Catatumo

On Friday a group of four girls and I headed off early in the morning to Lake Maracaibo. We hopped in jeep and started on our journey. We stopped at two waterfalls to just take in the beauty of nature.

We also stopped on the side of the road and our crazy world known tour guide, Tony Martin (the Steve Erwin of Venezuela), just told us we had to get out for a bit. He then told us we were looking for the famous red-legged tarantula that lived in the area. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for me, we did not find one.

So we hopped back into the jeep to the lake. We made one more stop to eat lunch and to pick up whatever we wanted to eat for dinner and breakfast at an outdoor market.we picked up sausage, chicken, tons of veggies, potatoes, yuca, fruits and more! We also sat down and ate a lunch of rotisserie chicken, yuca, and coleslaw it was delicious! When we got to the lake we had to get into a boat.

 We took a slow boat ride down a river to our palafito, (house on stilts in the middle of the lake). On our way we were pointed out all the different animals that were in the rainforest surrounding us. We saw howler monkeys, parrots, toucans, iguanas, condors, vultures and so much more.



Monkey!

 We finally arrived to our palafito where we settled in, set up our hammocks for the night, and our guide made us dinner, while us girls played drinking games (without alcohol, because it was election weekend, and it was illegal to buy or consume any alcohol during election weekend.)



Our hammocks in which we slept



After dinner we went for a night safari in our boat again. We saw different huge birds, owls and crocodiles, one was about 9ft long! On our way back the phenomenon of Catatumbo began. It lasts about 7 hours and it is lightening without thunder. It lights up the whole sky. It is such an amazing sight to see. It did not seem real while I was laying back in my hammock, in the middle of the lake, watching this. It was surreal. In the middle of the night some of us had to move our hammocks because it began to MONSOON. well, close to it. It was quite a sight at 2am. Then I had to get up to pee, thanks to the rain. The toilets went directly into the lake! This was not a lake you come to swim in! At 6 am we woke up for breakfast, and headed out for our next adventure of paragliding!