VENEZUELA and T&T 2009

We have just had the most incredible few days! Our trip into the rainforest started with a flight in a tiny six seater plane, where Alice got to live out her Indiana Jones fantasies by sitting in front with the pilot. Flying over this largely uninhabited landscape, we could already see the surreal tepuis - enormous, flat-topped rocky mountains - which would be our backdrop for the next three days. We arrived at our camp in Canaima, a little village where the Pemon, an indigenous tribe, live and met our guide, Toni (the strong and silent type...) and lovely fellow tourists who would be keeping us company. After lunch (the chefs were great, by the way!) we were taken in a canoe across the huge Laguna, where the water is pink from all the tanins and the sand is white, to a series of wide waterfalls. We were able to walk behind the waterfalls and get completely drenched - a very awe-inspiring experience! The noise of all the water roaring over you, with foam thundering down, really like a stampede of white horses - it definitely whet our appetite for Angel Falls the next day...

To reach Angel Falls, or Salto Angel, we left very early the next morning and journeyed down the Rio Churun in a motorised canoe for about three hours. Later that night we would compare the experience of speeing down this wide expanse of water deeper and deeper into the jungle to Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. Once the boat had moored at a rocky island, we waded through the water to start our trek up through the rainforest. Apparently we climbed about 300m upwards, although we couldn't tell whilst we were in the gloom of the forest, but we came out at an amazing viewpoint on the side of a mountain where we could finally see Angel Falls! We were really lucky in that the clouds actually cleared for us so that we could see all 980m of the waterfall! It really is impressive, cascading narrowly down a sheer rock face and creating a cauldron of mist and spray at the bottom. I kept saying how much the Victorians would have loved it if only it had been discovered before the 1930s! It was textbook sublime - completely overwhelming and very much worth the journey! We also went to paddle in once of the smaller waterfalls just below it.

That night we stayed in a very rustic camp a few minutes from the Falls where the generator cut out at about 7 so we had to use candles. We played games with our new Venezuelan, Pemon and Danish friends, each improving our own language skills! We fell asleep, exhausted and satisfied, in hammocks, listening to the sounds of the rainsforest and the very distant but omnipresent roaring of the Falls.

Today we have taken the boat and then the plane back to Ciudad Bolivar, stopping for Alice to swim and soothe her ridiculous sunburn and blisters in the 'Pool of Happiness'. Ciudad Bolivar is a gorgeous town right on the Rio Orinoco. We have found a really lovely Posada here and will stay a night whilst we plan our epic journey on to Merida...

Lots of love, Hannah and Alice