From Venezuela to Lake Titicaca

The major difference between Venezuela and Peru (Chavez aside) is that in Peru(this part) it is Cold and wet (which i love) and in Venezuela it is warm and sunny (dangerous for a ginger like me). Otherwise the amount of tourists here in Peru (especially some quite talented Irish drinkers) is pretty staggering. This time i'm going to try and avoid too much text. And you can see my last week or so through some Pictures, the bottom are most recent.

1)Caracas from the worlds highest cable car.
2)Another pretty bad shanty town, Caracas.
3) St Partricks day, Cuzco. (HA ha ha what a mess)
4) Max and Dan leaning on a big rock in Sacsayhuaman (Pronounced Sexy woman) An Inca Remain near Cuzco.
5) Football Match Cuzco, Referee under Police Shield. Lots of flying debri. Pretty funny. Just one arrest.
6) The start of the Inca Trail (Altitude Sickness not pictured)
7) Our Inca Trail Group (Barely alive after 3000ft climb day before)
8) The 4 of us at Machu Pichu.
Brief enough for all i hope.

The Islands and the falls...

Uh oh, this might be a long one. In short: Went to sparkly, lovely, beautiful deserted Caribbean Islands, saw blue green and yellow fish, returned to Caracas, went to hostel where a monkey lives in Southern Venezuela, saw worlds highest waterfall in middle of untouched jungle, returned to Caracas, tired.

Los Roques is a rather special thing to see, long clear stretches of white sand touching on stunning tourqoise sea. Reefs full of fish and residents full of hate for tourists. It really is special. We camped in a mangrove clearing (pictured below) one night, looking onto a lagoon, and on a deserted beach the next night and cooking our dinner on an open fire. It was amazing. The cloudless sky and lack of shade found us in need of anything cold and beery with some shade between about 11 and 3 but this was fine by us. I haven't enough time or space to detail just how perfect it was waking up and watching the sunset from a spit sticking our into the sea as pelicans pick fish into their mouths all around you. Stunning.

We flew back to Caracas on the 6th (Tuesday) and had to plead with a hotel to give us a room for the night as earlier the receptionist had been far to engrossed in a game of virtual pool to book a room over the phone. (Before this we had turned up at Carlos' posh as hell restaurant in swimming trunks sandals and sand all over the place. Quite funny really. )
Next morning at about 5 am we set off by Bus to Ciudad Bolivar in the Southern state of Guyana. Apart from being freezing cold with A/C at like 5 degrees the journey was great. We ploughed through the pretty amazing lowlands and saw political propaganda on every road and at one time an alomost continual pro-chavez rant went on for about 50 miles along an oil pipeline. We (Well Dan as he speaks the lang) chatted at length to a cooperative farm builder who explained how private enterprise and farms are soon to be ´killed´. Interesting.
At the bus station we were met by our Hostel/Posada owner Peter. He had quite clearly had a few too many beers and he stopped off on the way for some more. It was pretty fun roaring down a dirt track at 80km while he looked the wrong way and drank too much. Good fun.

At the Posada we actually met some other tourists shock horror! Iulia and Dan (Jeezus) were probably one of the sweetest things i´ve ever seen, and we got on with them straight away- Matthew: So Daniel what do you do? Jeezus: I'm in gastroporn... you get the picture...well i hope not literally.
We woke at 5 the next day and hopped in a teeny weeny six seater plane (pictured right) over forest plane and jungle to Canaima. It was pretty shaky and pretty fun.
When we arrived we were greeted by a couple of Indiginous folk who are i must say incredibly small, but very lucky with the ladies we here. Before we started the tour properly we had an hour or two to look around the amazing lake and falls in Canaima (pictured below with Dan, Benjie and Max)

At lunch we met a few more people, my faves being Tara and John who had come here after working in Ecuador and were English. We then hopped on a boat, climbed some stunning waterfalls, saw a wicked yellow and black frog walked through jungle swam in the black river water and motored up river (probably not in that order). The jungle is amazing and in the background huge tabletop mountains fill the horizon. After a pretty full day we arrived at a base camp had some dinner. (Pasta...for a change..fucking carnivores) and pretty much passed out.

Guess what? We woke up at 5 the next morning. All raring to go...as i´m sure you can imagine. We hopped in the motorised dugout canoes and rapped and sung all the way to the next camp. From there we walked for about an hour and were suddenly contfronted with one of the most spectacular things i´ve ever seen. Angel falls seems to rise from nowhere and has itś top aboce the clouds. Thin white water cascades into a pool on the bottom and another small waterfall in which we sat and swam follows. Only 12 people saw it that day and being one of them was breathtaking.

After lunch (rice and potatoe) we headed back and relaxed and swam in the river until evening. I fell asleep under the stars in a field next to the camp before later trudging onto one of the hammocks.

The trip was amazing: The views were spectacular and the ride exciting and the people we met truly made it special. Sorry if this seems rushed...too much to write, too little time...

Caracas

Caracas is an amazing city. It is huge and yet feels small compàred to the massive mountains that box it in on all sides. On the plain on the way over we were politely informed by some venezuelans that we were crazy to be doing this trip at all considering we had no tour group and only one spanglish speaker in the group. After an hour waiting in line for a visa we emerged into the hot busy airport and immediately set upon by a policeman. A contact of Daniel´s had booked a Cab and the policemen insisted he escorted us to meet him, obviously some travellers have never made it past the airport! The cab journey in was fascinating, a long winding road around the coastal mountains connects Caracas to the airport as the original bridge the old road was on collapsed. Add to this the winding road being half closed because of a mud slide and you get a long journey. The cab driver told us, reasuringly, that visitors are put off caracas because of the huge gun crime rate. As we apprached the glowing metropolis shanty towns began to crowd around the road, it was quite someting.

We finally arrived at the hotel (view from room pictured) at about 9, after flying in at half 4 and Dan spoke to Carlos, his contact and we were invited for dinner at his rather plush restaurant. The fact that vegetarianism is laughed at did not stop me having a delicious meat-free meal at a fantastic restaurant. It was a very strange end to a a long day as we ate delicious food and drank free beer and laughed off the fact that none of us hadslept for 24 hours.
Today we have booked ourselves a flight to some Caribbean Islands, eaten strange cheese dishes in a cafe and experienced the local buses. The people here are lovely and without loads of help from total strangers we could easily be one of those gun crime statistics. The city is fantastic as long as you are told where to go and are careful. The gap between rich and poor is immense but you get no hassle from anyone, a testimant to the people of this proud nation perhaps. It feels as though we have been dropped in at the deep end but what a great place to start the trip.