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...