First day of the Angel Falls tour

Colonial charm at the Posada Don Carlos

Flying to Canaima

Approaching Canaima

Posada in Canaima

First stop: Ucaima waterfall

Beautiful orange coloured sand

The boats that would take us to Angel Falls

The local architecture

On the Rio to Angel Falls

A little walk in the Gran Sabana before continuing the boat ride. Hacer mucho calor!

So now I have been two days in Valencia with my friends. It's a fairly big town, but not as big as Caracas and less chaotic. People here are also more concerned with their looks and are considerably slimmer than in other places I have visited.

So the Angel Falls tour....

It began with my friend waking me up early on Sunday morning, and telling me the bad news of not being able to get the evening bus as planned to Ciudad Bolivar. Tickets had been sold out already three days ago. Instead she found out that there was a bus going at 10am. So I had to get quickly ready and take my cachapas breakfast with me. My friend's father accompanied me to the bus terminal and after being on the waiting list for an hour and some extra persuasion in the form of dinero. I got on the last seat for the bus to Ciudad Bolivar. After 8 hours on the bus I finally arrived in a busy terminal. There I was picked up by a friendly dude named Carlos and driven to the Posada Don Carlos. A lovely restored colonial house with a cool patio in the middle. So after settling myself in the room, I came out in the cool night air and chatted with two Polish girls who had just been on the trip to Roraima, their legs covered in red ugly spots from the puri puri. Also a young local fellow living in the Posada joined us and also played some classical guitar music for me.

The next day started with a cool shower at 6am. (So far I have only experienced cool showers here in Venezuela, but anyway it's so hot here that it is all you need.) After a breakfast of fried egg, toast, strong coffee and a lovely parchita drink I was driven to the airport to get a plane ride to Canaima. Carlos helped me sort out the ticket and airport tax before I went through security and waited for the pilot. I was met by a small aircraft filled with goods going to Canaima. So I hopped in the front with the pilot. The take-off was great. I almost wanted to steer the aircraft along with the pilot. Such an amazing experience to fly in such a small aircraft and what a view to the landscape of rivers and acres of green jungle. After about 40 minutes of flying we approached Canaima, great flat-top mountains began to appear in the distance. Awesome sight!

The Canaima airport is super small. Just a small landing strip and a long hut giving shade to the travellers and Pemon villagers selling their local handicrafts. The guide for the Angel Falls tour met me and told me to wait while we waited for the other members of the group. Then when everyone arrived we were piled onto an open-roof truck and took off along a bumpy road to the posada. We would make the journey to Angel Falls already that afternoon. So after being told to pack only the essential things, we again piled into the truck and drove to a lookout point of one of the Canaima waterfalls. Next we had a pasta and tuna lunch by the river before getting aboard the boats that would take us to the spot of Angel Falls.

This four hour boat journey would take us through some unique and amazing landscape with varying vegetation, beaches, extraordinary steep and tall mountains and amazing wildlife such as butterflies, dragonflies and birds. We also stopped at one beach called Paradise beach.

Luis, one of the Pemon guides sitting in front, would also point out to some of the the loose rocks on top of the mountains and tell us how it resembled faces or other objects. Luis had the job of maneuvering the boat through sometimes shallow places along the river. The boat also suffered from motor trouble part of the way, but we managed to arrive at the base of the campsite to Angel Falls just as sun set. A 5 minute walk through the jungel brought us to a tin roof canopy with hammocks tied up all in a row. Quite cool and rustic.

Then a dinner of spaghetti bolognese was prepared by the Pemon guides and enjoyed out in open air. The Venezuelan couple in our group brought out some Casaque, a Venezuelan rum to enjoy while playing a few rounds of Dominoes. Quite a tricky game and even trickier when trying to learn it in Spanish. It was an amusing first night in the jungle with this group consisting of two Italians, four Germans, the Venezuelan couple, the Pemon boys and myself, the only Norwegian. The Italians, the German couple and myself went to look at the stars before going to bed. Beautiful!