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Venezuela

Another country another border, more passport stamps and more haggling at the money changers. A group of us had decided to pool our money together to see if we could get a better deal at the money changers (these were just market stall holders who also changed money). It was decided that a couple of the Americans should do the haggling (they were good at this), two others should count the cash (we had all been stung by short changers before), and that i should hold our US dollars. So, as the business was being done, I decided to arrange the US currency in some sort of order (ones, fives, tens, and twenties), it was then that I noticed that someone of the twenties looked very much like forgeries (photocopies). So I quickly hid them back in the middle of the wad. Having made the deal and counted out the Venezuelan currency into our hands, the stall keeper suddenly decided that he had made a mistake and given us too good a deal. Tough, was our answer. I put the US dollars onto his stall (he was refusing to take them from me), weighting them down with a stone , and we walked away. We had no problems with the Venezuelan currency we had just bought, I wonder if the stall holder had any problems with the US dollars we had given him.

Overnight drive

A vote was taken in the group, as to whether we should drive normally and get into Caracas late or drive overnight and get in early. We drove overnight to get to Caracas in the morning, this was so that those who wanted longer in the city could get it. I wasn't happy with this result, and I remember very little about Caracas having had little or no sleep on the truck ride in.

From Caracas we headed south, away from the Caribbean coast, to Ciudad Bolivar. Here we saw the Orinoco river - the colour of a cup of milky tea. Some of the group flew off to see the Angle Falls, but I took the day to rest and get over yet another case of runnie bum.

The airport at Ciudad Bolivar had, standing outside on display, Jimmy Angel's old aircraft. It was this aircraft that Angle used to find the waterfalls that bare his name.

Carrying on further south we passed many , much smaller than Angle Falls, waterfalls. At one, we took the opportunity to have our morning wash. A great wake up call. The falls, some 30 feet (10 metres) high, fed a large pool. We swam in the pool, before climbing on the rocks behind/beneath the falls. Then a quick dive brought us out the other (pool) side of the falls, having been pummelled by the falling water.

At one point our path was blocked by a river, so we had to use the cable ferry. This is moored to each bank by cable and and pulls itself across using it.

In the middle of nowhere we came across a gold mine. This one looked nothing like any mine that I had seen before. A hole (about 3 feet in diameter, which is the smallest it can be and still allow a man to swing a spade) was dug straight down through the earth. When the gold seam (laid down by an ancient river) was found - about 30 feet down - horizontal tunnels were dug to follow the gold seam.

To make getting the spoil removal easier, a winch (looking like a water well) was sited on top.

The ore brought up from these mines was processed on site. First it was ground up between motorised rollers, and then, with the use of water and mercury, the gold was extracted. As you can imagine, with no health and safety rules, the mercury was having a bad effect on the miners, some of whom just sat there drooling, their brains rotted by constant contact with mercury.

The last place we stopped at in Venezuela was the border town of St Helena. Here we did some food shopping (for the truck) and went through an alarming amount of red tape to get out of the country. At one point Boomer, our trip leader, was arrested for not having employed a local guide in Venezuela. This, of course, was just a ploy by the local officials to try and extort money from us "rich gringos". All told it took three hours to get passed this bureaucracy. Then we drove to the border.

You could tell where Venezuela ended and Brazil started, the road stopped being tarmaced and became a dirt track. At the border visas (the Americans in the group needed them to enter Brazil) were checked and on two cases found to be out of date. We could not come it.

So back to St Helena, in Venezuela, and the Brazilian honorary consul. He was having his lunch, so we had to wait. Then , when he would see us, he said that there was nothing wrong with the visas, they were not out of date, and so he could not issue new ones. Fortunately Grace, one of the Americans effected, spoke fluent Spanish and was able to show that depending upon how one particular sentence was read, it could mean that the visa was either in or out of date. This cleared up, the consul was happy to issue new visas free of charge, and, 8 hours after starting the process, we drove back to the border and were out of Venezuela and into Brazil.