Si' notices were springing up across the nation covering everything from walls and roadsigns to boat engines and hillsides. Unless I've really got the wrong end of the stick, the people of Venezuela have decided that now is the time for a new Simon to finish the work that Bolivar started two centuries ago. My only opponent seems to be a shadowy, faceless individual known only by the initials NO. I'm not overly concerned, he seems to be running a very negative campaign whilst mine is an intrinsically positive message. Besides which there are so many posters in support of me that he's struggling to get his message across, it's as if Hugo Chavez himself has thrown his weight behind the Si campaign.

And with that comforting thought in mind I have decided to cease campaigning and continue my travels and thus am currently in Colombia preparing for government.

Hasta la revolucion

Don Simon.

Photos at: http://don-simon.smugmug.com/gallery/7817469_GNyAD


Special election album 'Isn't it Sironic?'

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Waterfalls and Tepuis

This chaosisation is proving to be fickle phenomenon, one minute I'm sat on a Caribbean beach and the next thing I know I'm living in a cave on top of a mountain. I'd never even heard of Roraima before I arrived in Venezuela, but three days later there I was setting out across the Gran Sabana intent on scaling its 2,800m.

Opinion was divided as to how exactly Roraima and the other tepuis in the area were formed. The geologist in our group spouted some frankly fanciful story about sandstone erosion, only to be swiftly put in his place by our guide who explained that they were originally all part of a large tree trunk which was cut down by some unspecified animals who were jealous that they couldn't climb to the top to get the special fruit that grew there. Either way they're huge monoliths surrounded by rolling countryside which meant that the two days required to reach the base were fairly easy and the third spent climbing it more taxing. Still, as Monday mornings go I'll take climbing through the world's second highest waterfall in the pissing rain over most alternatives.

We had hoped that when we got to the top we'd be above the clouds, but 'twas not to be. On the plus side I finally found a use for that jumper I'd been carrying around all this time, yet despite that I had a strange, long forgotten, feeling which I initially struggled to identify, I felt cold.

Our second day as troglodytes was far more rewarding, the weather cleared and we were able to appreciate just how spectacular a landscape it was, a mixture of boulders, pools, endemic species and precipitous drops. The undoubted highlight being the 1km sheer drop overlooking the border with Guyana.

It was all downhill after that, back to the starting point and a night bus back to Ciudad Bolivar. There we attempted to have a night out, but were thwarted by the fact that in a city of over 300,000 inhabitants only five people actually go out on a Friday night, and two of them are lunatics who feign friendship but threaten to explode into violence at any moment.

The next day we boarded a very small plane on the first leg of our journey to Angel Falls. I had imagined they were so called because they're often shrouded in clouds where angels might live, or because they're as high as the heavens. In fact their name is simply down to their serendipitous discovery by an American pilot called Jimmy Angel, would that all eponymous explorers were so aptly named.

Our plane took us as far as Canaima from where it was a bottom numbing six hour boat ride to the base of the falls, broken only by the occasional need for us to get out and push the canoe up some rapids. As we bathed at the bottom rather than climbing to the top my second consecutive waterfall Monday was less taxing than the first, but no less spectacular: 900m of falling water which has largely turned to mist by the time it gets to the bottom, followed by several terraces of shorter cascades culminating in a refreshingly cool pool. Jimmy certainly knew a good waterfall when he saw one.

And I know a good beach when I see one, and I hadn't seen one for quite some time so, following an unavoidable night in Ciudad Bolivar, we nipped up to the Caribbean again for a couple of days before spending 24 hours travelling to Merida. It was on these journeys that I realised just how welcoming the Venezuelan people had been to me. Along many roadsides and daubed on walls throughout the towns were messages extolling me, either simply with the message “Si” or sometimes with “Vota Si.” Some even said “Si con Chavez” which was overstepping the mark a bit as I've not yet decided where I stand on that thorny issue, but nonetheless the effort they went to to make me welcome was appreciated, back home you'd only really see that sort of thing during an election campaign.

And now, having spent the weekend in the more interesting, but still slightly disappointing, surroundings of Merida we are once again to quit the city for the countryside on a four day Anaconda hunting expedition and after that Columbia beckons.

Ciao

Don Simon.

Photos at: www.don-simon.smugmug.com/gallery/7817469_GNyAD#506258052_Fr6kQ