We arrived at Cuidad Bolivar after a comfortable overnight bus journey, albeit overly airconditioned to about 15 degrees. Once we had checked that all extremities were in place and none had dropped off through frostbite we went to find a tour company offering trips up to Angel falls.

We didnt have to look far at all as Cuidad Bolivar is the main hub for organising these excursions and almost everyone wants to offer to take you there. We agreed with a company called Eco Adventures that he would take us for a 3 day 2 night tour to Canaima National park where we would go upstream to see Angel Falls. We also have learned from experience that we should barter in these situations and managed to negotiate 3 additional bus tickets to Porto La Cruz (North coast of Venuzuela with the Carribean Sea).

The trip left that morning approximately 2 hours after we arrived in Cuidad Bolivar we were on a 5 seater Sessna plane heading towards Canaima. The plane was full with Katie and the pilot up front, myself and a really fat Venuzuelan in the two seats immediately behind and Martin was crammed in the back with the bags, a bountiful supply of Coca Cola and worringly some additional fuel!

The flight took approximately 90 mins. This was 90 minutes of deafening noise from the engine and constant squaking from the radio. The pilots door was ajar throughout the flight adding a third noise of rushing wind to the melee... Despite this, Katie slept!

Arriving in Canaima, we were directed to wait with some others who were to be on the tour with us as well as a couple of people who were yet to arrive. We met our guide, Elliot (who looked about 12!) who spoke Spanish, Pemon (local tribe) and some broken English. After a bit of a wait (time is very flexible here...) we headed off to walk 30 mins upstream beyond a couple of waterfalls to the boat which would take us upstream for 5 hours before reaching our camp just below Angel falls. As well as ourselves and Martin, our fellow passengers turned out to be Bruno and Lisbeth from Denmark, Mike from Manchester, Roman from Germany, Sal and Mandy from Sydney.

The boat ride was fun! The long wooden canoe with a huge outboard engine had two drivers, one at the back and one at the front with a paddle to help steer and act as a look out. We went up several rapids, sometimes so shallow you would never have thought it possible to get us up, but they did! It was a long 5 hours which left us with rather sore rears, but the scenery was stunning and on our arrival at the camp we had a great view of the top section of the falls.

It was already near getting dark so too late to do the 1 hour trek up the the falls, which was postponed to the following morning. We settled in, set up our hamocks and waited for the chicken dinner to cook over the fire, yum!

The early morning unfortunately brought cloud and a little rain so we had a leisurely breakfast before heading off on the one our trek up to the base of the falls. It was pretty hard going, with an abundance of exposed roots and loose stones to navigate. The viewing point was the next stop and as the cloud was clearing we got an excelent view of the impresive falls. Five minutes further on we were at the pool. It wasn't the base of the waters free fall as is fell on to an unreachable section of stone at the cliff base but this was the same water, and it was freezing! We jumped in after the hot climb and it was quite a shock! We also drank the water which was deliciously fresh and pure. We took some time and plenty of "Japanese moments" as our guide called them, then headed back to the camp.

That afternoon involved the journey down stream, which was equally hard work and involved us getting very wet. Paul had left his walking shoes out on the canoe to finish drying off after the trek and got really quite grumpy after they were soaked through again. Especially as he had to then wear them to walk a section that was too shallow for us to be in the boat, and he had a sore toe from knocking it on a rock at the pool, poor man!

Back in Caniama we were checked in to a possada where we took a shower and had a really nice fish dinner. We spent the evening chatting with the others and stayed up quite late with Martin, Sal and Mandy. It was only then that we found out that Pauls watch was half an hour out as apparently Venezuela has it's own time zone 4.5 hours -GMT, very odd.

We awoke (at the correct time) in the morning for an early start as some of the group had to leave early for flights all over Venuzuela. After a breakfast of cheese, ham and eggs we got in another canoe to take a short trip over the lagoon to Sapo Falls. These are apparently very spectacular in the wet season as thousands of gallons of water pour over the falls every second. When we visited them it was slightly less than that as you can see from the photos! The sapo falls and its neighbouring smaller falls have all been quarried out behind so that visitors can walk behind and through the curtain of water. This is a very nice way to start the day with a cold natural shower.

We finished our tour by 10am and said our goodbyes to people as they took their various flights out of Canaima. Our return Sessna trip took off around 1pm to get us back to Cuidad Bolivar for 3pm. This would mean that we should be at the coast by 8pm ish with time to find accomodation.... No worries there!

We arrived back at the airport to find that there was no representative from Eco Adventures to pick us up. We waited for about 45 mins and made our own way back to their offices to pick up our bags, money and get our bus tickets. The boss had sent one of his minions to open up the office and give us our luggage and tickets but had forgotten to give him the safe key to get to the 5 million bolivars that we had left for safe keeping. The minion looked sheepish!.. He made some calls and dissapeared. We waited in the office. We made ourselves at home. Minutes passed, minutes turned into hours. I got bored. Revenge was in order. I superglued the drawer of his CD player shut with some superglue I had found in his office. I hope he likes the CD that was in there!

Finally after 3 hours passed the big boss turned up. We thought that we had missed our bus but he managed to get us on a later one and just as the door was closing he mumbled an apology for the inconvenience... We were finally on our way to the coast!