Due to a lack of viable interweb, time and inclination it has been quite a while since I´ve updated the blog. This is particularly badly timed as the last 3 weeks or so have been pretty good and as such there is a rather imposing volume of stuff to potentially write about.

The orange truck trip continued on from Manaus in Brazil, the scene of the last blog post back at the beginning of the month. We lost a few from the last group and gained a few new´ns. New additions to the group are a english girl on her gap year, a scottish-canadain girl, an uber- sosphisticated Swiss bloke from Basel (this guy is so cool it is untrue, part of his commute to work involves a swim! I really want to be him), an unfeasibly dull australian couple who wear clothes with lots of pockets (Richard the bloke is the most easily confused man I have ever come across), and a great old english guy with who looks like he´s just been released from prison (think mean facial features and a voice like Barry the Baptist from the late nineties heist crime caper Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels).

We had a horrible drive north to start the trip crossing the equator towards Venezuela. Between the city of Manaus and Brazil´s northern border with Venezuela there is a huge protected area of jungle for one of the tribes that the highway goes through. So protected in fact that you are not allowed to even stop your vehicle by the side of the road, it therefore wasn´t long before I regretted to two huge coconut waters I drunk on the last stop before entering the tribal zone. We pulled off the road to camp for the night next to a dead cow (we didn´t choose the spot due to the cow it was just that it was dark and options were running out) before heading off early again to reach the border and cross into Venezuela.

Venezuela has been excellent so far due to the following reasons

- A lot of people have guns here and sometimes they let you pose for a picture with it

- There are nice looking big things like Angel Falls and table top mountain Roraima

- The whole Chavez thing and associated contreversialality. I really want to get a picture involving him, me, an anaconda draped over our shoulders and holding automatic weaponry although I fear time is running out.

- There are corrupt officials here who can be bought off using pornographic magazines.

- Cheap and always very cold lager

- An undercurrent of general lawlessness and a black market for money

- Amazing Caribbean beaches

- Big old american cars

First stop in Venezuela was a border town called Santa Elena from which it was going to be possible to do the trek to Mount Roraima. Roraima is the highest of the tepui (tabletop) mountains in the country and also the basis of the famous Conan Doyle novel The Lost World (amsuingly the love interest in the book is called ´Glayds´) which Jurassic Park is loosely based on. Upon further consideration I think there´s probably grounds to challenge that fact that the two are linked in any way as the only connection I can see is that they are two stories with dinosaurs in. Although having said that I didn´t finish reading The Lost World because I got bored (the book had more than 227 pages and the print was quite small).

The trek is considered quite hard (think being a 1cm tall human and trying to get from the floor to the top of a dinning room table) so being hardcore myself this obviously didn´t constitute any sort of barrier. I was joined from our group by the cool Swiss guy Rolf, who as it turned out eats mountains for lunch, and the Aussie couple. We joined some randoms to make up the party, a few nice german blokes and a french guy who had a face that looked like was a cross between a white Marcel Dessailly and a frog. The trek was due to be 5 days long, two days ascending, one day mooching around the top, and 2 days down. Day 1 was relatively easy and after a camp day 2 was where things got serious and we had some very steep paths to walk up through thick jungle before getting to the sheer cliff face of the mountain. By this time the rain was coming down something chronic and a seemingly endless blanket of cloud enveloping both the mountain and us. Luckily nature built a rocky ramp that you can use to get to the top but unsportingly placed a dirty great waterfall in the middle which had to be walked through which meant wetness was assured by the time we reached the top. Being 2700m odd high its a bit chilly up there so we very very relieved indeed to be able to set up camp in one of the ´hotels´on the summit which bear an uncanny resemblance to a cave, get into some dry clothes and admire the mental lunar like rocky landscape on top. Day 3 was spent sitting around in the morning hoping the cloud would lift and drinking lukewarm coffee with lumps in. After lunch our guide took us to wander around the top spotting the tiny jet black frogs that litter the area, look at the crystals that you are not allowed to nick and the various bizarre rock formations. The weather continued to be rubbish when are later walked up to the highest point which ordinarily would have afforded amazing views from the cliff edge but in our case was a sea of white. Things hadn´t improved weather wise for our descent on day 4 and it turned out to be an unfeasably wet hike down. So much so that by the time we reached our camp for the night myself, swiss Rolf and one of the other guys felt the lure of pizza and beer back at the town too much and decided to walk a further 3 hours back to a village from where we could get a jeep back. This meant we had an extrememly tough day´s walking by the end and red raw inner thighs but a dry bed and a nice dinner proved well worth it. I´d like to think I´d come back and do the trek again in better weather but I probably won´t bother.I´ve put some photos of the trek on the blog but none really did it justice.

This is what it is supposed to look like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shamanictrance/1466112365/

After the trek and rendezvous-ing with the rest of the tour group we headed out the next day towards a city called Cuidad Bolivar (after filling up the truck with diesel. 135 litres for $1.50). On the drive north we stopped off at a couple of good waterfalls for some photos and ended up staying at a campsite run by a fat swiss bloke who claimed to have served in the Venezuelan military alongside the now Presidente Hugo Chavez. The best thing about this place was that a member of the Venezuelan national guard was stationed there and he had a big shotgun. The campsite was beside a river that was frequently used by smugglers of among other things petrol, and the bloke was there to check all passing boats for and possilbe naughtyness. Usually the smugglers pass at night and cut their engines out before going past to try and sneak by but this bloke was good and in the night we were awoken by his shotgun fire at boats that had abviously refused to pull over for a checkup. Pictures of me with this shotgun are on the photo album and sorry to report sense prevailed when I considered a pose involving him with his foot in my chest on the floor pointing the gun at my head.

After playing with a tarantula we found in the bar of the campsite in the morning we drove further north and reached the town of Cuidad Bolivar and stayed at another campsite run by another fat german speaking owner. After a day spent in the town where I had my first ever haircut by a singing Venzeulan transvestite hairdresser, we embarked on a 3 day tour to Angel Falls the world´s highest waterfall (970m ish).

The falls are basically in the middle of nowhere and involve a bit of a palava to reach. We had an hour long flight in a posse of 5 seater Cessnock planes to the isloated town of Canaima as a starter where we overnighted and also did a senic flight of the falls in the same planes. Canaima is a lot of tourist potential, not only for being the gateway to Angel falls but also for its stunning riverside beach and other nearby impressive falls. From Canaima it was a 4 hour wite water ride up the river in canoes to the base of angel Falls for a night in hammocks. The following morning we hiked to the base of the falls themselves, took the generic tourist photos, and swum in the very cold pool at the bottom - it was all rather lovely.

After retracing our steps via canoe and light aircraft it was back to Cuidad Bolivar and another drive to our next port of call - the Orinoco Delta. The Orinoco is one of south americas big rivers and opens out into thr Atlantic in the form of a huge delta of tribrituies. We stayed here for 2 nights at a nice waterside lodge and were taken on numerous boat trips to see the wildlife, catch piranhas, and drop in on local villages. The highlight of this place was the lodge however, not because of the nice chalet room things but the wildlife they had on site. The restaurtant bar area was inhabited by a tamed spider monkey who looked like Barry Manilow and would hold your hand if you held it out, an absolutely samazingly coulered toucan (the bird with a beak like a banana), and a big Macaw parrot which would sometimes fight with the toucan. Also on a chain they had a baby jaguar that wasn´t completely adverse to attacking you when you got too near and a big puma which sensibly was kept in a big cage and on the last day there I got to fed through the fence. Our tout guide Tamar had got me dangerously excited before we reached the lodge after telling me the story of the last time she hadf visted when a semi tame Tapir had wandered through the restaurant one night they were there and apparently does this frequently. It wasn´t until I had formed visions of a picture oif me sitting on its back and after I´d named it ´Tamar the Tapir´did I learn from one of the staff at the lodge that some of the local indians had shot it to eat a month or so back - maybe the lowest point of the trip so far. Upon closer inspection of the map at the lodge we were only a matter of kilometers away from the sea and therefore given our position outrageously close to the island of Trinidad. The lodge said it was actually only 3/4 hours away by speedboat thus making it extremely tempting to head there, have a rum, and then go back but unfortunately time was against us.

Post Orinoco Delta we had two nights at a cowboy type ranch place to ride some horseys and sit around their swimming pool. One of the areas of amusement amongst my cotravellers in the group is my increasing hellbentedness for seeing an anaconda in south america. One of the prime spots is Venezuela and while we don´t have long left here the best place to see them is the Los Llanos national park where we go next so I´ve not lost hope. I did see one at this ranch place, in fact 3, but as they were in a cage it couldn´t really count....the search continues.

After we ranch it was with considerable excitement that were to hit the beach. Unfortunately it was the easter weekend so half the population of Venexuela had decided to do the same so the beach itself of Playa Colorado east of the captial Caracas on the northern coast was barely visible as it was so choca bloc with local families and their fat children (one of which almost up-ended me when he washed up while I was walking along the beach). On day 2 at this place a few of us hired some sea kayaks and a guide for a paddle along the coast to see some dolphins close up and then slept al-fresco on a palm fringed island beach where we also did some snorkelling (number of jellyfish permitting).

Next stop Caracas, the captial and also the scene of the world record for the largest ever stew made (7 tons of veg, 5 tons of meat, 70,000 portions). This was the also the end of the 2nd leg of my 3 leg journey on the truck tour so there was another exchange of people and we now number 11 plus the two guides but 5 or 6 of us are still vetrans since the start of the tour in Rio. Lacking in much motivation for achieving anything that could be described as productive or the inclination to do something cultural I did little in addition to watching football in the hotel room (england france, favourite moment Wes Brown´s air-clearance almost resulting in a goal for France), eating junk food, going on the interweb and drinking beer.

I write now from another Caribbean (isn´t the american pronouciation of that word with the enphasis on the ´rib´so much better) beach place called Puerto Colombia which is west of Caracas. We go south from here to the Los Llanos national park to catch anacondas, then the city of Merida before flying in to Colombia. The itinery of the trip which finishes in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito in about 3 weeks time can be found here:

http://www.dragoman.com/destinations/tripdetails.php?cat=SVQ

Mais ou menos,

Chris