Canaima, Venezuela.

Kara says:

Canaima - a little indiginous village in the middle of nowhere in the southeast of Venezuela. You can only get here by air, all the vehicles (all ten of them!) in the village were airlifted in by the military, same goes for anything that doesn't grow here - concrete, tin for roofs, food, clothes, everything.

It's on the edge of a lagoon at the base of a line of waterfalls. We settled ourselves in a little thatched cabana at the edge of the lagoon (or OUR lagoon as we liked to think of it although occasionally other people came by to swim in it!) and sat on the couch out front for two days just admiring the view, reading, admiring the view, drinking wine, admiring the view, swimming, admiring the view... As usual the photos don't really do it justice, it's just beautiful. And completely unspoilt and undeveloped with the hotels/camps hidden in the rainforest. See various photos of the lagoon, photo of Karl doing a handstand in our lagoon, photo of our cabana. The sand has a slightly pink hue and the water is full of tanins making it a rusty colour and the combination makes for a lovely coloured shoreline. The canoes are the local transport seeing at there are no roads except in the town.

Also photo of yet another dodgy translation.






Then we took to the canoes and headed across the lagoon to visit the waterfalls. We've covered every angle - me and Karl at the top of the waterfall, Karl having manly, philosphical (where does all that water come from at all Ted?) conversation at the base of the waterfall and me disappearing behind a waterfall. Very cool things, waterfalls. Incredibly powerful, incredibly loud, you really really really don't want to get swept over one. Behind the waterfall there's a really strong air current blowing spray around and at the base a gale-force (disclaimer: I did not actually measure the windspeed, poetic licence) wind blasts spray horizontally out from the falling water. Refreshing indeed on a hot day.

Also photo of leaf-cutter ants at work. We saw lines of them everywhere carrying (the more ambitious ones stumbling drunkenly about with pieces that were stretching the limits of their abilities) their big green bits of leaves but could never see where they were going. Finally we came across the entrance to one of their ....um...nests? colonies? house? Anyway, they were all rambling aimlessly around the entrance like a bunch of guys proudly bringing home Christmas trees.

And a photo of storm-clouds from as close as I ever want to be in a plane as we were leaving Canaima. We actually got diverted to an alternate airport because we couldn't find a way through the storm.



Comments

  1. glenfJuly 17, 2009 at 12:14 PM

    I think "Keep off the monkeys" is pretty good advice..

    ReplyDelete

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