Roraima - The Lost World

Hey all, this is my last blog till after xmas and the new year. We´ve been in Venezuela for about 10 days now. We came into a small town called St Elena and immediately it was very different from Brazil despite being only about 10 minutes drive from the border. I lost my entry card for Brazil so I´ve got this thing stamped into my passport now that says I have to pay a fine if I want to re-enter! Venezuela is a breath of fresh air - no more over sweetened coffee, bland food, and difficult language... don´t think I´ll be paying that fine!

We went on a 6 day trek to climb the highest mountain outside of the Andes, Mount Roraima. It´s a table top mountain and rises to 2850m. The first 2 days were solid trekking across baking hot savannah, wading across rivers and getting eaten by tiny little flies that simply swarm all over you. I had 15 bites on my left elbow alone, and I think there must be well over 100 on my body in total - They´re really nasty little buggers!! After two days we were at base camp and the climb began. The climb is really hard, at least 45 degrees incline constantly for about 4 hours. The ´path´ barely qualified as one and in places we were simply scrambling up rock falls, and in one place up a waterfall with freezing cold water crashing down on us and a 2000m sheer drop on one side! Put simply, it´s easily the hardest thing I have ever done in my life! To top it all off we were carrying our full size packs, in my case all 65 litres of it! (clothes, camping gear, etc). The top of Mount Roraima is the reason for going, and it really is a very strange place indeed. The plant life on the top of the mountain has evolved in isolation from the rest of the world and hence out of 2000 plant species, more than half of them are endemic (they only grow there). Apparently these plants can only be found as fossils anywhere else! The top is like being on another planet... black rocks of all shapes and sizes, pools of water that have slowly eroded in the most wonderful shapes, little black frogs about the size of the end of your thumb. It´s very odd indeed, reminiscent of a set from an old Sci-fi movie. Thick cloud can roll in at a minutes notice completely engulfing the top of the mountain so you can´t see a bloody thing! The top is about 32 square kilometers so you really don´t want to get lost. While we were up there a couple of Czechs got lost in the clouds and spent a freezing cold night huddled together (oooer) in a cave!! Can´t have been nice in shorts and a T-shirt given it was nearly below freezing at night! The way back from Roraima was long and arduous... more baking hot Savannah, more man eating flies... not nice, I´m glad it´s over!

After 24 hours on a bus, we´ve arrived on the Caribbean coast for Christmas at a place called Puerto Columbia. We have yet to explore...

Happy Christmas.

Soaked in the Amazon

Hello all, we arrived in Manaus last night after our long 6 day boat ride along the Amazon. The starting port, Belem, was a fairly non-descript town, the usual colonial type buildings, with generally nothing to do at all. However, the boat ride from Belem to Manaus was really good - the lonely planet gave it a poor rating, warning of discomfort, bad smells and security issues... I couldn't disagree with it more! We put hammocks up on the bottom deck which was half passengers and half cargo - economy class - open to the elements from both sides, and pretty much just lay there for 6 days! Hammocks took a bit of getting used to but after a while we were sleeping really well. It was the first time we've really had to chill out properly since we've been out here, as up until this we had spent all our time in big cities, and so it was great to just be cruising along the Amazon watching the endless jungle pass by, playing cards (mostly Shithead), reading books, listening to music, etc. In the days it was hot hot hot but at night it was surprisingly cool, even a bit chilly a couple of nights.

I bought some small padlocks for the zips on my pack before we left and after the first day on the boat two of them jammed up and I was locked out of my bag! Fortunately the guy next to me, who rotated between sleeping, singing and swinging violently on his hammock, pulled out a handy hack-saw and cut them off for me in about 30 seconds! Helpful indeed, but made a mockery of the security of my stuff!! On the second night of the trip we pulled out our stock of Caçacha (don't think that's spelt right) and limes and started making up Caprinhas - being ignorant foreigners we hadn't noticed the sign that said no alcohol (unless bought from the bar) and subsequently the captain confiscated our booze... well, one bottle of it anyway :) Fair enough I suppose, I can't imagine they want their customers getting smashed and feeding themselves to the pirannas! As usual I managed to make a fool of myself at least once, leaping onto my hammock which subsequently spun around, dumping me with a thud onto the metal deck - much to the delight of Heather and several Brazilians!

We have been travelling with a group of other people this last week, a Danish couple,a Brit and an Ozzy. It helped to make the boat trip great fun and it's a little bit of a shame that we now go different ways.

So now we are in Manaus and it's raining like there's no tomorrow... We're leaving the Amazon behind now with the possibility of doing jungle tours later on from maybe Peru or Bolivia where you can do all the same things but much cheaper ;)