Our home in Santa Elena de Uairen
On Thursday, August 09th, when arriving in Santa Elena de Uairen after a whole night in a freezing cold bus, we will have spent the last 14 nights in 13 different places! The only time when we spent 2 nights in the same place was in the Orinoco Delta, in a Warao village. This is a little bit too much!
And of course most of those places were not exactly 5 stars places. When we had a shower, which has definitely not always been the case, it was almost systematically cold water. Many nights we spent sleeping in hammocks, only a roof over our head and the lodges in Canaima National Park didn’t even have any electricity. It might sound very romantic or exotic, but it is without a single doubt highly uncomfortable!
And of course we have not been lazing on the beach or close to a swimming pool … We have just finished the second tour in Venezuela: 3 days in the Orinoco Delta (a report will soon follow) and 4 days in Canaima & the Angel Falls (Salto Angel, a report will also soon follow). We also visited Ciudad Bolivar (see report from August 6th) and Tucupíta. This means also quite a bit of time in transports.
So what is next? We will indulge ourselves with 3 or 4 days / nights in a good hotel in Santa Elena and … Do NOTHING!!! Get ourselves and our stuff clean that will be tough enough, sleep and relax, read a little, sort the many pictures we have already taken, write the reports we should have already written. Finally, and maybe the most important point: during those days, we will not have to unpack & repack our backpacks every night / morning, which is strenuous and actually sometimes is the source of an argument! This little vacation in the trip will surely help us loading up the batteries for some further adventures!
Afterwards comes serious stuff: 6 days trekking Roraima, the highest Tepuí or Tabletop Mountain, climbing up to 2.800 meters … with temperatures close to freezing at night, at least several hours rain per day and maybe worst, a few billion mosquitoes, or “plagas”, a local kind of mosquitoes that does not sting but bites and especially “puri puri” which are very small flies and that are not fought off by skin repellents.
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