Miraculously we managed to get up and leave early in the morning and we\u00a0took the subway across town to the bus station.\u00a0 Reynold\u00b4s guidebook had stated that the metro station was not next to the bus stop and that there was a 350m walk through an unsavoury neighbourhood in order to get there and that you might want to consider getting a taxi.\u00a0 We thought this seemed slightly ridiculous for such a short distance especially as it was early in the morning.\u00a0 As we walked through the “dodgy neighbourhood” I couldn\u00b4t help but think how much nicer it felt than the neighbourhood where we had been staying.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once at the bus station, having spent a long time\u00a0crossing a busy road, we couldn\u00b4t find the ticket office but found the buses with the men shouting out destinations.\u00a0 We got on a local bus heading for Valencia and I was pleased that none of the windows had gunshots in them.\u00a0 That wasn\u00b4t actually a completely random comment, you saw several buses in Caracas with ominous holes in the windows but this one seemed nice enough.\u00a0 As the bus ploughed through traffic out of the city I must say I was pleased to be going somewhere else.\u00a0 In a lot of ways Caracas had not been as bad as I had envisaged but in some it had and after my terrible night of paranoid sleep I was glad to be continuing on my travels.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once in Valencia we got a local bus to Las Trincheras.\u00a0 It was busy and we weren\u00b4t entirely convinced that they had understood where we wanted to get off as the journey took longer than we anticipated.\u00a0 The place the guidbook said to get off was, “the bridge over the freeway”, which was slightly ominous and far from helpful.\u00a0 Fortunately the conductor had understood, proably largely to Reynold speaking to him rather than me, and we stopped at the right place.\u00a0 It was a short walk to Las Trincheras but it was hot and we were carrying our bags so we stopped at a cafe for a drink.\u00a0 After Reynold\u00b4s drink never transpiring I finished my Pepsi and we headed to Las Trincheras.\u00a0 When we got there the only rooms they had left were for five people and, as such, were slightly out of our price range.\u00a0 We headed back the way we had come and passed one posada which looked decidedly shut.\u00a0 After investigating Reynold asked a guy painting a fence if he knew whether it was open.\u00a0 Very sweetly, but rather unhelpfully, he then did exactly the same as us, i.e. pondered the padlock and shouted, “Ola”, before telling us that noone was there!\u00a0 So we continued down the street and found another posada.\u00a0 This one looked, in my mind, like a giant cake.\u00a0 It was very darkly painted brown wood and was covered in Christmas decorations.\u00a0 It was pleasant enough though and a decent price so we checked in.\u00a0 Having showered we headed back to Las Trincheras.\u00a0 Along with the thermal pools there was a “mud bath” and that\u00b4s where we started.\u00a0 When we bought our tickets Reynold had asked if there was a mud bath and had been told, “No”, in no uncertain terms.\u00a0 When we saw people with mud on we thought the guy was mistaken but, in a way, it transpired he was not.\u00a0 When we got into the water (yes it was water and not mud) it turned out that in order to get any mud you had to kind of scrape your fingers along the ground.\u00a0 Then, what you dredged up was a handful of stones, leaves, sandy mud of sorts and bizarrely a lot of human hair.\u00a0 It wasn\u00b4t the most attractive mix and it certainly wasn\u00b4t going to be doing any “healing” anywhere near my face.\u00a0 We tentatively put some of the mud, with the least amount of human remains, on our arms and backs and then showered and left the gravely, hair pool.\u00a0 As we sat by the side of the pool there were several monkeys playing over the fence at the side and they were not like monkeys I\u00b4d seen before.\u00a0 There were also the most\u00a0beautifully bright yellow and\u00a0green birds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The thermal baths proved to be a lot more pleasant than the mud bath and we spent some time both in and out of them relaxing.\u00a0 The hottest bath was so hot it was unbearable though and I normally like baths super hot.\u00a0 It was hot to the extent that when Reynold got in he refused to go passed a certain point commenting that he hadn\u00b4t had childen yet!\u00a0 There were, however, people who were going into the pool and we commented that it\u00b4s amazing what people will do if they\u00b4re told it\u00b4s good for them.\u00a0 There were also a lot of people around the place who seemed a long way beyone therapeutic redemption!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
After a nice time being cleansed we headed back to the posada and then went out for dinner.\u00a0 The only place open was a local restaurant where we both had an amazing seafood soup type paella thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Miraculously we managed to get up and leave early in the morning and we\u00a0took the subway across town to the bus station.\u00a0 Reynold\u00b4s guidebook had stated that the metro station was not next to the bus stop and that there was a 350m walk through an unsavoury neighbourhood in order to get there and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}