Venezuela
30/05/2003 - Plaza Bolivar, Merida
We took this one about half an hour ago. Every town and city we have been to in Venezuela has a Plaza Bolivar with a statue of their great liberator. Merida is no exception. The photo is of the cathedral on the Plaza. Mountains in the background again!
Yesterday we went to the ice cream shop with the most flavours in the world (according to the old guiness book anyway). They have about 650. I had beer flavour, which was surprisingly nice.
Hoping to go and see the Matrix tonight. Fingers crossed it has subtitles rather than being dubbed in Spanish.
Might go up a mountain tomorrow. Might not. Its a hard life.
28/05/2003 - Merida
This is the hotel we are staying in at the moment in Merida. It took a 15 hour coach journey to get here ( nice coach though - reclining seats and TV), through some very nice scenary. Merida is in the Andes. You can just about see a mountain in the background. We are planning to stay here a few days.
27/05/2003 - diving
We took a whole film of photos on a borrowed underwater camera, but they are rubbish. This is a digital photo of the printed original photo, which doesn´t help the quality either!
here is one anyway. Once you get below you lose so much colour and light you need a very powerful flash, which we didn´t have.
26/05/2003 - PADI qualified
woohooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We did it. We are both now PADI qualified open water divers. Clare did the last few dives with a cold, which you really aren`t supposed to do. We took it easy though, and did easier dives than planned. Passed the written part with no trouble.
The short bloke is our instructor, Jose. The other two run the dive shop.
Bring on the Great barrier reef!
23/05/2003 - Los Roques
Another flight on a plane even older than that cessna bought us to Los Roques. It is a group of sandy islands off the north coast. It is very hot. We started our scuba diving course yesterday in the turquoise waters. Not doing any today as Clare has a cold! Getting a cold on a caribbean island. I don´t know.
Got to go, internet access is $10 an hour!
19/05/2003 - Angel Falls
It was an effort to get there, but we did. We took an overnight bus to Ciudad Bolivar, then a nasty Cessna flight to Canaima (imagine being in a bumpy sauna for an hour). We then slept a night in hammocks in a big open barn type building.
You might have seen my post on the discussion board about going in canoes. They weren´t what you would normally think of as a canoe. It seated about 12, plus baggage (plus dog), and had an outboard motor. So after a few hours on an uncomfortable bench in that, and about 2 hours walking/scrambling, we arrived. By the time we got there we were already wet as we had torrential rain on the way.
It was impressive. And loud. Didn´t look quite as big as I had imnagined it to be.
All too soon it was time to head back. Same journey in reverse. On the way back we stopped, and walked behind (and under, which hurt) Sopa falls.
Our cessna flight didn´t leave due to bad weather, so we changed our flight to a direct one to Caracas. We had our own 30 seater plane, complete with Stewardess (who still went through the safety procedure in Spanish and English). It was definately money well spent in my book.
16/05/2003 - Caracas
Well here we are. This is Caracas. It is enclosed entirely by mountains. Quite a few of which have these poorer areas scattered over them. We only spent a day here. Did a city tour with a nice man called Jesus, and booked a trip to the Angel falls with his son, Jesus.
Not that much to see here. They really love Simon Bolivar. Pretty much every site is something to do with him.