Gators and jaguars and snakes, oh my!

For our second day in the jungle, our guide took us on a trek through the woods, to point out flora and fauna. Two of our group members were on a holiday to photograph various dragonfly species of the Amazon, so our guide took extra note to point out every dragonfly in en route. Only 5 minutes into our journey we had to cross a large ant mound, belonging to some giant Amazonian variety, which our guide warned us were very painful, and Mr. Dragonfly stopped in front of me, blocking the path, and leaving me standing in the nest. As the ants started crawling up my shoe, I frantically started trying to kick them off. Their extra large mandibles held on tight, and they progressed further and further. I sprinted out of their territory and kicked my shoes off as I ran. From that point on, I determined that Mr. Dragonfly was an idiot.

On this night, we were going to string up hammocks under a canopy and sleep in the jungle. Ironically, Madam Dragonfly didn't like bugs, so she and Mr. Dragonfly stayed at the cabana and left the 3 aussies and us to spend our evening in the elements. We arrived just before sundown, and set up our camp. As the sun set, Shamir took us out in his dugout to spearfish for dinner. We passed a few alligators in the night, and Shamir caught one fish. When going for his second, the fish darted in the black waters out of danger from our spear and into the safety of a giant anaconda. Shamir, seeing the snake started saying "big big big anaconda", as he started to paddle away from the area. I couldnt see the snake, but being armed with only a small spear, Shamir decided that it was time we went back to the dry land, where we would only need to worry about jaguars. I asked him what a jaguar sounded like, and he told me he'd point it out when we heard them from our hammocks later. It didn't make for easy sleeping.

We survived the night, and headed back to the main camp that afternoon. We had a siesta, some lunch, and some last minute pirranha fishing, before starting back for Manaus. A dugout brought us back to the mainland, where we waited for some hired buses to bring us to the port for our boat home. It was a really hot day, and Shamir had us wait at a small local bar for our ride. After about an hour of waiting, he asked a friend of his if he could borrow a car. The night before, all the locals were out all night partying on the river, and now everyone was too hung over to come get us. Shamir's friend agreed to let him us his van, and so Shamir shuttled us over to the port in two loads. It was a much rougher ride leaving than coming, and we kept swerving all over the path. Shamir dropped us off with an apology for the delay, he would've driven us over sooner, but "Today," he said, "is my first time driving."

Welcome to the Jungle

We started our trek out into the Amazon with our guides who picked us up from the Manaus bus station, with Amazon Backpackers. We all loaded up into a mini bus and drove to the harbour, where we caught a small 20 passenger boat over to the other side of the river. Our first stop was a shanty town on the edge of the water, where our guide paid two local VW bus drivers to bring us to where we needed to catch our small boats down the river, to our lodge in the woods. I got the lucky seat up front in between the driver and our guide -which meant I got to see all the scary things that everyone else missed. The roads are red clay, pot hole ridden paths. In the rainy season, the pot holes fill with water, so you cant tell how deep they are, and on hills dry up so smooth you can't get any traction. Everyone in the back of the bus was laughing while we fishtailed around the road, when the guide said to me,

"Have you ever noticed how tourists always think everything is part of the game? The driver and I are up here, holding our breath that we don't roll over, and they're just laughing and smiling back there. Last week, one of our vans rolled over. But everyone was ok, so we just kept going." I regretted the seat choice even more, when we drove over a bridge made of 3x6 wood planks, with no real fastenings. We did safely make it to the boats at just about the time a rain cloud came, so we spent the boat ride to the lodge covered by a giant sheet of plastic.

We did the normal tour of the waters during the day, and our guide, Shamir, would point out wildlife as it passed. It was a beautiful ride, and he told us we'd go searching for an alligator in the night, so he could catch it and show it to us up close. Shamir collected us (7 passengers) in the boat that evening. We went slowly along the river, looking for the red gleam of an alligators eyes in the reeds. Shamir told me I could bring my headtorch, so I brought it along to look for myself. Shamir caught the first little alligator, then returned it because it was too small. When he caught one of a decent size, he handed it to guy behind me, Ricky. Ricky was a fun guy, and also a prankster. He pretended to throw the alligator at me, when I asked if I could touch it. I squealed, and everyone had a good laugh. We started to head back to the camp in our 7 person boat, when all of a sudden, an alligator jumped in the boat, and struck me in the chest with it's tail. I screamed and other people started shouting as they were hit by it's tail. I lowered my head torch into the boat to find the beast in desperation and fear of being bitten. It turned out, the spot light was attracting flying fish, who were leaping out of the darkness and into the boat, accidentally hitting us along the way. I shone my light on one little sardina -it was dead. I was going to throw him back in the water, anyway. "Aww. He's dead," I said. I grabbed hold of him, and he started to flop about in my hand. I shouted as I threw him back in the water, and more fish flew into the boat. One landed on my seat as I went to sit down, and flopped about under my butt, and I shouted again. The girl at the front of the boat, who was holding a small alligator, let go of his neck in the commotion, and he turned round and bit her in the wrist. She screamed, and dropped him into the boat, and chaos ensued again. After 5 minutes of off and on fish attacks, and recovering the small alligator, we headed back to the lodge. No one said it was going to be easy to catch amazonian alligator in the night...

Venezuela to Brazil

Rodman took us to the bus station the night we left Ciudad Bolivar. He pointed out some key factors that we would need to identify our bus, and went on his way. While we waited, several buses came and went, including one bus that had been converted into something of a party bus. It was fully painted in bright graffiti style images of Jesus. There were no lights inside the bus, except for some neon green emergency lights. It was missing all its windows, and there were huge speakers blasting very loud techno. Luckily for us, our bus proved to be a relatively normal one, and we started out 10 hour bus journey to the border town called Santa Elena.

No one tells you, but the buses are freezing. Well, some people did say that in the online forums, but I don't think we were prepared for how cold it was. It seems really silly, that they compensate for the extreme heat outside, by making it as cold as possible in the bus. No one was comfortable, and we got no sleep that night. I'd pulled my leggings down my calves, and wrapped spare clothes around my exposed ankles, put a heat pack on my knee, was wearing my jacket, and was still shivering through the night. When we finally got off the bus, we swore to never be left unprepared again.

We took a taxi from Santa Elena to the border crossing between Venezuela and Brazil, and were pointed to a long line. The Venezuelan border doesn't distinguish between entering or leaving the country, so everyone was standing in one long queue in the heat of the day. We stood in line for about an hour and a half, before we got to enter the building, and queue in another line. At some point, in the middle of the wait, the Venezuelan border officials decided to have a team meeting for 10 minutes, so they shut the door to the crossers, and had a chat while one of the team members took pictures. It seemed like a strange time to have a meeting. We went through the security questions, and got our departure stamps, and headed for the Brazil side, which we were dreading. Since Brazil required me to get a visa, and it was a complicted enough process, we were expecting a rough couple of hours getting into Brazil. We walked the 200 meters from Venezuela to Brazil, and stopped at the first security check point, where were filled out some paper work, got some stamps and headed to the next check point. But, there was no other check point. We were walking through the middle of a little town called Pacaraima, when we realized we were in Brazil, on our own.

In comparison to Ciudad Bolivar, Pacaraima is an extremely safe town. Since it lies on the border, and is patrolled by police, the people walk around with big wads of cash to change with tourists, and leave them unattended whenever they please. We were approached by several people, before a man named Joachim, who spoke English, came up to help us. We traded some money with him, and he helped us purchase our tickets to Manaus, with a bus change in Boa Vista. They had to sell us tickets for a later bus, for some reason, but told us they'd help us get on the next bus, which was due to arrive in 20 minutes. Then, both Joachim and the bus ticket vendor disappeared. The bus arrived, and after waiting for a while, we decided that we'd been had. We were working out how to get our money back, when the bus ticket vendor reappeared and put us on the 3 hour bus to Boa Vista, as promised.

We only had a few hours in Boa Vista, but we were going to grab some food from a market, if we could find one. Boa Vista, whose name means beautiful view, is a dump. Just walking across the street to the "market" which turned out to be a liquor store, felt dangerous. We hurried back to the bus station, where we waited for our bus. They called our bus an hour and a half earlier than we expected, so we checked our luggage into the hold and started to board. They'd sold us upper deck tickets...but there was only one level to the bus. Rich went back to ask, and the ticket checker, who looked confusedly at our tickets, then informed us we were on the wrong bus. We re-collected our luggage, and went back into the waiting room. We tried to board every bus from that point on, until the security guard told us to just come back in 20 minutes. We finally made out connection to Manaus, and had another 12 hour journey. When we arrived in Manaus, it was 7 AM and already scorchingly hot. Somebody called us by name, and we turned around to find some friends of Joachim who had come to help us get safely into the city, and get our Amazon ticket sorted out. People in Brazil are nice, afterall.

Adventures in South America

Angel Falls and Back

Our trip to Angel Falls began with Rodman telling us that liquor is expensive in Canaima, and that it's prohibited to bring it on the plane as well. In true Venezuelan disregard for the rules, Rodman then tells us that if we want to bring any alcohol, it's no problem, and to just let him know in advance, and if there is anything else we dont want the security officials to find (read: drugs, firearms, nailclippers) we need to move it into checked luggage. Apparently they dont go through the checked luggage, but they will confiscate your nail clippers if left in your carryon.

Canaima was beautiful. However, we soon realized that we had no idea who we are meeting, or where to go to catch out boat trip to the smaller falls, and no one here speaks English. We started by asking a tour guide looking boat driver, who pointed us to another boat driver, who pointed us to a third boat driver down the beach, who told us we were supposed to go with the second boat driver, but by now they've already departed, so he agreed to take us. We had a really niice little afternoon up to see the lagoon, and the local falls, which you can climb behind. When we get back to camp we asked about the departure time for Angel Falls the next day, and the guide told us to meet him at 8.30 AM the next morning.

In the morning, we found an English speaking couple that we met the previous day, and chat with them. Their group is apparently going at 7.30, but we have breakfast with them, and decided when their tour group leaves, we'll head back to our cabin and pack up our stuff so we're ready at around 8 and can look for our guide. Our guides brother comes up to the couple and tells them the bus will leave in 5 minutes, so I took the oppourtunity to ask him when our guide would be ready. He looked a bit confused, and told us that we need to be ready to go in 5 minutes as well - there's only one group. So, we rush back to the cabin to throw all our stuff in our bags, and catch the bus, which was waiting on us. Not a great start. Our guide tells us that they just kind of throw out a time, and we should be ready at that time, give our take an hour. That's how time in Canaima works.

We had no idea what to expect for the boat trip, but we decided it would probably take about 45 minutes to get to the falls, so the 30 minute boat trip, followed by a 45 minute walk, followed by a 5 minute boat trip, and a 10 minute walk, and a 4 hour boat trip, and a 1 hour walk uphill in the jungle to get to the falls were a bit of a surprise, but we still had a great time. It's the middle of the dry season, and the river is quite low, so our guides would often have to jump out of the boat to navigate through rocks and pull us up river. All around, other boats were making everyone jump out to pull the boat through the water, but our guides were expert navigators, and didn't require this...until close to the end. The water has more rocky rapids closer to the falls, so our guide started shouting for the men get out to pull the boat. The men would spring to action and leap out, but Rich, not speaking fluent Spanish, (and out guide not giving full explanations for what he wanted), was caught off guard a few times. Rich would jump out of the boat late, and our guide would immediately yell: "Everybody back in the boat". Rich would jump out of the boat on the left side and the guide would yell: "Get on to the right side!". Rich would jump out of the boat and the guide would yell: "No you! Only the three in the front!". At some point, Rich's new shoes started to come apart, making it even harder for him to jump in and out.

The climb up hill was hard. It's very humid in this region, and we'd been sitting in the sun all day as it was. Climbing over large roots and boulders for an hour on an incline wasn't what we were expecting but we managed, and got to see the falls on what was the last day that they wold permit boats up river for the view, so we were really lucky. We took some snaps, and had a snack on a boulder where we could soak in the view. The sun was setting, and it was starting to get dark in the forest, so we decided to start the one hour trek back down before it was too dark. Our guide said to us, "It's dangerous to go down on your own, lots of times there are rock slides, but you are your own person, so do whatever you want. I'm not responsible." We made it to the bottom, and waited for the rest of our group to regather. When everyone had arrived, out guide decided that the best way to cross the river at night, was to form a human chain across the river, and have everyone pass one-by-one, using the human chain as a bridge.

That evening at the camp we picked our hammocks, and had dinner. We chatted a bit with our fellow trekkers. One Swiss gentleman we met had been touring South America for a year at this point, and had developed a distaste for rice and beans. We had rice and beans for dinner. We all settled into our hammocks. There were about 50 us and everyone was just getting comfortable when someone started snoring - loudly. That evening we got little sleep with the chorus of about 5 people snoring throughout the night, and the unexpectedly cold evening that left us shivering under our blankets. We had breakfast the next morning of eggs and bread, which pleased our Swiss friend, and we set off back foor the Canaima camp, and then back to Ciudad Bolivar.

Rodman picked us up at the airport, and we confirmed for him that we had a great trip. Since it was only about 4 in the afternoon, we asked him if we could walk somewhere for an early dinner. "No," he informed us. "It's not safe to walk on Sundays." Ciudad Bolivar is not a dangerous place, as long as it's still light out, you're not walking down any of the wrong roads, and it isn't Sunday.

Airports

The first thing you notice when you arrive in Caracas is the security. Considering how relaxed immigration and customs are, it's really intimidating to walk into the main terminal and come face to face with men in full military regalia, wearing badges that say "Vigilante" and carrying semi-automatic rifles. They don't even look twice at my passport, or check my bags in the customs line, but I suppose they aren't so worried about smuggling drugs INTO Caracas. Considering Simon Bolivar is an international airport, it's a lot smaller and less equipped than I'm used to. But, after a week of seeing other, even smaller airports, it seems luxurious by comparison.

We arrive in Ciudad Bolivar in the evening. It's small. Small enough that there is a single waiting room for departing flights, a cafeteria, and a single arrivals room. The carousel makes a loud grinding noise, and then stops working. One of the porters makes a half-assed atempt to fix it by shoving a traffic cone into the jammed machinery, before they all determine it's too complicated to fix, and just start shoving bags out onto the carousel. This results in a general free-for-all with passengers climbing on the carousel and other bags themselves, so we end up being the last to get our bags. Our guide, Rodman, is a really nice guy. He's very animated and outgoing, so he gives us some details about the city, mainly that it's a safe town, during the day, but we shouldn't leave the hotel after 6 PM, and if it starts to get dark outside, we should rush back quickly. To prove this, when we decide to go to dinner one night, he drives the 15 minutes from his office to our hotel, to drive us 2 blocks to the restaurant, and comes back an hour later to retreive us and bring us back. And it turns out it was a good job he did because as we leave the restaurant we are questioned by a police patrol car who has been called to the area to stop a street brawl. Ciudad Bolivar isn't the safest little town.

Rodman picks us up the morning of our departure for Angel Falls, and drives us to the airport. On the way, he gets a call and starts explaining to whoever is on the line that "we're already outside". Apparently the airline has called his mobile to ask him when we'll be ready for check-in - that's how small this airport is. Rodman takes us inside, and tells us someone will be with us shortly to check our passports. Then, he steps behind the counter next to the other agents, and asks us for our passports, before issuing us our tickets. It should be noted that he doesn't work for the airline, but no one seems to mind that he just sort of does whatever he wants, so we go with it. Later Rodman decides he needs to inform us about a delay, so he just walks through the security control area to tell us, and the other passengers, and then walks back out of the secure area. It's a very relaxed enviornment.

The Ciudad Bolivar airport, is followed by the Canaima airport, which turns out to be a wall-less, thatched hut with a single desk serving as immigration. The man here checks our passports and our ticket, printed by Rodman, and complete with clip-art palm trees and hand written plane information, and writes our names on a list, so we'll be called to get on the next flight. Welcome to South America!