 |
| If you look on the map, I traveled from Merida to Salto Angel. |
Alright well on to my lastest adventure last weekend! It all started at 5am on a Friday morning. Eight of us gringos (white people) met at school and hopped into a jeep with our tour guide. We knew we had a long day ahead of us so, none of us really slept the night before so we could sleep on our ride across the country! We almost got to our bus stations, five hours away, when traffic completely stopped on a mountain side. Not much you can do stranded there. We soon found out that a bridge had collapsed about a month ago, and it made it dangerous for the children to cross the river to go to school, on rainy days the children could not even go to school. So the village was having a demonstration against Chavez. As naive as we sometimes can be, we all thought okay soon it will be open and we can go. After two hours of waiting, doing yoga in the street, peeing in bushes, and trying to sleep, we got out a deck of cards (That I brought --Thank you family for teaching me well) and played card games...for another hour or hour and a half. Some Venezuelan children even came to play with us! Finally we were moving again so we all hopped into the jeep to head off to the bus station. We had to go to a further away bus station because we missed our bus. When we finally go to the bus we had to run to get on it! We took a two hour bus ride to a different bus station where we caught out next overnight 13 hour bus! Thank goodness we were all so tired, because I slept the entire 13 hours. We arrived to the bus station and walked to the near by very small airport. We had to take two 6-person planes. We got into our planes and the first one went off and we soon followed. Not 10 minutes in the air and our plane started to smoke, the pilot continued to tell us to stay calm we need to land. (He was making us more nervous by continuously telling us to stay calm.)
 |
| Some waterfalls we climbed |
We had another 2 hour wait until we got a new plane to take us to the island of Canaima. The flight was magnificent. The view of so much untouched beautiful land is incredible. As we flew in we had to hike about a mile to the boat that would take us to our camp to set up for the night. We still had about 2 or 3 hours of daylight so we took advantage and hiked three different waterfalls, we even went behind two of them! It was like none of us were talking because you did not want to speak.
 |
| One of the beautiful waterfalls we visited |
You were completely speechless to the beauty of nature. We got back to our camp for the night ate a delicous dinner of spaghetti, with a potato-chicken sauce on it, veggies, and bread. We were pretty beat for the day and slept soundly in our hammocks with mosquito netting.
In the morning we had to take a "two-hour" boat ride to Angel Falls, I have learned very quickly that Venezuelans are always late and always lie about how long it takes to get somewhere. This "two-hour" boat ride turned into four hours, we stopped on a little deserted island for our bag lunches of ham and cheese sandwiches, a pastry, and water. We also got to swim to cool off for a bit since the sun was constantly beating down on us out in the river. In the river there were so many minnows that would bite at your feet, it was crazy! When we finally arrived to Angel falls we were told it would be about a 30 min walk to so. We were running for the first 25 minutes because our tour guide told us we have to beat the other tour that was also there, so we ran which was a bad idea, because a 30 min walk turned into an hour and a half.
 |
| Eating lunch on a island |
We were completely exhausted. Also, it was not just a trail we were walking on, we were in the JUNGLE, with tree roots everywhere and rocks and you were continuously climbing up. We were tired. When we got to the top we saw it 1 km of water free falling off a cliff. It was so breathtaking. The thought that I just took a 30 hour adventure to get here was nothing. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Then our tour guide told us to follow him, we followed to the bottom of Angel Falls, where he then told us to jump in.
I swam at the bottom of one of the seven natural world wonders. The feelings we all had were overwhelming. When we got out our tour guide said we need to go quickly down, since it gets dark very quickly. When we had about 1/4 mile left to hike, it was so black I could not see my hand in front of my face. At this point we became a bit terrified because you would just lift up your foot and hope to not trip, fall, slip, or twist your ankle. We soon caught up with the rest of the group who did have flashlights with them, luckily they waited by the river we had to cross because you could only cross by rocks. When we were out of the jungle, we took a boat to our new camp at the bottom of Angel Falls. This camp had no electricity or running water. It was lit by candles, and you either got water from the river to flush the toilet or went right by the river.  |
| In front of Angel Falls |
The next morning we had to adventure our 30 hours back home. From the boat, to walking, to another boat, to a plane (which I was CO-pilot on!), to an overnight bus, to another bus, to a jeep. We made it home, where all is wanted to do was shower in a warm shower! We got home at 6pm on Tuesday (because we had off school Monday and Tuesday). I had to get my homework done and be in class by 8am the next morning. Talk about a hectic weekend!
 |
| View from camp |
No comments:
Post a Comment