This is more like it - nice towns and beaches
Trip Start
Nov 01, 2006
1
46
65
Trip End
Ongoing
Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela
Thursday, January 17, 2008
We arrived at the bus station around lunch time and had a bit of a dodgy walk through town to the beach, such a safe place! We found a guest house right on the beach that seemed suitable. Within 5 mins after checking in a lad called Jim arrived shortly followed by Andrew and lastly Morten whom we met earlier on the ferry over to Venezuela.
We all met downstairs on the beach and got the beers in which is always a nice way to get to know folk. The afternoon whiled away and soon enough it was evening and time for a bottle of Ron. Early on in the evening an interesting fellow passed by, by the name of Juan who joined us in our quest for Ron and had some very interesting stories about how he had his life ruined by Chavez. He used to be an engineer for the country's petroleum company and now he sleeps under an upturned boat next to our hostel. Juan offered to be our guide the following day and take us to some caves and waterfalls, which we found out the next day was just an excuse to leave us mucking around on some rocks while he disappeared into the cave to smoke crack! Still we had funˇ.
We headed to the caves in the morning on the back of truck which was so unsafe it was hilarious; armed with beach rum and good sense of balance we proceeded. Andrew and I hung off the back of the open truck, swigged beach rum and discussed Venezuelan politics which was a very interesting subject especially at the moment with Chavez making some very powerful allies in South America by cancelling all their oil debt, plus the rum greased the wheels!
We got dropped off and after a short walk we arrived at the caves. The previous night I guide had convinced us that they were to be missed at our peril. Much to our amused surprise we discovered that we had actually been taken to our guide's favourite crack smoking den! Granted there were a few rock pools and a small waterfalls to loon about in for the afternoon and whilst our animated guide kept nipping off for a quick toot we kept ourselves highly amused with good company and beach rum. Several hours later we were all getting rather peckish and as promised our guide fired a D.I.Y BBQ and prepared for us a plentiful feed of grilled sardines and bread. In the excitement I managed to snag myself on some rusty barbed wire whilst Jim and I kept a close eye on our increasingly elusive, academic, crack smoking guide. At this point I was starting to really like Venezuela for its sheer dodgyness morethan anything else.
We returned to our hotel late afternoon just as it was getting dark. We were all in high spirits and decided that the day was far from over so we all decided to up the stakes from beach rum to battle rum which resulted in us all having a massive wrestling match on the beach (Carla not included). To finish the evening off in true Venezuelan style I fell foul to a local bandit and had a whole 1000 Boliviars (10p) stolen in a dash and grab set up operation as I very irresponsibly walked off with a local in search of NL. I found it quite funny as they made off with their 10p bounty and decided it had been a long day and that it was time to call it a night.
Over breakfast we all had a good laugh except Carla who declared I was a bad boy friend for bringing half a ton of sand to bed with me. After a good breakfast of deep fried cheese sticks, empanadas and good strong Venezuelan coffee we split up in teams to gather supplies for our overnight island trip which of course involved a good few bottles of beach rum.
We loaded our supplies and boarded our vessel with the introduction of a lovely Argentinian couple and set sail for some islands in the national park. It was a lovely day and the ocean wasn't too rough. After about an hour or so we reached our first island to do a bit of snorkeling. The place was lovely although the coral wasn't up to much so we stayed only a couple of hours. One quite amusing incident was (not to our skipper) when I tried to scramble across the deck trying hard not to tread on any supplies and slipped causing me to reach out and grab the awning frame, bringing it down in one crumpled heap, whoops.
After much apologising and offerings to sort him out we set sail for another island that was to be our home for the night and what a nice island it was too. We off loaded all our supplies mainly beer, rum and fish, waved good bye to our skipper and set up camp. First of all it was time for food so we built a fire then Carla and I spent a good hour gutting and cleaning sardines ready for lunch which was so much nicer than the unprepared stinking morsels we ate the previous day. Must admit there's nothing nicer than eating fresh grilled sardines with a good squeeze of lime washed down with beach rum standing round a fire on a Caribbean island. We mucked about for the rest of the afternoon, swam a bit and looked around the island. As the evening approached we built another fire and sat around talking shit. We also had the foresight to bring a little speaker system for our I-pods and found it most amusing when Morten our Danish companion plugged his I-Pod in and treated us all to an insight to his very weird taste in music which consisted of movie sound tracksˇˇ.Harmless enough I hear you say but after 20 minutes of listening to the sound tracks of Duck Tails and Conan the Barbarian, enough was enough.
The evening was far from over and with the aid of Andrews' under water torch we all went night snorkeling. The luminous plankton was amazing and we all took it in turns diving down into the inky blackness. As the evening drew to a close we were all pretty much exhausted so we just collapsed on the beach and drifted off into a deep sleep. In the morning we had to hang around for a few hours for the boat to turn up. Once we got back to Santa Fe we packed up all our stuff and Jim, Morten, Carla and me headed back to Puerto la Cruz leaving our good friend Andrew behind. Puerto la Cruz was just a short stop before getting our overnight bus to Merida.
