We had almost reached the peak of Los Gonzalez. The environment here was dry and arid; a far cry from the tropical lushness of the North. Here cacti grow sporadically in the thirsty soil and the plants and shrubs that pepper the otherwise sparse mountainside, are almost thistle-like and well used to surviving in hostile environments.
I wasn’t very well prepared. The warmest thing I had in my backpack was a towel, and the freezing snow that fell lightly atop the pico Aguila yesterday seemed to be mocking my three-quarter length trousers. I suppose I should have researched a little more thoroughly – it turns out there’s a lot more to Venezuela than meets the eye – the expansive mountain range of the Andes, beginning its colossal stretch here and ending way down at Chile’s Southern tip. Anyway, after the sweltering heat of Caracas, where little pools of perspiration gathered in the folds of my skin in the sleazy and seething streets of the city, it came as something of a shock.
I smiled to myself as I looked out the window of the 4x4, lost in thought, visualising the ridiculous encounter with the wild Andean mule I had come face-to-face with the day before on my impromptu journey down the mountain. The thing is, I had reasoned that just because I had taken a cable car up, did not necessarily mean that I would have to take one down. I decided that walking would not only get me closer to nature, but cunningly allow me to escape the throngs of people waiting to fill the downward bound cars.
It turns out there’s a reason why people don’t walk back down this mountain. There isn’t really a path, well not at least that I could find. The further I descended from the peak, the thicker the vegetation grew. The Andean flowers and shrubs that had smelt so sweet and were such a joy to photograph, started to turn on me, lashing out and scratching with their prickly claws.
I had felt like Heidi at first as I bounded down the mountain rejoicing to myself, at one with nature and singing with the birds, until I realised that I was increasingly being forced to plough my way through thick thistles and that the path had definitely disappeared, despite my mind’s award-winning attempts to convince myself otherwise. It wasn’t until I had fought my way through a particularly tough thorn tree, cursing loudly, as I pulled little spines from my hair and skin that I crashed into the large, untethered semi-horse, giving me a bemused look as it continued to chomp on the undergrowth. I decided it may be time to give in.
Having made it three quarters of the way down the mountain, I then had to contemplate reversing my tracks up the steep incline in the gathering fog to take the cable car back down. Emerging in the visitor centre at last, dirty and bleeding, with thorns in my hair and mud on my face, yet maintaining my composure and a look as if nothing unusual was going on, I wasn’t convincing the scared Venezuelan child that grabbed hold of his mother, eyes frozen on my frazzled face all the way down.
The 4x4 pulled to a halt and I was jogged back into my surroundings. I realised that we had reached our destination and my thoughts were returned to today’s adventure; not content with almost careering off the side of a mountain yesterday, I thought that today I would actively try to jump off of one with a paragliding experience. I think that something about being in unfamiliar terrain awakens an insatiable thirst for adventure in me. It’s sort of as if I dare myself to see how far I can go.
There’s something quite magical about soaring with the eagles, harnessing the power of the wind, with nothing more than a flimsy parachute as you’re elevated through the clouds, high above gorges and valleys below diminished to mere models as you dominate the power of nature.
The key here, though, is that you do have to dominate the natural wind or your launch off of the cliff could turn nasty. If you aren’t with a trained expert, then a sweeping bluster can mean that you either spend hours up in the air or are recklessly blown off-course. The powerful gusts that were stubbornly whipping up today meant that we had to sit and wait, respectful of the conditions.
We sat on the ground; a group of people just waiting for the wind to die down, passing round a few cans of Polar and exchanging idle chit-chat. This is where I met Amy and Juliet, two larger than life personalities blundering through this country together for no particular reason other than to entertain themselves. It was moderately cheaper than going anywhere else in South America, always warm in summer (they also were ill-prepared for the frosty climate in these parts), and offered endless possibilities for cheap thrills.
I really don’t think it matters for how long you know some people – for how much time you are lucky enough to have them pass through your life or the level of contact you maintain with each other afterwards– they can still be entrenched forever in your mind as lifelong friends – and remembered with a chuckling smile. Although the three of ours encounter was brief, we certainly packed more into it than most people in a lifetime, from searching for anacondas ankle-deep in blackened swamp water, to dealing with corrupt policemen, wild parties in the outback, sleeping in hammocks with insects the size of our hands, and swimming with piranhas.
I can still remember it now. Juliet was rubbing her eyes as they chuckled about what they had been up to the night before and Amy made a typically English comment about Brits on holiday while Juliet sniggered as she observed the skinny parachute instructor wrestling with the strong wind. I took to them at once. What friendship wouldn’t be immediately and solidly forged in the dizzying moments before running to the edge of a mountain, heart-in-mouth, about to leap over?
The breath pumped hard in my lungs and mixed with the stabbing cold of the wind, the adrenaline coursing through my veins as the impossibly orange sun set behind the mountain as we landed. Exhilarated, I ran over to Juliet and we jubilantly embraced as we waited for Amy to descend, jumping up and down and gushing over the awesomeness of what we had just done. “ I need a drink” said Juliet with a wink – that was my girl.
I’ll conveniently skip the details of the night that followed, mostly because I can’t remember them. Let’s just say a few beers turned into a rocking party that began soon after the sun set and ended as it was peeking through the mist some 12 hours later. Flashes of many things come to mind when I recall that night in the mountainous region of Venezuela with two English girls as mad as March hares. I had been on my own the last few weeks and it was good to have some company at last, especially in the form of two females from the same culture as me with the innate ability to laugh at themselves without being frightened of what they were doing.
I don’t remember any single person back home or in Spain saying to me that going to Venezuela was a good idea. The first reaction was almost always a wide-eyed “what on earth for?” or “where’s that? I don’t know if I would fancy going to Africa”. I remember the day I told my father that I had just bought a one-way ticket to Caracas. I couldn’t hear him breathing anymore on the end of the phone. Although I think he was secretly pleased that I wasn’t going to Colombia, where I would almost certainly be kidnapped by a rogue gorilla, he began his own (always dangerous) research – like when you google your flu-like symptoms and convince yourself that you have a multitude of incurable diseases. He rang me back. Apparently Colombia wasn’t the number one country in the world for gun crime – Venezuela was – was there no way I could reconsider my decision?
Amy and Juliet were like me. A formidable mixture of boldness and blind stupidity, with a lucky star watching from above – they didn’t see anything wrong or strange in venturing into the South American wildernesses in search of its most curious creatures either. We decided to go together to Los Llanos, in the heart of Venezuela, where you can see anacondas (ten metre long snakes) in their natural habitat, swim with flesh-eating fish, be eaten alive my mosquitoes with more perseverance than a drunken old guy at a bar and share your hammock with poisonous caterpillars – should you be that way inclined.
The day of the trip dawned ominously red and it was an uncomfortable ride from Merida to the cowboy ranch deep in the Venezuelan planes. After extracting almost no information from the nameless tourist agency, we relied on our own enthusiasm and imaginations as we waited in the plaza for our transport to arrive. Positively green around the gills after having tried far too many of the local substances, I bought us some coffee. Eventually a beaten-out 4x4 crunched its gears loudly in the distance and Amy laughed – “that’ll be our bus” she said – it turned out it was. A tin can of a vehicle that offered not a shred of comfort as the ten-hour journey quickly became one of the most uncomfortable experiences of our lives.
For the 99% of Venezuelans who are welcoming, jovial, friendly, chatty and entertaining, our “tour guide”, Jacinto, was certainly the exception, as he was little more than a chauffeur, no commentary was provided and no details as to our surroundings were offered, as we made several diversions along the way – one to pick up his girlfriend, Mariela, who was several years his junior – another to stop at a market and buy trousers for her, and several others for eggs, bananas, gifts for the family, just about anything purchasable was duly bought, and the bumpy, unpleasant, never-ending journey was extended even longer. It actually felt more as if we had hitched a ride on the side of the road with these people than that we had paid money for a tourist excursion.
As we wound our way through the mountainous roads, Jacinto loudly played a reggaton CD, that’s lustful lyrics told the tale of unrequited love (and something about banging on the bonnet of a beamer). He exchanged a deep and soulful look with his girlfriend. I opened the window a bit, and then asked for a pit stop of my own, feeling the vomit rise in my throat as the broken speaker in the back of the car throbbed against my thorax.
The day faded into evening and in the half light the severely worsening path was less visible. We had passed though just about every discomfort possible as the freezing rain that began at the top of pico el Aguila leaked in though the poorly insulated window, soaking us in instants. On one of our stops Jacinto had inserted a strategic plastic bag in its place as an attempt to stem the unrelenting torrent, but it failed to stop the leak. We shivered together as we descended the sloping roads from Merida to the flat lands.
As soon as we had driven through the mountains and reached the prairies, the temperature soared, as if jumping from an ice bath into a sauna and the bitter cold melted into blistering heat. The road was pitted with potholes and the brief relief we had felt that the twisting and winding had stopped for a moment was quickly quashed by the bumping and swerving of huge chasms where the road had fallen away, loose gravel chipping against the windscreen; our heads banged against the tinny roof.
The sky became dark and brooding and the black clouds looked as if they had formed for the rising of Lucifer’s reign on the planet. To the left of the jeep an electric bolt of lightning stabbed the earth, followed by a rumble of menacing thunder. The storm grew more persistent and aggressive, as fierce forks of unharnessed electrical energy passed directly over us, falling closer to the vehicle every time.
“Llano” in Spanish means “flat” - “Los Llanos” meaning “a flat place” – a plane – not really where you want to be in a fork lightening storm – the highest things for miles around being the occasional shrub at about the height of the wheels. Oh God how many times I’ve thought I was close to death on these wild trips of mine, as the jeep lurched high into the air without warning and we bounced over a rutted section of the road. My bag dropped to the floor, contents spilling out, head hitting the ceiling as the heavens opened, emptying the whole sky of water. Volumes and volumes of torrential rain pounded the jeep, converting the slippery, unpaved dirt tracks into swampy and treacherous terrain, and turning the car into a washing machine inside. We began to crash into clumps of earth and fallen trees, ditches, boulders and branches.
The make-shift leak stopper was rendered useless in the face of these conditions – the plastic bag could do nothing against the sheer force of nature and no one in the jeep could escape being soaked. The flimsy windscreen wipers worked feebly against the fury of the rain, their one speed unable to clear the ravenous water as it fell.
Jacinto was driving blind, presumably by memory. As the rain’s force continued to grow and the visibility weakened, so did the quality of the path. Our teeth rattled and our bones shook and banged against the hard sides of the jeep as the water continued to seep in through the window. At one point we drove past a sign warning to pass at our own peril. We collectively shuddered as we skidded along the road, wondering if we would ever reach our destination, all the while the anxiety rising in the back of the car; after all we actually had no idea of where we were, somewhere lost in the swamplands of outback Venezuela.
Finally we arrived at a modest-looking ranch with a few oil lamps burning dimly as a young shirtless llanero opened the gate. “You are most welcome” he said, staring particularly deeply into my eyes. Juliet giggled at me. With these insatiable cowboys, whose stares were just as capable as stripping clothes off your bones as the piranhas, the next few days would tell what the real dangers would be out here.
