The ETAs and the familia Buley (Eric's spectacular family who traveled down to Venezuela to hike with the rest of us) formed a powerhouse group of ten and conquered Canaima National Park (this HUGE park in the southern part of VZ). We met up in Ciudad Bolivar where a short (and nauseating) trip in a TOO small plane carried us to a tiny village tucked into Canaima; the starting point for expeditions to Angel Falls. Angel Falls, you say? Yes, that's the tallest waterfall in the world. Also, it's the waterfall from the movie 'Up!'.
The three-day trip around Canaima's best waterfalls was a great primer for the looming Roraima trek. While we weren't in tents, and there were (gracias a Dios) bathrooms, we slept in hammocks one night, did some decent hiking and generally spent all day in the great outdoors. A 5-hour boat ride took us from the Canaima lagoon (where we enjoyed our first successful beach day!) up to Angel Falls territory. We discovered that a 5-hour boat ride sounds cool but is actually very rough on the derriere, especially when you're sitting upright in a teensy wooden boat with VERY hard seats.
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| 5 hours in this bad boy! A lot less fun than it sounds... |
An hour-long trek up a mountain and we were before IT (and it deserves the All Caps). Sixteen times the height of Niagara Falls, Angel Falls was breathtakingly beautiful; turns out the one good thing about the record amounts of rainfall across the country was that the water flow for Salto Angel was PERFECT. We even got to swim in the pool that the falls dumps into. There was lots of swimming in cold (or 'mountain fresh', if you're looking to be optimistic) pools.
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| Angel Falls aka Salto Angel |
A trip back to base camp (only 2.5 hours by boat this time, since we were going with the current), and we flew back to Ciudad Bolivar (with our pilot who texted while flying...comforting) and hopped an overnight bus to the border town of Santa Elena. Our mere 12-hour ride stretched into a 16hr+ ride; apparently were stopped at a fuel station for two hours overnight because there was no gas. At the gas station. In an oil-rich country.
By the time we arrived in Santa Elena we were famished and ready for a big lunch. So we hopped the border and went to Brazil, where we enjoyed a spectacular buffet that featured skewers of oven-roasted meat brought to your table (for those of you posh eaters, it was like Fogo de Chao, but for about 6USD). We weren't slated to leave for Roraima for another day or two. The others spent a day checking out some more of Canaima's waterfalls (yup, after an overnight bus trip, we were STILL in the park), but I was fighting a pretty bad cold, and not wanting to be wheezing my way up Roraima, I slept in and hung around Santa Elena for the day. Turns out that was an excellent idea because I befriended the grocery store owner and his brother took me for a motorcycle tour of the town (motorcycle ride in VZ, check!).
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| Mmmmm...Brazil.... |
We ate dinner on this street called Calle del Hambre (Street of Hunger) - a long alley with little shops serving all sorts of things. I got fried chicken which (despite being deep fried) turned out to still be bloody...lost my appetite after that bit. After popping some cold pills (shout out to Eric's mom, our beloved Nurse Karen, who'd brought a pharmacy of medicine that SAVED me and the rest of the ETAs when my little bug mutated and jumped to them), I settled in for my last night in a bed, feeling less-than-excited about starting some real outdoorsyness the next day.
Not to fade to black here, but there's not much to say about the six days at Roraima except that they were tough as hell, amazing, spectacular, and wonderful. I learned that not only do I not dislike camping, I LOVE it. I slept in a tent, drank water from streams, and was super proud of myself for being able to do numero dos (as the porters so eloquently called it) in the woods and then later in a plastic bag (yes, that's right, how's THAT for imagery?)
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| Day 1 of our hike! All clean and perky! |
I got my butt kicked for about four hours each morning as we tackled anywhere from 5-12 kilometers a day over all sorts of terrain (the 5k day took four hours because we were literally scaling a mountain, up 60-degree inclines at some point). The terrain was incredible; in three days, we went from savannah, to rolling hills (looking like something out of the Sound of Music), to Amazon, to something other-wordly, dinosaury rock terrain.
We woke up on the morning of the 24th (when Venezuelans traditionally celebrate Christmas) on the top of Roraima with blue skies and an amazing view. Christmas Eve was back at Day 1's base camp, where we huddled around a fire eating some alfredo pasta. Note on the food: it was amazing and possibly one of the best parts of the trip. We all thought we'd be living on rice and beans; instead we were surprised with egg-salad sandwiches, tuna salad, pasta, and some excellent soups. I've heard everything tastes better when you're camping but REALLY- this was some awesome food. There were also snack bags; plastic bags of everything ranging from hard strawberry candies and guava chews, to the VZ equivalent of Saltines and banana chips. They were meant to last us the six days but some of us were better at rationing than others.
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| Feliz Navidad! The group on the 24th, doing some morning yoga on top of Roraima |
The three-person tent I shared with Jillian and Olga quickly became the party tent for our little crew and we all piled in (I think we had eight people at once) in the evenings, partly for warmth, and partly to stay sane. Other highlights: fjording rivers, the puri-puris (nasty little bugs that bite you and then the bites don't itch til a few days later), the amazing stars. There was also the Christmas Eve drama that saw familia Buley split up, the parent stuck on one side of the river (after a dehydration scare) and the boys on the other; Christmas morning was all the better when everyone was reunited.
I was super proud of our group (and myself) after our 60km+ trek. Of the two other groups that were doing the hike while we were, one flat didn't make it to the top and only half of the other did. Everyone in our 23-person HUGE group made it up and back. Christmas dinner was pizza and rum. Followed by dancing at Santa Elena's fine discoteca...
Our little crew split up on the 27th, with all of us headed home to our respective cities.
For all the pictures, check Facebook!
Oh yeaaah party tent. Those damn puri-puri bites kept itching for a good week and a half afterwards...
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