I woke up in the morning surprisingly refreshed given the disturbed night\u00b4s sleep I had had.\u00a0 I found an internet cafe and, having discovered that the Paypal transaction had not worked, I had to go and organise more cash.\u00a0 Actually it was pending but, somewhat annoyingly, I didn\u00b4t have any of the information with me in order to \u00b4validate\u00b4the account.\u00a0 One thing that has been annoying in Venezuela is the whole money situation.\u00a0 For some reason my bank turned into idiots and decided to restrict my accounts.\u00a0 Added to this is the complicated situation with the money here.\u00a0 They have changed currency and are still operating both in parallel currently.\u00a0 There is also a wealth (excuse the pun) of difference between the so-called "official exchange rate" given by banks and the like and the black market exchange rate for US dollars.\u00a0 Anyway, I wandered around trying to find a bank to sort it out and ended up on a mammoth trek in the heat.\u00a0 I was slightly concerned that I was due to be being picked up at eleven o\u00b4clock and also that I had no watch.\u00a0 Eventually when I got back to the hotel I was hot, tired but basically on time.\u00a0 I sat outside the hotel for some time, had a drink and a cigarette and got approached by numerous men.\u00a0 The first was from some bus company, I think and, having got the wrong end of the stick, tried to check me back into the hotel I had checked out of.\u00a0 At least I think that\u00b4s what he was doing before I took my bag off of him and walked away.\u00a0 Then one of the many Army guys walking about took a shine to me and asked a number of lewd questions which I pretended not to understand.\u00a0 In the end he wrote it down for me and, albeit in Spanish, the word "sex" was quite clear in the middle of the sentence.\u00a0 I told him "no" thinking that would be the end of it and was then in the difficult situation of not being able to explain why not when he asked.\u00a0 To be fair that\u00b4s a relativley tough one even in English.\u00a0 If I was at home and someone randomly came up to me in the street, asked if I wanted to have sex with them and then asked why not when I said No I think I would be slightly thrown.\u00a0 Now add to that trying to explain why not in Spanish with my lack of language skills!\u00a0 It was all relatively harmless though and I figured that I might at least get some protection if there was a street riot!\u00a0 See, positive thinking, glass half full etc!<\/p>\n
In Venezuela there are kind of impromptu phone places on the streets where vendors set up tables with mobiles on, often attached to chains, and charge you to use them.\u00a0 They also, rather helpfully, sell single cigarettes which you can presumably smoke whilst you make a call.\u00a0 I used one of these to call the tour company to see when I was being collected.\u00a0 By this point I had been waiting for about two hours I think and they told me that the guys due to collect me were just around the corner.\u00a0 To their credit they were and they arrived with Rainer, a lovely German guy and Ian a quirky English guy who were also on the Los Llanos trip.\u00a0 After getting lunch we headed to the rafting camp where I had been previously.\u00a0 I thought this was meant to be the last night of the trip but apparently they had switched it around!<\/p>\n
Back at the camp the French owner recognised me and found it quite amusing that I had returned.\u00a0 I spoke to him in French and wished that my Spanish was even remotely as good.\u00a0 Ian was evidently not particularly keen on rafting so went for a walk whilst Rainer and I went rafting, him for the first time and me for the third time in three days, with a recent jab to the arm!\u00a0 There had been a lot of rain and the river was considerably higher than it had been which led to Junior deciding we should not take the small boat, much to my rather vocal disappointment.\u00a0 The rafting was fun again and the river was very fast.\u00a0 The final section was really good and then we got to the bridge.\u00a0 Once at the bridge we walked back where we body rafted (i.e. floated\u00a0 in the rapids in our life jackets) down river.\u00a0 That sounds a little more tranquil than it was actually, but it was great fun.<\/p>\n
Back at camp we changed and headed out for dinner in town prior to getting a few beers to take back to camp.\u00a0 We sat round and chatted and were amazed at the extent of Junior\u00b4s knowledge about the wildlife in the region.\u00a0 He took us on an impromptu night safari where we saw Caimans\u00b4 (as in crocodiles) eyes glowing in the reflection of the torch.<\/p>\n
The following day we had a huge breakfast.\u00a0 Meals in Venezuela are generally large, often heavy and often involve most ingredients being fried or deep fried and this breakfast was no exception.\u00a0 Arepas are a staple here which are a kind of doughy, eliptical lump which you cut open and stuff things like cheese or eggs into.\u00a0 A lot of people make jokes about being able to knock people out with them which isn\u00b4t all that far from the mark!\u00a0 We dropped Ian off at Barinas airport then went to the bus station car park where we waited for the other jeeps in the group.\u00a0 We waited for some time and Junior decided we should go and get supplies for the trip from the supermarket.\u00a0 Having done so we went back and waited some more until eventually the other groups arrived.\u00a0 One group was a German couple, Ute and Olaf, who were both lovely with Olaf being a real character.\u00a0 The other group was a large group of people from Slovakia of all places.\u00a0 I\u00b4m only saying it like that as, not only have I not met anyone traveling from Slovakia, I don\u00b4t think I\u00b4ve -ever- met anyone from Slovakia.<\/p>\n
The drive to the camp in Los Llanos was meant to take four hours but took slightly longer.\u00a0 This -may- have had something to do with the fact that, after the alcohol stop, we had to stop about every five minutes for various Slovakians to get out of their van and relieve themselves.\u00a0 We were getting slightly peeved by this after a while and talked about the reinforcement of the Easter European stereotype.<\/p>\n
Eventually, several Slovakian stops later, the road became bumpier and we arrived at the camp in the dark.\u00a0 The camp itself was cool and Rainer, Olaf, Ute and I shared a round hut with hammocks all attached to the centre pole.\u00a0 We sat and chatted at the table outside and drank with the Slovaks, albeit at a much slower rate.\u00a0 At one point one of them told me there was no point in drinking my beer as it was, "very weak like water".\u00a0 It was fun and the three Germans, locals and guides were lovely.\u00a0 Some of the Slovakian group seemed amiable, others less so.\u00a0 I decided it was time to call it a night when one of them told us that his friend was going to kill two people that night.\u00a0 The following morning I was told that, after I had retired, he tried to pick fights with everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up in the morning surprisingly refreshed given the disturbed night\u00b4s sleep I had had.\u00a0 I found an internet cafe and, having discovered that the Paypal transaction had not worked, I had to go and organise more cash.\u00a0 Actually it was pending but, somewhat annoyingly, I didn\u00b4t have any of the information with me […]<\/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\/173"}],"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=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}