I woke up tired after a not great night in my hammock.\u00a0 After breakfast we headed out on the jeeps for our boat safari.\u00a0 When we stopped at the point where we were to leave from a small girl emerged with her “pet” ocelot cub.\u00a0 It was one of the coolest and sweetest things I have ever seen and when you held it it made crazy noises and dug its rather sharp claws into you on occasion.\u00a0 I\u00b4m not sure how long she\u00b4ll be able to keep him actually as he felt like he was at the end of his manageable, cute puddy cat stage!<\/p>\n
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Once in the motorized canoe we headed off and were treated to lots of birds, caimans and huge iguanas in the trees.\u00a0 At one point they kept driving round and round in circles and it then emerged that this was to see river dolphins.\u00a0 The dolphins were quite unlike dolphins I have seen previously and were, how do I put this, erm kind of ugly critters.\u00a0 When you picture dolphins they are slender, sleek and sculpted but these guys looked a bit more like dolphin trolls.\u00a0 They were very cool though and lovely to see.<\/p>\n
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After heading back to camp for lunch Rainer and I were driven out in the jeep.\u00a0 I was dropped off in Barinas whilst Rainer evidently headed back to Merida.\u00a0 The tour to Los Llanos was out of this World.\u00a0 We saw the most amazing range of wildlife and the guides were immensely knowledgeable, friendly and helpful.\u00a0 It\u00b4s one of the best things I have done in Venezuela and I would heartily recommenrd both it and \u00b4Gravity tours\u00b4 the company through which I booked it.<\/p>\n
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Back in Barinas I was reminded of how unexciting the place had proved previously.\u00a0 I was meant to be there for around eight hours but then the bus was stupidly late so I waited even longer.\u00a0 Towards the end of my time at the bus station I got talking to a young, local lad who asked if I could buy him some cigarettes.\u00a0 He did have loads of luggage with him which he told me he didn\u00b4t want to leave unattended, although part of me suspected that the real reason he didn\u00b4t want to go to the kiosk himself was as he was underage.\u00a0 Unable to question this particularly adequately in Spanish I wandered slowly to the kiosk, at which point our bus arrived and saved me.\u00a0 He was then struggling with all his bags so I carried one.\u00a0 Then I had strange thoughts that all the army and Police people at the bus station were about to rush over and arrest me for carrying some illicit package.\u00a0 I think I must have been tired!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up tired after a not great night in my hammock.\u00a0 After breakfast we headed out on the jeeps for our boat safari.\u00a0 When we stopped at the point where we were to leave from a small girl emerged with her “pet” ocelot cub.\u00a0 It was one of the coolest and sweetest things I […]<\/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\/175"}],"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=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}