Here it is, Halloween night, and there is not a thing going on this city. Movie theaters are closed, bars are closed, restaurants are closed, everything is closed, all because of the election. Well, everything except for this little whole in the wall internet cafe Steph and I found in the neighborhood we used to live in, where we ran into two other bored Americans we know, also lured out of their homes after spending the entire day indoors due to the torrential downpour and the fact that nothing is open.
So, about my AMAZING trip - I don't think I've mentioned yet that I went on an amazing trip. Along with my friends Anna, Brigid and Erin, I went to Lake Maracaibo, which is about a three hours drive away. We went with a local travel agency in town that does adventure tours, so we had a guide and went in a jeep and had all our meals provided, etc. As I said the other day, our guide, Cesar, was the coolest. He really made the trip; he was knowledgeable and funny and just a cool guy to hang with. There was a middle-aged biology teacher from L.A. with us, traveling around South America on her own. We had a really good group.
We started out on Friday by making some stops at some "cultural sites" - we went to a sugar cane factory and a coffee plantation, which was really cool. I learned that coffee beans grow in berries, which makes sense but I never realized it before. We also visited a xerophytic forest, where there were cacti growing so tall that they had bark around their trunks and moss growing on them and plenty of tarantulas hiding in holes in the ground. We also stopped for lunch in a little village in the mountains, where we "investigated" a whole in the wall bar with its own little "disco," which just shows that even tiny Andean mountain villages have some sort of nightlife.
After that, we drove to the lake and for the first time since I've been in Venezuela, there were no mountains in site. Eventually we got to the port town and met up with our boat guy, Eddy. We loaded up the boat and headed out on the channels that lead to the lake, and we saw tons of red howler monkeys in the trees, and birds and even some iguanas that Eddy spotted from the boat while it was speeding down the middle of the river. That night we stayed in a house on stilts on the lake (literally ON THE LAKE - we had to take the boat to get there). We had an awesome dinner of fish and crabs and grilled vegetables and the park ranger who lived in the house told me all about the National Parks of Venezuela (did you know Venezuela has the most national parks of any country in the world?).
After dinner, around 9 pm or so, we went back out on the boat again, with flashlights, LOOKING FOR CROCODILES, and oh, did we find crocodiles. We had to shine our lights out across the water of the river, looking for a flash of red in the dark - the red was the eye of a crocodile. Then the boat guy would just shine his light directly into their eyes, blinding them, until we were close enough where our guide could grab them out of the water. We only saw little ones, one or two years old, but it was still pretty awesome. Cesar, being a herpitologist and all, taught us all about each one he caught. We also saw some snakes, and our guide pulled a boa constrictor out of a tree for us to look at. After spending the night in a hammock open to the breeze, we went out in the boat the next morning, and saw dolphins and fishermen bringing in nets of crabs and catfish, and plenty more birds. And on the ride home, we saw a guy with an American crocodile he had caught, selling it on the side of the road, and our guide bought it for about 50.000 Bolivares (roughly the equivalent of $25) and we took it back to Merida in the jeep with us in the cooler! I rode in a car for two hours with a crocodile!
My main interest in going on this trip was to see this thing called the Catatumbo Lightning Phenomenon. It's "eternal" lightning that happens approximately 300 days of the year, without clouds, without rain, and without the accompanying thunder. This phenomenon occurs nowhere else in the world and there is no solid explanation for why it happens. But... because of rainy season, I didn't really get to see much of the lightning, only a little bit at night when I was drifting to sleep in my hammock. Ironic that the lightning wouldn't be visible because of rainy season...
Anyway, that was a long story and I even tried to keep it brief! Looking back on it a week later, I still can't believe that I was there and did those things... I wasn't exaggerating when I said it was amazing, all caps. It really was an incredible experience.
Tomorrow is the first day of November, which marks the beginning of my last month or so here in Venezuela! Oh me oh my!
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