The Gran Sabana and Angle Falls, Venezuala

Our departure from Brazil was sad and heart felt but we entered Venezuala hopeful and / becasue we went without our tour guide (he was pretty useless anyway so we were so sad he couldn`t get his visa).

We arrived in Venezuala late afternoon and people cahnged some money. Reals (Brazillian money) and dollars brought twice the offical rate when changed on the street, and Venezuala is meant to be one of the only places where it is both safe and common practise to change money on the street. Unfortunatly, curtacy of our previous tour guide unwillingness to part with information, I took only 10 real / 2.50 pounds in cash into the country). It also turns out that in Venezuala it is a pain to get money out of an ATM with a foriegn Visa, even worse than Brazil (and trust me that is saying something, Brazil wasn`t a piece of cake). So yeah even less happy with Jose (our previous tour guide) - his tip just went down again if he ever comes back.

Anyways, the following day our new tour leader (Terry) arrived bright and early, before the start of our tour of the Gran Sabana. He introduced himself, made us vote on night-bus / day-bus and then when we chose night-bus made us do a mad packing sess (to vacate our hotel rooms) before leaving for the 9am tour (needless to say we didn`t quite manage to leave at 9am).

The tour was pretty awesome though. We saw three different water falls which were all gorgeous, no. one were a set of pretty falls that were floored with a red semi precious stone, no. two we almost walked behind (but then another tour agency told us off half way there), and no. three was where we went swimming and went and sat under the spray of the falls (it was so cool). We saw a small local village at one of the falls, and at another village where we ate a late lunch and bough handicrafts. We walked and drove through some gorgeous scenery through out the day, both between water falls and between villages, there were around 25 table top mountains making the surounding area unique and facinatingly beautiful. We found out about the trees of life, so called becasue the people use them to make the roofs for thier houses, the hammoks they sleep in, the juice they drink, the handi crafts they sell, and even the bread they eat.

Our driver had his foot to the floor trying to get back form the tour in time for us to jump on the night bus to Bolivar. The day following the night bus was spent rushing round all the banks in Bolivar (trying to get money together in order to go to Angle Falls), and reading my new Marrian Keyes book (it is pretty good).

Before I before beginning the narration of the Angel Fall epic let me vent my fustration at my lack of American dollars in the corrupt-ness of Venezuala. In Venezuala they cannot get dollars easily so, unfortunatly for the rest of the world, they LOVE them. My tour of Angel Falls cost me 200 pounds, it cost my freind 250 dollars. In case you are unfamiliar with the current exchange rate and do not understand how shit this is (I apologise for my laguage but it is) let me explain: currently, 1 pound is worth 2.05 dollars - i.e. my friend paid in dollars and thus spend on 125 pounds, whilst I spent 200 pounds. CORRUPTION & ANOYMENT.

Anyways back to more interesting and fun stuff - Angel Falls was pretty amazing. It was a three day trip and the National Park is in the middle of nowhere and is only accessible by plane, so we flew in on a cute little six seater plane. The plane ride in itself was pretty amazing, flying over acers and acers of national park and the national park in Venezuala (also including the Gran Sabana) is apparently bigger than Belgum. On arrival we almost imediatly set off on our Angle Falls excursion. This included a five hour boat ride on a tiny boat, sitting on hard, wooden, sore-bum-inducing seats with no backs. Needless to say it was an uncomfortable ride, fortunatly for us we had a lot of distractions including: more amazing scenery, a lot of splash and some scary rapids that our guides expertly navigated. On arrival at the falls we had a good view from the boat but we also hiked a trail to take us closed to the base of the falls and it was pretty impressive from close up. On the way back down this little trail the heavans opened on us and we got drenched, by the time we got back to our camp at the base of the falls it was pitch black and still tipping it down. We ate a gorgeous BBQ chicken dinner and settled down to sleep in our hammoks at a frightfully early hour (9:30pm) but we were all straight to sleep as we were pretty shattered. On the second day I awoke to the sight of the falls from my hammok, it was amazing. Having arrived in the dark the night before, I had no idea what I was going to see when I woke up the next day, but I had by no means expected that view from my bed!! We had an early breakfast and took the boat back arriving in time for lunch and our second tour. The second tour wasn`t quite as hard core and only involved 20 mins boat (thank the lord for saving our sore bums) and a couple of hours walking, but we got to see five or six more water falls and got to walk behind one of them, which was super cool. We slep the second night at the logde in Canimer, the village we landed in when we flew in. On the third morning we wandered the village looking at local handi crafts, and got the plane back in the early afternoon, arriving back in Bolivar at about 3pm. It was an amazing three days.