We arrived in Coro yesterday morning at 6.30 in the morning, and were greeted with a blast of hot air in the bus station - a welcome change from the icy temperature that the night buses seem to be so fond of. Coro is a small, hot city in the northwest of the country, the first capital of Venezuela and one in which the colonial roots are still very visible in the architecture. We took a taxi 'La Casa de los Pajaros' or ´the House of the Birds', a small and unique posada that is owned by an architect and is a beautiful building made up of two airy courtyards filled with plants and rooms placed around, brightly coloured wall paintings and a kitchen with a tree growing out of the floor. It also had a tortoise.

After we had showered and changed, and feeling very much like brand new human beings, we set off exploring the city intending to spend the day in a 'museum spaz'. Sadly, this did not occur as easily as we had hoped as two of the museums were undergoing refurbishment. Next to the disappointingly bare Museum of Ceramics, we found the House of Windows - an old colonial mansion that housed a collection of items preserved from a Sevillian family who moved from Spain in the nineteenth century. Our favourite room contained a tall, four poster bed that had steps to climb onto it and was surrounded by a dark red material. We did not like it as much once the bat, the latest incarnation of the house's previous owner we decided, flew at our heads... After our narrow escape from the bat, we continued our exploration of the town admiring the old mansions with their light, airy courtyards before returning to our posada to eat and discovering some incredible, trashy thriller novel on the shared bookcase, which we MUST finish before we leave tomorrow evening...

This morning, we woke up early with the prospect of a day trip around Falcon state. Our guide, who we still don´t know the name of despite spending nearly 11 hours with, drove us north to the Peninsula Paraguana into a unexpected desert area lasting about 30 kms and consisting of endless sanddunes. After spending some time wandering around on the sand and feeling slightly as though we were in Dubai rather than Venezuela, we returned to the car and continued our journey north. Our next stop was the shrine of Anima de Guasare, a small building with an inside festooned with photos of cars, families, children, houses and graduation ceremonies. Apparently, in 1912 during a period of famine and drought a family died on this spot on their journey from Punto Fijo to Coro. Now, many people visit this site to ask a favour of the spirits of the family, promising to leave a gift of a candle or a photograph of their request should this favour be granted.

Once we had left the crowded building, we drove a short way until we reached a nature reserve called Montecano that contains several species of plants found nowhere else in the world. We walked for about an hour along a trail that led us through trees strung with a plant called barba de palo, a kind of funghi or algae that creates a symbiotic relationship with the plant that it grows on. These trees gave the whole area the feeling that we were walking through the setting of a fairy tale, or an elven glade in 'Lord of the Rings'. We left the reserve and set of to Pueblo Nuevo for lunch, our guide delighting us when he not only found out the name and singer of our favourite reggaeton song, but also bought us the pirate copy of a whole CD!

From lunch, we got back in the car - not nearly as bad as the jeep from Los Llanos, especially as there were only two of us, the seats faced forwards and there was aircon... We drove for about forty-five minutes until we reached the coast and a lighthouse at the northern point of Venezuela. From here, we took the same road back a little until we stopped at the strange, pinky purple lake we had passed on the way up. The salt lake, pink from the amount of sodium in the water, is home to many flamingoes, who come here to eat the large number of shrimps that get trapped here every morning by the retreating tide. The lake is incredible - the pink water contrasted with the bright blue sky and all around the edge there were large, white salt crystals in chunks. We spent a long time attempting to take pictures of flamingoes through a pair of binoculars, but to no avail. Afterwards, we set off to the beach for a short swim before heading back to the posada.

Tomorrow, we will spend the day in Coro before getting the night bus to Caracas for our final day in Venezuela. We are both excited to see Nelson again.

Love Alice and Hannah.

WE have just got bak from our four day safari in Los Llanos. We started the trip with a horrible winding journey in a kind of jeep through the mountains, on which I actually threw up... Luckily it got better as we stopped at a condor station to see some condors - huge, majestic vultures that are emblematic of the Andes - which are being reintroduced in Venezuela as they were at one point extinct. We also went for a walk through the mountains, where it was actually freezing cold and very misty and atmospheric! We ate lunch in a little wooden restaurant high in the hills, where we enjoyed delicious trout, a speciality of Merida.

After a lot more driving we eventually arrived at our first posada in Barinitas, a town near Los Llanos. Here we got to do white water rafting which was so fun!! ALice even got to go in a little canoe to get the action up close! We got very, very, very wet and screeched a lot as we tumbled through the rapids. Once we had dried off and calmed down, we had a delicious meal of Llanos beef.

The next day we set off in the bloody jeep again and headed for the plains, entering Apure state. It started to get a lot hotter and a lot flatter, with vast, green plains and an endless horizon, dotted everywhere with beautiful, white, angular cows, the main livestock raised by the Llaneros. Finally we arrived at our camp, a very rustic place in the middle of nowhere, shaded by two enormous mango trees where the mangoes fell like grenades with terrifying thumps in the night! On our first afternoon there we were taken by our jokes giude, Howard, on a boat trip through the marshy river, where we saw snakes, beautiful birds, caimans and huge, pink river dolphins blowing air. It also rained torrentially, and my hands and arms went numb for hours! After the usual delicious dinner, we went to sleep in our big dorm, where the ludicrously touchy feely Spanish couple had somehow managed to stick two beds together, making us rather anxious about any non-mango-related bumps in the night..

The next day we went on our first safari out into the plains, where the guides managed to catch an anaconda for us to touch! The anacondas are huge, muscular constrictors, and we could see an awkward lump in the middle of this one where it had just swallowed its lunch! We also saw herds of adorable capybara, enormous guinea pig-like rodents with big fat bums which I fell in love with! Howard told us that if a llanero girl has a nice arse, they call it a 'capybara butt'...

In the afternoon we went horseriding, and I was given the most mental horse who just wanted to gallop the whole way, so that was lots of fun (I really want to start riding again now). We trekked through the marshy land in burning sun, and saw a cute anteater sleeping in a palm tree. Again, we saw hundreds of species of incredible birds, including neon scarlett ibises, brightly coloured falcons, the world's oldest breed of bird, and the world's biggest stork.

That night a joropo band (a kind of Venezuelan blue grass with a harp, cuatro and maracas) came to play at the camp, and all the guides got drunk and the women went round dancing withevery available man. Afterwards, with our questionably compos mentis guide, we went on a night safari. Alice and I rode on planks on the top of the jeep, watching caiman eyes glowing in the water. This crazy guy waded into the pitch black water with bare feet and only my crappy torch as a light, and snatched up a baby caiman, which Alice and I held with glee! We also saw another anteater, and another crazy guy got out of the jeep and chased it until the anteater reared up with its arms splayed and did a kind of lairy defenive dance, in the style of, 'come and have a go if you think you're hard enough'. So funny, and completely unexpected!

The next morning we got up with heavy hearts at the prospect of another day in the godforsaken jeep... Luckily we were rewarded when we returned to Merida with a lovely meal out with our friends from the posada and the trip, followed by cocktails in a rammed, improvisatory bar that seemed to basically be someone's living room. We are having one last day in Merida before (hopefully) heading to Coro tonight.

Love Hannah and Alice

After our last blog, we set out on what we had planned to be a quiet, chilled out meal. How very wrong we were... We ended up in a small cafe with an insane waiter who was determined to use us to practise his English insisting, with many leaps, bounds and smiles that we let him take a photo of us before asking seriously "do you LIKE it??" and the question "Do you love me?!". After we returned, slightly hysterical from our experience, we chilled in the posada with Chris and the group of English boys we had termed the 'GBG' or 'Guide Book Guys' in Caracas due to their helpless, bewildered and disenchanted manner as they wandered blankly around Parque Central.

The next morning, we woke up early to go horse riding in the Andes. After a slightly traumatic journey involving a taxi driver who had as little idea of where we were trying to go and an exhausting uphill walk, we arrived at a beautiful, isolated farm. Jackie, the owner of the farm is originally French and passionate about his job. We set off, me slightly terrified of my first time on a horse, along the narrow, winding mountain trails. The scenery was breathtaking with lush, green mountains interspersed with the clouds that drifted between them. We stopped for lunch once we were out of the valley - homemade cheese, bread and salad, before setting back along the same route. When we arrived back at the farm, Hannah spent a while bonding with the cat whilst we chatted with the Spanairds who had accompanied us before beginning our return journey. When we had finally returned to Merida, we ate dinner at a restaurant in the south of the city which was probably the classiest place we`ve been so far! We had the best salmon we've ever tasted, and literally buckets of pina colada whilst a jazz band played in the corner. We followed this up with more cocktails in a slightly less classy place called Bananas...

Yesterday we visited Heladeria Coromoto, in the Guinness Book of Records for having the most flavours of ice cream - including meat, beer and shrimp! And now we are just about to leave for a four day safari into Los Llanos, the plains of Venezuela...

Love Alice and Hannah

We are really loving Merida! It's so nice to stop somewhere properly, and the posada we have found is such a nice, relxed, ramshackle little place in the centre of town which also organises loads of activities and tours. We spent our first few days here strolling around the town, nestled in the Andean mountains. We've visited a few art galleries and museums (Alice particularly loving the collection of ancient pottery!) and have been enjoying the cornucopia of cheap restaurants, cafes and ice cream parlours. We've even managed to find possibly the ONLY vegetarian place in the entire country, a welcome change from the 'meat party' as one poor Swedish veggie put it... The weather here is also very different, still bright and sunny in the day but cold at night - we even have to sleep with blankets! Yesterday we went to a zoological park and saw lots of animals native to Venezuela, like hilariously playful monkeys, squeaky little ring tailed coatis, and beautiful jaguars that we got up close to.

Anyway, the real highlight came today when Alice and I went PARAGLIDING! It's something we've both been long curious about, and Merida is one of the best places in the world for the sport so we thought we'd give it a try. As the jeep wound further and further up the mountains, however, we started to wonder what we'd gotten ourselves into! But once we were strapped in and had taken our little run off the cliff (!) it was just amazing. Yiu get to sit back in this little cosy seat whilst the guy behind you does all the steering, so it's really quite comfortable and actually not at all scary! Flying above the birds and seeing your shadow far below on the mountain side is so weird! I was particularly lucky in that we must have cauight some very strong thermal and flew ridiculously high over the valley, with the peaks of surrounding mountains at eye level and the rivers and roads shining threads beneath. It also feels very peaceful, and through the wind you can feel the heat of the sun on you, and maybe imagine what it's like to be a bird! It really was such an incredible experience, especially in such a beautiful area.

So hopefully tomorrow we will be trekking on horseback... Lots of love, Hannah and Alice

Our epic journey is over! We spent a day in Ciudad Bolivar, a pretty town located on the banks of the Orinoco. We had a very quiet day wandering around the city, made even quieter by the fact that Chavez had arrived to give a speech and the majority of the roads had been sectioned off by the Venezuelan police. The silence, coupled with the heat, made the entire place feel like a ghost town. After lunch we lay on a rock in the city park, surrounded by lizards and decided what to do with our lives - the outcome has made us both exceptionally happy.

That evening we began our epic journey that was to last slightly over 20 hours. The journey was relatively uneventful with the only highlight (for me, lowlight for Hannah) being the exceptionally pervy driver who spent a good 5 minutes standing on the stairs, staring at her and licking his lips in a manner reminiscent of a lizard from the park. His noticeable admiration for her made us leave 30 minutes later than we should have...

After we changed buses, the landscape began to change drastically, resembling a Devon moor (although much more dramatic). We are currently in Merida, a town located in the Andes. The city is a student town surrounded by impressive mountainous scenery. We found another nice posada in the centre of the town, close to the Plaza Bolivar, a crucial element for any Venezuelan street plan. Today we visited the Cathedral and the archaelogical museum located inside the University of the Andes. I had a slight spaz over the pottery collection and then proceeded to list all the many common problems found in museums. We also had many scatological conversations. The next few days will be fairly chilled until we decide to partake in some of the many outdoor sports that are on offer here including paragliding and horseriding.

Love Alice and Hannah