Venezuela is a beautiful country full of quirks and disorganisation. After our stressful trip to Puerto Ordaz we enjoyed Christmas day in Casa del Lobo. The owner, Wolfgang, is very hospitable and, after settling in, his wife made us Christmas lunch, which was "Hakari", a venezuelan speciality with chicken and veg steamed in a banana leaf. Wolfgang's wife seemed to have forgotten that Phant was vegetarian but as it was Christmas Day, and not wanting to waste food...

We arrive in Parapatei and tie our sleeping bags and mats to Suhanya's backpack. We weigh our bags; the big backpack is 14kg and the small one is 5kg. We then have some lunch before receiving a team talk and setting off on our adventure to Mount Roraima. The sky is clear and we have no shelter from the sun blazing down. We soon run out of water but meet someone in our group by a stream and Suhanya takes a swig of their water, not wanting to dink the river water. ...

It's Christmas Day and we arrive into Caracas just after midnight. After collecting our bags we experience the first quirk of Venezuela - the dollar black market. Luckily we had done a bit of research beforehand so are not surprised when an airport official asks us if we want to exchange dollars at a rate of 1:50. As the official rate is 1:6.7 this doesn't seem too bad! We exchange some money and wait for our airport pickup. We get taken to our hotel along with t...