Roughing it in Isla Margarita

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  Playa del agua, Venezuela
Sunday, November 6, 2005

Upon leaving the hotel and strapping on our backpacks once again Lea decided that we should walk the few blocks down the main street to the bus terminal so that we could find transport to Playa El Agua which we had heard was the main tourist beach on the island.

Lea's plan to walk fully loaded to the terminal evaporated like the sweat on our brows in the near midday heat. Within 5 minutes we hailed a taxi and asked how much to Playa El Agua and since the price was more than reasonable we got in and headed off to the beach in true western decadent style. No grubby autobus for the likes of us.

As I had called ahead and reserved a chalet days ago there was no searching for acommodation when we arrived and Lea was more than satisfied with the lovely small chalet with air-con that we hired and at 90 thousand bolivars (GBP22) a night we got what we had paid for.

Playa El Agua was well geared towards international tourism and even though we were in the low season we found the main road on the beach packed with people trying to sell tours and a lot of restaurants with English and German signs. Most of the establishments were built on the beach itself and also rented sunbeds and shades to the masses. The beach itself was about 3km long and very nice. Lea immediately set about installing herself on the beach and working on the tanning. I set about making friends with the hot dog seller on the main road and reading the books in the shade that we had recently swapped. We also set about looking for a tour which would take us snorkling. We booked one to some smaller islands nearby called Los Frailes. We were picked up at 8:30am and by 9am we were sinking our first beer on the boat but finding it a little hard to drink as the boat had all three outboard motors going and the sea was pretty choppy. I´m not entirely convinced that beer and snorkling are a good combo though.

It was a full boat with 18 people from all over Europe. As usual we were the only brits present. I noticed that one of the German guys was wearing long tracksuit bottoms which although went along fine with his droopy moustache and eighties style mullet hairdo was still a bit unusual in the 35°C heat. Me being my normal nosey self asked him how come he came to be wearing warm clothing when it was so scorchio hot. As he was in the shade he lifted his trouser leg lightly to reveal hideous second degree burns to his legs. He told me that he had done that two days ago and that it still hurt like hell and all because he fell asleep in the sun. Ouch. I quickly reached into my bag and put a further layer of sun tan lotion on so that I wouldn't end up looking like Freddies Kreuger's younger brother.

We got to the islands in about 45mins where they gave out the snorkling gear and in we went. The fish and the reefs far surpassed what we had seen so far it was pretty awesome and in no time at all I was humming "beneath the sea" again.

They then called us back for lunch which was thankfully on dry land under the shelter of some shade and consisted of roast fish and chicken with some rice and salad and as much as we could drink. Then it was back on the boat to another part of the island for some more snorkling. This time when we first got off the boat we were surrounded by shoals of very small fish who were obviously expecting a feeding. It was slightly unnerving at first being almost engulfed by a cloud of small hungry looking fish but then the guides threw some left over chicken bones into the water which threw the fish into a feeding frenzy that was impressive to watch. Again it was a really nice snorkle with lots of colourful fishes of all sizs on view. By the time we got back on the boat and taken back to port it was 4pm. A good trip all in all. We decided that the next day we would look for slightly less expensive accomodation and stay a little while longer.

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More Pictures

3. I think something swam up my shorts	4. I´m the one with the snorkle	5. View from lunch point	6. Our vessel . . . the splasher
7. Oy get off my fish	8. Mmmm tastes like chicken

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